by Chris Bostic
“Finding you,” Austin said.
I wanted to smack my brother—if not in anger, at least to knock some sense into him. “I mean with the searchlights on. They’ll see us move.”
“Don’t worry,” Mouse chirped. “It’s all good.”
I was ready to disagree vehemently, but Austin dropped the real bombshell.
“Those aren’t searchlights,” he said, though he remained low to the forest floor.
“What?” I rolled onto my side and immediately felt like an idiot. “Oh.”
A trio of Humvees roared out onto the road. Their headlights had passed over the three of us as they’d driven from the field toward the highway. They weren’t searching for rebels in the hills. Instead, several eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers also exited the field, and approached the road to line up behind the Humvees.
“They’re moving out,” I whispered under my breath.
Thankfully, Austin didn’t rub in my paranoia. The earlier version of my big brother wouldn’t have missed that opportunity.
We shielded our faces to avoid creating any kind of weird glow like the way a deer’s eyes would shine on the side of the road. Between slits in our fingers, we watched the soldiers head off to the north. Back in the field, another row of big-wheeled, multi-axle vehicles revved their engines.
“Yep, they’re headed up the road,” Austin said. “We’d better tell the others.”
“They’re right behind me,” I said, pointing up the slope. “Did you find the prisoners?”
“You betcha,” Mouse said. “They’re lookin’ okay. We can bust them fellas out, no problem.”
“It might be a little tougher than that,” Austin cautioned.
“Shoot, Big A. We got in there so tight we coulda reached out and touched ‘em.”
“With a really long stick,” Austin whispered to me. “But, yeah, we saw ‘em, and they looked alright, I guess. Beat up, but plenty lively.”
“Good.” I glanced back toward the road. The small convoy had driven on, and the other vehicles out in the field hadn’t shown any further signs of moving out. “Let’s go tell the others.”
With the hillside once again a shadowy gloom, we scampered up the slope. I felt like calling out to the others, but assumed they would have to know that it was us returning. At least I hoped Katelyn had shared that information.
Shortly after, we met up with her, who led us the rest of the way up to the group. Everyone descended on Mouse and Austin like jackals on a fresh kill.
“All right, all right,” Austin pleaded, holding up his hands as questions came at him at a rapid fire pace. “We’ve seen, uhm-”
“Turtle,” Mouse said. “And the other guy is Wood Duck, not Golden Eagle.”
“Hard to believe he got captured,” Spotted Owl said. “I sure thought he’d go down with a fight.”
“He’s been beat up,” Mouse said. “But he’s still walking. Just a big ole knot on his head. Heck we were so close I wanted to poke it.”
“That’s my girl. I knew I could trust you to get close.” Spotted Owl beamed with praise. Still, he didn’t get completely sidetracked from the gravity of the situation. “So where are they holding ‘em at? Can we bust ‘em loose?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mouse announced triumphantly. “We darn need coulda done it ourselves, right Big A?”
Austin nodded, but I didn’t think his heart was in it. Still, it all sounded encouraging, though I had long since known that nothing was ever as easy as it seemed. And how could it be, I reasoned, when the prisoners had to be well-guarded deep inside the solid concrete walls of the Visitor Center.
Mouse shot a gaping hole in that theory.
“They took ‘em back to the cabins.”
“The old log cabins?” Spotted Owl seemed genuinely surprised.
“Yeah,” Mouse said. “It’s the big one with two floors. It’s past this little, uhm, barn that kinda doesn’t have any sides. It’s just like all open underneath.”
“It seemed kinda like a pavilion, like where people have picnics and family reunions and whatever,” Austin added.
“I think I remember that one,” Spotted Owl said.
I did too. Their admittedly weak descriptions had stirred up memories of the little mock-up of a historic village behind the Visitor Center complex. I remembered how it nestled up against the river, but right next to the big open field which had been turned into a parade grounds crawling with soldiers and equipment. That fact sure didn’t make the location of the captives seem any simpler to get at.
