“See anything moving?” Jared asked through teeth that no longer chattered. His hands, on the flip side, were shaking like leaves in a windstorm, while his teeth seemed to have stabilized.
Stephani pulled her eyes from the optics and shook her head. “Nothing,” she rasped. Her mouth had suddenly become very dry, and she swallowed hard, feeling the dryness extended down her throat as well.
“Let’s get the horses and get out of here,” Jared urged. He took one last look at the house and then up the hill, half expecting to see men cresting the top, but all his eyes took in was the dark form of the hill. Time to go, Jared thought. The mission was to destroy a helicopter, and he’d done that. There was nothing left to do but get out of the area before they were forced into a fight Jared was fairly sure would end badly.
Jared and Stephani picked their way through the darkness to where the two horses were tethered to a low-slung branch. Both riders swung into their respective saddles in the eerie quietness that quickly returned after the helicopter had finished chewing itself to bits. Wordlessly they nudged their mounts toward the rendezvous point, the only noise now being the horses’ hooves stumbling through the rocky creek bed.
As they rode, Jared began to hear the second helicopter in the distance. For a few minutes the noisy machine had become nearly silent, but now it roared back over the property as Jared’s and Stephani’s horses trotted along under the cover of the trees that grew along the banks of the creek. Jared prayed silently the overhead foliage would shield them from any prying eyes in the sky.
After forty-five minutes of riding, Jared and Stephani arrived at the campsite, where they were met by a barking Crank, along with Shannon, who quieted the dog after having waited nervously in the early morning darkness. Clarence hadn’t returned, which sent Bonnie into a tailspin until Jared explained what had happened and how there was no way anyone on the ground could have posed a threat to Clarence since the helicopter was currently spread over much of their front yard, with the majority of it resting inside their house. Jared elaborated on the second helicopter and how it never came near its downed mate, instead opting to fly away from danger.
When Jared was finished calming Clarence’s kin down, he and Stephani set to preparing a hot meal over a small stove. Jared used a dehydrated packet of cinnamon apple oatmeal to warm his nearly frozen insides. Before Jared accomplished the task of inhaling the hot oatmeal, Crank let out a low growl before emitting a sharp bark. Everyone in the camp was on foot, weapons in hand, when Clarence came riding into camp, his face pale and slicked with a cold sweat.
The man went straight to Bonnie, and the two embraced for a moment before being joined by Suzy. When the trio completed hugging their family unit back together, Clarence turned to Jared.
“That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever been part of.”
Jared lowered his eyes but bobbed his head in agreement. “Sorry about your house. I didn’t even think that was a possibility.”
“We can’t go back there anyway. There was another helicopter that landed and dropped a bunch of guys off on the back side of that hill I had the tractor on,” Clarence stated, a look of hopelessness etched deeply in the lines of his face.
“I’m glad you came to that realization, Clarence; I was worried you and Bonnie would want to return. We have friends a few days’ ride from here up on Mines Road. I’m not going back until I resolve this John thing, but if you tell them about us and what’s going on out here, I am sure they’d take you in. If you show up with your livestock, it might make things a little easier.”
Crank let out a short yelp and sprinted from the group. Everyone turned as the dog beat feet toward a large mass of bushes just in time to see Devon come out into the open. The teen looked thinner and dirtier than the last time Jared remembered seeing him, which was several days prior. Devon raised a tired hand in greeting as he walked into the camp.
“Where did you take off to?” Jared queried the lad, in mild irritation coupled with curiosity.
“I saw John,” Devon responded flatly.
Jared’s mouth dropped open as he stood dumbfounded at this news.
“What do you mean you saw him—where?” Stephani snapped just a little too quick, causing Jared to close his mouth and shoot the woman a quizzical look.
“He’s at the airport, the Stockton one you were headed to. I saw him being led to take a shower.”
Jared finally gathered his wits. “You walked all the way to the airport? That’s where you’ve been this entire time?”
