by Nate Hawk
“I didn’t know you were a medic,” Angelo said.
“I wasn’t. I just made that shit up. What’s the problem?”
“We’re in big trouble, man. There’s commandos coming up the trailhead after us.”
“Shit! The credit cards and cell phones,” Owen said as if he should have figured out that men were coming for them two hours before.
“Yeah, we’ve been black listed from the Company man. What the fuck happened?” the Hispanic man asked.
“It has to do with my recent transfer from Germany. I thought Rick Quinn and I were just playing a gentleman’s game of Agency chess but it’s clear he’s done playing around. I’m sorry man. I didn’t think it would come to this.”
Angelo gave him a look of brotherly understanding. “We’ve fought side by side before. Let’s clean up the mess that you started, my friend.”
“If we didn’t have men to kill I’d give you a big fucking hug, bro,” Owen said with a grin.
“Well, if you want a hug you better take it. It’s six trained men against two. I wouldn’t be betting on our odds.” Angelo said dryly.
***
Chapter 3
Kelly had easily made it to his boat without a thought of a high-speed escape in his powerful sports car. The bikers wouldn’t be a threat for a while and he was sure that the police hadn’t had time to figure out what had happened. As he walked down the floating dock he carried a handful of grocery bags containing items that would complement the other food that was stored on his boat. He had originally planned to stay on the water over night and return the next day. After the events that had just unfolded, he had decided that he might extend his trip while things cooled down on the island. Besides, he didn’t exactly have anything to come back to land for and the weather report showed an abundance of heat and sun over the next few days. Kelly wasn’t a sailor per se. He was an adventurous soul with an inclination for excitement that could become borderline destructive at times. Even so, he was a competent man who rarely found himself in dire straits. He knew he could handle a boat.
He walked on to slip twenty-six. His current home was a 1991 Silverton, a 41’ cruiser with a 13’ beam that drew three and a half feet. Compared to many boats, the Silverton was a giant. Compared to most homes, the Silverton was tiny. It all depended on one’s perspective and Kelly’s was that he no longer needed all of the space that an apartment provided. The leased boat contained everything that he needed and he could be out into the Gulf (or Atlantic) in a world of solitude and harmony in less than an hour. It was aptly named, Escape the System, which Kelly had initially found quite ironic since he hadn’t named her himself.
The heat was slowly building on the island and certainly under the canvas of his craft. Kelly broke into a sweat as he opened up several windows that produced a nice breeze. Then he fired up the powerful twin 502’s and the boat lurched to life. The vibrations of the thunderous motors struck a chord within his being and he momentarily felt himself lurching to life. He even had a fleeting thought of shaving and cutting back his hair but it faded from his consideration just as quickly as it had arrived. Kelly untied the mooring lines and slid his boat out of its slip and pointed it towards the Gulf. It was Monday and it felt like one of those weeks that could only get better. As it turned out, he would be wrong about that.
***
Owen and Angelo shouldered their packs and began moving quickly. They were way behind the curve on this situation and if they had any chance of surviving, they knew they needed to take out as many commandos as they could as fast as they could.
“Where’s your phone?” Owen asked.
“I left it up there in the tower behind a stack of books.”
“Good thinking. I’m sure they’re tracking both of our phones. Maybe that will keep some of them busy for awhile. We’ve gotta make sure that ranger doesn’t get killed over this.”
“No shit! We’ve got bigger problems though. I didn’t bring a pistol with me. What do you have?” Angelo asked.
“What kind of sorry ass Company man, or Marine for that matter, goes anywhere without at least taking a pistol?”
Angelo looked towards his hiking stick. “I’ll take care of the rattlesnakes and you can take care of the armed commandos,” he laughed. “What did you bring?”
“This shit ain’t funny man. In fifteen minutes we’re going to be in the fight of our lives. Let’s toss our packs in the brush and get moving down this mountain so we can set up a proper ambush. You said six men. Are you sure?”
“I can count, man. Of course I’m sure,” Angelo said somewhat grumpily after being chastised.
“Alright, let’s assume they’re tracking both phones. They’re going to think that we split-up as the phones start moving apart. I’m guessing they’ll figure that the element of surprise is gone and they will split up too. I’m sure that you’ll agree that the only way to win here is to divide them up and take ‘em down in smaller groups.”
“Of course,” Angelo said as the two men continued moving quickly down the mountain.
They found an outcropping of boulders that continued a ways off of the trail. It looked like a promising location for an ambush. They went way off of the trail in hopes of luring only half of the team towards them at a time. They figured the other half of the team would continue racing up the hill towards the second phone. Based on their speed and the anticipated speed of the commandos coming up the mountain for them, Owen and Angelo knew their time was running short. They weaved their way through a field of boulders and found a recess in the rocks that would work.
“Since you brought a stick to a gunfight, you’ve got to be the bait. This only works if they are confident there’s only one of us down here with this phone. You’ll have to reel them in. When I give you the sign, you know what to do.”
