“Tell her that you love her and will raise her as your own daughter. That you’ll provide for her and protect her. And that you’ll never, ever let anyone take her away again.”
Chapter 55
Two down.
Dave didn’t know how many more he’d have to kill before the vengeance he felt for Tony was satisfied. But he was up to the task.
The rain was letting up a bit now. It was as though the skies couldn’t make up their minds whether they wanted to rain or not.
Or perhaps they were just trying to mess with Dave’s mind.
He saw the rain as an ally. It made it far easier to move from one point to another without being seen. It would have been nice if it were more consistent. But hey, he shouldn’t complain. It was what it was. When it rained heavily, he’d move around quicker. When it slowed, he’d slow as well. Either way he’d make darned sure he didn’t do anything stupid which would get himself killed.
For that would doom Beth to a lifetime of servitude. And she deserved far better than that.
He made his way back to the burned house. His base of operations.
There were a couple of walls still partially standing. Across them half a sheet of sheetrock, its edges broken and jagged. But it provided a limited amount of relief from the rain while he pondered his next move.
Before he left his first two victims he thought to check them for radios. He wanted to be able to monitor the enemy’s movements. And to know as soon as his presence was discovered.
Neither of the men had a radio.
Dave was pleased. That would make things much easier for him.
It meant he could move at will as long as he was quiet.
The enemy had very little discipline. They apparently thought they’d melt in the rain and were likely staying indoors. They were very unlikely to spot him from their windows as long as he stayed a respectable distance from the houses.
As long as he didn’t encounter any additional checkpoints along the way… checkpoints which weren’t there two nights before, he should be able to return to Dalton’s headquarters without any trouble.
He went through his weapons bag and selected his weapons for the next round.
Two hand grenades. His crossbow, which was already serving him well. And which had no appreciable drop due to the rain. His AR-15 and handgun.
Of course, his knife was still strapped to his boot and would be for the remainder of his campaign.
The knife and crossbow would be his primary weapons if he encountered any more bad guys on his way to the headquarters house.
He needed to be as stealthy as possible for as long as possible.
Because as soon as the first shot was fired, everything would change.
He felt in his pocket for Tony’s hand drawn map and it wasn’t there.
He’d lost the damn thing. It had fallen out somewhere along the way.
It wasn’t a major problem, though.
It was an easy route to remember.
However… if he lost it in enemy territory, and if Dalton’s people found it, they’d know for sure how he got in and out the first time he was here.
And they’d likely set up men along the route to stop him from coming back the same way.
Perhaps even set booby traps for him.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.
He hated it when he did something stupid.
He used to tell his Marines, “Stupid isn’t just embarrassing, it’s deadly. Stupid gets you and your buddies killed.”
He should have listened better to his own sermon.
He stuck to the center of the alley, the center of the streets, as he made his way by memory back to the headquarters building.
The rain hadn’t let up. It was still coming down in buckets, still his friend and ally.
Chapter 56
Just when Dave started thinking the odds were on his side, that this was easier than he thought it would be, an old nemesis returned.
The lightning.
He was within sight of the boarded up gas station now, perhaps eighty yards from it, when the sky lit up brilliantly for almost a full second.
His instincts took over and he was on the ground immediately, temporarily unable to see anything.
Night vision goggles work by amplifying light.
The flash from a lightning bolt as seen through such goggles can be blinding and almost painful.
As he waiting for his vision to return, he did two things: he ripped the goggles from his face, and he rolled toward a minivan he’d seen to his left just before the flash.
The first act was to prevent his being blinded again by the next flash.
The second was to get behind some kind of shelter. Any kind, to prevent him from being shot if he was spotted.
Anyone paying attention during the first flash would have seen him. They’d have noted his position, set up their shot, and easily picked him off on the next flash.
He turned the goggles off and would do without them for the time being.
The next flash came a full minute later, and he counted the interval between the lightning and the thunder which followed it.
Four seconds. The storm’s center was still some distance away. That meant the rain would soon get heavier, the lightning flashes more severe, the cracks of thunder louder.
About seventy yards away, directly in front of the boarded up gas station, was an elevated Chevy Silverado. It was a flat black in color, almost impossible to see on a dark night even with goggles, as it blended in well with the dark blue painted walls of the gas station.
But the second lightning strike lit it up like a Christmas tree.
Just as it had Dave.
And that was the thing. Dave once had a Silverado of the same year, and almost the same color. It wasn’t jacked up, but other than that the silhouette was familiar to him.
He passed a lot closer to the station the first time he came through here. If the truck had been there then, it would have caught his eye.
