“We got ourselves a talker.” Nathans shifted his position slightly. “Give the word, Gunny. Target acquired.”
“Do not fire,” Pavel answered.
Nathans ignored the Russian. “Gunny?”
“You heard the order. We’re here to observe.” When they got back to the base, he was going to have a sit down with the guys regarding his and Pavel’s understanding. He wondered if pulling in the colonel for that would be a good idea. The lack of military discipline might be the right approach as far as the civilians were concerned, but within units like his, it was only going to lead to confusion. He had to assume Skirjanek knew that, and was waiting for at least some level of organic acceptance.
“Hell, as far as we know,” Farmer added, “the attackers are the good guys here.”
Nathans snorted from behind his scope. “I’ll take whatever odds you’re giving on that.”
Whoever was atop the truck wasn’t a happy camper. Nathans reported his view through the sniper scope. “Leader is early thirties. No visible rank or insignia.”
The dismounted soldiers who had arrived with the last JLTV moved as a group in response to more yelling and took up a line in front of their prisoners.
“This doesn’t look good,” Farmer deadpanned.
It didn’t, but there was piss-all they could do from across the river with four guns except to reveal their position. Gunny scanned the faces of the crowd in the plaza through his binoculars. They appeared to be somewhere between shock and horror at what was about to happen.
“VIP rolling in,” Farmer announced. The honking of car horns reached them a second later as two black SUVs pulled up next to the JLTV. The rearmost SUV disgorged half a dozen men with guns who ran over and took up a position between the prisoners on the river walk and their erstwhile firing squad. The lead SUV took its time opening its doors. Four individuals hopped out and ringed the JLTV, signaling for the soldier on its hood to get down.
“Gray beard,” Nathans reported, “exiting SUV. Full BDUs, he’s wearing fucking stars.”
“Get a picture if you can.”
“Somebody’s in trouble,” Farmer sang. They all watched as the soldier who had been directing the erstwhile firing squad was led back to the general’s vehicle.
Whoever he was, the officer on the scene directed the prisoners to rejoin their people held in the middle of the plaza. He was handed a bullhorn and began addressing the gathered crowd. Between the distance and the sound of the river rushing over nearby rocks, the words reaching them were indecipherable noise, but the tone was one of calm and reassurance.
“Looks like Mr. Pavel was right. The general is definitely in charge,” Nathans added. “Army digicam BDUs, early to mid-fifties, maybe six foot, two hundred pounds.”
John would have paid whatever went for money these days to hear what the general was saying to the crowd. From his limited vantage point, the penned-in people of Richmond looked deflated, but what had been abject terror a few minutes ago had passed. More than anything, they looked resigned to their fate. He even saw a few heads in the crowd nodding in agreement at whatever the general was saying to them.
School buses arrived ten minutes later. They had to have been waiting close by; hopefully, the drone was back up and recording all of it. The gathered survivors of Richmond, perhaps as many as five hundred people, were loaded onto the buses. Each group of four buses was escorted away by one military vehicle and its occupants. The process was organized enough that John was certain it wasn’t the first time the attackers had done this.
Within an hour, the only vehicles left in the plaza were the two SUVs and the Abrams tank. The general stood off to the side of the others with a radio operator, talking to someone, when a tractor trailer pulling a lowboy trailer rolled into the plaza. They all had a good laugh, watching the multiple attempts it took the tank’s driver to get the Abrams loaded on the trailer, but it was soon gone as well. The two SUVs were the last to leave.
“Up to Poy Boy’s drone from here,” he announced. “We can’t follow.”
“Wish we knew who was who.” Farmer was on one knee, repacking his bag.
“This was theater,” Pavel announced, looking at all of them.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Perhaps I use the wrong word; they planned to not shoot the small group of prisoners. The general’s arrival . . . theater, for a psychological effect.”
“You saying they faked it?” Nathans didn’t look convinced.
He caught himself nodding. “That makes some sense. They terrify the shit out of them. Good cop, bad cop routine. General’s the hero . . .”
“Son of bitch . . .” Farmer was shaking his head. “But why?”
*
General Marks climbed into the SUV, offered him a big smile, reached across the backseat divider, and clapped him on the leg. “Well done, O’Connell, you missed your true calling.”
A degree in theater, three years as the lead actor for his community Shakespeare company, and one lead in a local TV commercial said that he hadn’t. The suck had just put an end to it.
“You had me a little worried, General. I was running out of shit to say.” Sergeant Liam O’Connell wondered for a moment if he could have given the order to execute the prisoners. Which led to the question of whether his guys would have followed the order and pulled their triggers. On the latter question, he was sure they would have. He was just as certain that a part of him had wanted to give the order. That particular group of defenders had killed four of his team members. His performance atop the truck while addressing the crowd had been inspired, but he wasn’t altogether sure he’d been acting.
Marks waved away his concern. “I was listening in on the open radio. We were close by. I wasn’t going to have another Roanoke.”
