The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 18
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
“Can things get any worse?” Shannon asked, regretting it before the words were finished spilling from her mouth.
“Yeah, Shannon, it can—it just did,” Jared snapped.
Shannon’s face clouded. “I know, dumb question.”
The two sat in mute contemplation, Shannon thinking about how to reach Jared while his brain scrambled like a captain on a sinking ship. John came in a short time later, heading straight to one of the smaller couches, where he too dropped into the comfort of its cushions. Jared turned his eyes to John, whose face had taken on that square-jawed determined look Jared knew meant the man had a mission plan.
“We have to take it to them, and I mean right away,” John stated.
“How?” Jared asked indeterminately.
“Where’s Rip?” John asked without answering Jared’s question.
Stephani chimed in from the kitchen, “He’s hunting, his turn. Barry was supposed to go with him, but Rip said he’d rather hunt alone.”
“Smart man.” John snorted.
John returned his attention to Jared. “We need to deplete their supply cache, then move to cut their resupply line. In doing this we will eliminate manpower. I mean, if we go in there and do anything, we’re going to have to kill anyone who gets in our way.”
Jared looked skeptical. “We just run in there and, what, light their stuff on fire?”
John grinned. “We have horses; they don’t. We can move around in these mountains faster and more efficiently than Carnegie’s boys and girls can. As long as we don’t walk into any ambushes, we have a tactical advantage because of our mobility.”
Jared leaned back into the cushions of the couch, thinking about this. It made sense when John brought up Carnegie’s lack of mobility. Sure, the soldiers possessed a couple of running vehicles, but they were basically relegated to paved and well-kept dirt roads while a horse could move at speed across the open countryside. If he and John used the terrain to their advantage, they could safeguard themselves and their mounts from the soldiers while inflicting casualties to the other side.
John and Jared complemented one another when the chips were down. One would find the seed of an idea, present it to the other, and together a plan of action would germinate. Both men knew they would be up late playing a game of what about this badminton. The ideas would fly back and forth, some finding a home in the plan while others were destined to be cast off.
Shannon and Stephani sat with the two men as they talked about how, where, and when to hit the soldiers. Hours passed and still Jared and John schemed, continuing even after Shannon left to put Essie to bed. Stephani made a few comments, all of which turned into questions due to her lack of experience in tactical mission planning. John realized right off she expected to be part of the operation, and he made sure not to exclude her.
John and Jared planned on having Rip, Stephani, and Quinten helping out with the duties of weaking Carnegie’s operation. In the meantime, Devon was going to be put to task gathering the intelligence needed to mount such an operation. In order to make the ranch appear as normal as could be, John suggested leaving Carlos and Raul along with Shannon, Margie and the children at the house to perform normal everyday-type activities. John wasn’t sure how well the soldiers at the different observation positions could see what occurred at the house on a daily basis, but wanted the soldiers to at least see some movement on the property.
The fewer alarm bells ringing, the easier their lives would be in the field. Both Jared and John agreed they had an advantage in the transportation department, and while the two sides were equal in firepower, Jared and his friends lacked manpower. November 16, 1532, a similar disparity in manpower had loomed over a Spaniard by the name of Francisco Pizzaro in the battle of Cajamarca. Pizzaro had at his disposal one hundred six infantrymen and sixty-two cavalrymen but was pitted against roughly eighty thousand battle-hardened Incan warriors led by Emperor Atahualpa.
The battle ended with Pizarro’s men suffering zero KIAs and only one WIA, while the Inca lost thousands, and Atahualpa was taken prisoner and later executed. There was much more treachery involved than a simple battle, but eventually, the end was one of great surprise considering the huge disparity in each side’s numbers. Treachery and violence of action had swung the tide of battle in Pizzaro’s favor, and this was exactly what John intended doing to Carnegie’s army. He wasn’t totally sure how he would do this since there was no open line of communication like in the case of Pizarro and Emperor Atahualpa, which had played a significant part in Pizarro’s trickery.
