The Last Rebel: Survivor

by William W. Johnstone

  About two hours after the break, Krill was at the back of the escape unit, when abruptly the unit came to a stop. Krill wondered why. He was the only one who could halt the unit. Why had they stopped?

  He trotted up to the front lines, and as he approached his second in command, Lieutenant Baiter held up his hand so as to caution him to go slowly and be quiet. The dogs were of, course, quiet, but they seemed very excited. Had they found Rosen’s body?

  He trotted up and Baiter pointed to a low sagebrush. Impaled on it was a small piece of gray cloth, and there was only one way it could have gotten on the branch—it had been torn off during Rosen’s flight.

  Meanwhile, it was obvious that the dogs were on to something. All were straining to the right, or northern direction. A couple of times they started to head straight ahead, west, but stopped, as if by an invisible wall.

  “Let’s go,” Krill said. He ran to the head of the unit.

  Krill was elated by the find. It just sort of symbolized the kind of crap that Rosen was going through, running along and abruptly, getting speared by a bush—covered with thorns—and part of his pants ripped off.

  Great!

  The unit, too, was encouraged by the find, and they quickly followed. Very quickly. All, that is, except one young soldier, barely nineteen years old, who had felt an urge to go to the bathroom. Indeed, he was, as someone said, “crowning.” It was stop and go now or crap in his pants.

  He was very gratified when he saw that Krill, who had been running next to him, had assumed the leadership of the unit.

  He hoped that Krill would not hold it against him. If it had been the premier leading the pack he would have risked going in his pants. But Krill would understand, and the young man, whose name was Otis Williams, was sure that he would not fall so far behind the pack that he would lose them.

  If he lost them he would just desert, because that’s the way he knew he would be treated.

  He gradually drifted away from the unit, and then looked around for some cover. This patch, in particular, was open, covered with sagebrush and rough terrain. In fact, the unit had disappeared behind a hill.

  He quickly found some cover in the fringe of woods that bordered the open area, ran back into it, then pulled down his pants and underwear and squatted. The relief was such that at that moment he didn’t even care if the premier had appeared.

  Now, about one hundred yards away, Krill and his unit kept pace with the silent bloodhounds, who would have been shattering the sky apart with their baying had they not had their voice boxes removed.

  Krill knew they were close. That’s the way the dogs acted when they were close.

  He raised his hand, the signal for the unit to draw their sidearms, though he was sure that they wouldn’t need them against the little shit they were chasing.

  Krill’s thoughts were filled with days of glory. He knew the premier looked on him in a special way. This was going to make him more special and, hopefully, get him a promotion to captain. It was easily the most important assignment of his career. They had to get this little punk.

  They had been running through an area with some woods, but now the dogs broke out into a clearing. The land was much rougher underfoot than the forest, and particularly beautiful. Gradually, the dogs were following Rosen’s scent into a sort of arroyo, at one side of which was a cliff and a small waterfall.

  Then the unit was stopped again, this time by Krill. The dogs had come across another piece of cloth, this time snagged in a bush. Krill was puzzled. He was a good soldier, and had the instincts of a good soldier, which is to say that he sensed when something was too good to be true, and therefore it was too good to be true.

  The word trap occurred to him just as he heard the first pfft sound, like someone spitting hard, and at the same moment he recognized that it was the sound of a silencer, the side of the head of the soldier standing next to him came off as if someone had sheared it off with an ax. Bright red blood splashed and sprayed on him, and then he felt a hit, a searing pain in his back, and his mind was functioning amid a cacophony of pfft sounds, so many it was like one long sound, and all the soldiers falling around him, some screaming in agony, others not screaming because their heads were blown half off, their gray uniforms dark with crimson blood, and then the desperate sound of real gunfire, the sound of men shooting their .45s at, really, nothing. And the last thing Krill was aware of before he died was being on the ground with many other men of the unit and falling over the body of a dog who had been hit multiple times.

  Then Krill realized that he wanted to die, but as some sort of blackness oozed around him, blocking out his consciousness, he had a thought that he hadn’t had since he was a little boy: he was going to meet God because, indeed, there was a God.

  The firefight, such as it was, had taken all of two minutes.

  When everyone was on the ground, Jim, Bev, Kindhand, and the other Rebels came down from their perch on the top of the cliff from where they had launched the ambush.

  It only took them a minute, and then they were walking among them. The escape unit had been shredded with at least a thousand bullets, but miraculously three of the men were still alive.

  Jim went over to first one, and then the other, and then the third, jamming his SEAL knife into the carotid artery of each, changing them from barely alive to very dead.

  “Good work, Jim,” Kindhand said.

  Jim just nodded. Then he said: “What do you want to do with the bodies?”

  “They’ll probably come looking for them,” Kindhand said. “Maybe we’ll wait until they come this way, then arrange another greeting party.”

  “I’m not sure I like that,” Jim said. “That gives them the advantage.”

  He paused.

  “I have another idea,” he said.

  “That trick with the bleach to throw the dogs off was great,” Kindhand said.

