by C. L. Jones
Cowboy looked back at Pops and with a wink and a grin said, “What will you bet they’re back this morning? Better get Surfer ready.”
Pops nodded his head yes and got up and walked over to Tracker and Surfer. “Hey maybe we should be ready when or if they come back.” Surfer nodded agreement and picked up his things and started for the blue team guard position. Surfer yelled at his new dummies, Cowboy and Rocky, and they set themselves up again as a trap at the blue team guard outpost. Cowboy and Rocky took a handful of grass and stuffed it in the back of their hats letting it hang down the back. If anyone came up behind them, it would cover the back of their head and neck and hopefully make it look like a stuffed dummy sitting there.
Sometimes in life things just go your way. Surfer and his dummies had no more than gotten into position when Roadside let out a bird call and pointed down the hill. Just as Pops and Tracker realized what Roadside’s whistling meant they heard the sound of the truck’s engine. An old green truck that looked like the same truck as before was chugging along the road up the hill. Pops hoped that the same numb nuts was driving it again.
This truck was old and beat-up and had a shabby appearance, looking like it had been around before the invention of dirt. Pops thought the truck’s engine sounded a little better than some of the newer military trucks he’d heard sputtering around a few of the military posts where he’d been stationed. Between the driver’s shifting you could hear the engine winding out as if it was trying to shift by itself. This reminded Pops why he liked trucks to have automatic transmissions so you wouldn’t have to suffer through the driving of inexperienced truck operators. The driver in the cab had most likely been picked at random and clearly was not experienced.
The Crew had never ventured far from where they’d made themselves at home the night before. They quickly took up locations that would best cover the hill. Surfer and his two dummies were in position at the guard post. Pops grinned to himself noting that Cowboy and Rocky couldn’t have been any better chosen for the job. They played their parts as dummies perfectly.
Pops saw the green dirty canvas of the truck starting to appear over the top of the grass as the truck advanced slowly up the hill. It seemed to come into view an inch at a time. Pops was unsuccessful in lifting his head high enough to get a view over the top of the grass so he could see through the truck’s windshield. He wanted to see if anyone was riding shotgun alongside the driver which could have been pretty important if they got into a shootout.
The old truck finally coasted to a stop at the wide spot in the road where the food container had been dropped off the night before. The empty container sat there with the lid open and the flies were having a heyday. It looked to be a typical stop. The driver got out and like the night before and walked to the back of the truck, untied the flap, flipped it up and secured it. However this time there were no other men in the back of the truck. He dropped the tailgate and reached inside the truck bed and pulled out another green mess hall food container. He set the new container down and showed his displeasure about the condition of the previous container. He tucked his lips together and whistled at Surfer, then turned with the old container and walked back to the rear of the truck. He put the old container in the back on the truck bed, slammed the tail gate shut and attached the canvas back in place. The driver then got in the truck showing no sign of noticing anything out of the ordinary. He made a tight circle with the truck and headed back down the hill.
Except for Roadside the Crew members got up with a look of disbelief on their faces. Roadside stayed in place and watched the truck for a long time until it was out of sight. Finally, he got up and walked back to the rest of the team. As he approached the team he said, “Man I thought they would have a truck full of dudes in there with full auto weapons to wipe us out. Hell that’s what I would have done. But I suppose they’d have to think like us and figure that we were here before they could wipe us out.”
The team said nothing but stared at Roadside with worried expressions painted on their faces. Pops looked at each of the men and said, “Well I guess it wouldn’t hurt any of us to stay on our toes. They could be trying to pull something; you know get us while we’re eating, or put something in the food. I know it’s rough but maybe we should eat our MRE’s and maybe the food in this container has a better use. We could leave it here and if it is tainted and some of them come back, they might eat it. Maybe they will or maybe they won’t.”
Switching gears, Tracker asked, “Okay how are we going to take the bridge?”
Pops answered immediately, “From two sides.”
You could see the light come on in the Crew’s eyes. Cowboy said, “Yea, I’ll take two of the guys and head back around on the other side, and Pops, you take two and go in from this side.” It was dead still for a second as the team looked at each other with hesitation and dread on their faces. Doing this meant going back the way that they’d just come, back around the hill, back across the river and then on to the bridge. Even with the dreaded consequences of the hazards they knew this was the best alternative.
The team gathered around Pops to continue the discussion on the plan for the tree bridge when all of the sudden Cowboy looked at the team and said, “Hey how do the replacements come and go so easy, you know?” He waited for what he’d said to sink in for the rest of the team.
“Sure,” said Surfer, “they must have an easy way to cross. All we need to do is find it.”
Pops nodded his head yes and quickly said, “You’re right and it better be fast.”
Like good field soldiers, the Crew grabbed some MRE’s ready to search for the easy route across the river. They opened the container with the hot meals to find toast, scrambled eggs and crispy bacon. They closed the container and left the meals there thinking it was perfect. How could anybody on the blue team pass them up after a night in the field?
