Thirty minutes later and all four men found themselves sitting in a bomb-proof bunker awaiting Lieutenant Fisher and Master Sergeant Knolls to make their report. The bunker was nothing more than a crude hole clawed out of the earth, going down about eight feet, and reinforced with what looked like creosote-treated railroad ties laid over stacked Jersey barriers that formed the walls on two sides. Small gaps left by the setting of the concrete dividers corresponded with rough boards on stumpy legs, built up to offer firing platforms, and Luke saw a pair of machine guns mounted on brackets. M-240Bs, his recent memories confirmed. Unmanned at the moment, but Luke could see where the wooden packing crates provided space for an operator and an assistant.
Beatty and Silcott, in true Army fashion, sacked out immediately on the dirt floor while Sergeant Hernandez disappeared on an errand, ordering the men to take five. Luke, taking advantage of the break, had all six of the salvaged M16s laid out on a blanket and was methodically examining and cleaning each one. The seventh rifle, the receiver deeply dented by one of Luke’s errant shots, was stripped and the pieces were scattered in the field at Sergeant Hernandez’s suggestion.
“What can you tell from their weapons, Private?” Master Sergeant Knolls asked, catching Luke with a cleaning rod stuffed into one of the barrels. Lieutenant Fisher stood silently flanking the senior noncom and examined the disassembled rifles laid out on the impromptu cleaning bench.
“Sergeant, I don’t know much about how the military stockpiles their weapons,” Luke temporized, then went ahead with his assessment. “But these A2s need a full refurbish. I mean, first, they are filthy, like the users hadn’t been taught proper cleaning methods. That says something about their training. On top of that, the barrels are about shot out, as is this buffer spring.” Luke gestured to the offending metal coil like he was pointing out a misbehaving pet. “They need replacing, and this bolt assembly needs to be totally torn apart to see why it’s sticking.”
“And this tells you what, Private?” Knolls continued to press.
“Either these men I killed are rear echelon troops, which seems unlikely for a scouting mission, or the Commies are scraping the bottom of the barrel to issue weapons to their volunteers. Also, these rifles haven’t been cleaned since forever, and I found nothing that looked like a cleaning kit in any of their bags. I don’t think these men knew how to do it. Just my opinion, though.”
Lieutenant Fisher finally spoke up at this point, and Luke stood quickly to attention, if a bit hunched over given the low roof of the shelter.
“I understand from Sergeant Hernandez, you once again managed to single-handedly wipe out an enemy patrol. Is that correct, Private?”
“Corporal Mansour was with me in the OP, sir,” Luke replied, feeling a bit self-conscious and not sure why. He was here to kill the enemy and disrupt their operations, after all. “Regrettably, he was killed in the fight. By the time reinforcements arrived, the Commie squad was dead. Sir.”
“That is an unfortunate loss, and he will be missed,” Fisher agreed, and from his expression, Luke decided the lieutenant meant what he said. He read the pain in the officer’s face, and the certain knowledge he would once more order men he cared about into harm’s way. That was his duty, and his burden that came with the oath.
Luke was currently as far from being an officer as he could be and still be in uniform, but one of his goals had been to attend the U.S. Naval Academy and eventually, earn a commission in the Marine Corps. An impossible dream under current circumstances, but he’d been young and ambitious, and the future seemed limitless back then. Less than a year ago, he realized. Not even twelve months and everything had changed.
Without getting stuck in the loop of what might have been, Luke reflected on the reading list recommended by his assistant principal at school. Mr. Fletcher had been an artillery officer in the Army, a Red Leg, if Luke remembered properly, and Luke knew he’d earned his degree from Texas A&M on an ROTC scholarship. Fletcher couldn’t have been over forty and appeared to have been in good health, and Luke wondered what ever happened to the man. He should have been at the forefront of the efforts to secure the town, but Luke never even heard his name mentioned after their group arrived. Must have died early on, the teen rationalized.
