Midnight Skills

by William Allen

  “What are you looking for here today?”

  “Some things for you, and a few of the other guys in the squad,” Luke replied over his shoulder. “You any good with a handgun or just that rifle?”

  “I’ve shot a pistol a time or two. My dad had an old 9mm Ruger he used to let me plink with when I came out to visit.”

  “Ah, I love Ruger pistols,” Luke acknowledged. “First pistol I picked up on the road,” he continued while they walked into the small shed, housing two men in ill-fitting Texas Army National Guard uniforms. Both men were in their late forties and had that common appearance of men who’d rapidly lost a lot of weight.

  “One of you guys named Henry?”

  That’s me,” the older of the two replied. “What can I help you with today?”

  “I’ve got a list,” Luke said, producing the paper from another pocket, this one with hand-written notes arranged in an orderly manner. He handed the sheet to Henry, who looked it over quickly before giving a little nod to himself.

  “What brand of match grade did you want? Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of choices.”

  Luke looked at Abbie expectantly, and she got the message.

  “Uh, Hornady or Sierra Match King seem to work the best,” Abbie finally volunteered. “I get the most out of something with 168-grain, if you have any.”

  “Ha!” Henry barked a laugh. “I got four boxes of the 168-grain Sierra Match King if you want them.”

  “BTHP?” Abbie dared to ask, her voice seeming to catch. Luke shook his head. Yep, she’s a shooter alright.

  “Yep,” Henry confirmed. “All yours. You gonna use that on some Commie officers?”

  “Hell, yes,” Abbie agreed.

  Next, Luke got her fitted out with elbow and knee pads, three sets, a spare hydration bladder for her pack, and extra socks. Then Henry went to work pulling water purifiers, spare filters, handsaws, hatchets, entrenching tools and other useful pioneering items. Thinking about it, Luke also requested eight white or light gray tarps and one hundred feet of rope. Looking at the growing pile, Abbie shook her head. With all her worldly possessions stowed in her pack, she was already carrying nearly fifty pounds.

  Seeing her expression, Luke told her not to worry, they had a truck coming.

  For the next part of the list, Henry led the two further back into the warehouse to a locked metal cage the size of a Starbucks. This was the armory, and Luke quickly took possession of two M9 pistols, a box of spare magazines, and the web belts and holsters for each. He also selected a pump action shotgun with a shortened barrel and an extended magazine. When Henry brought him a sling, Luke went ahead and set it up while the clerk ran to pick up a cart. Back at the front of the warehouse, Henry pulled two cases of 9mm and a case of 12-gauge single aught buckshot for the shotgun. They were out of double aught buckshot, but Luke didn’t complain.

  When the rattletrap truck showed up at the loading gate around back, Abbie and Private Castillo loaded up the requisitioned items while Luke signed off on the paperwork.

  “Now what do we do?” Abbie asked.

  “Now, we go to war,” Luke explained simply.

  CHAPTER 44

  Getting into position and setting up the ambush took a week, allowing Luke and his now-enlarged squad a chance to work together and mesh their skills. The two fireteams broke down along expected lines, with Dwayne Silcott taking charge of his friends Kenzie, Drew, and Cameron, while Luke kept Beatty, Castillo, and Winstead as Team Two. Not to say the two fireteams didn’t work well together, but the four young men from Denton already had months of experience learning to read each other, and that ability allowed them to practically read each other’s minds.

  “You think this will work?” Castillo asked, carefully laying out the extra ammunition boxes for his M-249 in his fighting position.

  They’d set up a classic L-shaped ambush, oriented along a slight curve in the southbound two lanes of Highway 49 where the interstate crossed over Coon Creek, just north of Jasper, Missouri. This was well north of the Allied lines and represented a major overland resupply artery.

  “Yeah, Eddie, I think so. If not, we’ve got our rally points set,” Luke replied, going over the plan in his head once again. Their trip in had been an arduous snaking route, leaving them far behind what were nominally enemy lines, but the potential for payoff made the risk worthwhile. Luke hoped so, anyway. Thinking on the plan made Luke muse about how they’d been tasked, and the intelligence he’d gathered from that meeting.

