by Eric Vall
“Hey,” I started, “you were plenty of help while we took down those coyotes. Not to mention with those Canadian thugs.”
“I guess,” she said.
“We all have our place in this group,” I told her. “You’re our sniper, and while it may not always be exciting to walk behind the group your presence there is necessary.”
“How so?” She asked.
“Well, if we had gotten charged from the rear or one of the sides would you have hesitated to take the shot?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said with wide eyes.
“Exactly,” I pointed out. “You help keep us safe. I know I feel safer with you at my back.”
“Thanks, Tav,” she said with a big smile. “I’m feeling better.”
“Good,” I said. “This is a big one, and we’re going to need you. We all have to play to our strengths.”
“You’re right,” she said, and then I leaned in and gently kissed her soft pink lips before I brushed a stray hair behind her ear.
“Hey,” I heard Tara call out and I turned to see her grinning at us. “We’re like, on a mission here. You guys can make out later.”
“Alright,” I chuckled. “Let’s get going.”
I picked up my pack and started to lead the group towards the outpost. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 8
Everyone was quiet as we made our way to the outpost, but after a few minutes of traveling through the dense forest, I turned back to face my group.
“Anna, take the lead for a while,” I said.
“You sure?” the redhead asked.
“Yeah, I’m going to fall back and focus on scanning the area,” I said.
“Okay,” she nodded, and then I let Rolly and the girls walk past me.
I did want to focus on scanning, but it wasn’t the area I was worried about. I wanted to take a look at the girls and see if I could gauge how they were feeling. Their total silence as we walked made me think they were a bit on edge, but I wanted to get a feel for how tense they really were.
Anna led the way, and her thick red braid swung like a pendulum across her back with each hard step she took. Paige walked to Anna’s right, and her slender frame barely moved as she took careful steps with her hiking boots. It was almost like her knees didn’t bend, and I guessed that she was really tense. Tara kept up the pace, but I noticed that her hips had far less of the natural swing I had become accustomed to seeing with her. Bailey seemed to walk slower than the others, and as I looked her up and down, she turned her head and gave me a small smile.
Rolly walked just a few steps ahead of me, and while he seemed a bit tense in the shoulders, he moved with his usual light steps. It seemed the old man was the least nervous out of all of us.
“How ya feeling old timer?” I asked him.
“Oh, I’m feelin alright,” he said as he turned to look at me. “This walk isn’t too bad if that’s what you were asking.”
“I meant how were ya feelin about the fight?” I chuckled in an attempt to keep things light.
“I know my role,” he said with a hard nod. “I think I can make due. Besides, I have all of you at my back, and after seeing you all in action, I’m not too worried.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” I said with a smile.
“As long as I make it out of this without any bullet wounds I’ll be happy,” the old man grinned.
“Maybe if you got a small bullet wound Betty would offer to take care of you,” Tara teased.
“She probably would,” Rolly laughed. “Still, I’d rather avoid injury all the same.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to bleed all over Betty’s bed,” Anna said as she turned to grin at Rolly.
The old man went red and waved a hand at her.
“What about the rest of you,” I asked, “how are you feeling about tonight?”
The group fell quiet for a moment.
“Well, I’m a little nervous, honestly,” Anna said.
“It’s natural to be nervous,” I assured her.
“Yeah, but this seems way bigger than anything else we’ve done so far,” she said.
“It is,” I nodded.
“I wouldn’t say way bigger,” Rolly said with a smile.
“What do you mean?” Bailey asked. “There’s a lot of guys in there, and they’re all trained.”
“Well yeah,” Rolly agreed. “But there were almost as many bikers headed to the school. And hell, Tav took out the same amount of guys at their own hangout. We have a solid plan and if we stick to it, I'm confident we’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Paige agreed. “I think we’ll be okay.”
“We are kinda badass,” Tara said with a shrug.
“Yes, you are,” I said with a laugh.
It was nice to have Rolly around. I hadn’t been kidding earlier about him being our mascot. He was great at helping keep up morale, and right now we really needed that. I didn’t want to admit it to the girls, but I was nervous myself.
This was a larger operation than we had done before, and the girls were right, these guys were trained. Though judging from the looks of it they weren’t trained well, and they mostly ignored whatever training they had to just do whatever they pleased. Still though, they had enough ammunition and firepower to do some damage, even if they were idiots.
We had reached the tree I had notched on one of our previous treks, and I knew we were just on the other side of the outpost. The only thing that stood between us was a small hill, but we were far enough away that we could talk at normal volume and go over the plan once more. From the looks of the sun we had about an hour and a half until it became dark.
“Okay, everyone,” I said. “Let’s stop here for a while and go over our plan again. It might be a good idea to eat something and drink some water while we’re here. Just don’t eat too much.”
None of the girls moved to get food or water, and only Rolly reached into his pack and fished out a water bottle.
“Not hungry?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
They all shook their heads.
