When the second tourniquet was in place, John opened the man’s top and searched for additional injuries. Other than a few superficial wounds, the man suffered no further major injury other than his leg wounds. Luckily the soldier’s upper body had been shielded by his being in the turret at the time Rip dropped the bomb. Finished, John grabbed the soldier by his harness and dragged him twenty yards away from the burning vehicle, where he knelt next to the wounded soldier and patted him softly on the shoulder.
“Remember, son, we didn’t shoot first. We would never have fired a shot if you hadn’t fired first. We are all Americans in a shitty situation. My advice is don’t follow the colonel. He’s going to get you all killed. He’s already forcing you to do things you’ll never be able to atone for,” John finished in a fatherly voice meant to make the man think.
The soldier seemed to have come around slightly as he stared up wide eyed at John in genuine bewilderment. John stood, then had a thought and sprinted back to the Humvee, opened the back, and found exactly what he was looking for. There were several boxy green military ammunition cans of .50-caliber ammunition along with two additional cans of 5.56-millimeter ammunition. John took the cans of .50-caliber ammunition and threw them down the embankment into the river. Neither John nor his SEAL friends had a need for the .50-caliber ammunition, and he surely didn’t want it retrieved by Carnegie and used on them in the future.
Finished with the heavy-machine-gun-ammunition disposal effort, John grabbed two cans of 5.56-milimeter ammunition and stuffed one in his pack, then used a D ring to secure the second to the outside of his pack. As he was about to turn and leave, he spotted an open box of MREs, or meals ready to eat military rations.
John grabbed the box and shuffled back down the levy and into the water, where he hoped all the added weight wouldn’t pull him straight to the river’s bottom. He countered the added load by using the MRE box as a kind of floatation device. Rip, who sat watching the strange ordeal from the opposite bank, took a look around, making sure they weren’t in danger before scrambling down the embankment and into the water, where he helped John to the shore.
Coming out of the cold river water, Rip blew water from his mouth and the facial hair closest to his lips. “You would have made a good SEAL, John,” Rip observed.
John lugged the heavy pack out of the water and onto dry land before flashing Rip a toothy smile. “You’d have made a better Special Missions guy.”
Before John and Rip contacted the Humvee, Goat set up in his position and had only fired a few volleys at the bothersome Humvee and its crew when Rip asked Goat to check his fire. Goat shot Denver a quizzical look, which Denver returned with a shrug. Seconds later, Rip’s grenade erupted in what basically amounted to be the Humvee passenger’s lap. Both Denver and Goat saw what appeared to be another pinpoint-accurate shot on Rip’s part. Jeez, this kid would be up for a Silver Star had they been in a conflict like this before the solar flare, thought Goat.
Goat heard at least one other Humvee working its way toward their location and was thankful they wouldn’t have to deal with the Humvee crew with the .50-caliber machine gun for the foreseeable future. When John’s voice came over the radio, advising he was moving to the vehicle, Goat and Denver both wondered why. As the soldier fell out the back door, Goat pulled out his binoculars and saw the man was in bad shape and wouldn’t likely be a threat. This was about the time Goat caught movement in his peripheral vision. He adjusted the optics in time to see John making his way down the embankment and into the river.
Goat watched John climb out of the river and make his way toward the downed soldier, at which time, Goat almost came out of the binoculars, not wanting to witness the execution of a very helpless man even if the downed soldier were responsible for Ty’s and Dale’s deaths.
“Don’t do it,” Denver muttered hoarsely.
When John pushed his own rifle back over a shoulder and rolled the injured soldier over, both Denver and Goat let out a collective sigh of relief. Goat got back on the Mk 48 and began searching for threats as John doctored the downed man. The sound of the approaching Humvee grew louder by the second, letting Goat know they were being maneuvered on while John undertook his humanitarian-aid mission.
