299 Days VIII: The War

by Glen Tate

  Grant and the convoy were idling along at about five miles per hour as the scout car was up ahead checking out an overpass. The overpass, which Grant knew well from driving to and from his cabin so many times, was about a half mile ahead. Bobby put on the brakes and Scotty got on the radio to Nineteen Delta.

  There was no response. Oh God, Grant thought, they were experiencing their first combat casualties. Grant had a horrible feeling about what was around the corner at the overpass. Grant’s biggest fear was a Lima tank column, as unlikely as that was. Or it could be one of those Homeland Security MRAP armored cars.

  Everyone was silent as they slowly rounded the corner on the highway. They were afraid of what was on the other side. Grant mentally rehearsed what he’d do if he saw Lima armor or other superior forces. He quickly assumed he would initially hit them as hard as possible and then fall back to assess the situation. This was where Ted’s expertise would come in.

  The lights from the highway were shining on a terrible sight.

  It was a wrecked car; the scout car.

  “Stop,” Grant said to Bobby. “Let’s see what’s ahead.” He wanted to speed up ahead to see if the scout car needed help, but he didn’t want to dash into an ambush. He had to fight his urge to rush toward the overpass.

  Bobby stopped the truck and Scotty radioed to unit that they were stopping. “Why isn’t the Clear Out Crew doing this?” Ted radioed back.

  “They’re not responding,” Scotty said. He didn’t want to alarm anyone by saying, “I think they crashed.” But everyone hearing the intra-unit radio needed to know what was going on.

  When they stopped, Pow, Scotty, and Grant got out. As they got out, Ryan yelled from under the tarp, “What’s up?”

  “Something happened to the scout car at the overpass,” Grant said. “Be ready.”

  “Roger that,” Ryan said from under the tarp.

  Pow, Scotty, and Grant got out and moved quickly, trying to find cover. There wasn’t much on the side of a highway. Luckily, they stopped the truck in between highway lights so they weren’t silhouetted. It was dark and damned hard to see them from a distance.

  “Boom!” Another rifle shot. They heard a bullet impact about 100 yards ahead and way to their left, in the median of the highway. It was at least 600 yards to the overpass.

  “Boom!” Another shot that was way short and to their left. Whoever was shooting at them was doing a shitty job; this made them relax a little bit.

  “Boom!”

  “I got a muzzle flash on the overpass,” Pow said.

  “Sniper on the overpass,” Scotty radioed in. “About 600 to 1,000 yards ahead. Shots are way short and to our left.”

  “Flank checkers out,” Ted said. “Everyone be ready to go. And get me Donnie.” This was a perfect project for a sniper: to counter another sniper.

  Jim Q. radioed on the CB to the chase truck that Donnie needed to get out and go meet up with the Team.

  Hearing that, Donnie jumped out of the chase truck with his hunting rifle. He ran as fast as he could, which wasn’t as fast at fifty-four, as he had been at eighteen. He was the oldest guy in the unit. And he was the first one to get to shoot someone.

  As he was running, Donnie realized that he would arrive with his pulse racing too much. The microscopic movement from the normal beating of a heart—especially the added movement from an increased pulse from running—could actually throw a shot off target. When the target was several hundred yards away, a tiny fraction of a degree of angle translated into several feet of deviation.

  Donnie tried his hardest to keep his heart rate down, but he was running into combat and running fast. He knew there was no way to slow down his heart, and that he just had get there fast without getting shot.

  “Looks like a sniper on the overpass,” Pow said to Donnie when he got up to where the Team was down on the ground. “About 600 to 800 yards,” Pow said. “Not a very good shooter.”

  Donnie was excited. He would finally get to do some work. He wanted to prove that an old guy like him, with no military experience, could be useful.

  “Right there,” Pow said, pointing toward the overpass. “Can you hit him?”

  Donnie nodded, although he wasn’t sure if he could. He got down on the ground with a good angle toward the overpass. He got out his laser range finder. It was 872 yards, outside his optimal range. “Man-sized target” he thought. That’s pretty big. There was a lot of room for error, though. The sniper on the overpass would be hunched down and not a full man-sized target. Odds were, he would miss a couple of times, but then get closer with each successive shot after he made adjustments. This was unlike the big-game hunting he’d done where he basically got one shot in before the animal ran away. This animal on the overpass was sitting in one place.

