Chapter Eighteen
Broken Glass
Something just didn’t feel right. I was tenser than all get out and I had no reason to be. The others were grouped around Orhanin, all of them reading even the little kids, who I was pretty certain couldn’t read, but were just trying to act like the grown-ups were.
Larc glanced at me and I looked back at him.
He shrugged his shoulder as if to say “What’s wrong?”
I spread my hands wide, as if to indicate, “That I didn’t know.”
Larc nodded and pointed up.
I understood. He wanted me to go up into the upper warehouse levels and have a look around. Getting up I walked over to a ladder and started to climb it.
The second floor had to be almost thirty feet above the bottom floor. When I got to it I saw that it was as empty and devoid of life, as the bottom floor was.
I started to walk along the side of the warehouse facing the ocean. Everything seemed okay. There was a small vessel headed this way, as if it intended on docking on the wharf near the warehouse. I studied it for a moment, but it was still a ways off and I couldn’t tell much about it.
I continued walking around until I got to the other side of the warehouse. Something caught my eye. The reflection of some flashing light off of a window two streets away glinted back at me and then I saw them coming.
What looked to be at least two hundred men dressed in black were making their way stealthily down the side streets coming toward the warehouse!
Some instinct, I couldn’t have explained if I had tried to, caused me to look up and to the right.
There on a nearby roof was another of the men laying down and he was aiming something at me. I threw myself to the side only moments before the window in front of me shattered and I felt my right arm jerked hard by something unseen.
The pace of the men in the street had quickened with the firing of the shot. I dimly registered all of this as I turned and half ran and fell at the same time to get to the opening between the two floors.
The wine of angry projectiles hitting the warehouse was all around me, as if someone had kicked over a hornet’s nest.
Larc and the others below were piling into the SUV.
“No!” I yelled.
Larc looked up.
“They’ve got the roads blocked off. You can’t get away that way. The only way is to get up here. Now!”
Larc yelled something and the others piled back out of the SUV and took to the ladders. Orhanin and Thannic made it to the top floor first each with a screaming kid in tow. I couldn’t blame the children.
The second floor was a nightmare of shattering glass and whining killer bees. It was a miracle that we weren’t being hit by them.
Just as Evette and Larc made the second floor their arrival was heralded by explosions from the first floor, as doors and walls alike were blown inward.
Black clad men stormed into the lower level guns blazing. Drawing the weapon that I had taken from the mansion with my left hand I fired it into their pressed masses and saw several of them go down, as the echo of my shots were duplicated by Larc’s gun, as he too fired.
The men below spotting us on the second floor issued forth a hail of bullets that forced us back from the edge of the overlook.
Choking on stirred up dust and smoke I yelled, “Follow me!” as I ran down the wharf side of the warehouse.
At the far end of the warehouse was an open bay door with a cable that ran overhead through it out over a side alley and onto the roof of an adjacent one story warehouse. Reaching the cable I picked up a piece of old chain and thrust it into Orhanin’s hands.
He knew what to do with it. Flipping it over the cable, with the little girl hanging on for dear life, Orhanin jumped off the platform holding onto both ends of the chain.
Thannic and the little boy followed suit moments later. Evette just stood there staring at me like she thought I was crazy, maybe I was.
Larc pushed her forward, as I flung another chain up and over the cable. She hesitantly put her hands on the chain ends, when I yelled at her to do so and before she was ready or could object Larc pushed her out the doorway.
Evette’s scream of terror sounded out clearly above all the other pandemonium going on around us. One or both of us was going to pay for that.
Larc was handing me a chain, but I yelled pointing at the Bible, “That’s more important than both of us! Go, I’ll cover you!”
With a look of reluctance Larc flicked the chain over the cable and was out the door with the Bible in tow. Awkwardly I flipped the chain I held over the cable above. Finding a piece of metal tubing on the floor I jammed it through the two links of the chain and grabbed a hold of it with my left hand. My right arm hurt too badly to try to hold onto anything like what holding onto the chain ends entailed.
I had transferred the gun to my right hand earlier, which was covered in my own blood now. Grimly I wondered if the weapon would still work.
Glancing back I saw that the men in black had made it to the second floor and I managed to lift my arm enough to fire off several shots, the recoil from each shot hurting my arm abominably, but I saw a couple of the enemy fly back into space to crash onto the ground floor below.
I jumped off the platform holding onto the metal pipe awkwardly, as I wind milled around in the air in my descent towards the other warehouse. The place where I had been standing only moments before was riddled with bullets.
I was flying backwards and unable to tell where I was heading and my landing would have been much worse if it hadn’t been for Larc half catching me out of the air, when I was overtop the other warehouse’ s roof.
The others were already inside as I and Larc raced toward the stairway off of the roof. We both saw something then that neither of us had ever seen before.
What looked like a giant one eyed bug was hovering in mid air up ahead of us.