  The day after Abbie had joined the squad, Luke had been summoned to meet with Lt. Fisher in his command post. He was accompanied by Master Sergeant Knolls and another sergeant Luke hadn’t recognized. The new sergeant, a man Luke estimated to be in his late twenties with sharp, hawk-like features and a dark complexion, made Luke think Italian or Mexican descent.

  Then, he’d noticed something else. The soldier bore the three stripes and one rocker of a staff sergeant and like the rest of the soldiers, wore no nametape. However, his shoulder patch was one Luke didn’t recognize, with a black border, yellow field quartered by a black stripe and a black horse’s head in profile. Oh, and he had a helmet, though the sergeant held it in the crook of his left arm.

  “First Cav?” Luke halfway guessed.

  “Bingo,” Lt. Fisher replied, a small grin flashing. “Corporal Messner, this is Staff Sergeant Rangdell, coming to us from the First Armored Brigade Combat Team. He’s here, well, he arrived wearing a few hats, but he comes from the general’s staff at Fort Hood.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Luke said, automatically extending a hand. Rangdell’s grip was firm but brief, as if he didn’t have time to mess around.

  “Likewise,” Rangdell intoned. “So, this is your new scout team leader, Lieutenant?”

  “He is,” Fisher replied, and gave Luke a hard look. “Sergeant Hernandez is moving back over to logistics, working with the Captain, and these are for you,” Fisher continued, tossing Luke a subdued rank tab. Luke caught the small device and noticed the three stripes. Buck Sergeant.

  “Luke, Staff Sergeant Rangdell is a communications specialist, and he’s been working with Brigade on getting our radio net up and running. We’ve got the old PRC-77s for short range stuff, but we still have the problem of talking to the various headquarters commands. Anyway, that’s not important,” Lieutenant Fisher waved the rest of his explanation away. “What is important is what the good Staff Sergeant managed to pick up from one of our SF teams in the field.”

  “Ah,” was all Luke said. He’d wondered where the guys like Captain Marino had gotten off to, and now he had a clue. Doing their thing, it appeared.

  “You have something to add, Sergeant?” Master Sergeant Knolls inquired, and Luke looked up sharply.

  “I was wondering where those men had gotten off to,” Luke replied. “I’d met some of those guys, er…well, I met some of the detachment stuck at Fort Polk, Master Sergeant.”

  “And that would be in regard to what, Sergeant?” Lt. Fisher prompted.

  “One of those things you probably don’t want to hear about, sir,” Luke replied slowly, and then continued, knowing his previous answer wouldn’t be enough to satisfy his commanding officer. “Sir, it had to do with when my father was kidnapped. They helped get him and our sheriff free from the local puppet government set up by the Committee.”

  Staff Sergeant Rangdell observed the exchange with a touch of curiosity, but when the answer seemed to satisfy both Fisher and Knolls, he decided to leave the subject alone. For now, anyway. Clearing his throat, Rangdell got back on topic.

  “We’ve received coded reports detailing enemy convoys coming through Jasper. The observers couldn’t be sure, but their best guess is the cargo is meant for resupplying the Committee forces lined up against us.” Rangdell’s explanation was short and to the point. He gave Luke an appraising look when he finished. Luke, instead, glanced at his CO to see what Lt. Fisher had to say. He didn’t have to wait long.

&n
bsp; “With guidance from Higher, Sergeant Messner, I’ve decided to detach your unit for a long-range scouting mission to check out the route and if feasible, stage an ambush to interdict this traffic. If you would care to gather your men, there will be a full briefing at 1100 hours.”

  Taking the dismissal, Luke turned to leave, but stopped at the last moment.

  “Staff Sergeant Rangdell, you might want to lose the helmet for the time being.”

  The older man turned, giving Luke a questioning look.

  “We don’t have enough helmets to issue for everybody, so nobody uses them. Wearing one around here might make you stand out for snipers. Just a suggestion.”

  “You have a problem with snipers?”

  “Not yet,” Luke agreed, “but do you want to be the first to find out about it?”

