The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 34
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
If someone broke a weapon by being careless enough to drop it, the unit would find themselves down a rifle when the fighting began. It was the one thing in the military that immediately made the offender a pariah until his debt had been paid in either push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups or some other body- and mind-strengthening rehabilitative exercise. On this evening, no one said a word, and the entire ordeal was lost on Jared as he drew his rifle under his armpit and shoved Chris away from the fallen rifle, toward the OP.
John kept a watchful eye up the dirt road in the direction of the Humvee until Chris was within reach, at which time, John reached out and dragged the still dumbstruck soldier into the OP, forcing him facedown next to his comrades in arms. John was already holding a length of cord he used to secure Chris’s hands and legs as Jared came over the top of the ditch, carrying Chris’s rifle. By the time Jared dropped into the OP, John was nearly finished with his last knot, ensuring Chris wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Together Jared and John sat the men up, leaning them against the side of the ditch so the two opposing groups were face-to-face.
“We have a problem here, don’t we?” John started. When the soldiers didn’t speak, he continued, “You guys are out here helping Josh hunt me, and I have a problem with that.” John jerked his head at Jared. “I wanted to kill the lot of you, but my friend here was against it. We had quite the argument a couple of hours ago, and well, I relented, and here we are.”
Chris somehow summoned the courage to speak. “We gave him a ride out here, but we haven’t been helping with anything other than that,” Chris bleated.
“Dropped him off and been here the entire time?” John asked, his face telling Chris he already knew the answer.
Chris swallowed so hard his laryngeal prominence, or Adam’s apple, moved nearly a full inch. “I mean we dropped him off and set up a base camp, but then there was a fire, and he told us to move back a couple of miles,” Chris stammered, his voice quavering much more than he would have liked.
John stood over the three soldiers, rubbing his thick beard and wondering if he would live to regret not killing these guys straight out of the gate. He was screwed now; not even he was ruthless enough to execute three trussed-up, unarmed American soldiers. What he would do was take all their gear, including rifles and ammunition, and send them on their way, which could be construed the same as killing them with a bullet to the head.
“Why?” Jared barked suddenly. “Why are you all following that colonel and being part of something so un-American it resembles Russia back in the 1950s?” Jared followed up.
“There is no America, man,” Chris portended, his face taking on a sickened look.
“No, no, no,” Jared fired back. “That’s no excuse for killing and taking advantage of people without the means to defend themselves. The people back at the ranch where your helicopter crashed, they were doing fine, surviving, and just making it until you guys started stealing from them,” Jared snarled, his voice elevated now, anger seeping into his tone.
“The colonel was just taxing people, that’s all, just like before everything happened,” Chris said softly, his voice, that of a man who wasn’t convinced of his own argument.
“No,” Jared snapped. “He isn’t taxing anyone. Taxes are taken, and something is given in return. The colonel has only taken and murdered; he’s given nothing in return—nothing.” Jared spat the last word, leaning in close to Chris to make his point.
“You guys killed a lot of people too,” Chris croaked, his voice faltering slightly.
“We have,” Jared admitted. “We will continue killing until you’re all dead if you keep coming. We’ve never initiated an unprovoked attack on anyone, and don’t even start with what happened at the ranch down the street. When someone builds a camp for the sole purpose of launching an attack against men, women, and children, you don’t get to whine about us firing the first shot,” Jared almost shouted.
“You shot down one of our helicopters, killed almost everyone on it,” Chris said, pushing back a little as he began to see these two for who they were. These men were not like Carnegie or Josh. They seemed like normal guys, living out in the countryside, trying to make it. Another thing that wasn’t lost on Chris was the fact that these two had gotten the drop on the two sentries and himself, but hadn’t hurt any of them. Chris was a soldier and was well aware of the fact that it would have been easier and far less dangerous to just kill him and his two buddies, but these two chose differently.
Jared shook his head almost sadly. “No one shot anything down. I crashed that helicopter by stringing power lines across the road, and yes, I killed a bunch of people who probably were your friends.” Jared snorted. “You all killed two of my friends just a few days ago, and it isn’t going to stop until someone stops your colonel.”
Jared and Chris stared at each other, neither man breaking eye contact. After a few tense seconds, Jared blew out a short breath and turned to John. “Maybe we should have shot this one.”
John grinned. “We still can,” he offered, hefting his rifle up just a little.
“Okay, guys—you’re right. We shouldn’t be out here,” Chris blurted out, hoping to put a halt to being shot while tied up, a thought that terrified him far more than being shot while not tied up.
Jared scratched the back of his head, staring at the ground before looking up at the sky and then to John. “What now?”
John glanced at Chris. “Who is in charge here?”
“I am,” Chris said, holding his head a little higher.
“Can you get those boys out of the trailer and off the mountain without us having to shoot them all?” John probed.
Chris’s lips tightened at the question. “Honestly, I don’t know. Would you come out and lay down your rifles if the tables were turned?”
“No, I would not,” John affirmed.
Again no one spoke as all five men weighed their situation, the two sentries opting to continue their silence.
