He heard the generator by the guardhouse startup, and three large floodlights lit up the entire area.

His teeth began to chatter, cold seeping through his bones, and he knew he was losing too much blood. He found himself hoping Tam had escaped with the others who'd run. He wished he'd turned around and run the second things went wrong.

Bud suddenly noticed something strange; none of the raiders were being pursued by the soldiers. He was baffled as to why these troops weren't hunting down and eliminating his friends. That's what he would have ordered them to do.

He reached down and gingerly touched his wounds. His hand jerked back when he realized what he was touching was a large loop of his own intestines.

He heard a whistling sound, and then soldiers rushed toward his team with their weapons at the ready, night vision devices removed. They started collecting weapons from the dead and dying.

He caught an unexpected movement in his peripheral vision and forced his head around to see what it was. Bud watched as Tam climbed out of a shallow hole behind the gatehouse which looked freshly dug. Without a backward glance, she walked over to a woman wearing a gray jumpsuit and shook her offered hand. Tam was still carrying her weapon and his heart twisted with agony matching the excruciating pain slowly building in his body. His fury built, but he was powerless to do anything.

His vision started to fade, but he was able to make out the image of Owen slowly bringing his AK-47 assault rifle up and pointing it directly at Tam. Part of Bud wanted to warn her, but another part was enraged that he wouldn't be the one to pull the trigger.

A single shot rang out, and the last image Bud saw was Owen's head disappearing in a red mist.

As soon as the weapons had been collected, Jill Warren increased power to the AH-64 Apache and increased altitude. Her co-pilot gunner (CPG) Steve activated the thermal imaging systems which instantly revealed the scene below in a whole different manner. The heat of the people's bodies glowed brightly, but not as bright as the heat radiating from the generator and the Humvees engines. Lower heat readings were coming from the body parts scattered around and the dead, whose bodies had started cooling off.

Jill was disappointed; it had appeared they'd be able to capture the raiders without firing a single shot, until someone did something stupid and started shooting, and the rest of the fools joined in.

Jill estimated close to fifty rounds had been fired at her aircraft during the brief battle, though only one round had made contact, and it ricocheted harmlessly off the armored fuselage.