  Luke departed to the sound of light chuckles, but he didn’t turn to see who was laughing.

  Thinking about Rangdell made Luke wonder about the rest of the men from Fort Hood. They’d entered the winter in poor condition, short on food, and making noises like they might have to start ‘reallocating resources’. Was that threat still hanging over his community? Luke didn’t know, and this concern only added more to his worries.

  A noise drew Luke from his musings and he glanced over at the man in the other fighting position.

  “We’ve got company coming,” Eddie said, lowering his binoculars. “Just got a mirror signal from Cameron. Looks like showtime.”

  “Roger that,” Luke replied, then he stood up suddenly, his movement catching the eye of his waiting teams. Without radios, this was the only way Luke could think to give a signal, and his men knew to look for him.

  Like the rest of the squad, Luke wore his tattered white camo smock, belted at the waist, and a baseball cap wrapped in layers of rags to both protect his flesh from the cold and to break up his outline. In a similar fashion, his boots were covered with more rags, from the soles all the way up to the knees and laced in a crisscross fashion. The image made Luke think of Tusken Raiders, down to the wrapped faces and long cloaks.

  The bottoms on their boot wraps wore out quickly from the rough terrain and the knobby treads, but the cloth muffled much of the sound made when they walked on the ice. Coupled with moving under the scant tree coverage wherever possible, since they usually found less ice buildup, Luke decided they’d done as much as they could to obscure the sound of their passage. None of the scouts, including Luke, had any experience with winter fighting, so the last week involved a good deal of trial and error. With their lives on the line, the squad learned fast.

  Sadly, the eight-man squad found plenty of empty houses to explore for more cloth along the way, since the demand for extra bed linens seemed scant in the new world. Some of the houses showed signs of looting, or savage fighting, while others sat empty and untouched. Figuring out which houses to salvage from wasn’t hard, since they could tell which ones had fireplaces or wood-burning stoves in them from simply studying the chimneys. They’d used their noses at first, sniffing out the smoke, but as time went on, their own body odor became the dominant scent.

  This was their second day hunkered down in their positions, doing without fire and eating their MREs using the chemical heaters. Those Meals-Ready-to-Eat were a luxury under their current conditions, and they only carried four of the stripped-down meals in each of their packs. If nothing showed by the end of the day, they had little choice but to return to camp. None of them were willing to start a campfire this close to the road.

  While on the move, things had been different. Along their route, Luke and Abbie, their two best marksmen, used small air rifles to take down rabbits and other small game while they moved. Not enough to feed everyone, but at least their mush had a little meat to add some flavor. Using the method Luke advocated, they’d stopped only long enough to cook a meal before moving on and leaving behind the smell of their cooking. Twice, they’d seen what appeared to be patrols, but neither had gotten close enough to pose a threat, and Luke made sure his people knew to avoid contact. They had a mission, and no time for messing around. Maybe after the job was completed.

  The report passed on by the SF team indicated two trucks, military five-tons, with a black SUV up front for security. With just the two of them, the observers let the small convoy pass, but now that Luke’s squad was on the scene, he didn’t know what to expect. When the lead vehicle came into view, Luke saw they might have a problem.

  The convoy this day consisted of five vehicles, not three, and the HUMVEE in front featured a manned turret with some variety of machine gun mounted on the pedestal. Behind the first vehicle, Luke counted three five-tons and a trailing black SUV that Luke feared might be armored. Thinking back to his old ‘three bandit rule’, Luke had serious doubts about tangling with this convoy with only seven effectives. Yes, he had eight men in the squad, but he doubted Kenzie’s shotgun was going to do much good. The guy was a great medic and decent with a shotgun or even a submachine gun, but anything over fifty yards, and he might as well be throwing rocks. Not his fault, though. Even with his glasses, he couldn’t see much farther than that anyway. This might be a bigger bite than we can chew. Luke thought about their last-minute upgrades and hoped they would be enough.

  After getting the formal briefing from Sergeant Rangdell, Luke sent the rest of his squad off for chow and stuck around to wrangle extra supplies from Master Sergeant Knolls.

  “I need more firepower,” Luke explained simply.

