A non-combat unit.
He wasn’t in danger, mind you.
He was just no longer welcome.
As for the man who drove back and forth over the dead man’s body a dozen or so times, he was never identified.
For every man in the outfit happened to be somewhere else at the time, and every man in the outfit had at least three of his buddies to vouch for him.
The lieutenant colonel tasked with conducting the investigation had a heart to heart talk with the lieutenant in charge of the operation.
“How is it that none of your men saw what happened to that dead asshole, lieutenant?”
“They were doing what I ordered them to do, sir. They were to seek out more insurgents and watch each other’s backs.”
“I see. Well, it sounds like they did an especially good job of watching each other’s backs.”
“Yes sir. I suppose they did.”
“Did your men learn anything from this endeavor, lieutenant?”
“I suspect so, but not as much as the insurgents.”
“Meaning?”
“I suspect if there were any other insurgents watching, they learned not to mess with the United States Marine Corps.”
“It looks like I’m finished here. Semper Fi, lieutenant.”
“Semper Fi, sir.”
Dave’s friend, the one who was shot, survived. But he would be horribly disfigured for the rest of his life, as half his jaw was blown away.
Dave wouldn’t see him again for several months, after his own return to the States.
The man was at Walter Reed Medical Center, recovering after his fifth reconstructive surgery.
“How you doin’, Tom?”
“Oh, I’m okay, Dave. Not quite as handsome as I once was, but still better looking than you. Welcome home.”
“Thanks. I wish I didn’t have to see you again like this.”
“Don’t waste your pity on me, Dave. I’m one of the lucky ones. There are twelve men just on this ward who’ve lost one or more limbs. Seven more with spinal injuries. At least I’ve got all my parts left.”
Dave was amazed at his spirit. And he repeated the lieutenant colonel’s now-famous question.
“Did you learn anything, Tom?”
“Yes. I learned not to stand up until we’re damn sure the battle’s over. It was a stupid move.”
Dave couldn’t argue.
“Yes it was, my friend. Yes it was.”
“Dave, do you think that someday they’ll quit sending us over there to fight senseless wars, just because people can’t learn to get along?”
Dave pondered the question before answering.
“I’d like to say yes, Tom. But you and I know better. As long as congressmen don’t have to send their own sons to die, and as long as the powerful men who own those congressmen make billions of dollars on the war machine, they’ll keep sending us over there to fight and die. It’s been that way for a long time, and I expect it’ll stay that way.”
“Semper Fi, my friend.”
“Semper Fi.”
Yes, cockiness could be deadly.
And Dave would learn from his friend’s mistake.
He would proceed with caution and would assume two things:
That there would be others watching out for him. Others that might not be so easy to spot.
And that his third shot, coming at the end of the thunderclap, was identifiable as a gunshot.
He had to assume that all over Crazy Town people were saying to one another, “Did you hear that? It sounded like a gunshot,” and were acting accordingly.
From here on out, he couldn’t count on being so lucky.
So he had to make his own luck.
Chapter 59
The storm front was directly above him now, the prudent thing waiting for it to pass. As long as lightning lit the sky several times a minute, the goggles were useless.
It was one of two advantages he’d had coming in, the other being the rain to hide his movements and provide him the advantage of surprise.
Now the rain was just becoming a pain in the ass.
He was starting to shiver, his clothes were drenched, and he still had a long way to go.
He crawled into the back of a UPS truck and sprawled across several boxes, then closed his eyes.
Not because he was sleepy, but because there was really nothing to look at while he waited out the storm.
At least the rain wasn’t beating directly upon his head.
The minutes ticked by slowly, seeming like hours.
He tried to kill time by going over in his mind what his next move might be.
The truth was, he had no plan.
A plan would have required information he just flat didn’t have. Like how many more sentries were out there. And how well fortified the headquarters was. And how much firepower they had.
“Playing it by ear” was fine for musicians. But it really sucked as a battle plan.
He checked his watch. It was almost two hundred hours. Two a.m. He was glad the watch was waterproof, but wished it was a bit earlier. He’d hoped to be at the headquarters raging a bloody battle by now, so he could get the hell out of Dodge before the sun came up.
By two thirty he decided it was time to go. It was still raining, but the lightning storm had passed him by. The only thunder he heard was far in the distance, and the occasional lightning flash was dim and weak. Not bright enough to blind him, even if he looked directly at it through the goggles.
He put them back onto his head and scanned the area first, before stepping back into the muck.
Nothing. He had his advantage back. He could see in the dark, and his opponents couldn’t.
His confidence began to return.
He made his way carefully, from one abandoned car to the next, until he was within a hundred yards or so of the headquarters house.
There, in one of the front yards on the side of the street thirty yards ahead of him, was what appeared to be a statue.
