The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 21
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
“Jared?” came Shannon’s voice from inside.
“It’s us,” John replied, knowing there was some sort of weapon pointed at him as he stood on the back porch.
The door swung open, and Shannon appeared, the barrel of her rifle preceding her exit of the house. “Oh my God, you guys, what happened out there?” She gasped at seeing their downtrodden faces. The fact that Rip and Quinten weren’t among the faces hadn’t yet registered with Shannon.
“Where’s Quinten?” came Margie’s urgent voice from behind Shannon.
“Is someone in the barn?” John asked before they went any farther down this road.
“Carlos,” Shannon answered, concern creeping into her voice now that she began counting faces.
Jared moved forward, catching Shannon’s gaze and shaking his head. “Quinten and Rip are gone,” he said, stepping onto the porch.
Margie tensed, the shotgun in her hands drooping, but only for a moment. “They killed my Quinten?” she shrilled, pushing Shannon out of the way as she blasted through the door, trying to exit the porch.
John caught the rifle and wrenched it from her hands as Stephani grabbed the woman by the shoulders.
“Quinten is dead, Margie, but Cody is not. You can’t run out there and make him an orphan,” Stephani tried cajoling her, in earnest.
Margie searched the faces of each returning member, looking possibly for a sign this was all just some terrible misunderstanding or some hideous joke, but she found no such consolation in their somber return stares. “I need my Cody back here; I need him now,” she croaked in the voice of a broken woman.
“Maybe you should go to him,” John offered. The woman was obviously grief stricken and at least for the time being would amount to nothing short of a liability. “Raul can take you; I’m thinking we get the kids out of here too,” John said, looking directly at Shannon.
“How’d it happen?” Shannon asked, still unable to fully digest the fact that two members of their group were gone, dead, murdered by a body of people who wished to bring the same fate on them all.
Jared gestured with his chin toward the inside of the house, telling Shannon they should go inside and talk. Once everyone sat in the living room, Margie quietly sobbed in a large recliner as Jared cleared his throat.
“We should debrief this, starting with you, John,” Jared suggested in a voice just above a whisper. It was times like these when Jared wondered why quiet was a respectful thing for the dead while a loud boisterous exhibit would be considered crude and disrespectful. He guessed it was more for the grieving than the person who’d died.
John bobbed his head in agreement, remembering he had the bloody necklace taken from Quinten in his pocket. Carefully John got to his feet and walked back to the bathroom, where he washed the piece of jewelry off in the bucket of water used for flushing the toilet. Finished, he returned to the living room, approaching the still sobbing Margie.
John extended his hand with the necklace out to Margie. “I thought you should have this. It was very apparent he cared deeply for you both and was doing what he thought would secure your future,” John said softly, offering the necklace.
Margie looked at the necklace and then up at John before taking the chain and letting it dangle in front of her face in the flickering light of the single tiny candle.
“You’re a good man, John. I’m just so heartbroken I don’t know how I can possibly go on,” Margie said through trembling lips glistening with her tears, which hadn’t stopped rolling down her rosy cheeks since Jared had delivered the horrific news about Quinten’s death.
“You will go on—for Cody,” John said as if it were already a foregone conclusion.
Chapter 19
When the first shots rang out in the late afternoon air, Carnegie sprang from his tent, hollering for Josh. Josh came huffing up the hill, heading toward the camp’s makeshift armory.
“Get that Goddamn heavy gun down the hill,” Josh screamed at a wide-eyed soldier standing outside the small tent that served as the camp’s armory. The soldier jerked into action, disappearing through the tent’s front flap.
Josh turned to Carnegie before the colonel reached him. “We’re under attack out front; they hit all the OPs.” As Josh finished, the soldier returned carrying a 7.62 machine gun.
Josh grabbed the man by the blouse and shoved him to the south toward the OPs that faced the ranch. Josh spun back to Carnegie. “Get on the radio and organize this shit show. I’m going down.”
