by James Tarr
“You go in there? The junk yard?”
Weasel shook his head. “I just wandered around, trying to look harmless and homeless.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I bet Jason can see into it halfway decent. There are a few trees in the way, but with binos you’ll probably get a pretty good eyeball on the whole place including the office all the way across the lot, I don’t think there’s anything tall in there except for those concrete mountains, and they’re in the back.”
“So the sports complex buildings, or building, is huge, and right out in the open, surrounded by open fields, but because of all the fences and how the neighborhood is set up you can’t set up to watch the front door except from one spot, unless you want to stand out in the open?” Early said. He looked at Ed and George. “You think that’s an accident?”
“I doubt it,” George said.
“I think I saw a running track on the north side of the building,” Weasel added. “overgrown to shit, just like everything else. And I think it’s just one building, all connected. But Q’s right, it’s the size of a school. There could be a thousand people packed in there. Or nobody. I didn’t see anybody go in or out of the front doors at all. There is one vehicle in the parking lot, but it’s sitting on rims, all the windows busted out.”
Ed looked around the squad. “Well, we’re still technically a day early. Think we should head to the junk yard office, get a closer look?”
“I think we have to,” Mark said. “Although…if it is a trap, we’ll probably never see it coming.”
“We’re all going into this with our eyes open,” Ed said. “If it is a trap, they probably know we’re here right now. If they’re waiting to jump us at the school, hopefully if we’re smart they shouldn’t be able to get all of us.” He shrugged. “Or, if they do, that we give as good as we got. Should we risk a drone flyover? We’ve got the thing now, we should use it.”
“I can’t think of any reason not to,” George said. “I’ll get it spun up.”
“Assuming we don’t see anything with the drone that we didn’t see walking around the place, head out now?” Weasel asked. “Once we’re inside that junkyard fence, we’re pretty much gonna be invisible to everybody but the eye in the sky. And if he’s already peering down at this little patch of nothing special, four miles from the Blue Zone, we’re fucked anyway.”
“Let’s see what we see with the drone. And I think I want to wait until dark before moving out,” Ed said after thinking on it a bit. “Just to be on the safe side. Renny?”
“Yeah?”
“Think you can get up on the roof with that rifle while we do this drone flyby? That scope’s more powerful than these binoculars, maybe you can see something I don’t. And I’m curious if you can get eyes on that junk yard office from up there.”
Renny looked up at the high ceiling and thought of the way the tire stack had swayed and wiggled while Jason had climbed it. “‘What’d you do in the war, dad?’ ‘Well, son, I broke a hip’,” he muttered, shaking his head, then looked at Ed and said heartily with a big fake smile, “Sure, what could go wrong?”
The rest of the squad broke out in laughter. The old man with the big rifle was still the new man on the squad, but after hearing from George how the bland-faced senior had reflexively executed the cannibal with a shot to the back of the head, followed by two more just to make sure, their comfort and trust levels had gone way up.
Parker stood in the middle of his operations center, hands on his hips, staring up at the display on the big board. His people had plotted all of the significant confirmed and suspected enemy activity in the metropolitan area for the past two weeks up on the large illuminated map. His S3, Major Mike Chamberlain, stood on one side of him, his S2 Major Paul Cooper on the other. Captain Jessie Green, his S7, was standing in the background, just observing as she usually did. That was something new for this war that nobody talked about, the S7 position—Political Officer. Green spent most of her time approving broadcast content for the Voice of the People, censoring whatever needed censoring. She also had access to all electronic communications so she could monitor them for any anti-government sentiment. It was an unpleasant job, so it was no surprise Green was an unpleasant person, but she was very efficient. Around them the soldiers assigned to the OpCenter worked at their stations, staring into widescreen computer monitors.
“If there's a pattern here, I’m not seeing it,” Parker said.
“Maybe it’s the increased activity itself that’s the red flag,” Cooper replied.
“Hmmm. I'm not sure that it is increased activity,” Parker mused. “Compare it to last summer at this time. Things always pick up this time of year and drop close to zero in the middle of winter, could just be a coincidence that we’ve had so many things happen in such a short period of time.” He turned his head and saw the look on the Major’s face. “I know, probably not,” he said, “playing a little Devil’s Advocate, but I’ll be damned if I see anything here that looks connected or a concerted effort. It’s scattershot. Mike, clear the map, and then bring up everything we’ve had in the past two weeks, in order. I want to go through these all again, see if anything jumps out.”
His S3 cleared the map, then started. “I’ll do sniper activity separately afterward, as so many of those are individuals or one-offs.” He clicked, and a red icon popped up on the city’s northeast side. “August first, a patrol ambushed. Small arms fire. We suffered four dead and a handful wounded. No clue as to enemy strength or numbers or casualties.”
He clicked, and a red icon appeared on the east side of the city. “August third, a checkpoint came under fire. Rifles and one RPG round fired. We went after them, but they disappeared into the city, as usual. We suffered one dead, four wounded. They suffered two EKIA, unknown if any of them were wounded. From the way it went down, that one RPG round they fired was probably the only one they had.”
“I’m surprised they had any, at this late date, to be honest, but they must be getting smuggled in somehow,” Parker observed.
