by Clay Martin
“Bo, take us back to where Dean got bushwhacked. We will start there, see if we find a trail. Lot easier to track in daylight than with a flashlight. Form up!”
Bo moved to the clearly visible truck tracks that led off into the treeline, and halted for orders to move. He knew how to take direction, and Jessup was in no mood to be trifled with. Chief had interrupted his morning beer. The rest of the tribe was bullied and cajoled into a line, until they looked like Pickett’s Charge. Jessup gave the order to move out, and off they went.
Arriving at the scene of Dean’s death brought a somber silence. The main body of troops held back without a word from the circle of trampled grass where he had given up the ghost. A gash in the mud showed where his body had been driven hard to the earth, never to rise again.
Jessup moved from the rear to hear Bo’s assessment.
“Just like I thought, he came back here. Probably looking for something else he could use. Gait looks like a panicked walk. Skittish, desperate even. I am kind of surprised he found it again, but maybe he never left. Could’ve been fifty feet away, hunkered down behind a tree. Most likely made this morning by daylight. He circled here three or four times, made a few passes up that way. Hoping to find Dean’s gun no doubt, but we beat him to that. Heads off to the north east, tracks are deep. Should be easy to follow in this mud.”
Two hundred yards later, the tracks changed. Bo had to slow to a crawl, deliberately looking for the tiniest disturbance in the earth. Thirty or forty yards later, an obvious print would appear again. After a few cycles of impossible, obvious, impossible, obvious again, Bo held up his hand to stop movement. Jessup came forward again.
“What’s up? Problem?”
“No, it’s just weird. One minute these tracks are like a freeway, the next it’s like nothing at all. Almost like it’s on purpose.”
“Broken clock theory dude. Broken clock is right twice a day right? Scared little rabbit, bound to get lucky some of the time. You’re also tired, we been doing this all day and night. Keep it up, we are keeping the pressure on. He is going to run out of gas sooner or later. He’s a smoker, and we live in these woods. Easy day.”
Jessup clapped him on the shoulder, and moved back behind the picket line. Command and control spot he said. Easier to maneuver the boys when the time came. Left unsaid, it was also arguably the safest.
The pep talk did nothing to ease Bo’s nerves. Something was wrong. But it also wasn’t worth an argument. On he went, at whatever pace the tracks dictated.
The sun neared its peak, and still on they trudged. Miles into the vast wilderness, and not so much as a glimpse of the quarry. The tribesmen might be from here, but they were not endurance athletes. As the day grew longer, their feet grew uncomfortable. Unlike soldiers, they weren’t accustomed to humping a rifle across vast distances. Heads slumped, looking at the ground instead of the foliage. Jessup finally had to resort to calling breaks every hour for ten minutes. He was starting to wonder if the stranger was heading to Canada, high tailing it for the border. What the fuck had Tim found, the only marathon runner sponsored by Camel?
At noon, the tracks disappeared completely at a dry streambed. Bo searched both banks, and found nothing. Less than nothing. He wondered if man had ever stepped foot on the other side of it. Returning to the near side, he prepared to give Jessup bad news. Left or right was the gamble, and they might have to split forces to be sure. As he opened his mouth to give his analysis, he heard a scream from the right, followed by a rifle shot. It was answered by two more in quick succession, and he and Jessup both hit the dirt when a 30.06 round cracked overhead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Without a starting point, Mike assumed they would come back to the place of last night’s action. In lieu of other options, it’s what he would do to. The rain might well have washed away all the tracks leading out of here, but some chance was better than none. It beat walking around in the woods, hoping to cross his path by chance. So Mike gave them what they wanted. He wanted a tracker to read him as scared and lost, so that was the story he crafted. Four rapid trips from the imprint of his victim uphill. Mike didn’t even bother looking for the gun, he was sure it was long gone. Only a complete fucking idiot wouldn’t have made certain they found it last night. And if they even thought for a second it was in his hands, this morning’s behavior would have been a lot different. No one would be that stupid, no one. And anyone with any sense would have at least driven the trucks into a circle to form a barricade. A truck won’t stop a bullet, but it stands a pretty good chance of deflecting one. And it beats nothing. A smart man would be sleeping in the woods.