Roanoke . . . Liam hadn’t been involved in that one beyond the role of carrying a gun. Whoever had addressed the battle’s survivors at the end of the day had been just a little too keyed up and still angry over the effective defense that had been put up. As he’d heard the story from Marks himself, his predecessor had shot a pair of survivors at the front of the gathered crowd. The rest of the survivors, disarmed or not, had reacted in a very predictable manner and charged anyone holding a gun. By the time order had been restored, they’d lost another dozen soldiers and almost a hundred more of Roanoke’s survivors.
In Marks’s words, it had been a shit show. It was the real reason so many of those collected from Roanoke were still housed in the stadium. “It’s all about trust,” Marks had explained to him. “They can think whatever they want about the folks they’ve just been beaten by, but they have to come to believe that our leadership has their best interests and continued survival in mind. Don’t fuck this up, or you’ll join your predecessor under the fairway on the fourteenth hole.”
As far as pep talks went, it had been effective. They all knew what the golf course’s fourteenth hole was used for. Finding motivation for today’s role hadn’t been an issue.
Chapter 10
“Can we trust you not to run?”
Daniel and Reed were staring down at him. During his short time in Tysons, Ray had learned they pretty much ran the place. At least in terms of the day to day; he was pretty certain Daniel’s girlfriend, Michelle, actually called the shots. She and some guy named Jason who hadn’t been there during the nearly two weeks he had. It had taken two days for them to get the story of what had happened from Pro. They’d assured him the kid was going to be fine. He’d felt a little guilty that his first thought at the news that Pro was going to make it was all about the kid’s story matching his own. It had. They’d released his cuffs and were standing over him now.
“You still good with setting my ass up for a trip out of here?”
“We are,” Reed answered immediately. “Your story has to be that you’ve spent the last two days scouting with myself and Gabe. Neither one of us has been seen by Carla. We were scouting the area inside the beltway; in Gab
e’s case, it happens to be the truth. We’ll get you out of here and once we are certain that Carla is around to notice, we’ll roll you up with Gabe in one of the trucks. You have to figure out a time to sit down with her today.”
“Why today?”
“’Cause we’re going to arrest you and the whole group you arrived with.” Daniel held out a hand to stop him. “Minus Sammy. He’ll be with Michelle all day.”
“We’ll hold you together,” Reed explained. “We’re hoping she’ll confide in you or say something that will help.”
“This was her idea, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“Whose?” Daniel asked.
He just looked at both of them and shook his head. He was tired of people thinking he was an idiot. “Michelle’s.”
“What difference does that make?” It was Reed’s turn to play stupid.
“’Cause when the boss lady changes her mind about me, I’ll already be under guard.”
Daniel smiled at him. Reed rubbed at his face, concealing a smirk of his own.
“You may not believe this,” Daniel started, “but from the beginning, you and Sammy were the only ones Michelle wanted to let in.”
“Bullshit.”
“Michelle doesn’t trust anybody who says they’re willing to give up their weapons. You were the one willing to walk away to keep your gun.”
Reed held a hand up and grinned. “To be clear, she doesn’t really like anybody except Daniel here.”
“Fine,” he relented. He didn’t see that he had any options. Besides, if it helped nail that crazy bitch Carla, he’d give it a shot. “I’ll do it.”
*
Jason had taken almost a week to work his way back home. He’d gone west into the Shenandoah Valley and then north, moving only at night and checking out the towns during the day. They’d all been as stripped of people and supplies as he’d discovered Leesburg had been at the beginning of his trip. What was left was no different from the suburbs Sheriff Bauman’s crew had hit. The towns had been professionally looted and left to small, scattered groups of survivors who had managed to escape the New Republic’s personnel collection efforts. From Roanoke in the south, through Harrisonburg and Winchester in the north, the valley’s towns had all been raided.
A small group just outside of Woodstock had told him the raiders had worked the valley all winter long, collecting people and looting everything they could carry. He’d intended to go west into the hills at Woodstock and try to make it to Wolf Gap where the Dagmans’ small farm was located, but the same group that shared their information had also taken a little too much interest in him and his gear. They weren’t a threat beyond the usual one of banditry, but he didn’t want to take the time to deal with them. Wolf Gap could wait. He’d needed to get home.
He almost didn’t make it. Raided or not, there were still people everywhere. The scattered survivors had learned the hard way that large groups were targets for larger groups. The survivors had dispersed. It was a lesson that he was desperate to deliver to Tysons. They’d been thinking their size offered protection, and to a certain extent it did. It also painted a target on their back. While he’d been traveling at night, by back roads paralleling state routes 9 and then 7, someone had shot out a rear tire of the beast. It had been pitch-black, and he’d heard the rifle report just as the right rear of the vehicle dug in hard and threatened to roll him.
It had been nothing but blind-ass luck, that allowed him to keep the rig on the road even at the sedate speed of maybe 35 mph. He hadn’t stopped. Given a choice, stopping in the middle of an ambush was never a good idea. Accompanied by the sound of a flapping tire, and a rim that would send a rooster tail of sparks each time he steered to weave between abandoned cars, he’d continued for nearly two miles before pulling over in front of a line of abandoned cars that would offer some protection from whoever would be coming. He had no doubt they would be coming.