Only it wasn’t a statue.
It was a man, in military woodland camouflage, standing at parade rest.
Not moving a muscle.
Just standing there.
He had to be prior military. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had the presence of mind and self-discipline to stand there in the heavy rain.
Dave hated to shoot a fellow military man. But this man stood in the way of his objective. And he was on the wrong side.
He charged his cross bow and prepared to take aim.
But something was wrong.
He couldn’t put a finger on it.
The man was just… too still.
Even a man at parade rest twitched now and then. Adjusted his stance so his legs didn’t fall asleep and his knees didn’t lock. After watching the man for a full five minutes Dave hadn’t gotten an indication of movement. Not at all.
Then the wind changed direction and Dave caught just a whiff of a now familiar smell.
It was the smell of burned flesh, tempered by the rain but still quite pungent.
And he realized what was wrong.
The figure before him wasn’t a former soldier.
It was a former friend.
He checked his surroundings again before moving forward.
“Oh, Tony… what in the hell did they do to you?”
The men were mad. They had to be. They’d taken the body of his friend and dressed him in BDUs, a battle dress uniform, then impaled him on an eight foot long stake, driven into the ground.
As a final insult he was posed, his body contorted into a position of parade rest so precise it would have made any soldier proud.
He wondered what kind of insanity would make men do such a thing to a once living, once breathing human being.
A man who never did a damn thing to them.
They’d obviously noticed that Dave had moved Tony from the street and deposited him beneath the tree. It wasn’t much of a gesture, really, but in Dave’s mind it was a more di
gnified place for Tony to rest.
They’d also obviously figured out that only a friend of Tony’s would make such a gesture.
So although they’d never met Dave, and couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup, they were on to him. They knew that the man who’d moved Tony from the street would be back for revenge.
Whether they hung Tony’s body like a macabre scarecrow to inflame him, to goad him into being outraged and getting sloppy, was one possibility.
Another was that they were simply insane, as Tony had contended, and gave no thought to the matter.
Maybe they just liked to put their victims on display, in the same manner some of the other factions posted the heads of their enemies on sticks for all the world to see.
Maybe in CrazyTown they just went one step further.
Whatever the reason, Dave was incensed.
But if they were counting on that to make him careless or make him rush headlong into something he shouldn’t he’d disappoint them.
He’d keep his cool head.
He thought about taking the body down under the cover of rain and darkness, but decided against it.
Tony was in a better place now, free of pain. He was sure of that.
His body was nothing but an empty vessel now. Whether it was upright on a stick, skewered like a shish-kabob or lying on the muddy ground no longer mattered. Tony’s spirit, Dave was certain, wouldn’t have cared either way.
He passed his friend by and continued to make his way to the Daltons’ HQ.
Chapter 60
He finally reached his objective a bit after four a.m., as the rain was starting to let up a bit.
He hoped it didn’t stop completely. If it did, the cloud cover might blow over, following the storm to the east.
And if that happened, if the stars and moon became visible once again, he’d lose much of his cover.
From some heavy bushes, across the street and two houses down, Dave watched the Dalton house for any sign of movement.
As was the case two nights before, the lights were on inside the house.
Only this time, the heavy drapes were open in the big picture window on the front porch.
That was odd. Very odd.
Even as crazy as the bunch was, they had to know that the open drapes lit them up like fish in a barrel for anyone outside with a rifle.
And indeed, Dave was incredulous to see people walking around, laughing, and having what appeared to be a good time.
He wondered whether they were still using Tony’s stash of drugs. Whether they’d been on the same bender since the last time he’d seen them.
Dave didn’t know a lot about illicit drugs. He learned a little bit in the Marine Corps, so he could tell whether any of his men started using. He learned more from Tony, who’d described the various drugs he peddled and how they affected people.
Tony had told him most of his customers in Crazy Town were meth junkies. Speed. And that the meth they smoked or injected into their veins made them stay awake for days at a time. They lost their appetite and their sense of thirst, and simply had no desire to rest or sleep. Their bodies began to twitch almost uncontrollably and they began to hallucinate. They became very paranoid and irrational. And sometimes they felt invincible.
Maybe invincible enough to think the incompetent sentries they put out were enough to take care of their Dave problem.
Maybe invincible enough not to care whether the blinds were open or closed.
Maybe invincible enough not to notice, or not to care, that they were all like the targets at a carnival midway game, just waiting for Dave to pick them off one at a time.
He watched the house for maybe half an hour before deciding it was safe to go further.
Then it took him a full five minutes to work his way to the front of the house, where he hid in the bushes just outside the picture window.
The same idiots who were part of the party two nights before were at it again. Only this time they looked more zoned out than before.
Dave wondered if the party had gone non-stop for two days.