Apparently, Spotted Owl wasn’t worried about that. He asked a few more questions as his scouts continued with their story.
“The house where your guys are at is right next to that barn thing,” Austin offered. “I think it’s the only one with an upstairs, but the guys were still downstairs when we left.”
“We were hanging back in the woods, right along the river, when they came marching them along this back path,” Mouse explained. “They were all tied up, but walking pretty okay, I guess.”
Austin added one final detail. “We heard them stomping around inside on the floor, but they hadn’t gone upstairs like I was saying.”
“Okay. Great work.” Spotted Owl clapped Austin on the back. The force of the blow knocked him into me. I couldn’t fully hide a chuckle. As proud as I was of my brother finding out the vital information, it was comical to see the bear of a man beat him down with a simple pat on the back.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Spotted Owl told the group. “There’s a little bridge just north of the first driveway to the Visitor Center. We can plant bombs there and get under the road.” He paused for a second to sweep the leaves aside. “Dang it. I wish it was light enough to draw this out.”
“It’s fine. I think we’re all following so far,” my mom said. I was happy to hear it, as I feared a battle breaking out over who got to be represented by the stick or the rock or whatever.
“Fine.” Spotted Owl looked to Katelyn’s parents. “So there’s a pretty big pipe under the road not quite at the far end of the big field. If we can blow out that one too, then all those vehicles are pretty much trapped between there and the bridge.”
“And then we can get away with the prisoners,” Spotted Fawn replied.
“Yep. And slow them down for a long time.”
“Especially if we bomb the buildings too, right?” Austin asked, seemingly excited about creating all kinds of havoc. I liked the idea too, though not quite as enthusiastically.
“Oh, hell yeah,” Spotted Owl said, his volume growing until I felt concerned that someone down on the road could hear us plotting. “I want to light that whole camp up like the Fourth of July. We gotta let them know who they’re dealing with.”
“So we need to get out into the field too?” Katelyn’s dad said tentatively.
“If we can. I don’t know that we’ll be able to get close enough to disable some of the APCs, but we’re gonna level every building. Imagine the effect that will have. They won’t dare mess with us for a long time.”
I put myself in the position of the soldiers. I figured they were sitting there confidently, waiting for the all-clear so they could drive right through the park and push the rebel scum aside. When all the bombs started going off, I expected they’d abandon the equipment and high-tail it all the way back to Cherokee. Hopefully farther.
Even if they didn’t run, they were effectively trapped in their vehicles. They would need to bring in a whole bunch more bridge-building equipment to fix the damage our group would cause. And that would take ages.
A spark of confidence burned in my chest, though I had no reason to be so optimistic.
Maybe it was just the imminent taste of revenge. Better yet, I wouldn’t necessarily have to hurt anyone to do it. Perhaps things might get hairy when the buildings came down, but I found it oddly reassuring that I wouldn’t have to see another man fall. A person could get crushed or blown apart, of course. However, it seemed
strangely tolerable as long as I didn’t have to witness every gory detail.
“What’s happened to me?” I mumbled. “This is crazy.”
“We’ll be fine, right?” Katelyn looked at me, her face etched with concern. I wanted to reach out and touch her cheek, but the helmet had become an obstacle. Not just physically, though she had turned slightly away from me. In that moment so close to life or death, her profile view seemed all wrong. I didn’t want to see her all geared up, covered with armor plating and holding the rifle tightly in her gentle hands. Worse yet was the worried look plastered over her soft features.
She wouldn’t hurt a spider, but she appeared to be readying herself for war. I supposed I needed to get into that frame of mind too, and tried to shove the demoralizing thoughts from my head.
“We sure will,” I finally answered. “Just stick with me.”
“Okay, Rambo,” she said with a smile that softened the jab. “You must be ready for this?”
“Yes and no,” I admitted. “I’m ready for it to be over.”
“All of it,” she added, and I nodded in agreement.
CHAPTER 30
Spotted Owl urged everyone to pick up their buckets again, and he went around passing out blasting caps. Each phone was connected with thin wire to two of the caps.
