The first assailant had to stop pressing the plastic bag over Brad’s mouth and nose until the newcomers left, but he bent over Brad as if he were doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but covering his mouth so Brad couldn’t cry out. A few moments later he heard, “Eto vo vsem. It is all over.”
“Takoy zhe. Same here,” the first assailant said . . . and then his vision exploded in a sea of stars and blackness as the crook of the cane crashed against his left temple, rendering him instantly unconscious.
“Jesus, Dexter, you’re as blue as a f*cking Smurf,” James Ratel said, shining a small flashlight at Brad’s face. He pulled Brad to his feet and put him in the front seat of his Ford pickup truck. He then loaded the two Russian hit men into the cargo bed of the pickup and drove back down Tank Farm Road to the dojang. He put plastic handcuffs on the wrists, ankles, and mouths of the two Russians, and sent a text message on his phone. By then, Brad was starting to come around in the passenger seat of the pickup. “Dexter!” Ratel shouted. “Are you okay?”
“Wh-what . . . ?” Brad murmured.
“McLanahan . . . Brad, Brad McLanahan, answer me,” Ratel shouted. “Wake up. Are you all right?”
“I . . . what . . . what the hell happened . . . ?”
“I need you to wake the hell up, McLanahan, right now,” Ratel shouted. “We could be under attack at any moment, and I can’t defend you if you’re not awake and able to defend yourself. Wake the f*ck up, right now. Acknowledge my order, airman, immediately.”
It took a few long moments, but finally Brad shook his head clear and was able to say, “Chief? Y-yes, I’m awake . . . I’m . . . I’m good, Chief. Wh-what should I do? What’s happening?”
“Listen to me,” Ratel said. “We don’t have a lot of time. I anticipate that we will be attacked by the backup strike team any second. We are completely alone and in extreme danger. I need you alert and responsive. Are you hearing what I’m saying, McLanahan?”
“Y-yes, Chief,” Brad heard himself say. He still wasn’t sure where he was or what was going on, but at least he was able to respond to Chief Ratel. “Tell me what to do.”
“Go inside and grab some mats and weights to cover these guys up,” Ratel said. They both went inside. Brad found workout mats and barbell weights. Ratel unlocked an ordinary-looking trophy display case in the front of the dojang; a hidden drawer underneath the case concealed a number of handguns, shotguns, and knives.
“I covered them up, Chief,” Brad said.
Ratel racked a shell into a shotgun’s chamber and handed it to Brad, then did the same with two pistols. “Stick the pistols in your waistband.” He armed himself with two pistols, an AR-15 rifle, and several ammunition magazines. “We’re going to try to make it to the hangar in Paso Robles—it’s easier to defend.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“I’d like to avoid doing that, but we might not have any choice,” Ratel said. “Let’s go.”
They drove onto Highway 101 northbound. Darkness had fallen, and the rain continued to fall, greatly reducing visibility. They were on the highway for less than five minutes when Ratel said, “We’re being tailed. One car, staying with us about a hundred yards back.”
“What do we do?”
Ratel said nothing. At the Santa Margarita exit a few miles later, he left the freeway, and at the end of the off-ramp they armed themselves and waited. No car exited behind them. “Maybe they weren’t tailing us,” Brad said.
“More likely they have a GPS tracking device somewhere on my pickup so they don’t have to follow very closely—there was no time for me to check,” Ratel said. “They probably have more than one pursuit team. The first team will drive on, then pull off somewhere, and the second pursuit team takes over. We’ll go the back way to the airport.”
They stayed on county roads for another hour until they finally reached Paso Robles Airport. Once inside the security gate, they drove toward the team’s hangar, but stopped about a quarter mile away. “There’s still too much activity at the airport to drag those guys inside,” Ratel said, laying the AR-15 rifle across his lap. “We’ll wait until it gets quieter.” They waited, on hair-trigger alert for anyone approaching them. About an hour later a small twin-engine airplane taxied close by, and the pilot parked a few hangars away. It took the pilot almost an hour to get his own car out of the hangar, park the plane inside, then gather his belongings and drive away, and the airport was quiet once again.
Thirty minutes later, after no more signs of activity, finally Ratel could wait no longer. He drove to the hangar, and he and Brad dragged the assailants inside. Ratel then drove the pickup about a quarter mile away and parked it, then jogged back to the hangar.
“Made it,” Ratel said, wiping rain off his head and his AR-15. “The backup teams will track down the pickup, and then track us to here. Then they’ll probably wait a few hours before they attack.”
“How will they track us down to here?”