The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 6
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
Jared listened, but didn’t feel inclined to bemoan something hindsight seemed to make clear as day, but could never have been predicted at the time it all happened. Instead, Jared got to his feet and started up the hill. Thirty minutes later, the men found a narrow seasonal creek and began following it upstream. The farther they went, the narrower the creek grew, which was exactly what the two men were looking for. The banks on both sides were steep, reaching up ten feet or more in some places.
John knew if they were set upon while down in the creek, he and Jared would be in for a hell of a fight, but with so few people roaming the hills, he wasn’t all that concerned with being discovered. At a point where the little creek bent to the right, John stopped. The floor of the creek was sandy and stood nearly six feet in width. Jared pulled out the sleeping bag, holding it up to John. John gave a small shake of his head and lay on the soft sand, pulling his jacket up around his throat. The single tactical thing John suggested was they sleep head to foot so in the case they were discovered, at least one of them would be pointed in the right direction depending on which direction they were contacted from.
Jared was far too tired to even eat at this point, wrapping his sling around his arm so no one could easily grab the weapon from him. He burrowed down into the sleeping bag, and although it wasn’t night and the sun was still up, Jared began to drift toward the weightless feeling of early non-REM sleep, his body beginning the transition from wakefulness to sleep. His heart rate slowed as his muscles relaxed. Other than an occasional twitch from a muscle not yet conforming with a deeper sleep, Jared floated in a kind of blissful state of contentment.
Before he fully lost consciousness, Jared tried to enjoy the absolute feeling of nothingness in his body. It was one of the few times nowadays he could achieve a feeling he’d enjoyed prior to the solar flare. There weren’t many things he could replicate from his past, but this was one. As Jared drifted closer to the edge of oblivion, he realized his feeling of complete and utter depletion, coupled with the rest he was giving himself, resulted in a feeling like he’d never experienced before.
Jared had never pushed himself in the manner he was forced to in the present-day conditions. In his life of old, sure, he’d worked long arduous hours in order to bring a project in on time and under budget, but the work hadn’t been physically difficult nor had his actions been accompanied by copious amounts of adrenaline. Today, Jared had drained himself, quite unlike he’d ever done in the past. Additionally, his prior life’s work never gave him ethical or moral pause.
The following day, John was up before the sun, but left Jared to sleep as he rubbed his cold hands together in an effort to warm them. Careful to be quiet, John hefted his rifle, feeling the cold metal in his still warm hands, and headed down the creek to scout the area. He wasn’t comfortable waking and not getting a handle on their surroundings, which could have changed during their slumber. John stepped carefully through the rocky creek bottom until the banks were low enough to offer a look around.
John dropped to his belly and slithered up the embankment, and once he was out of the creek bed, he crawled uphill for fifty yards, stopping next to a large oak tree. Here, he pulled out his NVG and flicked them on. He didn’t bother strapping the visual night aids to his head; instead he held them as he scanned the surrounding countryside. The first living creature he came across was a small doe forty yards out, staring directly at him, not moving a muscle. Other than the doe, John didn’t see any other sign of life.
John shut the NVG off, but kept them close, choosing to save the batteries while relying on his ears for a spell. A faint rustle in the direction of the doe told him she was moving off, away from him. John sat in absolute silence for over an hour, waiting for the sun to arrive and both light his way and heat his cold bones.
The genesis of the day came in the form of piercing blades of light knifing their way across what appeared to be a crystal-clear spring morning. John packed the NVG, no longer seeing a need for them with morning setting upon him so quickly. He watched the sun show its imaginary cap in the far eastern distance and didn’t stop watching until the glowing orange orb completely cleared the flat valley floor.
With night swiftly turning to day, John withdrew his binoculars and took a few minutes to ensure he was the only meat eater in the vicinity. Satisfied, John climbed to his feet and made a stealthy return to the creek bed. He wasn’t overly worried about Jared waking and coming unglued, since John had left his pack behind, which wouldn’t have been the case were foul play afoot. John also knew Jared was smart enough to know taking John out wasn’t something that could be done quietly.
When John rounded the bend in the creek where he’d slept, Jared crouched, rifle in hand, waiting patiently.
“Morning, sunshine,” John greeted him with a grin. “Get all your beauty sleep squared away?”
“Wanna know what I miss,” Jared responded, nonresponsive to John’s jab. “Coffee, a cup of hot coffee. More than anything else, coffee.”
John waved a hand for Jared to stop. “Enough with the coffee. Jeez, man, now it’s going to be on my mind all morning.”
Jared got slowly to his feet, looking back the way John had come. “Anything out there?”
John propped his rifle next to his pack and shook his head. “Saw a doe, nothing else,” John said, opening his pack and pulling out a small stove. Next, he withdrew a Ziplock baggie with four packets of apple cinnamon oatmeal. He pulled two out and tossed one to Jared. In John’s previous life, he would have eaten all four packets, a couple of slices of toast, and had that steaming hot cup of coffee Jared had maliciously reminded him of. Now, it would be one packet of oatmeal and a swig of cold water.