Their horses would help tip the scales in their direction, making their movements quicker than Carnegie would anticipate. Additionally, Jared and John would leave the ranch always under the cover of darkness and then move freely about the countryside, being careful to stay clear of Carnegie’s soldiers. Once Devon located the colonel’s supply route into the base camp, they could devise a plan to sever that artery. There were precious few working vehicles, so if Jared and company were able to destroy one or two, this would place Carnegie at a deficit.
Armies needed to be resupplied, or they would cease to move forward and eventually wither on the vine. The greatest feat during the invasion of Iraq had not been the performance of the tanks, helicopters or even the men and women in battle. Alternatively, it was the resupply mission that allowed the United States military to dash across the border, overwhelming the enemy with a German-like blitzkrieg. Speed not available if not for a stalwart and constant resupply of ammunition, fuel, and food.
Jared and John talked long into the night, stopping only when Rip slipped through the back door, carrying a black plastic bag of deer meat. John filled Rip in on what had happened and watched the younger SEAL grind his teeth in anger. No military man or woman had use for a traitor since they tended to get the others they left behind killed. The sudden departure by Barry still wasn’t being processed by a single resident at the ranch, and with little time for anything other than to prepare to fight, it could be weeks before people came to terms with what Barry had decided to do.
John briefed Rip on the day’s details, then set up a watch rotation in the barn before heading out to give Devon his marching orders. After John left, everyone else began heading to bed. Shannon followed Jared into his room, and Jared was pleasantly surprised to find the room vacant, Essie nowhere to be found and presumably sleeping in what had become the kids’ room.
Out in the barn, John climbed the ladder and slipped through the darkness, stopping next to Devon.
“You ready to get out there?” John asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” came Devon’s whispered response.
“We need you to figure out what trail or road they are using to get resupplied. I am pretty sure they’re using vehicles, but we need that confirmed. Make and models along with number of men and weapons,” John finished, not expecting anything other than a nod accompanied with Devon’s departure. John was not disappointed.
Devon picked up his gear and just left, slithering down the ladder into the darkness, and was gone. All John heard was a short whistle and the clang of a stall door as Devon secured Crank prior to departing. John was left alone to stare out into the darkness, wondering what was coming their way. Would they find success on the battlefield, or would Carnegie lay siege to the ranch and its occupants? He did not know the answer to these questions. Something else nagged at his mind. When the battle came to its conclusion, would they all be alive, or would some of them no longer be part of this little band of survivors, struck down during the events of the battle? Again, John held no answers. Suddenly a thought struck John like a bolt of lightning. He hustled back down the ladder and rushed to the house.
Inside, John went to Jared’s room, pushing the door open, and immediately regretted not knocking. Shannon’s bare shoulder was all he had to see before initiating a hasty retreat into the hallway.
John took two seconds to compose himself before knocking softly. “Bro, get out here.” Next, he went to Rip’s room, then Quinten’s, knocking on them all.
Within three minutes, everyone, including Shannon and Stephani, were in the living room, waiting for John to explain why he’d woken the entire house.
“Okay,” John said, clasping his hands together. “Barry shot over there, and I’d bet they already know everything he has to offer, which means they will assume we are changing our mission plan. We are,” John stated before moving forward. “Well, we are and we aren’t. We didn’t plan on hitting their observation positions for a few days, which is what Barry will tell them.”
John smiled wickedly, wagging a finger at the group. “We are hitting them tomorrow, late afternoon. This means we go out tonight and set up. We lay up all day tomorrow, and an hour before dark—bam—we lean on ’em.”
Jared’s look of uncertainty prompted John to push his idea. “Carnegie will absolutely not expect it; no way he sees this coming. Hell, I didn’t even think of it till about ten minutes ago.”
“I like it,” Rip offered up. “Only issue is positions. We have to find concealment at night, which isn’t the easiest thing to do.”
