The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 12
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
When Cody and Calvin moved the cows away from the ranch, they’d left a milk-producing cow behind. Every morning, Margie would get up, go to the barn, milk the cow, and bring in the still warm milk. It took getting used to, but after a week, everyone looked forward to the fluid. In addition to the cow, the Thackers had two goats that were also lactating. One taste of the goat’s milk and all but a couple shook their heads and pointed at the cow’s milk. Apparently, the goat’s milk was an acquired taste.
After the group ate and drank what they all wished had been their fill, but was in fact far from it, they headed out for the day’s duties. Quinten got back on the tractor, with John painting the fighting squares at the front of the preexisting trench dug the day prior. To rectify their mistake didn’t take as long as John feared it would, and by noon, they had the new additions completed. Finished with the trench remodel, Quinten moved the tractor around to begin excavating the trench leading from their frontline fighting positions back to the house.
During this stint of digging, Jared came up with the idea of digging straight to the basement’s foundation on the opposite side of the area they planned on digging out for their final stand. This way, the fighters could retreat under the cover of the trench, never needing to expose themselves as they entered the basement, transitioning to their final defensive bastion. John agreed, told Quinten, and so went the digging until late in the afternoon, when Quinten finished by scraping clean the side of the naked foundation. The tractor shut off, and Quinten dropped to the ground next to Jared and John, who stood like road workers, leaning on their shovels.
“That’s it for today. I’ll dig the hole on the other side tomorrow; then I have an attachment we can use to punch through those walls,” Quinten said with a trace of regret in his voice.
“I know. Sorry about your pad, man,” John consoled.
Quinten rubbed his nose, then waved the whole matter off. “Ah, ain’t nothing to fix something like that. I’ll form it up when we’re done and pour some concrete in there, let it dry, and push the dirt back.”
John stared at the flat concrete outer wall of the basement and wondered internally if any of them would be alive to pour concrete or push dirt back into the holes.
Quinten pushed past John, slapping the Special Missions Unit operator on the back. “Better go get the professor. Make sure he gets some sleep before your big date tonight,” he said with a wicked grin he dressed up with a wink.
John and Jared stood for a moment, studying the hills to the north, the very hills where an enemy was now gathering, preparing and positioning themselves to do Jared and the rest of the people at the ranch great harm. John was the first to move, stretching his arms over his head and groaning as he flexed his back.
“Tonight, Barry and I will see what’s going on out there. Maybe Rip and I can go out and thin the herd a little before they are ready to hit this place.”
Jared tilted his head in John’s direction. “Don’t do anything that speeds up their operation until after we are set.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, but once we have these holes dug, they can stand the fuck by,” John said, his voice low, almost guttural.
John took one more gander north, then headed off to the barn to make sure Barry remembered they were heading out in seven or eight hours. John found Barry at the same worktable as before, hunched over what looked to John’s untrained eye like a pile of useless electronic innards. Barry was pumping away on his air sack, the fire in the little brick oven was glowing, and he was using a much smaller nail than John had seen him using the day before. John stopped and watched silently from the side, a good ten feet back, as Barry peered through a large magnifying glass at the smoldering component he was working on.
After a full two minutes, Barry sat up, placed the soldering nail into a hole in a piece of wood, and turned to John. “How much time do I have?”
John moved closer, inspecting the items in front of Barry. “’Bout eight hours or less, I guess. Gotta be dark when we leave.” John glanced up at the loft and didn’t see Devon. “Where’s the kid?”
“You told him to go out, so he went out.”
John made a sour face. “I did no such thing. I told him I wanted to go over some things with him, and then Jared was going to tell him when to go.”
Barry wiped his hands on his pant legs and shrugged. “Well, he’s gone.” Barry jabbed a finger north. “Out there.”
Wordlessly, John turned and hurried to the house, retrieved his pack, and came back to the barn. Inside, he climbed to the loft, moving to the northern end, where Devon had stood watching the hills the evening before. John hauled out his binoculars and trained them on the hills, seeing only the lengthening shadows of late afternoon as they stretched their tendrils across the grassy slopes of the far-off hills. He searched the hillside quickly, then turned his attention to the left side, starting a much slower, more methodical detailed search. It was unlikely he would be able to spot anything of value with the ten-power optics he was using, but he pressed on. At five to seven hundred yards, he really should have been using a spotting scope, but John worked with what he had, and today that was a pair of ten-power binoculars.
As the shadows lengthened, their movement in the breeze played havoc, causing John to waste time on what appeared to be man-shaped silhouettes under some trees when in reality they were shadows cast by swaying tree branches. John wasted more time studying a dark spot under a bush that appeared to be a soldier lying in the prone position, but turned out to be nothing. After ten minutes of hushed curses through pursed lips brought on by inaccurate information fed to his brain through squinted eyes, John gave up.
Slowly John descended the ladder leading from the loft to where Barry remained working on his pile of electronic junk. “I wouldn’t stay up too late; we may be out a couple of days if something happens.”
