Midnight Skills

by William Allen

  So, back to plan A, Luke decided. Then he caught a glimpse of three newcomers approaching the fire, and he wondered if the plan might need some adjustment. Two of the men wore clean and serviceable-looking uniforms that looked black in the firelight, but Luke knew they were actually blue-tinged like the others. The third man, though, wore khakis and what looked like a safari jacket over a slender body, reminding Luke of Ichabod Crane. Tall, with jutting ears and a prominent Adam’s apple, this guy looked like a joke, except for the way the other four men at the fire reacted. Luke read a snapshot of their nonverbal cues and realized the four paramilitaries milling around were terrified of the odd man in his jungle safari gear. And the trio approached Luke with a determined step that meant they would be on top of him in seconds.

  Luke thought about running. He really did. He had his family back and a girl waiting for him at home. Home, he mused, I guess I never should have left the homeplace. These men, all three of them, wore holstered pistols, and the two bodyguards also bore rifles, though slung at the moment. Can I get away before they unlimber those rifles and start blasting, he wondered. His calculations ate up a part of a second before he realized he had a better option.

  “Cut him loose, boys. Once we get this one over to the tent, I’m sure he’ll tell us everything we want to know,” the skinny man said. His voice sounded rich, cultured, like a professor Luke had in one of his early entry night classes at Stephen F. Austin. An American History professor, he flashed on the man’s face when the two goons bent to grab Luke’s arms, and one of them produced a knife to cut the zip ties.

  Luke, of course, was waiting with his own knife, and he wasted no time. He lifted his head slightly, and the movement caught the attention of the three men long enough for him to bring the Ka-Bar up from the darkness. The blade was nearly invisible in the night, and the first man never saw his death coming.

  Luke cheated, of course. He sat with his unbound hands tucked tight to his thighs, not trussed up behind him as expected, and the tip of the seven-inch blade opened the first guard’s abdomen from nearly hip to hip just above his belt buckle. The honed edge of the knife split fabric and flesh with equal ease, biting deep into the man’s torso. A shower of blood erupted from the severed blood vessels, drenching Luke even as he acted.

  The man dropped his knife in shock, and then Luke was popping up into a crouch, springing into sudden, violent motion, the knife licking out again to nail the second guard with a thrust up under the ribs, piercing his heart in one frantic thrust. When Luke twisted the Ka-Bar free, the dying man emitted a horrible hissing exhalation while his partner stood rooted in place, trying desperately to stuff his emerging organs back into place.

  Ichabod dropped a hand to the holster on his hip as Luke spun, the young man driving a shoulder into the center of his chest with all the force of an open field tackle while he brought his arms around to club the man’s back. At the last second, Luke turned the blade so the pommel, and not the business end, of the Ka-Bar struck the falling man a stunning blow to the left kidney. Rolling the man’s body under his own, and assuming a high mount position, his knees dropped on the man’s arms and pinned them to his sides. Leaning forward to reduce his profile, Luke pressed the wet edge of the knife against the man’s throat while he knelt on his arms, effectively immobilizing his new prisoner.

  “Hello, Professor Schultz,” Luke hissed as a flurry of shots rang out in the still night air. All of it was incoming, filling the darkness as bullets found the bodies of all the Homeland troopers Luke could see. “That had to hurt. I guarantee, if you survive, you’ll be pissing blood for a week. But if you move again, I will solve all your problems.”

  The man, who really wasn’t Luke’s old college professor after all, cringed against the sound of the screams of the wounded and regarded Luke with a horrified expression.

  “Who are you? I’m…my name’s not Schultz,” the man gasped in terror and confusion, his pale face speckled with a spray of red freckles in the poor light of the fire. The blood of his luckless guards, Luke realized.

  “Me?” Luke asked, glaring down to make eye contact. “I’m the man who watched your thugs gun down a bunch of my friends for no reason.”