Carnegie for the first time realized he’d been in the rear with the gear for long enough to have dulled his combat capabilities. This situation was moving faster than he felt it should have been. All Carnegie had done was amble down the hill, while Josh was already implementing more appropriate weaponry to the battlefield. Not wanting anyone to sense this weakness, Carnegie grabbed his radio and transmitted.
He ordered all the recently relieved sentries from the OPs back to their posts to check on, assist if needed, and augment the OPs until the base camp either stabilized or was deemed secure. After issuing the orders, Carnegie marched back to his tent and stood in the doorway, staring south, unable to see what was going on. He heard more gunfire, men yelling in the radio, Josh issuing on-the-ground battle orders, and then came the low, deep thwomp of a grenade.
Not long after the thwomp, Josh’s machine gun began to chatter like an excited monkey. Short controlled bursts from the weapon told Carnegie his lead dog was onto something, or he wouldn’t have been wasting ammo. Through the radio, Josh’s voice bellowed like a floor boss at a livestock auction.
“Three running west, five hundred yards, OP five, hit ’em hard,” Josh howled over the radio speaker. No answer followed Josh’s order, telling Carnegie whoever had been or was in OP five was either wounded badly or dead.
Carnegie’s mind raced through different plans of action based on what he was hearing over the radio. He wanted to order a pursuit, but both his vehicles were headed back to the Stockton base for the evening and weren’t scheduled to return until the following day. Sure, the men driving the vehicles had radios and were almost certainly listening to their brothers and sisters in arms fighting for their lives, but they wouldn’t be able to return in time to be of any help. Carnegie keyed his mic again.
“All units, secure your posts. Do not pursue. Secure your posts and stand by for further instructions,” Carnegie barked into the mic. A foot pursuit in hostile territory with night coming on was a surefire way of getting more troops killed, Carnegie thought as he stood staring south, wishing he were a younger man. As he stood, the shots grew fewer in number until they stopped altogether. Five minutes after the last shot sounded, Josh came jogging up the hill, breathless, his face already telling Carnegie there was little good news.
“They fucking hit us just like that bastard on the motorcycle said.” Josh turned his head and spat in the dirt. “I swear to God I would never have followed through with it knowing the plan was compromised.” Josh huffed, shaking his head.
“Yeah, Buckley’s a genius. What’s our sitrep?” Carnegie snapped irritably, not wanting to hear any more about how they’d underestimated one John Buckley—again.
“Ten KIA, two WIA, one’s gonna bite the big one so really eleven KIA. They hit the forward line of OPs, got most of the guys and gals in the first wave, then cleaned up with more fire and that M203. I got one of ’em, and we have people out there now policing the area. OP five killed one as well before they got torched.”
Carnegie scowled at Josh for a moment. “We kill two and they somehow get a dozen of us. How the hell did they get so close? I swear if I find out someone was sleeping on post, I will shoot them myself,” Carnegie roared; his fists clenched as if he would swing them at any moment.
“They had to have crawled in last night and lain out there all day,” Josh offered.
“And no one saw them lying out in the middle of a flat pasture?” Carnegie shot back.
“Those fields aren’t as flat as they look. There are plenty of small dips and depressions to hide in. It’s the only way they could have pulled this off,” Josh said, defending his stance in the conversation.
Carnegie turned, knowing Josh had already handled everything that needed attention. The dead would be staged for pickup tomorrow by the outgoing vehicles after they completed their resupply of the camp. The camp would be on a heightened alert status for the foreseeable future even though the shooters seemed to have slunk off into the night, and even after Buckley’s unpredictable attack today, Carnegie doubted there would be trouble within the next twenty-four hours. Buckley losing two of his people would be a significant blow to John’s operation, Carnegie was sure of this, which nearly brought a smile to his cruel mouth.
