Some didn’t give it a second thought, while others were preoccupied by their near miss with an agonizing death.
Tate put down his coffee and rubbed his eyes with a groan. He didn’t know why he rubbed his eyes, because it didn’t do anything to relieve his fatigue.
“To answer Fulton’s question,” he said, “I didn’t find anything. There weren’t any breaks in the fence. I don’t see how the Vix got in.”
“Maybe they were already inside,” said Wesson.
“What?” said Tate.
“I think she’s saying,” said Kaiden, “the meat sack was one of ours.”
* * *
Tate woke up to the familiar thump of a helicopter flying overhead. His eyes were raw and gritty, and he splashed some water on his face to help.
His watch told him he’d been asleep for four and a half hours, but it felt more like four minutes.
Ignoring his aching leg, Tate walked out of his quarters as the Blackhawk circled low over the camp. Looking up, he saw the port-side gunner looking down his machine gun at him.
Fulton had reported they had secured the outpost, but when it came to the question of Vix, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Tate waved at the gunner, who smiled and waved back. Tate made his way over to the communications hut and found Fulton speaking to the helicopter pilot.
“Yeah, it’s just us humans,” said Fulton. Seeing Tate, he gave him a thumbs up. “There’s been zero Vix in the area since last night.” He paused while listening to the pilot through his headphones. “Roger. Out.”
He took off the headphones and Tate got a better look at him. Dark circles ringed Fulton’s bloodshot eyes. The hut smelled of stale coffee and sweat.
“Corporal,” said Tate, “have you had any sleep?”
“Not really,” said Fulton. Anticipating Tate’s approaching reprimand, he quickly spoke up. “I screwed up, Top. I left my radio behind when we bugged out last night. Communications are my responsibility, and I wasn’t going to be sleeping when the support chopper arrived.”
Tate couldn’t hide his rueful grin. Fulton’s guilt was obvious, and he was punishing himself and proving to Tate he could be counted on at the same time.
“You knew what time they were scheduled to get here. You could have gotten some sack-time before then.”
“And risk sleeping through the alarm?” said Fulton. “Uh, uh. Not a chance.”
“All right,” chuckled Tate. “I officially absolve Corporal Fulton from his screw-up. Now, go get some sleep. That’s an order.”
Fulton’s face creased into a haggard but sincere smile. “No argument, Sergeant Major,” he said, as he shuffled out of the communication hut.
Tate followed him out then split off as he walked over to the command and control hut, which also doubled as the Tactical Operations Center, or TOC. Like every other building in the outpost, this was a ribbed structure with a heavy-duty poly-carbon fiber material. The smaller size of an outpost called for the limited space to be multi-purpose. In this case, the TOC was also the conference room, logistics desk, and the clerk’s office.
Tate limped into the TOC and saw the company clerk; one of the few survivors they’d found last night. He was the hunched over a laptop next to a pile of folders. Tate noticed a small pyramid of balled-up tissues near the clerk’s feet. He correctly guessed the folders were the personal files for the outpost, and the clerk was logging the casualties.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, uh, Corporal Basset, right?” asked Tate.
Basset turned to him, putting a crumpled tissue to his face and wetly blowing his nose. “The T’s silent,” he said. “Like bassy.” He wiped his red nose and dropped the tissue near the pile at his feet.
Tate guessed the clerk was in his forties, which was old for a corporal, but like everything in the AVEF, the personnel was a mixed bag of whoever the Army could get to sign up.
He had a few extra pounds on him, and Tate suspected the guy didn’t see much, if any, patrol duty.
“What can I help you with?”
“I wanted to check the activity log from yesterday,” said Tate.
Basset sat back and crossed his arms over his bulk. “What do you want to know?” he said.
Tate hated the politics of paper-pushers. It wasn’t if you had to jump through hoops to get anything, but how many hoops. Who knows how far back the antagonism went between soldiers and administration types, but it was the same everywhere.
He decided not to press the issue. “All right. Were there any patrols yesterday?” he asked.
“Nope,” answered Basset quickly. “Anything else?”
“Did anyone go outside the camp, or make contact with Vix?” asked Tate.
“Nope.”
Tate couldn’t help feeling that this clerk was giving him whatever answer would get him out of his hair, and decided a different approach.
“I know you’re busy with other things,” he said. “If I can get the activity log, I’ll get out of your way.”
“Other things?” repeated Basset. “You mean writing a report for every person who got ripped apart last night?” His voice became brittle and high-pitched as he jerked his thumb towards the stack of files next to him.
“I was in prison for embezzlement,” he said. “I had seven years left, but when the waiver program came up to join the AVEF, I thought I could get a desk job. I mean, better than sitting behind bars, right? No one’s going to put a gun in my hands. Do I look like someone you’d give a gun to?”
Tate had no answer. The last thing he expected was to deal with a meltdown, and could only stare at the clerk.
“Right?” said the clerk. “I’m thinking the safest place to be is behind a desk, but it doesn’t occur to me that the Army loves to put desks in the worst ass-crack hell hole it can find. And after a night of watching everybody in the entire camp get chewed up, everyone treats it like business as usual, and, oh, by the way, can you relive the worst moment of your life and write up a butcher’s bill of men and women you knew?”
