by James Tarr
“Five minutes,” he softly called out. He caught Mark’s eye. “Go tell Weasel.”
Mark nodded. Weasel was up on the second floor, keeping watch out the front windows. Mark slapped the SAW back together with practiced speed, unfolding its integral bipod so it would stay upright. The SAW’s ammo belt was coiled in a soft-sided box that hung from the underside of the receiver. He laid the end of the belt into the open receiver, then closed the top and chambered the first round. He stood, then bent and picked up the weapon. Mark was a big man, six-foot four, with dirty blonde hair graying at the temples. His Vandyke beard had gone almost entirely grey and badly needed a trim. His arms below the sleeves of the Hawaiian shirt were covered with tattoos.
“This thing’s getting awfully light,” he told Ed. “A machine gun’s supposed to be for suppressive fire. I get any lighter on ammo all the Tabs are going to be doing is suppressing yawns.”
The squad leader looked up and nodded unhappily. No one quite knew where the nickname had come from, but the enemy soldiers, whether they were Army or Air Force, were often referred to as Tabs when no one felt like using any of the usual profane nicknames.
Ed put the purifier back together and stuffed it into his pack. He didn’t know if he’d made it better or worse, but he’d had to try. With a grunt he stood up, shouldered the pack, and grabbed the grenade launcher that had so perplexed Jason. Ed slung it behind his arm alongside his pack.
The small pack wasn’t nearly as heavy as it should have been. They needed to find more food and water, and soon. Conscious of the load on his back he bent down and picked up his carbine. The empty magazines in the front pockets of his vest poked him in the arms. That was another must-have item for the grocery list—ammo.
George cornered Jason on the ground floor. “You really walk down from Omer?” he asked the boy, squinting.
Jason swallowed. “Yes sir.”
“How long did that take you?”
“Eight, nine days to get to the suburbs, then another week before I found the lady who contacted you guys.”
“Hmm.” Well, at least he wasn’t a quitter. George’s feet ached at just the thought of that much walking…not that he wasn’t on his feet all the time anyway, or that they didn’t ache all the time. “You want to go by Jason?”
“Umm…what?”
“We’re fighting our own government, which considers us terrorists, and we’re behind enemy lines to boot. I don’t know about rank-and-file ARF, but Irregulars like to keep their anonymity, so if the government is in the mood for reprisals against family members, audits, property seizures and the like, they don’t know who to go after. Government has a price on all our heads, reward for ‘information leading to the death or capture of…’ Don’t tell me or anybody else here your last name, it’s not like you’re drawing a paycheck. And if you want to use a different name than Jason, that’s fine too. Early’s not Early, and you think Weasel’s his given name? I don’t think even his mother hates him that much.”
“Oh. Uh, Jason’s fine.”
George nodded. He looked at Jason, then around at the immediate vicinity.
“Where’s your rifle?”
Jason pointed. “It’s over there in the corner.”
“Are you carrying a pistol?”
Jason shook his head. George stepped close, and his voice dropped. “We’re in a combat zone. Any second we could take incoming, get surrounded, whatever. If you don’t have a single loaded gun on you, or within arm’s reach, you’re just a liability. Stay strapped or get clapped. You understand me, son?”
Jason nodded quickly. “Yes sir.”
George jerked his head. “Go get your fucking rifle.” Jason scampered off, and when he returned George took a step to the side and gestured. “Shoulder your rifle,” he said.
“What?”
He pointed his hand again. “Point your rifle, I want to see something.”
Jason frowned, but did as he was told, pointing the rifle at the far wall. George noted that the boy kept his finger off the trigger and didn’t point it anywhere near anyone. Without warning, he stepped in front of Jason, and watched as the young man instinctively lowered the rifle and twisted it to the side so that it wasn’t aimed at George.
George nodded. “Excellent. They said you had good muzzle awareness. Keep it up. If you never point your weapon at any of us, even if you fuck up in every other way, you can never shoot us by mistake.” He nodded at the battered lever action. “What is that, a Winchester? No, a Marlin. You shoot a lot of deer with that?” Jason nodded.
