Redoubled

by Warren Esby

  Apparently Muffy wasn’t completely satisfied for long, because all of a sudden she saw one of the hounds start to get up and she growled again, a little more forcefully and all three went from sitting to lying down and staring at her. She again seemed satisfied and appeared to be smiling again. I looked over at Anya who was looking on with approval and thought to myself that the scene reminded me of when Anya was surrounded by the three officers who had been admiring her after she had shot those pine cones off the tree. As I looked at the two blonde females in my life, the thought came to me. Blondes do seem to have more fun.

  Buddy led us about fifty yards into the woods along a trail and we ended up in some cover behind some fallen trees. He showed us a small grove of wild pecan trees with some puddles under them a short distance away where he said the wild pigs liked to root the pecans out of the puddles where the water had softened them up. There was some mud on the side of the trees which he said was where the pigs liked to rub up against them. He said we should wait there and he would take the hounds with him, and would also take Muffy if she wanted to go, and go a bit further along and see if he could send the pigs towards us from a swampy area nearby where he knew they liked to hang out. He said this was one of the areas they liked to travel to, from a fresh-water stream nearby.

  He was gone about a half an hour and Anya and I enjoyed the peace of the woods. The bugs were not too bad since it was fairly cool and we had sprayed ourselves pretty liberally with DEET. I almost started dozing off when we heard the dogs baying in the distance and then we heard some rustling in the brush and a group of five or six pigs came through. They stopped near the pecan trees to have a snack, and we could just see them through the light brush about seventy-five yards away. I signaled to Anya and we both got into position.

  I fired at one of the pigs and I was sure that I hit it. But this pig was a tough customer. It fired back at me, and it sounded like it was a 7.62 mm caliber rifle that it was using. The pigs in Arizona hadn’t been that tough. I saw Anya’s first shot hit another of the pigs, and I thought for sure it was a goner, but that pig shot back at her as well. It was a good thing we were in deep cover because then the pigs really started firing at us. I got a glimpse of one of them. It almost looked like the pig was wearing a keffiyeh and had a beard and had a very human-looking face. I thought for a minute that I must be dreaming, and that these must be the Russian boars that Buddy had told us had been imported years before and were now roaming wild. We hadn’t encountered any Russian boars in Arizona so I didn’t realize that they looked so different from American pigs. When I noticed the keffiyeh and beard, I just assumed the boars must have been from the eastern part of Russia where all the countries ending in “stan” are from. Although Anya and I are of Russian descent, our families were from the western part of the country.

  I know a little about the various stanistans. At least that is what I call all those innumerable countries in that part of the world that end in stan, many of which had been part of the Soviet Union like Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and some that weren’t, like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iranistan. I know something about them from school and had to memorize all the names that I had just recited to you, but I didn’t realize that all the pigs in that part of the world looked like the people there and Arab people, no less, since there are a lot of Arabs in the stanistans. I guess you realize that irrational thoughts will go through your mind when you are under stress and nothing stresses you out like being in a fire fight with a lot of people shooting at you. Of course I quickly realized that this wasn’t a dream about pigs looking like humans, and that the ones firing at us were human and might actually be Stan something or other because they were dressed like Arabs.

  Just then, Buddy appeared behind us and told us that there were six of them out there, all armed with AK-47s. Once again I had been lucky because I had decided to buy semi-automatics for hunting rifles instead of the slower to fire bolt actions and had the foresight to buy several clips for each. We did not have the fire power of the AK-47s, but we were not far off, and Buddy had his AR-15. He told me to stay put and continue to fire at the pigs, and he and Anya were going to set a trap. He would put Anya in some cover he knew that would not put her in my line of fire, and he would circle around and close in from a point where the three of us would have clear shots without being in each other’s way. He knew that swamp like the back of his hand and told us that we couldn’t have got them in a better trap than if we had set it up on purpose.

  I asked him, as I continued to fire periodically, if he knew who they were and he said he thought they were after him for revenge for what he had done during his last tour in Afghanistan. So our adversaries were Arab Afghanis, and Afghanistan is a stan after all. And then he and Anya disappeared and I was alone in the swamp hoping I would remain lucky since I was the bait and had to hold them off until Buddy and Anya circled around. Well thankfully, none of those Stan Afghans were used to the swamp since the stan lands are mainly arid, and they got caught. Buddy took out a couple before they saw him and the rest left their cover and started to move in the direction that looked open and inviting to them. Anya was waiting and took out two more. The last two took a chance and came directly at me, and I got my full bag limit of two pigs per day as well. That’s not quite true. There are no bag limits on pigs, either porcine or human, in South Carolina.

