Free A Private War by Donald R. Franck Page B

dead man.
    Kate sat on the edge of the bed and carefully cleaned her HK MP5SK resting on her knees. Putting the action back together, she then threaded the Sonics suppressor onto the short barrel and turned it tight. Then after checking all her magazines, she lowered the bolt and then rammed a clip into the well. Pulling the silencer equipped Ruger from it holster she gave it a quick wipe with a rag and after pulling the magazine, checked it's action also. Reaching into her pack, she pulled out a box of subsonic .22 ammo and started to reload some of her magazines. Captain Samuels had told her that with the special ammo and the built-in suppressor on the Mark I, all that would be heard would be the action of the gun and a "spat" when it hit the target. Kate also had three boxes of special loads for the HK MP5SK, those were already loaded into thirty round clips. When Gaylon walked into the hotel room, Kate was already packed and had her guns ready for action. Smiling Kate handed Gaylon a white coverall to go over his parka and a pair of white snow pants. Kate was already wearing hers.
    "One of Peter’s men stopped by and told me the Mayor is trying make a deal with the pirates for food. He thinks there is about five hundred of them. And the mayor is shitting his pants." Kate said as he pulled on the snow pants. "There is a good chance he is going to let them into town. Is he crazy or something! The pirates will burn this place to the ground after they have stripped it bare. Doesn't he know that! God, they'll kill everyone!"
    "Peters has been trying to tell him that, but I don't think it will make any difference. Peters is going to fight, I can feel it. He told us to run for it." Gaylon said, then looking up at Kate, "I want to help him, ok?"
    "Lead on McDuff."
    Gaylon looked up and down the street then motioned Kate to follow him out the back of the hotel and down a dark alley. Picking their way between the buildings, Gaylon headed for the fence line that circled the town, hoping to find a place in the wire to get through. As he peeked around the last row of houses, Gaylon saw someone wave at them from the shadows behind the house ahead of them. "I thought it might be you," Gaylon said as the face of Peters appeared out of the darkness, "what's up?"
    "I had a feeling that you would head this way and I thought I would give you a hand getting out of town before it's too late. The mayor is going to open the gates to the pirates and let them in. If I had thought that it would have made a difference, I would have killed the bastard. But he had already given the order, Murdock is in the town right now!"
    "Doesn't he know what the pirates will do to this town! Can't they be stopped somehow?" Kate asked, "My God, the people!"
    “I tried, the town is terrified that if they put up any kind of resistance that the pirates will destroy the town. These people have no where else to go. I tried to make them understand the danger, but they believe the pirates will only take some of the food and then leave. The best I can do is to get some of my men ready for when the fun starts, because I won't see my town die without a fight."
    "What can we do to help?"
    For the first time that day, Gaylon saw Peters smile and in a low voice began to tell them the plan to retake the town. Smiling himself, Gaylon looked at Kate and winked. For the tenth time, Kate grumbled to herself as she brushed away a mass of cobwebs that hung in front of her face. Even as a little girl, she had hated spiders and to have them so close to her face was making her skin crawl. But Peters had said that the tunnel they were in now was the only way out of town that the mayor didn't know about. It had been part of the old sewer system that had been built over fifty years before and then abandoned as the town lost population to the bigger cities. Peters had found it while scouting the fence line a month before and had traced it to a small drain by the river a quarter of a mile