Chapter 12

It was sunrise and John lay beside a large rock. He was hidden under his cloak and blended into the background perfectly. The desert dawn this morning was glorious and cool. Winter in Nevada wasn’t as bad as winter in the north. As he watched the sunrise, he performed his morning ritual of offering two drops of blood, one to the Gods and the other to the Goddesses. Somehow, he felt reassured by that one simple act.

John was twenty yards from the house. This was where he expected everything to happen. He looked at his watch and wondered how long he would have to stay here. It wasn’t hard to stay in one place for an extended period, but it was murder trying to do it without moving.

From the spot where he was hiding, he could see the front door, the road, and the landing strip behind the house. The windows were covered so that he couldn’t see into the house. As the first light of morning struck the house, John could see more details. There were spy holes of the kind that are normally in the door of house scattered on the walls of the whole house. There were a number of slots cut into the walls and covered by boards. He could tell they were there so that whoever was in the house could shoot out without exposing themselves. He whispered into the microphone that the FBI had given him, to report what he had seen. The soft answer in his earphone confirmed that his message was received.

As he lay there, he suddenly realized that he had a problem. If these guys were as paranoid as they seemed, then they would probably station a man at exactly the location where he was hiding. There was a smaller pile of rocks ten feet behind him. Taking a chance, he inched his way to them. Rover got up and ran a good distance from John. John smiled as he realized that between a moving rock and a cougar, that if anyone were watching they would notice the cougar first.

He nestled down into the rocks, blending in as he did. Rover disappeared into the rocks further away from the house. John settled in for the duration. He held his breath when two men came out and looked around the property with binoculars. He reported the actions back to the command center at Albert’s place. The men went back in the house.

Several times during the morning, the men came out and checked the surroundings. It was always the same two men. Albert said that there were usually five guys at the place. Shortly before noon, the same two guys came out and got into the pick up truck parked at the end of the driveway. They drove around the property stopping occasionally to look at the surrounding area. They returned after thirty minutes.

It seemed to John like they were expecting their first delivery soon, and were making a last check of their surroundings. The way the men acted suggested they had not spotted anything unusual. John reported his findings and suggested that everyone get ready to move in.

Fifteen minutes later, two different men walked out of the house. One went to the rocks where John had hidden, earlier. The other went to a small shed on the other side of the house. John whispered the locations of the men to the command post. He stated that he would take out the man in the rocks.

He continued to wait for a car to show up. He examined the man in the rocks in front of him. The guy had a fully automatic rifle. These guys were serious about their business. He tensed when the guy switched off the safety on the gun and got into position to cover the driveway. John looked towards the road and saw a car stop, move forward a hundred yards, and then stop again. It waited a few minutes and then pulled to the entrance of the driveway. It stopped there and waited.

John was getting anxious at the delay. The car sat there for five long minutes. Finally, the buiding’s front door opened and a man stepped out. He waved his arms. The car started up again and drove down the driveway. It stopped right in front of the rocks occupied by the man with the gun. The guy kept the gun pointed at the driver. The driver got out and waited for the man at the door.

John had to wait to see if there was an abduction victim in the car before calling in the cavalry. It seemed as if everything moved in slow motion. The guy from the porch slowly advanced towards the car. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He glanced at it and then said, “Fourteen years old. Blond hair. Green eyes. Slender build. Is that what you got?”

“Yes, Mr. Jones. She’s a prime, grade A, virgin. Hell, I wanted to do her myself, but I know I’ll get more for a virgin.”

“Good. Let’s see her.”

The driver of the car opened the back door and pulled out a young girl that fit the description. Her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet were bound so that she could stand, but she was too weak or scared to stand by herself. There was a gag in her mouth.

John whispered, “Go!”

John waited five seconds and then leapt up moving towards the man in front of him. He swung his walking stick catching the guy in the back. He jumped on the guy and wrestled with him trying to put the handcuffs on his wrists. Shots rang out and ricocheted off the rocks. John finally got his guy under control. He looked up in time to see two dozen jeeps rushing into the area.

The guy in the small shed was shooting continuously at the advancing jeeps. The man by the car shot the driver, grabbed the girl, and ran into the house. John started reporting what he saw happening. Now shots were coming from the slots along the front and sides of the house.

John watched a disaster unfold in front of him as the jeeps were racked with automatic weapons fire. He ran to the wall of the house. He felt a sting in his side and crashed into the house with more force than he had intended. There was one of those flimsy wood covers right next to him. He ripped it off. He removed a tear-gas canister from a pocket inside his cloak, set it off and dropped it into the open slot. There was a lot of swearing inside the house.