Josh took the hint and headed off toward the battered observation posts, leaving Carnegie to enter his tent, think about what had just happened, and nearly stomp the small table into the ground. The scarceness of resources such as serviceable tables stopped the colonel from any gratuitous acts of vandalism. Instead, he paced inside the tent, grinding his teeth at the thought of losing a dozen troops in a single conflict. The loss to Buckley’s side was essentially the same since the ranch didn’t have nearly the number of people Carnegie enjoyed at his disposal, but somehow this small positive didn’t serve to cool Carnegie’s temper much.
Carnegie needed to change his tactics or risk losing more valuable troops and equipment. His strategy would remain intact; he planned on removing a threat and adding livestock to his own inventory. Yes, his strategy just needed a new approach, or it ran the risk of failing. Carnegie was positive John would change his own tactics after losing two men in their last clash, and the colonel wanted to be ready for this adjustment, whatever it was.
Carnegie was essentially laying siege to the ranch, an old tactic dating back thousands of years. A tactic he knew relied heavily on brute force more than finesse. Carnegie was also aware that brute force could be overcome by innovation and wit on the part of his adversary. This game was much like chess, Carnegie was allowed moves, but so too was John Buckley, and John was proving to be a skilled tactician so far.
After going over everything each surviving member could remember of the ambush, Rip’s and Quinten’s deaths, and their narrow escape, silence hung heavily in the room. Jared was the first to speak, picking his words carefully.
“I have a feeling things are going to change after what we just did,” Jared started. “This seemed like a great idea, but not so much now. I know Quinten wasn’t the type of man to be run off his own land, and I totally get that, but it cost him his life—so…” Jared hesitated, wondering if this was a little too harsh a thing to utter in the presence of Quinten’s newly widowed wife. “I’m just saying we might want to rethink staying here,” Jared finished, his voice softening.
Jared rose slowly to his feet before catching John’s gaze and flitting his eyes toward the back door. John got to his feet, and both men left the women sitting in the living room. Outside, Jared stopped after stepping off the back porch.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, John, but we shouldn’t have gone after them like that,” Jared said, squaring up on John as the former military man descended the back steps.
John’s cheeks flushed, as the first emotion he felt was anger at being accurately second-guessed on a mission plan that had resulted in the death of two men. Truth be told, there were several things that didn’t go as John anticipated they should have. The quickness with which the soldiers got a heavy gun into the fight had surprised him greatly. During the planning phase, he’d figured they would knock the hell out of the soldiers, causing mass hysteria, at which time he and the rest of the ambushers would slip away unseen for the most part.
The operation hadn’t gone anything like that. Rip getting shot early on was just bad luck, but his being hit again with accurate and lethal fire was outright unnerving. John had been with the SEAL, and the only reason he was alive and Rip lay dead in the pasture was a simple case of target selection on the part of whoever was operating the machine gun. If John had fallen in the man’s sights before Rip, he’d be the one leaking his life fluids into the fertile North American soil.
John was learning he couldn’t lash out every time his emotions commanded him to. “No shit, Jared, ya think I don’t know that? Fuck, bro, I knew it the second Rip got hit the first time.”
The moment Rip was hit, John knew they were in for some serious troubles. John hadn’t for a second thought their troubles would be two dead members of his crew, but he had been worried about Rip making it after being shot. Any wound nowadays had to be considered life threatening, and in Rip’s case, it would have been crippling at the very least.
“Listen,” John continued. “I made a mistake. I had no idea they’d be able to get going so quickly or that someone would get a lucky shot on Quinten. I just didn’t see it coming. I thought we’d hit hard and fade into the countryside.”
Jared swallowed hard, his head tilted slightly, staring at John. “It’s not just your fault. I should have said something or seen a flaw. Hell, Quinten or Rip, even Stephani, we were all part of planning this. We all walked into a chainsaw, and two got chewed to bits. The issue we need to deal with is making sure we don’t repeat it.”
John’s temper lessened slightly as Jared spoke. John placed a tremendous amount of responsibility on his own shoulders when it came to the health and safety of the community, so when things went sideways like they had earlier, he always positioned the fault on himself. He was, after all, the one with by far the most experience in making war, so he by default should be held accountable when their thin veneer of security was breached.