“Well, knowing how to stalk and shoot is good, so’s being familiar with the sight of blood, but we’re not out here hunting deer. What we’re going after shoots back, and a lever action rifle’s just not going to cut it. However, we don’t have any spares to give you. Still…” He hoisted his short rifle. “You know how to work one of these?”
Jason shook his head. “I think my dad owned one when I was little, but he turned it in when the government told him to.” He made a face at the memory, then nodded at the stubby piece in George’s gloved hands. “But that’s a machine gun, right?” It also had a metal tube screwed onto the end of the short barrel, which Jason was pretty sure was a silencer.
George snorted and looked down at the gun in his hands. There, barely readable through the three or four worn layers of spray paint—mostly tans—were the words SAINT EDGE etched into the right side of the battered magazine well. “Hell, technically, this is a pistol. Or at least it was, before the war. Now it’s somewhere between ten years in prison and an automatic death sentence they catch me with it, depending on their mood, and who’s doing the catching.”
“A pistol? But it’s…” Jason moved his hands two feet apart.
“Calling this carbine a pistol makes as much sense as forcing law-abiding citizens like your father turn in their guns for the sake of ‘public safety’, but it’s not about making sense, or reducing crime, it’s about taking control. That’s what this whole war’s about in a nutshell. That’s what most wars are about, really.” He sighed. “Okay, let’s get you read in on some of the hardware you’ll be seeing.”
“The camouflage rifles you’ll see the soldiers carrying are M5s. Actually, technically, I think they’re M5A3s, but whatever. They’re chambered in a new proprietary cartridge made just for the military, the 6.8x51mm, that was supposed to be great at punching through walls and car doors and other intermediate barriers, but it still won’t penetrate a chest plate.” He knocked at the one covering his heart. “And compared to the 5.56 ammo that all our rifles shoot, that new 6.8 kicks a lot more, and apparently it beats up the M5s something fierce. The cartridge is stupid and unnecessary, thought up by armchair warriors to justify their salary. Still, I wouldn’t mind having one, but battlefield pickups are mostly a thing of the past, because those M5s all have tracking chips embedded in the polymer stocks. So we can’t use the guns, and that ammo doesn’t fit into anything else, which means we’re always struggling to keep our mags loaded.”
George hefted the gun in his hand. “Most of what we’re running are standard commercial semi-auto rifles people refused to turn in, mostly AR-15s, and that’s true around the country. Mine’s a Springfield Armory, and legally, before the war, it was a pistol. There were a whole lot of AR pistols on the market, with arm braces on the back instead of stocks. After the war popped off most people said ‘Fuck it’ and swapped those braces with stocks, but the Maxim Defense brace on this works better as a stock than most stocks.” He glanced at the left side of the magazine well where there was an oval missing from the aluminum, revealing the side of the polymer magazine beneath it. “Put on stocks, and drilled out the serial number. Helps that the side of the magazine well isn’t required for structural integrity.”
“And that’s a silencer?” Jason asked, pointing at the tube.
“Suppressor, sound suppressor. You ever seen one before?”
Jason shook his head. “They’re illegal.”
George snorted. “They are now. They were legal in over forty states before the war.”
Jason blinked. “Really?” The news said only criminals and terrorists used them. And Army Special Forces.
“Lot of hunters liked to use them. Helped to save their hearing.” George hefted his Springfield. “How loud do you think it would be if I fired this?”
Jason shrugged and shook his head. He’d only ever seen them in movies. “Quiet.”
“Shit,” Weasel said with a snort.
“You ever shoot a .22 rifle?” George asked him.
“Yeah.” Jason had killed a lot of squirrels and other small game with a bolt-action .22. It was the only way they could get any meat, they certainly couldn’t afford to buy it. Of course, hunting was just as illegal now as possession of a firearm, but even his dad ignored those laws when the alternative was borderline starvation, which was why he’d held onto the Marlin lever action, the .22, and one shotgun, all of them kept inside a false wall in the mud room of their house.