“Slip those in your pocket,” he suggested. “We’ll put ‘em in the buckets when we’re close.”
I looked at the wiring curiously, and asked Spotted Owl, “Two caps in each bucket?”
“One might not have enough spark to blow it. We’re not taking any chances.”
“No, sir.” I bit down on my lower lip and slipped the detonators into my backpack. I hefted the buckets. I couldn’t wait to be rid of them so I could unsling the rifle from my back, not that I wanted to use it. But at least I would be able to move a lot quicker.
With John and the two scouts back, many in the group only had to carry a single bucket. I volunteered to take what should have been my mom’s. Despite my concerns about being loaded down, I’d much rather suffer through that myself than have her stuck lugging a bucket around.
The adults had the attack plan worked out, and once again we divided our forces. Katelyn’s parents and John were headed to the south. They would crawl through the culvert pipe and plant a couple bombs, one on each end. Then they’d follow the stream, skirting along the south side of the open field behind the soldiers’ staging area until they made it to the river that ran behind the historic village.
If possible, John was to sneak out into the back part of the field and see if he could get close enough to leave a couple more buckets next to some of the parked vehicles. He hadn’t been left with a back-up plan, meaning he pretty much had to get the bombs somewhere close. At the very least, he needed to dump them along the way, since they would have no idea when Spotted Owl would start calling the phones to set them off. At the most, they had an hour to get the job done, and then follow up the river to meet up with us.
Katelyn should have gone with them, I thought, seeing how that group was completely her family. However, she had been emphatic about staying with me. Had anyone argued, it would’ve been an easy win for her seeing how I was part of the bigger group that had many more bombs to set. Of the fourteen original IEDs, two were way up the road at the temporary bridge that John had previously set by himself. He and his parents had four more with them. That left eight for my group to set.
Like me, Spotted Owl also carried two. Katelyn had another, along with Austin and Mouse. Noel was still showing major fatigue, which left James to bring the other one. Worry settled over me about that, yet the kid had shown himself to be not much of a concern up to that point. Though he hadn’t been altogether helpful, he hadn’t stood in the way of any of our plans. Nor did Spotted Owl seem concerned.
I couldn’t imagine who wouldn’t want a chance to get away from the military. I had no doubt James had been conscripted against his will, much like Noel. Despite having gone through a rigorous indoctrination program, I didn’t think there was any way the training could strip all the decency from the soldiers. Sure, some had to be bloodthirsty lunatics, but I felt confident that the vast majority were decent people doing what they had to do to avoid punishment, or to support their families, or pretty much whatever it took to get by.
That didn’t make them real pillars of the community, but they were people all the same. Some flawed, some not the types to stand up to wrongdoing like Mom had talked about earlier, but many had to be genuinely good at heart. That was the thought that troubled me the most about fighting back with deadly force, no matter how many times they’d knocked me down.
As we hiked diagonally down the slope, the point/counterpoint battle played out in my head. I sincerely hoped that the setting of the bombs wouldn’t actually hurt anyone, while at the same time I would’ve loved blasting every bit of the soldiers’ equipment to smithereens.
I didn’t know the two captives we were trying to rescue, but that didn’t matter in the slightest. I knew I would do whatever it took to get them back. Or so I hoped.
If I froze up again, everything could go horribly wrong in a hurry. So I decided to quit thinking ahead and put my hopes on spontaneity.
Until that final moment, I decided to pretend we were just hiking through the woods. The buckets were gear that I was bringing to a campsite my family had picked out deep in the forest. It wouldn’t have been the first time. We’d always stayed off the beaten path, carrying all our gear sometimes several miles to an overnight destination. Then we’d rise the next morning, tear the tents down, and head somewhere else.
