The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 32
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
Devon found himself slightly to the rear of the Humvee and up the steep embankment when he spotted the vehicle. He couldn’t be sure, but there appeared to be close to half a dozen soldiers in or around the Humvee as Devon peeked through the grass. Shortly after Devon’s arrival, four of the soldiers got to their feet and split into two groups, one heading west and the other heading back along the dirt road to the east.
The two soldiers walking east were Devon’s main concern as they drew nearer his position. Devon allowed the two soldiers to pass him and continue to the south before he began making his way after them. Again, it didn’t take long for Devon to realize what was going on. The two soldiers outpaced Devon rather quickly, and as he tried reacquiring them, he spotted two completely different soldiers strolling back toward the Humvee.
Devon pressed his face to the ground and let the two new soldiers pass. He wasn’t overly worried about being spotted since he was roughly one hundred and fifty yards from the two men, but he also didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. As he lay in the grass, waiting for the soldiers to pass, Devon realized what he was seeing. The men were relieving their rear watch while the other two soldiers who’d struck out to the west were most likely relieving another defensive position. The soldiers held four positions including the Humvee, which appeared to be their base of operations.
No defensive positions on the downhill side due to the Humvee being able to cover the entire area with the machine gun in the turret. Security front and back, with another emplacement up high, controlling the high ground. Devon was no military war planner, but he was preceptive enough to recognize the soldiers could not be closed on without running afoul of one of their defensive positions. The weakness to this little arrangement was someone like Devon, who left the footprint of a common gopher snake wherever he went. The soldiers had a very nice shark net in place that had no effect on snakes. The flip side was Devon wasn’t a real threat to these soldiers.
Over the next hour, Devon mapped all the soldiers’ positions and then slipped back out to the east, picking up the main road. Devon crossed the road and began gathering small sticks, twigs and any other flammable material he could find. It took several trips, but after some time and effort, Devon stood back and admired a nearly waist-high stack of fuel for his soon-to-be fire, placed right at the entrance to the dirt road. Although out in the open for the most part, Devon was careful to survey the area before each and every load of tinder he brought in.
Devon had recently begun carrying a strike igniter, but today he used a regular old lighter he’d scavenged from a convenience store months before. The leaves and smaller fuel lit easily, and soon the fire was actually roaring. Devon tossed the last few larger lengths of wood into the blaze, then sprinted for the east side of the road, where he dropped off the opposite side, melting into the scrub oak and brush.
Chris Allen had been in the reserves before the solar flare and enjoyed the misfortune of checking in at his home base in Stockton a week after the event. He’d not been allowed to leave since. From what he knew of the outside world, getting trapped at the base might have been good fortune on his part. Now he was out at some reservoir with Colonel Carnegie’s hotshot special forces guy Josh, trying to find some guy they’d had locked up a few months ago, but who was able to escape when a group of SEALs mutinied. The SEALs killed a couple of soldiers and wounded a bunch more before making good their escape, and Chris was just thankful he hadn’t been one of the poor bastards slinging lead with those Navy fellas.
Chris’s partner, Marty, had never served and only recently been recruited by Josh and placed into the ranks to serve alongside Chris and the rest of the soldiers. Today the two were on rear security, watching the dirt road they’d driven in on before setting up camp. Once the camp was set up, Josh had left the soldiers to look for the John guy Carnegie wanted for the murder of his soldiers. Chris also knew the guy they called John had provided medical attention to several of the soldiers after clashing with them. He’d probably saved a couple of their lives by giving them first aid in the field and then calling and telling Carnegie where to pick his wounded up.
As Chris and Marty sat in the dirt, their backs resting against their packs, both men perked up at the smell of smoke. Chris was the first on his feet, his nose held high, searching for the source of the smell. His eyes clued him in before his nose could, seeing smoke rising from the direction of the road. Chris glanced at his watch, 1123 hours, still more than thirty minutes until he could check in with Josh.
By virtue of being in the military before the solar flare, Chris outranked Marty, so he was essentially in charge when it came to decision-making.
“Stay here, man, watch that smoke, turn your radio on; I’ll do the same. I’m going back to the truck and get some people up here to investigate,” Chris ordered.
Marty wasn’t too keen on being left alone, but having radio contact eased his tension enough that he didn’t resist. Both soldiers flipped their comms on, and Chris left at a jog in the direction of the Humvee.
When Chris caught sight of the Humvee, he called out, “Heads up. I’m coming in.”
The unexpected arrival of Chris had the other six soldiers on their feet, faces creased with looks of concern. As Chris stopped in front of the other six soldiers, he saw their eyes divert from him to the sky. As Chris turned, he saw the smoke, which seemed to have grown in volume. Turning back to the six soldiers, Chris nodded.
“Yeah, smoke, started a couple of minutes ago. Seems like it’s up by the road. Leave two here, and the rest come back with me,” Chris ordered.
The first four soldiers to step forward followed Chris back to Marty’s location. Marty was on his feet, eyes alternating between the smoke and the direction Chris had gone for help, and seemed more than a little relieved when he spotted the five soldiers approaching.
