Giving a snort, Nelson moved over and looked over the notes and drawings Ronald had made. “I was just saying, I know how you want to think you’re a Jedi and all.”
“Bitch, I’m Obi Wan,” Gerald snapped, pulling on his ghillie suit. “Don’t make me tell the council to have your Jedi status removed.”
Shaking his head, Nelson picked up the hand-drawn map Ronald had made to scale. “Damn, pretty good. Now I’m not the only one in the group that can draw,” Nelson mumbled, studying the map.
“I shouldn’t be gone long,” Gerald said, walking out with Duke.
Pulling his head back from the spotting scope, Ronald looked up at Nelson. “What the hell were you two just talking about?”
“We have thermal sheeting sewn in our ghillie suits to block heat, but the downside is it will cook your ass. I found a vest that pumps water around, cooling you off. Without it, your heat signature still stands out in the suit, just not as bad. With that vest on, it’s easy to miss someone, especially if they are under cover,” Nelson said, putting the map down and flipping through Ronald’s notes.
“I’ve seen those, and you’re telling me you and Gerald brought ice to put in the cooling reservoir?” Ronald asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back.
Shrugging, Nelson said, “Don’t know about Gerald, but I have frozen gel packs I put in mine. You haven’t noticed any patrols?”
“None,” Ronald said and pointed at a small building that was in front of the lodge on his map. “That is the only building I’ve seen them coming and going to. Now I’ve seen some moving around that lodge but not outside the fence they have around it.”
“You good for batteries?”
“I can almost open a store,” Ronald snorted. “I’m going to get up on the roof tonight and use the thermal to see if I can spot any OPs.”
“Don’t fall because that would suck,” Nelson said, moving over to his gear. He started dressing, and after his ghillie suit, Nelson opened his backpack, pulling out a smaller hydration-style pack. Next, he pulled out a collapsible insulated cooler and removed a line of frozen gel packs that were tied end to end, forming what looked like linked hotdogs. He dropped them in the cooling pack, and Ronald saw water running out the top as Nelson closed the pack and put it back in the rucksack.
“Wish I would’ve had that in the sand box,” Ronald said.
“That’s where I found out about them,” Nelson said, putting on his rucksack and checking the rifle case mounted to it. “Granted, the one I had there made a lot of noise as it pumped water, and if you walked around, the ice would slosh; that’s where I learned about gel packs. This one is quiet when it’s on.”
“Have an extra one?” Ronald asked hopefully.
“Nope,” Nelson said. “Michelle has one but told me if mine broke, tough shit, I wasn’t getting hers. Each one set us back almost a grand.”
“Shit, if they work, it was worth it.”
“Oh, they work, otherwise I wouldn’t be toting the damn thing,” Nelson said, moving up behind Ronald. “See that draw in front of us?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s where I’m moving down to cross the highway. Even if someone gets in the Stryker, the road dips below their line of sight. I’m heading for the northeast side of that hill. From there, I can see the prison area and the camp,” Nelson said. Ronald just nodded as he lowered his head back to the spotting scope.
It hadn’t been long when they heard Gerald coming up the stairs, otherwise, Zeus would’ve alerted. “They are set up just over a mile from here overlooking the valley below,” Gerald said, coming in. “They can see people ten miles away using that road. They were pulling thermals out when I was leaving.”
“So they rotate out every twelve hours and alert the camp when they see people coming,” Nelson said.
“Makes sense because nobody down there has got close to the barricades across the roads,” Ronald said.
“When are you heading out?” Gerald asked, wiping his face and looking at Nelson.
“Right now,” Nelson said, moving to the door, patting his leg for Zeus to follow.
“Meet back here tomorrow night at midnight,” Gerald said as Nelson walked out, mumbling, “Okay.”
Gerald looked down at Ronald. “We have radios, but be cautious about using them. We don’t know if they are set up to track, but if you see shit happening, call out, and boogie back to the ATVs.”
“I will. You two need to be cautious,” Ronald said as Gerald nodded and left.
