Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  “My name is Karras,” the prisoner said. “I’m in charge of some things, but Carrington is in charge of the tactical details.”

  “So, you were running someplace to get a better vantage point to lead from?” Boxers asked.

  “Big Guy, stop,” Jonathan said. Taunting the man would not bring greater cooperation. “How well armed are they up there?”

  “How many of you are there?” Karras asked.

  “Concentrate,” Jonathan said. “I ask, you answer. How well are they armed?”

  “Rifles,” Karras said. “Maybe a few handguns.”

  “How many people?” Jonathan asked.

  “In total, nearly two hundred.”

  “What about up here in officers’ country? How many here?” He deliberately used the term that Tommy Piper had used. He’d take any edge he could get.

  “Twenty.”

  “That’s too round a number,” Rollins said.

  “I got this, Madman,” Jonathan snapped. But again, it was the comment he was going to make, and it raised the question he wanted answered.

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “How good are they?” Boxers asked.

  Karras hesitated. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “Do they have night vision?” Jonathan asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “They have access to night vision,” Karras said. “But not in their barracks. It’s kept locked up. I don’t think any of them have had a chance to find it and use it tonight.”

  “How far are we from them?”

  “Not a hundred yards. I don’t know precisely. They’re close.”

  “And how are they deployed?”

  “In a defensive circle.”

  “What the hell is a defensive circle?” Boxers asked. Disdain polluted his tone.

  “They don’t know where you are,” Karras said. “They’ve deployed in a circle, behind whatever cover they could find.”

  Jonathan’s mind conjured an image from old Westerns, with circled wagons and Winchester repeaters pointing out at every compass point, aimed everywhere. He had no idea if such a strategy ever occurred in real life, but it made no sense to him. In reality, people didn’t attack in circles, they attacked at weak points. The “defensive circle” created nothing but weak points.

  Boxers leaned in very close to the prisoner. Close enough that even if the man couldn’t see him, he could sense his presence. “Think about every word you just told us, and understand that if any of it is false, I won’t hesitate to kill you. In fact, that will be my very first bullet, and it will be to a part of your body that will keep you dying for a long, long time. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Karras nodded emphatically.

  “Say it out loud,” Jonathan said. Once vocalized, words lingered longer in the head.

  “I understand,” Karras said. “Everything I’ve told you is true. To the best of my knowledge.”

  Jonathan caught the hedge, but decided to give the guy a break on that. Backing away from an absolute might just be a sign that Karras was working hard to tell the whole truth. He decided to believe him.

  “All right,” Jonathan said. “Hog-tie him, gag him, and put him on the floor in the back row of seats.” If nothing else went right tonight, at least they had a high-value asset to take home with them.

  Boxers needed no help to do a task he had done so many times in the past. In three minutes, it was done. It helped that Karras was such a cooperative prisoner. That happened a lot when people contemplated how near they were to dying.

  While Big Guy took care of Karras, Rollins said to Jonathan, “What’s the plan?”

  “We’ll leave the Batmobile here,” he said. “We’ll leave it running so the bad guys will have something to listen to, and then we’ll edge up and see what we’ve got.”

  Boxers reappeared. “He’s all tucked away, nice and comfy.” That no doubt meant the Karras was facedown on the floor, wedged between seats.

  “Listen,” Jonathan said. “I do not want a bloodbath here, am I clear? These poor bastards might call themselves an army, but we all know they’re nothing like an army. They’re zealots with guns.”

  “Who are going to try to shoot us,” Boxers said.

  “And I’m not suggesting that we die on their behalf,” Jonathan said.

  “Otherwise, it would be disconcerting,” Big Guy said.

  “So put that into the shape of a strategy,” Rollins said.

  “We go in slow and easy,” Jonathan said. “With luck, they won’t see us or hear us, then we see what we’ve got.”

  “We’re gonna have a lot of yay-hoos with guns,” Boxers said.

  “And if they shoot those guns, we shoot back.”

  “That’s a mighty big change to the playbook, Boss,” Boxers said. “For the record, I do not approve.”

