Reese could see the box truck among the flashing blue lights of the cruisers in the distance ahead.  As he approached, Reese realized the truck was actually swarmed by cruisers nearly a mile south of the blockade.  By the look of the truck’s positioning, the driver had apparently tried to turn around upon seeing the checkpoint.  Unfortunately for him, it was already too late.

As Reese and the rangers arrived at the box truck, he noted the logo on the side, Mountain Spring Water Company, Brownsville, TX.  The officers were just pulling two men out of the cab.  They were both about thirty years old and lanky.  Reese noted that all of the color had drained from their faces.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

One of the officers responded, “They tried to avoid our checkpoint but we got ‘em.  They said they were making a delivery to downtown.  When we asked to take a look in the back, they refused.  That’s as far as we got before you arrived.”

Reese stared at the men for several seconds.  He could tell his gaze made them uncomfortable.

“Open it up.”

An officer walked to the back of the truck and said, “Somebody grab some bolt cutters, it’s padlocked.”

A second officer retrieved some from cutters his trunk and rushed over.  As they cut the lock and began to open the door, a hail of gunfire suddenly erupted from within, hitting both officers in the chest and head.  The pair stumbled backwards and fell to the ground.

The remaining team members jumped with surprise, caught completely off guard by the ambush.  Several men drew their service pistols and began to fire blindly into the side of the truck.  The two rangers shouldered their carbines and slowly began to make their way to the open back door.

A second volley of gunfire exploded from within, this time in the direction of the pistol fire from the side.  The rifle rounds ripped through the thin shell of the truck and pierced the air all around the team.  The lanky driver was struck in the neck and sunk to his knees.  He brought his hand up to his neck to try and stop the blood from gushing from his ruptured, carotid artery.  His face was as white as the edge stripe on the pavement beside him.  He began to go into shock.

A guardsman groaned in pain as he was struck in the shoulder.  He dropped to one knee as his uniform began to blossom red.  A deputy stumbled backwards and fell as a round hit him squarely in the chest.  Reese grabbed the deputy, rolled him onto his side and began to hold pressure on the wound.  In the confusion of the exchange, a voice could be heard shouting, “Hold your fire!” as a second voice called out repeatedly, “Medic!”

The rangers slowly and methodically began to slice the interior of the box truck, searching for the attackers.  They tried not to focus on the large device that rested in the center of the freight area.  They had to locate and eliminate the threat first.  In spite of their focus, they could feel the hair on their arms and neck standing up.

The rangers finally spotted two men in the far corner of the interior, indiscriminately firing through the walls of the truck in the direction of the wounded officers.  After two well-aimed taps from each rifle, the men dropped their guns and slumped in the back of the truck.

Reese called a guardsman over to relieve him, before he rushed to the rangers’ side.  They stood motionless and speechless as they stared at the apparent, nuclear device.  Reese paused for a moment, and then rushed to the two men inside of the truck.  The men looked to be Hispanic.  One of them was dead already, and the second was gravely wounded.  Reese tossed the man’s rifle to the side, leaned in closely and growled in Spanish, “Who do you work for?”

The man lay motionless and said nothing.

Reese turned to yell for help carrying the man outside, but heard a faint whisper coming from the dying man.

Reese turned back to face him as the man repeated the phrase.  His heart sunk as he recognized the language.  The clean shaven man was not Hispanic at all.  The dialect was Khaliji, or Gulf Arabic, as it was commonly called in the West.  Khaliji differed from other Arabic dialects in that it borrowed heavily from the Persians.  Reese knew without a doubt that the man was from somewhere along the shores of the Persian Gulf, most likely from Saudi Arabia, one of the gulf kingdoms or the southern coast of Iran.

The man defiantly repeated the phrase a final time in his native tongue, as if it was a dying prayer meant for his god rather than for Reese. Finally, his eyes rolled back in his head.  The words ran through Reese’s head in a frantic loop.  His head throbbed as the words echoed through it.

Reese numbly stepped out of the truck and onto the pavement.  He was met by a guardsman that said, “Sir, we’ve called the bomb squad; they’ll be here in a few minutes.  We did it!  We saved the city!”

The words were distant and hollow, as if they were coming from the far end of a tunnel.  Reese turned to the rangers and tried to speak, but could only manage a whisper.

“I need you to get all members of the evacuation team out of the city immediately, and get me the governor on the phone, now.”

The two men eyed him curiously for a moment, before turning to execute his orders.

Reese knelt on the ground and stared skyward as he simply whispered, “God, help us.”  The words of the dead man played on an endless loop in his head:

Praise be to A llah, for the righteous fury of your left hand may be denied, but the wrath of your right shall not.  Before this hour has passed, the world shall witness your glory.

Reese looked down at his watch; he had twenty minutes until four o’clock.

Chapter 26

Clayton

Washington County, Alabama

They turned east onto the narrow, paved road from Highway 43.  The pavement was crumbling and hopelessly potholed. The Sheriff navigated the road slowly to avoid damaging his SUV.  The shoulders were almost nonexistent.  The grassy swales on either side had long since been reclaimed by the dense forest.  The woods that the road dissected struggled to once again become whole.  The branches from both sides now intertwined with each other, creating a thick canopy above.  The overhanging branches made the moonless night even darker and more imposing.

The sheriff’s Suburban was followed by two full-sized, four-wheel drive pickups. Sheriff Greene had brought his three deputies and six volunteers with him on the raid.  The man that Clayton had managed to capture had told them that there would be eight men at the camp, but they were not certain if he had been truthful.  They could not even be certain that they were not being led into a trap.

The men were all solemn faced and anxious.  Some of the men had lost loved ones because of the group of interlopers that had invaded their once-sleepy town.  One of the men had nearly lost his own life to them, but had successfully escaped.  The face of the intruder that had stood over him was still seared into his mind.

Sheriff Greene had selected the men precisely because of what had happened to them or their families.  He needed men that had a reason to stand and fight, if it came to that.  He had also sternly warned the men that there would be no revenge killings.  They were deputized lawmen, not vigilantes.  None of his men were to fire unless it was in self-defense.  They were here to make arrests, not to satisfy vendettas.  The men had all swore an oath to the sheriff’s terms.  As far as Greene was concerned, this was not the Wild West, not yet.

As they rounded the final curve of the paved section of the road, Sheriff Greene glanced over at the tiny graveyard that was nestled in a small grove to his left.  Spanish moss hung from every limb of the oak and maples that grew in the cemetery.  The headstones were crudely constructed and covered in green moss.  The markers mostly represented three or four families that had lived in the area during the nineteenth century.  The headstones bore deaths ranging from the 1830s to the 1870s.  The sheriff wondered what the men and women that chose to live in such an isolated place so long ago were like.  He wondered if the people who lived here now had the strength and courage to survive if a world like that was realized once again.