“Damn, Tony,” he muttered under his breath. “How much dope were you carrying in that satchel of yours, anyway?”
At one point, Dave thought he was busted when two of the men approached the window and stared intently through it.
They looked as though they were on their own planet, and they peered directly at Dave.
He thought his goose was cooked.
But it turned out the tweakers couldn’t see anything except their reflections in the glass of the lighted room. They were debating about whether their faces were melting.
Dave worked his way around to the back of the house and peered over a privacy fence.
He was overjoyed to see that the back door, and all the windows on the rear of the house, had been boarded over with plywood.
He wondered why.
Perhaps to save themselves the trouble of guarding the rear of the house, maybe?
In any event, the only point of escape was through the front door.
This was too good to be true. He must be dreaming.
But he wasn’t.
Dalton’s Raiders might have been mean beyond compare and absolutely ruthless when it came to dealing with their enemies.
But they knew nothing about the art of war. They were the lousiest tacticians Dave had ever encountered.
And he’d make sure they paid for it dearly.
Chapter 61
The rain had slowed to a drizzle. That was the only thing working to Dave’s disadvantage. He wanted the additional cover the rain would provide, especially as he made his egress from the Dalton’s compound.
And time began to become critical. He checked his watch again. It was almost oh four thirty.
Ordinarily he could count on the sun rising around five thirty or so. And that would still happen regardless of the rain. But the additional darkness the heavy rain clouds would provide would make it much easier to get out of there unmolested.
But that wasn’t a problem. He’d be wrapped up in an hour and on his way back to the freeway.
By noon he’d be bunked out in a sleeper cab, catching up on his sleep.
And by midnight he’d be on his way west from Albuquerque, resuming his desperate search for little Beth.
Of course, none of that was going to happen. Not the way he expected it to, anyway.
For things had gone way too smoothly to this point. It was time for something to go wrong.
Dave looked around along the side of the house for something heavy. A big rock. A brick. A crescent wrench. Hell, he didn’t care what it was. As long as it was heavy enough to break glass.
And there it was, on the ground not far from his feet. A broken red brick, twice the size of his fist.
“Hot damn!”
He couldn’t believe his good fortune.
He took the brick back to the front of the house and returned to his previous hiding place, directly in front of the expansive picture window.
And there he waited for the rain to start again.
He figured he’d wait until oh five hundred. If the rain didn’t come back by then he’d have to go without it. But he’d still have at least half an hour to clear the territory before the sky began to lighten.
Dave felt confident.
No, he was starting to feel a little bit cocky.
And he should have known better.
For he wasn’t aware that four men were bearing down on his location, two blocks away and moving stealthily toward him. These men weren’t like any he’d encountered in the compound thus far. They were well trained and disciplined. They had the know how and experience to match Dave’s own.
They were, by anybody’s estimation, formidable opponents.
He’d also underestimated the quality of his watch. He’d noticed it was still ticking even after he spent hours in a drenching rain.
But it was ticking at a far slower rate than it should have been, losing almost twent
y minutes per hour.
Dave’s good luck was starting to turn. And he hadn’t a clue.
He sat in the bushes in front of the house, glancing upward at the sky every few minutes.
He’d erred in keeping the goggles in place too long, and assumed the bright light he saw to be the goggles doing their job.
It wasn’t until he finally took off the goggles that he noticed the sun was already rising. The sky was becoming lighter, and his cover of darkness was pretty much gone.
“Shit.”
It wasn’t a word he used often, but under the circumstances no other word would do.
He looked around and saw no movement, nothing amiss.
He’d blown it. Big time. He didn’t know what happened. His watch said five after five.
But it was what it was. He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t change anything.
His only option was to press ahead and hope for the best.
He’d never thrown a grenade through a glass window before. He assumed that at close distance, thrown hard enough, it would shatter the glass and fall into the room full of miscreants.
But if the glass was heavier than it appeared, or if the window was double paned, or if his throw wasn’t strong enough, it might bounce right off the window and back into the bushes with him.
He couldn’t take that chance.
Hence, the much heavier brick.
He held the grenade in his left hand, took a deep breath, and heaved the brick with his right.
The plate glass shattered, spraying glass everywhere, and causing heads to turn all over the house.
Their heads turned, but they were too stoned or too stupid to respond in any other way. Most of them were carrying side arms, but nobody drew them.
Most of them didn’t even dive for cover when the grenade came rolling into the room a couple of seconds later. They were either too high to see it or confused as to what to do.
The blast took out several of them outright.
Several more would die within hours, for there were simply no trauma facilities in the area equipped to handle blast injuries and shrapnel wounds.
Dave’s second grenade went a little farther into the room and took out a couple more.
On Desert Sands: Alone: Book 6 Page 17