Dead weight was difficult to deal with and a man could easily exhaust himself trying to pull an unconscious man up into a fireman’s carry. Everyone thought they could do it until they tried. Most gave up when they realized it wasn’t as easy as they made it look in the movies, but Brandon had a trick for that.
He propped his weapon against a tree and laid himself perpendicular across the cook’s body, resting his back on the cook’s chest. He hooked his left arm under the cook’s knee and grabbed a handful of his pants. Brandon rolled hard to his right side, pulling the leg with him, and using his momentum to roll efficiently onto his knees with the limp body across his shoulders. The technique was called a ranger roll and designed exactly for this scenario.
It still took significant effort and Brandon used all his power to force himself to his feet. The cook was comparatively light as grown men went—it was nothing like lifting another soldier across his back—but heaving a human body across your shoulders and moving with it was never an easy task. Brandon trained obsessively, often with sandbags. He’d sling them around, drag them, or carry them for long distances. Although he couldn’t explain to people why he did it, this was precisely why. It was for moments just like this, when an injured buddy or a high value target had to be carried to a location they weren’t able, or willing, to go.
Brandon grabbed his weapon, then did a quick check to make sure he had all his gear with him. He was certain these folks would eventually figure out what happened but he didn’t want to make it easy for them. Maybe they’d assume the cook wandered off to answer the call of nature, or perhaps took a walk and got lost.
He aimed for the woods and began marching in that direction. He climbed steadily away from the encampment, taking long steps and feeling the burn in his quads almost immediately. When he hit the woods he reached into his radio pouch and keyed the mic. It was the signal. He had his cargo and was coming home.
He tried to maintain as much stealth as possible but with the man on his shoulders there was no blending in this time. He focused on moving as quickly as possible, with sure and certain steps, while still trying to minimize the noise. He was constantly processing input from his environment. He monitored comms, did a visual scan of his surroundings, listened for unusual sounds, and kept track of what messages his own body was sending him. With each step he reminded himself that climbing a peak wasn’t over just because you reached the summit—you still had to get home.
8
“Jim Beam Actual, this is Jim Beam Romeo. I have a visual on Jim Beam Delta. He’s returning under load. Over.”
Brandon heard the message in his earpiece and knew Arthur’s perimeter security had spotted him.
“Jim Beam Delta, this is Jim Beam Actual. Be advised we’ll meet you at the border unless you request an alternative pickup point. Over.”
Brandon freed up a hand to click his mic in response. It was a pre-arranged signal. He lowered his head and chugged away, focusing on his steps. Focusing on not falling and injuring himself. Focusing on not getting killed.
A hundred yards shy of Arthur’s boundary, a side-by-side ATV with two rows of seats intercepted him. The armed crew relieved him of his burden, sandwiching the sluggish prisoner between them in the back seat while the front passenger provided overwatch. Brandon, legs spent but feeling considerably lighter without the body on his shoulders, rolled into the cargo bed and held on for dear life. The ATV spun around, spraying dirt in all directions, then shot toward the safety of the compound.
Back inside Arthur’s borders, the ATV hit a trail and accelerated madly, the engine racing. Branches whipped off the roll cage, sending leaves spiraling in their wake. The trail soon joined one of the compound’s interior roads, wider and smoother than the trail. The driver punched the throttle. The machine slewed sideways before the wheels caught traction and it accelerated forward. In less than a minute, they were at the command pod, skidding to a stop in front of the communications shack. Arthur was waiting for them, along with Sonyea, Kevin, and a glum-looking Robert.
"The hay barn," Arthur ordered, pointing a finger in that general direction. It was all he had to say. He didn’t want this prisoner out in the open for too long, not banking against the devious Congressman Honaker having access to drones or satellite surveillance.
The driver did as he was told, accelerating toward a different gravel road and travelling deeper into the interior of the property. He was gone from sight in seconds.
Arthur called back inside the radio shack, "Carlos, transmit the code for radio silence. I don’t want anyone using a radio unless it’s an emergency. Got it?”
“Roger that,” Carlos called back.
“Bailey!” Arthur yelled, calling to a stocky man in the distance wearing camo and carrying an AR-10 with a long-range scope.
“Yes sir?” Bailey asked, jogging toward Arthur.
“Put some guys on the electronic security measures. Plug any gaps. I want this place wrapped tight.”
The compound was nearly surrounded by a boundary of tripwires and electronic notification devices. It was low-tech for the most part, with many of the electronic measures being of the simple home improvement store variety. There were intentional gaps in the perimeter security so men could come and go without being concerned about tripping over them. This didn't seem like the time to err on the side of convenience, though. Any gap that would allow a friendly to access the camp might also allow an enemy to stroll into the camp undetected.
His assignment clear, Bailey jogged off. Arthur walked briskly to his own ATV. He waved at Kevin. "Come on. Let’s interview a cook.”
"Arthur!" Robert called.
“What is it? I’m kind of in a hurry here.”
Robert looked sheepish. "Any chance of me coming along?"
