by D. J. Molles
Tomlin nodded. “We got you.”
The Delta man scooted out of the way, recognizing when the fight was somebody else’s, and wise enough to remove himself when that seemed to be the case. Lee made for the other side of the building and Tomlin slid into place at the corner, popping out just long enough to return a few potshots into the woods.
Lee hit the other side of the building then hung a sharp right, sprinting along it until he was at the opposite end. Once again, there was nothing but the ubiquitous pines. At the opposite corner, Lee was careful to look out slowly. He could hear the chatter of Tomlin’s fire, and the even, steady response of whoever was in the woods.
Holding down a base of fire, Lee was sure of that.
Letting the other one get away.
But who gets away? Abe or Lucas?
Abe gets away. Lee wasn’t sure how he knew, but he just knew that it was Abe running and Lucas bedded down, holding them back. But Lucas was running long odds, and he had to know it. Plus, the likelihood of him having a good ammunition store was low. Which meant he would be running dry in just a minute.
Or, if he was smart—and Lee knew that he was—he wasn’t going to try for suppressive fire. He was going to give them a few bursts to let them know he was there, to slow their progress and make them careful, and then he was going to lie in wait. He was going to take shots at them as they tried to sneak into position.
When Lee looked around the corner of the building, he could see the little puffs of smoke that came with each rifle report, issuing from a copse of bushes that sat between two close-set pine trees. That was Lucas, he was almost positive.
Lee waited until Tomlin and Brinly were firing again, and then he sank down to his knees. His joints complained like an old man’s, but he achieved a stable shooting position. As Tomlin littered the trees indiscriminately with rounds, Lee took long, slow breaths and sighted into the copse of bushes. In the forefront of his mind were the imperatives: Control your breathing. Good cheek weld. Steady trigger pull, straight to the rear. Take out the base of fire. Advance. Overtake Abe. Capture him.
But in the back, behind all the conscious thought, there was a soul sickness that he couldn’t deny. An utter disgust and the image that went along with it was the image of Abe with his face battered and bloody at the hands of Lee, and with it came the image of Lucas’s body, riddled with bullet holes and bleeding from his nose and mouth. These were not enemy combatants. They were not random men from some third-world country that he happened to encounter in the middle of a night, inside of a pitch-black thatch-roofed hovel while they fumbled for their AK-47s.
These had been friends. These were fellow soldiers. These were men that he had known. They’d shared food and drinks and laughter and camaraderie. Project Hometown had chosen them because none among them had family, none of them were committed, none of them were tied down. But they’d become a sort of small family unto themselves. And this…
This was like killing his brother.
Not my brothers. Not my friends. Men who wanted me dead. Men who sent others to kill me.
They wanted me dead. They picked the fight. Now they deal with the consequences of that action.
Sickening or no, Lee did not pause to think it over. The decision had already been made. He had not made it; they had. They had chosen who they wanted to ally themselves with, and it was not Lee, and it was not the mission. It was not Project Hometown that they were implementing. They called him a traitor, as he called them the same, but in fact it was all just words.
They were enemies.
When he had a good sight picture, and his lungs fell into their natural respiratory pause, Lee fired. Four shots, evenly spaced and cold to the bone. Deliberate. Deadly. He would have no excuses to assuage his conscience. He gave it no room for such frivolities.
The bushes shook and trembled.
Lee was moving again. Out from the corner of the building, out from cover. He shouted, “Crossing! Crossing!” as loud as he could, so that the others knew not to continue shooting as he moved into their lanes of fire. He was about seventy-five yards from the bushes where the shooter had been, and still advancing. In his peripheral he could see the corner of the building, behind which Tomlin and Brinly had been firing, but he stayed focused on the bushes.
From around the trunk of one of the pines, Lee saw movement.
A man, going into the “urban-prone” position, the muzzle swinging toward Lee.
He could only see the rifle and the top of the man’s head. A shock of bright red hair.