  Donnie was glad that Pow had found them some decent cover. He took off his backpack, which he used for a rest, just like when he was hunting. He took out his good binoculars and gave them to Pow.

  “Spot me,” Donnie said. Pow took the binos and found a good place to lie down.

  “Boom!” Another shot hit. It was still short and to the left, but closer this time.

  “This guy sucks,” Pow said. “He has no idea where his shots are hitting. He must not have a spotter.”

  Grant came running up to them, “Let’s go, gentlemen. I’ve got wounded men in that car up there.”

  “Don’t rush us,” Pow said, a little annoyed. “We’re working here.”

  Grant realized that he shouldn’t have tried to rush Donnie and Pow. He knew that Pow knew they needed to hurry up so they could go get the scouts out of the car.

  Donnie made a few adjustments on his scope for the 872-yard shot.

  “Target,” Donnie said, which meant he had the target in sight. He had a shadowy blob in his scope. The crosshairs of his scope were jumping around because his heart was beating so hard.

  “Send it,” Pow said, which meant there were no obstructions or friendlies in the way and it was okay to shoot.

  Donnie waited a few seconds until he had the shot. Well, he kind of had the shot. The crosshairs were still jumping around and he couldn’t tell for sure if the target was the enemy sniper. But he knew that the shadowy blob with a rifle wasn’t a Girl Scout, so he didn’t feel bad about taking a shot. Besides, going on the offense by taking a shot at the sniper would help out the situation because it would cause the enemy sniper to hide, which would reduce the number of shots he could take at the 17th.

  “Boom!” His shot wasn’t faint like the others. It was ear-ringing. A 300 Win. Mag. is not a quiet gun. It kicked up a spray of pooled rainwater and dirt from the side of the road where they were lying. That was the first shot from the 17th Irregulars. This was for real.

  “Inconclusive,” Pow said, looking through his binos. “Can’t tell if that’s a hit or not. Too dark.”

  It was quiet, except for their ringing ears.

  “Send another,” Grant said. He was feeling desperate to get the scout car rescued. Those guys could be bleeding to death.

  “No target,” Pow said, peering through his binos.

  “Send it to the same place,” Grant said. “Keep his head down while we go get the scouts.”

  “That’s stupid,” Pow said. “We can’t go running up there until we take this guy out.”

  Pow’s tone didn’t bother Grant; everyone on the Team was an equal and the best idea won, which meant that a person proposing a bad idea would be told so in not-too-gentle terms. That was fine for when the Team was just the Team, but now Grant was a lieutenant in combat, and a non-Team member, like Donnie, was hearing this. Grant started to tell Pow not to talk to a lieutenant that way when Pow interrupted.

  “He’s running away!” Pow said, still looking through the binos. “He’s running across the overpass!”

  Donnie tried to follow the dark figure across the overpass, which was hard to do at night. He fired another round, but knew as he pulled the trigger that he hadn’t led the ta
rget enough.

  “Gone!” Pow said. “I lost him.”

  There were a few seconds of silence followed by a loud crashing noise. It sounded like something was falling; rumbling and crashing. Like something heavy was crashing down onto the road.

  “What was that?” Grant yelled, realizing that he needed to keep his voice down because, for all he knew, they were surrounded by the enemy and about to be ambushed. If this was an ambush, it sure was effective to have one sniper holding everything up. Even if the sniper didn’t hit anyone, it was a great way to slow things down and create opportunities for regular troops to hit you. The military guys had always talked about how much they hated enemy snipers. Now Grant was seeing why.

  “Dunno,” Pow said. “Wait.”

  It was silent for another few seconds as Pow looked through the binos.

  “What the hell?” Pow said. Everyone was hanging on his every word.

  “Logs?” Pow said. “It looks like there is a bunch of logs, or telephone poles, or something across the highway.”