Because he loved that old truck. He’d owned it for years and never had a lick of trouble with it. It was the most dependable truck he’d ever owned. He only got rid of it because he and Sarah had decided they didn’t need three vehicles for a two-driver household. As the oldest vehicle they had, the truck was the logical sacrifice. Dave sold it on Craig’s List and never saw it again. But damn, he sure missed it. More than most of the women he’d once dated, more than any other vehicle he’d ever traded or sold.
If it had been there two nights before he’d have noticed.
He didn’t know where it came from. But somebody had rolled it to the station from somewhere. Probably the driveway of a nearby house.
Dave wasn’t a rocket scientist. Never claimed to be one. But he knew a little bit about geometry.
He used to joke with Sarah that the high schools put way too much emphasis on math skills. It was his hardest subject and he’d struggled with math each and every day in school.
“I don’t know why they torture the kids the way they do,” he’d said when Lindsey brought home a C in math. “I’ve lived my whole life so far, and no one… I mean no one, has ever asked me to solve an algebraic equation or do a geometry problem.”
“Oh, Dave,” she’d patiently said as she rolled her eyes. “You use geometry all the time. You just don’t know it.”
“Oh yeah? Give me just one example. Just one.”
“Every time you shoot pool, you use geometry. You line up your bank shot by trying to figure out the precise place to bounce your cue ball off the rail and then to knock your ball into the pocket. That, my friend, is geometry.”
It gave him pause. But not for long.
“Okay. I’ll admit you’re right about geometry. But prove me wrong about algebra.”
Sarah thought, then said, “I can’t. No one has ever asked me to solve an algebraic equation either. You win.”
“Ha! They should save that foolishness for college, and then only teach
it to people who want to be doctors and scientists and stuff. Let kids be kids and have more fun in high school.”
The truth was, Dave was just happy to win an argument with his wife. He very seldom did.
Why he thought about that particular conversation at that particular time, he had no idea.
Then he realized he was using geometry again, this time to estimate the rough angle from his position when the lightning lit him up in the street, as viewed from the windshield of the black Silverado.
Specifically, he was trying to determine whether the men sitting in the pickup could have seen him from their particular point of view.
And he determined they couldn’t have seen him. Their vantage point was blocked by two other vehicles between their position and Dave’s.
Good old geometry. It was all of a sudden Dave’s best friend. He suddenly wished he’d taken more of it.
But not more algebra. Screw that.
From the angle he was at, though, they could just make out a shadowy figure on the ground next to the minivan. If they were paying closer attention than the fools at the Town Car were.
He crawled back a bit to lessen the size of his profile, and put the crossbow off to the side.
The AR-15 rifle had been slung over his shoulder. He took it off and aimed it in the general direction of the Silverado.
And he waited.
Chapter 57
As Dave saw it, the men in the pickup had no radios. If working radios were available, they’d have given the first set to the clowns working the Town Car. They were at the entrance to the Dalton’s Raiders’ turf, and therefore presumably the first line of defense.
The fact they didn’t have radios told Dave nobody else would either.
That only left two problems. They were sizeable, but not insurmountable.
The first was the shots.
Dave wouldn’t be able to use the crossbow for this part of his operation.
While a crossbow bolt might go through a thin glass pane window at, say, a residential house, and remain true to its course, thick auto glass was a different story.
A sloped windshield would deflect the bolt. It might veer off without penetrating the glass at all. If it did break through, it certainly wouldn’t follow its original path.
The side windows offered the same problem, but to a lesser degree.
The crossbow was out.
The bullet from a high powered rifle could conceivably be deflected as well. But it was far more likely to stay on course than the slower and longer bolt.
Luckily the Silverado’s windshield was almost true vertical on that particular model. It wasn’t as sloped as a lot of windshields. And that would help.
The other problem Dave faced was the noise from the shots themselves.
They wouldn’t need radios. At the first sound of gunshots they’d scramble to find him and kill him. If they weren’t already in war mode they soon would be.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
The storm was a fast mover. It was almost directly overhead now. Dave could tell because the thunder was coming only a second or so after the lightning flashes now.
And it was louder. Much louder.
Dave had a plan. But to make it work he’d have to time everything perfectly.
And he’d have to be damn lucky.
The sky lit up again.
But it was a brief flash. Not enough to do him much good.
He’d need a much longer flash. A flash which extended for a second or more.
He lifted the cover to his rifle’s scope and peered through it.
He couldn’t see squat.
Then the sky lit up again, this time for a split second longer.
It gave him the opportunity to align his scope with the driver’s side of the pickup, but wasn’t long enough for him to make out whether there was anyone in it.
The third lightning bolt, twenty seconds later, gave him that opportunity.
A white male, in his twenties, was sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette and talking nonchalantly to a second man seated beside him.
Dave smiled.
