by David Wilson
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road. Keep your head on a swivel, we need to make Diane’s house before dawn, so we can scope out their building and make contact. I don’t know if we are going to run into a bunch of people or not, but here on in to her apartment, this is all built-up area. I can’t imagine that we will but be ready.”
Ben nodded again, and Talon turned and gently booted his horse to a walk. The night was quiet, with no background noise other than the wind moving through the trees. The waning moon provided enough light to see fairly well once they were out from under the trees. Every couple of minutes, Talon would use the small night vision monocular to sweep the area in front of them. It was hard to believe this was America, Talon had roamed the streets of Beirut, Baghdad, Mogadishu, and Kabul at night and seen less destruction. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, parts of each of those cities had areas that had been hit hard and looked like this, but in America, it was unthinkable. Burned-out cars and buildings were everywhere. Some evidently happen a few days ago, but some were still smoldering. Why? It puzzled Talon, why almost all of the buildings had been put to the torch. Not just apartment type buildings but businesses, stores, restaurants, everything. Was this just out of control gangs or kids torching all the empty buildings or something more malicious? He pushed away the thought, he wasn’t going to solve the problem, so why dwell on the problem. But it hard not to picture in his mind swarms of zombies coming out of the burned out buildings. Stop this, thought Talon, you are going to freak yourself out.
After over an hour of riding in silence, Talon pulled up and motioned Ben to come up alongside him. “Ben, we are coming up on the Dulles Toll Road. If we are going to run into anyone, that is high on the list. Large overpasses have always attached people, I don’t know why but they do. And don’t ask, almost all the neighborhoods have those sound walls along the highway which channels us to the overpass. We will approach slowly and watch for a few minutes before we try and cross under. We can pick up Hunter Mill Road just on the other side, and that will take us all the way down to Highway 123. From there, it is only three miles to Diane’s apartment. Any comments or questions?” Talon said with a smile.
“No questions, but I do wonder why all the buildings we have seen have been set on fire. Even the big company building sitting off by themselves have burned. Why do you think people are doing that?” asked Ben.
“I wondered about that myself, and I have no answer for it. I also don’t like that we haven’t seen one person or even a dog anywhere south of Highway 7. I know with the fires and no power that most of the people would abandon their homes and move to somewhere they thought was safer, but for no one to be around. I just have a bad feeling about this,” replied Talon.
Nudging his horse to move, Talon took the lead again. After about 15 minutes Talon and Ben got their first look at the overpass. There were several barrels with fires lit in them sitting across the intersection just before going under the overpass and several more on either end of the overpass up on the toll road. They could see several people milling around both under the bridge and on top of it. Pulling up, Talon turned his horse towards an alley between two of the burned-out commercial buildings on the east side of the road. Talon pulled up and waited for Ben to catch up before he dismounted and handed his reins to Ben. Ben raised a curious eyebrow, but Talon put a finger to his lips and motioned for Ben to remain where he was. Talon opened one of his saddlebags and pulled out his binoculars, and again, using hand signals told Ben to remain here in the alley with the horses.
Cutting around the corner of the office building, Talon scanned the area first with the night vision monocular and then with his binoculars. Zooming in on the men nearest to him, Talon could see they all had on some type of military uniform. It was still too dark for him to make out which service they were, but judging from the patches on their shoulders, they were either Army or National Guard. That was when he saw that not all of them were dressed the same. Several of the men had on all black or dark color military-style uniforms. Again, just an educated guess, these guys in the dark uniforms were Department of Homeland guys. And it made sense, kind of anyway, that they would be in charge of operations here inside the borders of the US.
Talon wondered if now was the time to try and use the letter he had from Jake. He hesitated to attempt to use it as these guys this far from Winchester probably got there orders from someone much closer to the Pentagon than a commander of an armory 40 miles from where they were. But he did need some intelligence on what in the hell was going on in the area and what the deal was with the fires everywhere.
About that time, Talon spotted two individuals walking toward the building he was hiding beside. What in the world, thought Talon, but quickly corrected himself. This was their overwatch sniper team for whatever they were doing on the overpass. So the commander of this lash-up wasn’t a complete idiot. But it also gave Talon what he needed. Sliding back out of sight, Talon listened to the two men chatting as they walked into the burned out building. He couldn’t make out what they were talking about other than one of them was complaining about his wife being a bitch about the housing they had been provided. Talon waited where he was until the men entered the building through the broken out front doors of the building.