Ronald watched Nelson cross the backyard as the sun reached the horizon. When Nelson eased into the woods, Ronald lost him. “Now that’s good camouflage,” Ronald said with a low whistle. “I need a dog bad,” he said, getting up, and started setting noise makers like broken glass and trash on the stairs and hallway.
When the sun slipped below the horizon, Nelson eased out of the wood line near the highway. The draw led to a dip in the road. Glancing around and only seeing road, Nelson trotted across, almost diving back in the trees.
Taking a knee, Nelson slowed his breathing, turned on his cooling vest, and felt the vest turn cold fast. Giving a slight shiver, he reached over and patted Zeus. “Stay close,” he whispered and lowered his monocular over his left eye. Pulling the hood of his ghillie suit over his helmet, Nelson moved slowly through the trees.
There was a hill in front of him that he stayed on the back side of, away from the highway. On the other side of this hill was where the Stryker was parked. He reached a small road that ran between the hills that ran into Highway 60 and had to turn his vest off because it was freezing his ass.
Running across the road, Nelson moved to the back side of the hill and eased around the building with a large parking lot that sat on top of the hill. Easing back into the trees, he heard laughter far off and engines crank up.
Slowly moving down the northeast side of the hill, he stopped just below the crest beside a boulder sticking out of the ground between two large trees. He looked over at the camp and saw two school buses pull back out on the highway and cross the bridge.
Getting to his knees behind the boulder, Nelson dropped his pack, watching the area. The building that was being used to monitor the roadblock looked like an office of some kind for the lodge. The lodge and building were both lit up with electricity, and he could hear the generators.
Leaning around the boulder, Nelson saw the buses dropping off people at the prison area and leave, heading back across the bridge. The buses pulled back into the area they left from, but there were too many trees for Nelson to see where they parked. From the sound alone, he knew they weren’t more than four of five hundred yards away.
Looking at the boulder he was hiding beside, Nelson pulled out a small, folding shovel from his rucksack. “Hope you don’t have a lot of friends around you,” he mumbled at the boulder and slowly and very quietly started digging. Off toward the camp, Nelson heard several women screaming.
***
As Nelson started digging, Gerald was moving around houses, closing in on the lodge the military was using for a camp. All the houses he saw and passed were empty and had been ransacked. Getting closer to where he heard the buses shut down, Gerald heard voices and slowed his pace to a crawl. Coming around a house, he saw a clump of trees and carefully moved across the backyard.
Stopping in the trees, Gerald saw a small field with rows of parked buses, and on the other side were rows of semi box trailers with their doors open and stairs at the doors. The last trailer in the row wasn’t a real box trailer; it was a shipping container mounted on a trailer frame. On the far side of the trailers was a large pile, but he couldn’t make out what it was. On this side of the row of trailers was a long horse trailer sitting next to four tanker trailers.
On two of the tanker trailers, a large letter D was painted on the side, and the other two had a large G. Civilization falls, and you still have to account for idiots not to mix up gas and diesel, Gerald thought. Wanting a closer l
ook, he glanced around and eased around the edge of the field toward the trailers.
Beside the tankers were hundreds of fuel cans of various sizes with G or D painted on them. Reaching over, Gerald touched a few and felt they were empty. Moving under the box trailers, he duck walked under them to the other side and stopped, looking at a pile he couldn’t identify, and his jaw dropped open.
It was guns—a shit load, big ass pile of guns. Looking from one side of the pile to the other, he guessed it was fifty yards and an easy fifteen feet tall in the center. “Only in America. Too bad the people didn’t get to use them,” he sighed. “Their plan worked pretty damn well for separating people from their guns.” Studying the pile, he saw it was mainly civilian hunting rifles, hunting shotguns, and muzzle loaders with a lot of revolvers.
Glancing around, he eased out from under the trailer, moving to the back, and eased up the steps and stopped to stare at the stacks of rifles and boxes in the trailer. Unlike those on the ground, these were ARs, AKs, and other civilian copies of military rifles. In other stacks were fighting shotguns and precision rifles. Peeking in a box, he saw it was filled with semi-automatic pistols. “Hate to rain on their parade, but the pile outside is just as deadly as the ones in here,” Gerald mumbled. “I’ve trained people to fight with both.”