With the story complete near the body, he headed off towards the northeast. As he went, he switched back and forth from sloppy movement to counter tracking. Mike wasn’t the best counter tracker in the world, but he certainly wasn’t the worst. The easiest method is not to make sign in the first place. Deliberate steps, hard spots underfoot, green vegetation that won’t snap and preferably recovers quickly. With a lifetime of practice, you can still move relatively quickly this way. And for an amateur tracker behind you, the time is magnified ten fold. Mike needed a perfect set of conditions for a killing ground, and at mid-morning he found it. Taking someone out of a picket line with a rifle is easy, but requires a bit of finesse and planning with a close range tool. Now he needed to make his escape. A half a mile later, he found what he was looking for. A dry streambed would offer the pause he needed. Deliberately walking right across the soft ground to the edge, he stopped and removed his boots. No dirt on the rocks for his next move. Gingerly, moving stone to stone on the balls of his feet, he walked downstream. In a matter of minutes, his sweaty footprints would disappear, dried by the sun. A very experienced tracker would notice the slight indentation and loose dirt around the rocks he stepped on, but he doubted this crew was up to that challenge. And he only needed a minute of pause anyway.
Five hundred meters downstream, Mike made for the bank and pulled his boots back on. Silently slipping back into the forest, he found the rock face he had spotted jutting out of the mountainside from his initial track. It was inaccessible from the forest floor, at least without some serious effort. He judged it to be 150 meters from his track anyway, which put it out of the line of march for the flanks of his pursuers. Shaded by a large pine, it would be hard to see into from below, and offered a great vantage point for observation. Mike settled in to wait.
Eventually, Mike was rewarded with the sound of a twig snapping. He had almost dozed off, his night catching up with him. Minutes past, as he heard rather than saw the movement below him. The tracker soon appeared, hunched over, desperately trying to stay on the trail. Mike noted a lack of a sign cutting stick, a tool that would have made this immensely easier on the poor bastard. Behind him, shapes slowly turned into men as the pickett line tried to keep pace. Far right flank was falling behind a little, and the occupant of that position looked winded. Left would have been easier, but like lions on the savannah, weakest prey dies first in times like these. Mike ducked below the crest of the granite, eliminating any chance he could be seen, and waited on the passing noises of pursuit to subside. Two minutes counted off in his head, and he chanced a look. He was just in time to see the bearded man pass out of sight. He counted two minutes more. He couldn’t afford a straggler like last night, catching him in the open during his descent. That would be the end of the line. Sure everyone was accounted for, Mike slipped down the rock face. Quiet as a ghost, he maneuvered to the far right end of the line and fell in with the tracks.
Just before the dry streambed, the vegetation grew noticeably thicker. This is true the world over. Smaller plants have a chance here, vines and brush not seen in the shadowy forest where trunks rule the sky. A running creek not only supplies water and nutrients, but the flood of spring storms washes away the saplings that try and take root. Thick undergrowth binds and holds together, tree roots wash out and topple fr
om the weight. The tribesmen, new to this game and worn out from a long pursuit, had stopped the accordion effect of shrinking their lines when visibility was restricted. Now it was time to pay.