Another click, this icon north of the city, in one of the adjoining suburbs. “Nothing further until the tenth, when Kilo One-Three engaged two vehicles on a bridge over the Ditch. Eight confirmed enemy casualties, but we lost Kilo One-Three and the two aircrew.” He nodded at the Colonel. “RPG, launcher recovered at the scene. We suspect there were more terrorists in the area. Later that night ground forces and Kilo One-Eight engaged what we think were terrorists in the two apartment high-rises here.” He clicked, and a red icon appeared two kilometers directly southwest of where the Kestrel had gone down. “Six confirmed dead, but not sure how many of them were terrorists or just residents. Two enemy weapons were recovered.”
He clicked, and a red dot appeared on the south side of the city. “Next day, August eleventh, patrol takes fire here. Nobody hurt, they just scratched the paint on a few vehicles. Our men never saw who did the shooting, and I’m only including it here because they say they were fired upon by at least two or three people based on the amount of incoming. Later that day,” he clicked and a red dot appeared half a mile east of the previous one, “a truck ran one of our checkpoints. It got shot up pretty bad. Took us an hour, but we found it inside a warehouse. Empty, when we found it. I’m only including this because the troops manning the checkpoint said it looked like the driver and passenger were masked and wearing armor.”
“August twelfth,” he clicked, and a red dot appeared on the city’s west side. “Patrol ambushed, and they booby-trapped an ammo box for the QRF, which should have fucking known better. Sorry, sir.” He also slid a glance at the taciturn Political Officer, but she had no comment. “Fourteen dead, six injured, an IMP and Growler destroyed. Goddamn waste.”
“Next day, a mile plus to the east, a patrol still looking for the group that ambushed the patrol heard some shots and rolled right up on an ARF squad. Took them by surprise. Seven terrorists confirmed dead, we suffered one dead and three badly wounded from a grenade. Unknown if they’re the s
ame squad which ambushed the patrol the day before, but it seems likely, they used grenades there as well. An hour or two later, at the very south end of the city, there was a big turf war between some motorcycle gangs, or at least that’s what we were told by the locals. We had troops in the area that responded to the gunfire, but it was over before they got there. At least ten civilians dead. Not ARF involved, I don’t think, we don’t believe the ARF works with any of the gangs, but still, that’s a big dustup, which is why I’ve got it plotted. And that gets us current.”
Parker frowned as he stared at the map. “Okay, so what about losses to snipers?”
Chamberlain hit several buttons. The map widened to show the entire territory the Army was tasked with controlling. Yellow lights appeared all over the map, in and around the city as well as out in the rural countryside. “Eighteen sniper attacks, which resulted in twelve dead and two wounded. Only one of the snipers was killed. I can scroll through them chronologically, but the pattern seems totally random. This group here,” he reached up and moved his finger down a series of icons stretching from the suburbs into the city, “might be the work of the same sniper, but patrols turned up nothing. Of course, they were all buttoned up, so he had nothing to shoot at, but….”
“What about our SF sniper teams?” Parker asked. “Isn’t one of their responsibilities doing surveillance and acting as scouts? Calling out enemy movements? What the hell are they reporting?”
“Yes,” his S2 told him, “I’ve been in regular radio communication with them. Only one of the teams reported seeing any confirmed enemy movement. They scored two KIA on an ARF squad. They searched the bodies, but no intelligence was recovered. Those four sniper teams, since they've been operating in the city, have reported fifty-nine KIA.”
“Fifty-nine?” Parker said incredulously. “Fifty-nine in four days and that’s not major enemy activity? Why wasn’t I told about this?”
“Um, sir,” Cooper said, “only those two that I just mentioned are confirmed enemy combatants. The rest were just citizens spotted with guns or body armor. Mostly guns. And curfew violators. In fact, the majority of their kills were residents ignoring the curfew.”
“Jesus Christ!” Parker threw his hands up. He was shouting. “We’ve got four SF scout/sniper teams out there and all they’re doing is popping idiots with guns and people out after dark?”
His Political Officer cleared her throat. “Possession of firearms and body armor is illegal,” his S7 reminded him. “Under martial law we have the legal right to shoot violators on sight. Same with people violating the curfew. Or looters. Or rioters. Not only is it legal, it seems to me to be a moral imperative, to reinforce proper obedience to the laws of the state.”
“I know that. You don’t think I fucking know that?” Parker paused, took a deep breath, and tried to calm down. “Sorry. And I’m not saying they shouldn’t. But I wanted them here, in the city, to actually hunt down and shoot the goddamn enemy soldiers who have been running around the city killing my men. And I told Barnson exactly that.”
“From what I’ve gleaned talking to those teams, Sir,” Chamberlain told him, “it seems that General Barnson impressed upon them he wanted more of a scorched earth approach. Take out anyone with anything that even looks like a weapon. Enforce the curfew. Put the fear of the God, and the Army, back into the city.”