  Jonathan understood Big Guy’s point, and he even agreed at one level. All reasonable assault protocols dictated that people with guns in their hands be killed before they had a chance to use them. There was no yelling for people to put their hands up, and there was no shame in shooting the enemy in the back. Elite Special Forces team members lived to retirement by bringing overwhelming force to their enemies with terrifying speed.

  But monitoring the radio traffic of the slaughter that was ongoing down the hill had gotten to him. He didn’t want another slaughter up here. He didn’t need that burden on his conscience.

  “Think about what you’re saying, Scorpion,” Rollins said. “We survive against outrageous odds because we have the advantage of technology, training, and commitment. But that advantage only lasts as long as we are willing to leverage it.”

  Of course, they were correct. This was no time to change the rules of combat that he’d lived by for his entire professional life. It wasn’t fair to his team. “Okay, you win. But show restraint. If people try to surrender, we let them.”

  “When have we not?” Boxers asked.

  “You’re right,” Jonathan said. “But unless we wander up against something imminent, we coordinate shots. Is that understood?”

  “Got it,” Boxers said.

  “Coordinated shots, got it,” Rollins agreed.

  “Now let’s go kill us some soldiers,” Big Guy said. There was a smile in his voice. “Oh, lighten up, Boss. I was kidding.” A beat. “Mostly.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Jonathan’s Bravo Team advanced in a disciplined line, each of them separated by thirty feet. Scorpion held the center position, with Big Guy on his right. Jonathan kept his M27 pressed into his shoulder and advanced in a high crouch. The others moved just like him. Through his NVGs, infrared laser sights cut the dark in bouncing, sweeping lines. The night revealed nothing but wide open spaces and no movement but their own.

  “I hear voices,” Rollins whispered over the air.

  Jonathan pivoted his head to the left and caught Rollins pointing forward and to his left with a bladed hand. “Copy,” Jonathan whispered back. Good God, they’re talking. Do they want to die?

  A few seconds later, Jonathan heard it, too. He couldn’t make out words, but the sounds were unmistakably voices. People didn’t realize how efficiently sound traveled on a quiet night. They also didn’t realize that the whisper they thought was nearly silent was really quite loud. Back in the day, he’d trained in the art of whispering. Christ, he’d trained on just about everything at one point or another, except maybe butt-wiping, but he couldn’t rule that out entirely.

  As one, Jonathan and his team sank a bit lower to the ground and slowed their approach. At night, in tense situations, movement was easily detected.

  Jonathan’s Spidey-sense tingled. Something was out of place, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He’d learned to trust that sense, so he tapped his transmit button twice. The double-rasp of breaking squelch on the radio would be interpreted by his team for what it was—a silent order to stop and assess.

>   One of the greatest dangers Jonathan and Bravo faced right now was overconfidence. Their enemy was without doubt incompetent, but they were well armed, and bullets fired by idiots were no less deadly than those fired by professional assassins. The only difference lay in the ability to aim. The annals of warfare bulged fat with stories of disaster wrought at the hands of amateurs. Jonathan’s greatest hero of military strategy and tactics—Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (the man after whom he was named)—was shot and killed not by a Yankee sharpshooter, or in a hail of bullets while leading his troops, but rather by one of his own sentries on the night of what was then his greatest victory. It didn’t take a talented marksman to kill with a weapon capable of spraying six hundred rounds a minute.

  The technical term for Spidey-sense was situational awareness, the greatest, most important factor that separated victims from victors. If you toiled in the field of violence long enough, you developed a sense for what belonged and what did not. You learned to trust yourself. You learned that when something didn’t feel right, that’s because it was not right.

  He swept the area with his sight, left to right, high to low. He switched his scope from light-enhancement mode to heat-seeking mode, and the world viewed through his right eye switched from green-on-green to black-and-white. That’s when he saw what he was looking for.

