by J. L. Bourne
We rode for a good bit until we came upon another cliff that overlooked a river valley. The bend in the valley below looked familiar; perhaps I fished there as a child with my dad, or maybe skinny-dipped with a teenage girlfriend at some point in the past.
“We usually don’t ride during the day, but I needed to get away from the camp for a while,” said Mars. “Listen, Max, we’re into the idea about pushing the feds back across the Mississippi, but half my people aren’t trained. What’s your play?”
“Well, like I told you, my friend is being held in Bentonville and I’m going to get him. That’s about it,” I said.
“How do you think you’ll get inside the perimeter? Just walk through the control point?”
I could hear the frustration in his voice as he tried to reconcile what he thought might be pure disregard for my own life.
“I don’t know exactly how I’m getting inside, but I do know that I will get in, either as a prisoner, an infiltrator, or a corpse.”
“Well, we do have some captured equipment I think you might be familiar with. A few of our engineers were able to patch up the ultralight from the liberation of the camp at the university.”
“You . . . you have my aircraft?” I asked in disbelief.
Mars went on to explain how his mission in the early days was to acquire as much equipment as he could from the provisional government by any means necessary. This included salvage.
“So, yeah, it’s got some carbon-fiber patch tape and some extra wire and wing material, but it works.”
“Got any parachutes?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got a stack of those.”
“Wow.”
“Paratroopers dropped in from a C-130 a while back. They were deserters. Two of them that were from Arkansas stayed on with us irregulars, and the rest kept moving west on foot to where they were from. The C-130 pilot agreed to do only three drops before he’d need the rest of his fuel to get back to his hometown. He was a deserter too, I suppose. None of those boys wanted a hand in all this bullshit. Pilot made his three drops in three different parts of the country and headed for home. He probably sat the Herc down on empty in a cornfield somewhere.”
“Damn.”
“Well, Max, let’s hunt. I’ll introduce you to one of our paratroopers when we get back.”
Mars and I then sat quietly, prone atop a thin roll-out ground mattress on the rock that overlooked the valley. His 7.62 AR had some serious glass on it and could probably hit a drinking deer a quarter mile away. My little 9mm sub gun would be lucky to hit a rabbit at fifty meters, so I spotted for Mars and ran security as he glassed the riverbank below. He grumbled about how these woods were picked clean and that it’d be a generation before they’d be full of deer again. Eventually we packed up and started the rocky, narrow trail back to the camp.
—————
After returning to camp, I reorganized my kit and went looking for Mars. The sun was getting low and the activity was starting to pick up here. It was obvious that these guys were the nocturnal type, and for good reason. When going up against a superior force, it’s best to lean on the advantage of darkness, especially when you have a night vision capability as robust as these guys do.
Mars was talking to some of his people as I approached the fire. He glanced over and saw me and waved me over as he continued to speak. After giving his perimeter orders, he told me that he had someone he wanted me to meet.
“Savannah, get over here,” Mars said over the hum of activity.
A woman about five-foot-nine parted the group and stepped out in front of the fire alongside Mars. She appeared to be about twenty-five and her features were stunning. Her long hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her golden skin reflected the firelight. The woman stood there stoically when Mars introduced me.
“Savannah, this is—”
“I know who he is; I’ve seen the posters, sir.”
“Max, Savannah was one of the paratroopers that fell from the sky a while back, so save the angel jokes about her falling from heaven, because, well, she did and she’s heard all of them.”
Savannah wore a camouflage uniform in what looked like a multicam pattern. She had a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger on her hip in a Kydex sheath and a HK handgun beside it. A Remington 700 was slung across her back attached to a buckskin sling. Her eyes were calculating and she seemed to size me up right there in front of the fire. In that second, I was either worthy to hear her words or I wasn’t.
“You did good last year, even if half the reports were bullshit.”
I responded with only a nod.
I already met my quota of trusting alpha female warriors this decade, no matter how hot they were. I listened to Savannah give Mars a sitrep of the local area, watching her eyes remain locked on to Mars as he responded with new orders. Her body language and demeanor seemed to indicate that she’d follow Mars, but the moment she stopped believing in him, she’d skin him for a raincoat and take over.
She glanced over at me a few times and I didn’t dare look away. I just returned her stare with my own, fighting back the dry eyes brought on by the blazing fire. Once her orders were given, she left without a word in the direction of the dying light. I’d hoped I’d get to see Savannah again at some point, but I knew I couldn’t count on it in a world like this.
I thought this the best time to tell Mars my plans to leave after sunset.
“Max, wait, I’ve got a deal for you,” Mars said, after realizing that I was serious. “Give it two more days before you leave. It’ll give us more time to formulate a better plan.”
“I can’t afford to lose the days. I don’t know what condition my friend is in,” I said.
“Yeah, I understand that, but if you leave on foot, it’s a twenty-mile hike through enemy territory. It’ll take you longer. Listen, stay; we’ll give you Molly two days from now and then you can leave. You can make those twenty miles on her a helluva lot faster than on foot.”
The fire licked the large blackened boulders that imprisoned it and the heat blasted the right side of my face to near boiling as the left side froze like the dark side of the moon. I stared at the fire as I weighed both options.