  “You can also do that with oregano,” Jim said.

  “How?”

  “Just sprinkle it on. It masks the scent.”

  Kindhand nodded. “I like your ideas,” he said. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

  Otis Williams was just tightening his belt when he heard the random pfft sounds. He quickly headed in their direction but, well trained as he was, he approached with caution, his body always shielded from the shots. It was a good thing he did. When he came to a little hill and peered over, it looked like something out of a movie. The entire escape unit had been slaughtered—including dogs—and were lying in a bleeding heap and jumbled together, all dead . . . or he thought they were all dead. And then he watched in burgeoning horror as their ambushers had come down from the nearby cliff and one of them had finished off those left alive with knife thrusts.

  But that was not all he saw. He saw Rosen standing there—and Beverly Harper, the religious bitch whose coworker had been hung!

  Williams immediately pulled back down the hill. He knew that he had to go back and alert the premier. But the premier would ask him: Why didn’t you get ambushed too?

  Otis would have a simple explanation: “Because I was able to get away.” It was that simple. “They chased me for a while, and I got away.”

  He was sure the premier would listen to him, particularly with the kind of intel he had to report.

  No, Otis thought He was not sure of that at all. He was not sure of anything when it came to the premier. There was only one thing for sure when you dealt with him. You never knew what he was going to do.

  SIXTEEN

  “Listen, Duke, “Jim said to Kindhand, “my idea is really simple. Let’s just keep going. We’ll meet up with your colleagues and just keep going. Or maybe, depending on how many troops show up, you might want to launch an attack on the Rejects. But if we stop and make a fight now, who knows how many troops they’ll have? We could be overwhelmed.”

  Kindhand nodded.

  “Also, there’s no way that the Rejects can find us—unless they get lucky. They don’t have spotter planes
, choppers, and the like. They’re on foot, just like we are.”

  Jim paused, then continued. “Now, if you didn’t want to engage them now and wanted to establish a real secure base you could go on into Montana and I’ll show you where I think you might be best off. Isn’t your basic goal right now to put together a good-sized army?”

  “Sure,” Kindhand said. “Where do these ideas come from? I mean they’re militarily sound. You don’t have military experience.”

  “I don’t know. I see what the problem is and somehow the solution presents itself.”

  “Well,” Kindhand said, “your solutions are good. Now, what do you think we should do with the bodies? I’m for hiding them, but that’s going to take hours.”

  “I agree we should hide them. But I have a place where it shouldn’t take hours.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a natural cave behind the waterfall that’s not observable from outside.”

  Kindhand looked. The waterfall Jim was referring to was a solid sheet of water. It would hide the bodies very effectively, and at the same time keep animals away from them. Also, they could get them out of the way quickly.

  “Okay, Jim,” Kindhand said. “Let’s get it rolling.”

  “I would also suggest that we take their weapons. Not only because they’re good for us to use, but it means one less bunch of weapons they can use on someone else.”

  “Absolutely,” Kindhand said, and his look lingered on Jim LaDoux. He had the feeling that if he had come up with a better idea on anything, LaDoux would have accepted it without a moment’s hesitation, just like he would and did. It was the idea that ruled the day, not the ego. Small wonder that Ben had given him the HumVee and had such faith in him.

  Kindhand gave the signal, and the men started to carry the Rejects behind the waterfall, first stripping all arms from them.

  Williams waited a full hour before starting away from the area, because he was more than a little worried about what the premier might do. There was no way to predict what he was going to do. He might strangle him to death, then abruptly change his mind. But it would be too late for Williams.

  Every now and then he would risk a peek to see what was happening, but on one occasion a steel fist grabbed his innards and squeezed. One of the ambushers had looked his way, and for a moment he thought he was spotted, and quickly decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. He lit out, being as quiet as he could, but taking a zigzag route through the forest. He was well aware that the ambushers didn’t have any dogs to track him, so as long as he was able to put a lot of space between them and him he would be okay.

  Two things he had on his side were his strength and speed. He was twenty-two years old and had a good lead. No one was likely to catch him, let alone see him.

  One other good thing: it made any indecision he had about telling the premier what had happened final. He was going back to base camp and telling him.

  In fact, Williams had been seen, or a movement spotted that indicated that someone was there.

  It was the Rebel Frank Langone. But he did not overreact. He knew that if he had seen anyone any sudden movements would make him bolt, and he had a good lead and the forest was nearby. He’d be gone in a flash. And, of course, it might be a sniper. The next thing he knew might be the last thing.

  But Langone did take action. He meandered over to Duke Kindhand, who was with Jim LaDoux.

  “Don’t look that way,” Langone said, “but I think I spotted someone due south looking over a hill and observing us.”

  “Okay,” Kindhand said, “we’ve got to get someone to sneak up there and see who it is.”

  “I’ll do a fade to the other side of the cliff and then work my way back to the hill,” Kevin Shea said.

  “Good.”

  With that, Shaw drifted away casually. Once he calculated that he was out of the line of sight of anyone hiding behind a hill, he burst into a run, drawing his .45 as he went.

