Autumn (Four Seasons Book 1)

by Robert Sullivan

  Jared spotted the neighborhood commander that Christina had pointed out and fired on her, aiming to disable her. The bullet struck her knee, causing the woman to fall down, clutching her knee and howling in pain. The rest of her platoon broke completely as their leader went down, fleeing into the adjacent neighborhood in the direction of the nearby highway.

  Christina moved forward out of the trees first, trying to get to her former commander before she could try to get up. She body slammed the commander into the ground, driving her elbow into the commander’s back. The commander howled in pain again, but did not move again as Jared caught up to the two of them.

  The commander turned over and saw that it was Christina who had kept her down. “You fucking traitor…” she started.

  “Fuck you, you’re the one who betrayed the Black Hand!” Christina shouted.

  “I’m following John’s orders…” the commander protested.

  “John has betrayed the Black Hand and has betrayed me,” Jared said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and pointing his favorite handgun at her head. “Where is the bastard?”

  The commander swallowed. “Jared Bennett?”

  “Where. Is. John?” Jared demanded, cocking his handgun.

  “He’s…he’s at the college. He’s fortified it because he knew he could only slow you down, not stop you,” the commander explained.

  “Any last words?” Jared asked.

  The commander seemed at a loss for words, which Jared took as a ‘no’. He shot and killed the commander and said to his platoon, “We have our target and we’ve secured this neighborhood. We keep going.”

  The platoon looked tired, but they followed Jared’s order. He glanced at his watch and noted that it was already four in the morning. The sun was only a couple of hours from being up, so there was no time to waste. Jared could only hope that the other landings would be able to converge on the college in time to break the fortification and take John.

  Jared and his forces made it across the neighborhood separating the park from the highway without incident. The broken forces of the traitors had scattered and had hidden themselves well. Jared could not be bothered to hunt them down; they would be rounded up later if there was enough time. Before long, they had reached the highway, which had little traffic at this hour in the early morning.

  The platoon crossed the highway on a bridge over it and found themselves adjacent to Westwood park. Jared moved them into the small park to get under cover as the college was only a block away at that point. They moved through the trees cautiously in case John had set up an outpost in this park to expand the defense perimeter from beyond the college. There was no opposition though and the platoon was able to pass to the other end of the park unmolested.

  Jared looked ahead to the college that was only a hundred yards away down the street. There was no sign of the traitors in the tree line there, but Jared suspected that they were hidden there. He glanced to his left and saw the faintest sign of light gracing the edge of the horizon. The bottom fell out of his stomach; dawn was an hour and a half away.

  “There’s no time to wait for help, we need to go now,” Jared said, turning back to his platoon. “We’re going to advance from house to house on both sides of the street until we get to the tree line on the college grounds. From there, we turn to the main campus. We need to stay under cover at all times and avoid detection for as long as possible. Clear?”

  The platoon nodded. “Good. Let’s go, now,” Jared finished.

  Jared took point and moved to the right side of the street, while the other half of the platoon went to the left. It was an agonizing process, moving to one house, waiting to see if there was any resistance, then moved on to the next house. The process took fifteen minutes and by the time Jared got to the house across the street from the college, the horizon had lightened even further.

  There was no time to delay anymore. Jared moved across the street and into the small woods on the grounds of the college. There was no gunfire to greet him and he was soon joined by the rest of his platoon. The moved through the trees towards the main buildings of the campus, doing so slowly because they could still not see any hostiles.

  The platoon emerged from the trees and saw that they were among the dormitories. Jared turned to the platoon towards the main campus building, which was separated from them by a large parking lot. As they crossed the parking lot, Jared’s fears ratcheted it another notch; they were likely walking into another ambush if John was letting them get this deep into the college without attacking them.

  The crossed onto the lawn in front of building at the center of the campus. The sky had lightened enough so that Jared could discern finer details on the ground and he saw that there were brown spots on the lawn where the soil had been dug up and then packed back in. He froze his body before his mind caught up with what was going on. He held up his hand to halt his platoon, but not before one of his fighters on the far end of the line stepped on one of the bald spots.

  The explosion knocked all of them to the ground. Jared glanced over to where the explosion had come from and could see the carnage that the exploding mine had unleashed on his soldiers. “Where the fuck did they get mines?!” someone shouted.

  Several shots rang out and the stricken platoon was peppered with bullets. Jared avoided being hit, but only be a few inches on either side. The gunfire was too thick for him to move, leaving him prone and praying not to get hit.

  There was suddenly returning fire going in the opposite direction over his head. The initial attack suddenly stopped focusing on Jared’s platoon, but instead turned to fire upon the new interlopers. Jared was able to lift his head and saw that their attackers were firing from the building in front of them. He turned his head and saw that part of his company that had split off to sweep the adjacent neighborhoods had caught up and were engaging the traitors.

  Jared took advantage of the reprieve and crawled towards the building. He crossed into a parking lot that served as a loading zone for the building, stood up, and ran as hard as he could to the side of the building. Jared could not believe his luck as he sat flush to the side of the building with bullets continuing to fly out in the windows overhead.