Hearing Duke give a low growl, Gerald spun around and eased out on the steps. On the other side of the field, he saw two soldiers walking side by side. He dropped down and moved under the trailers with Duke beside him.
The soldiers walked to the middle of the field, looked around, then walked back toward the highway. Bet they are from that guard post at the checkpoint, Gerald thought as they walked out of sight. Against his better judgment, he eased back out and moved to the next trailer and saw it was stacked with cardboard boxes.
Stepping in, he saw at the end of each box, a caliber was written. He looked in the first box and saw boxes of ammo like you bought in stores. Glancing back at the small aisle down the middle, Gerald shook his head at all the ammo they had pulled out of houses.
Moving from trailer to trailer, he found another loaded with ammo and another with guns like the first, two loaded with canned food, and one with toiletries. Another three loaded with boxes and bags of food while another held boots and shoes. Getting sick to his stomach with the knowledge that a lot of this was pulled from homes, Gerald moved over to the last one and eased up the steps then froze in his tracks.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he moaned, looking at the clear plastic bins stacked floor to ceiling with, like all the others, an aisle down the middle. He could see gold coins in one box. The box above it held gold necklaces, and the box above that one held gold rings. Looking at the end, he saw the hand-written label like all the others. Moving down the aisle, he saw silverware, gold watches, gold rings, bonds, stocks, silver coins, and precious stones. He stopped and stared at all the stuff and realized he didn’t see cash.
Quickly climbing out, he moved to the horse trailer and found it held boxes of gold, silver and jewels. “Bet anything this trailer is for the group here,” he mumbled and moved past the row of trailers into a row of shrubs. Kneeling down, he pulled out a notebook and made a sketch of the area and labeled it. Putting the notebook away, he moved up toward the lodge, stopping well away from the fence.
He could see a few soldiers walking around, drinking. When he saw two men dressed like contractors, wearing dark polo shirts with khaki tactical pants with body armor, Gerald fought the urge to bring up his rifle and shoot them. Seeing the hill Nelson was set up on across the highway, he eased back and followed the river south.
When he was far enough away from the camp, Gerald eased out into the river, sucking in a breath from the cold water. Pushing off, Gerald slowly swam across as Duke swam past him. “Yeah, but I’m carrying a lot of shit, Duke,” he growled in a low voice as Duke left him behind. Thankful for the air trapped in his rucksack, Gerald prodded along.
Getting out on the other bank, he moved through the trees until he reached the road that paralleled the river. “Wonder why they call it Brown Road?” he mumbled, following it south. After walking for a mile, Gerald pulled out his map and looked up where a ridge sprang up on the side of the road, running up into the forest.
“Hope we can get the buggies through that, or this fight is going to suck ass,” he said, patting Duke and walking off the road, following the ridgeline up.
Chapter Fourteen
Nelson sat in his foxhole, watching the camp and prison area and refining his notes. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was exactly 10 p.m. and continued writing as Zeus sat beside him in his hole. Sitting on his rucksack, Nelson could see over the piles of dirt through the glass he had brought down out of the building behind him.
After digging his hole the night before, Nelson looked down at the building where the troops manned the checkpoint to see a man wearing tan pants step out and raise his rifle, scanning around. Seeing the man move his rifle off the road to his hill, Nelson dove face-first in his foxhole. The only part that the man could really pick out would be his head and hands, but Nelson wasn’t going to take a chance.
He eased his head up and peeked around the boulder and noticed the man was aiming at him, making Nelson jerk back. With his back to the boulder, Nelson saw Zeus looking at him, panting and sitting on the edge of the foxhole. “Oh shit,” said, grabbing a stick and tossing it up the hill. “Zeus, find and stay.”
Watching Zeus run up the hill, Nelson peeked back around the boulder and saw the man laughing as he lowered his rifle. When the man walked back inside, Nelson crawled out, heading to the building at the top. He found several small windows and used his knife to remove the glass. Taking the sheets of glass, he carried them to the foxhole and shoved them in the piles of dirt around the forward lip.