He lined up his crosshairs on the man’s heart. If the bullet deflected upward it would still hit him in the upper chest or throat. Both mortal wounds considering there were no trauma centers operating nearby. And they wouldn’t waste valuable time and medicines on such a scumbag anyway.
To make his plan work he’d need to fire into the first man’s chest, pivot quickly to his left, and fire a second round into the general area where he knew the second man to be.
And that was the problem. By the time he fired the second shot, the light would be gone. He’d have to get lucky. If he missed, the man would likely exit the vehicle and run.
Since he knew the area and Dave didn’t, he’d likely get away to warn the others.
He said a quick prayer:
Lord, I know you’re all about not killing, and you try not to choose sides and all. But these men are vile and evil, and brutally murdered a good friend of mine. If you can see your way into helping me out just this once, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you, Lord. Amen.
Then he went back to waiting.
It occurred to him he was getting pretty good at that.
The first lightning flash was too brief. The thunder that followed wasn’t long enough.
The next was a bit longer. But not long enough.
So he waited. Thirty seconds. Then a minute. All the while the rain was beating down upon him.
He tried to focus on the fundamentals. Breath control. Trigger control. He rested the pad of his finger on the trigger, ready not to pull, but to squeeze.
The prone position was his best firing stance. It was from the prone position he’d earned the marksmanship ribbon in the Marines. Twice.
And this, despite the heavy rain, was a much closer shot.
In the Corps he’d fired the M-16, which was the military version of the weapon he held in his hands. They were almost identical, except for the full-auto feature the M-16 had. He wished he had the feature now. But then again, he’d seldom use full auto even if he did have it. It tended to expend a lot of ammo, and there would come a day when ammunition would be more valuable than gold or silver.
His thoughts were drifting. He refocused.
At last, the sky lit up in a brilliant flash of lightning that lasted more than a second. It struck something close by. The following thunder would be deafening. And that was perfect for his needs.
In the flash of light he zeroed in once again on his target: the heart of the man in the driver’s seat.
By the time the thunder rumbled, he could no longer see his target.
But he knew where he was.
He squeezed off the first shot and then pivoted slightly to where he estimated the second man would be.
And he squeezed off two more quick shots.
He was almost too slow. The final shot came just as the thunder was ending.
But he was right. The roar of the thunder was deafening and covered the shots completely.
He held his breath and got ready to move.
If the second man got away he’d be off on a mad scramble to find him. To catch him before he could warn the others.
He’d have to leave his crossbow and rifle behind. For their battle wouldn’t be with firearms. It would be hand-to-hand. Dave would have to get the upper hand, and then he’d shove his knife with all his strength through the man’s sternum and through his heart.
He was ready to bolt.
But he didn’t have to.
When the lightning flashed again it once again lit up the cab of the Silverado for a second or so.
That wasn’t long in the grand scheme of things.
But it was long enough to reveal to Dave a truly macabre sight.
The man in the driver’s seat was killed instantly. Dave’s first shot was true and deadly.
He slumped to his right, his eyes and mouth wide open.
The man in the passenger seat lived a split second longer. That was apparent because he died with a look of pain on his face the first man didn’t have.
He slumped to his left.
Both men’s heads were touching, in what some might have interpreted as two lovers saying goodbye.
Dave didn’t know whether they were lovers, friends, or whether they hated each other’s guts.
It didn’t matter to him at all.
They were dead.
And that was good enough for him.
Chapter 58
Dave knew not to get cocky. He’d come against four men and killed them all. He was four and oh.
His confidence was building. But confidence was healthy. Cockiness could be deadly.
In Fallujah five years before, Dave and his men had a fierce firefight with a handful of insurgents. The bad guys were pinned behind the rubble of a stone and mud building, and had fought ferociously.
Finally, all fell silent behind the ruins, and a good friend and fellow lance corporal stood up to celebrate.
“Yeah!” he yelled. “Take that, you slimy bastards!”
He took a round to the face.
Dave had gone with the man on the medivac helicopter. He didn’t return to the scene until hours later.
One of his men showed him what became of the shooter.
There wasn’t much left of him, after he’d been riddled with a hundred bullets and a Marine in a Hummer rolled over his body several times.
An embedded photographer took a photo which showed up in a major weekly magazine a few weeks later. An investigation was started and went nowhere.
The United States Marine Corps has a very long and very proud history.
Part of that history is their belief that a fellow Marine is closer than a brother. Closer than a mother or a father.
He who is insane enough to accost a fellow Marine will pay a heavy price. If possible, the ultimate price.
The dead Iraqi was soon forgotten. The photographer who took the photo and sent it off to be published was transferred to another unit.
On Desert Sands: Alone: Book 6 Page 16