Free These Dead Lands: Immolation by Stephen Knight, Scott Wolf Page B

plain sight near the roadblock, but the rest were nowhere to be seen.
    Hastings got back on the radio. “Ballantine, I’ll need you guys up here pretty quickly. Tharinger, let me know when you’ve established line of sight with the engagement area. Over.”
    “Six, I’ve got it,” Tharinger said. “Thing is, those guys are going to be able to see us too. Over.”
    “Can’t be helped. Six, out.” He nudged the driver with the rifle again. “Stop here. Put the truck in park and leave the keys in the ignition.”
    The guy did as he was told. “Okay, now what?”
    “Now you wait for me to tell you what to do. Both hands on the wheel—I lose sight of one, I pull the trigger.”
    “Okay. Okay.” The man quickly grabbed the steering wheel.
    “Six, we’ve got you covered,” Ballantine said over the radio. “Reader and I are in the woods on either side of the road, and Tharinger has overwatch. Guerra thinks he’s got a good bracket lined up with the grenade launcher if things really go to hell, and we’ll help him walk his fires to target. Over.”
    “Roger that. Who’s left, and who’s right? Over.”
    “Six, Reader is to your left. I’m to your right and about thirty meters behind you. I can’t tell if there’s anyone in that GMC pickup you passed. I have it under surveillance, and I’ll pop anyone who tries to line up on you. Over.”
    “Roger that, sounds good. Okay, we’re getting out of the vehicle. Over.” Hastings eased open the passenger door and stepped out. Keeping his weapon trained on the driver, he reached around and opened the rear door. “Okay, driver, slide out. Diana, move over to this side but stay in the truck.”
    “All right.” She slid across the bench seat.
    “Do you see any of your party?” Hastings asked.
    “No.” She pointed to the left. “But you can see their Explorer there, parked in front of the roadblock.”
    “Understood. Ballantine, keep an eye on Diana as well. Over.”
    “Roger that, Six.”
    The driver slid out of the truck, trying to still keep his hands in sight. As he stepped out, he slid in some mud and fell onto his flabby ass. Hastings shook his head and kept his M4 trained on him while also trying to keep one eye on the three men standing by the roadblock, who were watching him intently. They all held assault rifles, but Hastings couldn’t tell whether they were civilian or military versions. It didn’t really matter. The only difference between the two was that the civilian versions didn’t fire on full automatic, which was a mode of fire professional soldiers rarely invoked. The civilian versions could kill someone just as dead as their military counterparts. All the men wore some manner of camouflage clothing, and they had a backwoods air among them. Hastings wouldn’t have been surprised to discover they were veteran hunters and trappers, as those professions were regularly encountered in that part of the state.
    “What do you want me to do?” the driver asked.
    “Where’s the family you stopped?”
    “I don’t know—”
    “Dude, listen to me. Things are starting to look a lot like what Diana described them. You don’t tell me where those people are, then you’re suddenly of no value to me. You just become a human shield. Get it?”
    “Mister, I don’t know where Frank put them. Really, sir, I don’t know.”
    “Where’s the rest of the men?” one of the bearded men at the roadblock yelled.
    “Dead,” Hastings called back. “They elected to try to go to guns on an element of the US Army, and that was it for them. Where is the family you captured?”
    The bearded man stared at the driver. “Dale, is that true?”
    “They shot first,” the driver said. “Look at the front of my truck. There ought to be bullet holes through the grille!”
    “Which one of you is Frank?” Hastings asked.
    “That’d be me,” the same man said. “Where’s my brother?”
    Hastings saw the family resemblance, but where Jerry had been