Devon nodded, confirming he had indeed walked to the airport, saw John, and walked back to report it to Jared.
Shannon stepped forward. “Have you eaten?”
Devon gulped and shook his head in answer.
“When was your last meal, Devon?” Shannon demanded in motherly concern.
Devon looked uncomfortable, his eyes averting to the ground as he answered, “I thought I had enough food, but the walk took a little longer than I expected. Once I was there, I couldn’t shoot any squirrels, or they would have come looking for me. Two days ago, I ate some broccoli in a field near the airport, but nothing since then. I just came back as fast as I could so we didn’t get separated.”
Shannon didn’t respond to Devon’s explanation, choosing instead to rummage through their stores, looking for a high-calorie meal for the half-starved teen.
Puzzled by how Devon had found them nearly five miles from the homestead, Jared asked, “How’d you find us way out here?”
Devon smirked woefully. “I just got back to their ranch and was watching to see if you guys were still there when I saw what you did to that helicopter. I saw two horses heading up the creek and figured it had to be you guys. I followed, and I could smell the food,” he finished with a shrug.
Shannon pulled out a meal that would usually be shared by two or more of their group and prepared it for the half-starved Devon. Neither of the other two adults in their group objected to what usually would be considered a wasteful overindulgence, so Devon filled his belly.
When the Black Hawk touched down, Matt and his SEALs exited the side doors of the helicopter, moved a short distance, and set up a security perimeter. The large aircraft lifted slowly into the air and floated away, leaving the SEAL team in relative quiet. Matt sent two of his men to the top of the ridge to assess the crash site before he moved the rest of their team down the hill.
When his two men radioed the coast was clear, Matt and his team moved cautiously down to the house, where the helicopter wreckage lay in the living room. The two overwatch SEALs also radioed the tractor was unoccupied, so Matt decided to check the piece of farm equipment on his way out of the area.
Both pilots were immediately confirmed dead, as were several of Josh’s team members. Matt’s team kept a small security element in the front yard while the rest of the SEALs searched for survivors. As Matt pulled debris from both the house and the Black Hawk out of the site, he found Josh facedown under a large portion of felled wall. He wasn’t sure if the man was alive or dead, so he began the arduous task of digging the stricken man from the debris pile.
Two other SEALs leapt in, helping to clear rubble away to expose most of Josh’s form. When Matt attempted to roll Josh onto his back, he was greeted with a groan of pain from Josh’s dust-covered lips.
“Get Doc up here,” Matt hollered over his shoulder.
Chapter 18
The SEALs worked for the next two hours picking through the disaster site, finding only the one survivor. Matt groaned inwardly, secretly wishing the survivor was one of the pilots or any other of Josh’s team members and not the diabolically black-hearted Special Missions Unit lapdog to Carnegie. Several of the victims involved in the crash were lying around the front yard, having been thrown from the aircraft when it first impacted the ground. Matt ordered the men stripped of essential battle equipment, but left them fully clothed, including the men’s boots. Next, he and his SEALs carried the men into the house and left them with the rest
of the dead, who had either been strapped into their seats or managed to hang on during the violent latter half of the aviation tragedy.
By midmorning, the SEALs stood in front of the house where the Black Hawk was held in the structure’s ruined embrace. With no first responders to clean up the mess, it would remain, until over time, mother earth reclaimed them both. One of the SEALs found a lawn mower and chainsaw, which he drained of gasoline. The SEAL emptied both fuel tanks into a five-gallon bucket before dumping the propellent throughout the house. When he was finished, he stepped back and looked to Matt for direction.
“Burn it,” was all Matt said, his voice flat and emotionless.