Mike spotted his intended target twenty meters away, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. Silently advancing, keeping to the shadows, wraith like he closed the distance. At ten meters, his victim’s ears perked up, and he moved his head in a wide circle, sensing danger. Mike froze, slowly kneeling from his hunched over walk after the man’s gaze passed over him. Movement is what gets you seen. The moment passed, and the right flanker resumed looking to the center for direction. Inch by inch, Mike crept forward. A branch breaking right now would mean getting shot, and that wasn’t on his agenda. He felt every step before he committed his weight, sliding his toes left or right of anything that felt thicker than pine straw. At seven meters he committed. In one fluid motion he swept his freshly minted spear over his right shoulder, cocking his arm for a throw. The femur attached as a spearhead was carved to a pinpoint, secured with repurposed boot laces. The need for stealth gone, Mike planted his left foot hard on the ground. Right flank idly turn his head to the noise, and his eyes turned to dinner plates at the horror. Too late to react, the six-foot oak shaft released from Mikes hand, moving forward at the speed of death. 240 pounds of weight whipped into the throw, hurling it forward, a javelin of retribution. The spear penetrated the man’s front and rear ribs like paper mache, shoving him backwards as it embedded in the pine behind him with a solid thunk. His victim felt the wind go out of him, both from the impact and his newly perforated lung. Blood bubbled around the wound, a sickening pinkish froth known battlefields the world over. The agony of his lung collapsing forced a weak gurgle from his lips. Mike never stopped moving, arriving a half second behind his deadly missile, scooping the unfired rifle out of the still shocked hands holding it. Kicking off the body pinned to the tree, Mike immediately sprinted for the safety of a shallow ravine he had picked on the way in. As he rolled over the crest, he heard a bullet hit near him and ricochet off a rock. Jerking onto his chest, he fired two shots in return, expert hands running the bolt like a sewing machine. He didn’t even try for a hit, just enough lead back to let them know he had a gun now too. Running in a crouch to keep his head from getting blown off, he hit the end of the ravine and disappeared into the foliage. Time for phase two.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There is an advantage in knowing where all of your opponents are, one never seen on a battlefield. Mike shook off the recce instinct to go to ground, to hide until the next time to strike. He needed to do some real damage to his enemy’s ability to make war on him, something with some teeth in it. He might have delivered a couple of jabs by killing two of them, but human beings are adaptable. Even the dumbest rock farmer in a third world militia is capable of learning, and if they live long enough, they get dangerous. He needed an uppercut that came all the way from the floor, something to knock them completely off balance. And he knew just what to do. Running flat out, no concern for noise, Mike booked it back toward the base camp. He needed all the head start he could get.
Half a mile away from his destination, he stopped to listen. Hard lessons learned, Mike knew it was imperative to keep an ear open. You could often hear foe long before you saw them. With no way of knowing if the camp had been reinforced, or if someone was there conducting roving sentry duty, he had to approach carefully. Silently he moved five steps, crouched, and listen again. Shadow to shadow, planning multiple moves at a time, his pace slowed to a crawl. Three rounds left in a rifle of questionable zero was no way to get in a surprise firefight. He needed to get the job done, but years of reinforced training kept him cautious on approach. “You’re in too big of a hurry to die” one of the old hands had told him the first time he ran point on a training mission. Non Commissioned Officers, NCO’s, handled the hands on assessment and training of new recruits. Officers might be overall in charge of the school, but that mostly meant sitting in an office doing paperwork, and occasionally leading morning PT. The NCO’s were the gatekeepers, and at any moment they might decide you weren’t good enough. Failure to heed advice such as this, or a recurring inability to adapt, would have you doing the walk of shame with your seabag right back to the unit you came from. And with good reason. Those same NCO’s would rotate out in a year or two, and anyone they let pass the gate might be their teammate then. The lessons learned were written in blood, first from the Gods who stalked the jungles of Vietnam. No fighters had ever existed like those, nor might ever again. The best a man could hope for was to carry their torch forward, and never bring shame on the units they built.