Angelo nodded. Then he climbed into the recess in the rocks and positioned himself in a way that gave him adequate cover. Owen racked a round into the chamber of his .40 S&W Glock, tucked it into his waistband and then scaled himself up a large boulder. He was located on the highest point around which the commandos would anticipate but he was in a divot where his body could only be seen upon standing directly in front of him. He had a line of sight towards Angelo who had the phone and a line of sight on the two potential directions that the assault could come from. Owen flattened himself on the rock and waited in anticipation. He hated the idea that there were six men out there gunning for them and he could not see or hear anything.
Eventually Owen heard the soft noise of leaves crushing beneath someone’s foot. He remained motionless and without even a slight movement from his head he allowed his eyes to scan the area. He saw one man with a 10mm submachine gun shouldered and walking towards their ambush site. Owen couldn’t see a second man (or third) but he could see the first man sending hand signals to someone just out of sight.
Owen had learned this type of patience years before as a Delta Force Operative. The forest was one of his most comfortable environments to be in. He knew that he was calm enough to take on a few guys if he had the element of surprise but trying to eliminate six commandos was something altogether different. He lay with his black face pressed against the black Vermont rock and waited. The first man’s form seemed to grow bigger as he approached. Then a second guy could be seen with an MP5 slung and held in one hand. His second hand held a GPS locator.
With the relatively flat trajectory of the .40 S&W ammunition that Owen had, he knew that he could make a shot to take out the first man. But then the second man would know his location and would take advantage of the fact that he had a longer range weapon. So Owen was attempting to strike the delicate balance of remaining hidden from the first man until the second man came within range. Owen gave Angelo the sign.
“Oh, my ankle!” Angelo yelled referencing a fictitious injury. “Somebody help me!”
The commandos hadn’t survived as long as they had by being stupid. They’d seen plenty of combat. They’d seen (and
tried) most of the tricks in the book. But Angelo’s plea for help wasn’t intended to lure them in so he could kill them. The plea for help was to get the commandos close enough and to distract them long enough for Owen to kill them. The operators thought that the two men had split up. Now that they knew where Angelo was (injured or not), they were sure that he’d be an easy kill. The two commandos widened their approach while Owen watched them carefully to see if they seemed to be working with other elements of the six-man team or if it was just the two of them. Owen kept hidden and even glanced away at times in hopes that they wouldn’t feel his eyes on them.
The front man came to a halt before Owen was comfortable making the shot at the furthest man. There was still no sign of them working with anyone else on the assault. Owen’s plan was working well until the man in front produced a fragmentation grenade, pulled the pin and began to toss it towards Angelo. Realizing the second man was still too far away to hit with his pistol, Owen shot the first man one time. Normally he would have followed up with several more shots but that wasn’t part of his plan. The injured commando was hit through the torso at which point he dropped the grenade and fell to the ground with a thud. The second man, seeing his friend drop the grenade, decided to be a hero. He dropped the tracking device and his rifle as he ran towards his fallen comrade. In a gesture of fearless courage or stupidity, he dove for the grenade in an effort to scoop it up and toss it away. As he grabbed the grenade, his adrenaline got ahold of him and he mistakenly fumbled it and dropped it to the ground. He didn’t have time to try again. The device exploded and then shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces that shot through both men and the gear they were wearing.
Owen was ready to shoot the second man too but once he had fumbled the grenade Owen knew there was no need. Instead, he buried his head into the crevice where he was hiding. After the explosion, Owen and Angelo crawled out from the rocks and walked towards the remnants of their adversaries. Although bloody and tattered and aside from a missing arm or two, the corpses were mostly intact. It wasn’t the sight that Owen and Angelo found repulsive as much as it was the smell. It was the stink of severed guts saturated in the stench of death.
Owen and Angelo disregarded the heaped bodies and the mangled gear. Their attention was quickly diverted to the 10mm MP5 rifle that had been discarded by the second man before he sprinted towards the grenade. Angelo was very interested in the rifle since he lacked his own weapon at the time. Owen would have preferred to have it himself but he refused it when Angelo offered. Besides, Owen was more interested in the GPS tracker that had been laying on the ground next to it. Owen picked it up and scrolled through the device. It appeared that the previous owner had entered the other team member’s phone numbers in the device too. Maybe there was hope for them after all. Now it appeared that the hunted had become the hunters.
***
Chapter 4
It was several months into his term and Representative Swanson had done just what he promised. Nothing. As usual, just a lot of D.C. bootlicking and brown-nosing, both giving and receiving. Strictly politics as they say. The Representative’s term was already well underway. The media was chastising him for his excessive golf, which he himself would have privately admitted to being somewhat excessive. And then there was his lack of promised action, of which he hadn’t really decided where to start. He was still celebrating from a political win that almost seemed too good to be true. He wasn’t terribly worried about getting started though; his golf game had improved drastically and he was making more money being a Representative than he ever had before. He had a freezer full of bribe money to prove it. It felt great to stack his hard-earned money next to his inherited wealth. Plus, if he were ousted in the next election he would still be able to retire with a high-dollar federal pension. Most of the local and state governments were busy playing by what ever he said the rules were and the ones who weren’t were being hunted by the Florida State Bureau of Investigation or worse, the media. He preferred to catch his rivals in an affair or a scandal of some sort. He had found it quite easy to lob a story like that to the press to get rid of his enemies. Secretly though, he preferred the ones who openly fought him because then he could have some real fun. He had contacts and he had men that could get done anything needing done. Nothing will ever stick to me, he thought.
