The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 33
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
“They have to see it too,” Jared exclaimed, trying to keep his voice down, attempting to control his concern.
“Yeah, they will. No doubt about that,” John murmured distractedly. “Cat’s out of the bag now, brother,” John said, clearly directing his words not at Jared, but out into the countryside to wherever Josh lay in wait.
Jared was plainly shaken by the arrival of the smoke even after being part of the planning that had resulted in the smoke’s presence. He hated the fact that he still felt like things were spiraling out of control just prior to a life-threatening experience, while John lay next to him in the same position in life, seemingly unfazed by it all. Maybe it was because John thought about battle as a single-dimension event while Jared felt he viewed conflict in its full three-dimensional glory. Jared saw the dangers to not only himself, but the fallout of Essie and Shannon being killed or the effect on the two gals were he to be cut down in battle.
Jared wasn’t of the opinion that John didn’t care about the others in their group, just that he was better able to compartmentalize things when he faced a foe in conflict. Jared knew John’s original plans and all his actions were focused on the betterment of the community; the difference between Jared and John was how they dealt with those responsibilities during an operation. Jared fretted about the outcome while John pushed through the obstacles like an enraged bull.
“Bro, you good?” John asked, breaking Jared’s internal struggle with his inability to remain unfazed by impending violence.
Jared pulled in a slack-jawed breath, then nodded his head. John stared at him hard for a few seconds, and when Jared didn’t speak, John clapped his friend on the back.
“This thing out here may drag on for a while, man,” John whispered.
Jared met John’s gaze, a look of question on his face. “How long?”
John gave a half shrug. “Days, maybe longer.”
“What?” Jared mouthed incredulously.
John had engaged enemy snipers in the past, but the clashes were always one-offs. If some base had a sniper problem they weren’t able to resolve with the resources they had, then John and a partner might be flown in to assess and assist. Those operations were always the same, find out what times the sniper was taking shots into the base, what direction he was doing it from, and then work from there. If the enemy sniper was an idiot, he or she would use the same hide site over and over.
The repetitive use of the same site made John’s job easier. He would go out with his partner, locate the enemy sniper position, and booby-trap either the hide site itself or the path used by the enemy sniper to gain access to the hide site. If booby-trapping wasn’t an option for whatever reason, John would mark the hide site on a map, return to the base, and dial up a fire mission from either a mortar team or an artillery unit. The soldiers or Marines being shot at would man the indirect-fire mission twenty-four hours a day, and when the next shot came into the base, they’d execute John’s fire mission.
John didn’t even need to be around for the latter and only asked the base contact him when they executed on the enemy sniper with a full report on whether the mission was successful or not. The three times John had drawn up a fire mission for some base commander, he’d enjoyed three thankful calls from the commander within a day or two of his departure from the base.
John and his mates who were trained for this type of work spent time studying other historical sniper duels at length, but John had never been involved in one himself. These clashes were dangerous, and neither sniper held an advantage other than what was in his head. The winner of these one-on-one battles always ended like a chess match: one player outwitted the other, painting the loser into a corner.
John was aware he couldn’t maneuver the playing field like he could in the company of one of his old mates from the unit. All was not lost though; Jared had been sneaking about the world for nearly a year with no breaks like John and his mates had enjoyed when they weren’t deployed. John would tap into Jared’s strength in the upcoming hours, days, and even weeks if that was what it took to rid himself of Josh.
Neither John nor Josh would flee from this battle, which meant the Del Valle Regional Park was going to be the stage for their deadly game of hide-and-seek. The game would be played like most other games. There would be boundaries, and although the two pieces in this game were essentially equivalent to queen pieces in chess, the terrain acted as the only controlling factor. In chess each piece has rules governing how it can move, and thus these rules assign strengths and weaknesses to each piece.
This lethal game of cat and mouse would be a struggle between both sides to gain the best positional advantage for themselves using the topography to eliminate their opponent. The only other restriction was the range of each man’s rifle, coupled with the skill of the man operating each weapon. John could gain purchase of the high ground, handicapping Josh’s position in the game, but could find himself out of range, resulting in a stalemate until one of the men made their next move, and so it would go until either John or Josh checkmated the other.
Once Jared and John donned their packs, they slipped out of the hide site. John was sure once Josh realized he’d been compromised, he would look to his map and come up with John’s position or at least roughly where Jared and John had set up. Thirty minutes later, Jared and John were able to get to their feet, picking their way down the back side of the hill they’d been using and heading in an easterly direction.
John cursed under his breath, again wishing he had a spotting scope so he and Jared could put some real distance between themselves and where Josh would likely be, find an elevated position, and glass the entire area until they spotted Josh. After their foe was pinpointed, John and Jared could begin a stalk on Josh’s location. It was a simple case of spot and stalk, only the prey wasn’t deer or elk. The advantage of using a spotting scope was twofold in that it allowed John and Jared to locate Josh and then move on his position using the terrain to mask their approach.
At the bottom of a deep ravine topped with scrub oak and brush, John held up a fist, calling a stop to take on water and orient himself better with what his next move should be. Jared pulled a water bottle off his pack, but left the pack in place on his back while he drank.