At hearing this, Barry paused long enough to look up, his face awash in anxiety at the mention of not only going out, but staying out due to an unforeseen event. In the recent past, unscheduled events were always bad. Nothing good had happened out of the clear blue since the solar flare had smashed Earth with its environmentally correcting rays.
Barry swallowed hard before speaking. “Why am I going with you? I have a lot of work here.”
John frowned quizzically. “What exactly are you working on?”
Seeing a possible way out, Barry hurried to explain his self-important work. “A two-way radio, something we can communicate with when we place people out there.” Barry gesticulated toward the far-off hills.
“How close are you?” John asked flatly.
Barry’s face took on a dour look. “Honestly, I don’t know. I have the ability to send, but not receive a signal.”
“Get some sleep, man,” John said with a toss of his head as he exited the barn.
Inside the house, Margie was already preparing food for dinner, reminding John just how hungry he was. A little breakfast or not, no lunch and a hard day of work left a man half-starved when dinnertime arrived. John went to the room he slept in and checked all his gear, making sure the solar-charged batteries for his NVG were fully charged. John had previously placed the small solar panel on the outside of his bedroom window and had run the charging cord inside, where it was connected to the battery-charging unit. John flicked the goggles on and peered into the darkened closet, testing them. Their green glow and full battery indicator were all John needed before shutting them off and stowing them in their case.
John made sure he had enough food for a couple of days and that all his magazines were fully loaded. Next, John replaced all his gear in the pack and hefted it up and down, ensuring it didn’t make any unnecessary noise. John would have enough issues with Barry stumbling along behind him without his own gear rattling like a wind chime. After he was satisfied with his pre-mission measures, John returned to the kitchen area.
Jared sat with Shannon and Essie while Essie read a book about some kid who lived on an island with a pet monkey. The work Shannon was able to accomplish with both Essie and Salvador was astonishing considering the circumstances she was asked to perform it under. Essie was reading flawlessly from the book, using voice inflections where the story’s punctuation dictated. John stared for a moment before sitting at the table along with Barry and Quinten.
A noise at the back door gave everyone a start as Devon came in, looking more than a little disheveled. His face was streaked with mud or dirt mixed with sweat, while his hair was adorned with several pieces of the local plant life. John briefly wondered where the hell Crank was, but didn’t see the dog.
“Bro, you were supposed to wait till I showed you what I needed,” John blurted out.
Devon’s face was one of absolute seriousness as he responded. “There are people everywhere out there. Soldiers, trucks, and one Humvee. They have a camp with, like, fifty guys in it a couple of miles from here,” Devon reported crisply, his eyes darting from person to person as he spoke.
“Fifty?” Barry nearly screeched. “Fifty people ready to swarm this place? That’s five to one in case anyone was wondering.”
Jared got to his feet, moving to the table as Essie stopped her reading. Stephani heard the commotion and came in from the front porch, where she’d been keeping an eye on the well along with scanning the hills off to the north.
“Quinten, do you have a pen and paper?” John asked.
A pencil and paper were brought to the table, where John sketched out a surprisingly accurate overhead view of the ranch and surrounding area, including the hills. Near the end of his art session, John went to his pack and returned with a topographical map. He drew in some rough contour lines to represent the terrain and then explained their meanings to Devon. Everyone had crowded around the two, straining to see what John was doing.
When John was finished, he turned the paper and slid it to Devon along with the pencil. “Mark where you saw the big camp.”
Devon took the pencil and made an X atop some contour lines.
John rubbed at his beard as he looked over his drawing, then took the pencil back and pointed to a nearby set of contour lines that signified a smaller hill, below and slightly to the south of the X Devon had marked on the map. “You see anyone here?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?” Devon asked, his eyes wide in amazement.
“Camp’s on the high ground in case they have to defend it.” John pointed to the second spot. “This here is where I would have set up an outer security element. Carnegie did exactly what anyone with an ounce of strategic tactical sense would have done given the terrain,” John clarified. “Okay, show me the rest.”
Devon spent the next several minutes marking Xs on the map, then telling John how many men were at each X. John would in turn make some notes on the paper and hand the pencil back to Devon. This went on until Devon straightened up with a shrug.
“That’s all I saw,” he said, scratching his ear.
John held the drawing up to Devon. “This information is invaluable, dude, but next time tell me when you’re gonna run off, and where the hell is Crank?”
Devon gave a little start, then looked at Essie, who smiled.
“I fed him, and he has water,” Essie piped up, her face beaming with pride.
“I locked him in one of the stalls so he wouldn’t take off and get shot out there,” Devon admitted. “I asked Essie to take care of him.”
“Well, go let him out. We need him patrolling the ranch for intruders,” John exclaimed.
Devon wavered briefly. “He’s starting to go out farther and farther. They’ll kill him.”
John opened his mouth to talk, but caught Stephani staring at him and stopped himself. Where John came from, dogs were tools: there to be used and, if need be, sacrificed in place of a human life. If a dog was blown up by an IED, well, that sucked, and the handler would be crushed, but it paled in comparison to one of the operators getting killed.