“This thing, with this suppressor attached, is as loud as a .22 rifle. Maybe louder.”
“Really?”
“Suppressors are designed to keep you from suffering immediate hearing loss when you pull the trigger, but they are not quiet. Far from it. I pulled the trigger in here your ears would be ringing.” He hefted his gun, gestured to it, then around the room. “So, Springfield AR. Quentin’s got a Smith and Wesson, Bobby’s got SIG, Ed’s got a fancy Geissele…we’re mostly fighting this war with the guns they outlawed, which only seems fitting. Poetic. Ironic? Maybe poetically ironic.”
“It’s totally fucking predictable is what it was,” Mark’s voice floated out of the dimness at the back of the room. “The first shot fired in the American Revolution was at British soldiers trying to seize an ammo dump belonging to the colonists. There were actually too many guns for them to even think about confiscating those—sound familiar?—so they went after ammo instead, and that war lasted for eight years. Those who forget history are doomed to blah blah blah.”
“This war’s got that one beat by at least a year,” George observed. No wonder he felt so tired. He looked at the new kid. “This and most of the guns we’ve got are semi-auto, one round per pull of the trigger, which is all you really want most of the time. The only full-auto guns we’ve got here are Weasel’s MP5 subgun, Ed’s Geissele, and Mark’s SAW. Don’t mess with that, belt-feds are a whole ‘nother animal. But apart from the MP5 and SAW and Early’s big piece of lumber, all the rifles we’ve got or that you’re likely to see in the hands of doggies are ARs of one kind or another, and work the same way. And take the same magazines, which is important. Let me show you how to work the controls.”
“Okay. Um, why?”
“So if the guy next to you gets killed, you know how to shoot his rifle when you pick it up.”
As the rest of the squad sealed up their packs and shouldered their loads Ed wandered toward the rear of the former machine shop where Early sat patiently on a thick pipe, his big rifle across his knees.
“You know, ah had a thought this mornin’,” Early began.
“Yeah?”
“You evah consider maybe that Uncle Charlie was compromised and left that message f’us with a gun to his head?”
Ed sighed and shook his head. “You really know how to start the day off rosy. Yeah, I thought of it. Every single time we get a mission I think of it.”
“Jes’ wonderin.”
“He didn’t use any of the red flags, though.” If Uncle Charlie, or anyone for that matter, was captured and forced to send a message, they were supposed to insert any one of a half dozen innocuous words into the message, so the recipient would know he was compromised.
“Yeah. So?”
“You’re right. But we weren’t going to stumble in blind anyhow. And I can’t let the ‘what ifs’ take over.”
“I know, Cap’n, I know, jes wanted to bring it to your attention.”
Ed glanced around the room at his squad. Camo or not, no one was going to mistake them for regular army, what with their bearded faces, helmet-less heads, and motley collection of weapons. Which was both good and bad; if they stumbled across an army patrol they’d never be able to pass for regular army, even at a distance, but at least they should be safe from friendly fire. Hopefully. He looked back down at Early.
“You going to need help getting up?” He did an admirable job of keeping a straight face.
Early squinted up at him. Ed was silhouetted against one of the filmy windows lit up by the morning sun.
“I saw how badly you were shaking last night trying to keep your rifle on the kid,” Ed went on. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Early, for a second there I thought you were having a heart attack.”
Early looked from him to George, who’d walked up and was now trying hard to hide a smile. “It’s gotta be hard being the only retiree on the squad,” George said innocently. “We’ve got time this trip to stop for afternoon naps, don’t we?” He raised his eyebrows at Ed.
“Oh you miserable bastards,” Early cursed. His hands gripped his rifle tight as he stood. “If either a you carried a real rifle maybe we could have an adult conversation.” He’d been forty-nine years old, just three years from retirement, when the war started, and that was near on a decade ago. Through all the years of fighting he’d managed to keep the same rifle he’d started with, a National Match M1A. Compared to the carbines the Army and just about everybody else used it was long and heavy and didn’t hold much ammo, but what he hit stayed down. And he had a track record of hitting what he was aiming at quite a bit more often than not.