“I sure hope Devon is being careful after that fire,” John muttered.
Jared finished drinking and looked up. “He should be okay. He’s the sneakiest guy I’ve ever known,” Jared offered, but knowing what Devon did was tantamount to taking a swipe at a hornet’s nest.
“How many sneaky guys did you know before all this?” John chuckled.
“The sneakiest people in the world are in business,” Jared countered with raised eyebrows. “There were spies in my old business, hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Corporate espionage like you wouldn’t believe. Real spies, John, real ones, like former CIA guys, working everywhere in Silicon Valley.”
John held up a hand. “Take it easy,” he soothed. “I’m just saying I sent Devon out there, so I hope he’s being sneakier than your old running dogs.”
“I never was part of those groups.” Jared snorted.
John examined Jared curiously for a second before stowing his own water bottle and getting to his feet. Sometimes his conversations with these civilians were downright perplexing. Part of the disconnect was usually the fact that John and his former teammates spoke in their own language, which was one of innuendos, clichés, and analogies that oftentimes corresponded with matters not understood by most civilians. On the flip side, Jared spoke in actualities, meaning exactly what he said every time he spoke with John or any other person in their group. The disconnect only came when John spoke to Jared, not the other way around.
“Let’s get going—Jared,” John stammered, almost using the term tycoon, but stopping himself for fear Jared would automatically add the word business in front of the word tycoon, and thus the banter would continue when they had real work to do.
Together, they made their way east for an hour before turning north, far from the reservoir. John wanted to approach the reservoir from the north, heading south, slowly working his way back into the kill zone. The trek would take most if not all of what was left in the day, leaving them to rest during the night before moving toward the south the following day. Jared and John agreed to push hard into the night so they were well positioned for the following day’s movement.
Although neither John nor Jared thought Josh would have any inclination they were this far to the east, they took their time, scanning every section of the countryside before entering and passing through it. Late in the afternoon, both men froze in place when the sound of a diesel engine rattled across the quietness. The engine was started, ran for several minutes, then shut off. Both Jared and John were facedown in the grass, not moving a muscle as the sound of the engine ceased.
When Chris received Josh’s order to move back out of the area, he wasted no time in gathering all the soldiers and making good on the directive. The soldiers moved back the way they’d come in, the Humvee idling alongside the soldiers on foot. Once Chris guessed they were roughly two miles northeast of their original position, he began looking for one of the many dirt roads leading off the main paved roadway. These dirt roads had belonged to land owners before the solar flare and were usually well enough kept for the Humvee to traverse with little to no trouble.
The next dirt road Chris and the soldiers came across was gated, so the soldiers used a pull strap, connecting the strap to the gate and the bumper of the Humvee. The driver reversed the large vehicle until the gate was torn from the two posts it hung between. Two of the soldiers dragged the gate off to the side while another soldier replaced the pull strap in the rear of the Humvee. The troops headed up the dirt road, which wound around a hill before ending where someone had used a bulldozer to flatten out a fairly large area. There was a trailer and an old tractor along with several old rusted-to-hell motorcycles and some tattered old lawn furniture.
On the far side of the flattened area were several steel targets, telling the soldiers whoever owned the land had been a gun enthusiast. Chris was driving the Humvee and pulled it to a stop in front of the trailer.
“Clear this place,” Chris ordered the men on the ground.
Several of the soldiers on foot moved to the trailer while the gunner in the turret covered them. The trailer proved empty, and soon the Humvee was parked alongside it while the soldiers set up security and explored the immediate area around the flattened-off piece of land. An hour later, the soldiers had their defensive positions manned and were talking about what was going on back at the reservoir. To a man, the soldiers were all curious, but also thankful they weren’t in harm’s way any longer. The sudden appearance of an unexplained and obviously manmade fire so close to their former position served to unnerved them all.
For now, the soldiers were content with checking in every hour in order to receive game details, no participation needed. After their second check-in with Josh, the soldiers began foraging through their packs for MRE packets. Chris walked to the front of the Humvee and unlatched the hood, hoisting the cover up and locking it into place. He’d warmed meals on an engine more than once and wanted to teach some of the newbies how it was done.
“Bring your chow over here and lay them out on the engine block. I’ll start this beast, and we can all save our stove fuel,” Chris announced to the group. There were ten soldiers near the Humvee, while the remaining two sat fifty yards down the road in case anyone came waltzing up the road. When night fell, Chris planned on placing another two soldiers on the hillside above the Humvee, but for now they would all eat some warm chow. After the last soldier laid his meal across an open portion of the engine’s surface, Chris started the Humvee, exited the driver’s compartment, and closed the hood to block as much heat in as possible.
The engine was already warm, not hot to the touch, but definitely warm, so Chris didn’t figure he’d need to let the beast of a vehicle run for long. Less than five minutes later, Chris killed the engine while the soldiers hefted the hood and retrieved their meals. For the most part, everyone’s meals were warm enough to eat without complaint. As was usually the case when hungry men ate, no one spoke.