  He paused then, sucking great torrents of air into his lungs as they heaved like bellows. The adrenaline surged again as the sounds of gunfire continued, and Luke fought the urge to leap to his feet and continue the slaughter. He had no idea how many Homeland troops were using this base, but from the dearth of outgoing rounds, the ones who were here must be either hunkered down or already dead.

  No, he thought, I’d better stay right here for now. Glancing down, he looked at the dim features of his prisoner and offered a smile.

  “I’m the man who will cut you for fun,” Luke hissed, his voice razor-sharp with menace. “You will beg to give me your secrets, and I might even stop. For a while, anyway. Let you heal up, so I can start all over again.” Luke paused, savoring the horror he read in the other man’s face. “I’m the nightmare that walks like a man, and you are so fucked.”

  Luke drew out the last word, then laughed, and it sounded like an old man’s hollow cackle, packed with a special dose of madness. He never knew if the man pissed his pants then, or later, but it didn’t matter.

  CHAPTER 19

  After the sonic fury of thirty seconds of sustained gunfire, the next fifteen minutes passed in relative silence, the peace only shattered by the occasional gunshot when another of the wounded Homeland soldiers met with a 9mm punctuation. Luke saw some people he thought he recognized from the convoy moving amongst the parked vehicles, but he decided to wait for his father’s return. Friendly fire, wasn’t.

  Luke sat with his back once more resting against the metal sign post but now, he sat with an UMP45 submachine gun in his lap and his feet resting on the near catatonic prisoner. So far, he’d only been able to find out the man’s name was Matt, so he figured it was appropriate. Once Luke had Matt’s hands and feet double-secured with zip ties, so politely provided by the dead guards, Luke figured he could do with a rest.

  At some point, the small fire by the tents had been tended, with more wood added, and though Luke avoided the light to protect his night vision, he found he could see fairly well, as long as he watched out the corner of his eye. He watched, ready for any Homeland troops playing possum to make a move.

  His head still hurt fiercely, and he knew he had some kind of cut on the back of his head, another scar that would no doubt match the one he already sported. Luke wasn’t going to touch it, though. He knew enough about bloodborne pathogens to realize he didn’t need to contaminate the wound site with the blood already covering his hands up to the elbows.

  When he saw his father approaching, Luke offered him a thumbs up signal and gestured to the bodies of the two dead men keeping him and Matt company.

  “Sorry, Dad, I didn’t think I could get out in time,” Luke explained, and his father nodded while he looked over the scene.

  “Still got my knife?” Sam asked, for lack of anything better to say.

  “Yes, sir,” Luke replied, gesturing to the second man he’d killed. “Used his canteen to try to get most of the blood off, but it still needs a good detailed cleaning.”

  Luke leaned forward, wincing as he did, trying to reach the blade he’d stuffed behind his back, out of Matt’s reach, and encountered the pistol first. It was nice, a Sig Sauer in 9mm that his father had picked up somewhere and carried as his backup. “Also got your Sig, and the rest of the weapons off these three. Don’t want to give Matt here any ideas.”

  Sam Messner looked down at the filthy form sprawled out on the asphalt and gave a sigh. Luke couldn’t tell if it was one of relief or disappointment.

  “When the truck crashed, I must have hit my head. I woke up here, tied to this post,” Luke explained. “They were coming to get me for interrogation, I think, right before you cut me loose. How did you find me, anyway?”

  Sam exhaled, a long shuddering breath, and
Luke could see his father shake himself before he replied.

  “We got lucky,” he said, his voice distant. “After you and your truck held their attention, we managed to get everybody turned around. Thought we’d lost all of you,” he added, his words filled with sadness. “We came back, Luke. We regrouped and came back for you, but these assholes had already pried you out of the truck. We picked up Scott, and recovered Rudy, too. We knew they had to have gone further west, but we lost them for a bit. Then Mike caught some chatter on the CB. Barely made out what some locals were talking about. Discussing a convoy of Army trucks pulled off at the truck stop outside Batson.”

  Luke looked around, catching the darker shape in the sky nearby. An unlit billboard sat in what he realized was a parking lot.