  Of course, Grant thought, the sniper bought some time while others put up an obstacle. They were now officially trapped on the highway. Sitting ducks. Grant might have led his men into a giant trap.

  “Vehicle leaving,” Pow said after a while. “Car lights.” He could see the tail lights after they went past the log jam and headed up the highway toward Olympia.

  Grant and Donnie could see the lights now.

  Donnie took a shot at the car lights. Just trying to get lucky.

  “Miss,” Pow said. “They’re taking off.”

  “Now we can go get the scout car,” Grant said. He ran over to Scotty to radio in what had gone on.

  Pow got up and headed for Mark’s truck. Donnie looked around, wondering what to do.

  Pow yelled, “Jump onto the bumper of our truck and ride it. We’ll get you closer and you can cover us while we get to the scout car.” Grant radioed Scotty asking him to yell back to Ryan and Wes under the tarp in the truck bed to expect someone to jump onto the rear bumper.

  Donnie nodded, got up, slung his rifle, and grabbed his backpack. He ran over to Mark’s truck and jumped on rear bumper and held onto the tailgate.

  Grant and Pow got into the rear cab.

  “Go to the overpass!” Grant yelled to Bobby, who instantly put the truck into gear and quickly took off.

  “Whoa!” Grant yelled to Bobby. “Donnie’s on the bumper. It’s hard to hold on.”

  Bobby slowed down to about ten miles an hour. They were plowing ahead toward the overpass. The slower speed allowed them to keep their eyes on signs of an ambush.

  Grant looked back and there was Donnie, with a rifle and backpack, holding on for dear life.

  “Stop!” Grant said about three hundred yards from the overpass. He could see a crumpled car that looked like the scout car.

  “Pow, Donnie,” Grant yelled, “cover me and Scotty.” Scotty gave Bobby the CB radio but kept the intra-unit one. This allowed Bobby to have radio contact with the unit because Jim Q. could relay messages from the intra-unit radio to the CB, and therefore, to Bobby. The driver had to be in the loop in case he needed to go pick people up.

  Pow and Donnie got out and started setting up a quick sniper position to cover Grant and Scotty. Right behind them came Grant and Scotty, who started finding cover before running up to the crashed scout car.

  Bobby yelled back to Ryan and Wes, “Get ready to jump up and cover Grant and Scotty. Enemy was last seen on the overpass.”

  “Got it,” Wes yelled back.

  By now, Grant wasn’t feeling so brave. He was scared. Scared that he had wasted too much time getting to the scout car and its dead or dying occupants. Because no one was currently shooting at them, Grant assumed that the enemy had left and that there was no danger getting to the scout car … unless this was a big ambush.

  Grant ran up to the crash, which took a while given that it was about three hundred yards away and he was running between cover the whole time. Scotty was right behind him.

  It was horrible. The little car was not built to withstand a crash, and it didn’t.

  Grant realized that the term “twisted” metal was not a car accident cliché. It was real. Everything was twisted and smashed, strewn all over. The “We Support the Recovery!” bumper sticker was still intact.

  This was the most scared Grant had been, so far. Some of his men were dead or about to die in that crushed car. He had known that this would probably happen at some point in the march to Olympia. But now that it had, he was scared. He didn’t know what he was scared of. He was just scared.

  Grant heard Scotty radioing in. “Crash site. Scout car. Looks bad.”

  It was. It was dark, but the highway lights illuminated parts of the crash site. Grant could see someone. It was Anderson. He was wrapped around the steering wheel; literally wrapped around it. The top of his head was gone.. All that was left was his face, which was soaked in blood with bits of broken glass stuck to it.

  Grant and Scotty searched for Nineteen Delta, who was on the other side of the crash, the side that wasn’t in the highway light. They found him outside of the car. He must have been flung from the car, which made sense. The scouts didn’t wear seatbelts when they had to be able to get out of the car on a moment’s notice. Traffic safety wasn’t their highest concern.

  Nineteen Delta was dead, too. His blood was everywhere. Grant shined the flashlight all over the area; it looked like he had bled out. Grant immediately started feeling guilty that they hadn’t rushed in to help, despite the sniper and possible ambush. Maybe he should have not worried about the sniper, who turned out to be a shitty shot, and just rushed to the scene of the crash. Maybe Nineteen Delta wouldn’t have bled out.

