The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny

by Tippins, Rick

  Within seconds, Jared could no longer see the Humvee, as it was shrouded in a cloud of dust as it sped around a bend and out of sight. Jared stood and was about to collect his horse when another shot rang out, causing him to involuntarily drop back down below the embankment he’d employed as cover. When he peeked over the top, his shoulders sagged. Clarence was standing over the prostrate form of what amounted to be a defenseless man, whom Clarence essentially just executed.

  “Ah, no,” Jared mumbled under his breath.

  Clarence did what Jared knew he could never do. Jared wasn’t about to judge the man after all everyone had been going through the past several months. This man was a victim of theft at the hands of the man lying dead in the dirt at his feet, and he would have to atone for his actions either in his own mind or at the end of time, Jared didn’t know which. Or maybe the man was justified. Jared did not have the answer. The killing could easily be construed as a type of detached self-defense. If Clarence allowed these men to starve him and his family to death, what difference was that than if the men shot and killed Clarence and his family.

  Jared collected his mount, climbed numbly into the saddle, and rode back to the house, where Clarence still stood over the dead soldier, a look of dread written on his weathered face. Jared dismounted just as Stephani also rounded the side of the house. Jared studied the fallen soul and realized the soldier was little more than a kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” Clarence hissed through clinched teeth, obviously disappointed with his lack of self-control.

  Stephani looked at Jared, question etched on her pretty face. She’d not seen Clarence shoot the soldier.

  “Killing a man is a nasty thing no matter how you look at it,” Jared offered. His feelings on certain matters after the solar flare were evolving into ones formed after much thought coupled with a healthy dose of inner perspective. Just because Jared wouldn’t have shot the defenseless teen soldier didn’t make Clarence a bad guy. Jared didn’t actually know how he would react if all this were his and these men stole from him and his people. It was not without possibility Jared could have reacted in the exact same manner as Clarence just did if it were Shannon’s and Essie’s lives hanging in the balance.

  “He’s just a kid,” Clarence murmured more to himself than to Jared.

  “The next group of guys they send won’t be kids,” Jared stated flatly. “I saw the guys who came for my friend John, and they looked and acted totally different than these guys.”

  “What happened?” Stephani finally asked.

  Jared flashed Stephani a grave look, then shifted his eyes toward the house, letting her know he would fill her in later on what had happened to the man on the ground and that now was not the time for an after-action debrief.

  “The decent thing to do is bury these guys,” Jared announced in an attempt to get everyone’s minds off what had occurred there in the front yard. “Clarence, can you dig a hole maybe out behind the barn or wherever, and then come on back so we can load the bodies into the bucket?”

  Clarence mumbled something Jared didn’t catch before heading off to fetch the tractor. It took more than an hour to excavate a hole large enough to accommodate all seven bodies, and while Clarence was digging, Jared and Stephani embarked on the gruesome task of stripping the men of anything valuable. They left the men with their clothes and boots, but took almost everything else. Body armor, weapons, ammunition, and rifle-cleaning equipment.

  Next, they searched the remaining Humvee and found a box of MREs, which they also took. Once the bodies were stripped and the Humvee was searched, Jared started the vehicle and drove it into the barn, where it would not be visible to incoming troops.

  When Clarence returned with the tractor, he and Jared loaded the bodies into the bucket, and Clarence drove the dead to the hole he’d dug. Clarence tilted the bucket and dumped the soldiers’ bodies unceremoniously into their shared grave. Once the bodies were in the bottom of the hole, Clarence bulldozed dirt over the top before tamping it down by driving back and forth across the grave top. The last thing any of them wanted was for scavengers like coyotes to dig up the human remains.

  Two hours after the shooting, in which their opposition failed to fire a single shot, Jared and company stood somber faced in front of the house.

  “The shit is going to hit the fan when that guy gets back to their base,” Jared said, stating the obvious. “I say one of us takes some things out to Shannon and them for the evening, and we set up and be ready for a night assault just in case they come tonight. Plus, the gals had to have heard the shooting and are probably worried sick.”

