The Peacekeepers. Books 1 - 3.

by Ricky Sides

  “Yes we could, but the odds are we’d hit some soft spot and sink up to the axle of the truck. Then we’d have to abandon the truck. I’d rather not do that,” he said.

  “The ground looks firm enough to me,” Lina observed.

  “So does quicksand, until it sucks you under,” he quipped.

  She got the message then and he proceeded to cut apart the tangled mess the two trees had made when they fell across the road.

  It took the rest of the day for Jim and Lina to make it to Leesville. What they saw there made them sick. Most of the town was still under water. Over half of the buildings were in ruins and decaying corpses were everywhere.

  The smell of the town was the worst aspect of the experience for Lina. She gagged and hastily covered her nose and mouth with a rag. Jim grimly turned the truck around and headed back the way they’d come. When they were well outside the city, Lina asked, “Aren’t you still going to Fort Polk?”

  Jim nodded his head and replied, “Yes, I’m still going to the base. We’ll just have to backtrack and come in from another direction. Let me see the map,” he requested and stopped the truck in the middle of the road. He wasn’t about to trust the shoulder of the road in this area.

  Studying the map, he decided to take Highway 8, back east to Highway 28. From there he could take Highway 121, to Highway 463. This would take him to the east side of Fort Polk.

  Jim handed the map back to Lina and said, “After we get on Highway 28, don’t let me miss Highway 121. It’s only about eight or ten miles from our first turnoff.”

  Lina promised to help him watch for the turn and just as the sun was setting on the horizon, they arrived at the base.

  As far as Jim could tell, the base was deserted. He checked the area near the truck for even the slightest sign of recent activity. His search turned up nothing. To all outward appearances, the base was indeed empty of any live personnel.

  It was full dark by the time Jim returned to the truck. He called out softly to Lina to prevent her from being startled when he opened the truck door. He’d left her at the truck with a pistol and instructions to fire a shot if anyone arrived in his absence. She seemed nervous when she greeted him. “I’m glad to see you. This place gives me the creeps.”

  Jim didn’t say anything. He just sat down inside the truck and sighed. Lina said, “What’s wrong? Didn’t you find any sign of your brother?”

  Jim was glad that she was here with him. Somehow, having her here made the disappointment of not finding his brother a bit easier to bear. “Not yet, but I will eventually. I don’t think he’s here. I don’t believe he’s dead though. I honestly believe I’d feel the loss if he’d died.”

  Lina thought about what he’d just said, and then she responded, “You’ll find him someday or maybe he’ll find you. Perhaps not tomorrow or next week, but you’ll locate him if anyone can.”

  ***

  An hour later, Jim and Lina sat eating a hearty meal that she’d prepared for him. She had gone out of her way to prepare a lavish spread in the hopes that the food would serve as a distraction to take his mind off the disappointing turn of events.

  He played with his food as his mind pondered the next move he should make. Lina didn’t mind his lack of appetite. She understood that he had a lot on his mind.

  Chapter 25

  A curious set of circumstances had gotten Tim out of Fort Polk an hour after his conversation with his brother. The base commander at the Fort had needed a volunteer for a mission. He’d come to the brig to speak to Tim. He’d said, “You are charged with a serious crime, Sergeant Wilison. Under the circumstances, I could have you shot for what you did. You realize that don’t you?”

  Tim had stood and saluted when the base commander entered his cell. He was standing at attention when the man had addressed him. “Yes Sir, I understand.”

  “You’re career military. You know better.” With a sigh, the commander turned and faced the door for a moment. He seemed to be thinking. A moment later, he turned to stare at Tim, and then he said, “I have a mission I need someone to take on, Sergeant. You’re qualified to take on the mission. It’s dangerous and could cost you your life, but if you succeed in the mission, I’ll see to it that all charges against you are dropped. All records of the infraction will be destroyed. The incident never happened.”

