Mel had a few goals in life. Nothing too crazy. Finish school, which she did. Continue the fisher with Dad, which she was doing. Someday she would settle down and build a family.
Her plan was simple. Her life was simple.
Then it was not.
Rebels from...
Keeping low I crawled behind a pile of rubble, an overturned car, and more debris before reaching the spot Carlos indicated.
Wong met me there first. "This looks like it's going to be hard," Wong said. The pile of vehicles was high enough that we could stand. Both of us looked for peek holes through the pile to see buildings.
The back lobby was a large room with its walls and roof made of glass that was still intact. Back in the day, the room probably looked exquisite with white linen tables to be placed tastefully around the room for the guest.
The tables and chairs now were not set in position but scattered throughout the room along with debris. Along with the broken chairs and tables, there were car hoods, doors, trash cans, and random large objects scattered across the floor. In the center of the large area was a little camp the officer-rebels had created. And in the center of their camp was a black box. From the reports, that was the package we needed to get.
The package was easy to find but hard to get to. Officer-rebel stalked around the camp life vultures. The large rifles slung on their backs. They didn't wear Alliance black. Some wore jeans and t-shirts, flannels, and denim to look like rebels.
As we took inventory of the camp, the rest of our group joined us.
"There's twelve officers in there," Wong whispered beside me.
"Only six of us," muttered Alec.
"We can still do this with six of us," Carlos shot.
"This is going to be hard," I said. "That room is made of windows. They will see us coming."
I turned around and sat down. The image of the building burned into my brain. The entire wall and ceiling were windows. There were a few windows broken in, but most were intact.
Ben and Grant sat down.
"Any ideas of how to get the package?" Carlos asked while he sat.
Wong and Alec both sat.
"We need to be sneaky about whatever we do," Alec said. "There's twelve of them and six of us."
My eyes studied the babbling river before us as my mind fluttered from one half-formed idea to another idea. We couldn't ask the officer-rebels to bring us the package. That would be dumb. We could go running in, but like what Alec said, there were a lot of them. Taking them by surprise would be best. But how?
A kernel of an idea formed in my head. "That lobby has a lot of windows," I said as I thought out loud. "I know, they would easily spot us coming, but what if we somehow get inside and sneak our way to their camp to steal the package?"
"How are we going to get in without being caught?" Carlos asked.
"Go at night," Wong said. "Oh! That's a good idea. We wait for night, and we climb into the lobby. Some windows don't have any glass. Inside, we sneak our way to the package. They won't see us, and they may be asleep."
"I see a problem," Alec countered. "There will be a few of them awake for a night watch. How do we sneak past the ones that are awake?"
The idea slammed into me. "Create a distraction." I leaned forward so everyone could see me. "Wong and I are the smallest and Ben is the quietest. The three of us climb into the lobby at different windows on each side. We sneak as close as we can to their camp. When we are in position, Whitman, Carlos, and Grant come running in and start shooting. That will distract the awake officer-rebels and the ones that are asleep will wake up, hopefully disoriented. During the confusion one of us will reach the package."
Silence answered me as each one considered the plan.
Carlos spoke first. "That sounds solid. When do we go in?" He looked at me. My plan. My decision.
"If they were smart, they would do rotations of people watching over the camp. Let's do our attack in the middle of the second rotation," I said.
Doing the second rotation will bring us into the middle of the night. Hopefully, everyone would be disoriented with sleep when we go crashing in there.
"I like the idea," Wong said. The others nodded their agreement. "Since we got time before night, why don't we find a good place to hide our bags and get some rest before tonight."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