They returned the way they’d come down the hill to the riverbed staying in the grass as much as they could. Once there they spread out looking for their own tracks and the tracks of the blue team replacements.
It wasn’t long before Rocky and Roadside found the tracks that the blue team had made as they traveled along the river. Tracker was on the riverbank working back and forth like a bloodhound. Surfer was standing up in the grassy area with his arms folded across his chest watching. Pops looked at Surfer and motioned as if to ask what’s going on? Surfer bent over and sniffed like a dog and pointed to Tracker. Just as Pops’ eyes shifted back to Tracker he took off down the shoreline. In a heartbeat the team spread out to give him cover. They weren’t sure what he was doing but nevertheless they had his back. After a couple hundred yards Tracker stopped and held up his left arm and pointed to the ground with his right arm.
Tracker then headed like he was going to run directly into the river but turned at the last moment and continued down the river’s shoreline. There it was. Like magic the river funneled into a really narrow place where the water was even rougher than any other place the team had seen. Bridging the river was a huge tree that was embedded well into both sides of the bank. It’s not the crossing that the mess truck had used but this would have to do. Spending more time looking for a better path was out of the question since it would cost them valuable time they didn’t have. They could see that the large tree had been there for a long time.
The team headed to their side of the newly discovered water crossing and when they arrived they carefully looked it over. Cowboy crossed his arms across his chest, smiled and smugly said, “Well boys I knew it was here all along. I just thought everything was going way too easy for us so I picked a harder path upstream across the stones. I thought that maybe we needed a challenge to kick us in gear.” The team laughed and shook their heads.
Showing more relief than the rest of the men, Surfer said jokingly, “I think I can make this one.” Cowboy jumped up on the big tree and took off like a ten-year boy in a city park without much trouble. About half way across he motioned for the rest o
f the team to join him. Surfer held his hand out and said, “Maybe this time I should be in front, that way nobody has to come all the way back for me.”
Cowboy reached the other side and secured the area for the remaining team members to cross. One by one the remaining Crew took their place on the tree and crossed. Most were a little slower than Cowboy but everyone made it in a tenth of the time of the first crossing. Pops thought of the raft and then of the struggle with the stepping stones and rope while all along this tree was right here. Why did the blue team find it so easily? Once again he thought, it was provided for them and they knew ahead of time right where it was. This river crossing was not within the boundaries of the course plus it was far enough away and out of sight from the course that it would not easily be found. Yes, the blue team must have been told about it before the competition began.
After the team was across and firmly on the ground again they were ready to continue. Tracker found the place where the blue team replacements had headed down the river bank and turned up the hill. The Crew followed the tracks and climbed up the hill. It was steep but the going was much easier than the one they’d come down in the dark because nature had provided its own steps on this slope. They topped the hill finding a small grassy clearing at the hill crest. Looking back Pops could see the new tree bridge without any problem, but again, you’d have to get close enough to the edge to see it and that would mean you would have to venture far off the prescribed course.
Pops and Cowboy split the guys into two teams and headed in different directions. Cowboy took Surfer and Tracker toward the other side of the original tree bridge that crossed the crevasse. Pops took Rocky and Roadside and also headed to the original tree bridge but he would come up from the valley-side. When both sides were in place they would signal the other team.
Pops knew that his team would be in place long before Cowboy’s team because the distance his team had to travel was much smaller. He and his team worked through the forest taking their time, keeping an eye out for unwanted surprises. The tree bridge was not far off and he knew if the blue team had experienced men they could send them out to set a few traps in case the red team was doing just what they were doing.
Through the trees Pops saw someone moving around. He motioned for Rocky and Roadside to stay low and go slow and watch for the movement ahead. They both nodded that they’d seen the movement as they all slowly crouched down to their knees and then to their bellies. Pops motioned for the team to move forward. When the team was about twenty-five yards from the bridge they could see that there were two blue team men guarding this side of the tree bridge and two on the other side. The four blue team guys looked pretty relaxed and Pops thought, why shouldn’t they look relaxed? After all, they thought the game was fixed in their favor.
Although Pops didn’t like his take-no-prisoners attitude, he knew from experience that the rest of the Crew would be thinking like him. If they could take four simultaneous shots at the four blue team targets it would be a no contest, contest. The two teams of two men guarding each side of the bridge walked around looking like they were paintball weekend warriors in the woods playing silly paint ball games. Unfortunately for them, if everything went right they would experience a splat that wouldn’t be quite the same as the red or yellow splat that they got during their paintball days.
The theory that surfaced in Pops’ thinking a couple of days ago came back again. To him it seemed the other team was nothing but a bunch of wannabe agents. Maybe they were nothing more than paintball heroes, cannon fodder, or worms on a hook. If so there was nothing to stop the organization from leaking a story that the Crew had gone crazy during training and killed a bunch of new trainees. It looked like someone from the organization had recruited a bunch of know nothing guys. The know nothings were probably told that this was training and afterwards they would be super spies or something like that.