“You three want to live?” John finally asked.
All three men bobbed their heads in the affirmative.
“Thought so. I can’t speak to how this little thing is going to go down with your amigos up the way,” John continued, thrusting his bearded chin in the direction of the trailer, “but I can say we will give them the option. What happens after that is entirely up to them.”
Jared and John used riggers tape to cover the cord on the three men’s hands and legs before dragging each man to a small sapling tree and using more cord and tape to secure all three to the tree trunk. Finished with this task, they moved off a short distance to formulate a plan to deal with the remaining nine men in the trailer and on top of the hill in the second OP. John wanted to shoot the sorry bastards on the hill and then call the trailer boys out, giving them the chance to surrender.
As was the norm, Jared pushed back on outright murdering the two sentries on the hill, and John begrudgingly conceded to trying to take them all at the same time. John would move into a position to shoot both sentries on the hill, while Jared would work his way to a spot he could cover the trailer’s only door. Their only concern with the trailer was all the windows that could be used as gun ports. Their plan was simple, give the soldiers an opportunity to give themselves up, and if they refused, John would kill the two sentries while Jared ventilated the trailer until John could get his rifle into the trailer fight.
Jared went into the mission with high hopes of twelve prisoners in the end, while John was almost positive they’d have to kill the remaining soldiers. The afternoon was disappearing quickly as early evening set upon them all, casting longer shadows across the flattened area the trailer rested on. Usually, night worked to Jared and John’s advantage, but this particular event needed the light of day, or the soldiers might escape into the night.
When both Jared and John were in position, John called out to the men in both the trailer and on the hill not far off, “This is your one chance to come out of this alive. Leave your weapons on the ground and come down to the trailer. You guys inside the trailer stay put for now. Anyone shoots or pokes a rifle through a window, and we light you fellas up.”
The two men in the hillside OP stood up immediately, searching for the source of the voice ordering them to lay down their arms. The trailer rocked as soldiers were undoubtedly pulling on boots and hefting rifles in preparation for a fight.
“We already have three of your buddies from down the road, and they are alive and well because they went with the program,” John added for good measure. “Now, you two on the hill, lay ’em down or pay the price,” John hollered. “You guys in the trailer stay put. Anyone pokes their head out that door is going to lose it,” John cautioned.
Jared lay off the side of the road near where the road widened into the flattened area. He chose a spot behind some taller weeds, which further concealed his presence from any soldier inside the trailer who might get the idea of taking a shot through one of the windows. Jared held an advantage here due to the fact that all the window louvers were in the closed position. If one of the soldiers wished to engage Jared, the window would either need to be opened or shot through, and Jared would see the former.
Jared focused primarily on the trailer’s side door, but occasionally swept his eyes across the trailer’s windows, making sure their status remained closed. Jared nearly cooked a round off when the snap of John’s suppressed rifle sounded five times in rapid succession. The shock of hearing John engaging the soldiers on the hill served to freeze Jared’s attention on the trailer’s door just as it flung open and two men poured out, weapons up.
Without thought, Jared pulled the trigger on his rifle, felling both men less than three feet from the still open trailer door. One of the windows toward the front of the trailer literally exploded outward as a soldier inside the trailer opened fire. Before Jared could think about redirecting his own fire onto the window, John pounded the window from his position, causing the cheap curtains to dance like dingy yellow phantoms.
A second window exploded as screams and shouts poured from the interior of the doomed trailer. Jared saw the second window erupt outward and immediately directed several rapid-fire shots through the opening. Both shooters were silenced by John and Jared’s return fire for the time being. Jared couldn’t tell whether he’d struck anyone, but based on the shouts coming from inside the trailer, Jared guessed there was a high probability one or more of the soldiers inside were sporting extra holes.
“We can do this all day, fellas,” John yelled down to the trapped soldiers inside the trailer.
Nothing came from the trailer for a full twenty seconds as the soldiers worked on figuring their way out of the current mess they found themselves entangled in. Finally, a call came from inside the bullet-perforated trailer.
“We have two guys hit inside here. Hold your fire,” came the unidentified voice.
“Bring out your wounded, but I see one rifle and everyone gets it,” John admonished. “Including your wounded.”
“How do we know you’re not going to shoot everyone when we come out?” the voice called back.
“Jesus, man, are you really that stupid?” John growled. “You all know who I am, we had a go-around last winter, and I know every one of you guys in there knows what I did for your wounded then. Now I call you guys out, give you a chance to give up, and the fellas on the hill point a rifle at me, and you guys blow all the windows out of that trailer you’re all in. If you can’t figure that out, at least know if you resist, we’ll kill all of you,” John snarled down at the men, who remained inside the trailer.
A scraping sound at the trailer’s door caused both John and Jared to tighten the grip on their rifles. A man’s backside appeared first as a uniformed soldier backed down the three steps leading to the ground. He carried the feet of a lifeless uniformed soldier. A third man appeared in the tiny doorway, struggling with his arms tucked under the downed soldier’s armpits. Pink foam bubbled from the wounded man’s mouth as the two soldiers laid him on the ground outside the trailer. Two additional soldiers carried a second wounded soldier from the trailer, laying him next to the first WIA brought outside.