  It took him about five minutes to work his way to the hill, and there was no one there. He did a brief search of the edge of the nearby forest, then went back over to the hill and raised his arms in a signal that said: whoever was here is gone.

  Kindhand, Langone, and LaDoux immediately left the ambush sight and within minutes they were with Shaw.

  “I only saw one thing,” Shaw said when the others joined him, “a pile of animal crap.”

  “Where?” Jim said.

  “Just inside the woods.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “Sure.”

  LaDoux followed Shaw to the site.

  “I have no idea what kind of animal made that. But it’s a large one judging by the size of the turds.”

  “It’s a human animal,” LaDoux said. “And fresh. It’s highly likely that the same person who was peering over the hill did this.”

  “How are we going to find out?”

  “I’m more concerned if it was made by a straggler Reject,” Kindhand said.

  “So am I,” Jim said.

  They went back to the ambush site.

  “Where’s Rosen?” Jim asked one of the Rebels who was busy with another Rebel carrying a body behind the falls.

  “He’s behind the hill.”

  Jim, accompanied by Kindhand and Shaw, went over to him. He was sitting down, writing something into a narrow notebook. He had listened in on the conversation Jim had with Kindhand, so he was probably making notes on this. But Jim wasn’t sure. The bottom line was that he didn’t know.

  Rosen looked up almost in alarm when he saw the three heavy hitters approach.

  “No problem,” Jim said. “I just want to double-check the number of soldiers in the escape unit. You said twenty-five?”

  “Yes,” Rosen said. “Just a second.”

  He took another thin notebook from his breast pocket and flipped through the pages.

  “Twenty-five,” he said. “Each unit has twenty-five specialists in it.”

  “Could there be any deviation?”

  “I seriously doubt it,” Rosen said. “The premier was a stickler for organization and knowing exactly what strength he had.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “I counted twenty-four bodies,” Kindhand said.

  “So did I,” Jim said.

  “Which means that the guy I spotted on the hill was a Reject from this special unit,” Langone said.

  “And which also means that he’s probably on his way back to his unit,” Kindhand said.

  “We’re pushing on through.”

  “But what if they catch up to us?” Rosen asked. “They found you the first time.”

  “Well,” Jim said, “we can cover our tracks.”

  Rosen looked like he was not convinced that the strategy was a good one. And, in fact, he wasn’t. He had great faith in the Rejects’ tenacity and cleverness.

  No one saw it, but abruptly Jim’s eyes had gone cold. Rosen’s attitude was the last straw. He had another idea, and Rosen was not going to like it.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Rebel convoy had mounted up. Jim, Bev, and Duke Kindhand were standing near Jim’s HumVee. Jim was watching, rolling a cigarette, but mainly looking at Rosen, who had gone off into the woods, for what, Jim didn’t know. Kindhand looked at Jim and saw something in his eyes.

  “Do you like reporters?” Jim asked Kindhand.

  “Not really,” Kindhand said.

  Jim licked the paper closed and stuck the completed cigarette in his lips.

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Kindhand said, “they’re ruthless. In particular I remember how when the priest pedophile scandals hit, reporters went on a rampage, implying that every religious person in town was a pervert. It was vicious and untrue—but their stories sold papers so they kept it up.”

  “But without a free press . . .” Bev said.

  “I understand that,” Kindhand said. “And I support that.”

  “What do you think of Ros
en?”

  “Something sneaky about him,” Kindhand said.

  “Sneaky?” Jim asked.

  ‘Yes.”

  “I think that’s a good word to describe what I sense,” Jim said.

  “Me too,” Bev said.

  “He told you why he took off, right?” Jim said.

  “Yes.”

  “What I truly don’t understand,” Jim said, “is why he really left the Rejects’ compound. I know he said that he sensed that the gig was up, but I don’t accept that totally. I mean he’s a reporter for Rolling Stone. Those guys are famed for their chutzpah. I don’t know if he would have taken off just because of a feeling.”

  Kindhand nodded.

  “The bottom line is if he’s not telling the truth about that, what is he telling the truth about? A liar can be a dangerous person.”

  Both Kindhand and Bev nodded.

  “I have an idea,” Jim said.

  “What?” Kindhand asked.

  “I—”

  Just then, Rosen came out of the trees.

  “Okay,” Kindhand said, “ready to roll.”

  Rosen was about to get into the HumVee when Jim said, “Wait.”

  “Aren’t we going?” Rosen asked.

  “First,” Jim said, “I want to see your .45.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a secret,” Jim said, smiling.

  Rosen hesitated, then drew his gun out of his pocket and handed it to Jim. Jim shoved it into his waistband.

  “I wanted your gun, Morty,” he said, “because I don’t want any problems resulting from what I’m about to ask you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to know, and Bev and Duke want to know, what’s really going on here. Why did you leave the Rejects’ base camp? It sounded to me like a bunch of baloney. And relatively shortly after you left they came after you. It doesn’t add up to me.”