That’s almost exactly what we were doing, I reckoned. We’d hiked to the cave last night. Now I was going to drop some supplies, and I’d be back home by morning—excluding one key detail. Someone needed to break the news to Maddie. I wasn’t sure if I could be around when she found out about Dad, much less be the one to help tell her. Still, I resolved to get the mission done. We needed to get back to her as soon as possible. She deserved as much. Besides, I was spent as physically as I was mentally. It all needed to end.
“Stay low,” Spotted Owl said as we closed in on the little stream that crossed under the road.
Mouse and Austin had already set down their buckets to hurry off to check it out, and they came bounding back seconds later.
“All clear,” Mouse chirped. “They don’t have a clue we’re here.”
“Good,” Spotted Owl said. “You two leave your buckets here, side by side under the bridge. Then keeping running on ahead.”
“But not too far,” my mom added.
Mouse turned to her dad, who nodded in reply to an unspoken question. She saluted, grabbed her bucket, and urged Austin on ahead.
“Don’t dawdle by the bridge,” my mom told the others. “We just keep on hiking down to the river.”
I noticed that along with her voice, her eyes had firmed up. Sharp lines in her aging face drew at the corners of her eyes, but it made her look shrewd rather than old.
The stream wasn’t terribly wide. It rolled and bubbled enough that it grew noisy. The darkness would’ve seemed even eerier if it hadn’t been for the moonlight reflecting off the ripples. I felt oddly calm, though I usually did around the streams. Playing in the water was my absolute favorite thing to do in the park. Even in these dire circumstances, I took a quick moment to savor the smell of fresh, cold water.
A new metal bridge the soldiers had placed sometime earlier was suspended over the creek twenty yards downstream from us. Heeding my mother’s advice, we went straight for it without stopping. I had to duck to get underneath and came face to face with the two buckets resting on the dirt right beneath the edge of the structure.
I imagined the heavy bridge flying in the air like a sail when Spotted Owl made the call. That elicited a smirk.
A little gust pushed at my back as I finished crossing under the road. It was as if the creek itself was generating the cool breeze. It swept under the lip of my he
lmet and through the webbing, giving me short-lived relief.
There was a mild benefit to the wind dying down, not that it helped me hear much better. Our boots made a racket. Tipping rocks clanked as we stepped along the rocky shoreline. Spotted Owl adjusted course to keep us closer to the water. It was a risky move considering how slick the flat rocks were, but it helped dampen the noise.
Granted, we could’ve gone slower, but Spotted Owl was in a hurry. I wasn’t opposed to that, especially in the midst of the enemy. However, I had in the back of my mind that the slippery rocks could spell disaster. Against my better judgment, Spotted Owl had us wade even farther out into the stream to fully deaden our clinking footsteps.
I was suddenly no longer a big fan of cold water. It spilled over the tops of my boots, knifing through my socks and practically into my skin. Had it been the middle of summer, the water would still have been ice cold. Even with warmer temperatures, my skin would have turned blue in a matter of minutes. In the fall, the water was perilous.
We rounded a big bend in the stream and made it out close to the confluence with the river when I felt my toes go numb. In a sense, I enjoyed the way the blisters finally quit hurting, but knew I would pay for it later. Once my feet started to warm up, they’d burn like fire. But right then, there was no need to worry about that. We were almost ready to set a whole different kind of fire.
I looked ahead, and noticed how close we were to the river. It was much wider than I had anticipated. The view shocked me to the point that I forgot to watch my next step. Sliding on a flat rock, I planted a knee in the stream. The rock cut through my pants more sharply than the water, but I bit my lip and refused to cry out.
At least I’d kept the buckets from getting drenched.
Totally embarrassed, I quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Luckily, everyone was busy trying to keep themselves from falling and hadn’t seemed to detect my little stumble. Even Katelyn, inches away, apparently hadn’t noticed.
I leaned my head over to try to wipe the sweat off my brow with my shoulder. Between carrying buckets and the helmet, it didn’t work. I gave up and stopped for a quick breath. Blowing out a sigh, I was almost surprised that I hadn’t expelled a cloud of steam. The world had definitely gotten colder that evening, which was even more noticeable thanks to my frozen feet.