“Well, while they’ve been terrorizing the locals with their Saturday Night Specials, the ARF has been chewing the shit out of us.” He did the math in his head. “We’ve lost thirty-three people, but almost half of those were in that one ambush. Confirmed terrorist kills twenty-five, if we count everybody in that apartment tower and our two measly sniper kills.” He wasn’t counting the rest of the sniper team kills, shooting people in the city who had guns or were out after dark seemed more like culling the herd of the stupidest animals than actual combat. “That’s high, even for this time of year. I don’t like those numbers one fucking bit. Gentlemen?” He looked around the room.
“I don’t know if this uptick portends some major offensive or not, or if this is some kind of slapdick ARF offensive, but I want random patrols doubled. Night patrols, too. If they’re out there, up to something, I want to flush them out, and hit them hard. You stay on top of things, and if anything happens, any sniper shots, any confirmed enemy contact, some three-legged stray mangy dog barking arf arf arf, I want to be made aware of it immediately. Am I clear?”
The sun was down and the sky filling with stars when most of the squad left the safety of the building and slipped through the gap in the metal fence. Renny was still up on the roof with Jason. Once the man had clambered up there with his powerful rifle and glassed the giant junk yard, he’d crawled across the roof to one of the metal vents and found, as he suspected, that he could talk to Ed inside without having to raise his voice.
“I can see most of one side of that junk yard office,” he told Ed, his hands and stomach burning on the hot tarpaper covering the roof, nose against the metal vent. “A few windows and doors, but nothing moving, there or anywhere else in the lot. Rangefinder says it’s almost three hundred yards exactly, which is nothing for this scope.” Or his rifle, for that matter.
“How well does it work in the dark?” Ed’s voice was faint, but clear.
“Not bad, actually.” On lower magnification it could actually gather light, and he could see more with it than he could his naked eye.
“You stay up there, I want you to cover our asses when we walk over. And Jason can cover your ass. You see something you don’t like, you let us know somehow, I don’t care if you have to put a shot over our heads or between us.”
“Gotcha.”
George had spun the drone in circles five hundred feet over the area, close enough to see all the detail possible but high enough its rotors wouldn’t be heard. Neither he nor the other people watching the drone camera’s feed on the provided tablet had spotted anything of concern. So, when the sun set, the men had checked their gear and headed out.
Directly on the other side of the metal fence were several relatively ordered rows of cars, packed so closely together the men could barely fit between them. Ed used hand signals to spread the squad out to either side, and they moved cautiously forward.
Past the orderly, rusting hulks the yard opened up. There were random heaps of debris, everything from sand to chunks of asphalt to slabs of concrete. The junkyard itself was paved in asphalt, or at least had been, once. Now, nature was slowly reclaiming it, and patches of waist-high weeds and grass poked through frequently, with the occasional sapling.
The moon wasn’t up yet, which was both good and bad. After another hundred yards the random piles ended and there were abandoned semi-trailers without cabs, scattered with no apparent pattern, left to slowly collapse atop their rotting tires. The squad moved through the trailers slowly, listening, checking underneath them, in no hurry.
Less than one hundred feet past the last trailer was the junk yard office. It was a squat, one-story building, white with fading red trim. They could see a closed rolling metal door and one pedestrian door flanked by windows, most of which seemed broken.
The men of Theodore paused in the shelter of the trailers, using their wheels as cover, and stared at the building. Ed pulled out his binoculars and glassed the front of the building, but didn’t immediately see anything. He was keenly aware of Renny, three hundred yards behind him, looking through the scope of his powerful rifle.
He was just about to signal the men to approach when Early, on one knee beside him, tapped Ed’s leg, and pointed at the building. Ed squinted. There was some sort of moving orange glow inside.
The glow resolved itself into the wavering flame of a candle being carried by a man. In the dark, with their eyes adjusted to the night, the flickering sphere of light from the candle was bright enough for them to see the man clearly as he walked to the side door of the building and opened it. He had no visible weapon, and nothing in his hands but the candle, although the
re were binoculars hanging from his neck. Ed raised his rifle and braced it against the side of the trailer, putting the glowing reticle on the man’s chest as he stood in the open doorway, staring in their direction.
Ed was sure the man couldn’t see them—it was too dark, and they were in dark clothes and mostly hidden behind the big tires of the trailers. And yet the man lifted a hand and waved them in. “Come on in and get a roof over your heads,” he said, loudly enough for them to hear him clearly. He took one step backward so the candle was not beyond the roof line, and waited.
Ed growled in his throat. “Stay here,” he murmured so quietly only Early could hear him, and the man nodded behind his M1A, which was trained on the candle bearer.
Using hand signals to direct his men, Ed and the remainder of the squad slowly approached the building from three sides. Ed didn’t recognize the man when he drew close. He was in a plaid shirt and blue jeans and if he was carrying a weapon it was concealed.
The man waved them on again and backed a few steps into the building, then turned and walked away from them, unconcernedly turning his back on half a dozen armed men. Quentin was in the lead and followed the bobbing light from the candle, which did a decent job of illuminating the nearly empty building. George was behind him, grunted “Fuck this,” and turned on the light mounted on the handguard of his carbine. The 600-lumen beam seemed as bright as a nuclear blast inside the building, and as he swung it about he was able to quickly scan the big repair bay. He kept the beam low so he didn’t shine it out the front windows.