John peeked around the corner of the house. Two agents had rushed to the small building to capture the gunman inside. They kicked the door open. Rover appeared from nowhere and ran into the shed before the agents even had a chance to move. There were screams and shots were fired. John ducked out of the way. He looked around the corner and saw the agents at the door of the shed looking towards the house. Rover raced out of the shed towards John. John waved to them and slowly moved towards the porch. A gun barrel was sticking out in front of him. He searched around to see what he could find. He spotted a stick and picked it up staying out of sight as much as possible. He waited for the gun to stop firing. The barrel disappeared as the man inside reloaded and then reappeared. John quickly stuck the stick in the barrel and stumbled towards the corner of the building. He knew when the man pulled the trigger by the explosion.

John felt weak and sat down. He reported what he had done and then just sat there. His side was bleeding. He removed his cloak and shirt. He wadded up the shirt and pushed it into the hole in his side. He took a deep breath at the pain produced by the pressure.

It suddenly got very quiet. John didn’t move. He was starting to get blurry eyed. He looked up to see three helicopters land near the house. He shut his eyes for a minute and the next thing he knew Ed was by his side, holding the shirt tight against the wound. Rover was sitting next to him.

When John lost consciousness, Beth arrived and immediately began working on his wound. She was a good trauma surgeon, but operating on the bare ground with only the contents of her medical bag was beyond her skill. She patched him up and stopped the bleeding. Kelly helped her. Ed went into the house with the agents and took control of the kidnap victims that were stored in an underground room.

There were twelve people in there and they were in horrible shape. Ed went outside and checked on John. He asked if Kelly could come with him to take care of the hostages. Beth nodded as she finished doing what she could for John. Two of the men from the helicopter showed up with a stretcher. They loaded John on the stretcher and carried him to the helicopter.

Beth’s loyalties were divided. On one hand, John was her fiancé. On the other hand, there were wounded people in the area needing her attention. She knew the decision that John would make. She watched them load John on a helicopter and went looking for someone else to help. To her surprise, Rover stayed with her. Kelly returned to help her with the other patients.

It took more than two hours for all of the chaos to come to order. Beth had worked diligently to patch up the agents that had been wounded. The guy whose gun had blown up on him and the driver of the car were the only fatalities. Their deaths had convinced the others that they had no chance of coming out alive. John had been responsible for the capture of all but one of the criminals, although the credit for the last one should have gone to Rover.

Beth and Kelly sat on the porch resting and drinking bottled water. Rover was drinking some water out of a bowl they had found inside the house. They were exhausted physically and emotionally. Beth turned to Kelly and said, “I did the best I could for him.”

Kelly replied, “I know.”

“I wanted to go to the hospital with him, but I couldn’t help but think that he would have disapproved of that.” Beth looked around with tears in her eyes.

Kelly said, “I couldn’t believe what Rover did to the guy that shot John.”

Beth laughed and said, “I know. I tried to stitch him together. I ran out of sutures. That guy is never going to be able to look in a mirror again.”

“It’s amazing, but Rover didn’t open any veins or arteries. He must have scratched that guy fifty times.”

“His worst injury was from shooting himself in the foot.”

Ed came out of the house and joined the women. He said, “They are all fine in there now. The agents are going to take them back to Vegas in a few minutes. They’ll stop by the hospital to check them out and then take them to a hotel to wait for their loved ones.”

Kelly’s eyes misted and said, “There are young boys and girls, some as young as nine. There are even two women in their twenties.”

Ed shook his head, “The stupid fucks had everything written down. Who they got, who ordered them, where they shipped them, and how much money they got. They had a list of orders in their filing cabinets. They had taken over seven hundred people of all ages. John had looked at California. These guys had people from all over the west. They had orders for fifty more.”

Beth sighed and said, “I can understand why John went after them so tenaciously. These guys are just evil.”

Ed said, “Yeah, they expect to arrest another twenty or thirty people in the next twenty-four hours.”

Kelly asked, “So what do we do now?”

Ed answered, “We are riding into Vegas with the kids. They want us to separate and keep the younger ones company.”

Beth asked, “So we’ll be able to see John?”

“Yep.”

Kelly looked towards the house and said, “Let’s get them out of there. They must be feeling very uncomfortable in there.”

Ed went into the house and led the victims out in a disorderly mob. The older ones joined Beth and Kelly on the porch. The kids played in the yard. Rover joined them in an informal game of tag. It seemed that Rover was the favorite subject of getting touched. The adults on the porch laughed at the game.

Ed turned to Beth. He asked, “Could you take a look at my leg? It’s bothering me a bit.”

Beth turned and looked at his jeans. There was blood there, but she assumed that it was from John. She told him to drop his pants so that she could get a closer look. Ed obeyed her. Beth swore at the hole she saw in his calf. She muttered, “Congratulations, you got shot.”

Ed shrugged and said, “Patch it up.”

Beth snarled, “No, I’m going to leave a gaping hole in your leg, just to remind you to stay in the back with us. I was going to kill you myself when you went charging off with the FBI agents in that Jeep. You didn’t think that you might be making widows of us, did you?”