George held out his stubby carbine. “You want to trade for the day? I don’t mind carrying an antique.” He eyed the bright scrape down the handguard. He knew he needed to repaint the thing, but finding spraypaint these days was nearly impossible. Grease, though, he should be able to find some grease inside this former machine shop to rub on it.
Early was visibly insulted. “Carry one ‘a your poodle shooters? No thank you. I take my job seriously.” He scowled at the short-barreled carbine in George’s hands. “I think I’d be insulted, you shot me with that thing.”
It was so easy to push Early’s buttons. George sobered up first. “How many rounds you got left for that beast again?”
Early pinched his lips together unhappily. “Thirty-four. We don’t do something soon I’ll be throwing rocks.”
Ed checked his watch. Time to go. He pulled the SatLink6 and battery out, assembled it and switched it on, unable to contain his impatience as it booted up. Once it was ready to go he looked at the signal strength icon. He’d charged the battery for twenty minutes early that morning, hooking it to the roll-up solar panel he’d laid on the concrete out back where it caught the morning sun. George was tasked with carrying the drone jammer, and he had his own rubber-backed solar panel for the four working batteries they still had for it.
“Can we get a signal here?” Ed asked. It wasn’t the metal in the roof interfering with the signal. Satellite coverage in the city had never been great, even though back before the war every car with a satellite radio never had any problem getting a signal. He supposed the military had shut down or taken over a lot of the birds in orbit. Or the ARF had taken them out.
George pointed. “That corner, usually.”
Ed moved to the rear corner of the shop room and was rewarded with a half-strength signal reading. “Better than nothing,” he muttered. He pulled out the tablet and got that up and running. He quickly checked the forum thread and saw there were no new messages, then used his thumbs to type in the other now-familiar web address.
George moved up quietly behind him and peered over his shoulder as a list of cities appeared on the small screen. Ed tapped one and the two men waited.
“I’m surprised it’s stayed up this long,” George said, nodding at the screen. “Whoever this guy is, he’s good.” He blinked. “I wonder if it’s Uncle Charlie, or someone on hi
s team.”
The palm-sized screen changed from bluish-white to a mottled brownish green and both men breathed silent sighs of relief. Ed checked the readout in the corner of the photo for the time it was taken. “Christ, Zulu, Greenwich Mean Time, I can never remember. When was this taken?”
George checked his watch. “Thirty-seven minutes ago.”
“Not bad,” Ed said, nodding, as he used his fingertips to zoom in on the satellite photo. The mottled colors soon resolved themselves into a busy crisscross of tiny lines and dark splotches.
“No cloud cover,” George observed, staring at the screen. He then looked out the grimy windows, peering upward into the dark blue sky, idly wondering what piece of the world the satellite that had taken this photo was over now. “Better save this and disconnect.”
“Shit, yeah, right.” Ed saved the ultra-hi-res photo file and then pulled the battery from the SatLink. He then moved to the far corner of the building where the walls and pipes prevented any signal from going in or out. You never knew when someone might be trying to trace your signal, although passive downloading from a piggybacked Polish server was a far cry from broadcasting propaganda. He put away the SatLink and peered at the photo on the tablet.
Ed tapped the zoom button repeatedly, leaning close to peer at the screen until his nose was almost touching. The resolution on the satellite photo was scary good.
“Move a little north, about one tic,” George suggested. “That’ll center us.” He watched as the squad leader re-centered the screen. What was now displayed on the tablet’s small screen was a section of the city approximately one mile across. Both men squinted at it. “You think they have a clue we’ve got access to this?” he wondered aloud, much as he did every time they studied satellite data.
“As soon as they found out they would shut it down,” Ed replied. “Unless ARF controls the satellite. I don’t know.” His world was filled with unknowns. Since he couldn’t control them, he tried not to worry.