Escape and evade.
CHAPTER 92
Sampson
I’M ON MY BELLY, hugging the ground in the tall grass. Aiden Phillips is a few yards away. As soon as the volley raked over our heads, I wanted to return fire—but Phillips said to hold up. “Let him think he hit us.”
We advance like crabs through the grass toward the house. I’ve got my pistol in one hand as I dig in with my elbows to pull myself forward. I can see the grass moving alongside me as Phillips crawls along on a parallel path.
Twenty yards from the house, the tall grass gives way to a roughly mowed yard. No more cover. No way to rush the place without being exposed on open ground. A frontal assault on a fixed position would be insane. Especially for a two-man infantry unit.
I dig in and sight along my pistol barrel from window to window. Then …
Boom!
The house explodes in a ball of flame and smoke!
I cover my head against the blast. Shingles and siding rain down around me in flaming chunks. When I look up, black smoke is belching out through a hole in the roof.
Phillips shouts,“Let’s go,”and heads toward the house, gun raised.
“Aiden! Stop! No way he survived that!”
Phillips turns and shouts back over the roar of the fire, “I know J.T.! That wasn’t suicide! That was a diversion!”
CHAPTER 93
Cross
ALEX CROSS PICKS HIS way carefully around the perimeter of the fence on Colton Brophy’s property. He now knows to look for trip wires and step around them. Even in the dark.
When he reaches the main gate, Alex settles in beside a post and watches the house through a pair of mini-binoculars. The lights are on, and he can see movement inside. Every few minutes, Brophy’s bulky shape is framed behind one of the barred windows.
Suddenly, the front door opens. Brophy emerges wearing a pair of denim overalls, like a farmer’s. In his hands, he’s carrying a steaming metal pot. He walks across the scrubby yard of the compound toward the barn. He stops at the wooden gate to the pigsty and lifts a latch. A few of the pigs move toward him, expecting a meal. Brophy kicks them away.
Halfway across the pen, he puts the pot on the ground and reaches down. He grabs a metal bar and pries under the straw.Alex hears the scrape of metal on metal. Brophy lifts one edge of a thick panel, grabs it in both hands, and pulls it up until it locks into position at a forty-five-degree angle.
Some kind of hatch!
Brophy picks up the pot, then turns around and lowers himself down into the opening. When only his head is showing, he shuts the hatch. The pigs shuffle across the closed cover, spreading straw and shit as they go—almost like they’re part of the Houdini act.
Is this the bomb shelter Brophy got approval for years back?Alex wonders.And what’s he doing down there with a cooking pot?
One thing’s for sure: Brophy didn’t come to feed the hogs.
Alex presses himself closer to the ground and waits for the hatch to open again. Two minutes. Three. He looks up at the thick chain holding the gate shut and at the high-voltage line running through the barbed wire.
I need a way in. But how?
Maybe it’s time to call for reinforcements. He pulls his phone out of his pocket.
A twig snaps. Alex flinches. He turns his head.
A boot kicks his phone away, and his cheek touches the cold end of a shotgun barrel.
CHAPTER 94
Sampson