  While Stephani rode out to the women in the creek bed, a subdued Clarence along with Jared began preparations for the helicopter takedown. They drove the tractor up the side of the hill Stephani had used earlier that day, and attached the power line to the tractor’s hitch. When they walked back to the barn and looked back at the hill, the tractor was conspicuous, but it also could have died in that spot on the day of the solar flare.

  Clarence would hide under the machine in the depression they’d dug, and hope the men flying overhead weren’t using forward-looking infrared (FLIR). Jared and Stephani would be in the creek bed, under some trees, with two horses tethered nearby in the event they needed to be ferried away posthaste. Clarence left his horse a fair distance from where the tractor was parked, and would have to move on foot after the party started in order to reach his mount. There would be no need for a signal. Clarence had line of sight on the power line and would see when it was time to drive the tractor forward in order to pull the line up tight across the aircraft’s approach path.

  When everything they needed done was completed, Jared turned to Stephani, who had just returned. “How was Ess doing?”

  Stephani smiled warmly and cocked her head slightly. “Funny, she asked the same thing about you.”

  Jared felt some of the day’s tension leave his body as he thought of his little charge. Strong silent Essie. The kid was a prodigy after all she’d seen and been through. Jared found himself missing Essie and Shannon as he waited for their next impending clash with the people who’d taken John from them. Once they were finished with all the preparations, such as ensuring the barn was closed, and everyone knew their job, Clarence left and went to lie under the tractor while Stephani and Jared moved their horses into the creek bed. As the afternoon wore on, Jared chewed on some dried food he and Stephani had brought with them. He wondered what Clarence was up to and pulled out his binoculars.

  Clarence lay on his side, propped up by a boney elbow, a piece of straw hanging from one corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Jared smiled inwardly. Country folk were having a much easier time with all the post-solar-flare nonsense. Clarence was content to lie on his side and gnaw on hay while Stephani and Jared sat impatiently in the creek bed, wishing they had something to pass the time with. It was times like these that caused Jared to miss his computer and all the wonderful things he previously used to occupy his time with. He’d checked email, surfed the internet, used the computer for research, and even wrote code.

  Here in the new world, there was most often nothing to do but struggle to survive. The definition of struggle changed on a daily basis. One day it meant hard work trying to find or raise food, but today it meant a fight with an airborne combat unit. Jared swallowed hard at the thought of not bringing the helicopter down and having to deal with the men who would come pouring out of the aircraft’s belly. He harbored a sinking feeling they would not be in the greatest of moods when they realized someone just tried to crash their ride. In fact, Jared felt confident the men would be in a shoot-first-ask-no-questions kind of mood if he failed to destroy the helicopter.

  Chapter 16

  When Matt Carver returned to the Stockton base, he went directly to his team’s quarters and gave the men who’d remained behind the bad news. Kemper was dead, and in Matt’s opinion, their former commander should still be al
ive. Matt filled the entire team in on his suspicions, but was made to admit he didn’t have evidence to back up his misgivings about what Josh said had happened out at the farm.

  That evening a soldier stopped by the SEAL quarters and told Matt the colonel wanted to see him. Matt knew this was coming and was only surprised it hadn’t come sooner. The call came less than two hours after the SEALs finished burying Kemper, leaving Matt in a foul mood, ill prepared to mingle with the base commander. A couple of the SEALs offered to accompany Matt, but he told them to lie low and keep an eye out on the rest of the team. Matt dressed in full battle kit, then slung his rifle before heading toward the hangar that housed Carnegie’s office.

  When Matt walked through Carnegie’s office door, he was less than pleased to see Josh sitting in a chair off to one side of Carnegie’s desk. Matt would have preferred Josh not get the colonel’s ear first in this after-action debrief or whatever shit show it was going to turn into.