Swanson already had a couple of foreign bank accounts in countries known as tax havens before being elected. After being elected a US Representative he was able to add substantially to these accounts and damn it felt good to be the leader of the 23rd district.
There was some trouble brewing on the horizon though, he knew. It had started quietly, years before, like a warning shot cast off of the bow. The difference between then and now was that the politician currently had a lot to lose. Swanson was mentally prepared but he knew there wasn’t much he could do other than ride out the storm and strike with the fierceness and speed of a bolt of lightning when it came time.
Riley knocked on Swanson’s door, interrupting his thoughts of concern and ushering in new ones. “Sir, we’ve got a problem,” he said sheepishly.
“Goddamnit, Riley! Surely it’s not more important than my golf swing. What the hell is it this time?”
“Well sir, someone claims to have video of you parking your Cadillac the other night. Apparently, you got going the wrong way on a one-way and as you were doing a 180 to park the car, you seemed to have sideswiped…,” he paused and gulped the building saliva. “You sideswiped a mother-of-three’s minivan.
“It’s got to be a goddamn misunderstanding! You know how many Cadillacs there are in Washington?” he asked rhetorically.
“No sir,” Riley answered dumbly.
“Hell, I don’t either and that’s my point! I’m sure I’d remember an encounter like that!”
“Thing is they’ve got this video and it’s a striking similarity to you sir. In fact, you seem quite inebriated, sir. I’ve seen the video myself and it’s bad. After striking the van, sir, it appears that you staggered out of your vehicle and promptly inspected the damage.” Riley paused again, apprehensive at how the Congressman would react. “Sir, the video shows you kicking the minivan out of frustration,” he added.
“Awe, hell! That’s on video?” he asked, carefully considering his next statement. “Now that you mention it, I might remember something about that. It was a goddamn accident. You know these things happen.” Riley nodded his head in complete agreement, having no idea how the Congressmen always found himself in these situations. “Has anyone gone to the press?” Swanson asked.
“No sir. I believe we caught it in time. I proposed that we settle it out of court,” Riley said. “I offered three thousand dollars for the sideswipe damages, which they accepted. However, they countered, requesting another ten thousand for the dent. Plus we get the video.”
“Goddamnit, Riley! Ten thousand bucks for a dent?” Swanson said, thinking over the situation one last time. “You’re a genius. Just get it settled. You know I don’t have time to fuck around over a few thousand bucks!”
“Yes sir,” Riley committed, not quite satisfied with the run-of-the-mill complement. Genius? Riley knew Swanson could do better than that. He leveled his eyes at the Congressman, hoping for a little more. That Riley and his damn feelings! Swanson thought to himself. He knew what his aid wanted.
“Riley, you are the most valuable asset that I brought with me from Florida”, the Representative said as he picked his club up watching himself in a mirror as he walked through the office. Then he turned back around and gave one of his famous campaign smiles.
“You know, my wife and kids just bitch and moan about things they don’t have… Riley, you get out there ten steps ahead of everyone and get to work! Write yourself in for a raise. Just don’t forget we can’t have this coming back on my office.”
“Yes, sir, Congressman. I will immediately get working on this,” Riley said diligently, now satisfied after receiving a proper compliment. He put his notes back
into his leather brief case and headed towards the door. As he did the Representative watched him leave in annoyance. That Riley sure is a queer little man, Swanson thought to himself.
***
Owen and Angelo realized that it was still an uphill fight for survival: both topographically and tactically. And that was just to survive this firefight. Then what would they do? The odds had improved in their favor but there were still four men out there gunning for them. According to the GPS tracker the four men had remained relatively close together before the explosion. After the explosion, a group of two had remained near the tower and the other group of two had begun coming back down towards the sounds of combat. Owen and Angelo knew they had mere moments before they would make contact with the next two men. Rather than hide themselves within the rocks around them they opted for a different strategy. They lay down in the underbrush and covered themselves with leaves.
It took longer than either Owen or Angelo had expected but they remained patient and motionless. Eventually movement was heard in the woods nearby. As the two commandos approached, the two friends felt as if they had the upper hand. Surely the element of surprise was enough of a force multiplier to guarantee success. Owen was located about twenty yards from his friend, covered in debris. Angelo remained under the leaves with the silenced MP5’s barrel pointed towards the advancing men. When the commandos were in range of the rifle, Angelo remained steadfast. Their plan was to wait until the operators were close enough that Owen could enter the firefight with his pistol, if necessary.