From what Goat could hear of the other Humvee, it was trying to get across the river so the soldiers could pinch the SEALs in the middle with no way of using the river as an obstacle to their tactical advantage. The vehicle’s engine sounded loudly for a while, then faded as it headed north, seeking a crossing point. By the time John was halfway back across the river, Goat could hear the Humvee in the distance to the north, growing louder. The crew must have crossed and were using the dirt road that ran along between the orchards and river. The dirt road was in excellent condition, so the Humvee would be making great time, Goat groused inwardly.
Goat tracked Rip and John as the two made their way back toward his and Denver’s position while at the same time, Matt’s voice crackled in Goat’s earpiece.
“You guys are about to be contacted, boys. Set up an ambush, and we’re moving to you,” Matt’s voice huffed breathlessly through the radio.
Before Goat got to his feet and hauled ass forward to John’s location, he saw Matt and the rest of the SEALs sprinting toward them. He and Denver slid down the levy’s embankment to the dirt road and ran as fast as their full-combat loadout allowed them. Goat knew the smoke from the burning Humvee was acting as a beacon for the incoming vehicle and its crew, so he didn’t think the incoming Humvee would be delayed searching for its partner vehicle. They would want to get to their people and assess the situation as quickly as possible.
The smoke from the burning Humvee was undoubtedly working against the SEALs since Matt and the fellas were all on foot and already at a huge disadvantage in regard to battlefield speed and maneuverability. Other than the smoke, Goat doubted the incoming soldiers knew much about what was going on—so they had that going for them.
John could see Goat and Denver legging it their way, with Matt and the SEALs doing the same just two hundred yards behind the senior SEAL and machine gunner. John held the same line of thought as Goat regarding the incoming soldiers, and the idea they would go straight to the stricken Humvee was what he was counting on to use against the soldiers. John and Rip set up a hasty ambush in hopes the soldiers’ eyes would be trained out ahead, thinking the fight was at the Humvee burning in the distance and not lurking in the trees of the orchard.
As Matt reached John’s position, he ordered the SEALs with him to drag a felled tree from the orchard across the dirt road to a location to force the Humvee to drive partially up the levy in order to circumvent the obstacle. This was where Rip would put his M203 to use by lobbing a grenade through the open turret hatch or smashing the engine compartment with an HE, or high explosive, round. The SEALs would initiate the ambush from the passenger side of the vehicle and give it everything they had because if the vehicle survived and was able to gain distance, communicate a call for backup, and return fire, the SEALs’ advantage would begin to evaporate like mist on a hot summer day.
Chapter 29
Carnegie was well beyond frustrated with the combat effectiveness of his untested and poorly trained troops. To date all he’d asked of them was to go out in numbers and bully the locals out of food, livestock and other items of necessity. Their good fortune bred a false sense of security, which Carnegie was realizing he’d fallen victim to himself. Merely having access to men, women and weapons was not enough, and his wayward SEALs were making this weakness blaringly evident.
The last radio call he’d received from his big-gun vehicle was they had a visual on the SEALs and were manning an overwatch position. The soldiers from the Humvee had since gone silent. Being inside his own vehicle, Carnegie did not hear the M203 blast that rendered him a two-Humvee warlord. Carnegie’s second vehicle reported seeing smoke in the area where the first Humvee last reported seeing the SEALs, and was heading there now. Carnegie ordered his driver to m
aintain a wide berth of the area, not wanting to fall into a trap himself. He’d wait for a report from the second Humvee before making a decision on what to do next. The lack of situational intelligence was infuriating.
The hunt for these damn SEALs seemed to have devolved into a grade A shit show, and Carnegie was questioning his own resolve in continuing the search. The Navy’s exit from base seemed to have already cost him his last Black Hawk and at least one Humvee and God only knew how many men and women, adding to his need for blood-pressure medication.
Carnegie plotted the second Humvee’s estimated position along with their direction of travel as his driver cruised slowly north along Highway 5, mostly staying to the shoulder due to the abandoned vehicles blocking a great deal of the road’s useful surface.