  Buddy was good. He could tell what tribes they were from by the keffiyehs they wore. Buddy told us he had been on patrol with someone during his last tour in Afghanistan who had “lost it” and fired indiscriminately during a fire fight and killed or wounded some civilians along with the insurgents. The head of the tribe had vowed revenge on everyone although only one had done the shooting, and that soldier was immediately arrested. Buddy didn’t know how they found him, but he didn’t think it was a coincidence. I wasn’t so sure since Anya and I had been doing a little killing on our own, although Buddy said he was sure the keffiyehs belonged to the tribe where his unit had been patrolling. He looked at both of us after the fire fight and was surprised at how calm and dispassionate we both were, especially Anya.

  “It looks like this isn’t your first time in a firefight. You both look too calm about it.” And then turning to me, he said, “Were you over there?”

  “No. But we’ve been in these situations before. And for the right side, by the way so don’t think we’re criminals or anything. We’re part of the good guys.”

  “Anya too? She looks pretty cool with it.”

  “Anya too. She is cool. Probably more cool about it than I am.” I looked at her when I said it and she blew me a kiss. She really likes to be acknowledged as cool and as good as any man when it comes to killing, people or animals, and especially pigs of both kinds.

  “And I’m not entirely sure they were after you rather than us. What do we do now with the bodies? Do you have any suggestions? Do you have to report it? Will it affect your position?”

  “I really don’t know. I’d rather it hadn’t happened and I’d rather not report it.”

  “Okay. Let’s get some advice on this.”

  I called Ben and let him know what happened. He suggested the usual procedure for disposal and asked if there were any remote places nearby. I, in turn, asked Buddy who said there was a clearing not too far from there. We loaded the bodies into the bed of his pickup and followed him to the clearing where we dumped the bodies in a pile after removing all their identification and personal effects from their bodies. I gave Ben the coordinates on my GPS and he told me it would be at least two hours to get the drones there from the Charleston Air Force Base. We settled on 2:00 PM. Ben had a dog whistle and called in the dogs. Muffy came in with them but lagging well behind the rest and looking like she had had the time of her life, all covered with dirt and mud and out of breath with her fur plastered against her.

  We went to Buddy’s uncle’s place and he put his dogs in a pen, and we hosed off Muffy and dried her with a towel. We
left Buddy’s truck at his uncle’s, and then we all went and got a bite to eat at a fast-food restaurant. Muffy was sacked out in the back of the Expedition, exhausted by her activity. She was definitely out of shape compared to the hunting dogs. She was still sleeping in the back of the Expedition when we got back from lunch. We all went back to the clearing in the Expedition. I called Ben again and said we would be standing in front of our Expedition a short distance from the clearing and to tell the drone operator to look to see if they could identify any other vehicles out in the woods near us. The drones came on time and there was a big explosion and a big crater was all that was left behind. It began to fill up with water because we were in the Low Country after all, and whatever remains were left in the crater would soon be under water.

  “I hope your uncle won’t mind that we had to rearrange the landscape a little,” I said.

  “I think he’ll agree it was for a good cause. What’s one pond more or less?”

  Ben got back to me. There was another SUV on a parallel road. He gave me the GPS coordinates and we found it without too much trouble. It was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. Ben told me where to drop it off in a parking lot in Georgetown. Just leave it unlocked with the keys underneath the mat, he told me and he would have someone take it and search it and decide what to do with it. I told him we had collected all the personal effects of the six attackers and would leave them in the SUV as well. Buddy told us that he knew where the lot was and volunteered to drive the SUV. We followed him and dropped it off and took him back to his uncle’s.

  On the way back he asked, “What branch of the government are you with, or can’t you say.”

  “We can’t. Sorry.”

  “I didn’t think you’d tell me but I can see you’re connected. Am I okay? Knowing what I know?”

  “You don’t know anything except we had a good hunt today and killed some pigs.”

  “Well, that hunting trip didn’t exactly turn out like I expected.”

  “Well, I did get to shoot a pig,” said Anya. “Actually I got three, didn’t I Alexei?” She usually calls me Alexei whenever she’s happy.

  “We both got three. Poor Buddy only got two.”

  And then turning to Buddy, I continued, “Pigs are pigs to us. Human or otherwise.”

  “Y’all are a strange pair. But you sure can shoot and you sure can hunt. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but let’s stick to animals the next time.”

  “We’d like to. Let’s keep in touch. I’m not sure what our schedule is like, but I’ll let you know.” I glanced over at Anya and she nodded.

  “What do I tell people about the explosion if they mention it?”

  “Weren’t we in a swamp? Doesn’t swamp gas explode?”

  “Good point. That’ll be my explanation.”

  We dropped Buddy off, said our goodbyes and headed back to Charleston. Muffy had gone back to sleep in the back after having been awakened by the explosion. She whimpered on occasion and her feet twitched as she slept. I was sure she was still chasing the pigs in her dreams.

