When we were done, dad and I went to bed and got some sleep. We left later than usual. The secondary meeting place was set for an hour later in our original plans. We walked slowly, trying to teach Eileen along the way. But she was noisy and a slow learner, or she was being obstructive. I was not sure which. We were close to the meeting place, more than an hour early, so we called a halt for a drink of water and a rest and pit stop if needed.
Apparently, dad and I had been distracted by the noise Eileen was making. I don't know. Maybe we were just being careless that night. But I heard a noise that was out of place and knew we were going to be under attack. I whistled to dad lowly and we both prepared. There were three of them. They had night vision and they were better than any we had faced yet. I saw the first one from the flank in time to shoot him with the bow under the chin. The arrow came out the top of his head.
Eileen saw this, stood up and started puking. The second guy saw her and stuck her in the middle of the chest with what looked to be a bayonet. It got stuck. I shot him between the eyes. Then I saw that dad was down and the guy over top of him was going to kill him. I shot that guy in the side of the head. His head nearly exploded on the other side. It got quiet in a hurry, except for Eileen's moaning.
I took the bayonet out of her. I bandaged her chest wound though I had no hope she would survive. She didn't. Within a minute she was gone. Dad was with me when she left us. He had seen what happened to her, tried to turn and got knocked down by the butt of a rifle by the guy I killed.
Dad had a nasty gash on his forehead. I stanched the flow of his blood and covered it with one of the military camo bandages that came with our kits. I gave him a couple of anti-biotics and several Ibuprofen. He had to stay sharp until we got home. We wondered why there were not more people. We wondered if somehow Eileen had gotten word to them. We wondered if the stumbling around and noisiness was not for their benefit.
We left the area after policing the weapons and ammunition as well as some canned goods the guys were carrying. One of them was “tatted” and I took the time to look. The “tats” were from prison and he was an Aryan Brotherhood member. So that was where they were getting their new recruits. I guess that was in congruity with the kind of criminal behaviors that the militia had been exhibiting.
We went to the meeting place. We got there early and waited in really good hiding places. Three militiamen came along. We killed them. Three more came along a little while later. We killed them. Four more came along a little later. We killed them. We wondered if they were supposed to be setting up to meet our people. Four more came along. We killed three of them and took one prisoner.
I asked the prisoner if any more were coming. He said he didn't know. He was being a smart ass. I gagged him and cut off his trigger finger with my knife. He screamed for a minute. I asked him again if any more were coming. He said he didn't know. I gagged him again and cut off the second finger on his right hand. He screamed, I sapped him, he went out and I cut his throat. Asshole!
About fifteen minutes before rendezvous time four more came along. We shot all of them. We were stacking their bodies in a pick-up truck. Our guys came and we left with one more in our group. His name was Jim Martinez. He was from Missoula, had grown up there, and had gone to school there, including University of Montana. He was the army equivalent of a Recon Marine I guess, that being a Green Beret, Special Forces type. We told him what we were going to do with the bodies. He said “No problem.”
We drove the truck to a point about a hundred yards from the roadblock, set the steering wheel with rope and put a rock on the accelerator, put it in gear and let it go and crash into the roadblock. All four of the men working the roadblock were standing there looking at the truck when we set off the Semtex that blew the hell out of all of them.
Not a bad night given everything except of course for Eileen. Twenty-five more of theirs gone and one of ours slightly wounded for the first time. We went back and retrieved Eileen's body, put a note on it asking for a Christian burial, took it to the perimeter of the town that I had first seen only three weeks earlier, rolled it onto the street and beat feet. We were home before midnight.
After the initial rounds of introductions between Jim, mom and Ruthie, and after dad's forehead was cleaned up and Mom treated it with anti-biotic cream and sewed it up, we sat down and told the women the entire story. It was sad to lose Eileen. She had given us good information and been a friend to mom and dad in the past, and seemed like a nice lady. I still wonder to the day I am writing this whether she knew exactly what she was doing making noise.
The appearance of the first three militiamen, everything taken together it is just a little too coincidental for me and I don't really believe much in coincidences in war. There was nothing more to be done about it. As we talked, mom asked us for a moment of silence. We all joined hands, prayed in our own way for her soul and then the moment we had in the life of Eileen Powers was over.
Chapter 7
Jim Martinez and Friends
“The two guys from the State Police said to say hello to you guys and tell you thanks again for getting them out of the jail. The militia had told the two of them they were going to be executed the next day. They are very grateful to you two. Believe me when I tell you that.”
“It's nice to know we did some good for someone,” Dad said. “Unfortunately, it didn't work out for Eileen Powers. She was the woman we left in town tonight. We were trying to get her to Missoula. We were going to send her back with the guys that brought you in.”
“Jesus, Powers you said? She was one of the ringleaders of the whole deal Mr. de Young. Her son was like the third in command in the militia outfit and she was calling the shots right down the line. According to what the State Police guys told me she got the boys to go to the armory and get all the weapons they have, I guess I should say had, looking at this place. She was the one who started the killing off the passers through so the militia could gather as much money as it could get. They robbed a couple of banks as well. They got all the cash out of the local banks right away, hit the banks in Arlee and Alberton within the first week. Jesus guys, you were damned lucky she didn't lead them right to you.”