Arthur cut his eyes to Kevin but the other man gave no reaction that Robert could see. Settling his eyes back on Robert, Arthur pulled his hat off and scratched his head. "I just don't see the point. This isn't your fight and you’ve made it clear that your priority is getting out of here."
His message delivered, Arthur didn't wait for a response. He hopped into his own side-by-side and cranked the engine, not even waiting for a reaction.
"Wait!" Robert shouted, stepping in front of the vehicle.
Arthur sighed and turned the engine off. He looked pissed. “Make it fast.”
Robert cast a quick glance at Sonyea, who appeared uncertain as to where this was going. They’d barely spoken since she’d expressed her opinion to him while he was splitting firewood.
“I had some time to think about your problem while I was splitting wood. Sonyea and I talked about it. Until this is resolved one way or another, this is our fight as well. Our families are safe for now and we’re not walking out on you. This is where we’re needed. I’m sorry it took me a while to realize that and I’m sorry about…being a dick."
Kevin cast a quick glance at Sonyea, raising a questioning eyebrow.
"He's right," she confirmed. "We’re here until this is done. It’s not up for debate."
Arthur merely nodded and waved Robert toward the back seat of the side-by-side. Sonyea started to follow but Arthur held up a hand. "No, ma’am. This is one place where I draw the line, Sonyea. If the cook doesn't speak freely, this may get ugly. The threats I’m going to make will not be pretty. It may even get physical. I don't want you to have to see that. Some things won’t leave your head once you let them inside."
Sonyea nodded with understanding, a little embarrassed that she’d not grasped the full implication of what was about to take place. This was not to be a friendly conversation. This was an interrogation. If the answers weren’t forthcoming, there would be the threat of torture and perhaps even the application of torture. She was tough as nails but the sight of a man being tortured was not something she wanted to see. Bad memories were never as easily forgotten as the good.
Arthur started his machine again and punched the gas. The light vehicle spun the tires and barre
led toward its destination. Robert caught Sonyea’s eyes as they parted ways. There was a lot in that brief glance. There was appreciation for her setting him straight while he was splitting wood. There was apology that he’d put her in a position of having to say those things to him in the first place. There was also a flicker of concern at the things he might soon have to watch. It was one thing to write gore, violence, and human ugliness. It was another thing entirely to experience it firsthand.
9
Arthur’s compound made the majority of its income from survival training and the firearms school. They had contracts with state police and local law enforcement agencies for firearms training, and contracts with the military and some alphabet agencies who required a low-key place to train or needed something specialized that the military schools didn’t normally offer. It was not operated as a farm commercially but they did maintain some livestock as part of their long-term, sustainable preparedness strategy.
There were some sheep, goats, a few head of cattle, a contrary bull, and a dozen free-range hogs that rooted around in the woods. There were chickens and ducks in coops and running loose. There were several hayfields carved from the forest and Arthur allowed a trusted local farmer to cut the hay several times a summer, with Arthur and the farmer each getting half of the yield. For hay storage, Arthur built a cavernous pole barn with mammoth rolling doors that allowed a tractor to stack bales inside. A couple of solar panels on the roof powered a simple twelve-volt lighting system.
Arthur skidded his ATV to a stop in front of the hay barn, practically launching himself from the seat and barreling into the barn. He was laser-focused on the task at hand. Kevin and Robert were on his heels, trying to keep up with him. Inside, the cook from the opposing force was sitting upright on the dirt floor. His hands and ankles were bound and a burlap feed sack had been pulled over his head.
Brandon and the other men who’d played a role in recovering the prisoner stood around him in a circle, their weapons at low ready, watching him impassively. They were all men who’d been in this very situation before in numerous regions of the world. At different times, in different lives, the man on the ground before them had been Taliban, Al Qaeda, a suspicious local villager, an insurgent, a cartel member, an Iraqi Republican Guard, a Somali pirate, or a host of others. Regardless of who the high value target was, they all knew how this went. They all knew their role.
Arthur went to Brandon first, patting him on the back and offering a smile at a job well-done. No words were exchanged. Brandon gave a silent nod of acknowledgement, meeting Arthur’s eyes before returning them to the prisoner. Arthur then strode to the prisoner, dropped to a knee, and yanked the sack off the cook’s head.
“Welcome to my side of the fence, shitbird.”
The cook was wide-eyed, panicked. He struggled, but with his hands and feet bound, only succeeded in falling over to his side, unable to sit back up.
Arthur smiled. “The Taser just scrambled your wiring a little bit. Your coordination will come back. You’ll be fine.”
The cook rolled to his back and awkwardly struggled to a sitting position again, glaring at Arthur. He tried to speak but the tape over his mouth limited him to muffled swearing.
Arthur reached forward and pinched a flap of the tape that had worked its way loose. The cook stared at him, fear in his eyes.
Arthur smiled. “This is probably going to sting a little.”
The man gave a muffled scream when Arthur yanked like he was starting a particularly cantankerous chainsaw. The tape came loose but didn’t break, whipping the man forward. As the tape unwound itself from the cook’s head, it brought a generous amount of hair along with it. When his mouth was no longer covered, his voice no longer muffled, the cook had a lot to say.