“One more, fellas,” John barked.
One of the soldiers standing unarmed near his two fallen comrades shook his head. “Dennis is dead, man,” the soldier responded.
“You last two out go back in and bring him out. Make it quick,” John ordered.
The last two soldiers out of the trailer turned, scrambling back inside the death trailer. A few seconds later they dragged the last soldier outside. Dennis had been struck in the head and was very dead, as was evidenced by the gruel dripping from a ferocious wound starting at his left brow and extending beyond his left temple.
“Everyone, toss all your gear in a pile, then facedown in the dirt,” John commanded.
The four uninjured men squirmed out of their personal gear and dropped it to the ground in unison as John rose from behind a large rock outcropping on the hillside not far from the hillside OP. “Cover them, Jared, I’m going to check the boys on the hill here.”
Jared didn’t bother responding as John made his way, weapon up, toward the OP. A minute later, John came crashing down the side of the hill, sliding on his butt the last ten feet before landing on the flattened area. Once John was up, Jared got to his feet and moved forward as John also approached the four soldiers. Jared reached the quartet and stopped at their heads as John moved in from one side. Jared and John had previously talked about how to cover and search people, and thankfully, Jared remembered the conversation.
Jared held his rifle on the men while John moved in and began searching them one at a time. Other than a couple of knives, the men carried no weapons. With the search completed, John turned his attention to the two wounded men on the ground. The first to exit the trailer with the pink foam bubbling from his mouth was now quite still, and although he maintained an unhealthy plume of the pink foam extending from his mouth, the man wasn’t breathing. John moved to the man’s side and felt for a pulse, but found none. Releasing the man’s arm, John moved on to the second wounded soldier.
The man was still breathing, but his eyes were vacant. John tore at the man’s clothing until he located a small perforation in the man’s skin high on the right side of his chest. The wound was not bleeding outwardly, so John packed the hole with gauze in an attempt to curb some of the internal bleeding he was sure was happening. With no medical facility, John was making an effort to make the soldier’s final moments on earth as comfortable as possible, not save his life, and although it could be perceived as a waste of valuable medical supplies, John didn’t care. He only hoped when his time arrived and he was knocking on the doors of Valhalla and before Odin admitted him, someone would do the same for John.
John used the soldier’s own blowout kit to apply a chest seal over the wound and wished he had some real no-shit drugs he could fill the man’s bloodstream with to ease some of his discomfort. After applying the chest seal, John held his rifle up and entered the trailer. The inside smelled of sweat, mold, burned gunpowder, and death. There was blood covering most of the floor, and a fair amount adorned one of the walls. John stripped one of the beds, bringing the blanket and pillow out to the still living soldier with the chest wound. John lifted the man’s head and placed the pillow underneath; then he covered the man with the dirty blanket and stepped back.
“Who is closest with this guy?” John asked the group lying facedown in the dirt nearby.
Dane, a young-faced soldier lying at John’s feet, raised a hand slightly. “Tim and I are best friends.”
John moved close to Dane, squatting down next to the man. “You go over there and tell your friend he’s going to be just fine. You keep telling him that until he passes on, you hear me?” John said in a low voice only the two could discern.
Dane’s eyes went wide at the mention of Tim’s impending death, but a fatherly shake of John’s head stopped him from protesting. Dane climbed to his feet and moved to Tim’s side, where he sat whispering to his dying friend. Dane took Tim’s hand in his and talked about dreams the two had discussed in the past. At one point, Dane pulled the blanket up tighter under Tim’s chin, tucking the edges in under his friend’s sides in an attempt to keep his dying friend as warm as possible. Tim took fifteen minutes to die, but when he did, Dane collapsed on top of his friend’s chest and wept openly for several minutes while Jared and John held the other three soldiers at gunpoint.
When Dane was able to compose himself, he stood and faced John, his hands held out palms up as he gave a pathetic shrug of his shoulders. John pointed at the ground next to the other three soldiers, and Dane sank back down.
“Cover these guys, Jared,” John said as he headed back into the trailer. Inside, John found seven M4 rifles, one of which had been struck with a round from either Jared’s or John’s own rifle, badly damaging the upper receiver. John tossed the damaged rifle on a padded bench seat and began work on removing all the bolt carrier groups from the remaining six rifles. John ejected all the magazines and dropped them in his pack. When the magazines were secure, John pushed the rear retaining pins out of position, rocked the upper receivers forward, and pulled each bolt carrier group out one by one.
John dropped all six bolt carrier groups in his pack, where they clanged against the metal GI magazines; then he moved all six inert rifles out to the hood of the Humvee. John returned for the damaged rifle, which he took to a stump where he leaned the rifle against the sturdy trunk and smashed it with his foot. The rifle snapped in two pieces, rendering it useless. John took the two pieces and threw them off the side of the flattened hillside, far down into the ravine below.