Lee dove to the side. Bullets peppered the ground just behind where he’d been standing, a few sizzling past his head as he hit the pine needle carpet and scrambled gracelessly to a tree trunk. Lee gasped for breath, his heart pounding. The air came out of his lungs colored with curses. He glanced to his left, deeper into the forest, hoping to catch a glimpse of Abe on the run, but there was nothing.
Lucas was delaying them more than Lee would have liked.
Tomlin and Brinly were firing again.
Lee rolled partially out of cover so he could see Lucas’s hide. Bullets were smacking the wood on the trees, stripping the bark almost completely off the first four feet. They were stout trees, but the bullets would eventually go through. They all knew it, including Lucas. Which meant Lucas would be looking for a way out right about now.
Lee came up to his feet, rifle at the ready, and he began walking laterally, gaining more and more angle on Lucas, and getting closer in the process. Now within twenty-five yards. Tomlin was keeping up a steady suppressive fire on Lucas’s hide, keeping the man’s head down and letting Lee creep closer and closer.
Movement again.
Lucas peeking out. He saw Lee, and his rifle came up.
But this time Lee was ready for it. Finger already on the trigger. Lee fired once, watched Lucas jerk, but stay on his feet, then fired two more times, and he couldn’t tell whether he fired the shots out of anger or necessity. The rifle was already dropping out of Lucas’s hands when Lee fired those last two shots. And when the third shot had been fired, Lucas’s legs went out from under him and he hit the ground in a heap of limbs.
Lee ran to the body, keeping his rifle trained on it. Conscious of the fact that the man he’d just shot was still moving, might be reaching for a secondary weapon. He could still be a threat. You should just shoot him again, shoot him now, shoot him for the things that he did…
Lee reached the man on the ground. It was Lucas, just like Lee had thought it was, though almost unrecognizable except for the bright red hair. His features were sunken and sallow. His eyes were dark and hollow-looking. He had a scraggly, unkempt beard, darker red than the rest of his hair. Almost auburn. Blood was coming out of his mouth and nose. He was struggling to keep his head up, but he was looking at Lee, and his eyes registered shock.
“Lee…” His voice was just a wet croak. “I can’t believe you’re here.” He sounded almost dreamy and Lee got the uncomfortable sense that Lucas thought it was a good thing that Lee was here. Then some other realization clouded Lucas’s face. He looked confused. “You shot me, Lee. Why’d you shoot me?”
Lee could feel his head buzzing unpleasantly. His stomach slip-sliding around like a bowl of live eels. Shoot him. Shoot him and kill him. He’s just going to lie to you. He’s just going to confuse the issue.
Don’t. Don’t. Something is wrong.
“Where’s Abe?” Lee said. He’d meant for it to sound stern, but it came out gentle. There was something roiling around in the back of his mind, something that he didn’t typically feel. When you shot a man, there was no redo switch, no way to put the bullets back in your gun. So you found ways to rationalize it. Sometimes it was easier than others. But here and now, for the first time, he felt terror. True fear that he had just done something that he should not have done, and could not be taken back.
Lucas glanced into the woods. “He ran that way. He’s hurt bad, Lee. He needs help.”
“He
lp?” Lee was incredulous, but it was hollow.
Lucas frowned up at him, his confusion almost childlike. “I don’t understand… we came for you.”
“To kill me?” Lee said. “On Briggs’s orders?”
Lucas seemed to realize something he had not seen before. His head relaxed and he looked skyward, and for a moment, Lee wanted to grasp that silence as an admission of guilt. But Lucas would not even give him that. The man on the ground just coughed, then spat blood. “I don’t believe this shit…” His voice sounded far away. “… Not supposed to happen this way…”
Lee knelt down, the terror making him shake. He grabbed Lucas’s shoulder. “Lucas. Lucas. C’mon. Stay awake. What are you talking about?” He kept looking down at the two bullet holes, just an inch or so from each other, both punched neatly in the center of Lucas’s chest.
Good aim.
Bad shots.
What did I do? Is this right?
This isn’t right. This is a mistake.