Basset grabbed a tissue and angrily wiped the tears off his face. His weepy display hit a nerve in Tate.
He felt himself get angry and was about to tell Basset to suck it up, but bit back the words.
This was a different time and world than his old life, when he had been running special operations as part of Delta Unit. Back then he was part of the Night Devils, under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command. The Night Devils had developed a reputation for getting missions accomplished, which got the eye of JSOC.
Tate’s unit had seen some hardcore missions after JSOC started assigning them more customized activities. The Night Devils weren’t arrogant, but they had borne a hard-earned confidence that they could endure the worst a mission had to give, and ask for more.
Tate thought back to a mission, several years ago, where that attitude had been put to the test.
The Night Devils had been tasked with a special reconnaissance mission. Warring tribes in Somalia were nothing new, but a new warlord had appeared on JSOC’s radar.
Known only as Jama, this warlord had been well-equipped, organized, and uninterested in the endless skirmishes of defending his meager slice of territory. He also hadn’t wanted to be burdened with the innocent people who lived within his control. Whatever resources he had, were for him only; everyone else was being systematically wiped out.
JSOC hadn’t been interested in the genocide, but had been keenly curious to know who was backing Jama. The Night Devils were deployed see what could be learned by boots on the ground.
The defenses around Jama’s camp were more than enough against the small units of rival warlords, so had made sense to Jama for the base to have multiple uses; a camp for his troops, warehouse for supplies and a small prisoner camp.
Tate and his unit had been tasked with watching the movement of supplies and the appearance of any high-value personnel that might reveal Jama’s sugar daddy. The information would go a long
way to explaining the motives and end game behind sponsoring this third-world psycho.
The Night Devils had taken up two positions, which gave them the best view of the camp. It was just what they’d expected from a defendable base of operations, just on a smaller scale; some beat-up trucks, a bulldozer – who knew why – and guards everywhere.
They’d learned that the prisoner camp was predominantly women and kids, with a few elderly types.
The second day on station, Tate had observed a beat-up M35 troop truck coming down the dirt road towards the base. Known as a Deuce and a Half, the truck had been known and used all over the world. The bed of the truck hadn’t been covered, allowing Tate to see it was jammed with people.
The truck had entered the camp and rolled into the prison yard. These were the unfortunate civilians who had gotten caught up in Jama’s land grab. The question of how Jama had filled his army was easy enough to see, as husbands, sons and brothers were pulled from the arms of their families and put back on the truck.
The truck had left the base and turned onto a dirt road to points unknown, leaving the remains of shattered families behind.
The intel briefing from JSOC had included scraps of what they could piece together of Jama’s history, current equipment and estimate of forces, but nothing about a prison camp. The prison had contained a shabby hut and a slit-trench by the back fence.
Tate had guessed it was a latrine, but he never saw the prisoners use it. Jama was scooping up whole villages, but there couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty people in the prison yard. Something hadn’t felt right to him.
Tate and his teammate, Robby ‘Huck’ Fin, had set up their recon position about two hundred meters from the base, with an unobstructed view of the front gate. They had taken up position in a shallow depression with a scattering of scrub brush, which worked perfectly for breaking up their silhouettes as they looked over the rim of their hide.
Tate had been asleep for a couple of hours as Huck took his turn watching nothing, when he had nudged Tate with the toe of his boot.
“Something’s happening,” Huck said.
“It’s not my turn to care,” Tate had grumbled, as he pushed his boonie hat off his face and picked up his binoculars.
Losing sleep was part of the job and Tate had got up to see what was going on. As he brought his head up above the berm of their hide, Huck had directed him to the activity.
“Coming down the road,” he said.
The scenery had blurred through the lenses of Tate’s binoculars as he shifted his view. He caught the end of a dust trail and followed until he had seen a small pickup truck rattling down the road towards the base.
A couple of men had scrambled to open the gates before the truck arrived, then closed them up behind the truck. Three men had walked out of the barracks as the truck pulled up. All of them had assault rifles with the classic Kalashnikov AK-47 profile. Their clothing had been a mixed assortment of camouflage pants and t-shirts, with a couple of baseball caps thrown in.
They had waited as the truck came to a stop and the passenger door opened.
Everything had been lost from Tate’s view as the cloud of dust caught up to the stationary truck and blew over it.
After it cleared, Tate had been able to see the truck’s passenger had joined the others.
The new guy carried an FN-FAL, or some variant of it, and it had seemed to reflect a higher status. Sunlight had winked off his mirrored aviator sunglasses as he took off his black beret and slapped the dust off against his thigh. This guy had ‘top dog’ written all over him.
“Hey,” Huck had said, with excitement edging his voice, “I think the Mr. FN-FAL is our guy.”
Tate had squinted though the heat waves at the new arrival. He had opened his pack and took out the profile sheet on Jama, then turned it over. On the back of the sheet were a handful of pictures of the warlord.
Tate returned to his binoculars, studying the distant figure. The similarities had been strong enough to convince Tate the man with the FN-FAL was Jama.