Glad that he had not tried to cross the open ground to the overpass, Talon carefully moved back to the corner of the building before standing and returning to where he had left Ben. Once he was back with Ben, he explained what he was thinking, and Ben readily agreed. Leading the horses, they backtracked to the side street and moved as quietly as possible back north for two blocks until they came to an underground parking lot. Slipping their night vision devices back on, they led the horses down into the underground garage to the second level. Talon left Ben with the horses and did a quick search of the lower two levels. Finding nothing, Talon returned to Ben, and they led the horses down one more level and secured them in a small alcove. Talon dug around in the pack saddle until he found the box of chemical lights, retrieving three of the green lights he broke and shook them until they were glowing to his satisfaction. Placing them on the ground against the three walls of the alcove lit the area enough so the horses would not get nervous in the complete darkness of the underground garage. Talon next pulled out a set of hobbles for the big Belgian. Seeing them didn’t make Shadow exactly happy as he blew out heavily and stamped one hoof showing his displeasure, but he stood still as Talon put them on him. They only had the one set, but with the big horse hobbled, he wasn’t too worried about the other horses getting too excited about trying to leave without their leader. The big Belgian settled down as soon as Ben pulled out the feed bags and put one on each horse after taking the bits off each of them. They decided not to unload the pack saddle or any of the riding saddles, but they did loosen the clinches on each of the horses.
With the horses taken care of, Ben and Talon stood and talked through the mission. Talon explained that the whole mission depended on them being able to secure the sniper team before they could sound the alarm. Talon really didn’t want to have to kill any service member or law enforcement, but they also couldn’t afford to be detained by them. The building the sniper team was in was six stories. They did not know what floor they were on but figured the sniper team would be on the fifth or sixth floor. Ben asked why not the top floor and Talon explained that the mission of the sniper team was to cover the checkpoint, not the area. Also, they would not want to be outside for hours on end, and they would want to be able to stand up and move around without having to worry about silhouetting themselves against the skyline.
Talon made Ben jump up and down a couple of times to make sure none of his equipment was going to make any noise. Pulling out his roll of duct tape, Talon taped down Ben’s sling on his DP-12, to keep it from rattling. Ben had to tear apart his pack to find his ski mask, when he asked why he needed it, Talon patiently explained that he hoped to not have to kill these guys, but he definitely didn’t want a sniper t
eam to know his face. Ben agreed this was a good idea.
While Talon had out the duct tape, he first tied, then duct-taped the Sharkalope to his drinking bladder. Ben gave him the stink eye, but Talon ignored it and was inwardly impressed that Ben didn’t bitch about not getting to take his Deuce III. Ben had the common sense to realize that it was just too big for close-in work. Plus, he knew that Talon was taking his along to encourage the sniper team members to talk to them.
“You did bring your Hunter’s Ear,” asked Talon as he handed Ben several cut lengths of 5/50 cord and one set of handcuffs, “Put those in your pockets, one per pocket, so they don’t get tangled up. Keep the handcuffs somewhere you can reach with your left hand.”
Ben nodded about the Hunter’s Ear and pulled it out of his pocket and put it on. Double checking that it was working, he gave Talon a thumbs up and began carefully rolling up the pieces of 5/50 and placing them in various pockets.
Talon helped Ben replace the battery in his night vision device, and Ben returned the favor. Ready to go, Talon looked at Ben and saw the young man was grinning from ear to ear. Talon thought for the tenth or twelfth time that Ben had missed his calling with the SF or SEALS. If everything ever got back to normal, he was going to make a few phone calls to some old friends. Talon pulled out his camo face paint and quick did his face and turned to Ben, only to see that he had pulled out his own and already had his done.
Talon walked over to the pack saddle and pulled out the three hand grenades he had taken off the Iranian’s. Handing one to Ben, Talon said, “Remember, once you pull the pin on the grenade, it is no longer your friend.” Ben nodded and carefully stowed the grenade in the side pouch of his vest.
Both of the men drank some water and munched down a power bar as they didn’t know how long this was going to take. After finish the power bar, Talon took two more of the pain pills and chased them down with a long drink of water from his bladder. Walking over to a pillar, Talon relieved himself and then insisted that Ben try, even if he claimed he didn’t need to go. But he did, just to get Talon to shut up. With all of their short term items taken care of, they headed up and out of the parking facility. Once they hit the street, Talon reminded Ben to turn off his IR light. Ben was surprised how much darker it was as the moon had set while they were taking care of the horses.
Moving carefully, the two men returned to the back of the building that housed the sniper team. Not bothering with opening the rear glass exit door, Talon ducked under the middle bar of the door and carefully moved across the area covered with broken glass shards.
Talon and Ben stood and listened after entering the building. There were two stairwells indicated by the unlit exit signs. Talon moved close to Ben and point towards the stairwell towards the back of the lobby, “Ben, go over and listen at that stairwell for a couple of minutes.” As Ben moved off to listen at the back stairwell, Talon moved towards the other stairwell to do the same.
No sooner than Talon got to the stairwell, he heard footsteps and at least two men talking. Listening for just a couple of seconds, Talon realized the men were coming down the stairwell. Double-clicking his radio to get Ben’s attention, Talon motioned for Ben to move behind the security counter as he moved towards the counter himself. They both knelt down behind the counter and waited. As the men came down the stairwell, their conversation became louder and clearer. One man was asking the other how long he thought they would be struck out here on this overpass duty. The other man chastised the first man for asking again and said that if he knew he would have told the other man. The conversation began to fade as both men made their way out the front doors and back towards the overpass. Talon was able to hear one say something about the George Mason College football stadium before they got too far away for Talon to hear the rest of their conversation.