Somebody who had been able to shoot out a tire, of a moving vehicle, at night. He bailed out of the Land Cruiser and set up with his own rifle on the opposite side of the road, behind a Hyundai sedan that had the rotting remains of bodies sprawled across the front seat. There were times when he hated what the night vision goggles allowed him to see. Without them, his nose would have been perfectly capable of giving him the same information.
The sound of motorcycles reached him just as two bikes came around the last corner, moving slow. They rolled up, slowing even more when they spotted the beast. It looked like a man and a woman, judging by their builds. He confirmed it a moment later when the guy hopped off his bike and approached the rig with a hunting rifle held to his shoulder. The woman dropped her kickstand and followed. She didn’t look to be armed, but that idea seemed ludicrous. He had to assume she was.
He waited until they were a safe distance from their bikes before letting loose a three-round burst at the gas tank of the man’s bike. He was disappointed it didn’t blow but then caught himself flinching when it caught fire and did. The woman threw herself to the ground, and the man came running around the back side of the Land Cruiser and let loose a round aimed at nothing in particular, in his general direction.
“Throw the rifle away!” he screamed. He could feel his anger building; he knew this petty bandit bullshit wasn’t going to end any time soon. He so didn’t want to deal with this right now and came very close to handling it in the most forthright manner he could think of. He told himself that they were probably just hungry, that he shouldn’t kill them over that.
The man complied and hung his head. He stepped out from behind his cover, flipped up his night optical devices and crossed the road from where he could cover both of them. “Your weapons, all of them, toss them to the side of the road. I’ll be checking you, and if I find one you forgot, I’ll kill you. I don’t have time for this shit right now.”
“You a soldier?” the young man asked.
He hadn’t thought of the light thrown out by the burning bike; they had a good look at him. “Used to be,” he answered. “Lose your weapons, all of them. Now.”
“You, too, miss.” He prodded the woman’s boot with his own. She was still lying on her stomach and hadn’t moved.
“Don’t do it, Will!” she spit. “He’ll just kill us.”
Jason stared at the young man and kept the barrel of his rifle aligned with his chest. Will couldn’t have been any older than nineteen or twenty. The woman hadn’t sounded any older than that either. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d both be dead. What I want is for you to change my tire while I keep an eye on you. You finish that, I’ll let you go. You have my word.”
“Your word?” the woman screeched from the ground.
He ignored her and focused on the guy. He could tell the young man had something holstered under his shirt. He tried to make his voice sound calm. “Your move.” He was somehow reminded of his first encounter with Loki. Looking more closely at the young man, he wasn’t convinced Loki wouldn’t have been the smarter of the two.
“OK, OK.” The man lifted his shirt and unsnapped his holster from his belt. He tossed it to the side of the road. He pulled another smaller gun from the back of his belt, plus a scabbarded bowie knife and a small folding knife from one of his boots. Maybe not so dumb after all, he thought.
“You know how to change a tire?”
“Yeah.”
“Get to it. The jack is mounted inside the back door.”
The woman started to get up, and he planted his boot on her lower back and pressed her back to the ground. “Not you. You didn’t toss the knife I can see sticking out of your boot or the gun I’m guessing that you’re lying on.”
“Asshole . . .”
Yep . . . He’d rather be an asshole than take the easier and without doubt, safer route of killing them. She tossed her knife and the beat-up Glock she had been lying on. He let her get up and go sit on the remaining motorcycle, but only after zip-tying her wrist to the luggage mount behind the seat.
Will, if that was
his real name, changed the tire quickly but took his time getting the lug nuts back on, delaying. Jason nudged him with the barrel. “I’ve changed a tire myself a time or two. Tighten them down. If you hurry up, I’ll leave some supplies for you both.”
“Seriously?”
“You two alone out here?”
“Yeah,” the girl answered far too quickly from off to the side. She might as well have screamed “No!”
“Look, I don’t know why I give a shit, but if you’ve got people depending on you, taking potshots at people is just stupid. When you get back to your group, you should come into Tysons. We’ve got food, shelter, and numbers enough to be safer than hiding out here in the hills.” After what he’d seen in the last week, it sounded to him like a lie the second he spoke. But however long Tysons had, it had to be better than making a living off the road.
“Save your breath. We’ve heard about Tysons.” The girl wasn’t going to believe anything he said. If stories of Bauman’s gang had reached them, he could hardly blame her.
“We ran those assholes out,” he answered. “The place is under new management. If you ever do come in, ask for Michelle. She runs the place.” He couldn’t believe how good it felt to say that.
“That’s it.” The young man reseated the jack in its bracket on the door and stepped away from the back of the vehicle.
“You’re down to one bike.” He motioned with his chin in the woman’s direction. “What do you want to carry? Water or food? I can spare either.”
Will looked over at the woman before facing him again. “You wouldn’t have any medicine, would you? Aspirin? Anything like that?”
Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow Page 9