Defiance: A House Divided (The Defending Home Series Book 2) Read online

  He was sure Shane chalked up their current situation to Dale’s refusal to share with his neighbors. It was an easy argument to make, especially when his younger brother seemed convinced all they needed to do was hand over a portion of their water and the bad guys would leave them alone. Perhaps that might have worked in the old days when the government, imperfect as it was, had at least been beholden to some form of public pressure and humiliation. But in this new world, devoid of newspapers, where public perception was almost entirely shaped by whether someone had access to a hot meal and something to wash it down with, things were far different.

  Dale peered through the scope of his rifle, doing his best to follow the men as they hurried from right to left. Not only that, but the rules themselves had changed. More likely than not, the country had shrunk down into dozens of local, self-governing districts, like the fragmented state Italy had found itself in during the Renaissance. Without the shadow of some kind of centralized umbrella, each of these new independent districts would only be as safe or as productive as the local leaders could manage. A valley with wise and fair leadership might lie less than a handful of miles from a community run by a petty tyrant, eager to expand his sphere of influence at any cost. Unfortunately, Encendido had fallen under the latter, but Dale knew that given enough time and resources, even dictators could be overthrown.

  “Are you gonna pull the trigger or not?” Sandy asked, a nervous furrow in her brow.

  “Waiting for a clean shot,” he told her. The men had stopped running and were hiding somewhere behind the chicken coop, among the trees and bushes, watching the house. One of them was ordered forward with a shout and soon emerged into the open. Dale settled the crosshairs over the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle kicked back into his shoulder with a loud crack. The target’s legs gave out and he collapsed into a dusty patch of earth. The others behind him began firing wildly, mostly at the house. While he didn’t like putting those inside at risk, it was fine by Dale if these yahoos wanted to waste their ammo.

  When the wild firing finally stopped, a handful of the cartel men behind the chicken coop fanned out and began to approach. Without a doubt there were more behind them, ready to spot the source of incoming rounds. Dale would have to be careful. Concealing muzzle flash was a lesson Walter hadn’t taught him yet.

  When they drew even with the pumphouse, Dale knew he had to act. A few of them were wearing bulletproof vests, but even that wouldn’t do much to stop a 30-06 round from his Remington 700. A thug with a red bandana peered around the back corner of the pumphouse and Dale aimed the crosshairs for the center of his forehead. Dale steadied his breathing and squeezed the trigger. Another loud boom came as the man’s head snapped back in a red mist.

  The cartel members were firing again, but this time nearly all of it was aimed at the barn.

  “They’re onto us,” Sandy said, her voice tight.

  Duke let out a low growl.

  “Easy, boy,” Dale said, working the bolt and firing again at a man who was darting through the open. This time the shot went wide, kicking up a puff of powdery dust. He chambered another, fired and it also went wide. These guys were moving too fast.

  Sandy opened up with her pistol, letting off a handful of rounds. Then shots from the treeline thudded into the sandbags, forcing both of them to stay low.

  “If they keep us pinned down, we’re as good as dead,” Dale told her.

  Sandy looked worried and headed over to the ladder and the hole in the floor.

  Dale got on the walkie. “Zach, we got multiple bogeys around the barn. We could use some support back here.”

  He waited for a reply, each second feeling like an hour as bullets whizzed over his head. Dale popped up with the Remington, trying to acquire a target. To the right of the chicken coop, lying prone behind a piñon tree, was the exposed left thigh of a cartel member. If he could hit the target, the shot might not kill the man, but it would at least take him out of the fight. Dale squeezed the trigger and watched the man’s jeans ripple, followed by a bellow of pain. From here, it looked like the round had snapped his femur in two.