  “Close the door, Matt,” Carnegie ordered, his voice void of emotion.

  Matt pulled the door closed behind him and shot Josh an icy stare before refocusing on Carnegie. “What’s up?”

  “Josh here tells me you made some pretty heavy accusations out at the farm after Kemper was killed.”

  Matt didn’t like being outnumbered, knowing full well Josh was Carnegie’s boy and he was not. Matt had no proof of anything other than what Josh was telling everyone had happened, but he remained convinced something was off.

  “Something isn’t right with all this, Colonel. Dan wouldn’t just run off without letting the team know where he was headed or what he was doing.”

  Carnegie leaned forward in his chair, clasping his large hands together. “That was because I told him not to tell anyone. We had time-sensitive intel about a working piece of farm equipment. There wasn’t time to run around telling everyone where and what Josh and he were up to. We spun up a bird and away they went. Hell, Matt, our mission brief lasted less than twenty seconds,” Carnegie finished, his tone telling Matt to drop any questions he might have.

  Matt stared at the floor for a beat, then looked Carnegie squarely in the eye. “No more. We do things the way guys don’t get killed from here on out. No tractor is worth a guy’s life, with all due respect, Colonel.”

  Carnegie raised his brows almost imperceptibly. “Matt, let me remind you you’re still in the Navy, and therefore you’ll follow orders.”

  Matt tried not to grit his teeth as his jaw muscles flexed. “Is that it, Colonel?”

  Carnegie peered placidly back at Matt before shrugging. “I guess that’s up to you, sailor.”

  Matt didn’t hesitate, giving Carnegie a curt nod before he spun without acknowledging Josh and exited the office.

  “Fucking millennials,” Carnegie swore.

  Matt stormed through the halls and out into the hangar. He headed straight back to the SEALs’ quarters, dropped his gear on a chair, and fought the urge to put his fist through one of the walls.

  “What’s up, Matt?” asked a young SEAL named Adam.

  Matt turned to the men, took a deep breath, blew it out, and tried to lower his blood pressure back to healthy levels. “I want two of you to low-key an OP outside. Very low key, the rest of us have to talk.”

  Without delay, the two junior SEALs moved to the door and disappeared outside, taking with them a Hacky Sack they planned on using as cover for being out front, where they could warn the rest of the team in the case someone stopped by.

  Inside the SEAL living quarters, the remaining SEALs looked solemn faced at Matt, waiting to hear what he had for them.

  “Something stinks with this outfit,” Matt began. “I can’t put my finger on it, but Dan didn’t go down like this Josh cat is laying it out. I saw Dan and the other guy they say killed him, and there is no way Dan walked into that barn with a guy standing out in the open and lost a gunfight. His fucking rifle was safed, for crying out loud. I don’t believe it. Dan would have pied that door off and at least got a few rounds off even if the dickhead got a lucky shot on him.” Matt flexed his jaw muscles and searched the younger faces in the room. “Anyone else have a bad feeling about being here with this Carnegie guy?”

  Heads bobbed while a couple of SEALs murmured their agreement.

  “No one goes out without at least a team of four, no matter what, and no one leaves without telling me. Kemp was one of the most squared-away guys I ever served with, so I just don’t buy that one day he throws everything to the wind and gets himself killed as a result. Cover each other. Don’t go anywhere on base without your swim buddies until I figure this out.”

  The SEAL meeting was interrupted by the sound of an over-revved Humvee engine, followed by excited voices of men and women. Matt moved to the door and swung it open. The two younger SEALs tasked with watching their six were staring in the direction of the hangar that housed Carnegie’s office. A Humvee sat in front of the hangar, but what caught Matt’s eye were the several bullet strikes adorning the right side of the vehicle. Next, he noticed the Humvee was missing most of its rear bumper. Matt turned back to the rest of the team.

  “Team One, come with me. The rest of you lock this place down, but keep an eye on us.”