  Tim looked the commander in the eye and said, “I’m in, Sir. What can I do for you, Commander?”

  “I understand that you’re a licensed civilian pilot. I want you to fly a small, single engine plane to Fort Chaffee. Major Donavan will accompany you. Once the two of you get there, you will be sheltered at that base. It is vital that the major get there ASAP”

  “Are you still in, Sergeant?” The commander asked with a solemn expression on his face.

  Tim was no fool. He knew that something was very wrong here. For one thing, he wondered why the commander wanted him to fly a single engine plan to Chaffee. Surely the commander knew that there was no way he could get the major there before the bombs fell. Suspicion dawned in Tim’s mind as he gave the commander his answer. He asked, “When do we leave, Sir?”

  “You leave in thirty minutes, Sergeant.” He turned and walked out the door. Stopping he turned to face Tim. “Come along, Sergeant. You don’t have much time.”

  ***

  A bit less than an hour later, Tim and Major Donavan were airborne. They were flying to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas in a Cessna 172. Tim took the Cessna to three thousand feet and concentrated on setting a proper course for Fort Chaffee. Once he had the airplane flying on this course, Tim turned to his passenger and asked, “Have you been sleeping with the commander’s wife?”

  The effect this question had on the major was astonishing. His face turned as white as a sheet as he replied, “What kind of question is that for you to be asking a superior officer, Sergeant?”

  Tim frowned and asked, “You have, haven’t you, you dumb shit?”

  Major Donavan’s face turned beet red and he said, “Okay, Sergeant, so you know my secret. What do you want?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tim asked the man.

  “You know about me and the commander’s wife. You must want something to keep your mouth shut.”

  “You really are a dumb shit, aren’t you? Don’t you realize yet that the commander already knows about the two of you? Why do you think he sent you on this suicide mission?”

  Major Donavan looked stricken. “This will mean the end of my military career,” he said plaintively.

  Tim looked at the major in disgust and said no more about the matter. Instead, he concentrated on flying the Cessna. It had been a long time since he’d piloted a plane through the night sky. An hour later, he had almost forgotten the perils that awaited them at the end of the flight as he soared through the night sky. For another two hours, he flew the plane. He was constantly checking to ensure that they were remaining on course and maintaining altitude. He remembered the warnings of his flight instructor about the dangers of flying at night. It’s so easy for a pilot to lose their perspective in the night sky. Once a pilot loses perspective, they can easily permit the loss of altitude a few feet at a time, until the novice pilot crashes.

  The trip was uneventful until they landed at the airstrip at Fort Chaffee. Tim was busy going through the routine post flight checklist when the major jumped out of the aircraft and began walking toward the vehicle that was rapidly approaching their plane. He assumed that it was the staff picking him up to report for his new assignment.

  Tim heard three gunshots in rapid succession and snapped his head around to see what was happening. He saw the major fall to the ground in a crumpled heap. “Damn,” he said as the major fell just within range of the planes light and he saw that the man had taken a bullet to the head. “The hell with this!” he said. He immediately started the Cessna’s engine and began to taxi the plane toward the main runway and the freedom of the night sky.

  Tim didn’t wait to see if the men o
n the ground intended to kill him as they had killed the major. As he headed down the runway, he heard the sound of several bullets slamming into the fuselage of the aircraft. He desperately hoped that they wouldn’t hit his gas tanks. He was already low on fuel.

  Tim opened up the throttle on the Cessna and raced for the far end of the runway. He’d entered the runway too close to the end and he knew it, but the men in pursuit had given him no option or time to taxi to the far end so that he could utilize the entire strip. As the plane gathered speed and approached the end of the runway, Tim was afraid that he wouldn’t reach a speed sufficient for maximum lift. As he gently pulled back on the control yoke, he hoped for the best. The plane struggled off the ground, but his stall indicator alarm began to sound almost immediately.