The SEAL stepped into the tangled pile of wood and carbon fiber, drew out a lighter, and set fire to it all. By the time the SEAL returned to Matt’s side, a third of the house was ablaze, the fire roaring, wood crackling and smoke curling skyward into the burgeoning morning.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here before we die from breathing this shit,” Matt muttered, turning on his heel and heading back up the hill the way the team came in. The sun had risen during the rescue operation, and as Matt walked, he caught sight of the tractor, reminding him he’d intended to check the machine out. He stopped and studied the machine for a moment before changing his course and heading straight to the piece of farm equipment. Once Matt reached the tractor, he knew immediately why Josh’s bird had crashed.
Tied to the rear hitch of the tractor was some sort of plastic-covered cable, maybe power lines, Matt didn’t know. His eyes followed the lines down the hill, where it appeared they had been severed after the Black Hawk came in contact with them. Matt knew power lines and other high-rise obstacles were helicopter killers, and from what he was seeing here, it looked like the people from this house were also aware of a helicopter’s kryptonite.
Matt turned to the rest of the team, who had stopped, waiting to see what he was going to do with the tractor. “Get Josh to the LZ, and I’ll be along in a couple of minutes.”
The SEALs didn’t argue and, to a man, turned and resumed their struggle up the hill, under the weight of Josh, who was strapped to a micro stretcher. Matt slowly started back down the hill, tracing the path of the lines to where they ended. He hauled out his binoculars and gazed out across the small valley in the direction the lines ran, and noticed the anchor point on the opposite side of the valley. The concrete had been ripped from the ground by the force of the helicopter impacting the lines, and fresh dirt was plainly visible. Matt scanned back down to the flatness of the valley’s floor and visually located several other lengths of tangled line.
Not satisfied with his inspection, Matt trudged back down the side of the hill until he stood over some of the tangled line. He let out a low whistle when he realized these people hadn’t just strung up lines in an effort to neutralize the helicopters, they’d attached large chunks of concrete to the line, as if flying into a strand of thick plastic-covered metal cable wasn’t enough. During Matt’s Navy career, he’d never been involved in a conventional war. He was too young for the invasion of Iraq, but had fought extensively in Afghanistan, Africa, parts of Asia, and even South America. All his experience in warfighting was against guerrilla-style fighters.
Matt realized people who were oppressed would, at some point, reach a breaking point. He’d seen it in every theater he’d fought in. Now he was seeing it right here in the United States of America. He winced inwardly at the thought of America no longer being united. Her connectivity lost by the absence of electricity. Like a rudderless boat, she now drifted into an abyss of lawlessness. His homeland was quickly becoming a large-scale simulacrum of all the third-world sewers Matt had previously worked in. Matt had always viewed America as being above this, which presently saddened him greatly.
With his investigation completed, Matt turned and started after his team, who were already cresting the top of the hill. As he walked, Matt swore he would not be part of an oppressive movement of any kind. Once he got back to base, he planned on sharing his thoughts with his team and letting them make their own decisions. Matt felt apprehension about just walking out the front gates of the base and into the unknown, but he was a Navy SEAL and was trained to survive in any clime or place.
When Matt reached the LZ, he found his team waiting patiently for their ride back to base. Josh was actually sitting up, drinking water from a Nalgene bottle, while the team doc was checking his vitals as well as asking the man a ton of questions, which appeared to be irritating the hell out of Josh.
“You’re looking better than a couple of hours ago,” Matt offered.
“No shit, but my fucking head is killing me.”
Matt bit his upper lip and nodded. “The rest of your team didn’t fare so well, Josh.”
Josh jerked his head one time in agreement. “Yeah, I must be one lucky bastard.”
Matt was sickened by Josh’s cavalier lack of concern for his fallen men. “We burned the whole thing. House, the bird and—the bodies.” Matt stated this last part with as much reverence as he could muster.
Josh shrugged as he gulped another mouthful of water. “What else were you gonna do? Can’t dig graves for them all, not out here in this hard-ass ground. You did good, man,” Josh asserted with the tone of an older brother letting a younger brother know he’d done well, but also letting him know his place beneath Josh in the pecking order.