Lee could hear Tomlin and Brinly running up to his position.
“What are you talking about?” Lee said desperately. “Why’d you come here?”
“To find you,” Lucas said, frowning again.
“To kill me…” Lee said again, but knew it wasn’t true.
“To help you.” Lucas grit his teeth together. “It’s about… it’s about what’s right.”
Standing over Lee, Tomlin swore. “Oh fuck, man… Oh, Jesus. Lucas… what the fuck were you thinking?”
Lucas closed his eyes. “Don’t let ’em get Abe. He’s… he’s got something of yours.”
Lee felt his throat tightening. He stood up, blinking rapidly as the world blurred and turned quickly away from Tomlin and Brinly. He pointed to Lucas. “Brian, stay with him. Don’t let him die.”
Too late! It’s too late for that!
Lee took off through the woods before Tomlin could respond.
FOUR
TIES
ABE RAN, HEARING THE smattering of gunfire far behind him. Pausing, hesitating, pushing back and forth, like an argument spoken in the tongues of burning propellant, sonic cracks, and copper-jacketed lead punching through trees and dirt.
The running was painful. His hip still felt out of whack—some strained muscle from the electrocutions, he had to assume. But the shoulder… the shoulder felt bad enough to make him curl up in a ball, but he knew he would die if he did that. He kept forcing his unwieldy legs to move, and every time his foot hit the ground, his shoulder threatened to make him faint. He kept telling himself it would go numb eventually, that the pain wouldn’t feel so bad, but it didn’t. It was getting worse. A slow, harsh, aching pain, and a fast, beating, spiking pain, intertwined with each other.
The forest ahead of him was deep and flat and neverending. But he knew that it ended. It would end in a road, and that road would lead out of Fort Bragg. And maybe they would have the road cordoned off, or maybe not. There was always the possibility that Abe could make it through. Shot shoulder and all, Abe had to make it through.
Keeping Project Hometown alive. That’s what I’m doing.
The gunfire had stopped.
Abe halted in the forest, stumbling to a stop and leaning his good shoulder against a tree. The breath came out of him in hot, steamy plumes. The momentary respite made the pain in his shoulder cease for all of two or three seconds, and then it was back, worse again. Abe winced and looked back into the forest in the direction he’d just come from.
No more gunfire…
Abe’s eyes kept staring into those endless pines, hoping to see Lucas running toward him. Surely he’d just given up his firing position and was backing up to… to…
“C’mon, buddy…” Abe realized his throat was almost clamped shut. The words came out of him choked and stricken. Pain weakened everything about a man. His physical strength, his mental strength, even his emotional strength. And here Abe might have given it more time before he let despair take him, but he was sick and he was beaten and he was in agony. And he knew damn well what the silence in the woods meant.
“No…” He faced into the looming woods, the direction he was supposed to be running, but the energy and the fight were bleeding out of him fast. He looked back toward the sound of silence. “C’mon, man. Fuck you, Lucas. Come the fuck on.”
Am I going or am I staying?
Lucas is dead. He died for you. For this.
What Abe really wanted was to fling the backpack off of his shoulders and sit down at the base of the tree, his wounded arm tucked against his chest, his good arm gripping a pistol, and wait there for whatever bastard was on the way to fight him. His chances of ending the fight with the rounds that were left in his M9 pistol were probably just as good as his chances of getting out of Fort Bragg and to Camp Ryder in one piece. What the fuck was the difference?
“No difference at all,” he muttered. “This is all a goddamned joke.”
Still, he turned back into the woods and put one leg in front of the other. Not running anymore. Just a slow, painful jog. His wounded arm hung limp. His good arm, still holding the pistol, was also clutching his wounded arm, trying to hold it in place while he jogged, to keep it from flopping around, to keep the bone fragments from grinding together. Just the thought of it made him sick.
“Maybe they just took him captive again,” Abe said. But he knew Lucas wasn’t going to let that happen. Lucas would have fought to the very last, trying to give Abe every second he could to get away.