  Tim cursed and tried to manipulate the throttle to get the engine to stabilize. He didn’t try to lift the plane any higher for a few moments. He was trying to take advantage of the phenomenon known as ground effect. Simply put, the air within two wingspans of the ground produces greater lift than the air above that distance. Utilizing this ground effect, Tim nursed the Cessna to greater speed and a moment later pulled back on the yoke. He held his breath as the plane cleared the tree line.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Tim leveled the Cessna off at one thousand feet and began to set a course for Alabama in the hopes of getting as close to home as possible before having to land the aircraft. Then he noticed that the fuel gauge was reading almost empty. He grabbed the map and looked at it anxiously for the best alternative landing site. He decided that he just might be able to coax the plane to Highway 30, if he took a course that didn’t force the Cessna to fight the wind. Ten minutes later the engine began to spit and sputter. He managed to coax another five minutes out of the engine by manipulating the throttle and manual choke

  Nursing the plane paid off, because soon he spotted the highway below him. He executed a slow turn and tracked back to the highway. Tim saw a solitary vehicle on the road below him but that vehicle soon disappeared into the night as it traveled in the opposite direction.

  He dropped altitude as he flew along through the night on the last few moments of fuel. Looking ahead he estimated that he had more than enough landing space available if he landed immediately.

  He gently feathered the Cessna to the surface of the road and was doing really well until the passenger side wheel dropped into a ten-inch deep pothole. This caused the plane to veer sharply to the right and go off road. Cursing, Tim fought the yoke attempting to steer the Cessna around a tree he saw looming ahead. He partially succeeded. The main body of the fuselage missed the tree, but the tip of the left wing slammed into it. The force of that impact whipped the light aircraft around and slammed it into the tree.

  Tim scrambled to get out of the Cessna but the door on the pilot’s side was jammed shut by the impact with the tree. He tried the passenger door, which swung open easily. Soon he was outside the plane and running from the scene of the controlled crash. He put about one hundred yards between himself and the Cessna then sat down beside a tree to wait and see if the plane would explode.

  Fifteen minutes later, it became obvious that the plane was not going to explode, so Tim returned to it to scavenge anything that might be of use. In the back floorboard of the Cessna, he found a black nylon carrying case. Inside this case, he found a Berretta nine-millimeter pistol and a supply of four extra magazines. The carrying case also contained three boxes of ammunition, a nylon holster for the pistol, and a carrying case for two of the spare magazines.

  Tim realized that the major must have brought along a personal side arm and the accessories. He was just glad to be armed. If the people who killed the major showed up at the crash site, at least he wouldn’t be defenseless. He loaded three of the magazines and threaded his belt through the holster. He chambered a round and flicked the Berretta safety. Holstering the weapon and securing the retaining strap, he now felt much better.

  A further search of the plane yielded a survival kit and a well-stocked first aid kit. Tim placed the map inside the survival kit. Taking those items, he moved away from the plane for the last time. He had considered trying to radio for assistance, but under the circumstances he felt that might be a bad option. He was beginning to believe that the commander had contacted Fort Chaffee and told them that a plane would be landing at their airfield with terrorists aboard. That was the only reasonable explanation for the attack, which had occurred at the airfield.

  He had just begun to walk away from the area of the crash when the earthquake that rocked the region that night began to rumble through the ground. By the light of the quarter moon, he watched in shock as the surface of the earth undulated and rippled like the surface of the sea. He saw trees crashing to the ground not far from him, and he was thrown twice to the ground.

  When the earth stopped shaking, Tim got back on his feet and looked at the damage around him. Like many soldiers who trained extensively for night operations, Tim had superb night vision. As he stood surveying the carnage wrought by the earthquake, he wished for the first time in his life that he didn’t have such excellent night vision.

  Having grown up in the Tennessee Valley, Tim was accustomed to surveying storm damage from the many violent thunderstorms and tornadoes that plagues that region of the United States. But the damage he witnessed that night dwarfed everything in his experience. Shaking his head in awe, he began the ordeal of walking to the nearest city where he would, hopefully, find food, water, and transportation.