The first two soldiers finished with their dinner departed to relieve the two guys on post down the road. The two soldiers from the OP arrived shortly later and packed their own meals on the still hot Humvee engine. While the men ate, Chris surveyed the hill their flattened area had been carved out of.
“We’ll have two guys up there tonight to augment the others down the road,” Chris told the group of soldiers.
For the next hour, the soldiers did what soldiers have done since the invention of the profession, talk about home, future plans, and girls they’d been with. Josh purposefully didn’t bring any of the female soldiers on this mission, still subscribing to the old way things were done or at least the old way he thought things should be done.
The lack of females in Josh’s mind resulted in less preoccupation with thoughts other than those connected to the mission. The reality of their situation was, most of these soldiers couldn’t care less about all Josh’s machismo bullshit when it came to whom they were assigned to go outside the wire with. Everyone there had trained the same, passed all the same physical requirements, and qualified on the same ranges, so whether a soldier sported an innie or an outie didn’t matter to most of the soldiers under Carnegie’s command.
Chris outlined the watch schedule for the evening, giving himself the worst of the watches. It was a strange thing how being in charge made hardships easier to endure. The first of the watches started late in the afternoon after everyone was fed and feeling more comfortable moving farther away from the reservoir where it was rumored John Buckley would be. No one wanted to tangle with the man except Josh.
Chris sat in the front seat of the Humvee while seven of the soldiers not pulling duty fought for bed space inside the trailer. The trailer slept six, and although a bit drafty, it kept the wind off the men for the most part. The trailer was parked with its tail bumper backed into the hill where the mountain was carved into. The Humvee was parked on the opposite side of the trailer from its only entrance, where Chris lounged, feeling relaxed after eating and taking care of the men. Now he just wanted to clear his mind for a while before climbing in the back of the uncomfortable Humvee and trying to sleep.
Chris’s mind wandered between his duties with Josh and his old life, then back to what he needed to stay on top of in regard to checking his posts and ensuring the other soldiers were not only taken care of, but also doing what was required of them. Chris pulled the latch on the vehicle’s door and pushed it open and slid out of the driver’s seat, planting his feet on the ground, where he suddenly felt very tired of all the soldiering he’d been involved in lately. There was no sound coming from the trailer, which meant the men inside were either asleep already or trying to get that way.
Chris would leave the men in the trailer alone and take a walk and check on the OP down the road. He’d spend some time with the two men assigned to the OP and then move to the OP on the hillside. Once he’d shown his face, he’d get some sleep in the Humvee until it was time for his watch. Chris had his gear on and his rifle slung over his right shoulder. He wasn’t overly concerned about being contacted en route to the OP, so the rifle remained slung indifferently.
Chris cursed under his breath as he approached the OP and saw no sign of the soldiers. The OP was in a ditch off to one side of the road and had been further excavated with some good old-fashioned elbow grease and a couple of shovels by the soldiers assigned first watch. The bottom of the ditch had been deepened, and all the dirt removed was used to shore of the sides of the OP in the event they were attacked by an assailant who was able to gain access to the ditch on either side of the soldiers.
When Chris was twenty yards out, he gave a low whistle, to which a head rose from the OP. Chris’s feet dragged to a halt, his brain immediately shifting into overdrive in a wildly futile effort to make sense of what he was seeing. When a complete stranger rose from the brush along the opposite side of the road, rifle held high and shaking his head, Chris felt his bowels loosen their grip slightly, as he wrestled with the panic that threatened to render him a groveling lump of flesh at the feet of these two men. Chris recognized neither man, causing him to wonder where his soldiers were and what exactly was going on rather than what he was going to do about it.
The man in the ditch stood erect. “Drop the rifle, man,” John said, stepping out of the ditch OP he’d been hunkered down in. The two sentries were sprawled prostrate at his feet, trussed up and lashed together like a couple of rainbow trout.
Chapter 29
Chris’s jaw dropped as the man on his left approached, moving quickly from the brush, closing the distance on him before Chris’s mind could begin to form a preventative course of action. In the two seconds it took Jared to cover the several yards to the poor bastard standing dumbfounded in the middle of the dirt road, Chris’s brain housing group briefly fostered the idea of calling out to the soldiers in the trailer, but his tongue was stayed by the thought of his being shot dead before a single soldier exited the trailer.
Chris had no idea how many men he was dealing with other than the two standing in front of him, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to martyr himself for anyone out here in the countryside. Slowly, Chris lowered his right shoulder, allowing his rifle to slip off and drop straight to the ground with the clatter only a Colt M16 or like rifle can make when dropped on a hard surface.
Inwardly every person standing or lying within earshot and who had served in the military cringed at the sound of the rifle striking the hard-packed surface of the dirt road. Jared was the only person who wasn’t bothered by the rifle hitting the hard ground. Having never served, Jared had never been subjected to the abuse that followed dropping a rifle on the ground. The very act of dropping a weapon was tantamount to an act of treason for Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airman alike. One’s rifle was his lifeline, his last line of defense, and served the greater good of the entire unit.
