“Go get the boat, Ronnie, and bring it up here!” Keith yelled, before he waded into the bayou himself. Diane was already out of sight when he reached the other side, and by the time he caught up she was bent over her fallen husband, her hand clamped over his own bloody hand that was pressed tight against his abdomen as he lay in the grass on his back. Willis was there beside him too, and Keith noticed a belt cinched tight around Joe’s upper thigh. Below it, his pants leg was soaked in blood.
“He’s hit twice, Deputy Branson,” Willis said. “Looks like the first one was in the leg, because he put that belt on it himself and made a tourniquet out of it. The second one got him just below the ribs.”
Keith ripped the blowout kit from the rear of his duty belt and dumped out the contents. He had a RAT tourniquet that would replace the belt, but the first priority was to get a QuikClot bandage on that torso wound. Seeing Joe hit like that brought back an instant replay of the night his partner, Greg, took a similar bullet, but that time they’d had access to the still-functioning hospital in Lafayette, an option that was off the table now that their enemies were already in the state.
Diane was holding it together better than could be expected. She was talking to Joe, and he was responding, if feebly. Joe had taken his initial target down, but the other contractors hanging back by the trucks had spotted him quickly, and the smallish tree from behind which he was shooting proved to be inadequate cover. Keith knew if they hadn’t arrived when they did, the two guys that were closing in on him would have finished Joe off then and there. As it was, Keith figured his survival chances were fifty-fifty. The bleeding they could see he could stop with the clotting bandages and the tourniquet, but he didn’t know what kind of internal bleeding was happening, or what tissue or organ damage the high-velocity rifle round had caused.
“Listen to me, Diane,” Keith said. “We’ve got a pretty good medical inventory aboard the Miss Anita. Greg and I took what we had at the sheriff’s office, and later we got more stuff from the hospital in Lafayette after Greg was wounded almost the same way as Joe. Greg recovered, and Joe can too, but we need to get him back to the Miss Anita now! It’ll be dark soon, but if we get him in my boat now, we can be there in under an hour.”
Ronnie and Becca had pulled up to the bank as close to where Joe fell as possible. Keith and Willis carried the wounded man to the boat, and with Ronnie’s help, they got him aboard and situated on the sole in front of the console. Diane was by his side the whole time, keeping him talking and watching his wounds for renewed bleeding. Becca insisted on riding in the boat with them, to be there for her friend, and Ronnie didn’t object. As Keith shoved off to make the run up to the lake where the Miss Anita was anchored, he asked Ronnie and Willis to do one more thing for him.
“You’ll have to use one of their other trucks to get home, but then you can take it somewhere else and ditch it after you get to your own truck. But before you leave, see if you can yank that two-way radio out of the first truck that we brought here. The screwdrivers you need should be in here:” Keith tossed Willis the tool kit he kept on the patrol boat for servicing the outboards. “It’s really important that we get that radio, because like I said, my father may be able to decipher the frequencies, and that’s the main reason we did all this. But after you get it, put that truck in gear and run it down the boat ramp into the river. Maybe when they come and find all this, they won’t bother trying to salvage it, and they won’t know we have one of their radios.”
Fourteen
“I’M GOING TO REMOVE my hand, but if you try to yell, I’ll slam your face into the ground! Do you understand?” Eric was whispering in the frightened hunter’s ear as he leaned over the man from where he had him pinned to the ground in the prone position. “I’m not your enemy. I just want to talk.”
The man murmured an affirmative answer and tried to nod. Eric relaxed his grip and removed the hand clamped over his mouth, and though the man tried to roll over to see who it was that had taken him down, he took Eric’s threat serious enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Are you from around here?” Eric asked.
The man nodded.
“Look, I’m sorry if I scared you and I’m sorry I had to take control of you like that, but I know you’re with the group that’s camped just to the south over there, and I need to find out what you can tell me.”
“Who are you?” The man asked, when Eric moved off of him and allowed him to roll over to a sitting position.
“I’m an American citizen, just like you,” Eric said, “and I’m a survivor of what has happened here, just like you. My brother is a sheriff’s deputy downriver in St. Martin Parish, and the rest of my family is there as well.”
“Then why did you sneak up on me like that—like you were trying to kill me or something?”
“You’d be dead if I was trying to kill you,” Eric said. “I told you, I wanted to talk. I watched your camp last night. I saw the pig you guys were roasting in the fire. But I didn’t want to scare the hell out of your whole group by walking out of the shadows into your camp. And I didn’t want to get shot.”
“You damned sure woulda got shot, I’ll tell you that. And if I’d a heard you sneaking up before you grabbed me that way, I’d a shot you just now!”
“I know you would have,” Eric said, “and I wouldn’t blame you. But what I’d like to do now is talk to you and the rest of the folks you’re camped here with; and hear your story.”
“Why would we want to tell a stranger like you anything about us, and why do you care anyway?”