  “Like what?” Knolls asked, wanting to see what Luke had in mind.

  He’d asked around about the boy, like he’d promised, and what he heard back had been interesting. His story checked out, and while none of the men Knolls talked to had known him personally, the grapevine said there was a schoolboy, a kid named Luke, who’d left a trail of bodies stretching from Chicago to Texas. He was ten feet tall, of course, and fearless in a fight against any odds. Pure bullshit, of course, and if Luke had heard any of the rumors, he’d have been mortified. However, the fact remained that he had friends in the Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas who sang his praises.

  “Barrett Light 50,” Luke responded instantly. “My sniper can’t take out those trucks with just a .308 bolt gun. Also, any explosives you can lay your hands on would be appreciated.”

  “Don’t have a rifle in 50 BMG I can spare,” Knolls replied. “I have something else we picked up, though. And do you have anybody in your squad experienced with explosives?”

  Luke nodded. “I’ve read the Army Field Manual for the Claymore, so if you have any of those, I’d be much obliged. I’ve worked with field expedient models too, so I’m familiar with the hands-on side of things.”

  Somehow, Knolls hadn’t been surprised.

  No, Knolls didn’t have a fifty caliber Barrett, but he’d somehow squirreled away a Savage 110 .338 Lapua bolt action rifle with a Steiner 5-25x56 military scope, flash suppressor, and two five round magazines. He also had nearly eighty rounds of the potent 300 grain ammunition, evenly split between boat-tail hollow point and armor piercing.

  Seeing the size of the beast, nearly four feet long and over twelve pounds when loaded, Luke felt tempted to carry the thing himself, but after Abbie ran five rounds of each type of ammunition through the rifle, he had to admit, she was better with it.

  “Oh, you can carry it,” Abbie replied coyly that afternoon when she’d finished at the makeshift range, “but when we get to where we’re going, I still get to shoot it.”

  Before Luke could change his mind and fire off the red flare to abort the mission, Abbie made his decision for him by taking out the gunner in the HUMVEE. The body exploded when one of the 300 grain .338 Lapua Magnum rounds impacted the hapless body at a three quarter angle, and his arms and head separated from the torso in bloody rain of destruction.

  That triggered the ensuing tsunami of fire as both Eddie and Cameron, anchoring the two ends of the ambush, fired into the first and last vehicles in the convoy, lashing the vehicles wit
h bursts from their M-249s. Luke couldn’t tell if any of the bullets penetrated the HUMVEE, but Abbie rapidly placed two shots into the driver of the military vehicle from her position in the center of the formation and about fifty yards back. She was about six hundred yards out, well within range of the HUMVEE. She then repeated the shots, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, on the SUV bringing up the rear.

  While the three heavy hitters in the squad poured fire into the first and last vehicles, Luke, Dwayne, Beatty, and Drew fired long bursts from their M4s into the cabs of the three big transport trucks. Luke burned through his first magazine, thinking back for a split-second about the fight at Big Mac and at the armory, while he rapidly changed magazines. Even with his hearing protection and the heavy scarf wrapped around his head, the sheer weight of the sound seemed to make his body vibrate. He focused his fire on the truck in his assigned firing lane and killed with indiscriminate fury.

  Luke knew he should be doing more to direct the fight, but without headset radios, he was reduced to shouting commands and hoping the man in the next fighting position could pass those instructions down. He continued identifying targets and pouring down fire in response, and when he saw the body sprawled in the cupola of the HUMVEE fall into the vehicle, he was dropping his crosshairs in anticipation. The head emerged rapidly, and Luke felt his finger stroke the trigger, even as he heard the thunderous BOOM, BOOM of the big .338 bark yet again. The luckless soldier disappeared in a spray of fluids and pulverized bone, and Luke felt reassured that Abbie remained on mission.

  The volume of fire fell off after a mad minute, when the smattering of incoming rounds sputtered and then died out. Luke quickly scanned the roadway and saw several bodies, mainly clustered around the tail end SUV and the last cargo hauler. Each of his men had a second firing position prepared, but he’d stayed in his position, perhaps unwisely, to assess their progress.