  “This truck stop, I take it?”

  Sam nodded to his son.

  “We got close just before dark, then came in on foot. Gambling this was the right place. David spotted you first, when him and Angel were scouting the perimeter. He was going to come for you at first, but I put my foot down. After you saved me, it was my turn.” Looking around at the bodies again, he huffed out a dark laugh. “Almost cut it too close. Should have let David do it his way.”

  “No, this worked out better,” Luke disagreed. “Whatever these fucknuts are up to, I’ll bet Matt here can clue us in on the details. He was acting like an officer, anyway.”

  “Fucknuts? Don’t let your Momma hear you using that kind of language,” Sam chided. His tone spoke of good humor at the outcome, though, and Luke wasn’t worried. “I’ll send Eric over to take a look at you in a moment. He was working on Scott earlier.”

  “Wait!” Luke nearly shouted as he started to stand, then thought better of it when his head began to spin. His earlier exertions, fueled by desperation and adrenaline, left him feeling sick to his stomach and aching. Definitely a concussion, and his chest still felt like a gorilla sat on him at some point. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost his body armor, and sitting here now without it, made him feel more naked than if his bare ass was hanging out of a hospital gown.

  “Scott? He’s still…”

  “Alive? Yeah, though he’s not sure at the moment if he wants to go back with us. Broke his good leg when he got thrown out of the truck bed. He was still trying to get you out of the truck when the ambushers rolled up. He had to hide then but was able to give us a good count on the opposition, as well as what they were driving.”

  “Why would he not want to go back?” Luke asked, incredulously.

  “Well, if you thought Helena was a mother hen before, just wait until she sees him with a cast on his leg. Unable to escape and all.”

  Luke had to laugh at the image, even though he knew his father was being a bit unkind. It was a guy thing, he knew. Helena was a wonderful girl, and her worry for Scott made perfect sense after all she had lost. For Luke, he was relieved not to have to face her, or Lori and Summer, and try to explain how they needed to add another family member to the graveyard.

  “I think he will be just fine,” Luke finally managed to say. “I thought we’d lost him too. So, how many did we lose?

  Sam nodded, turning so his face was obscured by the darkness.

  “Rudy you knew about. Ben and Skeeter. They were just all chewed up. Never had a chance.” Sam looked away, emotion playing across his face. “That’s it for the dead, but with you and Scott injured, we are down two trucks and five men. Mike wants to abort the mission and head for home.” Sam replied. “He’s worried we have worse yet to come. Still only halfway to Kingwood and going into the more built-up areas.”

  Luke wanted to shake his head, but worried about sloshing his brain any more than necessary.

  “No,” he said, using his words. “We go on and finish this. Can we use these trucks here? The MRAPS? Can we disable the tracking systems and get them to run?”

  “That’s what Mike and the mechanics are looking at right now. They think it is doable.”

  “Really? Wasn’t that a British rock group?” Luke asked, suddenly buoyed by the news of Scott’s survival, even as they counted the losses.

  Sam gave a grim chuckle at that. “Yeah, I think it was. Can’t remember any of their songs right now, but darned if you aren’t right. Still, I don’t see why they can’t get these two MRAPs, and there’s a pair of five-ton trucks, old M939s we can use, too. One was set up as a gun truck, but the other was strictly a troop carrier.”

  “Well, heck, Dad, let’s get what we can here. Maybe find out what these guys were doing.”

  “We already know part of it,” Sam replied, his mood darkening once again. “They’ve got the store part of the truck stop packed with stolen food. I mean, stacked to the rafters and on pallets. Like they are expecting a pick up shortly.”

  “So, they’re back to their old tricks,” Luke said gruffly. “I imagine they killed everybody connected with those supplies. Even more reason to find out what Matt here knows.”

  “All right. David and I will have a discussion with him in a bit. Be ready. We may need to move tonight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Luke replied.