John’s smile faded slightly. “Yeah, but this gives us the best chance. We have to make it work. The trick is to stay hidden until go time. Once we hit these bastards, we do it so violently they don’t fight back. Make it so bad on them they only want to get clear of what’s tearing them to pieces.”
Jared stood. “Let’s go over the plan once before we leave, but we should be gone within the next thirty minutes.”
Seeing his friend come around brought back John’s smile. He reached into his pack and withdrew the paper he’d previously used to jot down Carnegie’s positions along with rough assumptions of where he and the rest of the crew would need to be to get rounds on the soldiers. The refresher course took less than ten minutes, and then the men and Stephani were off to their rooms to prep gear. They needed water, a little food, ammo, and, of course, their weapons.
Quinten returned with his lever-action rifle with its iron sights, which wasn’t going to cut the mustard on this outing. John returned to the barn and retrieved one of the extra Colt AR-style weapons. The rifle also had only iron sights, but the range on the weapon was far greater than Quinten’s old lever action. John gave the man a two-minute crash course on how to align the sights, which, although slightly different from Quinten’s own rifle’s sights, worked on the same principle. Following the briefing on how the sights operated, John showed Quinten how to use the safety as well as the magazine release. The only other advice John gave Quinten was in case of a weapons malfunction, drop the magazine, and just figure it out before reloading the rifle.
Margie was visibly nervous as her husband bid her goodbye at the back door. She held his arm in her trembling hand, her head shaking slightly from side to side as if this would stop Quinten from leaving the safety of their home and walking out into harm’s way. Quinten leaned down and kissed his wife’s forehead before exiting the back door and disappearing into the darkness.
Margie knew Quinten wasn’t leaving the ranch, but her mind hadn’t actually ventured to examine what that meant exactly. Her mind’s defenses kept Margie from delving too deeply into what she was capable of imagining could happen. Now that Quinten was marching out into the night, Margie felt unsure, scared, and almost completely helpless. She wished Quinten and she had one more evening so she could impress upon her husband their need to leave the ranch in lieu of staying and fighting trained soldiers. When she could see her precious husband no more, Margie turned and fled to her bedroom, where she flung herself onto Quinten’s pillow and cried.
The four men and Stephani headed out to the south, keeping the ranch house between themselves and the soldiers. When the terrain dropped off, they turned west and made their way toward the road. Two hours later, John slipped from the road, crawled under a fence, remained on his hands and knees, and began moving back to the east. The plan was to drop off a shooter every three hundred yards or so until they covered a line approximately a little less than a mile across.
Quinten was the first to stop and begin searching for a suitable spot to operate from, with Stephani, then Jared being the next two. Rip was next, and John was last and furthest to the east. When the sun came up, they would all hide until late afternoon, at which time everyone would acquire their targets and wait for John to initiate the ambush. Rip would follow up with his M203 on his target, then John’s, then would move with John back to the west and engage Jared’s target. The three would then move to Stephani’s position and eventually reach Quinten’s spot.
John and Jared both agreed the mirror-signaling approach should be benched. With Barry undoubtedly spilling his guts to Carnegie and Josh, John wanted to divorce himself from any timeline or plan they’d previously intended on using. The ambush would come days earlier and without a signal in hopes of scratching out as much of an advantage as they could, considering the deficit Barry placed them in.
If all went well, there would be a bunch of dead and wounded soldiers, while Jared and his people would slip away during all the confusion that usually followed force-on-force violence. They were banking on Carnegie not mounting any sort of counterattack since they weren’t taking prisoners, nor were Jared and his people holding any ground for the colonel to reclaim.
Morning found Jared cold, stiff, and tired. The sun’s light failed miserably at warming his body as the orange orb crested the eastern horizon. Jared rolled slightly, turning his face to the sun and splaying his open palms in an attempt to drink in the sun’s rays. Sadly, Jared found himself too far from the approaching ball of fire to enjoy any of its warmth.