Seeing John was being muzzled, Jared interjected. “Keep him with you, control him, and if you’re going to leave, put him back in the stall. Maybe try tying him up in the yard so we get his early warning, but I doubt that will work,” Jared suggested, not exactly knowing what John had been about to say, but feeling pretty sure of the general direction, which would have caused a mild disturbance within the community.
The tinkling of a spoon on glass let everyone know it was time to eat. They sat and devoured the disjointed meal prepared by Margie before, one by one, they left the table to clean their individual plates and silverware. Shannon and Jared assisted with the cleaning of the pans used to prepare the meal while everyone else but John and Barry retired to the living room, where they sat amidst the dancing light of two candles. When Jared and Shannon were finished with the cleanup, they too joined the others around the two candles and their lackluster light.
Jared leaned back into the couch he sat on, working his neck back and forth, trying in vain to rid his muscles of their aches. Soon their life here would change with the depleting propane supply, not to mention the gasoline wouldn’t last forever. No, soon, very soon, they would be cooking over fires like men and women had done two hundred years ago. Jared’s mind wandered to the more pressing issue, which was the fifty or so men and women in the hills, preparing to attack the ranch, threatening to absolve them all of ever suffering the rigors of cooking over an open fire.
Jared reached over and drew Shannon to him; it was his first act of public affection, but wasn’t salacious in any manner. He grabbed Essie with the other hand and pulled her close on his other side. Their warm bodies pressed against his brought a feeling of calm to his otherwise tumultuous feelings of unease. Shannon laid her hand on his leg while Essie curled up against Jared’s body, hugging his arm like her life depended on it. If only Jared could freeze this moment in time, a place to revisit when he felt the world getting away from himself, he would never suffer a long lapse in happiness again.
Jared leaned his head down and softly kissed Essie’s head, smelling her strong child odor as he did so. Turning back to Shannon, he kissed her forehead gently, then went back to staring at the candle’s dancing flame, drinking in the sensation these two humans gave him. A sense that all was well and life was good and that the fifty men and women in the hills simply didn’t matter at that very moment.
Chapter 12
Shortly after midnight, John led Barry straight out the back of the house and across the open pastures toward a slight depression where the ground dropped off a few feet, nearly a kilometer south of the ranch. They continued south, not bothering to hide, slink, or otherwise conceal their presence since they were proceeding away from the soldiers to the north. When John could no longer see the ranch using his NVG, he and Barry turned west and moved for nearly an hour, crossing fences, a road, and climbing several smaller hills. Two hours after leaving the ranch, John stopped, pulled his jacket over his head, and spread out a map on the ground, hovering over the navigational tool, his red-lensed light shrouded by the jacket.
John inspected the map for a few minutes before folding it back into a pocket. “We’re about five miles from the camp Devon showed us,” John whispered in Barry’s ear.
Barry wiped his sweat-slicked brow, but didn’t respond. He was along for the ride and was content following John around the countryside with little or no input on where they went or how they got there. When John turned and took up a northerly heading again, Barry followed doggedly behind, trying not to trip or make too much noise. After all, it was in Barry’s best interest to be quiet as much as it was in John’s.
John moved as fast as he felt Barry could go for three miles before stopping and taking a break to drink water and rest. During the break, John glanced over the map again, wanting to avoid any contact with the two-man teams Devon had pointed out at various points on John’s hand-drawn map. There was always the chance Devon had missed some of the teams, so John reminded himself that from here on in, they would need to move with great care.
John and Barry wound their way around the west flank of Carnegie’s positions, coming within five hundred yards of the main camp. At the point at which John and Barry arrived, they found themselves directly in between the forward security element and the main camp, which suited John just fine. John scanned the landscape through the NVG, realizing if he moved farther north, he’d remain a fair distance from the camp while maintaining a good line of sight on its operations, based on his elevation. The camp was on one hill, and John sat five hundred yards away on another hill. The hill John and Barry occupied was covered in either green knee-high grasses or the thick scrub brush that rose to their armpits in most areas.
John lowered himself to his hands and knees and crawled into the thick underbrush, trying not to catch the goggles on the entanglement of branches as he pushed forward. The going wasn’t easy, but this was going to be their home until tomorrow night. John winced at the thought of breaking this news to Barry. Civilians didn’t always view things through the same lenses guys like John viewed them through.
Lying up in the middle of an enemy encampment, unnoticed, was what John labeled success, while Barry would likely classify the move as more akin to a suicide attempt. Once the sun came up, John would find a suitable spot to observe from, but until then, he and Barry might as well get some rest directly in the middle of the large patch of bushes. Barry wriggled up next to John and waited expectantly for information he was getting a feeling he wouldn’t like when he got it.
John made him wait a full thirty seconds as he rummaged through his pack before leaning toward Barry with a whisper. “Get some sleep. We are right smack-dab in the middle of these guys; great place to watch from once the sun comes up. We’ll go back tomorrow night after it gets dark,” John finished, turning back to his pack.
