Chapter 12
What’s the plan?” Geri asked as we crouched in the bushes off to one side of the trail.
We could see the outline of the Rolling Clover Event Venue and Soiree, where I was supposed to be getting married two days ago.
It was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, so climbing it was out.
Not that I was much of one for climbing fences anyway. Not exactly my primo skill set.
“I don’t see very many guards,” Ash murmured from their spot next to us.
“According to the info I found back at their camp, there shouldn’t be more than four or five here. I think they were counting on the fence keeping most people contained, and keeping fae creatures out,” Geri said.
“Four isn’t that many, right?” Jarvis asked. “Couldn’t Geri just shoot them until the survivors surrender?”
“We aren’t shooting anybody if we can help it,” I said, casting a dark look at Geri.
It bothered me how casually she’d taken down the two Pest Control operatives in the woods, and how she hadn’t even hesitated at chopping of the toes of the guy she interrogated.
We were going to have to have a conversation about acceptable use of force if we ever made it home.
“So how do we get inside?” Geri asked with an “okay, dipshit, what’s your idea” tone.
“Get help,” I said to Geri’s groan and Ash’s look of shock.
“Huh?” Jarvis asked. “Where are we supposed to get help? We’re the only humans we know of in this whole dimension.”
“We’re not going to get help, we’re going to do ‘get help,’” I said. “Haven’t you seen Thor: Ragnarok?”
“Thor what?” he replied.
“The third Thor movie. It’s really good. Anyway…” As I started explaining the plan in hushed tones, the look on Jarvis’s face went from confused to amused, to horrified when he realized exactly what his role in my plan was going to be.
* * *
An hour later, Jarvis and I were kitted out with body armor stolen from the mercenaries we left tied up at their camp (easier for him than me, since getting normal person-sized body armor on me required a fair bit of adjusting of straps, buckles, and the application of no small amount of profanity) and were limping down the middle of the road, me carrying Jarvis over my shoulders like an overgrown fireman and yelling for all I was worth.
“Help!” I shouted as I came around a bend in the road and saw the fence blocking the road.
“Help us! The demons got him!” I’d smeared mud and dirt all over both of us so it looked like we’d been in a hell of a fight, and I hoped we could at least get the gate open before they realized that nobody had ever seen a Pest Control mercenary my size.
Jarvis moaned a little across my shoulders, and even though I couldn’t tell if he was acting or gonna puke because my shoulder was poking him in the nuts, I didn’t care if it got us inside.
I mean, I hoped he wouldn’t barf down my back, but it’s not like it’d be the first time I’d carried a buddy home over my shoulder and had him paint my ass with his dinner.
I went to an SEC school, remember? We know how to party.
Ash’s admonishment that this would never work and we’d get shot full of holes before we made it within ten feet of the place rang in my ears, but the freckled kid at the gate didn’t even look at us twice, just saw a big human (mostly) lumbering toward him with an injured soldier on his back and opened the gate.
The first gate.
My plan hit its first roadblock when I realized that there was a sally port to get into the compound.
We made it through one gate with no problem, but that didn’t get us inside the camp.
No, there was another rectangle of chain link with a second gate that I needed to bluff our way through before we were inside, and that still didn’t leave the door open behind me to let the others through.
“Name and unit number,” the freckled guard said from his spot inside the second fence.
“Let me in, man!” I shouted. “He’s bleeding all down my back! My CO is down, all our other guys are down, and we’re the only ones left! Let us in!”
“Name and unit number,” he repeated, his voice quivering a little this time.
“He’s gonna die, man! You gotta help us!” I screamed, dropping to one knee to hopefully sell our dire circumstances better and to let me drop one hand close to Bertha’s holster in case things went sideways.
It says something about my life that carrying my brother-in-law-to-be into an armed encampment in the middle of another dimension while reenacting a scene from a comic book movie and hoping it all turned out okay in real life doesn’t constitute a situation that has already gone sideways, but the bar for “sideways” in my life is pretty high.
Freckles looked at me, looked at the latch for the inner gate, then back at me, then repeated, “Name and unit number. How do I know you’re not one of those monsters pretending to be human?”
“If I was a faerie pretending to be human, would I pick one this damned big? I’d want to look less intimidating, not more, you jackass! Now open the damn gate!” I yelled.
And in the universal language of most military organizations, a lot of yelling gilded with the tiniest bit of logic worked wonders. Freckles, who looked like he’d graduated high school within the past week, flipped the latch up, yanked the gate open, and stepped back to let us through.
“Help me with him,” I said, panting. “I can’t carry him anymore.
” I put Jarvis’s feet on the ground, and when Freckles came forward to help take his weight, I pushed J’s “lifeless” body onto the kid, knocking him flat.
I sprang to my feet and yanked hard on the gate’s latch mechanism, bending it out of shape and forcing the gate permanently open.
Then I ran back to the first gate and opened it, mangling the latch there as well.
Ash and Geri darted out of the woods and took up positions behind me with their guns raised. I hurried back to Jarvis, but he had Freckles on his stomach and tied up with his own flex cuffs by the time I got there.
“Handy of them to carry cuffs,” Jarvis said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I just wonder who they’re meant to be used on.” I yanked Freckles to his feet and shoved him ahead of me. “Walk slowly into the camp and tell anyone who asks that everything is fine. If you don’t, the short one will shoot you in the back of the head.”
“Hey!” Geri called out. “I’m not short!”
“But you are the one that’s gonna shoot him,” I fired back over my shoulder.
“Yeah, that part’s true.”
Freckles nodded and walked into the camp, where another guard was already walking toward us.
“Who the hell are these…” His eyes widened as he got a good look at me, my team, and took in the fact that we had all the guns and his buddy was handcuffed.
“It’s the half-breed! Boss says there’s a month’s pay bonus for everybody that helps bring him in! ”
He drew his pistol when he was still about ten feet away from us, but Jarvis had shouldered his twelve-gauge and fired a beanbag round right into his gut.
If I’ve learned anything from the rare and unfortunate times Skeeter has gone into the field, it’s to give the scattergun to the guy who can’t shoot for shit.
Jarvis qualified as the one who couldn’t shoot for shit, but even he couldn’t miss from that distance.
The guard dropped, but the damage was done.
Whistles sounded all over the camp as the alarm went up.
“Get help” might have gotten us in the door, but our plan went right to shit the first time we encountered the enemy.
Just like Sun Tzu told us it would. I hate it when that old bastard’s right.
“Okay, gang,” I said. “Spread out and try not to get dead.”
“Oh, that’s encouraging,” Geri said as she sprinted to my right.
“You want inspiring speeches, watch Varsity Blues,” I replied, drawing Bertha and hoping I could get through this without killing anybody. Or dying. Mostly that second thing, if I was being honest.