“I’m totally too nervous to eat,” Tara said.
“Okay, well let’s all at least drink some water,” I said as I sat on the ground. “We’ve been out in the sun all day, and we need to keep hydrated.”
They nodded and started to pull out water from their packs. As they drank, they scanned the area and still seemed on edge. Bailey was the first to finish her whole water bottle, and then she sat down next to me with her rifle in her lap while she chewed on her lip.
The rest of the girls quickly finished their water and followed Bailey’s example. Paige was crouched in a sort of squat holding onto her shotgun. Tara and Anna both opted for a crisscross position, and Rolly sat to my left with one knee up and the other folded beneath him. They all looked at me with intense faces.
“Let’s go over the plan once more,” I said as I grabbed a stick and moved some pine needles on the ground to reveal soft dirt below.
I drew a crude outline of the outpost with small x’s to indicate our targets. Then off to the side I wrote the first letter of each of our names, I made myself the big T and Tara the small T so there was no confusion. Then I looked up at the girls.
“Once it gets dark, we split into two teams,” Anna started.
“Good job,” I said. “I didn’t even have to explain it to you.”
“Thanks,” the redhead said as she blushed a little.
“Then what?” I nodded to Paige.
“Tara and I are with you, and we’re going to bait the dog out with the coyote meat once the guys are halfway down the fence line,” Paige said.
I nodded.
“And once we have the dog, we take those fuckers down,” Tara continued.
“But try to keep their lights on,” Rolly added.
“Yes, we don’t want to give away our presence,” I said. “Then what?” I nodded to Bailey.
“We take down the guys with
the .50 cals, and Rolly and I each take a position in one of the towers,” she said with a small voice.
Rolly gave Bailey a playful punch on the arm. “We got a big job, you ready kid?”
Then Bailey dropped her rifle, ran to a nearby tree, and vomited up all the water she had downed a few minutes earlier.
“What did I say?” Rolly asked with a frown.
Paige moved to stand up, but I put a hand on her leg and shook my head.
“She could be sick,” Paige protested.
“That’s unlikely,” I said. “She’s nervous, that’s all.”
We waited a moment for Bailey to return to the group. When she did her eyes looked to be red, and she sniffled as she wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“You okay?” Anna asked as she reached out to touch her friend’s arm.
“Yeah,” Bailey muttered. “I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t seem fine,” Tara said.
“Tara,” Anna hissed through clenched teeth.
“What?” she asked. “She doesn’t.”
“What’s wrong?” Paige asked as she turned to Bailey.
“Yeah,” Anna said. “Talk to us, we’re your team.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Rolly said as he put a hand on Bailey’s arm.
“It’s not that,” Bailey said. “It’s just, I don’t wanna mess this up. If I miss or don’t catch someone in time, then one of you could get hurt. I’m feeling a lot of pressure.”
“Hey,” Paige said. “We’re all a team and we’re all gonna look out for one another.” She gave her friend a small smile.
“Besides,” Tara chimed in, “you’re the best shot out of all of us. You totally took that wolf down and saved my ass.”
“Not to mention that guy with the grenade earlier today,” Anna said. “That could have been really bad, but you didn’t hesitate.”
Bailey smiled slightly as she looked at the forest floor.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’re just so outnumbered here, and I want to make sure I don’t crack under pressure.”
“Yeah, the number of guys in there is pretty daunting,” Paige said with a frown.
As nervous as I was, the girls were far more on edge. I’d done operations like this in the past, but our setup was a lot different from that of the military as far as weapons and training went. Still, I had to have confidence in my team. They’d proven themselves time and again and now it was my time to let them know I had faith in them.
I took a deep breath and leaned in closer to the group.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” I started. “I’ve been nervous before every mission I’ve ever done.”
“Yeah right,” Tara said with an eyeroll. “You’re like, trained for this and a total badass.”
“That’s true,” I chuckled. “But you all are trained too, and you’ve done nothing but prove yourselves capable these last couple of weeks.”
“But you probably had a lot more men with you when you went on missions in the military,” Bailey said.
“Not always,” I began. “When I was on my second tour in Iraq, I was part of a five man unit, and we took out an entire Taliban compound that was a lot better fortified than this place.”
Their eyes grew wide.
“Well damn,” Rolly said. “I knew you had good skills after you took out half those bikers alone, but five guys up against the Taliban is pretty impressive.”
“How did you do it?” Anna asked.
“Well I had a good team,” I said, and I looked at each one of them pointedly.
“Still though,” Paige said, “a whole compound sounds like there were a lot more bad guys there than at this outpost.”
“Not by much,” I said. “We were dealing with about forty-five guys that were heavily armed. The place was pretty impenetrable. They had a fence surrounding the compound with only one gate in or out.”
“How did you get inside?” Bailey asked.
“Well, we made a plan and stuck to it,” I started. “First, we had to take out the guards that were watching the gate, then three of us went through the gate and into the warehouse.”