The fire of guns mounted to it began to bloom orange flames and I expected to feel the slice of the hot metal into me in the next instance, as I had in my arm, but the bullets didn’t come close to us.
They rang out overhead of us and briefly craning my head back to see I watched as the stream of bright lighted death cut the men in black practically in half, as they stood on the platform in the process of taking aim on us.
They were firing on their own men?
What was going on here?
Whatever it was I was grateful, because without the intervention of the mechanical one eyed beast we would be dead, of that I was sure.
Gaining the ground floor we reached the others. This strange occurrence of friendly fire was occurring street level as well, as men in mottled green and brown uniforms were firing unmercifully into the dwindling ranks of men in black, who were retreating to the same warehouse we had just escaped from.
Evette answered the question on everyone’s mind as to what was going on outside. “The military is mounting an attack on the Committee forces. They’re trying to take over control of the Federation!”
Larc spoke, “I don’t care what they’re trying to do! What’s important is that there giving us the diversion we need to get away from here! Come on!”
Larc led the way through the warehouse to the far end. Gaining the street side of it we dashed across, hidden it seemed from the larger confrontation taking place around us.
Larc ran down a narrow space between two more warehouses that was barely wide enough to fit a man width wise.
Coming out on the other side I saw the dock before us and the ship I had seen earlier. It must belong to the navy because I could see a rather large looking gun sitting above the cab of the ship.
Evette was beside me with a look of determination on her face, “Give me your gun!”
She more or less had to take it from my hand, because I couldn’t lift my arm up anymore. Running past me she snatched the gun out of Larc’s waistband and ran on past toward where the boat was docked.
Larc half yelled in surprise and started to run after her, but he stopped as he was holding the little girl that Orhanin had taken to calling Lucy.
Orhanin had been shot through one hand and had a deep groove across the top of the other shoulder. Larc had taken over carrying the girl after seeing the pain on Orhanin’s face caused from holding onto the girl. Orhanin had been reluctant to hand the girl over though and had only done so because of Larc’s insistence.
We watched as Evette raced up the dock towards the boat. The sailor at the gun started to move the gun towards her as she neared.
I watched as both of Evette’s guns raised and then I saw the sailor manning the gun fall backward closely followed by his helper. Other sailors were falling like flies left and right too.
Within five seconds the armored patrol boat’s crew of seven were no more. Evette jumped over the side of the boat and disappeared within the boat, but quickly reappeared motioning for us to come.
We all started running for the boat. When we reached the boat Evette had already started it and had it idling. She had even cast off the mooring lines.
I’d said it before and I’d say it again, this woman was handy to have around, and deadly too!
I tried to step over into the boat, but I more or less fell into it. I pulled myself up to a sitting position. I just couldn’t catch my breath it seemed.
Larc glanced at me and motioned something to Evette. Evette was by my side. I tried to get up, but she pushed me back down, “I need to help.”
“It’s all taken care of and you’ve lost far too much blood for you to do anything other than sit here.”
She said in a no-nonsense way.
“Okay.” I said leaning my head back against the railing, as I continued to suck air down.
Evette tore the sleeves off of her shirt, tearing one sleeve in half making two pads of it she pressed one on either side of the wound and then used the other to hold them in place tightly. Evette left and some time passed by, but then she was back holding something up to me.
“Drink!”
It was some kind of orange fluid.
Was she serious?
She wanted me to drink water that was orange!
Pushing my head back she practically forced my mouth open and began pouring the stuff down my throat. She let me up for a gulp of air.
The stuff wasn’t bad at all!
I took the bottle from her and finished it off. Looking up at her somewhat sheepishly I held out the empty bottle, “Is this all there is?”
She laughed softly and held up a second bottle, “You know I really shouldn’t give this to you after what you did to me back at the warehouse.”
I pointed at Larc, who was steering the boat and said, “He’s the one you want to punish. He’s the one who pushed you. What could I have done?” I said indicating my injured arm.
“Right!” She said skeptically, but she gave me the other bottle anyway in good humor and then she moved on to who else needed help next.
Besides Orhanin’s injuries, Thannic had a couple bullet burns and Larc had a deep furrow cut across the front of one thigh. The children and Evette had escaped with no injuries at all.
I lay my head back against the side of the ship and closed my eyes and simply rested, as I enjoyed the swaying motion of the boat, as Larc steered it out of the harbor and down the coast.
After a while I heard a loud “Ouch!” I cracked my eyes open to see Evette kneeling beside Larc.
She was tying a rag around his thigh wound, perhaps a little too tightly. If the saucy grin on her face was any indication I would say I was right about my last thought. Finishing she came back over and sat down beside me.
“Feel better?” I asked.
“Much!” She replied.
Glancing back over at Larc I saw that Orhanin and Thannic were talking with him. It had to be serious because their demeanors and manner of speaking were.
I was too tired and comfortable to move. I closed my eyes again; soon it would be nightfall and God willing we would be back on our way home. Home had never sounded as good as it did now.