“You old bastard!” he screamed, his face burning crimson. He writhed on the floor, wanting to rub his aching scalp, his stinging flesh, but he couldn’t get a hand loose to do so. He worked himself to a sitting position, yelling and complaining until he was done. When he got no response from Arthur, he settled down and glared murderously at the older man.
“You done?” Arthur asked with a grin.
“You are so screwed right now!” the cook bellowed. “You’re a dead man. You are so dead!”
Arthur’s smiled faded. “What’s your name, son?”
“Screw! You!” the cook spat.
Arthur lashed out and slapped the cook across the face. The blow knocked him over on his side again. The gesture wasn’t intended to injure the cook but to establish that violence wasn’t off the table. Better to get that out of the way now so there would be no doubts and no misunderstandings later. The rules in any negotiation should always be established at the beginning. Less time was wasted when everyone knew the rules.
Arthur stood, grabbed the cook by his t-shirt, and hauled him back to a sitting position, making sure he was able to hold himself up before he released him. “What makes you so certain that we’re screwed?”
The cook hesitated, giving Arthur a wary glare. His eyes watered and his face stung from the tooth-rattling blow to his cheek. "Because my dad is Congressman Honaker. You understand that? A United States Congressman. He’s part of the government. He was trying to be nice to you guys and give you a chance to leave quietly, but you were too stupid. Now you’ve left him no choice. He’ll probably have to kill all of you and it will be your own fault."
The way the cook offered up his dad’s name and title indicated that he thought this information might carry some weight with the men surrounding him. He seemed to think it would instill fear or maybe regret at the path they’d taken. If he expected them to back out of the room like a primitive tribe mistaking technology for magic, he was mistaken.
Arthur grinned and looked around the room. "Did you hear that, boys? That’s the government outside. We’re supposed to be scared." He chuckled and his congregants followed his lead.
The cook looked from man to man, infuriated that they weren’t taking him seriously. Then it occurred to him that, if this was their reaction, maybe he was the one who needed to worry. He thought they would be alarmed at the revelation he was the son of a sitting United States congressman, the very man leading the attack on the compound. His father had led him and many of the other men to believe taking the compound would be a cakewalk. Any resistance they met would be purely a token gesture and would be dealt with quickly. These men gathered around him appeared serious and dangerous. Worst of all, they apparently didn’t give a crap who his dad was.
"You won't be laughing when my dad's done with you," the cook spat defiantly, trying to regain some of his bravado.
Arthur squatted down. He spoke more intimately to the young man but loud enough for the rest of the room to hear. "What’s your name, son?"
The cook stubbed up and twisted his head away like a defiant child refusing to eat broccoli.
Arthur sighed for dramatic effect. "You can tell me the easy way or you can tell me the hard way, but I guaran-damn-tee you'll tell me. In fact, you'll tell me everything I want to know before the day is over. The only question here is whether you'll survive the telling."
The cook flicked his eyes in Arthur's direction, his escalating fear apparent. He was obviously weighing those words, trying to gauge just how much trouble he was in.
“Let me tell you a little story. I grew up on a farm in the country not too far away from here,” Arthur said. “We had a lot of livestock. When hogs were born, my daddy and I would track down all the males. He taught me to push them over and hold them down with my knee. I’d grab the scrotum, just above the balls, and squeeze like I was trying to wring out a wet rag. That forced their balls down tight into the sack, you see. Then, just like my dad showed me, I’d take my pocket knife and make a quick little cut in their scrotum. From there it was just a matter of squeezing their balls out that little slit and snipping the cord that attached them to the hog. That was it. No medicine, no stitches. The cut healed on its own. We did dozens of them i
n a day sometimes. There would be little balls everywhere—dogs eating and carrying them around, cats batting them like toys, kids throwing them at each other.”
Arthur paused and forced a look of compassion onto his face. “You’re okay, aren’t you? You’re looking a little green. This story isn’t making you uncomfortable, is it?”
The cook shook his head hesitantly. “No,” he croaked.
“Good. The point is that I’m a little rusty after all these years but I still remember the basics—grab, squeeze, cut. Some things never leave a man. Now I’m going to ask your name again. I'll ask nicely but this will be the last time I ask nicely. Do you understand where we’re headed here? Do you understand there’s a point from which we can’t back this thing up?”
The cook nodded.
“Now what is your name?"
The cook swallowed hard, deciding that a name was a simple thing, in the end. He could give that up much easier than he could a testicle. It was not information worth getting cut over. "Jeff. My name is Jeff."
Arthur reached forward to pat the young man on the shoulder with a folksy gesture of appreciation of their progress. "See, that wasn't too bad was it?"
"What do you want with me?" The young man looked Arthur in the eyes. The icy look he got back from Arthur demonstrated that his concern for his safety was completely valid. The man interrogating him was deadly serious. He was not lying when he said he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
"I need information.”
Jeff tried to give a laugh of exasperation but managed only a pathetic seal-like bark, fear constricting his throat and choking it off. "Why would I just hand you any information?"
Compound Fracture Page 5
