IT WAS DARK AND IT DRIZZLED. Joe stood alone looking at the army base below from the knoll with the field glass. The sector was lucid with yellow-sodium floodlights that reminded him of his time — when he looked out the barred window of his prison-cell in Tombscradle before.

He turned and returned to the rest, who were getting ready to execute the mission. Reeves and True Bob were wearing the army uniforms of the two dead soldiers that they had sniped. Reeves wore the fatigue shirt of the gunner woman-soldier — who was shot twice in the chest. It had patches of blood clots, with two bullet holes...

Laura too was disquieted — to see the bloodstained uniform that he wore. She heard him calling out...

“You got the C4s, Bob?

“Got it, all four — it is enough to bring the whole place down to ground zero.”

“Troy, you still got the flare guns that you took from the float planes at the lake? You will fire it, the moment you get on the Canadian side, and then we will catch up fast after that.”

“Sure Reeves,” Troy replied.

Reeves checked his sniper rifle chambers...

“Okay guys, this is it. Stick to the plan.”

He hugged Troy and Joe farewell and good luck. Laura came from behind, and held Reeve's arm — and led him away from the rest of the Intersexuals.

“Reeves, promise me that you will get out of the base once you are done.” Reeves nodded and she embraced him even tightly...

“I still am so afraid for you, dear.”

“Don't worry, Mimi, stick to the plan — everything will be fine.”

“I want to hear you say, 'Mum, I will come back to you.'’

“Mum, I will come back to you.”

Reeves repeated her words knowing that was no assurance — as she was back again into her frightened thirteen-year-old-child mode.

She released hugging — and looked at Reeves in the eyes, while she unhooked her chain with the Mimi pendant...

She fastened it onto Reeve's neck...

“Wear this — it belongs to your grandmother. It will bring you back to me.”

“Thanks, Mum, I will return it back to you — once I see you at the border.”

“No darling, keep it...”

Laura kissed him a few times before Reeves walked over to the jeep with a heavy heart. In the ten days on the road, he was cold towards her and did not have the opportunity to get to know his mother, as a person, whom he had longed to meet since he was small — now, they were to be separated again.

There is so much he yearned to talk to her, but...

Quietly, he sat on the passenger’s side in the terrain-assault-buggy. Bob started the ignition.

Troy came over to True Bob...

“Chief, here is the second flare gun — it is from 'The Lady of The Lake,’ it will bring you good luck. Fire it once we had fired ours — so we will know that you are right behind us.”

It started to drizzle heavily when the buggy drove away towards the icy road. Both Troy and Joe accompanied Laura into the Mustang — where they had to wait for their clarion call to escape, to the border.

They peered at the terrain buggy — driving downhill in the rain.

***

Both of them were in their Army ponchos — Reeves looked again at his sniper rifle and spoke to Bob, pointing at the water tower.

“The moment we are in, I will perch up there and keep a lookout for you. You go set up the charges — and we get out in an hour.”

They saw two sentry posts ahead — one was into the army base camp, and the other was a checkpoint to the road to the Canadian border — which the Mustang would later take — once the team got the explosion-cue to make a run.

The female sentry soldier was discharging her duty in the rain — both the Intersexuals anticipated her to notice that the buggy was without a windshield — but the feckless soldier released the rope anyway — and the boom-gate barrier pole went up...

True Bob drove in surreptitiously into the base, the vehicle cruised slowly towards the parking bay ahead — with more stationary patrol buggies, a Humvee and a wheeled Mowag Shark combat tank, which were all parked.

Reeves have cloven to his role in the recon-mission — by jumping off near the drums of gasoline fuels — and he then gaited swiftly in the dark with great celerity, towards the elevated water tower.

True Bob parked his buggy and he alighted off — he had a sling-bag with the explosives under his poncho. He walked away in the rain, passing another guardhouse at the vehicle bay...

Someone called him...

“Hey, you private, come here!”

He walked up slowly to the windowed booth, where a female soldier was inside.

She was watching the network news on her tablet — that repeated the incantation of a pontificated female unctuous victory, by the combined armed forces of the Police and the US army, who brought the carnage of the Preacher and his God’s Army rebels, recently in LA.

True Bob approached with his hand on his pistol prodding under the rain cape. The booth was well-lighted — and the soldier could identify that he was not a female — so, Bob tilted his helmet down, so he would not reveal much of his face. The soldier’s attention was still engrossed, in the news coverage — she pointed at a record book...

“Sign out and leave the key — Capt. Farrer’s order.”

Bob noticed nail pegs outside by the window, with dozens of keys itemized by the vehicle numbers. He copied a vehicle number in random, from the earlier entries. He then scribbled his initials as 'fuck you,' before he stepped back into the cold rain — clinching to the sling-bag of explosives, under his poncho.

He had also pocketed the buggy’s key — instead of returning it...

He walked nearby, to set up his first explosive charge — at the fuel storage area.

***

Captain Jacintha Farrer was the person in charge of the base — formerly from the tank division serving a few tours in the Iraqi Desert Storm Gulf War, during the pre-Medusa days. These days, there was not much action going on the Canadian border except for occasionally seizure and detention of drugs, firearms and contrabands from smugglers into Canada — and also the security, of keeping all sorts of gangbangers and hardcore criminals from trying to head in and out of the country.

After the recent Battle of LA civil war victory — Pentagon had given orders to be on a stringent lookout, for escaping AOG militia rebels, who might flee the country at the checkpoints.

Tonight she was working late on her year-end budget reports in her office. The door rapped, a drenched Corporal Hilly in a dripping poncho saluted...

"Sir, this is urgent — you have to come, and see this."

They both stepped in, slightly wet in the communications-room — where a team of three was working at their work-stations. They stood up and saluted, Farrer nodded while she folded her wet umbrella. One of them looked up with urgency...

"Sir, the FBI transponder frequency that you gave this afternoon — we have intercepted it."

“How close?”

The eager communication officer replied, in a high tone...

“Very close, Sir — in fact, it is zeroing into this base itself.”

Farrer mistrusted her...

“What!!? Insurgents had penetrated into our base camp — that is impossible!”

The captain turned to the ten monitors mounted on the wall — with the base’s CCTV video-feeds.

She saw two uniforms of the canine-unit patrolling outside in the rain. The rest of her women soldiers were cosy indoors in their barracks.

“Should I sound the alarm, Sir?” Corporal Hilly suggested.

“No, they will escape if we do that — Hilly, you go and get Royle and Piccirilli at their bunks, and you all form 3 small search parties. Use the hounds to track — and you go out there, and ‘shufti’ every corner of the ground.”

“Should we kill them, Sir?

“No, they are of worth some shit to the FBI — capture them alive, if possible.”

Captain Farrer picked the FBI fax with the picture CCTV photo of Reeves and Joe taken at the LA hospital car-park. It had Agent Maxine Harvest's phone number scribbled on it.

Farrer called the FBI.