  A few people left from his decimated platoon came forward and crawled up next to him. Shards of broken window glass and small pieces of brick rained down around them as their reinforcements continued to pelt the building from afar. “We can’t stay here!” Christina shouted.

  “I know that!” Jared roared. He glanced upwards and saw a sizable hole had opened up where a window had once stood because of the gunfire coming from both directions. Thinking quickly, Jared pulled the pin of a grenade he had brought with him, waited a moment, and threw it into the hole.

  The explosion showered them with more debris and bodies flew out of the window down onto the parking lot where they did not move. The gunfire ceased from the building for a moment, which led Jared to suddenly get up. He moved across the side of the building towards a loading dock, clambered up onto it, and entered the building through there. The rest of his platoon followed him in and advanced down the hall towards the center of the structure.

  Jared did not see anyone ahead of them, but he halted their movement nonetheless once they got to the end of the hallway. He peered out ahead and found himself in the main atrium, which was unoccupied. Sounds of gunfire were still ringing out on the floor above. He smirked; for all his careful planning, John had failed to put a second wave of defenders in this building. It would be easy for his platoon to ambush the rest of the traitors from behind since they had no contingency plan.

  The platoon moved through the atrium and up the main staircase. The gunfire suddenly ceased, which gave Jared pause. He glanced to his left, which was on the opposite side of the building and saw that there were bodies down ahead of him.

  “What happened?” Christina asked.

  “We must have had more help show up,” Jared said. “We landed on several sides of the island and a
ll of us were to converge on the college from all sides.”

  Suddenly realizing that the building was secure, Jared moved with a sense of purpose to the main administrative office ahead and burst in. John was sitting by himself facing Jared with a gun pointed at the latter.

  “So you finally made it up here. I didn’t think I would be able to hold you off indefinitely,” John said. “I just wanted to cause you as much pain as possible.”

  “Why?” Jared asked furiously.

  “Because you took all of our advantages that we had in January and threw them away like an incompetent jackass. You triggered this Conspiracy and I decided it would be better to go my own way,” John explained calmly.

  “You knew I would not let that go,” Jared said.

  “No. Your response was quicker than I anticipated. But we caught some of your spies and I realized you were moving in tonight. I figured you would use the gold being moved as a distraction to keep the authorities away. By the way, the gold got to the Federal Reserve just fine. There are unconfirmed reports that someone did try to stop the gold, but they were defeated by a forward unit of the Army,” John said, taunting him.

  Though Jared’s fury escalated even further, fear gripped him as well. He had expected Ethan to succeed and now he did not know if he was still alive. He kept his gun trained on John’s head as he asked, “What did you plan to do since you knew you would lose this fight?”

  “I had held out hope that the authorities would interfere sooner. You apparently have friends in high places…” John said.

  Jared fired his gun while John was talking. John slumped in his chair senseless and Jared fired several more bullets into his torso in a fit of rage. He turned to leave the building and was followed out by his platoon.

  The Black Hand had indeed converged on the college by that point. There were thousands of them there in front of Jared, but he noticed that their numbers had been reduced. There were at least a third of the group that had gone out from Manhattan missing. Jared was stunned; he knew his group had taken severe casualties, but he had thought that the bulk of the traitors were either in front of his company, or had surrendered.

  “Is this everyone?” Jared asked.

  The neighborhood leaders looked around and nodded. Jared sighed heavily and said, “Everyone back on the ferries. We need to get out of here before the night ends.”

  The Black Hand evacuated Staten Island just as the authorities began to swarm the island. They had not been able to earlier due to the transport of the gold, but also a lack of information as to what was occurring, other than that there was widespread fighting across the island. They had been told stay put until they could get enough people together to match the size and scope of the fighting across the island.

  As dawn broke and the National Guard and NYPD reestablished control over Staten Island, they found thousands of dead and dying people strewn over the island, in parks, in streets, in neighborhoods, and on the campus of CUNY. Homes and businesses had been damaged in the fighting as well, which led the authorities to search house to house for dead and injured in those areas as well.

  Jared had returned to his apartment, where Julia and Janice stood with him. Timothy was missing on Staten Island and Ethan had not returned either. What had been a council of six Black Hand leaders over the city had been halved in one night. It was a titanic disaster for the Black Hand. Jared did not have the number of his people that had fallen on Staten Island, but he knew it was in the thousands.

  The three of them did not say a word for the longest time, merely drinking water that Jared had uncharacteristically served the two of them personally. They were too stunned by the events of the last twelve hours to even speak. The loss of their capital and the decimation of the Black Hand had been a huge blow, not unlike the one they had inflicted on the city mere months before. Jared could only wonder how they had fallen so far in so short a time.