“I think you’re right,” he had said. “Why do these dicks always dress the same? Do they all shop at Warlords R Us?”
“Don’t knock it till you tried it,” Huck had chuckled. “They got great discounts on sweaty-ass Van Heusen shirts.”
As Jama spoke to the other three men, he had gestured to each of them and pointed around the base. One of the men took off at a trot, while the others listened and nodded.
“Yeah, that’s him,” said Tate. “Guys in charge love pointing at stuff.”
“You go there and do that thing,” Huck had said, mimicking Jama. “And you go there and do that other thing.”
“But it makes it easier to know who’s in charge,” said Tate. “Nice of them to make a sniper’s job easier.”
“Hang on,” said Huck. “What the heck?”
One of the men had swung open the gate to the prison yard and jogged up to the bulldozer. The adult captives, sitting in the shade, came to their feet, suddenly alert. They called to the children playing games in the dirt, but they were having fun and ignored their summons until the bulldozer’s big diesel engine had fired up with a loud growl. The startled children ran crying to their parents.
“I don’t like this,” said Tate, as he had picked up his squad radio. “Toaster, this is Razorback. Do you have a visual on three bad guys and our high value target in the prisoner camp?”
Huck had turned from his binoculars to look at Tate. “What are you thinking about, buddy?” he said.
Tate had held up his hand to Huck as he pressed the radio’s earpiece against his ear.
“Razorback, this is Toaster. I confirm visual. Three tangos and our HVT.”
Five hundred meters west of Tate’s location had been the other two-man reconnaissance team, consisting of Willie ‘Magic Beans’ Carson and the unit’s sniper, Charlie ‘Toaster’ Woodmen.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” Huck had said, “don’t. Our rules of engagement are clear.”
“I know our ROE,” said Tate. “We don’t shoot unless we’re getting shot at. I think he’s going to kill those people,” he said.
“I think you’re right,” said Huck. “We can’t save them.”
Tate had known Huck was right and hated him for it, but hated himself more for agreeing with him. Getting the bad guy wasn’t always black and white.
Tate and his team were professionals, and the hundreds of grueling hours of their training hadn’t been about how many miles they could run, or pushups they could do. It had been about hardening their mental discipline against the missions that would put them in situations where no sane person would willingly go. Their job was to do the hard things. Not simply endure the physical demands, but to preserve and advance the importance of the mission’s goal.
“Razorback, this is Toaster. I’m dialed in on the hostile in the bulldozer. Say the word.”
Huck had slowly shaken his head at Tate, who had gripped his radio with white knuckles.
The terrified civilians were herded along the slit-trench, as the gunmen casually strolled within a few feet of them.
“What’s your order, Razorback?” asked Toaster.
Tate’s radio had felt too heavy to lift. His had hand trembled as he squeezed the button to speak.
“Stand down,” he said, just above a whisper. “Don’t…”
The sound of popping gunfire had echoed across the open desert.
“Maintain our ROE,” said Tate.
In time, Tate had quelled his anger and guilt under a wave of acceptance. This was what happened when there was evil in the world. Killing Jama would have been like cutting off a twig of a tree; these people would have been saved, but the enemy would grow another limb. Innocent people would die somewhere else. To destroy this evil, they’d have to take it out at the root.
The bulldozer had belched a column of black smoke as it rumbled forward. The rusty shovel had gouged into the ground, building up dirt th
at it dumped into the trench.
Jama and his two men had disappeared into the barracks as the third man plowed a final scoop of dirt into the mass grave. He cut the engine and rejoined his companions in the barracks.
Just like that, there had been nothing to show that twenty-three people had been alive. All signs of their life and slaughter had been erased, but the memory of those people was burned in the minds of the Night Devils.
It would not be the last time Jack Tate would be a witness to death, and when the opportunity presented itself to exact payment on the enemy, he never flinched.
That had been years ago, when Tate had been an elite warrior who wouldn’t have given this piece-of-fluff-corporal the honor of even looking at him.
That had been another time, another life. He wasn’t that man anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
CLUES
Basset’s eyes widened in fear as Tate sat on the bench next to him. He couldn’t stop himself from flinching as Tate put a hand on his shoulder.
“What?” said Basset defensively.
“If you try to make sense of death,” said Tate, “it’ll eat the heart out of you. You’ll never find the answers you’re looking for, because the real answer has nothing to do with justice, right or wrong, because none of that is going to change what happened.”
Basset looked at Tate for a long moment, absorbing the unexpected humanity in Tate’s words.
“What do I do?” he asked. “Is there even, you know, an answer?”
Tate let his hand drop away from Basset’s shoulder. “Accept it,” he said.
“How is that even possible?” asked Basset. “All those people… I could hear them screaming as they were being ripped apart.”
“And it shouldn’t have happened,” said Tate.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Basset. “Nothing like that should ever happen.”
“That’s how we want the world to be,” said Tate. “But that’s not reality. Fighting against reality will break you, understand?”
Basset’s lips moved but made no sound. His eyes welled up as he sat motionless, caught in Tate’s gaze until he finally nodded.
The Suicide King (The Grave Diggers Book 2) Page 4