“Because like I said, I’m a survivor too. I’m also former military and I’ve been involved in situations very similar to this, but in other countries. My partner and I just went up the river to the Simmesport lock and dam the day before yesterday to seek help from the soldiers that were stationed at the temporary Army post there. But we found the post wiped out, and then we were attacked as well, by whoever took the gunboat that was assigned to guard the place before. They shot up our boat—completely destroyed it—and we’ve been working our way back downriver through the woods on foot. That’s how we came across your camp last night. We saw your fire; and smelled the pig cooking.”
“And then you were sneaking around out there, watching us?”
“Yes, I told you that already. Like I said, if I wanted to hurt you or your friends, I could have done it then, or just now.”
Eric’s matter-of-fact statements seemed to convince him. The man introduced himself as Hal and told Eric that he and his companions had moved out to the woods for safety, because groups of aggressive soldiers had come through the area recently, demanding that people surrender their guns, ammunition and food supplies. He said they shot some folks that refused to comply, and that the word of what they were doing spread quickly. After that, anyone in the area that could do so had collected their weapons and everything else they could carry and evacuated their homes and communities.
“As far as we know out here, which isn’t much, we don’t think the soldiers that did it are still around, but we’re not taking any chances. We’ve been moving our camps ever so often and staying away from the paved roads and off the river, except for at night. We have heard that boat you’re talking about, and some of the guys fishing the river have seen it once or twice; the one with the machine gun on it.”
Eric questioned Hal some more about what he knew of these “soldiers” that had raided people’s houses and if he’d personally seen them. He had not, but he said several of the people in the camp had, and now that they were talking, he agreed to take Eric back there. But first, Eric led the way back to where Jonathan was waiting and retrieved his rifle and other gear. Then, he and Jonathan both slung their weapons behind their backs in the most non-threatening position possible and followed Hal back to the camp.
All eyes were upon them as Hal called out a warning to his friends before leading the two of them into the clearing. Eric could plainly see the distrust written on the faces of
several of the men there, all of whom were now standing and facing them, many with long guns or pistols in hand. Hal made the introduction, apologizing profusely to a stern, older-looking man who Eric soon realized was both Hal’s uncle and more or less the leader of the little band of refugees and hunters. His name was Sam Necaise.
Sam didn’t try to hide his displeasure with his nephew at bringing two armed strangers to their camp as he’d done. While the man was still focused on that, Eric spoke quickly to break the ice, also apologizing for the unannounced visit and for trespassing if he and Jonathan were on land belonging to any of the folks camped out there.
“I knew when I saw your camp last night that you people were just regular citizens like us, and that you weren’t a band of outlaws or a group of mercenaries working for hire with the people responsible for this madness. I could tell that you were locals because of your hunting skills and the way you looked right at home out here in the swamp. My friend, Jonathan, and I could have simply moved on by in the night and you’d have never known we were here, but when I saw the way you were living out here, I knew there must be a reason, and that you would surely know things about what was going on around here that we have no other way of finding out. And I knew too that you would likely be interested in the information I have about a very serious threat that is coming this way from Texas; something that is going to affect all of you and everyone else in the region. Because of all that, I thought it would be worth taking a chance to meet you to see if we could talk, but we can leave now if you’d rather not, and I would totally understand.”
Sam’s mood seemed to soften as he heard Eric out, and when he spoke again, Eric knew he had made a convincing argument for a sit-down pow-wow.
“We can talk,” Sam said, but you boys look like you could use a cup of coffee and some breakfast after being in the woods all day and night.”
Eric started to tell him they weren’t hungry, just to watch Jonathan’s head explode, but instead he just grinned and shook Sam’s hand, accepting his offer. Sam told him that everyone there had known each other for years, if not a lifetime, and that most had been more or less neighbors before they left their homes to take refuge together in the woods. Eric saw that they had indeed made themselves comfortable there, or at least as comfortable as anyone could in a primitive camping situation in that swampy, river bottom forest. Their only mechanized transportation was the small fleet of ATVs Eric had seen the night before, and a couple of John boats that Sam said they kept pulled up out of sight in a thicket near the river, a quarter mile to the east.
“It must have been you two our watchkeeper heard going upriver a couple of evenings ago then,” Sam said, after Eric told him that he and the kid had passed that way to go to Simmesport. “It was nearly midnight, so we knew that boat wasn’t anyone we knew. We’ve been staying off the river in the daytime, and usually run our trotlines a couple hours after dark and then come back in pretty early. We’ve heard that Army boat out there a few times in the last week, but only in the daytime. I think they mostly stay farther upriver. There’s been the occasional small group of Humvees and armored trucks passing by on the highway, but we avoid traveling on it at all and don’t give them any reason to stop and come looking around out here in the woods.”
Eric told Sam what he’d already told Hal, about how they found the post at Simmesport deserted and apparently decimated by an all-out attack. Sam said they knew there were soldiers stationed there, but they’d assumed they were the same as the ones that had raided their homes and communities. It was news to him that there’d been any sort of battle there, as they were a little too far away down here to have heard even the heavy machine gun fire. His reaction to this news came as a revelation to Eric. Sam was convinced that the men that had forced them into hiding were actual military troops, and not some militia or band of private military contractors. And this seemed to jive with what little evidence Eric had found at the post, especially the empty cartridge cases.