During the night, Jared had found a fence where the ground on his side was nearly a foot lower than the ground the fence posts were driven into. As the sun illuminated his surroundings, Jared realized he was lying on a trail made by years of cattle walking along the fence line. The difference in elevation wasn’t much, but Jared could lie prostrate and not be seen by anyone in the vicinity of the soldiers’ OP. Previous to the sun’s arrival, Jared had also removed his pack in order to keep a lower profile. Now he fished his binoculars from the pack, moved to one of the fence posts where tuffs of grass grew around its base, and began searching for the OP in his area of operation.
It did not take Jared long to locate the careless soldiers sitting in a shallow hole they’d dug. The fresh earth mounded up to their front caught Jared’s eye first, giving away the men’s position before Jared had spent more than a minute searching. The soldiers hadn’t even tried to hide their position, thought Jared. He watched the bored soldiers at a distance of about three hundred yards, wondering what they were talking about and then being a little jealous John or Shannon wasn’t with him for company. When Jared was sure he could quickly reacquire the soldiers’ position, he repacked the binoculars and lay back, trying to mentally prepare himself for a long period of hebetude.
Chapter 17
Carnegie was growing impatient with the speed at which wars were fought now that he was fighting them with foot soldiers and a mere two working vehicles. There were now so many soldiers in and around the base camp, the supplies that arrived were mostly items needed just to keep the base running. The stockpile of ammunition, food, and water for the impending battle was slow going because of this. Carnegie fought the urge on a daily basis to rush his soldiers into battle in an effort to appease his impatience. Only for his professionalism did he not give the order to attack.
Carnegie wanted the trucks running back and forth around the clock, but fuel was a problem these days, and much of each day was spent scavenging for gasoline and diesel along Highway 5. Each day Carnegie’s scavengers were forced to push farther and farther out in order to find the fuels required to keep his base camp fed and watered. His men had been ambushed or taken fire from locals increasingly more often over the past month, and although none of the soldiers were injured in any of the exchanges, the colonel felt things were beginning to slip from his controlling grasp. He needed more fuel, more vehicles, and more capable men like Josh.
Since the Barry fellow had come over the afternoon prior, Josh had remained busy extracting every speck of intelligence from the man. Things hadn’t gone quite like the deserter planned though. Barry had been welcomed in, gave his story along with all the details of what Jared and John were planning, and when he hadn’t been able to answer a couple of questions to Josh’s liking, Barry had suffered a light roughing up. To Josh it was light, but to Barry he’d just been tortured for information he didn’t possess.
When Josh finished with Barry early the following morning, Josh went to Carnegie’s tent to update the old man. Carnegie was just finishing up his morning shave as Josh approached. Carnegie’s back was to Josh as he wiped his face clean and pulled on his uniform blouse while Josh stood by waiting patiently. With his back still turned to Josh, Carnegie asked a question Josh hadn’t thought of yet.
“When you’re done with him, do we just kill him?” Carnegie asked as he turned to face Josh.
Josh didn’t answer straight away, his brain mulling over their current and very specific situation. When he’d worked for the Army, Josh had taken in defectors, met with informants, and even helped facilitate the exfil of an Iranian nuclear scientist. An informant was useful as long as he continued to provide information. A defector was always dicey in that one never knew for sure whether the person was a double agent or if their information would be worth giving them a false name, a house, and a monthly stipend.
If a Russian wanted to defect, the US usually knew at the very least what type of information the man or woman would possess prior to risking American lives and spending taxpayer money to put together an extraction operation, not to mention supporting said defector for the rest of their natural life.
Barry the defector was different for one simple reason. Carnegie did not have the resources once available to him and others like him. Barry had indeed given Josh a lot of information he hadn’t known until now, but Barry could also be a double agent. Josh wouldn’t put that past John.