Mom sat there looking at Jim for a minute and said, “Are you sure about all of this Mr. Martinez? The State Police guys told you this? And they heard all this stuff going on while they were in jail?”
“Yes ma'am. There is no doubt. She was the brains behind the whole operation.”
“God, dad, we bought her line in every respect. Do you think she had some kind of implanted tracking device on her?”
“I doubt it son. She is dead now anyway. And her own people killed her. What an incredibly ironic turn of events! And to think we gave her $50,000.00 from the money we have confiscated from those assholes.”
“It's all right, dad.” I took the packet of money we had given her out of my pack and threw it on the table. “I cannot tell you why but I always had the oddest feeling about that woman, like she was playing all of us. That is why I wanted to take the rear tonight, dad. I wanted the control that goes with hanging back a little, getting the chance to see what is developing and then react to it. You taught me well in that regard Major!”
“You two are both Recon, aren't you?” asked Jim.
“Yes, we both were in that part of the Marine Corps at one time or another in our brief or long careers,” my father responded. “I always thought I learned more about life and about how to live in extreme circumstances in that training than I learned in any other setting in my lifetime. Do you agree with that, Will?”
“Yes, dad, I do. And ever since arriving at Charley and Berneice's place last month I have been damned glad that we both had that training and could still use it to our benefit. Those people, Jim, have been trying to kill me and my family as well, for nearly a month now. My dad and I have whittled their numbers down a little, or so we thought until tonight. And our training is what has held us up, has made it possible for us to
defeat those yokels every time in every way.”
“Well, sir,” Jim spoke to my dad, “and you too, Will,” he continued, “we want to send in a lot of troops and take this town back, but we wanted to recon the place first. Can we do that safely?”
“No. And I don't think a pitched battle would ever occur if you sent a bunch of troops in here. What you would have then is a garrison against which these fools could chip away in Guerilla style warfare. And that would suit them a hell of a lot better than what they are doing now,” my dad responded.
Jim asked “What are they doing now?”
“They are a garrison fighting against a Guerilla force that is kicking their ass off every night. They own the day at this point. But we own the night. That has become increasingly more evident in the last week or so. And now that their mastermind is dead I bet it gets easier yet to kill those bastards.”
Jim was a little surprised and put out by our comments at that point. He said “You mean to tell me that you have been going out night after night, conducting guerilla raids to kill a bunch of them off, to defeat them by attrition? How the hell could you do that? This is the United States of America.”
“Obviously you have not been around an area where these bozos have been doing their thing before tonight, Jim. Did you not notice the cars parked beside the road at the roadblock when we attacked there,” my dad asked?
“Yes sir, I saw them. But what does that mean?”
“You didn't go and take a look in any of them, did you Jim?”
“No, no I didn't, Will. Again, why is that important?”
“You tell him, Will,” my dad said.
“I will make this brief, Jim. In those cars you would have found regular citizens of this United States of America. And every one of them would have been tortured and killed. And all the women would have been raped. And all the young girls would have been raped, no matter if they were teenagers or in their twenties. And all the children, boys and girls alike, of an age less than whatever number you wish to speak in your brain, would have been raped, tortured and killed. Looking at the line of cars tonight I would have guessed at about the same number we killed tonight, maybe a few more, depending on children! That is why we are doing what we are doing. Those people we have been killing are nothing better than rabid animals.”
“Are you serious?”
“What the hell do you think we are doing here? We love this country. And we are trying to restore some sense of regular order to this part of the country by doing away with these rapists, child molesters and murderers. If they were not here, if this were not necessary we would be headed for Florida to fight the damned Cubans. Now tell us what the hell is going on in the real world?”
“What was going on when you came out here, Will?”
“As I was going up toward Cheyenne I saw the blooms of three devices that exploded over or around Omaha. I assumed SAC was taken out. Did Thunder Mountain get hit too?”
“Yes. But most of the missiles that were sent into the Minuteman fields of the Dakotas and eastern Montana were intercepted. It would not have made any difference. All of our missiles were launched by the time the Russian missiles arrived in the Dakotas. All of those that tried to hit the eastern population centers were intercepted with the exception of New York and Washington, D.C.”
“A lot of Europe is gone. And most of the Russian Empire is gone, and most of the caliphate that the Sunnis were trying to build in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is gone, especially on the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia and its oil fields, all of Iraq and Iran and their oil fields were destroyed by the Israelis. A lot of Israel is gone and its government has moved to Eilat down on the Red Sea Coast. All of the Islamist countries are no longer in existence for one reason or another. Riyadh, Teheran and Qum, Baghdad, Tikrit and Damascus, most of Lebanon were all taken out by the Israelis. Tel Aviv, Gaza, that whole area was hit by Iran. Iran does not exist except as a boiling mass of radioactive ground. India and Pakistan hit each other multiple times. Pakistan took the worst of it. You knew we had devastated Korea didn't you?”