  Behind him, he heard Sandy lay off a half-dozen rounds with her 9mm. She was shooting down through the hole. The cartel members below returned fire, sending bullets bursting through the floorboards, tossing splinters into the air. Sandy shrieked with pain and rolled out of the way. The blood in Dale’s veins froze with terror. He grabbed his shotgun and rushed over to where Sandy had been standing. The cartel men below must have thought she was alone, because one of them was scaling the ladder. Dale aimed the barrel at his face and fired. The weapon let out a deafening roar as the thug was thrown to the ground in a heap. Racking the shotgun again, he let off three more shots, firing through the floor, trying to wound or kill anyone standing beneath him.

  Quickly, he then made his way to Sandy. Her face was cut from the flying bits of sharpened wood.

  “Are you hit?” he asked, checking her for an entry wound.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied, her cloudy eyes looking over his shoulder. Suddenly, she raised her pistol and it clicked empty. Another cartel member had just cleared the second floor and was shifting to raise the pistol in his free hand.

  Dale struggled to swing the heavy shotgun around in time. The look of bloodlust in the man’s eyes was clear. He was muscular with a scar on his neck. Dale had killed his friends and now this monster was about to return the favor.

  Dale managed to rack the shotgun right as Duke pounced, clamping his powerful jaws around the thug’s wrist, shaking his head violently. The man let out a yelp of agony as he let go of the ladder. Duke lurched forward, struggling to hold onto the weight of the man’s falling body, but it was a tug of war the eighty-five-pound dog was bound to lose. If Duke didn’t release him, Duke would fall too and be at the mercy of any of the others still down there. Duke’s paws were close to the edge, his body drawn back, the muscles in his haunches and neck bunched up like tight cords.

  “Release,” Dale shouted and the dog complied, licking his lips as the man fell. Shots from downstairs followed the man’s hard landing, barely missing Duke. The dog recoiled, looking left and right, unsure what was happening.

  “Heel,” Dale ordered. That was when he heard the walkie come to life and the sound of fire coming from the house.

  Dale went to the sandbags and saw Colton and Dannyboy opening up from the back window on the men in the barn and others scattered around the rear of the property. Zach’s silhouette was between them, surveying the situation and pointing out targets.

  “Keep running, you bastards!” Zach shouted over the walkie.

  “Appreciate the help,” Dale replied. “Things were a little touch-and-go here for a while. Everyone inside safe?”

  There was a delay in Zach’s response and it drew shivers up Dale’s spine. “Zach, is anyone hurt?”

  “We’ve all taken a hit in one way or another,” he replied. “Some worse than others.”

  Dale swallowed. “Was anyone...” His voice trailed off.

  Zach started to respond, but was cut off by a thundering boom.

  “The hell was that?” Dale said.

  No response.

  “Zach, what’s going on over there?” The panic ran through Dale’s body like a virus.

  He glared at the walkie, willing it to deliver an explanation. The only response came across the yard from the house itself in the form of muffled automatic gunfire. It sounded as though a gun battle was going on within the house. Then came that sickening feeling as Dale understood. The cartel had found a way inside.

  Chapter 3

  “We have to go and now,” Dale told Sandy, who was sitting on the floor, pistol in hand, keeping an eye on the loft opening.

  “Whatever that was, it sounded like a bomb went off,” she said, rising quickly to her feet.

  “They’ve breached the lower level,” he told her, leaving the Remington resting against the row of s
andbags. “There’s no time to lose.”

  But even in his frantic state, Dale knew well enough not to go charging into danger. Just because Colton and Dannyboy had scattered Ortega’s men in the back of the house didn’t mean that the bad guys had gone very far.

  “I’ll head down first,” he told her, “and let you know if it’s clear.”

  Shouldering his Mossberg, Dale drew his Ruger .45 and quickly descended the ladder, swiveling as soon as he could, to check for threats. He reached the bottom and scanned any hiding places inside the barn, searching behind piles of plywood, spools of chicken wire and barbed wire and a host of useless junk he’d been meaning to get rid of for years.

  Satisfied the barn was clear, Dale went back and got Duke, Sandy not far behind.

  They exited the barn, Dale and Sandy holding their pistols in the ready position. The sharp report of automatic fire ringing through the open second-story windows made it clear the gun battle going on inside was a fierce one.