When the second Humvee reported they were on the west side of the river and moving along its banks towards the smoke signature, Carnegie only responded with an acknowledgment of their transmission, giving the men no guidance. The men from the first Humvee were still not responding, giving Carnegie the feeling they were the source of the smoke. Carnegie gave a terse order to his driver, telling the woman to reverse course and head south. If the second Humvee was pushing south from the north toward what the colonel now believed was his first Humvee, then the SEALs were moving south along the river. He would find a nice flat raised area and wait. He would not, however, go looking for these dangerous Navy boys.
Carnegie could be a real aggressive ballbuster, but what he wasn’t was stupid on the battlefield. Begrudgingly, Carnegie was beginning to concede he’d been outfought even after outmaneuvering the SEALs at the start of the battle. This was great cause for an elevated degree of irritation that threatened to degrade his decision-making process. Carnegie fought the urge to plunge carelessly into the area of the burning first Humvee in search of the SEALs in a reckless and selfish act to exact some level of revenge, but somehow, he stayed this urge. For now, Carnegie would preserve a safe distance from the epicenter of violence and see what his second Humvee crew came up with.
As Carnegie listened to the hum of his vehicle’s tires on the pavement, his radio came to life with the panicked screams of the men in Humvee number two.
“Motherfucker,” Carnegie snarled as the terror-stricken voice assaulted his ears.
The colonel looked over to see his driver’s eyes as wide as saucers. The girl looked like she was going to lose it. He needed Josh now more than ever and wished John hadn’t gone on walkabout. Carnegie grabbed the mic and pulled it to his mouth. “Base actual, November Two, report your status.”
The radio crackled briefly with unintelligible garble before falling silent. Carnegie repeated his call, but received only silence.
“Should we head that way, Colonel?” the female driver asked nervously, her voice cracking slightly.
“Negative, keep driving, and let’s find a road we can gain some elevation on.”
The female driver didn’t know what to do other than drive straight. She was not familiar with the immediate area and surely didn’t know where to go that wouldn’t be flat like everything in her current view. For no other reason than it was the next exit, the driver turned west, leaving the highway. She ducked down and peered across the colonel and out the passenger window, where she saw the smoke from what was presumably one of the other two Humvees.
“Keep your distance,” Carnegie growled, and she did this.
Carnegie’s driver navigated the Humvee in a wide orbit around the rising smoke as Carnegie continued to call November Two without a response. Four minutes after losing contact with his second vehicle, Carnegie’s radio came to life.
“Carnegie, you have wounded men in need of medical attention. We’ve done what we can for them, but you need to get in here and get them back to base, or some are going to die.”
Carnegie knew the voice the second he heard it. “John, you fucking traitor,” he snapped to no one in particular. Carnegie understood what John was doing, he was transmitting on a channel everyone at the base was monitoring, and he was playing the good guy. Carnegie only saw one card to play in this situation.
“This is Carnegie. If you men are quite finished murdering my soldiers, I would appreciate your word that you will stop the killing and allow us to recover our dead and wounded.”
John’s voice came back quickly. “We only wanted to leave peacefully. Your men and women fired on our group first. You killed two US Navy SEALs, guys who served this country. If you withdraw your men and women, we will leave the area peacefully—it’s up to you, Colonel,” John countered, also realizing the game of radio popularity the two were engaged in. It was a classic case of psyops, or psychological operations, and John was as well versed in the intricacies of the vocation as Carnegie.
Matt and the rest of the SEALs, along with Denver and Goat, made it to John’s ambush site as the second Humvee appeared less than five hundred yards out, heading their way. The SEALs melted into the orchard as the vehicle approached the kill zone. The driver slowed, seeing the downed tree, while the Humvee’s unmanned turret suddenly became manned. The SEALs held their fire until the vehicle pulled left partially up the levy embankment as it struggled to clear the tree. The angle exposed the turret opening to Rip’s deadly accurate M203 fire, and the lad did not disappoint. The round clipped the lip of the turret and exploded in the opening, effectively cutting in half the poor soldier who’d recently appeared in the doomed turret position.