Talon had them wait for five minutes before he stood and motioned Ben towards the stairwell the men had come out of. Talon and Ben started up the stairwell with Ben three steps behind Talon. Talon had explained to Ben that his job was to keep the muzzle of his shotgun pointed up the stairwell in case someone spotted them and began firing down at them. Talon also told him to hug the wall as Talon was hoping that if they were spotted, the sniper team would assume they were from their unit and wouldn’t just open fire on them. Ben was to only step forward as Talon did; that way, they wouldn’t trip each other up. Talon had also told him to hold off firing if he could as Talon had a good chance of firing his suppressed M-4 within the building, and the guys on the overpass would not hear the firing, but there was no hiding the blast of Ben’s cannon.
Talon paused for several seconds on each landing to listen for the team above. These guys were making it pretty easy to tell where they were as they were not even trying a little to hide where they were. From their conversation, they were pretty relaxed and busy getting their camp stove going to make some coffee. So far, Talon had only heard two voices and had no reason to think there were more than the two-man sniper team. As Ben and he passed the third floor, they could tell the two men were on the fourth floor of the building.
As they reached the landing of the fourth floor, Talon decided that the direct action route was the way to go in this situation. He had discussed this possibility with Ben, and he motioned that they were just going to walk in. Ben nodded his understand and Talon forced his body to relax as he walked through the doorway into the large open office floor. It was the typical office set-up with a bunch of cubicles. The sounds made by the sniper team were coming from the south side of the room, and Talon walked toward the voices.
One of the sniper team members were hunched over a small gas camping stove, and he looked up as Talon came into the light of a chemical light the guy had lying on the floor next to the stove. At first, the guy didn’t react to Talon’s presence, but as Talon got within about ten feet, the guy realized that Talon was not one of theirs. He started to stand, but the muzzle of Talon’s M-4 convinced him to stay where he was. Talon held his finger to his lips and stepped closer to the kneeling man as Ben moved around them both and approached the man laying behind a Barrett M107 .50 sniper rifle. The sniper team had pushed together several desks and made a platform out of them about three feet from a large window with all the glass removed. The desktops were almost the perfect height, and the window gave them a commanding view of the entire overpass, and the angle allowed them to see most of the underside of the road structure. The sniper was commenting on how he would like to put a couple of rounds in those bastard DHS guys, going on and on about their parents and what assholes they were.
Ben whispered, “Please back away from the sniper rifle, and move slowly, there is no reason anyone has to have a bad night.” The man behind the rifle jerked as he swung his head around to look at Ben in disbelief. He froze as he focused on the muzzle end of the double-barreled shotgun. Ben could see the calculations going through the guy’s head, could he, was he fast enough, but in the end, he did the reasonable thing and carefully begun to slide off the desktops. After he was standing and saw that his buddy was also under the direct threat of a weapon, he raised his hands as Ben motioned with the shotgun to do so. Ben directed, “Ok, slowly and with your left hand reach over and unbuckle the leg strap on your drop leg. Do it, slowly, as if your life depended on it,” Ben waited until the man had complied then added, “Now again with your left hand undo the waist belt, then slowly undo your armor and drop it to the floor.” After the man complied, Ben instructed the man to take off his uniform top and to turn in a slow circle. After confirming he had no weapons, Ben asked the man to sit. Ben moved around the man until he was standing behind the man before instructing him to raise his left arm. When the man did, Ben ratcheted a set of handcuffs around his left wrist, then instructed him to handcuff his left wrist to his right wrist but under his legs at the knee. After the man complied, Ben pulled two strips of duct tape off his jacket and placed it over the man’s mouth and eyes. The man didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do abou
t it at this point.
After Ben had his guy secured, Talon secured his guy to a rolling office chair and then used zip ties to secure his forearms and legs to the chair, before applying duct tape to his mouth and eyes. Pulling out a length of 5/50, he fastened the man around his chest to the chair. During the whole time, no one said a word other than when Talon needed to instruct the man on what to do. After the man was secured to Talon’s satisfaction, he wheeled the man over to a desk and sat him with his back to the front of the desk. Ben next dragged the first man over to the same desk and made him lay down under the desk where the chair would typically go, opposite of his partner. Taking a length of 5/50, he looped the man’s feet and secured them with about a foot of slack to a desk nearby. Pulling out another length of 5/50, Ben made a slip loop and put this around the man’s neck, which by the way the man did not like one bit. Taking the other end, he passed it to Talon, and he secured it around the waist of the man in the chair, pulling it taut but not enough to choke the man under the desk.
Last but not least, Talon motioned Ben to pick up the man’s legs that were lying on the floor. Talon looped another piece of 5/50 around the man’s ankles and pulled the loop tight. Taking the loose end, he walked around to stand in front of the man strapped to the chair.