“Yeah. I know.”
“The kid was sobbing and had been hit a couple of times. Naked from the waist down. Armanti didn’t hesitate, just came up behind the guy, grabbed him, and broke his neck. Crack. So with the guy there dead and the kid sobbing, Armanti castrated the corpse and stuffed his genitals into his mouth. That took just seconds.
“He had the kid under his left arm and was on his way out when a woman walked in. She took one look at the corpse and started to scream. He hit her once in the chest as hard as he could. Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill her, just wind her good so she couldn’t scream, but… anyway, the way he told it to me, her heart stopped dead. Probably burst like a balloon. He’s a strong man and was all pumped on adrenaline…”
Travis took a few seconds, then continued, “Met a man coming up the stairs as he and the kid went down. The guy decided to shoot Armanti, but he was a hair slow. I think Armanti actually stuck his pistol in the guy’s mouth and blew his head off.”
We all thought about that for a moment.
Travis went on. “The Brits took the kid and said they would send her to a British charity that is trying to get orphans out of Syria and into the UK. Of course he had to tell the Brits why they didn’t have a prisoner to sweat. They said to forget it, but you know how these things are. Someone will whisper about it, and when the agency gets wind of it, killing the mother and kidnapping the girl, the shit will hit the fan. Armanti just wants to be gone.”
“How does he know the woman was the child’s mother?” Sarah asked.
“She was. He was briefed before he went in. But when she walked into that room, she didn’t care about the child — she was screaming about the holy warrior who was going to do a Muhammad on the kid. So he killed her. Instant justice, I guess.”
“Can he be trusted?” I asked.
“You’ve trained with him, Tommy. I’d trust him with my life, but I don’t do kids.”
We left it there.
As we approached Leesburg I glanced to my left and saw a strip mall with one store all lit up. It was a drugstore. I wheeled the van into the parking lot. We locked it and went inside.
“How come you’re open?” I asked the guy behind the counter.
“We have an emergency generator. We’re open twenty-four/seven, all year around, rain, snow, or power outages. People sometimes need medications in the middle of the night. That’s our edge.”
We stocked up on bandages, antiseptics, needles and thread, surgical tape, aspirin, and a box of surgical gloves. “Be prepared,” my scoutmaster always said.
The warehouse district is on the south side of Leesburg, in an industrial district that looked as if it contained only warehouses and light industry. Without power, there were only a few vehicles there today.
Sarah pointed out the warehouse we wanted. It was a big steel building and the sign said “Walmart. Always low prices. Always.” It was locked up tight, with a steel personnel door and a code pad.
I parked the van so people down the street couldn’t see what we were doing. Armanti parked a block away in the other direction.
We put on surgical gloves, and then used a propane torch and a crowbar. Took about ten minutes but we got that door open. No alarm sounded. The place was dark as King Tut’s tomb. We used flashlights and right in front of us was a deuce and a half and four pickups with FEMA markings, plus a gaggle of big forklifts. I left the Wire outside to warn us if anyone came along, then, using flashlights, the rest of us explored.
The place looked like the hold of a ship heading for D-Day in Normandy. More pickups, trucks, Humvees, electrical generators on trailers, mobile kitchens, tanks for water and fuel, even some weird looking things that Travis said were microwave radar for crowd control, plus mobile radio setups and com units mounted on the backs of trucks. The stuff was painted a dark green and had a white star stenciled on each side. It wasn’t marked U.S. Army. This was FEMA stuff, for Barry Soetoro’s army.
That was one side of the warehouse. On the other side, arranged so there was room for forklifts to go between the stacks, were pallets of ammo, several tractor-trailer loads; more pallets with boxes full of one-piece green coveralls emblazoned with a FEMA badge on the right shoulder and an American flag on the left; tractor-trailer loads of MREs, meals ready to eat; mountains of weapons; crates of M4s, AT4s, heavy belt-fed .30-caliber machine guns and M279 light machine guns, hand grenades, belted ammo, and pistols; and even some small wooden boxes containing two sniper rifles each. There were some industrial-sized coffee pots, a truckload of first aid supplies, including anti-coagulant pads, and medical emergency kits for corpsmen. Basically, it looked to me like enough military supplies to outfit an infantry brigade for a trek across Africa even if they had to fight every step of the way.
“When the revolution comes, these folks planned to come out on the winning side,” Willis Coffee remarked. The rest of us just looked around, stunned.
“Did you know all this was here, Tommy?” Armanti asked.
“Nope. But I was hopeful we’d find some weapons. Our pistols aren’t going to be enough to pry Jake Grafton out of Camp Dawson.”
“So that’s what’s going down.”
“Yeah. You still want in?”
“Why not.”
“Okay, people,” I said. “Let’s get at it. We’ll load two of their pickups, the van, and Armanti’s ride. Use that forklift over there to load up some pallets of MREs. Take four of those ten-gallon jerry cans full of fuel. We want a crate of AT4s, a couple of machine guns with boxes of belted 7.62 for them, a couple of light machine guns, a couple M4s for each of us, lots of ammo, and anything that looks interesting, like those boxes of hand grenades and the medical supplies. I don’t want to die for lack of a Band-Aid. I’d also like a sniper rifle for my personal collection in case I decide to take up groundhog hunting. But what I’d really like to find in here is some C-4, timers, and detonators. Chop chop.”
The good news was that Willis, Travis, Armanti, and I knew how to use all these weapons and keep them in good working order. Sarah didn’t, of course, and neither did Willie the Wire. On one trip to the van with a crate of MREs, I asked Willie, “You want a rifle or pistol for a souvenir?”
“I’m a two-time loser, man, and you know it. If I got a pistol in my pocket when they arrest me for jaywalking while black, it’s mandatory life. Thanks, but no thanks.”
He was going to bet his life on our ability to rescue Grafton, but wanted to do it disarmed. Explain that logic if you can.
Since it was already ninety degrees outside, we threw our jeans and shirts in the van before we stepped into the new duds. Everyone but Willie strapped a web belt and pistol holster on, including Sarah. Beretta nines were the flavor of the day. “You know how to use that shooter?” I asked her.
“No, but it’s the fashion accessory of the season, so I want one.”
There were boxes of army combat boots in the warehouse, so we each took a pair. Sarah, of course, said, “I’m not wearing those.”
“Find a pair that fits, try them on to make sure, then throw them in the van, just in case we have to wade a swamp.”
She nodded and did it.
We spent fifteen minutes opening the overhead door so we could get the pickups out. Using the forklift, they raised me as high as possible and I unlatched it from the opening mechanism, then we used one of the door cables to pull it open. The forklift pulled and up it went. Willis and Travis climbed into the cabs of the pickups. The keys were in them, lying on the dashes.