“Yes, that happened just before I left on vacation. That was what it was meant to be I thought. But when I saw the blooms over Omaha I knew it would turn into something else. By the time I got up here it was what it was, the militia was trying to create its own government, steal everything it could use for its own benefit or whatever.”
“Have you tried to talk to them, Will, or Mr. de Young,” Jim asked?
“Who would we talk to?”
“You have some of their radios. I bet you could arrange a pow wow if you tried.”
“You are wrong about that, Jim. But I will not be the one to burst your bubble. We will take you back to the rendezvous point tomorrow as planned. Why don't you and some of your people come up here and see if you can get to talk to them. Bring a couple of helicopters, bring some heavy stuff that you can use to impress them if you need to, maybe an M-48 tank or two. Because if you don't bring the heavy stuff you won't make it past the first meeting place that was compromised night before last. You do know that your buddy Ken Stills was gutted by those people don't you?”
“No, I was not aware of that. But it changes nothing. The killing has to stop sooner than later. Things are getting better. We are restoring grid for electricity every day. We never lost any of our ability to generate electricity, we just lost transmission capability for a time. We have television up and rolling in a few places. The”front" is stabilized in northern Florida and we are preparing for a counter attack there. Our fleet is basically intact and we had all our boomers return, reload and go back to sea in case the Ruskis got friendly again. The Sixth Fleet in the Med was lost for the most part but all their aircraft were able to get back to land in Israel or Jordan. But the Seventh Fleet in the Indian Ocean is intact and fully operable. We are beginning to rock and roll all over the country. There are a few places like this where there are problems. We don't yet have enough military men back in harness and trained up to take care of those places by ourselves. But we are working toward that end. So are the State Patrol in Montana and Idaho."
“How many men do you have available to bring here, Jim?”
“Ken and I were it. But we thought we would be coming here to do some negotiations, restore the civil government, and get things back to normal.”
“The last two that dad and I killed yesterday, did you notice dad, they were covered in prison tats?”
“Yes and that probably means not only the county jails all over this part of the state have been emptied but so have the prisons. Still think you are here to restore the civil government, bring peace to the area through negotiation, Jim?”
“Okay, I give in. When do you sortie again?”
“This evening. It generally takes us about an hour or two to get to the killing fields. They are usually very evident. The militiamen are such idiots they just go to sleep on sentry status. There are generally anywhere from ten to twenty on sentry status. We eliminate them starting at one end until we find no more. Then we move down and attack those at the roadblock. And Jim, there has never been a night yet where there were not at least half a dozen cars of average people that made the mistake of getting off I-80 onto Hwy. 93. And all the cars seem to have at least one child in them lately. We try to kill all the roadblock guards every night. We throw them all in the back of their pick-up trucks and light them afire in the hopes some of the rest will come out to see what is going on. We got four pick-ups and a Humvee the last time we had them come out. But they have stopped doing that. When they don't do that they try to set some kind of trap for us in the forest with anywhere from three to five guys. We do them and then come on home with all the weapons, ammunition and cash we can carry.”
“Jim,” Dad said, “you being a Green Beret probably doesn't mean shit here frankly. If you have never served in a long range recon unit with the army in a combat situation your skills are in need of honing. Have you ever done that kind of thing, J
im?”
“Exactly what do you refer to Mr. de Young,” asked Jim, a little ruffled by the directness of what dad had said, and then added, “No, I have not done long range recon.”
“You'll see this evening. Let's get some rest.”
We geared up that evening, not so much for a sortie but for Jim's training. Dad said to him, “We will slip into the forest. We will be within five hundred yards of the house. It will be your job to find us. Do not go down the animal trail that you saw leading toward the house today. If you do that we will have to be taking punji stakes out of you. So you have the area toward the forest from the trail, no less than one hundred feet or so from the trail into the trees please. Then you have the forest. We will not be together. Use your night vision. Walk carefully.”
We left the house. Jim came out about fifteen minutes later as planned. He struck out into the forest and was making so much noise he couldn't hear himself think. He was only aware of his visual acuity at that point. After he had gone about fifty yards into the forest, Will had him in a hold that could have ended with Jim's throat cut. Will said to him, “Quiet down, go more slowly, walk more carefully.” And then Will disappeared into the forest again. Within no more than ten steps Will was lost to Jim, who by that time was embarrassed and a little panicky.
But he was game, I will say that for him. He struck off into the forest again. This time he moved a little more slowly but was still making so much noise he could hear nothing else around him but that noise. Dad poked him in the butt with an arrow from a crossbow. As he turned toward dad, I took him back into the hold that would end with his throat slit. “Jesus, guys,” he said, “how in the hell do you do that?”
“You will learn, Jim,” Dad said, and then ominously he said, “You will have to learn to stay here or you will die.” We went back to the house. I took Jim with me out into the woods again. I showed him how slowly it was necessary to move and how much distance one could cover very slowly but seemingly in just a few seconds. We started back toward the house from about a mile into the woods. We were both covered in camo and our skins were painted the colors of the forest as well. I signaled him to shut up and sit down where he was.
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