I went with the free horse one.
“Good, that’s good. I’m about to go out on a patrol. Savannah will be there. Wanna tag along?” Mars teased. “I saw how you were staring her down. Pretty ballsy. I’ve seen that go bad real quick.”
“Yeah, I’ll go. It’ll give me more time to get to know Molly. She’s the only girl in this camp I think I can trust,” I said, firing back at Mars.
Mars gave a huge belly laugh and slapped me on the back with the force of a grizzly bear before heading off into the darkness to where the horses were stabled.
—————
It was a bitterly cold night and getting worse as our small patrol headed down the mountain into the deep valley. One of the patrol’s horses pulled a small jerry-rigged trailer behind it. I hung back with Mars and kept my eyes peeled for any sign of threats. I could clearly see our own Milky Way galaxy in all its glory, with its hundred-thousand-year-old light somehow reaching through space and time to this little blue planet.
The clouds from my breathing intermittently blocked my sight picture through the NVD. We began to level off at the valley floor and I started to hear water rushing over unseen rocks through the trees to my left. I watched the patrol communicate via hand signals. Molly seemed to stop without prompting when the other horses did. It was obvious that my new horse had already been trained on a patrol or two.
Mars began to let the group open some distance between us. I noticed the large rectangular container lashed onto the side his saddle, but didn’t say anything. We hung back a ways so I took the opportunity to whisper.
“Who usually takes Molly?”
“Dicky,” Mars responded quietly.
“Where is he?”
“Dead. Raiders got him during recon.”
After another two hours of ridi
ng, the patrol set up shop inside an old barn at a two-way highway intersection. Its dilapidated condition reminded me of the barn I’d slept in on my way to find Jim. Old hay covered the dirt floor of the barn; the horses sniffed and snorted, but didn’t try to eat any.
The patrol whispered in a circle in the center of the barn as I stood near Mars.
“They’re on foot from here on out. Can’t risk losing the horses,” Mars said.
“On foot? Why the hell would they patrol that way?” I asked.
“They ain’t patrolling anymore. There’s supposed to be a supply truck moving through this area tonight. Got a tip from a reliable CI on the inside. We’re taking it. That’s why I’m here. The supply truck is due around midnight. We’ll be ready.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“We’ll hang back and let Savannah’s team do what they do, unless you want in on the action.”
I didn’t respond and waited for the team circle to break up.
“We’re ready,” said Savannah.
“Roger that. Execute,” Mars commanded.
I watched two men pull explosives from saddlebags along with a familiar weapon I’d used last year. A drum-shaped explosively formed penetrator. The concave circle of the hammered copper projectile plate shimmered in my NVD. I still remember Rich sending the plans out last year over HF radio so that people could build their own and take down armor; it appeared that it worked.
Teach a man to fish.
The assaulters pulled down their masks and readied their guns and stepped through the barn doors into the darkness, owning the night.
I followed Mars behind them.
The team set up a kill box at the intersection. I watched one of the assaulters construct a tripod from sticks and 100-mph tape before placing the EFP on top. He then proceeded to wire it up and take his position behind a massive dead oak tree fifty yards behind the explosive, opposite its intended blast cone.
I wasn’t part of the assault team. Mars and I stood back a ways on the crest of a rolling hill overlooking the action. It was two hours till midnight and the waiting game would begin.
I extended the side folding stock on my MP5K and screwed on the silencer. My reload mag was taped to the mag inside the gun using a dead NVD battery as a spacer. Sixty rounds of food for my roller lock sub gun to eat through. I checked my selector switch, making sure I had it in single shot instead of burst or auto. The gun could empty a full thirty round mag in about three seconds.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally, at about an hour till midnight, I saw something coming through the brush in front of Mars and me.
A skinny winter rabbit.
I pulled the HK up to my shoulder and put the rabbit on top of the front sight. Depressing the trigger, I sent the animal tumbling. I ran over to the small creature with my fixed blade already out to make sure it didn’t suffer. I did a partial field dress and tied the rabbit off on the outside of my pack. My bloody hands were stained and frozen against the cold metal of my sub gun, but at least I had some meat for stew later.
Worth it.
Through all the action with the rabbit, Mars said nothing, and aside from some IR light sweeping in my direction, there was no other reaction from the assaulters below.
Midnight came and went, and at about 0015 I caught an IR flash below. Mars quickly responded and the rest of the team didn’t move.
At 0030, things got interesting. A motorcycle engine revved and got louder, coming from the east. I began to see a bright beam of light coming down the hill, but I couldn’t see the light with my unassisted eye. The rider was using night vision like everyone else. As the engine noise increased, I could see real headlights appear on the hill behind the rider.
The rider was a scout for the supply truck, and if the rider was using NVD technology, it could see us if we didn’t secure any IR sources of light. Mars yelled “Douse!” down the hill and the small light sources went dark, just as the scout buzzed around the corner before the intersection.
I broke off from the group, nodding to Mars. He acknowledged right back.