“Something’s burning up there,” Marty blurted out.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Chris muttered, walking straight past Marty.
Five minutes later the soldiers gathered around the large fire burning in the middle of the dirt road next to the gate. It was evident to all the fire was man-made and not some random act of nature, which served to unnerve them all. Chris looked at his watch, 1149 hours. Josh would be checking in shortly and would know what to do. Chris and the other soldiers wanted to pull everyone back to the Humvee and wait for Josh’s return, but Chris held off on doing anything until he received guidance from the more experienced man out looking for the ever-elusive John Buckley.
Josh lay in a hide on the west side of the road leading into the reservoir, his rifle pointed in the direction of the cluster of small boats six hundred and seventy-five yards in front of him. The fishermen hadn’t gone out this morning, which tickled something in Josh’s red-flag department. It wasn’t enough of a tingle to act on, but it was something seemingly out of the ordinary and a deviance from what he’d seen earlier, so Josh wouldn’t forget it. The argument Josh held in his own head was he’d only seen the men go out a single time, so he didn’t possess enough data to definitively say their absence today meant anything other than they weren’t out fishing today.
Maybe the men fished some days and hunted others; Josh couldn’t be sure until he’d sat and watched their movements for several days. Only then could Josh determine whether their behavior was that of normal post-apocalyptic survivors or the actions of men taking precautions against being attacked by a hostile force. Josh blew out a frustrated breath, then ducked his eye back into the rifle’s scope, playing with the magnification as he caressed the far shoreline with the scope’s reticle.
At noon, Josh reached to his radio, switching the piece of equipment on and immediately hearing one of the soldiers in the middle of calling for Josh. Josh frowned. The soldier’s voice sounded strained, telling Josh something was happening.
“Go,” Josh whispered into the mic.
When Chris was finished reading Josh in on the fire and where all the soldiers were, Josh told him to hold one while Josh thought about his next move. Now he had enough to understand his situation a little better. John knew he was in the area; it was the only answer that made sense. First the boats failed to go out as they’d done the morning before, and now someone was marking his soldiers’ position with a fire. Josh was fairly sure John didn’t enjoy the luxury of communications gear like Josh did, so John would have to find other ways of communicating with his people, like fire.
Josh could remember working in far-off lands like the Philippines, where he and his mates had been training on a range that backed up to a mountain the locals used to gather firewood from. There was no way for the Americans to stop the locals from gathering the firewood from the mountain, which was essentially the backdrop to their range.
The locals came up with lighting fires as they moved around the mountain in an effort to alert the Americans to their presence. If the fires were low enough to be struck by the Americans’ bullets, Josh and his mates would shut it down for an hour, allowing whoever was on the mountain to pass safely out of harm’s way. This tactic was now being used against Josh by one of his old mates, John Buckley. How ironic, Josh thought to himself, shaking his head before pulling the scope back to his eye.
Josh drew the scope’s reticle across the boats at the far south end of the reservoir, finding them in the same condition they’d been in all morning—empty. Josh glassed the bridge next, then the trees on the far side of the bridge, unable to make out anything new. Josh felt an unease now he hadn’t suffered from before the call from his soldiers. John knew he was in the area, and that in and of itself was a bad thing.
Worse than John knowing Josh was close by was the fact that Josh didn’t know how John knew, making this little missing puzzle piece the most troubling of them all. Josh let the rifle rest on its bipod while he transitioned to his binoculars. Slowly, Josh performed a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, probing every bush, tree, and depression he could see. Josh completed his search of the area, finding nothing indicating another predator in the area, then lowered the optics to gaze naked eyed out across the vast expansiveness of the reservoir and all the mountains it was encompassed in.
Josh’s mind raced as the realization of his situation began to grow clearer in his head. He was no longer the hunter out here; John was now hunting him. Josh never in his life had been involved in a sniper duel. He’d killed other enemy snipers, but they’d not been the highly trained and even more experienced animal John Buckley was. A chill began creeping its way into Josh’s body as he wondered just how behind the curve he was on this one.
It was totally possible John had spotted the Humvee the moment they arrived, but Josh doubted that since he’d seen people on the reservoir the day before, and then suddenly today, they didn’t show up. Josh needed to move, knowing John would be assessing his situation and setting up target ambush points along with fields of fire. After that, John would reverse engineer the battleground, placing himself in Josh’s shoes in order to figure out where Josh would set up his shot from.
Both Josh and John came from the same background and would read the terrain the same for the most part. The more Josh thought about this, the quicker his hands collected all his gear, stowing it in his pack as he prepared to evacuate his hide site before John tore into him with that damn Mk 13. Maybe he should have come alone, leaving all the cumbersome soldiers at the ranch. He could have slipped into the area much quieter than doing so with a Humvee and twelve guys who weren’t all that talented at the art of warfighting.