Finally, Mike reached the edge of the clearing. He set his internal clock to ten minutes, and observed the camp. Longer would have been better, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. The camp had been built on a relatively flat meadow, with the tents set right in the center. 200 meters of open ground on any side was a lot to cover, if he wanted to get this done quietly. There was a lone man, sitting on a log turned up right, poking at the coals of a dying fire. His rifle was leaned up against the guyline three feet away, which showed a decisive lack of concern. The bane of sentries the world over, the man had given in to boredom. He was failing at his most basic of tasks, to keep alert to any changes. Still, three feet was too close to cover the distance presented. Mike considered just shooting the bastard, but that wouldn’t really solve his problems. Right now, Mike needed information. He was still operating in a complete fog. He needed troop strength, assets available, known enemy strengths. The obvious play was to shoot him, steal a truck, and high tail it out of dodge. That, however, presented other potential problems. A stolen car report, a little extremely real evidence of the two murders he had committed in the last twenty-four hours, and some fabricated evidence could make him an enemy of the state very quickly. Given some creativity and thought, he could face a slew of charges that would keep him from seeing the light of day as a free man forever. And just running around killing his captors seemed very shortsighted. It was a simple mission, to be certain, but it left a host of problems as well.
Mike looked the camp over again, calculating the odds. Worst scenario possible, he was caught halfway to the tents by the man to his front, and all his friends from behind. He was unlikely to survive that if he had a real gun. With three bullets at his disposal, the odds were zero. Reading the micro terrain with a practiced eye, he caught a shallow wadi that flowed down the mountain, behind the canvas bunkhouses, and off to one side of the vehicles. Two feet at best, with maybe a foot of grass on top of that. Known in the business as a pool table stalk, because from above it resembled crawling across a sea of felt. Absolutely the most time consuming way of moving, it would work. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but it was the only option available. Without a ghillie suit, front covered in slick canvas, it was also going to be painful. But sometimes that is the cost of doing business. Mike started pulling small patches of grass and bushes to hold in front of him like a fan of correct colored vegetation. As he prepared to step off, movement to his front froze him. Incredulously, the sentry went to one of the trucks, rummaged around in the backseat, and headed for the tent flap. Mike stood frozen in slack jawed amazement, but his eagle-eyed vision wasn’t lying to him. There was a girlie mag of some flavor in the man’s hand. He was going to get a combat jack in. “Oh, you dumb son of a bitch”, Mike voiced to himself, “I hope your family puts tits on your tombstone because you just signed your own death warrant.” With glee, he set off at a high crawl, moving much faster than he otherwise would have dared.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Robbie was bored to tears of sitting on his ass on a goddamn stump, waiting on something to happen. He had started this morning with righteous indignation at being told to stay behind as camp guard. He tried to argue with Jessup, then pleaded, then all but begged. Jessup had finally told him “Shut the fuck up, we don’t have time for your bullshit, you’re doing it. End of story.”
That had put a nail in his dissent. It was unfair, and they both knew it. But Jessup wasn’t the kind of man to argue with once he was red in the face. Robbie backed down, even though he knew it was a stupid choice. He was younger and stronger than half the tribe, and a better shot than the other half. He had grown up in these woods, before his daddy got shipped off down state. He and his mother had done the obligatory visits every month at first. Then the time started growing. Pretty soon the weather was too bad one month, and we ain’t got the gas money the next. Not a year later, his mom had a new beau living at the house, then another in a never ending string. A decade past, and when his pop’s got released, he never even bothered coming to look for his boy. Last Robbie heard, he was in California, shacked up with some biker skank. Lesson learned early, all women are whores. Robbie was never going to let one get the best of him, no sir. All through his young life, Robbie had kept his deer rifle stashed deep in the mower shed, a place his mom would never think to look. Or her worthless scum fuck toys, they might slip and fall into some hard work. He would retrieve it at the start of deer season, heading straight to the woods. All that time, he never failed to fill the freezer, not that he cared about providing. He knew he had the respect of the men in town. Young man, no mentor, doing what men are put on this Earth to do. Old Roscoe, who ran the processing shop, let him work the first few slaughters off, sweeping up the place and other menial tasks. After a few seasons, he finally sat him down and showed him how to do it himself. Said he admired the young man’s tenacity. And that had eventually brought him to the attention of Chief. His mother had been initially concerned that he was friends with the Law, that sort of thing didn’t sit well with his family’s habits. And she had been right to be worried, but for the wrong reasons. When he was twenty, Chief had showed him how to suicide someone off a bridge. He inherited the house, and had been part of the tribe since shortly after.