Then he pulled out his sniper tarp and covered his hole and the glass, using sticks to prop it up. Before dawn, he moved over the hillside, gathering dead leaves and digging up small plants and finished camouflaging his sniper hide. He knew he had done a good job when he walked by it, not seeing his position as he carried an armful of dead leaves.
Looking back up in his binoculars, Nelson rechecked his drawings. Hearing a small moan from Zeus, he looked down. “Hey, I’ve got to piss too, so shut it,” Nelson whispered. “It’s not fair when the other side has cool toys too.”
Zeus just looked up at him with sad eyes. “Oh alright,” Nelson sighed, packing his gear away. After looking around, he shoved the rucksack out and lifted up the back edge of the tarp. “Out and sit,” he whispered. Zeus crouched down and leapt out of the foxhole.
Looking back at the prison and camp, Nelson made sure nobody saw Zeus then climbed out. Making sure his snipe hide was covered, Nelson put on his rucksack and moved up the hill. Taking his hand off his AR, Nelson lightly tapped his leg, making Zeus move to his side and match his pace.
Reaching the top, they both moved off to pee. Feeling much lighter, Nelson watched Zeus move over to him and started walking down the back side of the hill. Since he was ahead of schedule, he moved closer to several houses behind the hill.
They were all empty and ransacked, but in a shed behind one, he saw a nice four-wheeler. Easing over, he saw the keys in it and turned it, smiling when the small lights came on with a full tank of gas. Moving back to the side of the house, Nelson passed a nice Lexus and noticed the fuel tank door was open. Investigating, he saw the fuel cap lying on the ground. “They jacked the fuel?”
Moving across the road, he saw other houses that were ransacked, and every car or truck he came across had its fuel door opened. “There is no way in hell they are that short of fuel that fast,” he mumbled then headed toward the highway.
Stopping at the tree line and not seeing anything, Nelson took off running. Bursting into the trees on the other side, Nelson stopped and tried to slow his breathing. Looking up at the steep ravine he had to climb, Nelson groaned and headed up.
When Nelson reached t
he top, he looked at his watch and saw he still had half an hour before midnight. “Let’s eat, Zeus,” he said, moving to the back door. Walking in, Nelson stopped, looking at all the shit now on the floor.
“It was bad but not this bad,” he said, trying to move through the shit without making too much noise.
Reaching the top of the stairs, he saw Gerald standing in the hall. “How do you like Ronald’s detection system?”
“Pretty damn good,” Nelson said, letting his AR hang across his body. “I thought they had come and ransacked the house again.”
Seeing Nelson about to start taking off gear, Gerald held up his hand. “Hold on, we are moving to the basement so we can compare notes.”
“I have to walk through that shit again?”
Gerald shook his head. “How in the hell do you think I got up here?”
“You two could’ve met me downstairs,” Nelson snapped.
As Ronald walked out carrying his rucksack and gear, Gerald pointed to the room Nelson had slept in. “Grab those blankets so we can cover the windows.”
Letting out a huff, Nelson walked in and grabbed an armful of blankets off the bed. Walking back to the hall, he followed Gerald and Ronald down to the basement. Moving over to one side that was walled off, Nelson followed them through a door and grinned. “A man cave,” he said, looking at the remnants of what was left.
“Yeah, it used to be a nice one,” Ronald said, setting his stuff on a velvet-covered, wooden, octagonal card table.
Dropping the blankets, Nelson saw the monster TV screen still intact and looked around and saw an open safe on the wall that had been hidden behind a painting. “Motherfuckers are persistent,” he said, dropping his rucksack beside the card table. “Guys, you’re not going to believe this, but they are siphoning the gas out of cars.”
“Hey, I can take you to the tankers they are pouring them in,” Gerald said, dropping his rucksack and grabbing a blanket.
“Gerald, there is no way they are short of fuel this far in,” Nelson cried out, grabbing a comforter and covering another window.
Forgotten Forbidden America:: Patriots Reborn Page 26