  Almost directly ahead of him, a face peeked out from behind a tree. In the green hue of light enhancement, the image appeared as a bulge against the column of the tree trunk. Now, the bulge had eyes. And it was pointing a rifle in his general direction, close enough to pose a hazard. Knowing now what to look for, he switched back to light-enhancement mode. He drew a circle around his target with his IR laser sight. Through his peripheral vision, he saw Big Guy and Madman doing the same thing. Each one of them had identified a target.

  Jonathan keyed his mike and whispered, “At will.” He heard the suppressed cracks of their rifles almost instantaneously, before he could focus on his own target. It was a kid, not yet twenty years old. The age of ninety percent of all soldiers. The kid was turning to examine the noise of his neighbors’ fracturing heads when Jonathan launched a 5.56 millimeter bullet through his ear. The brain spray was somehow more unsettling in the artificial light that it was in daylight.

  The enemy stirred. They heard the sounds, and they sensed the danger, but they clearly didn’t know what to do. One of them, on the far side of the circle, facing exactly the wrong direction, started shooting randomly into the night, endangering Alpha. Rollins took the shooter out with an efficient double-tap from what had to be seventy-five yards. For anyone else, it would have been an unimpressive shot, but Jonathan had perhaps unjustifiably discounted his former commander’s skills.

  Jonathan pressed his transmit button. “Hold fire unless fired upon. Find cover.” They’d made their initial point. Now they needed to see if the enemy could be reasoned with. He scanned the area for cover, and took refuge behind a substantial hardwood. He told himself that it was oak, because oak was a particularly hard hardwood. It had remarkable bullet-stopping properties, and he suspected that the next step was going to bring more than a few bullets in his direction.

  “Acknowledge that you’ve gone to cover,” Jonathan whispered over the radio.

  “Set,” Rollins whispered back.

  “Good to go,” Boxers agreed.

  It was time. Jonathan all but straddled the tree trunk. He pressed his body against the rough bark, and exposed only his weapon and his right eye. He kept his right elbow—the elbow of his shooting hand—tucked in close to his ribs so as not to unnecessarily expose an impact point.

  “Patriots’ Army, listen up!” he yelled.

  Someone on the near end shot at the sound of his voice, sending a bullet into his tree. A good shot. Boxers and Rollins dropped him simultaneously.

  “We can see you and you cannot see us!” Jonathan yelled. “We have you surrounded. Your troops in the barracks down the hill are dead and dying and in total disarray. You cannot win. All we want is Victor Carrington. Give him up, and we will allow you to lay down your arms and walk away. Anyone who tries to shoot back will die. Decide.” In the distance, on the far side of the circle—which had grossly lost any geometric resemblance to a circle, with some elements moving closer to the center and others moving away, almost all of them moving farther away from the sound of the threat—a soldier raised his weapon to his shoulder. “You in the back!” Jonathan shouted.

  He was too late. Boxers had already taken him out.

  “You are outgunned and outclassed!” Jonathan shouted. “You don’t have to die tonight. We already have Karras. We caught him as he was abandoning you. Running away. Now, we only need Carrington and we’ll be out of here.”

  In the distance, he saw confusion. The chatter grew in intensity and volume. They were about to give their guy up, Jonathan thought.

  Ian’s heart skipped when he heard the mention of his alias, and it damn near stopped when they invoked Karras’s name. The coward. Now we only need Carrington and we’ll be out of here. He kneeled on the ground, initially facing the wrong direction, but now facing the sound of the man’s voice. But he kept his weapon down, the muzzle toward the ground. No sense drawing unnecessary fire.

  “On my command,” he whispered, “I want this row to turn and engage. If we can—”

  “Don’t be foolish,” the voice called from the dark. “Too many people have died tonight. You don’t have to be among them.”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Ian said. He pivoted his body so that it was completely concealed behind the pickup truck he’d been using for cover.

  “We don’t even know who you are,” the voice said. “Our intel says that none of you used your real names to join this outfit, so if you walk away, no one will be the wiser. You’ve got dead to bury and wounded to care for. Give us Carrington and our business here is over. Unless you make it more complicated than it needs to be.”