  Luke knew what that meant. Matt was in for a rough time. He resisted the urge to taunt his prisoner over his likely fate. This war going on between the Homeland contractors and the rest of the country didn’t follow the Geneva Conventions. Given the mass graves found at Camp Gruber and other locations under sway of Jeffrey Chambers and his mad crew, the men Luke and his family were fighting didn’t take prisoners, except as hostages or to torture for information.

  When Sam left, he was dragging the hogtied prisoner across the rough asphalt without care or remorse. Luke thought about what horrors these blue camouflaged thugs may have perpetrated in the area and found he didn’t care what his father or David did to get some answers. The cycle repeated itself, he knew, and he hoped God would forgive the atrocities they committed.

  Luke’s nightmare contemplations were interrupted by a friendly voice he thought to never hear again. He looked up, catching sight of his friend, hopping along slowly and using a long-handled shovel as an improvised crutch. Sure enough, his lower right leg was immobilized in a splint. Luke was relieved to see it wasn’t a break at the femur, since those seemed to take even longer to heal for some reason.

  “Man, I can’t leave you alone for one minute and you’re back to cutting people up!” Scott cried out, and he managed to collapse, without further injury, to the asphalt close to Luke.

  “Didn’t have much choice,” Luke countered. “They were planning on asking me questions, and you know how much I hate having to answer questions.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I hear you,” Scott muttered, and Luke could tell his friend was still in some pain. In the firelight, Scott’s face looked pale, and his cheeks were red from some emotion Luke couldn’t identify. Not embarrassment, he didn’t think.

  “Luke, I really tried to get you out of that truck,” Scott began, his voice catching as he spoke. “As soon as I could get to my feet, well, foot, I was working to get that door open. The crash had it wedged shut, and I couldn’t get your bony ass out the window before they were almost on top of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Luke said. “Worked out for the best, anyway. Where could you have gone to hide me? Or fight off those guys? That freaking CROWS system means you can’t even see the gunner, much less get a shot at him.”

  Scott nodded, but his eyes were still downcast. “I still should have done something.”

  “You did,” Luke assured his friend. “You survived, and then gave my Dad and the rest of the crew vital information. He said you had a report on numbers, weapons, and vehicles for them. That helped a lot.”

  “All right,” a new voice joined in. “Hug it out later, men. I need to check on my new patient.”

  The voice ended up belonging to Eric Zavala, the team’s medic. Eric had joined the community as part of David’s influx, and until now, Luke had never exchanged more than a few pleasantries with the man. When Lu
ke asked about his name, he was surprised to find out that Eric, who’d been a paramedic with the Tyler Fire Department, was descended from Lorenzo de Zavala.

  “Who?” Scott asked, not placing the name.

  “Oh, he was one of the Founding Fathers of Texas,” Luke explained. “Signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and helped design the state’s flag. He was also an early member of the Republic’s government, I think.”

  “He served as the first Vice-President,” Eric supplied with a bit of surprise. “I didn’t know kids still learned that stuff in school.”

  “A little bit,” Luke answered. “A lot of it came from my grandfather, though. He was the family historian, and he stressed learning what he called the “real” history, not just what they taught in schools. Of course, I attended several years of elementary school in California, so I know what politically correct schooling looks and sounds like.”

  “Yep,” Eric said. “Even here in Texas, we get a regular dose of that feel-good nonsense. When did you move to Texas, Luke?”

  “Oh, the Messner family has been here a long time” he explained. “Great, great, great, whatever, he fought with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto. But when Dad was in the Corps. we moved around a bit before he retired, then we moved back to the ranch. Been here full-time since I was twelve, but also spent a lot of summers here, too. Long enough to pick up the accent, anyway.”

  Eric stifled a chuckle while he applied betadine to Luke’s scalp wound. He’d seen the Boss’s kid around and heard things about him. Crazy things. But Luke didn’t even flinch as the betadine wipe cleaned the blood away from the still-leaking gash on the back on his head.

  “Definitely going to need stitches,” Eric said.