Both Jared and John had been nearly bingo on water before all the killing the day before. Luckily, the men they’d dispatched had all been carrying two canteens apiece. Jared and John had consolidated the men’s water in their own water bottles, and what was left over they further consolidated in two of the canteens. They’d used an entire canteen to wash the blood from their hands after moving the men from the OP as well as the men they’d left scattered in and around the old Ford pickup truck.
Jared tossed his water bottle to John, who used it to fill a small pan he set atop the little stove. In less than ten minutes, both men were finished eating, packed, and ready for the rest of their long walk home. Wordlessly, they trudged down the creek to a spot they could negotiate the embankment, climbing out and up onto the grassy surface of the hills. John took point, leading them southwest across the terrain. Had things been different, John knew they could have made more than twenty miles a day, but that would have entailed them dropping down to the valley floor and using roads, and that wasn’t happening.
With just the two of them and after what they’d done to Carnegie’s men, this wasn’t an option in either John’s or Jared’s mind. John guided them as best he could, staying low and therefore out of any sort of line of sight from anyone down in the valley. If they weren’t blocked by a hill, John would move around to the back side of another slope, which added a tremendous amount of time and effort to their trip back to the Thacker ranch.
When they neared the area Carnegie’s men had previously used to watch the Thackers’ ranch, John cursed under his breath. No less than fifty vultures soared overhead, circling the ravine the two dead soldiers from the OP had been deposited in.
“That could be a problem,” John stated flatly.
“You don’t think the animals will have those guys cleaned out by the time someone comes looking for them?” Jared countered, screwing up his eyes to peer skyward at the aerial flotilla overhead.
“No, I don’t,” John answered seriously. “I think when that group from the truck doesn’t get back, they’ll send out a reactionary force, and Josh will be with them. When they find all the guys in the truck, they’re gonna want a word with the two dudes down there.” John jutted his chin in the direction of the ravine. “When those poor bastards can’t be found, well—Josh is a smart guy, he’ll put two and two together pretty quick.”
“Well, then we need to get back and figure out what we’re going to do about all this,” Jared quipped.
John shrugged. “Agreed, but what are we going to do about it, and what is it? I mean, we don’t know what Carnegie was planning in the first place, and now that we did what we did, albeit the guy at the truck kinda forced our hand, things are probably going to escalate.”
“We have to leave, get away from here, take the Thackers’ cattle, and relocate,” Jared said with such boyish naivety, John couldn’t be upset with him.
“First off, old man Thacker ain’t going anywhere; he’s made that pretty clear. Secondly, I feel partially responsible for bringing all this to his doorstep. Carnegie can’t just roll in here and burn the place down. I just don’t think he has the logistical support to move that many troops along with all their equipment in a single motion. My bet is they will re-establish an OP and begin moving troops and gear into the area, carve out a base camp close enough to the ranch that they could move people into attack positions in a couple of hours.”
Jared listened, his jaw falling slack at the thought of Carnegie being so obsessed with the pettiness of revenge, that he’d go to all this trouble in a time when expending energy and resources essential to one’s survival could have deadly consequences. Jared’s mind was unable to understand the reasoning, even from an outsider’s perspective.
He understood those who preyed on the weak for their own survival, but this was ridiculous. Then Jared had a thought, the colonel would amass what amounted to nearly all his resources, and if Jared and John could foil Carnegie’s efforts to destroy the Thacker ranch, steal all their cattle, and murder him and John, that would leave Carnegie destitute.
It might very well go a long way in stripping him of any loyalties soldiers under his command held for their leader. A leader, no matter the profession, who led a team into disaster wasn’t usually the leader the next time around. Jared had seen it in tech and doubted it was any different in a military setting.
Jared was tired of playing the short game, reacting to everyone else’s actions. It was time to start playing the long game, plan and execute operations, missions that would benefit Jared and his people in the long run. To date they’d mostly taken action that had only stopped an immediate threat and done little else. Now Jared knew he had to join forces with John and the rest of his small community to devise a plan of action that would either permanently remove Carnegie and the Josh guy, or so severely cripple Carnegie’s little army, they could no longer pose a threat to anyone in the region.
On the trip down the hill to the ranch, Jared laid out his thoughts on a longer-term solution to deal with the troublesome Carnegie. John listened, while his tactical mind whirred away like a high-end computer processor. John had long ago realized the addition of Jared to his own abilities could be deadly positive for their group.
Chapter 6
Josh stood on the shooting range he’d ordered built just outside the fence of the base. It was designed as most other square ranges were—square with a flat surface with an impact area at one end where his targets could be set up. Josh requisitioned the help from the fellas over at what basically boiled down to be the base motor pool. The men possessed a working welding machine and used it to build a dozen steel silhouette targets for Josh’s range. The targets were stupidly heavy, so Josh left them outside the wire, figuring it not worth the trouble of hauling them inside every night.
People would definitely steal food or a working vehicle, but Josh doubted anyone out at night would make any attempt to remove the steel targets. So far, he’d been right on the mark about the safety of his range equipment. He’d also issued a standing order to all those standing watches that if anyone were seen trying to remove anything from his range, they were to be shot on sight.