  “He’s over there behind that pickup truck!” someone shouted. Ian didn’t have to look to know that he was being pointed at.

  “Simpson!” someone spat in rebuke.

  “He shot Dennis!” was the reply. “I’m not dying for a guy who’ll shoot his own troops.”

  Panic seized Ian. He didn’t know what to do. Certainly, getting caught was nowhere on the agenda. Whatever his next step was going to be, he had to decide now.

  The officer who’d ratted out his commander made a show of placing his weapon on the ground and standing with his hands stretched high in the air.

  “If he leaves, let him go peacefully,” Jonathan said in his radio. “That will encourage the others.”

  “As long as his hands are empty.”

  “Keep those hands high in the air until you are past the gate,” Jonathan instructed. “You’ll pass more of us. If you pick up a dropped weapon, or attempt to seek shelter elsewhere in the compound, you’ll be shot without warning. Hold two thumbs up if you understand that.”

  The soldier popped two thumbs and started walking. He’d taken three steps toward the rear when one of his cadre whipped around and shot him. Boxers and Rollins fired simultaneously to drop the shooter.

  “Goddammit, it does not have to be this way!” Jonathan shouted. “Put your weapons down! Give yourselves a chance to live, for God’s sake.”

  But panic had taken hold. Two or three of the soldiers opened up on full-auto in the direction of Jonathan’s voice. Jonathan had seen them raising their weapons and had plenty of time to duck behind his tree before bullets slammed into it. He heard cracks through the air of rounds that went wide of the tree, but still close enough to make themselves known.

  “Left shooter down,” Boxers’ voice said in his ear.

  “Center shooter, right shooter down,” Rollins said.

  In the blast of rifle fire, Jonathan didn’t hear the softer pops of his team’s suppressed weapons, but the silence of the others confirmed their words.

  Jonathan pivoted from behi
nd his cover and scanned the scene before him. It was utter bedlam. Against the wild, dancing light of the burning barracks down the hill, a swarm of largely undressed men ran and fell and tripped over themselves trying to get away. It would have been comical had it not been for the corpses among them, each lying so still among the swirling action.

  Sudden movement on Jonathan’s left startled him. It was Rollins, and he had taken off at a dead run. “Carrington’s bolting,” Rollins said. “I saw him take off from behind the truck they were pointing at.”

  Jonathan bolted after him. As he sprinted, his gear flapping against his body, he pressed his transmit button. “Big Guy, get the vehicle before we get too far separated. Break, break. Alpha, Scorpion.”

  “Go, Scorpion,” Jolaine said.

  “There are waves of bad guys heading your way. They are in total disarray. Try to find a way to let them go. Try to disarm them. Only engage if engaged.”

  Jolaine said something in response, but Jonathan had turned back to the business of running. An exercise fiend, he was no stranger to a vigorous ten-mile jog, but he hadn’t sprinted in full kit in a while. It bugged him that Rollins seemed to be better at it. That pushed him to run harder.

  The man they were chasing seemed intent on not getting caught. He had a rifle in his hands, but he’d made no effort to shoot. Technically, by their unofficial rules of engagement, that made him eligible to be shot, but he was the purpose for their raid tonight. If at all possible, they wanted to take this guy alive.

  Son of a bitch wasn’t making it easy.

  Ian’s lungs screamed and his head boomed with the effort of his flight through the woods. He felt angry and betrayed by his men, but mostly he felt fearful of what the future would hold for him if he got caught. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the fact of his conspiracy was justification for the death penalty. But to be caught at this stage of the operation wouldn’t trigger that. The judges wouldn’t want that. They would want to see him toiling at hard labor for the rest of his life.

  Life in a military prison was a fate worse than death, especially for the crimes he had committed. As unlikely as it sounded, many of the inmates in military prisons were still patriots at heart. They had violated the rules, or in most cases had committed felonies, but they’d committed their crimes while in service to the United States. Ian imagined that the treatment of a traitor at their hands would mimic the horrifying stories he’d heard of the treatment of child molesters who’d served time.