The Game is Afoot (Cumberland Saga)

Pale-green shaded area is forested. Double-line is two-track. Dashed line is foot-trail. "B", "S", and "R" are Blain's, Sig's, Roger's positions, respectively. Gregor's position at the end of this segment is identified with a "G" and an arrow pointing to where he is standing.

 

Lightning snarled at Ralph. “Stop stepping on my heels, fnck-wit!”

The men were walking up the dark two-track in very tight formation. Ralph was following so closely to Lightning that he was stepping on the backs of his shoes. The cheap pistols the men carried seemed very inadequate against any beasts that roamed the inky blackness of the Tennessee night. The illusion was heightened by the redoubled baying of the hounds just as they passed the second hair-pin turn. 

***

Gregor was making good time down the footpath but he was not running. He was more concerned about twisting an ankle than about making noise. The rush of the wind and the creak and rubbing of branches made a great deal of noise as he moved down the path toward the road. He heard the dogs’ increased frenzy and knew that he didn’t have time to lollygag.

Roger had to put the switch down on the ground. He had been overcome with anxiety and really wanted to test it one more time. This wasn’t like “jacking” deer. Deer don’t shoot back.

Sig stoically stood next to the lilac bush he remembered his mother planting. The human eye is trained to recognize human silhouettes. By merging his form with the irregular form of the bush, he greatly reduced the odds of the invaders being able to pick him out of the clutter.

Blain sat behind his woodpile. He kept repeating the very short prayer Sig had taught him. Oddly, Sig told him it was the tax-collector's prayer “God, be merciful to me. I am a sinner”*.

All three men startled when they heard the "rinky-tinky-dink-dink-dink" of the second motion activated chime and the dog's erupting again. It reminded Blain of the lame tune that the ice-cream trucks of his youth had played.

Lliam saw them first, given the advantage of young eyes and an elevated position. He was on the second floor of Roger’s house looking out the window. They were a scant 40 yards from his position.

Level ground is a precious commodity in the Tennessee uplands. Very little is wasted on “yards”. Consequently, the houses were crowded close to the slopes that were untillable and barely even grazable and were thus given over to trees.

Lliam counted four faces. In the daylight, it would not have been a challenge to hit four bleach bottles at that distance with his .22LR, but it was not daytime and faces move and Sig had told him in tones that brooked no argument that his job was over-watch and to assist Blain from elevation if things went to hell. 

***

Lightning gave the two men who were following him and Davey ungentle shoves. One he pushed to the right and the other to the left. They reluctantly separated from the group and assumed positions, backing into the brush to either side of where the drive opened up into the clearing that defined the compound.

They were there to stop, by any means required, any strays that might think they could flee the compound. Lightning knew that even one witness would send them all back to prison.

No escapees. Stop them. By. Any. Means. Required. 

***

Roger almost swallowed his dentures when Lightning and Davey purposefully walked along the two-track past his house. That was totally unexpected.

Sig was silently tracking them and was surprised when they did not angle off the two-track and head for his porch.

Blain was on the verge of peeing-his-pants when the two men abruptly stopped in the middle of the two-track directly in front of Sig's house. One of them pulled something out of a tote-bag. Blain could not make out what it was but he could hear one of the men grunt with satisfaction when multi-colored LEDs started blinking. The taller man leaned over and gently placed the blinking box on the ground.

Then the men reversed direction and started walking toward Roger’s house. 

***

“Remember, we gotta keep moving” Lightning growled at Davey. “The jammer only has enough battery for about five minutes.”

The plan was simple. Each man had a pocket full of zip-ties and there were rolls of duct-tape in the tote-bag. Lightning was counting on pain-compliance and fear of the pistols to keep the residents quiet while they were subdued.

Lightning was something of an expert on pain-compliance although until recently it had all been on the receiving end. The key, in his mind, was to apply pain to the women and the men would roll-over like a female collie.

Davey stood to Lightning’s right, on the hinge-side of the door.

Lightning turned the knob and pushed. The door moved in a quarter-inch and stopped. Lightning frowned. Most people in the sticks didn’t even lock their doors at night. This was unexpected.

Lightning knocked. Then he knocked harder.

“Who is it?” an elderly, female voice quavered. Alice was putting on a show. Her job was to stall as along as possible.

***

Gregor found the car down by the public road. From a distance, he looked through the side window to see if there was anybody in it. Quickly scanning around, he did not see anybody outside the car. It would be just his luck to have the driver taking a leak.

It was with regret that Gregor stabbed each of the four tires through the tread with an ice-pick. Given his druthers, he would have lifted the hood and yanked a cable off one of the battery terminals but he didn’t know how to open the hood without opening a door and causing the dome-light to come on. If there WERE any bad-guys in the area, that would surely alert them.

Four flat tires would not stop the enemy from fleeing but it would certainly slow them down.

Hearing the air hissing out, Gregor then made haste back to the east hair-pin. Once there, Gregor found the heavy-duty carabiners on the ends of the two lengths of tan-colored paracord that had been laid across the two-track. He clipped the ends of the two trip-cords to ropes that had been tied about fifteen inches up the trunks of two saplings that were conveniently growing beside the two-track just up-hill of the hair-pin turn. The trip-cords were five-feet apart.

The height of the trip-cords had been a subject of debate. If they were too low then the fleeing enemy might unknowingly step over it. Too high and it might not topple the targets or they might break the paracord. The men figured 5" would be optimum if the targets were walking and maybe 10" if they were running on flat, smooth ground. But this was downhill and the ground was uneven, consequently the target of the trip-cords might be getting way up in the air.

Gregor got off the two-track and positioned so he could look down the final leg of the two-track from the last hair-pin to where the SUV was parked. Before he leaned against the trunk of a tree to wait, he reached into his pocket and pulled out three more shotgun shells. He wedged them between the fingers of his left hand. They were to be his quick reload if he ran dry.  It was a trick that Sig had taught him when he was eight...A practiced shooter can get four shots out of a break-open, single-shot shotgun almost as quickly as a novice can fire them out of a repeater.

 

*Luke 18:13