  As he walked, he kept expecting the bombs to start falling at any minute. In fact, he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been a bomb that had caused the earth to shake so violently during the earthquake. However, he didn’t much believe that it had been a bomb for two reasons; there had been no flash of light in the night sky and there had been no shockwave. So, he felt reasonably sure that if he could feel the shockwave through the earth he would have experienced the atmospheric shockwave as well. “Unless the bombs detonated below the surface,” he told himself.

  Walking all night, he didn’t see another soul. Dawn found him on the outskirts of a small community that had been evacuated due to some of the natural disasters that had occurred two weeks prior to his arrival. He was able to find some food and water there. More importantly, he acquired his transportation, a motorcycle. He also found a few boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition, which he gratefully added to his meager supply.

  Chapter 26

  All of that had occurred weeks ago. He’d decided to go to Fort Chaffee to try to clear up the mess and link up with the military there. Since then he’d learned that there wasn’t much of the military left, at least not at Fort Chaffee. He then turned around to head for home.

  Now on the same day that Jim and Lina had finally made it to Fort Polk, Tim was in the Ozark National Forest. He hadn’t as yet found a place to get across the Arkansas River. All of the bridges were out north of the city of Little Rock.

  He was hoping to cut through the Ozark forest and find a safe place to cross the river in that region. He stopped and killed his engine and then he dismounted. He’d been riding for hours and needed a bathroom break. He was watering a tree near the bike when he heard the first scream. The woman’s scream was loud in the quiet of the forest. He returned to the motorcycle and started the engine. The Honda idled smoothly and quietly. “Thank God for good mufflers,” he muttered to himself as he rode the bike though the forest. He followed the trail, since the scream he’d heard seemed to come from further along it. He kept the bike throttled low to minimize the noise the machine made and traveled very slowly. In fact, he was riding just fast enough to keep the motorcycle balanced.

  Rounding a curve, he stopped the bike. There is a clearing he saw an old man tied to a tree. On the ground next to the tree was a woman. There was one man atop the woman in the process of raping her. There were two other men waiting for their turns and alternately shouting words of encouragement and taunting the man for his lack of techniq
ue.

  He shut down the engine, dismounted the bike and then he silently crept up behind the two men. He put his pistol to the back of one man’s head and said, “All right, freeze!”

  The man Tim was holding the gun on tried to bring his arm up and around to knock the pistol away from his head. Tim pulled the trigger and the man died instantly.

  The man standing to the right went for his pistol and Tim shot him twice in the center of the chest as the Marauder’s pistol was clearing his holster. The force of the impacts lifted the man off his feet and he was knocked several feet through the air.

  The man who’d been raping the woman was up and on his feet. He bolted away with one hand holding his pants up. Tim fired at him, but just as he fired the man darted to the right to avoid a tree limb. That shot missed. Tim ran after the fleeing Marauder, determined not to let him escape and lead others back to him. The man’s fear lent speed to his legs as he ran down the trail. It took Tim a few minutes, but he finally closed to within decent range of the man. He stopped and snapped the pistol up and shot him twice in the back and the man fell dead.

  Tim ran back to the small clearing to help the woman. He found her trying her best to free the old man tied to the tree. He offered to do it for her and she reluctantly backed away and tried to straighten her torn clothing. Tim found it hard to free the man from the tree. He was tied to it with barbed wire and many of the barbs were embedded in the man’s flesh.

  When he finally got the man down from the tree, he laid him down on the ground and tried to treat his wounds. The old man looked into Tim’s eyes and said, “I can tell that you’re a good man. I’m dying.”

  Tim said, “You’ll be all right, Mister. Just rest while I clean and bandage some of these wounds we can talk after I see to that.” In anger, Tim noticed that the Marauders had been working on the old man with a knife. He was doing everything he could, but he had to admit to himself that the old man was probably right.”