  Additional shots rang out, but these sounded different. He and Sandy were on the right of the house when bullets thudded into the wood siding. They spun at the same time, each aiming their weapon. Two cartel members had come from behind the barn. One had a rifle, the other a pistol, his right arm mangled and dangling by his side. He must have been the one Duke had bitten on the ladder.

  Dale rolled left and opened fire. Sandy dropped to one knee and did the same. Woodchips exploded from the front of the barn as shots failed to hit their mark. Dale emptied his magazines as the cartel members fired back.

  With two bullets remaining, Sandy struck the man with the rifle, dropping him to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry. The sight made the other man flee back behind the barn. He was shooting from his left hand, likely not the one he was most comfortable with, which explained why he’d decided to tuck tail.

  Dale and Sandy changed magazines and headed toward the front of the house, staying low as they approached, in case more of Ortega’s men were by the road.

  But that didn’t seem to be the case. There were a few shots coming from a group of vehicles fifty yards away, but most of the firing was coming from inside.

  Glancing from right to left, Dale spotted a clear set of tire tracks leading from a gaping hole in the fence by the road toward the boarded-up front entrance. The pickup had plowed into the house right up to the windshield, its tail lights on, the engine running, the back wheels still spinning. The impact had torn a gaping hole large enough for Ortega’s remaining men to storm through. On the plus side, the holes they’d dug for booby traps seemed to have slowed the truck’s momentum enough to prevent it from doing far more damage.

  Dale holstered his pistol and came up with the shotgun. Sandy and Duke were on his six as they stayed low and headed through the hole and into the darkened confines of the house.

  Dale’s eyes struggled to adjust. They’d left a bright, sunny world and entered a darkened hellscape. The whiff of gasoline and cordite was strong. So too was the noise, weapons of every caliber rattling off in every direction. With the windows and doors all boarded up, it was difficult to see more than five feet in front of you. To their right, near the kitchen, Dale could hear the sound of men crying out in pain. A voice from the darkness called to him.

  “El Ventrílocuo, is that you?”

  “Yes,” Dale replied and opened fire. The light from the exploding end of his barrel lit the terrified thug’s face before he was thrown back by the blast. Dale racked the shotgun, following the sound of gunfire. Two more cartel members were working their way up the staircase by the kitchen. They turned right as Dale and Sandy fired. Both men froze in a strange tableau of death before slumping forward. Climbing the stairs, Dale called out so they wouldn’t get shot by their own side.

  “Watch out,” a voice that might have been Brooke’s shouted back.

  A gunman stepped out from one of the bedrooms with an AR-15 and managed to get a shot off before Dale fed his chest some buckshot. The rifle flew from the man’s hands. When Dale reached the top of the stairs he spotted two cartel members jumping from the window in his bedroom.

  Dale headed back into the hallway to help clear the rest of the second floor. “I’m coming through,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”

  Zach emerged from one of the bedrooms, aiming a pistol. He lowered it when he was certain it was Dale. “They had us pinned down,” he explained with noticeable frustration.

  “It’s not over yet,” Dale chided his brother-in-law. “There may be more of them.” He peered into the guest bedroom which faced onto the road and saw Dannyboy lying on the floor with a bloodstained pillowcase wrapped around his head. Next to him was Walter, struggling to draw in shallow breaths. Ann was tending to both Dannyboy and Walter. Nicole was kneeling next to her, sobbing.

  Dale swore.

  “He was one of the first to get hit,” Zach told him, referring to Walter. “Crazy old man thinks he’s Rambo or something.”

  “Will he be okay?”

  Zach shrugged. “Hey, I’m no doctor, I just play one on TV.”

  More shots from outside.

  He thought about Brooke and Colton. “Is everyone else accounted for?” Dale asked.

  From a bedroom at the other end of the hall they both emerged, looking exhausted and shell-shocked.

