“Come on, Pop, let’s get you out of here,” Gerald said. He held out his arms for his father.
The rest of the club had dismounted their bikes. Guns appeared in their hands like a quick-cut editing technique. Ike got down on one knee and held out his arms to Arianna while balancing his shotgun against his shoulder.
“Yeah, sugar, that’s it. Come on to Granddaddy,” Ike said.
Grayson moved to his right. He pulled his .357 from his waistband. He wanted to get up close and personal with these fuckers.
Arianna leapt into Ike’s waiting embrace. He gripped her tight with one arm and grabbed the shotgun with the other before falling back into the bunkhouse.
Gerald smiled at his father. The old man pulled the duct tape away from his mouth with a determined snap of his wrists.
“Gerald, what the hell have you gotten yourself mixed up in this time?” Gatsby roared.
Gunfire erupted as Buddy Lee dropped the roll-up door. Bullets exploded through the metal siding and ripped dime-sized holes through the roll-up door. Buddy Lee went to one of the windows and began returning fire with the AR-15. He strafed the entire meadow from left to right. The bikers scattered like roaches. A few hid behind the backstops of the tactical targets. A few more flipped one of the picnic tables and used that as cover as they returned fire. The majority of them retreated into the brush that surrounded the meadow and began returning fire from the shadows.
Ike opened the crate near the back wall of the bunkhouse and lowered Arianna into it. A burning sensation erupted in his left bicep like he’d been touched by a hot poker. Ike flopped to the floor and crawled over to the window opposite Buddy Lee.
The automatic shotgun bucked hard as he unloaded on the darkness. The rear parking lights of the SRX cast a red glow across the meadow as the car began to lurch forward. Ike saw a group of bikers trying to make a run for the far side of the compound. They danced and jumped like religious zealots in the throes of ecstasy as the slugs from the shotgun ripped into them.
No, you don’t, you motherfucker. You don’t get to leave the party early, darling, Buddy Lee thought. He emptied a fusillade of bullets into the SRX. The SRX’s fiberglass body was no match for the AR-15’s power. Each bullet punched quarter-sized holes in the vehicle from the engine to the hatchback. The car careened off the side of the road and down a slight embankment until it crashed into the wide trunk of an oak tree.
Buddy Lee popped out his empty clip and slammed another one home. Ike likewise had to reload. The bikers took this opportunity to advance on the bunkhouse. They peppered the steel building with an endless tempest of gunfire as they pushed forward.
Ike wiped his eyes and his hand came away mottled in red. Chunks of concrete and slivers of metal sheeting were raining down on them. Ike and Buddy Lee may have had the more powerful weapons, but the Rare Breed had the numbers. Buddy Lee dropped to the floor, held his rifle aloft, and fired blindly through the nearest window. Ike fired one last barrage before tossing the automatic shotgun aside. He knew he had taken out a few of the Breed but not enough. Not nearly enough.
He crawled across the floor on his belly until he reached the fifty-five-gallon drum. As Buddy Lee continued to shoot blindly, Ike set the “timer.” The timer was in actuality a cannibalized CD player and a simple circuit attached to an old ignition switch. The ignition switch was taped to the underside of the lid of the drum.
Ike had come up with the idea as soon as he’d seen what was in that special crate near the back wall. It was their way out. It was what was going to allow them to pay the debt they owed their boys. A debt that was about to be paid in blood.
Ike had known they needed something powerful on their side against Gerald and his boys. Something that would level the playing field. Something made with the ammonium nitrate–rich fertilizer Ike had in dozens of bags back at his warehouse. A landscaper might not have guns, but he had a lot more than shovels. Neither one of them had much experience, but Google had helped them once again.
The huge drum was nearly full of fertilizer and gasoline. When the timer went off it would send a charge through the circuit to the ignition switch. The ignition wires had been peeled back just enough to make room for a spark. A simple but deadly effective bomb.
* * *
“Let’s go!” Ike said. He disappeared inside the crate near the back wall. Buddy Lee let off one last salvo, then made a dash for the crate. He shimmied down the aluminum ladder and followed Ike, with Arianna in his arms, into the tunnel that ran under the bunkhouse.
Grayson emptied his .357 into the building, dropped the empty shells, then reloaded. He only had two more speedloaders left. That was twelve shots. Dome hit the building with a blast from his MAC-11. Grayson heard a few more shots from his brothers. He peered from around the backstop at the building. It resembled a block of Swiss cheese. Inside, a fluorescent light fixture hung from the ceiling by a thin wire. It swung lazily back and forth creating a strobe-light effect through the window. Grayson fired three more shots at the window.