Furthermore, Pops thought it was likely that most of these new recruits had nothing else going in their lives. Probably they had failed at being able to get and hold down a good paying job. They could be living off mommy and daddy and may have tried and failed to get accepted in a branch of the military. It would be nothing for the organization to get the records of all the poor suckers that fell into this sorry group. It would only be a matter of picking through the psychic profile results and enlisting the weakest and the best victims.
The bottom line was, if any of this was true, it would have been easy for the organization to play the new recruits. Pops bet to himself that these recruits had no hint of what they were in for. They never thought this adventure would go down with them losing their lives, and if they had graves, they would never be found. There were many lost young wanderers out there who were candidates for the organization to pick from. For years the American culture had labeled these wanderers and pointed out that they were in the process of “finding” themselves. But Pops thought that attaching a label and making excuses for these people was not helping.
For the organization it was almost like an egg carton and the bad guys just had to open the lid and pick from among the cracked eggs.
CHAPTER TWELVE:
TOO EASY
Pops and his team stayed in position waiting for some kind of sign from Cowboy and his team. As much as he didn’t want to, Pops had time to remember years of doing jobs like this. When you’ve been a trigger for so long, you figure that’s what you will always be. Sometimes the memories creep in without any warning. Pops would catch himself and try to change what he was thinking by shifting his thoughts back to his family. This time he didn’t have to because Rocky interrupted his train of thought by tapping him on the shoulder and pointing to the far side of the bridge.
At first Pops didn’t see anything but then there was a small movement near one of the trees. As he watched he could see Cowboy sticking his head out from behind the tree. Cowboy, acting like a kid, would look around the tree and smile at Pops, Rocky and Roadside then disappear behind it again. Pops worked his way behind a tree to a hiding place of his own and signaled to Cowboy that his team should take the two men on their side of the bridge and Pops and his team would take the two on his side.
Pops ducked back down and motioned to Rocky to take the guard on the left and for Roadside to take down the man on the right. Pops stood back up behind the tree and gave Cowboy the thumbs up. Cowboy ducked in behind the tree and after a few seconds reappeared and signaled that they were ready. Pops looked down at the men lying at his feet and nodded his head. He pointed his finger at them asking if they were ready. The men looked up, nodded their heads yes and took aim at their targets.
The men standing guard were completely unaware of what was about to happen to them. They were in full view walking around playing Mr. Macho paintball dude. When one of them came near one of the other guards they would stop and talk to each other. Pops thought how easy it was and how sometimes we have no idea how close the end might be. The next step you take or the next breath you take could be the last one and you’d never get a chance to say goodbye to your loved ones.
Pops looked at the two men, then at Cowboy and raised his hand. Cowboy raised his hand. With a nod to Cowboy Pops dropped his hand as a signal to commence firing. Cowboy took only a split second to drop his hand. There was a thunderous eardrum busting harmonized ringing of shots that filled the air. A split second before the first trigger was pulled the men on each side turned toward Pops and Cowboy. It looked like they wanted to cry out, in which case it would have been the last words of the last few seconds of their agonizing end. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion in a burnt, smoky, gunpowder-filled moment. The two targets had turned in Pops’ direction for half of a heartbeat before they dropped, being hit by the weapon fire. Pops had watched the four targets at the same time and hadn’t flinched at the sounds of the weapons fire. He’d just blinked his eyes and the targets were down.
Pops had been in partial view but now he stepped out from behind the tree. He checked the ar
ea where the men had been standing and seeing no movement, raised his hand and let out a victorious yell. Roadside and Rocky jumped to their feet and scanned the area as far as they could see. Cowboy came into full view and looked over at Pops as his team stood next to him checking the area as well. The two teams walked towards the motionless targets lying on the ground who now looked like the straw dummies they’d left at the top of the hill near the raging river.
After reaching the downed men, the teams searched the bodies to find anything they could later use. One thing every ground pounder knows is scavenging. You never leave anything you can use that could also be used by the other side. So they grabbed the ammo, weapons, and some packaged food off the bodies. Pops, Roadside and Rocky stood over the bodies looking at each other and across the crevasse at Cowboy’s team with the timeless glassy eyed feeling of emptiness that Pops knew well.
Cowboy called out across the pit, “By my count its blue team one and red team seven. I think the blue team members have been eliminated except for the last guy who maybe is their new leader.”
Pops nodded to Cowboy and yelled back, “You and your team wait there.” Then he turned to his team and said, “Let’s go.”
Pops and his team headed back down the way they’d come. They knew that they’d have to work their way down the hill towards the riverbank to find where Cowboy and his team had headed up the other side. All the way down the hill towards the river no one said a word. They just kept an eye on the landscape, checking everything and everywhere looking for a hint of a trap. You never relax just because you’d taken down a few of the other side. Mr. Paranoia kicks in and tells you that the dead men could have been bait and you could be the big fat dumb fish walking into the trap.