“Me, either.”
They had just made it to the pines when Court looked back over his shoulder and saw the two gray SUVs passing up the driveway, past his Range Rover, continuing off-road, into the backyard.
He said, “They’ve seen us. They’re being careful, staying back, but they’ll catch up.”
Jim took his glasses off, wiped rain from them, and put them back on hurriedly. He said, “We had rain yesterday afternoon too, so there’s going to be some puddles and some mud back here, so watch your step.”
—
Three minutes later Court came out on the far side of the trees and stood next to his father as he looked at the massive shoot house, now almost surrounded by overgrown woods. The storm had kicked in full force, and rain poured from the tin roof, so the two men immediately stepped inside a dark sloppy hallway with overgrown vines on the wall and the smell of rotting lumber and mold prevalent in the humid air.
The last time Court had set foot in this building, he’d been eighteen years old. He’d spent thousands of days of his life working in here, mostly playing the role of opposition force, fighting the SWAT teams training under his father and his father’s training cadre. Both Court and the law enforcement teams used real but modified rifles and pistols that fired marking cartridges, non-lethal rounds that blistered and tore skin when they hit.
By sixteen Court was doing the training himself, walking the catwalks above, shouting orders to SWAT teams facing other OPFOR role players.
Jim said, “Listen up, son. I wouldn’t trust that catwalk. I damn near fell through it ten years ago, back when it didn’t look so bad, so I’m guessing anybody going up there is gonna come down on their ass, or worse.”
Court pulled out his flashlight, and Jim pulled his own; the lighting inside the area was spooky, even for Court. The dark gray sky barely filtered in through holes in the tin roof, water poured in with it, and many corners and smaller rooms were pitch black.
Jim said, “This is mixed lighting, especially with the storm. We get them in here, get them confused, get them lost.”
Behind them they heard the sound of a vehicle struggling, and they turned to see a gray Suburban caught in mud along the tree line. Quicklythree men bailed out of it and ran behind a rusted-out CONNEX shipping container outside the shoot house surrounded by dense foliage, a stack of rotten railroad ties, and a high pile of sand with vines all over it.
A long, low earthen berm ran along that, parallel with the shoot house.
All three men had been carrying pistols.
Both Gentrys knew those three men could have gone anywhere after they’d disappeared, including right up to the entrances of the shoot house.
They turned and saw the other SUV at the edge of the pine trees, but it immediately pulled past a berm that separated the shoot house from a nearby handgun range. The berm was so overgrown that, again, the three men in this vehicle could enter the other side of the shoot house without Court or his dad seeing them.
Court said, “They can come over both those berms, enter this space from any one of the twelve entrances.”
Jim spoke softly, even though the roar of the rain on the roof drowned out their voices at distance. “There were twelve entrances when you used to work here. There’s over twenty now with all the broken-down plywood walls where the railroad ties rotted out. We need to go deep into the structure, son. Let them come to us. They won’t stand a chance.”
Court liked the idea. There were thirty-two different rooms or hallways here, and Court could still walk this entire building with a blindfold on.
He looked to his dad and said, “King Tut’s Tomb.”
Jim nodded. “Yeah. Center of the shoot house. We go there, defend. Our fallback is the Speakeasy.”
Every room and every hallway had a name; Jim’s two sons came up with most of the names when they were just children. King Tut’s Tomb was a closet-sized space off a center-fed room in the middle of the building, but there was a low crawl space out of it that led to a room they called the Speakeasy because of a makeshift wooden bar built there to resemble an actual pub. The Speakeasy had four exits to it, plus the crawl space entrance behind the bar, so if the two Gentrys were overrun, they could possibly escape out of there.
Together they began hustling through the nearly dark hallways, making lefts and rights without needing to employ their flashlights, exceptwhen they encountered plant life, large puddles, or fallen wooden beams from the catwalk above.
It occurred to Court that if he had time to think about it, he’d probably have a serious bout of PTSD from being back in this building. He’d spent some scary times as a child in here, often against his wishes, growing up working for his dad, being subjected to thousands of Simunition rounds fired by amped-up and big SWAT officers who saw young Court as their mortal enemy, lest they fail the course.
As if his father could read his mind, Jim said, “I’m sorry I was so hard on you back then, Court. I know I made a lot of mistakes. Especially considering you and your brother didn’t have a mom around.”
“Dad, let’s not get into that right now. It’s good to see you.”
“You, too.”
They made it to the Tomb; it was even smaller than Court remembered, just enough room for himself and his father, but they could look out on a larger room, a long hall, and several stretches of the wooden-beamed catwalk above.
There, Court said, “I’m really sorry I got you into this, Dad.”
Jim was breathing hard. This had to have been the most arduous morning of the last ten years for him. Still, Court saw his dad’s smile in the low light. He said, “If we get you out of this alive, maybe kill that man who’s after you, then this will be the best fucking day of my life, boy.” He pulled his revolver from his pocket, looked it over. “I mean, if I had an MP5 it would be better, but—”