  Jared idly turned the news on to see what the media was saying about the Black Hand’s infighting. “Authorities are not sure exactly what triggered the fighting, but they can safely say that the Black Hand, which is the organization responsible for the attacks in January had a violent internal conflict and fought each other on Staten Island. Thousands of these Black Hand members are either dead or injured on Staten Island, along with many others who were caught in the crossfire. Homes, schools, and businesses on the island have taken severe damage and the worst of the fighting has apparently occurred in and around the campus of CUNY here on the island.”

  “Thousands,” Jared said in a low voice. “Fucking thousands.”

  Julia sighed and said, “I can’t deal with this right now. Is there anywhere I can sleep?”

  Jared sighed. “Just…just take my bed. I might join you later.”

  Julia nodded and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Janice got up and said, “I’m going to go to sleep too.”

  “It’s only a twin,” Jared said, annoyed.

  “I’ll make do,” Janice said, disappearing down the hall.

  “Okay that’s fine, I guess I’ll just nap on the couch,” Jared said sarcastically. “Twats,” he added under his breath.

  Jared settled down a bit further in his chair and began to doze a little as the news report droned on about the damage to Staten Island and the staggering body count. There was a knock on the door that made Jared jump in his seat. He stormed over to the door, intending to give whoever was knocking a piece of his mind. He opened it to find Timothy, bloodied, but very much alive.

  “You’re alive?” Jared asked.

  “Yes, no thanks to you,” Timothy said, entering the apartment. “I knew you had to clear out the island quickly, but you could’ve looked for me for a little while.”

  “Where the fuck did you end up?” Jared demanded.

  “My company got to the college late and had to make a break for one of the parks to hide in when the authorities swarmed the island,” Timothy explained. “While they were good and distracted, we snuck back to our landing point and extracted ourselves. We didn’t take many casualties though.”

  “We did,” Jared said. “We probably lost a good third of the Black Hand this morning.”

  “And a third of its leaders,” Timothy added.

  “A third? That would mean two borough leaders died,” Jared said, puzzled.

  “Well I assume you killed John and Ethan was done in by the Conspiracy…”

  “WHAT?!” Jared roared.

  Janice and Julia came out of the bedroom, confused by the yelling. “Timothy, you’re alive…” Julia started.

  “Say that again, because I didn’t think I understood you the first time,” Jared said dangerously.

  “I heard it over the police scanner I have,” Timothy explained. “They were saying the Army used some Conspiracy people to sweep the route they used to transport the gold. They came across a barricade Ethan had made and beat it. They killed Ethan and they got the gold safely to the Federal Reserve.”

  Jared threw the remote control at Timothy’s head, who ducked out of the way. Jared proceeded to the kitchen and began throwing everything he could get his hands on around the room, driving the terrified borough leaders out of his damage path. Jared screamed as he threw until he finally ran out of energy and collapsed on the kitchen floor.

  Julia advanced cautiously back into the kitchen, treading carefully around the broken dishware. Jared was not crying, but he was shaking with fury. “He was better than all of you,” he said hoarsely. “He put himself in harm’s way to make sure I could do what I wanted, burning down the fucking park and trying to take back that gold. None of you will come close to him.”

  Julia was used to this kind of verbal abuse, so she ignored it. “We’ll rebuild, Jared. We’re going to start the expansion and draw in more people and resources from outside the city. It’ll get better.”

  “But it won’t be the same,” Jared said angrily.

  Later that day, after Jared had sent his borough
leaders home and caught up on sleep, he was poring over the plans to expand outside of the city. They needed to be remade given the loss of thousands of Black Hand members and two borough leaders. There had initially been plans to expand all over the Northeast and Great Lakes region, while also putting people in the major cities on the other side of the Mississippi.

  Jared was content to curtail some of the Great Lakes operations while leaving all of the major cities intact. They would just have to expand from there with resources taken from the major cities in the area.

  The messenger he had sitting on the table suddenly started buzzing. He had expected it and answered it, saying, “We had a bad night.”

  “You don’t say? How many did you lose?” the computerized female voice asked.

  “At least a thousand,” Jared said heavily. “And two borough leaders.”

  “What happened exactly?” the voice demanded.

  “When I said we were going to expand, John insinuated I wasn’t in control of the Black Hand and declared he was breaking away from my command. I couldn’t let that stand. John…John turned it into a bloodbath,” Jared explained.

  “What’s this about some attack on the gold falling apart?” the voice asked.

  “Ethan did it as a distraction to keep the authorities off of the island while we took out John. The Army brought in some Conspiracy fucks to clear the route and they took out Ethan,” Jared said dully.

  “These Conspiracy bastards are starting to become a problem,” the voice said. “We need to lure them into a trap.”

  “How do we do that?” Jared asked. “They’ve got no incentive to go after us since we pretty much fucked ourselves.”

  “Then you need to do something that will get their attention and draw them out,” the voice said.

  “Like what? Try to rob the Federal Reserve again?” Jared demanded.

  “You won’t be able to do that again,” the voice said. “But you could cause a national incident at the beginning of June.”

  “What’s at the beginning of June?” Jared asked, perplexed.