  Matt pulled on his battle gear and grabbed his rifle before setting off across the tarmac, followed by four other SEALs.

  When all the yelling reached Carnegie’s ears, he strode confidently out to see what the hell was going on. When he saw one of his vehicles had been shot up, his blood pressure rose like a tsunami. When he realized he was missing seven men and one vehicle, his head nearly lifted off his shoulders. Carnegie could see the man who’d driven the only returning Humvee back to base appeared distraught, but physically uninjured. Carnegie walked straight to the man, who was jabbering about being ambushed, and grabbed the man by the collar, pulling him in close.

  “Where in the fuck is the rest of your unit, soldier?” Carnegie barked in a hoarse voice.

  “I, ah, I think they’re all dead, sir,” the man stammered through quivering lips.

  Carnegie released the man, shoving him roughly back a pace. “Yet here you stand without a fucking scratch.” Carnegie looked the man over briefly, an expression of disgust clearly written on his face. “Where’s your weapon?”

  “It all happened so quick, I don’t know. I must have dropped it,” the man whined as he began to realize he would be getting no sympathy from this man for what he’d just been through.

  Carnegie seethed as the subhuman groveled before him. Finally, he could no longer keep a lid on his rage and lashed a foot out fast and hard, hitting the man squarely in the chest, knocking him to the ground. “Get this coward into the briefing room with all his pre-mission briefing material, including the maps,” Carnegie snapped as he turned and stormed back into the hangar.

  Before anyone could move, Matt stepped in and hauled the fallen man to his feet. “We’ll get him there,” Matt said as he and the four SEALS moved forward to guide the man toward the hangar.

  Once they were away from the men and women who’d gathered around the Humvee, Matt whispered in the man’s ear, “What happened? Quick, just give me the Reader’s Digest version.”

  The man turned, his face brightening, thinking he might have a friend in all this. He quickly relayed to Matt what his mission was and how he basically went out and collected taxes from the locals. Matt listened intently, asked a couple of questions, then pursed his lips.

  “So let me get this straight. The colonel has you guys out there stealing from people who are barely making it?” Matt questioned incredulously. This was the first time he was hearing of any sort of taxation being run from the base.

  The man’s face again dropped after the accusation. “Taxes, not stealing,” he argued.

  Matt snorted. “Stealing, bro. What’d you expect was going to happen?”

  Inside the briefing room, Carnegie sat red faced as one of his intel wienies went over the day’s mission and how it was part of an
ongoing weekly collection detail. Following the intel brief, Carnegie listened to the man retell his experience at Clarence’s home. The SEALs stood against one wall while Josh sat in a chair, obviously taking his cues from Carnegie since his face seemed a little redder than usual. During the man’s account of the ambush, he was unable to honestly say how many people he faced, admitting he hadn’t seen a single person other than the man from the house, who outright refused to turn over any further livestock.

  The survivor told the group he saw the owner of the property walk up and execute Sergeant Clemons after the man fell wounded and was unable to defend himself. The soldier conveniently left out the fact that he’d run over Clemons, which was the reason the sergeant was down in the first place. Everyone in the room snarled when this was described except the five SEALs. When Carnegie felt he understood as much as he was going to about what had happened, along with where it had happened, his mind began planning his response.

  “Josh, we need to respond immediately. You and the Navy boys can go in there and bring these sons of bitches back here. Tomorrow we can send a retrieval team out for any valuables, and they can burn the place to the ground when they’re finished. We have two working helicopters, and I suggest you use them both.”

  Josh nodded at the colonel and looked toward Matt, who gave him a flat expressionless stare back. Matt held his poker face for a moment, then tilted his chin slightly, acknowledging his understanding of what was being asked of him and his team. Carnegie got up to leave the two warriors to plan out the mission, but stopped short of the door.

  “You know those SEAL pups out there don’t belong to you, Matt, they belong to me. I am their commanding officer. Please don’t let that little bit of trivia slip your mind.”