The three remaining soldiers were all the unhappy recipients of a hot shrapnel shower, which resulted in the Humvee veering severely to the left, heading up the embankment, where the steep angle caused the vehicle to roll onto its side, then its roof, before sliding back down the muddy levy, where it came to rest on the edge of the dirt road. The SEALs were upon the compromised vehicle in a matter of ten seconds, securing the three wounded soldiers in the mud next to the remains of their fallen comrade.
The SEALs went to work on one of the soldiers who was in the worst shape while John took another soldier’s radio and made the call to Carnegie. When John finished, the SEALs got the soldiers to their feet, and although they were all wounded, they were still mostly ambulatory. The SEALs escorted the soldiers the few hundred yards to the burning Humvee, where John and two other SEALs assisted the soldiers across the cold river, depositing them next to the soldier with the double tourniquets.
The soldiers kept their mouths shut, but it was obvious to every member of Matt’s team the soldiers’ minds were racing with questions. If these SEALs and their friend were such bad guys, why were they helping their enemy?
These were questions John hoped would help erode Carnegie’s power base as he and the two SEALs crossed back over the river to rejoin Matt and company.
“We good, man?” Matt asked John.
“Uh-huh,” John replied through lips bluer than red.
Matt’s SEALs who weren’t part of the medical effort stripped the rolled-over Humvee of everything of value. This included much coveted ammunition for Goat’s weapon, a couple of cans of 5.56-milimeter ammunition and, like the first Humvee, an open box of MREs. They stripped out the soldiers’ M4s, packing the parts away along with cleaning gear and all the soldiers’ magazines. The machine gun mounted in the turret was so badly damaged from the rollover, the SEALs didn’t bother fussing with it. The rest of the gear they discarded in the river.
Jared sat wide awake as the morning drew closer, struggling to stop his teeth from chattering. Being out of his sleeping bag for a large part of the night while perched in the drafty opening of the loft did nothing favorable for his body core temperature. After a couple of hours of silently shivering in misery, Jared was about to crawl over and wake Devon for a spell at keeping watch when the ear-piercing cracks of rifle and machine-gun fire sliced through the cold air. Everyone in the loft was immediately sitting upright in their sleeping bags, though no one made a move to extricate themselves from the bedding. Jared didn’t blame them and pondered just getting b
ack in his own bag and going to sleep as his heart raced from the initial shock of the additional and seemingly much closer gunfire.
The weapons fire’s change in proximity kept Jared from the comfort of his sleeping bag since this latest clash sounded much closer, as if the fight was moving toward the barn. Jared mentally examined their situation, trying to form a likely scenario in his mind of what was going on out in the night. After traveling through the flat muddy region, Jared knew it was lacking its original citizenry. There was nothing for them; therefore the population either left or died, he didn’t know. This, in Jared’s estimation, ruled out the possibility of the different clashes being a group ambushing people for the purposes of robbery.
Lending credibility to this theory was the fact the mini-battles were occurring in different locations, with the first being much farther away than the last. Jared placed another piece of his puzzle in place by assuming the military was involved based on the original explosion. Jared was further convinced of the military’s involvement based on his personal experience involving a post-solar-flare Bay Area, where never once had Jared seen or heard of people using explosives.
Now the question was what were the dynamics of all the noise? Was the military in a battle, were they pursuing someone, was there a fight with people trying to steal from the base and the soldiers were simply defending their home? Jared didn’t have enough information to make even a thin assumption regarding this area of unknowns, so he sat, freezing in the opening to the loft like a featherless owl. A loft Jared would not in a hundred years have traveled to before the solar flare.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny Page 28