Luke’s father had a good collection of practical training manuals, including some he’d written himself, but Captain Miles Fletcher decided the young man should be exposed to a wider range of knowledge. He’d recommended a selection of biographies for Luke to read. Everything from Civil War recollections written in the stilted language of the time, to first-person accounts of leading men into combat during the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam. Luke best recalled those books written in the last few years, since they’d detailed savage fights in places his father had spoken of with a mixture of pride and sadness.
One commonality of all these books, Luke realized, was the depiction of the perils and pitfalls of small unit leadership. Basically, one of the biggest problems dealt with losing men who’d become as close as brothers, fighting in the trenches together. Luke studied the books in his sparse spare time, and only now in this war of his, did he finally begin to understand the lessons.
Luke already knew how to fight and how to kill. His last months in hell taught him a graduate course in taking the lives of others, and surviving to do it again the next day. Now, he began to understand what his own father must have felt like when he’d sent out patrols around the ranch, or when he’d been forced to watch that truck explode in a hailstorm of machine gun fire with Ben and Skeeter still inside.
A good officer felt the sting of loss when men under their command died, but they couldn’t become so miserly with their men that they failed in their duty. They couldn’t afford the losses, Luke understood, even for a waste of space like Mansour.
Realizing he’d been woolgathering, Luke cleared his throat before speaking.
“Lieutenant, can we talk about the mission you want for tonight?” Luke asked carefully, not wanting to alienate this man.
“What’re your thoughts, Private?”
“Sir, I’d like to suggest a smaller party for this first scout into enemy territory. Sergeant Hernandez is a great teacher, and I mean no disrespect, but I would suggest a more…subtle approach until we can map out their positions.”
“How subtle do you want to be, Private?” Lieutenant Fisher asked drily.
“Just me, sir.”
Fisher looked away, catching the eye of Master Sergeant Knolls and giving him a wink.
“No,” Fisher said at length, “I don’t want you wandering out into no-mans-land alone. I’ll approve a smaller party, but you have to take at least one other soldier from your squad with you. Talk to the sergeant and tell him what I said. Report back here in thirty minutes with Gilberto and we’ll discuss. Dismissed.”
While Fisher and Knolls returned to their duties, Luke spent a few minutes reassembling the rifles and thinking about his squad. With Mansour gone, that left Beatty or Silcott. Silcott, Luke thought, but only if the man was willing. Done with the captured rifles for the time being, Luke set them aside in a pile next to his pack and went looking for the rest of his squad.
Hernandez came back in a few minutes, trailed by a soldier in his mid-thirties, Luke judged. He was slightly over medium height, not quite six feet, and carried himself with a confident step, even hunched over in the limited headroom of the tunnel. Luke noted the M-249 slung on the man’s right shoulder, along with the messenger bag-style ammunition carrier slung over the man’s other shoulder.
“All right, men, gather round,” Hernandez said, his voice low but conversational. “This here is our newest recruit. Private Castillo, take a moment to introduce yourself.”
The man seemed surprised by the sergeant’s order and looked around at the other three men in the small chamber.
“Like Sergeant Hernandez said, my name’s Castillo. Eddie Castillo. I’m from…well, doesn’t matter anymore. Kansas. Nothing much left afte
r the Commies burned out our farms. I just finished the two-week orientation in Neosho, but I’ve been fighting these bastards in Kansas for the last few months. I tried to enlist with a Kansas unit, but they were out of slots. Can’t feed anymore.”
Luke absorbed the man’s bald-faced statement and wondered just exactly what kinds of things this man had seen and done, before volunteering for this fight. Yes, he would need to spend some time with Eddie Castillo, but later. First things first.
“Sergeant, about tonight’s mission…” Luke said, bringing the squad’s attention back to the planning to come. Luke hoped they’d have something hashed out in time for him to get a few hours of sleep.