Matt just grunted, not wanting to participate in the conversation any longer. As Matt turned to go find a suitable spot to wait for his ride back to the airport, Josh called out, “Hey, Matt, one of your guys says you all pulled out of the raid and watched the whole crash from the safety of your bird.”
Matt stopped before tiredly rotating back in order to face Josh. “Yeah, I saw a tractor on the hill, had a bad feeling—wanted to come in with a little more separation from you and your team.”
Josh snorted. “Bro, it sure would have been nice of you to speak up so I could have called off our landing.”
Matt eyeballed Josh placidly for a few seconds before he spoke. “You wouldn’t have called it off.” Before Josh could argue, Matt spun and moved out of earshot, where he dropped his day pack, then sat with his back partially supported by the gear.
Jared sat watching Shannon prepare Devon something to eat, then watched as the youth devoured the meal. All the while Jared thought about what he’d just been a part of. The planning, preparation and execution were all well thought out considering what Jared and Clarence had to work with. Once the operation commenced, it was accomplished in spectacular fashion. Still, Jared didn’t feel like he’d been a part of something great. Men had died in the crash, and the more he thought about it, the more he concluded their actions would bring more oppression to the region. If the soldiers didn’t come in the helicopters, they’d come in Humvees, and were all the Humvees destroyed, Jared figured the soldiers would ride horses. Well, if they were on horseback, the playing field would at the very least be leveled slightly, Jared mused.
Jared was thankful for only one thing after bringing down the Black Hawk, and that was whoever ran the base now was short one air asset they could use to place men and equipment on a target with speed and surprise. In the new world after the solar flare, aviation speed enabled a group who possessed it to move with such swiftness, Jared and his group would find great difficulty in countering an attacking force.
Jared and his friends enjoyed no early warning system other than their ears. By the time anyone heard the roar of helicopters, there simply wasn’t ample time to saddle horses and prepare for flight or fight. The aircraft enabled the opposing force to not only descend rapidly on them, but it also allowed them to maneuver on their quarry. Still, Jared remained conflicted over making his and Essie’s life safer at the expense of other human lives.
Jared was very adroit when commissioned with an assignment. He would block out all outside interference in order to work his way through the problems constituted in whatever he was endeavoring to achieve. Thi
s interference included his conscience, which had been held at bay during the preparation and execution segments of the mission, but now returned after the fact for him to wrestle with. A thought plowed into Jared’s mind like a locomotive. What if the world got going again in the next few months, and I was somehow tied to this crash?
Jared’s heart rate actually increased as he mulled this over in his head. Deep down he knew nothing was coming back anytime soon, and the truth was likely that the world would see much worse days than today before mankind was able to get back to anything even closely resembling the world of six months ago. Still, Jared wasn’t wired to kill, so his involvement in bringing the helicopter down bothered his conscience tremendously. Jared knew he needed to be mindful of how far he went in ensuring his own survival. He didn’t want to reach a point where guilt drove him mad, but Jared also wanted to live, be free, be happy, and have the luxury of relaxing every once in a while.
In the end, Jared knew after he worked through the emotional part of what had happened, his analytical mind would take over. There was always bad in something good. It was called balance, and it was what kept everything from coming apart at the seams. Thanksgiving was a wonderful time to eat and be with family, and it was easy to forget that at some point before it all, a man or woman slaughtered the turkey. Balance was key to Jared’s sanity, and he knew he would work hard never to tip that scale radically in any one direction.
“You okay?” Shannon whispered, getting close to Jared and speaking in a low voice so as not to embarrass him.
Jared sniffed, then gave the woman a wistful smile. “I’m good. I just get worn down by all the violence and death. I know the world isn’t the same place it used to be, but sometimes I think it is changing quicker than I am able to.”
Now it was Shannon’s turn to smile. “That’s not a bad thing, Jared. If more people took your approach, the world would be a far better place.”
The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny Page 17