  “Where’s Shane?” Dale asked. But the blank expressions on everyone’s faces told him nobody knew.

  “He was positioned in your room. Spent most of his time complaining,” Zack said. “Things were going well until the whole house shook. After that everything just went haywire.”

  Dale, Zach, Sandy and Duke ran to where Shane had been shooting, stepping over the dead body at the doorway. There they found Dale’s room was empty. Scooping up the cartel member’s AR, Dale went to the window and began scanning outside. A shot zinged over his head and he took cover. But he’d seen enough. In the distance, the cartel were loading the wounded and beginning to retreat. Bodies lay strewn around the small part of the property he could see, but in all of that carnage, Shane was nowhere to be found.

  The next few minutes were spent sweeping the interior of the house to ensure all the cartel members were either dead or gone. Once that was done, Dale ordered sentries to cover every approach while he, Zach and Duke searched for Shane. Ducking through the large hole in the wall, Dale moved to reach into the pickup to turn off the ignition when he saw a body slumped over the passenger seat. The windshield above the wheel was cracked and stained with blood where the driver’s head must have struck upon impact.

  “Serves you right,” Dale said, killing the engine with a flick of his wrist. Three more bodies lay on the front lawn, their feet stuck in traps, their torsos riddled with bullet holes. Others were visible on the driveway, cut down as the first wave had been beaten back. It must have been an especially brutal assault, especially for those facing Walter’s aged, but experienced hands.

  An eerie silence descended over the whole area, leaving Dale with a strange and saddened mix of emotions. He was relieved that, bloody and battered, they hadn’t been completely overrun and at the same time devastated that his brother was missing and his mentor critically injured. It was a high price to pay, but he couldn’t be more proud.

  Zach returned from the rear of the property.

  “Any sign of him?” Dale asked, holding tight to the last threads of hope.

  Zach shook his head. “He just up and vanished.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Dale replied. “They got him, which might be why they were in such a hurry to pull back.”

  “You thinking they’re gonna use him as a bargaining chip?”

  “In some ways I hope so,” Dale replied. “Because the alternative is that he’s already dead.”

  A shout from inside the house sent them scurrying inside. Brooke was in the kitchen, holding the remains of a bloodstained calendar. It looked as though a wounded cartel member had ripped it off the wall and run a bloody hand across the front. But the closer
Dale looked, the more those bloody streaks began to take on the appearance of letters and words.

  You have one hour to leave or he’s dead.

  Chapter 4

  “He’s being held hostage,” Dale told the others, holding up the bloody calendar as proof. They were gathered upstairs to figure out what to do next.

  Still kneeling in prayer beside her wounded father, Nicole dissolved into tears. Ann rubbed her back reassuringly and tried to tell her it would be all right.

  Zach stuffed the pistol into the seat of his pants. “Can’t say I’m Shane’s biggest fan, but seems to me we’re wasting time squawking like a bunch of mother hens when we should be mounting a rescue operation.”

  “That’s exactly what Sheriff Gaines and Mayor Reid will be expecting,” Dale shot back.

  Zach was surprised by his quick answer. “How do you figure?”

  Colton, who had been staring out the window, keeping watch, turned to his father. “They kidnapped Sandy a few days back. Dale, Shane and I had to go rescue her.”

  Zach eyed Sandy up and down. “Kidnapped? Honey, you don’t look like a kid to me.”

  Sandy ignored him.

  Dale felt his hands tighten into fists. “This isn’t helping. Colton’s right. They knew if they took one of us, we’d be tempted to mount another rescue. For all we know, this was part of their plan. If they failed to kill us, then they would grab someone and use that person as leverage.”

  “If we stay and do nothing, then Shane dies,” Zach said, making no bones about how he felt. “He’s your brother, man.”

  “I get that,” Dale said, not liking Zach’s tone. “But if half of us leave to try to rescue Shane, we may be leaving ourselves overly exposed, especially with a giant hole punched into the front of the house. Even at full strength we were barely able to hold them off.”