To date no one bothered Josh’s range. This was partly due to the fear he and his men and women sowed throughout the region. No one came snooping around the base for fear of being forced into labor or outright killed for trespassing. Carnegie continued running taxation operations in order to feed his troops, and those who stood up to his collectors found themselves with nothing.
Soon, those people left in the area with a working farm or sustainable livestock found ways to appease Carnegie while maintaining enough for themselves to survive. This meant they usually hid their true value when the soldiers came knocking. Josh and Carnegie knew about this, and for the most part as long as Carnegie could feed his troops, he turned a blind eye. It was a small cost for doing continued business in the area. Once Carnegie gained the power he needed, all that bullshit would cease as the colonel dropped the hammer on the region, bringing to heel any resistance, no matter the form it manifested itself in.
It was late afternoon, and the men were cleaning weapons as Josh stood by, waiting for them to finish. Once the weapons were clean, he planned on thrashing the ever-loving shit out of the men for some sloppy work on the range earlier that day. As he waited, a soldier exited the small gate used to access the range from the base, and headed straight for Josh. What the hell does Carnegie want now? Josh wondered.
“Sir,” the soldier started breathlessly, but Josh held up a hand.
“I’ve told you before not to call me sir. I’m not an officer. Do it again and I’ll throat punch you,” Josh finished with raised eyebrows, trying to ensure the soldier wouldn’t be caught off guard if he were to violate this pet peeve of Josh’s again.
For a moment, the soldier’s mouth moved, but no words were emitted. A slight cock of Josh’s head triggered some survival mechanism in the man, and he began to speak.
“The relief group for OP Dark Horse hasn’t checked in, aren’t back, and I guess are missing,” he finished.
“Missing since yesterday?” Josh asked in disbelief. If these men were missing for even a few hours, someone should have informed him. “Does the colonel know?”
The soldier’s posture changed to one of fearful regret. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Good, don’t tell him,” Josh ordered before turning to the men cleaning weapons. “Get your shit clean and secure right fucking now. Briefing in thirty minutes, inside the barracks.”
Josh spun on his heel and marched toward the small gate. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder to the soldier who’d brought him the troubling news.
Back at the barracks, Josh found out the relief crew had checked in when they arrived in the area of the OP; then shortly after that, they’d advised they’d made radio contact with the OP team and were walking the relief team in. There had been a brief exchange between the base radio shop and the off-going team at the OP a few minutes later, and then both teams had gone silent. This wasn’t all that uncommon, since batteries died and equipment was failing more and more these days, but when the men in the Ford truck had failed to return that evening, the guys in the radio shop passed the information on to the night shift and went to bed.
For reasons unknown, the night shift either hadn’t understood the timeline or had just forgotten to pass it on. When the dayshift returned and asked about the relief team, they were told no one really knew where the guys were. By late afternoon, someone had decided to tell Josh, and now, here they all were. Josh was doing an admirable job of controlling his temper based on the fact these men knew the fellas outside the wire never came back, yet no one had bothered doing a damn thing about it until today.
Josh rarely took soldiers outside the security of the base on night operations for two reasons. First of all, it was more dangerous, and second, they were able to do everything they needed in the light of day. There simply wasn’t a need to sneak about in the darkness of night, so they didn’t do it. With night quickly approaching, Josh felt a surge of excitement at the thought of hitting the road under the cover of darkness.
Once the soldiers were in from the range, Josh chose four men he deemed to be the best soldiers at his disposal. All five men knew the way to the OP overlooking the Thacker ranch and had made the trip at least a few times each over the past couple of months. Josh’s plan was simple, they would slowly roll out to the OP, keeping a lookout for the Ford truck in the event the men had run into trouble and had been overrun. After he finished conveying the framework of his plan, Josh drew a deep breath, knowing he now had to go and see Carnegie. There was just no way he could take the only Humvee they had and drive out the front gate without the colonel knowing.
“Be ready to roll in ten minutes, ammo, food, and water. Get something into the turret, and I will meet you at the hangar,” Josh said before leaving the barracks and walking briskly across the tarmac toward the colonel’s office. Josh passed through the inner offices, heading toward Carnegie’s in the rear without making eye contact with any of the soldiers who scrambled to get out of his way.
As usual, the colonel’s door was closed, so Josh knocked before pushing the door lightly ajar and peeking in. Carnegie sat at his desk, hands laid flat on his desktop, as if he’d been waiting for Josh.
“Got a second?” Josh asked, trying to sound professional and sure of himself.
Carnegie dipped his chin almost imperceptibly, letting Josh know two things. The colonel was allowing him into the office, and the old man already knew about the missing soldiers.
“We may have a problem. Some of the boys were supposed to be back from Dark Horse and”—Josh heaved his shoulders—“They ain’t back.”
“Twenty-four hours late? Yeah, I’d guess there’s a problem. Why didn’t anyone mention this last night?” Carnegie asked, his voice level and void of emotion.
Josh knew exactly what was going through the colonel’s mind right now, and it wasn’t the welfare of the missing men. Carnegie was missing a vehicle, and that was his only concern, in Josh’s opinion.