  Grant quickly snapped out of feeling guilty. He had to make sure this wasn’t an ambush. He and Scotty kept looking around with their flashlights. At first, Grant was worried that any enemy about to ambush them would zero in on the flashlights. Then he realized that the odds of an ambush were getting smaller and smaller. He also realized that Pow and Donnie would know the flashlights were him and Scotty. Hopefully. Friendly fire was almost as big a concern as enemy fire.

  They heard some groaning. Thank God. It was Meerkat, who was under a car door. He, too, must have been thrown from the car.

  “Medic!” Scotty yelled into the radio, which Ted had already thought of and had told Nick to take the chase truck up to the crash site. Right as he called in for the medic, Scotty saw the headlights of a truck coming. He assumed, and hoped, it was the chase truck.

  “Medic on the way in the chase truck,” Jim Q. said into the intra-unit radio just before Scotty decided to take up a kneeling position and potentially engage the truck speeding toward him. “Flashing headlights now,” Jim Q. said right before the truck flashed its headlights, which allowed Scotty to return to treating Meerkat.

  “Can you hear me, man?” Grant yelled to Meerkat. Grant noticed that his fear showed in his voice. He sounded terrified and knew that he needed to be more calm so his men didn’t get scared, especially Meerkat, who needed to think everything was okay.

  “Over here,” Meerkat managed to get out. Right then, the headlights of a truck appeared and lit up everything. Nick jumped out.

  “Nick’s here, bro,” Grant said to Meerkat as he and Scotty were getting the car door off him. “You’ll be fine. Things don’t look too bad.”

  This was kind of true. Meerkat had all his limbs and there wasn’t a ton of blood. It could have been much worse.

  Nick got to work with Grant’s assistance.

  “Some broken bones, but basically okay,” Nick said after a quick assessment.

  Grant felt a surge of relief. He immediately started to think of the plan for getting the wounded out.

  “Get the utility truck here,” Grant said to Scotty, who started to call it in.

  “Car,” Meerkat said. “Take the utility car. I’ll be okay in it. Save the truck for hauling.”


  Amazing. Meerkat was seriously wounded and he was thinking more clearly than Grant. What a soldier.

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Grant said and pointed to Scotty, who nodded. Grant looked at Nick, who looked up and nodded.

  “Car will work,” Nick said.

  Scotty got on the radio. “Get the utility car here. Utility truck can sit tight. We’re taking a man back.”

  Back where? Pierce Point?

  “Tell the Frederickson hospital we’ve got a car crash coming in,” Nick said to Scotty.

  Frederickson hospital. Of course, Grant thought. He had forgotten it existed. Luckily, Nick always knew the location and general direction to the nearest hospital. He was good at what he did.

  Scotty radioed it in. A few minutes later, word came that Frederickson hospital was back in operation. They had lots of wounded of their own from “Code Orange,” but they had room for one more. Thank God Frederickson was in Patriot hands.

  “You’re going to the hospital; a real hospital,” Nick said to Meerkat. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks, man,” Meerkat said, with a pained wince.

  “Don’t talk,” Nick said. He knew Meerkat had broken ribs.

  Meerkat was quickly stabilized and in the back of the utility car heading off. Now the work began.

  Chapter 280

  Combat Cheeseburger

  (January 1)

  Bodies. Grant had to deal with bodies of Anderson and Nineteen Delta. These weren’t the bodies of strangers. They were his guys. Guys he knew and liked. Brothers, actually.

  Grant looked over at Anderson. There was the fun-loving guy who invented the 17th’s “gang sign.” He was dead. Mangled. In pieces. A guy who was so alive, so animated, always smiling and joking was now crumpled up and missing the top of his head. Grant thought about his missing forehead. That’s where Anderson’s smiles and jokes came from: his brain. Now his brain was splattered all over the dash and windshield of that stupid little car. Anderson’s joking and smiling was gone. It went away when his head did.