CHAPTER 39
Private Dwayne Silcott eased through the trash in the mouth of the dark alley, moving his body carefully around the random bottles and cans lining the asphalt. Not so random, he thought, after Wonderboy pointed them out.
Mansour’s derisive label for the serious, and somewhat scary, young man still made the twenty-year-old private smile to himself, though he stopped when he remembered what’d happened to Mansour. Not that he missed the dead man, who’d honestly rubbed Dwayne the wrong way. He’d only been with Second Squad for about a month before the FNG, Messner, showed up, but during that time, the corporal managed to make the two privates miserable. Mansour’s lazy ways, brown-nosing attitude, and constant scheming made Dwayne wonder exactly why the weasel-like man volunteered in the first place, but Dwayne had known the man was a cancer in their squad.
The Fucking New Guy, FNG, Messner, still remained an enigma to Dwayne. The Old Man, as Dwayne tended to think of Captain Jefferson, knew the kid’s father from their time in Marine Corps, of all things. Messner wasn’t a Marine, though. By his own account, he’d been a high school student when the lights went out. A highly-trained one, though, if Dwayne could judge such things.
Silcott knew some hardcases, and not from living the thug life, as some might blindly assume given his race. Dwayne never belonged to a gang, unless you counted his high school baseball team. No, Dwayne’s father ran a successful construction company in their hometown of Denton, and Marshall Silcott had given a veteran’s preference when hiring.
Most of the men and a few women, who’d taken advantage of that preference with Silcott Construction were just like everybody else, with a mortgage and a car note and two kids at home. They worked hard, played hard, and went home after forty hours of swinging a hammer or fitting windows. A few, well, a few of them seemed to be trapped with one foot in the humdrum everyday civilian life and the other, back on some dusty foreign battlefield.
Those guys would work for a couple of months framing houses or pouring concrete, then take a leave of absence and disappear. Sometimes for a month, and other times for as much as six. Marshall never complained, and as far as Dwayne could tell, his father never asked questions either, when the men turned up again and asked for their jobs back.
Dwayne, youngest of three siblings being raised by their divorced father, tended to gravitate toward the business. This was an opportunity to spend time with his father, as much as a chance to make some cash for all the things a teenager wanted to drop on the latest gaming console or the cool, new sneakers.
His father hadn’t cut Dwayne any slack, though, and working under the hot Texas summer sun as a laborer on a construction crew hardened up the young man’s body. Rubbing elbows with the other men also expanded his horizons when it came to spending time around all kinds of people.
Finally, Dwayne couldn’t hold his tongue anymore and brought the question to his father.
“Pop, where are Randy and Hershel always disappearing to? They just fall off the face of the earth, then show back up like nothing happened.”
Dwayne noticed how his father seemed to draw back for a moment, as if he needed to gather his words. He didn’t seem surprised by his son’s question, though.
“Dwayne, there’s still a market out there for men with certain skillsets,” Marshall Silcott explained. “In fact, some men are able to work full-time doing this kind of work. The pay can be very good and the men doing the work are able to put their training to use. I’d imagine Randy and Hershel could probably do that, working for one of the PMCs, but I suspect they prefer the flexibility of doing contract work for a set period of time.”
“Okay, but what is a PMC? Is that some kind of specialized construction field?” Dwayne asked, still curious.
“No,” Marshall told his youngest son, “it stands for Private Military Contractor. I don’t know for sure, but I think those two gentlemen are doing some security work overseas. Maybe working for the government, and maybe in the employ of one of those multinational corporations. I don’t know, and it isn’t my place to pry. When they are here, Randy and Hershel do a great job and never cause any trouble.”
After that, Dwayne did a little computer research and found out more than he’d ever wanted to know about Private Military Contractors. Also known in less polite circles as mercenaries. The young man never found out what Randy or Hershel did, either for the military or later as contractors, but he noticed the way the men went about their work and realized his father was absolutely right. These two men worked hard for the company, never giving their foreman any trouble, and kept to themselves while not being standoffish.