That thought spurred Abe’s feet to moving faster. He needed to get out of this fucking shithole. He needed to get out of Fort Bragg. He had the key to everything, the key to Camp Ryder surviving, the key to Lee Harden being able to save these southeastern states from total destruction. The key to Project Hometown. And it was the only way they were going to keep Briggs from consolidating his power and becoming the president of a United States of America that was very different from the country that Abe remembered.
No more moping. No more thinking. You’re just acting. You’re moving. Just keep moving. That’s all. When you encounter an enemy, you will kill him. Otherwise, you will keep moving. Until you reach Camp Ryder. You know how to survive. Just do it. No more thinking.
So he kept going.
The world got dark. In his mind, not in reality. In reality, the sun was climbing, and great beams of bright light were piercing through the canopy of pine needles and illuminating great glowing swatches all across the forest floor. But Abe’s body was spent and on the verge of shutdown. He was running on autopilot. The only thing keeping him going was his own will.
His mind was going to other places, way down deep inside of him.
And his sight felt like it was dimming. The edges were dark and shadowed. Only the small space in front of him seemed to be bright. Overly bright, in fact. Everything was stark whites and deep dark blacks. He felt the same now in these woods as he’d felt when he was sitting in the pitch blackness of his cell. It was cold and hot and full of disorienting pain and no concept of when it was going to end so the body just kept going, because that’s what it did. It survived.
He lost track of how long he’d been running.
He heard a noise behind him that at first he thought was a hallucination.
Then he turned. Back behind him, a dark figure slid behind a tree, perhaps a hundred yards away. Maybe a little more.
Abe swung his pistol up and cranked off two rounds that he was sure went wide, off into nowhere, but hopefully kept his stalker’s head down long enough for him to dive for a tree and get into cover. He hit the ground awkwardly and had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. He tasted blood.
This is it. This is it right here.
Abe crawled farther behind the trunk of a large pine tree, wriggling his way out of the backpack as he did. He was gasping for air. The world was coalescing. He could hear and feel the rattle in his lungs, and again he hoped the bullet that had entered his shoulder wasn’t rattling around in there, pokin
g holes in his lung tissue. He hoped it was just pneumonia.
Interesting, to hope that something was just pneumonia.
He put his back against the tree, trying not to cough.
Somewhere back in the woods he could hear the stealthy movement of feet slipping quietly over the pine needles. Pine needles had always been Abe’s favorite for practicing woodland movement. They were quiet and soft. Abe remembered stalking through them himself, somewhere in these very woods, when he was in the Operator Training Course. It was a trick, though. The pine needles just deceived you into thinking you were stealthy. It was close to impossible to be stealthy in a deciduous forest, with all the dried, broad leaves sounding the alarm at every step.
Abe tried to get his left arm to work, but it just wouldn’t.
One-handed, he ejected the magazine in his pistol and looked at how many rounds he had left.
Not many. That’s the official count. Not Fucking Many.
He put the magazine back into the pistol. Felt the click as it seated.
This is it.
More shuffling behind him. How close was it? Less than a hundred yards now, for sure. Maybe closer to fifty yards.
He stuck the pistol out of cover and emptied the magazine into the woods. Then he tossed the gun off to his side. Reached awkwardly around his back and drew out the Colt 1911. He would have eight rounds in this one. He checked the chamber. Eight plus one.
In the woods, there was no more shuffling noises.
A voice called out. “Abe? That you?”
Something about the voice was passingly familiar, but not strikingly so. Abe didn’t give it a second thought. He gripped the 1911 tight and slipped his finger onto the trigger, making sure the hammer was back and the safety was on. “Just let me go. We don’t have to be enemies. I’m leaving and I won’t come back. You should have never captured us in the first place.”
“Abe, it’s Lee. It’s me, buddy.”
Abe’s face twitched, but otherwise he remained very still, as though he had not heard. His mind started to race. He tried to piece things together that just wouldn’t fit in any logical way. He realized he was shaking his head. “No. You’re not Lee.”