  Chapter 30

  Ben called about a week after we got back to Charleston to fill us in on what they had found out about our attackers. They had analyzed Internet traffic and used the information from the personal effects and the hint that Buddy had given us about the tribe that the keffiyeh wearers belonged to in Afghanistan, as well as the CIA’s informants there, and determined that Al Qaeda had started a new program to see if they could infiltrate jihadists into the United States to commit terrorist attacks within the country. They planned to start in isolated areas and see how many Americans they could kill before being detected as an organized group of terrorists, and they thought the United States domestic authorities would just attribute the killings in remote areas as random acts of violence that often occurred in the United States rather than as organized terrorist attacks.

  The tribal members who had a gripe against Buddy’s outfit volunteered to be the vanguard of the new effort as long as Buddy could be the first target, so Buddy’s suspicion had been right. I called him to tell him that after Ben said he thought it would be all right to let Buddy know so he would be careful and look out for his own safety. From the subsequent Internet traffic and their informants in Afghanistan, the CIA had learned that Al Qaeda had concluded that the Americans were much tougher than they expected. They knew Americans were generally armed, but they did not think their hunting weapons would be a match for AK-47s, and they didn’t think they would be tough enough to put up a fight because they seemed to be such decadent and lazy people, as they had been led to believe.

  Al Qaeda was now re-evaluating the program and had put it on hold after the resistance they had run into, including the loss of the entire group of infiltrators, and they did not think they would resume it until they had more information. Ben and Edy were congratulated for discovering the program and using one of their groups of subcontractors to wipe out the terrorists before they could do any damage, and they were promoted and got big bonuses as a result of their efforts. We told them that we were happy for them and that we could be of help.

  There turned out to be both good news and bad news from the events that had transpired. The good news was that it seemed that Anya and I were not the targets directly, only indirectly because we had been with Buddy. Apparently, although Dong had tried to get rid of me on three occasions, he had done so without having learned my true identity and passing it on. As far as we knew, whoever was in charge of the program of mass liquefaction within Al Qaeda was unlikely to know my true identity. As a result, I was still of value to the CIA, and Anya and I could continue with our mission.

  The bad news was now the CIA had to contend with a new domestic threat from Al Qaeda that they had not been aware of, although they should have expected such threats after the success that Al Qaeda had in getting the team into the country that had been responsible for 9/11. When you are dealing with people who are willing to die to promote their cause because they believe they will go to heaven, the powers that be in this country should have known that the United States would always be vulnerable to individuals willing to infiltrate the country and go on a rampage without any concern that they could escape afterwards.

  And it continues to be too easy to get into the country because of our porous borders. The personal effects of the individuals that we had left for the CIA to examine indicated that some of them had been in the Bahamas and some in Mexico before they arrived in the United States. It was surmised that some had come across the Mexican border, which has always been considered a good entry route for both men and firearms into the United States. However, there was now a suggestion that the Bahamas, which is only a short distance by sea from Florida with its very long coast line, also might be a location that needed to be watched. As a matter of fact, the close proximity of the Bahamas did turn out to be a problem as we were to find out later in our mission.

  At any rate, the CIA had concluded that no area of the United States was safe from potential Al Qaeda attacks since some of our attackers appear to have made an entry into the country some two thousand miles away from their target and had no trouble traveling undetected and armed across practically the entire country to South Carolina. Although the CIA didn’t think there were any more of these kinds of infiltrators currently in operation, they now knew they would have to increase their vigilance for this new threat.

  Nothing much happened over the two weeks after we returned, and Anya and I got bored with visiting the local houses and plantations and listening to little old ladies and little old men wax nostalgic about how life was like before cruise ships were invented. And then three events happened in rapid succession and we were back at it. First, Ben called and told us that Woolsey had been killed and his office and laboratory ransacked and a lot of his research data had been stolen. Second, several animal balloons appeared in the Cancer Institute’s experimental animal facility and, third, I met the sick Sikh.

  The
animals that got sick belonged to the sick Sikh, but that’s not how I met him. Muffy and I took a walk along East Bay Street towards White Point Garden which is located at the tip of the Charleston peninsula from where you can see Ft. Sumter. When we got there, I saw a man in a turban with a German Shepherd off leash but very well behaved, and the man was giving the shepherd basic commands periodically and then walking along with the dog heeling and then giving him more commands like sit, lie, stay, and so on. The dog looked very well trained. Muffy was on a leash because I didn’t want to take a chance she would dart out into traffic, but the shepherd’s owner was not concerned because he was in absolute control of his dog. When we got close to them, I commented to him on how well trained his dog was.

  He told his dog to sit and then he said to me, “Thank you for noticing. I train shepherds as attack dogs and this is a young one. First you have to train them on the basics and get them to listen to you, and then you train them as attack dogs. This one shows a lot of promise. He is already learning to attack on command.”

  I made a mistake and said, “He looks really mild mannered to me. I thought attack dogs looked fierce and ready to eat someone.”

  “Not if they’re trained properly. If given the right signal they change instantly. I’ll show you.”

  With that, he put the leash back on the shepherd. I was standing about ten feet away and Muffy was standing beside me on a loose lead.