“No!” screamed Reel, when she saw the red dot flicking around him. She launched herself but it was too late.
The round slammed into the back of Bender’s head and stayed there.
He stood there teetering in his boots for a second before toppling forward face-first, his pistol dropping from his dead hand.
The door they were going to break into swung open, and ten guns were pointed at them along with blinding lights.
Dolph emerged from behind the armed men.
He smoothed down his uniform jacket and said, “I think this is where you lay your weapons down. Or we’d be perfectly fine with shooting you right here.”
Robie and Reel laid their weapons on the ground.
From down the tunnel they heard footsteps approaching.
Out of the darkness a silhouette appeared.
And then it emerged into a fuller, more solid form.
Yet it was only when the person used a flashlight to illuminate her features that she became recognizable. The rifle with the laser scope and heated barrel from the just-fired round was held in her other hand. It had been the red dot from the scope that Reel had seen.
Reel gasped, “You just killed your brother.”
Patti Bender looked down at the body and said, “Actually, my half brother. So it really doesn’t count, does it?”
Chapter
65
THE AIR WAS stale and warm, with a chemical odor permeating throughout.
Robie and Reel sat in a small concrete block room behind a barred door. They had been stripped down to their underclothes, searched, and shackled. Their phones and weapons had been confiscated.
“I’m sorry, Robie.”
Robie glanced at her. “For what?”
“I didn’t secure our rear flank.”
“Well, considering we had about a dozen guns on our forward flank, I don’t think it mattered. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine. I did a bull run and screwed us.”
“You didn’t have much choice.”
“People always have choices. I made the wrong one. And now Bender is dead.”
“I didn’t see Patti being in on this.”
“Neither did I. But maybe it’s starting to make sense.”
“How so?”
Before he could answer, someone appeared at the doorway. It was Dolph.
Robie looked up at him.
Dolph said, “Well, there is justice after all, even for people like me. I had you as prisoners before and I do again. This time the result will be very different. There will be no Apostles to aid you.”
Reel said, “So what’s the game, Dolph? Hiding out in an abandoned missile silo? Afraid to come to the surface and fight it out mano a mano? Going for the angle of the cowardly Nazi?”