Leaving my pack behind, I sprinted down the hill to the west and took position behind an abandoned tractor that lay flipped over on the side of the road. The motorcycle would be on the intersection at any moment, a minute or so ahead of the supply truck.
As the motorcycle approached, I stepped out of cover with my sub gun bearing down on the biker. The man skidded sideways, simultaneously pulling a sawed-off from the leather scabbard attached to his bike. I instinctively switched the gun from single- to three-round burst and squeezed the trigger. The silencer did what it was designed to do, and so did the heavy subsonic 9mm rounds. All three shots impacted the rider, sending the bike to the asphalt skidding and arcing sparks in circles like fireworks. The bike sailed off into the ditch with a loud crash.
The supply truck was at the intersection when I saw the bright flash. Instantly, I cupped my ears and got flat on the ground just before the sound and concussion wave hit. Bits of talcum-fine dust launched up into the air and slowly settled. The biker corpse remained still, as I expected, but I waited some time for him to bleed out. Gunfire erupted from the assaulters and the sounds of steel-core ammo punching through thin metal were eerie to listen to in the darkness. I caught a glimpse of a couple tracer shots coming from somewhere and hoped it was ours.
While the others were busy, I flipped over the biker, removed his NVD, and looked at his blank, lifeless face. I really shouldn’t have. You only get so many times to do that before you’re lifeless yourself. I closed the poor bastard’s eyes and scavenged what kit I deemed useful.
I didn’t bother checking the outlaw’s saddlebags, for reasons too messed up to go into here. Kinda funny—this guy working for the government; two years ago he would have been on their watch list. Now I’m on their kill list, when a couple years ago I was on their hire list. Just like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—just wait a regime or two to find a friend where once there was only the enemy.
The NVDs that the biker wore were scratched up, but still worked fine. I snagged his radio and turned it up as I walked back to the intersection where the assaulters were pulling cargo. My walkie let loose a split-second modem noise and screeched a frantic message.
“This is Supply Run Echo Tail, cargo under attack, send support, now!”
“Echo Tail, Talon One Six with two hours till bingo, state your posit, over.”
“Oh fuck, here we go,” I said aloud as our coordinates were being sent over the radio.
The pilot’s voice held a heavy Asian accent.
I began to run to the assault team, waving my IR light and trying to get their attention.
“What’s the fucking problem?” Savannah asked, somewhat annoyed.
Out of breath, I began to explain to her what I’d heard on the radio and how we’d likely have air support on top of our position soon.
“Roger that. Go get your ass up that hill and tell Mars!” Savannah barked as she and the others began to rapidly load the horse cart.
I hoofed it up the hill to tell Mars what I’d heard.
“Okay,” Mars responded.
“Okay? That’s it? A helicopter pilot with a GAU on NVDs will really fuck up our night, Mars,” I snapped.
Mars got up off the ground and calmly walked over to his horse. I heard the sounds of buckles and straps being loosened before Mars appeared from behind the animal, grunting as he carried the large rectangular container I’d noticed before.
He slowly flipped open the buckles on the container and opened the clamshell lid, revealing a Stinger antiaircraft missile. Mars configured the weapon efficiently, stopping just shy of inserting the battery coolant unit. He’d been saving that portion of the weapon configuration for aircraft targeting and engagement.
He then sat there atop the Stinger container chewing on some deer jerky.
“Okay, then. How many of th
ose do you have?” I asked.
“A lot. More than enough to make these fuckers think twice every time they send air support. We don’t go on patrol without Stingers.”
I immediately felt better about our odds. I watched from our vantage point as the assault team loaded the cart full and sent the horse away. After ten minutes or so, the cart would return empty. They must be off-loading the supplies and hiding them for later recovery. While the team stacked the second load, I could hear an engine, but this time it wasn’t a motorcycle or a helicopter.
Mars gave a quick IR flash sequence and the team below began to scatter like cockroaches.
“Hit the tree line—now!” Mars screamed. I grabbed my kit and rode Molly fast, galloping to the adjacent wooded area farther up the hill.
I knew jet noise well enough. Two low, hot engines should be an easy enough target for the Stinger to lock onto. I made sure I wasn’t leaking any IR light and stared up at the sky, looking to find what I knew was no doubt up there.
The Flanker came into view, breaking from the cover of tall trees and banking sharply out over the field. I held the radio up to my ear.
“Echo, Talon, remain clear, going hot,” the accented voice said firmly.
BRRRT!
The Flanker let loose a half-second burst from its gun, but it was too late. I could see the Stinger’s rocket light as the warhead began to break the sound barrier twice over. The missile hit the empennage of the aircraft, shooting shrapnel into the fuselage, avionics, engines, and human flesh. Numerous loud backfire sounds were heard just before a large explosion and then an even larger one as the plane hit the earth with massive amounts of highly flammable jet fuel remaining.
With the air threat neutralized, I dug my heels into Molly, sending her shooting down the hill to where I’d left Mars. As I approached the site, I could see the marks in the earth where the Flanker rounds had impacted and plowed the ground with several deep gouges. The oak tree nearby had holes blown out big enough to put a fist inside. I searched for Mars galloping back and forth until my eyes picked up some movement farther down the hill.