Eric Walters - The Rule of Three

Darkness was our ally, and in a world where there was so much against us, it was nice to have nature on our side. There was one more thing that had been installed in the plane that might help. Atop the controller, a carpenter’s level had been screwed into place. The little luminous ball that glowed in the dark would show me when I was flying level. Flying low, without light and the ground obscured below, it could be the only thing that would let me know I wasn’t tilting toward the earth. We were moving slightly up, still gaining altitude.

“Are you okay?” Herb asked.

“As okay as I can be, I guess.” I paused. “Will this work?”

“It will work better than doing nothing except waiting for them to attack us. We have a chance.”

“A big chance?”

“Maybe a bigger chance than I deserve.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Herb remained silent.

“This is no time not to answer,” I said.

“I’m just trying to figure out what to say. Look, I can think of at least two dozen times I should have been dead,” Herb said. “And more than that, I can’t stop thinking that after the sort of things I’ve been part of, maybe it would have been fair if I had died.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Karma. Good things happen when you do good things. Bad things happen when you do bad things. I deserve some bad karma for all the things I’ve done.”

“I’m sure you’ve always tried to do the right thing,” I said.

“No, there were times I did things that I knew were wrong but that had to be done. I tried to justify it by thinking I was just following orders.”

“But you were, weren’t you?”

“Just because I was following them didn’t mean I believed they were right. Do you believe in God?” Herb asked.

I hadn’t seen that coming. “Sure, yeah, of course.”

“I’m almost afraid to believe. I’ve broken more than a few commandments in my time. If there is a God I certainly deserve to be punished.”

This was the most personal conversation I had ever had with the man, and I wanted to make sure I said the right thing. “I know that without you, a whole lot of people we just left behind on the ground wouldn’t be alive.”

“I guess we’ll see how long they’ll still be alive.”

We flew along in silence after that. I was usually the one pressing for Herb to be completely honest, and now I would have welcomed a reassuring lie and false confidence. Maybe that confidence had to come from me.

“Herb, I don’t know what you did in the past, but I know what you’ve been doing over the past couple of months, what you’re doing now. Maybe all those times you were kept alive, there was a reason, and that reason is this, here, now, to keep all of us alive.”

“That’s a nice theory, although no lives have been saved yet. In fact, a lot of lives are going to be lost tonight. There always is a reason for killing. When I was working it was us against them, and ‘they’ were the evil empire or the threat to democracy, or our way of life, or our ideals, or our very survival.”

“But this really is about our survival,” I said.

“Actually it’s about more than just our survival,” Herb said. “This is about the very survival of a way of life, of the ideals that we believe in. The people we’re fighting are destroyers, tearing down any attempts for civilization to ever reestablish itself. What we’re doing today isn’t just about us—it’s about so much more. Right is on our side.”

Now Herb was sounding more like his old self. “And right always wins,” I said.

“Not always, but just maybe, this time. You know, I’m an old man. I’ve lived my life. Whatever happens to me doesn’t matter that much.”

“It matters to me. It matters to my family. It matters to the people of the neighborhood. So I want you to do me a favor.”

“Favor?”

“Yeah, stay close to me so I can keep an eye on you.”

He laughed. “Since they can’t shoot down half of the ultralight, I think we have no choice but to watch each other.”

“And we’ll watch everybody else, too,” I suggested. “We’re the eyes in the sky.”

“How long before we get over the top of them?” Herb asked.

“At this speed no more than fifteen minutes.”

Timing was crucial. I knew we couldn’t arrive at our objective early or we might tip them off that an attack was coming.

I banked toward the south and reduced the throttle until it was only half open. Herb was right. There was no need for speed.

“Our objective”—it sounded so clinical, sanitary, almost harmless. It was none of those. We were going to attack a group that was four times bigger than we were, more heavily armed, better trained, and completely ruthless. We were going to sneak into their stronghold during the night and try to destroy as much equipment as possible, kill as many men, and retreat without being wiped out ourselves. The odds weren’t good, but we had surprise. They couldn’t even think that anybody would be crazy enough to attack them.

Herb had said that their strength was their biggest weakness and that we had to exploit that weakness. If we couldn’t, it would mean the death of lots of people today—and it would mean the end of our neighborhood and the deaths of most of the people who lived there.

I’d seen, up close, what these people were capable of.

Herb was right, this was more than just about our survival. These people had committed evil . We had to stop them. Or die trying.

There was a burst of light on the horizon, and then a loud explosion shattered the silence of the night.

It had begun.

“Hold on,” I said. “This is going to be a rough ride.”

Off to the left I could see a blaze of light and flashes of explosions. I banked sharply and aimed right for the middle of the light. I opened the throttle up full.

There was another explosion, and then one more, bigger than the first, shot up into the sky.

“It looks like our people have managed to infiltrate the perimeter defenses,” Herb said. “Those are fuel tanks going up, so they got to the vehicles.”

“Will we be there in time?”

“Just get me close enough and low enough to do some damage.”

I dropped down and leveled off at around fifty feet.

“Just about perfect. We can afford to come in low because they won’t be expecting an attack from above.”

We were closing in fast. Along with the light from the fire there were bursts of light—guns being fired—and headlights sweeping this way and that as vehicles were swerving around inside the compound.

Herb had pulled up the bag, placed it on his lap, and opened it. I couldn’t see inside, but I knew what it contained. There were two dozen hand grenades and another dozen Molotov cocktails—simple bottles of gasoline with a wick. Herb would light them and drop them, and they’d set fire to whatever they landed on. It was great to have this arsenal of explosives and flammables—unless a bullet hit one of them before it was dropped. Then we’d be instantly incinerated. At least it would happen so fast it wouldn’t even have time to register before we were dead.

We were now so close that the sounds of gunfire punctuated the roar of the engine. There was a hailstorm of bullets flying through the air—just hopefully none of them high enough to hit us.

Flames were shooting up into the sky, some almost as high as we were flying. It was so bright that I could clearly see figures running around, scrambling away from vehicles and buildings that were on fire. We were coming in at full speed, but it was as if everything were slowing down. Herb had the bag on his lap and two grenades in his right hand. As we raced overhead he pulled a pin and dropped a grenade, and then did the same with another and another and—