John turned his head to the heavens, drinking in the clear starlit night, stars so bright they appeared to be dancing in the heavens above. Blowing out a stress-filled breath through his mouth, John looked Jared squarely in the face. “We need to be ready for Carnegie to change tactics. He will want to lay siege to this place now.”
Jared shook his head, a frown creasing the corners of his mouth. “Like attack?”
“Naw, he won’t do that yet,” John said through pursed lips. “He will want to restrict our ability to move about like we were able to do when we hit them. I’m guessing he’s not happy about his losses and will try to lock this place down on all sides.” John shrugged. “It’s a board game, and we know his next move, so we have to counter it with our move. There is no taking turns in this game. He who makes more moves or has the ability to make those moves quickly has a better chance of victory.”
“We’re not trying to win here,” Jared stammered, confused by all John’s talk of tactics and sieges. “We’re trying to survive.”
“Gotta win to survive, brother,” John said with a woeful smirk.
“Then we need to move tonight,” Jared shot back.
“All the horses have to come with and the VW; girls can drive as long as it starts,” John added.
“The VW?” Jared asked, not convinced that was the best idea since the little car would wake the dead once it was started.
John bobbed his head emphatically. “It goes. Carnegie would have used vehicles today if he had them here. He didn’t, which means his army is on foot.”
This immediately made sense to Jared. They had an advantage here in travel speed and maneuverability and needed to use this small yet significant benefit while they could. Calvin and Cody were hopefully still with the herd of cattle in or around Del Valle Reservoir, which was where they would head for the time being. Even Jared’s tactically immature mind knew they couldn’t allow themselves to be surrounded, restricted or otherwise controlled in any fashion by Carnegie and his soldiers.
“Let’s tell ’em,” Jared added, knowing time was of the essence.
Inside the house, Jared did the talking, laying out their exit plan while feeling Margie’s eyes the entire time like two laser beams trying to bore holes in his plan. Jared considered the fact that she wouldn’t be okay just leaving her fallen husband out in a field, but they had little choice at this juncture. John stood quietly to the side while Jared announced their next move, nodding his approval when appropriate.
When Jared was quite finished, he assigned duties to everyone, and the group hurried off to complete these tasks. Within forty-five minutes, the group had two packhorses outfitted with as much food and cookware as they could carry. Five additional horses were saddled for the men and Stephani while Shannon, the kids and a still grieving Margie would drive the VW.
John doubted Carnegie had any eyes on the ranch worth a hill of beans during the nighttime hours, so it was decided to stage all the horses, riders, and the VW before starting the combustion engine, which would tell the world something was going on down at the ranch. Ninety minutes after Jared briefed everyone regarding their departure, they all either sat inside the VW or astride a horse.
The women and children would leave in the VW, heading toward the reservoir with the riders in trail in the event Carnegie had soldiers closer than John believed he would. Both John and Jared wore their night-vision goggles, which weren’t lasting quite as long on a set of batteries as they once had. Both men constantly scanned the flat pastureland, seeing nothing, but as the time drew upon them to leave, the tension was high.
Raul was the only rider not on a horse, having procured a can of starter fluid he intended on spraying directly into the carburetor as Shannon turned the little motor over. Raul had pulled the air filter off and tossed it into the back seat with the two kids and was waiting patiently when Shannon poked her head out the driver’s side window.
“Starting,” came Shannon’s succinct declaration.
Raul was ready, and as the engine turned, he sprayed. The motor caught almost immediately, rumbling to life in only the way an older model VW can. Their sound and smell were like no other vehicle ever manufactured anywhere on the planet. Shannon revved the engine twice before mashing the clutch, jamming the gearshift into first gear and launching the vehicle with its occupants down the dusty driveway. The engine was cold, but it held strong as Shannon refused to permit the engine RPMs to decline, even when she worked her way through the gears. The little air-cooled engine would be warm soon enough, but for the moment, Shannon abused the vehicle with her near redline driving.