“I find it hard to believe that legitimate U.S. troops would conduct the sort of raids and depravations you describe,” Eric said to Sam, “and I feel confident that Sergeant Patterson was completely legit. He conducted his command in an appropriate and professional manner, and I’m quite certain that no unit affiliated with him or Lieutenant Holton would have carried out attacks on American civilians. From what he told me and from what I later learned the hard way upriver, they barely had the manpower to guard the locks, much less control the entire Mississippi. They certainly weren’t in any position to conduct overland patrols into the countryside way out here. And down in St. Martin Parish, where my brother is one of the last deputies standing, they haven’t seen a military vehicle or vessel of any kind since the hurricane came through in the summer.”
“Then who are they, if they aren’t U.S. troops?” Sam asked. “They sure looked like American soldiers to me, and they’re wearing the same gear and using the same kind of equipment as American soldiers. I didn’t see anything to indicate that they’re foreigners.”
“They very well could be Americans,” Eric said. “If they’re not active military, then they could be private contractors.”
“You mean like a militia or something?” Sam asked.
“No. There are lots of militias around, and I’ve come across a few since I’ve been in country, but the militias and these contracting companies are two different things. The contractors are soldiers for hire, most of them former military professionals and most of them very good at what they do, which is essentially fighting for whoever they’re working for.”
“So, they’re in it for the money....”
“Yes,” Eric said, without volunteering that he’d earned his own living doing that very thing for the past several years. “Unlike soldiers, or patriot militia volunteers, these guys aren’t fighting for a cause. Mainly, they fight because they like money, and the job pays a lot of money, especially for the real pros. But a lot of them also do it because they’re combat veterans, and they like the lifestyle, and the camaraderie of their brothers in arms. They like carrying weapons and throwing their weight around because they like the feeling of power it gives them, and some of them get off on doing bad things to the people their employers tell them are bad people. That’s the real difference.”
“So, they’re being paid by the same people that are trying to take over the whole country,” Sam said.
“I suppose, but I don’t really know exactly who that is, do you? The best I can gather is that there isn’t any single entity behind it. I’ve been from south Florida to here, and then halfway up the Mississippi and across the Midwest to the Rockies and down to northern Mexico since I returned stateside. I still don’t know a whole lot more than I did when I got here, other than that everything is a lot worse than I expected.” Eric gave Sam the quick and condensed version of why he’d returned, and how getting his daughter had required him to get involved in things he hadn’t counted on. “What I can tell you, is that regardless of who these soldiers you’ve seen are working for, there is for certain an alliance between one of the biggest private contracting companies in the world and one of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico, and they control all or most of Texas right now. What they want though, is the entire Gulf Coast region, and that includes your parish as well as my brother’s parish downriver. It’s impossible to stop them from seizing the cities and towns and other accessible locations along the highways and roads, but we intend to hold our own on the river and keep them out of the Atchafalaya Basin.”
“You and who else?”
“Every willing and able volunteer I can find. We are putting together a resistance force right now. I had hoped to get help from Sergeant Patterson at Simmesport so we wouldn’t have to do the fighting ourselves, but now I know for sure that isn’t an option, so we will move forward at once with our organization.”
“You mean like a militia?”
“You could call it that if you like, but this isn’t just for the pu
rpose of defending our parish... or the state... or even the constitution.... In fact, it won’t be defensive at all.... We will be focused on pre-emptive strikes instead, using small-unit and lone wolf tactics—tactics that good hunters can be trained to carry out in the shortest possible time.”
“And who is going to be doing this training, you? What are your qualifications?”
“His qualifications are that he’s a badass Navy SEAL Special Warfare Operator,” Jonathan interrupted, “with so many missions under his belt he can’t even remember all of them! And that’s not to mention he’s been working as a professional contractor like those dudes he was just telling you about ever since he got out. I’ve seen the shit he can do, and believe me, he’s qualified to put together a team like that, and I’m gonna be fighting right alongside him!”
Sam looked at Jonathan and back at Eric. “Is that true? You were a SEAL?”
“It is,” Eric said, “but more relevant is the work I’ve done since, like Jonathan said, as a contractor.”
“You just got through saying those contractors are killers for hire. How does that make you a good guy?”
“Some are killers indeed,” Eric said. “But while I was involved in a lot of combat, I spent just as much time working with indigenous populations in our areas of operations, training and preparing them to fight as resistance forces themselves. Sometimes it was about defending their country, other times it was to overthrow a tyrant, but the reason is irrelevant. Tactics aren’t. In some places, those civilians had no weapons or the knowledge of how to use them. In other areas, they did, either because their countries had long histories of civil war or oppression, or because they were hunters, like most of you right here.”
“Most of us are hunters, that’s right. And we’re armed, and we can shoot. But we also know better than to tangle with trained soldiers, especially when we’re way outnumbered and way outgunned. We don’t want them to take over our land and we don’t want to give up our homes for good; we’d like to go back to them, but we don’t want to die either. They have machine guns and armored vehicles, and no telling what else.”
Feral Nation - Defiance (Feral Nation Series Book 8) Page 14