Josh slipped into his pack, tightening the straps and then folding the bipods down on his rifle. Moving on his stomach, Josh slithered backward thirty yards before getting to his hands and knees and crawling down into a small ravine, where he made his way out of his hide site. When Josh was sure no one could draw a bead on him, he stopped to think about his next move. His ill-perceived advantage had likely evaporated the moment John realized there were others in the hills, but how in the hell had John come to this conclusion? Josh wondered.
Josh couldn’t know for sure, but he had to play this game as if he was facing his worst-case scenario. Josh would operate as if John knew his general location and had positioned himself in a manner to observe the entire area Josh was working in. This thought pushed Josh in the direction of abandoning this operation completely, but knew returning to Carnegie sans a dead John Buckley because Josh thought it was too dangerous would not fly.
As Josh lay in the ravine, thinking about his next move, he came to the conclusion he needed to move the soldiers out of the area. Their presence was already burned, which meant they could at this very moment be in harm’s way. If Buckley killed all twelve soldiers and took the Humvee, Josh might have to find another home. Returning to explain that storyline to the colonel would almost certainly result in a violent if not deadly confrontation.
Josh couldn’t leave anything to chance; the soldiers had to be pulled back. He needed them in a location far enough away from this area that John and his little band of irritants couldn’t easily locate them again. After Josh got that detail squared away, he would begin hunting and so would start a deadly game of cat and mouse, or more accurately cat and cat. Two highly efficient hunters on a battleground with rolling hills, sparse vegetation, scrub oaks, and a large body of water as their backdrop.
Josh had never experienced a hands-down beating in battle, but he’d attended many debriefs put on by survivors of such failed undertakings. The one thing every warrior Josh heard speak had in common with one another was the feeling that everything was going to work out right up until it didn’t. Josh’s old unit had spent quite a bit of time discussing how to avoid this false sense of security and how to recognize when your unit was in real trouble the moment it was upon you.
This proved a hard nut to crack since most every man in the Special Missions Unit was an alpha with no thought of failure ever passing through their brains. Although Josh’s former unit never came up with formal training for this phenomenon, they did talk about it at length. The end result was each man in the unit approached battle as a student, studying its every undulation instead of entering the fight as a conqueror bent on victory no matter the cost.
This didn’t mean the men in Josh’s unit didn’t fight with the ferocity of lions, it just meant they strove to be more honest with themselves while in battle. If things turned for the worse in a manner that would result in a situation they couldn’t overcome, they trained themselves to recognize the signs as early as possible and either make the appropriate adjustments or remove themselves from the fight, a sort of live-to-fight-another-day approach.
Josh would remove his valuable assets from the game board and continue alone until he felt his position in the game was compromised to the point of not being worth the risk of continuing, or he killed Buckley. Josh waited until the next comms check to inform the soldiers of his plans. Josh held little doubt the soldiers weren’t already packed and frothing at the bit to get out of the area. Josh really couldn’t blame the men since every time they came in contact with Buckley and his people, someone got killed or, at the very least, shot or blown up.
After the radio exchange with his soldiers, Josh ate some dried fruit and drank a little water. He relaxed his body and mind for a full thirty minutes before pulling out his map and running his finger about its surface, seeking a suitable avenue out of his current location. Now it was Josh’s turn to reverse engineer the battlefield. He guessed John would set up in a spot he could observe the only two locations Josh could have made a shot on the boats from, and this was what Josh looked for on his map.
The contour lines of the map turned, twisted and circled about the map’s face as Josh’s eyes drank in their meaning, feeding the information to his brain, where he worked to produce a target location, a position in the hills he could focus on and hopefully find John before John found him. A single spot on the map popped out at Josh as the place he would have used to observe the two hide sites. The largely flat-topped hill was the highest point in the area that remained within rifle range of Josh’s position.
Josh lamented the lack of a spotting scope he could have used at a distance greater than John’s rifle was capable of reaching. No matter, Josh would do what needed doing with the equipment he had at his disposal. It was the way it had always been for the warrior class, and it wasn’t likely to change anytime soon. Josh shrugged inwardly; John was facing similar problems of his own, after all.
Chapter 28
Jared toyed with the strap hanging under his binoculars as his eyes danced about inside the optics, looking for any anomaly in the landscape to his front. John was doing the same to Jared’s left, alternating between his own binoculars and the rifle scope mounted atop the Mk 13. Nothing seemed to be moving other than a coyote, a few squirrels, and the never-ending flurry of birds around the reservoir. Water attracted all manner of wildlife, but these weren’t what Jared and John sought.
Jared pulled his fatigued eyes from the binoculars and rolled onto his left side so he could reach the water bottle in his pack. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of a thin tendril of smoke wafting skyward off to their right. The curling aberration was thick at its base, but seemed to submit to the light air currents as it departed its place of origin, expanding into a thinner and then transparent version of its former self.
Jared abandoned the water bottle, nudging John roughly in the ribs. “Look,” Jared whispered earnestly as he gestured with his chin in the direction of the smoke.
John stared unspeaking at the smoke for a full ten seconds, his mind racing to arrange this new piece of the puzzle. “Devon must have found them,” John said in a low voice.