Dwayne also decided, without a shadow of doubt, he never wanted to get crossways with either man. Neither man stood out in a crowd and while Randy was definitely muscular, Hershel looked like he was always missing a few meals and barely stood five-foot, nine-inches-tall. Dwayne started watching how the two men worked and acted toward others, and he quickly recognized the differences.
No wasted effort, and no messing around on the job for either man. They did their assigned jobs, did them better than their coworkers, and worked tirelessly through the day. Not until he was in college and witnessed his first live martial arts competition, did he make the connection. And now, when he saw Messner moving in the light of the half moon, Dwayne knew he was dealing with someone else with similar training.
Luke insisted they leave hours earlier than Sergeant Hernandez proposed, with the young private insisting the two of them needed some time to work in the dark together, before trying to infiltrate the enemy defenses.
Instead, Luke led him on a forced march paralleling highway 96 halfway to Avila, before cutting cross-country and heading north to curl around behind Carytown, a suburban community heavily occupied by the Recovery Committee’s troops. The houses seemed ominously empty of civilians, and few enemy troops prowled the streets, save those on guard duty.
The longer, circuitous route also allowed Private Messner a chance to teach Dwayne how to use the Night Vision Goggles, or NVGs, given to him on loan. Messner emphasized these were not a gift and needed to be treated like fine china.
“I only have the two pair with me, and let me tell you, I had to kill a whole bunch of Homeland thugs to get these two, got it?”
Dwayne got it.
Seeing the world through the NVGs took some getting used to, but once he got accustomed to the limitations, the goggles really sped up their travel. Dwayne felt the need to ask why they took the long way to get to their objective, but seeing the young man’s wry expression made him swallow the rest of his questions.
“Going through some no-mans-land is stupid,” Luke had explained shortly, as if he were trying to teach trigonometry to an aardvark. “We can loop wide and have a better chance of infiltrating from the rear.”
And so, they had. Three times the duo hunkered down and outwaited or evaded patrols, and by one a.m., they’d passed miles wide around the barbed wire shrouded trenches of what Dwayne assumed were the enemy fortifications.
“Damn,” Dwayne muttered as he completed his crawl through the narrow alleyway to emerge behind a massive park lined with all manner of artillery. Dwayne knew Luke performed a similar reconnaissance of the motor pool located a kilometer away. They allocated two hours for the scouting and then had a prearr
anged rally point between the two camps.
Get the guard counts, document the weapon systems, and get out with the information. That’s what the LT wanted, and Dwayne remained determined to get the job done. Moving carefully, Dwayne moved from shadow to shadow as he catalogued the twelve howitzers that made up the two co-located batteries at this site.
The young private didn’t know the details of how an artillery battery worked, but one of the items on the lieutenant’s list asked for this information, and Dwayne was dedicated to getting the necessary counts. Seeing how lightly the area was guarded though, made Dwayne start thinking bad thoughts. The kind of thoughts that made their officers sweat with anxiety, but Dwayne was only twenty years old, and the bad thoughts had already begun to take root.
Back at the rendezvous site, Dwayne crawled into the ditch they’d previously selected and found Luke already waiting, knife in hand. They exchanged barely seen nods and proceeded to the forty-inch diameter drainage pipe and Luke led the way, only stopping after he’d elbowed his way twenty feet into the concrete tube.
“I got an idea,” Dwayne started, once the two men had the poncho liner out and draped over their hunched forms. They’d powered down the NVGs to save the batteries and returned them to their cushioned cases. Extracting their three-by-five notebooks and using their red-filtered lights, the two men sat barely inches apart.
“You want to blow the artillery batteries,” Luke interrupted, and grinned a malicious grin at Dwayne’s shocked expression. “Hey, I agree. I know the LT wanted to know what he was facing, and we got that. However, it’d be nicer if we took the toys out of their hands, right?”
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