“What about the other two guys?” Tara asked as she cocked her head to the side.
“Snipers,” I said and I looked at Bailey and gave her a big smile.
“Why did you need two, though?” She asked.
“To cover our asses,” I laughed. “It was easy enough for the three of us to get in once we took down the guys at the gate, but it didn’t give us a great vantage point to see the rest of the compound. We relied on the snipers to take down anyone that was still outside or that came outside while we were getting into position.”
“Couldn’t one guy have been lookout and just radioed when he saw someone?” Anna asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “It’s a common misconception that you’re in communication with your team the whole time that you’re on a mission.”
“But in the mo--” Tara quickly realized what she was about to say and went red.
“Yeah, it’s a lot different in the movies,” I laughed.
“But why can’t you talk to your team, what if something goes wrong?” Bailey inquired.
“Radio silent,” Rolly said. “Gotta be quiet in case the enemy hears you.”
“Rolly’s right,” I said.
“Some of my buddies told me about it after they got out,” he responded.
“When you’re about to go into a life or death situation, you need to be stealthy,” I continued. “It also allows you to focus on doing your job instead of reminding someone to do theirs.”
“But what if someone doesn’t do their job?” Bailey asked quietly, and her blonde hair framed her face as she looked at the forest floor once more.
“Well, you have to have faith in your team,” I said. “And confidence that if something does go wrong, you can handle it. The only thing that matters is the man to your right and the man to your left.”
“Or woman,” Anna said with a wry smile.
“Yes,” I laughed. “Or woman.”
“Was anyone hurt during your mission?” Paige asked as she pushed her glasses further up on her nose.
“No,” I said. “But we had a close call.”
“What happened?” Tara asked.
“Once we were inside we swept the area,” I started. “It was a large warehouse of sorts, but there were some office rooms off to the sides and there was a loft area.”
“What was in the warehouse?” Bailey asked.
“Guns, drugs, pretty much all the nasty shit you would hear about on the news,” I continued. “After we swept the area, we had twenty bodies to show for it. But we didn’t count on the other half of the group showing up.”
“I thought you said there were forty-five guys?” Anna asked.
“There were,” I nodded. “But they often sent half of them out for days at a time. We had struck on the first day that they left so we didn’t expect them back for a couple days. We figured we could take out one group, then the other.”
“Why didn’t you take them out like we did with the patrol guys?” Paige asked.
“We couldn’t risk giving away our presence,” I said. “We needed to retrieve the guns and drugs they had in that warehouse. We didn’t want one of them getting to the radio and alerting the others. They would have moved on before we could have made it back to the compound.”
“Why were they back so soon?” Rolly asked as his eyebrows pulled together and defined the wrinkles on his forehead.
“It seems they tried to contact the group and when there was no response they went to check on their goods,” I continued. “But at least then we were at the compound and had the upper-hand.”
“Did you kill all of them too?” Anna asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “We needed to take some back for intel so we tried to keep as many alive as possible. In the end we had to kill five of them, but we left with twenty POWs.”
“What
’s a POW?” Tara asked.
“Prisoner of War,” Rolly answered with his head hung low. I would have to remember to ask him more about those war buddies of his later.
“Yes,” I went on. “And that’s where the close call came in was with those five guys.”
“Well what happened?” Paige asked as her dark brown eyes fixated on me.
“My buddy Rolf reacted too soon,” I said. “When we saw the truck coming we each took up a position around the building. When they got out we saw they had their guns out. We were supposed to wait for them to split into groups and survey the area while the snipers took out whatever guys got left on perimeter patrol.”
“What did he do?” Bailey asked, her eyes wide as she continued biting her lip.
“He moved too quickly and didn’t follow the plan,” I said. “All but three of the guys had split off into groups and were making their way around the building. Two of the three were posted by the gate and the other sat with the truck. The snipers took down the two by the gate but Rolf moved from his position before they got the guy by the truck. The Taliban guy had yelled out before he went down, and it alerted the others.”
“So one guy messed up the whole operation,” Bailey said quietly.
“The plan had changed for sure,” I said. “And it got a bit messy, but we made it through.”
“What happened next?” Anna asked as she leaned forward.
“Well, the taliban guys started shooting, of course,” I said. “Rolf and I ran to the truck nearest to us and got pinned down by some heavy fire.”
“How did you get out of it?” Paige asked, her messy bun falling to the side as she cocked her head.
“Snipers,” I said with a pointed look at Bailey.
“What did they do?” Anna asked.
The girls were into the story and all but Bailey were starting to smile again.
“The snipers took out a couple of the shooters,” I started. “And when the other guys realized that there were snipers in the area they let their guard down and tried to run for cover. That gave the three of us enough time to move from our positions and surround them.”
“Three guys surrounding twenty seems like not much of a surrounding,” Anna laughed.