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“You think this is an ambush?” asked Whit. “Make it seem like they pulled everybody? Let us get in, get Katie, and then hit us on the way out?”
“Nothing would surprise me at this point,” said Shaw. “But they could have killed us easily enough when we first got here too.”
They searched the rest of the house, but Shaw only came away with two serrated knives from the kitchen. He handed one to Whit.
“Knife against guns?” said Whit.
“Best we can do. Now let’s see if we can find a phone or anything that’ll let us call for help.”
They didn’t. No land line, no cell phone, not even a walkie-talkie or a computer.
“Shaw!”
It was Reggie standing just inside the front door; Rice was next to her.
She said, “Trucks are coming. We have to get out of here.”
They ran to the back of the house and outside. Beams of headlights cut through the darkness. One truck, no idea how many men were inside. Shaw thought quickly. “We need wheels,” he said.
Reggie looked around and pointed to her left. “Whit can take Rice and Katie off that way and hide behind that berm. You and I can double back, grab the wheels, and take whatever weapons if any they have in there. Then we pick the others up and get the hell out of here.”
“Okay,” agreed Shaw.
Whit led Katie and Rice to the raised mound of earth behind the house. Shaw went around one side of the cabin and Reggie the other. Four men climbed out of the truck and headed to the house. Shaw knew they only had at best thirty seconds before they discovered Katie was not there.
He raced toward the truck. Reggie did the same on the other side.
“Shit,” Shaw muttered. They’d locked the doors. He peered inside the window. No keys dangling conveniently in the ignition. He saw no guns either. Reggie joined him.
“Even if I can break the glass, it’s not like you can easily hot-wire cars these days. And—”
They both heard it at the same time. Shouts from inside the house. They’d found out Katie was gone.
“Come on, Shaw!” Reggie exclaimed. “We have to run for it.”
“Go, go,” he said, pushing her off into a sprint.
She looked back once and then was gone around the side of the cabin.
“If we don’t have wheels neither will you,” Shaw said. He used the knife to slash the two right-side tires before running off. Seconds later the front door flew open and the men poured out, guns ready. Some ran to opposite sides of the cabin and fired out into the darkness with their submachine guns. Bullets whizzed over Shaw’s head but he kept going. He doubted they could actually see him. And there was little chance that their MP5s could intentionally hit him at this distance, but they could get lucky. He reached the others and they ran as hard as they could away from the cabin. But they clearly heard the frustrated curses of the men when the truck started and then wobbled forward on the trashed tires.
Shaw leading the way, they made a wide circle around the property and headed back west. Within five minutes the lights from the cabin had disappeared from their vision.
“Close,” said Shaw as they finally stopped running. “Too close and we got zip for our troubles.”
“Where to now?” Rice said.
Shaw answered. “Now we’re behind them. They won’t expect that.”
“Yes they will. They’ll know we’ve been there because she’s gone,” Reggie shot back as she hooked a thumb in Katie’s direction.
Shaw stared first at Reggie, then at Katie, and then back at Reggie. “What, do you want us to take her back?”
Reggie blanched. “Of course not!”
“Then we’ll just have to make the best of it.”
Whit cut in, “And how the hell do we do that? Sneak up and attack them with kitchenware?”
