Barrett was standing in the military ‘parade rest’ position during the discussion. He shifted his posture now and swiped the cap off of his head, running his hand through his short hair. His cap went back on, and he held a hand up like a kid in school. “The big man’s right, guys. We don’t need this. I wouldn’t trade one of my people for ten of theirs. When we got to this town, we had almost two hundred people. We now have just over half of that. Let’s face it; they won. I say we move on.”
The former Lieutenant looked at each of the men, in turn, trying to read their expressions. Lobo was pissed; there was no question of that. Arturo and Barrett were impossible to read except by their words. Arlo was trying his best to figure out what would result from his next decision. If he pushed on and was successful, he would strengthen his position as the leader. Above all else, Arlo wanted that; to be the first one fed, have first choice over the girls and the liquor, and the one everybody gave deference to while striding through the camps at night. No, he wouldn’t give that up.
He fixed Barrett with an icy stare. There was no longer any question in his mind that the younger man would try to take over at some point. If he could do it, Arlo desperately wanted to have him taken out and shot, but that wouldn’t work. Barrett was too popular with the soldiers, but if he just happened to die in combat, well, things like that happened. A big funeral, a few sad words, and…hey…problem solved.
“Thank you for your input Sergeant.” Arlo shifted his gaze to Lobo. “I say we follow through with our plans and kill every one of those bastards. What do you say?” He already knew the mindset of the crazy gang leader.
“Hell yeah,” Lobo replied. He pointed at his Segundo. “You in or out, Turo?”
The big man sighed. “I guess I’m in, Boss.”
✽✽✽
I had my goggles back on as I sat in my hole. I would check the area with the thermal imaging scope every fifteen minutes or so to cover all of our bases. I knew that we had one of our helo-drones making a pass high overhead every half hour or so, using their night vision capability to keep track of the bad guys who were still sneaking in on us from the north. The last report from the drones came from Pepper.
I overheard the conversation through my radio earphones. “Station One, this is schoolgirl; how are things on the west outpost?” She was deliberately using false directions to mislead anyone who might be listening in.
Buck responded. “All still clear to the west. Everyone tucked in for the night?”
“Yeah, most everyone is already asleep. I’m heading for my bunk shortly. Looks like storm clouds closing in on us, make sure to stay dry.”
It didn’t take a cryptologist to read her meaning. I pushed the goggles up and turned on the electronic M-240 sight. The infrared showed nothing, so I switched to thermal and spotted white blobs peeking over a knoll. The signatures on the thermal screen were unmistakably the heads of the incursion team, looking over the top of the small hill.
Our team had already agreed that, on the first sight of the enemy, we would announce it to all of our team with three clicks of the radio button. I executed the signal and waited for the response which would be two flashes of static from each of our people. Eight snaps came through to me quickly.
I used my fingers to carefully re-check the position of my ammo belt and ensure it was free of kinks or anything else that might interfere with it feeding into my weapon. With that done, I examined the knoll again, along with the rest of the topography. I observed two more heads just protruding over another, smaller rise. I longed to get on the radio and make sure everyone saw them, but Buck had already warned me against it. If anyone were monitoring our transmissions, such a report would tell the enemy that we were on to them.
Buck had gathered us before we even left the compound and explained our situation.
“We’ll be outmanned and maybe outgunned. The drone operators saw at least one of those rocket launchers in the hands of those people. Our best chance of taking these guys out will be to catch them in the open and cut them down before they can reach cover. I don’t want to get half of them and then have to stalk the rest of them in the dark. I want this entire threat eliminated with no loose ends. We need those idiots who are making the decisions down there to get the idea that anyone they throw at us will die. Once we get the signal that they are near our positions, we maintain radio silence until I fire the first shot.
“Virgil and I each have very sophisticated electronic sights on our weapons, so we’ll see them coming before the rest of you. We’ll alert you with three clicks and wait until they are in the open and away from cover. Your night vision should give you an advantage. If they don’t have N.V. goggles, it should be a turkey shoot. Use your lasers and take ‘em out.”
His reference to laser was regarding the infrared lasers that we each had which relieved us of the necessity of using sights to aim our weapons in the dark. The lasers would show up in our N.V. goggles while remaining invisible to anyone who didn’t have them. We could then place the red beam on the enemy and pull the trigger. It was the same system used by the U.S. Military and enabled our Army and Marines to truthfully claim that they ruled the night.
As I watched the white silhouettes draw nearer, I took several deep breaths to relax my shoulders and calm myself. A small part of my mind had refused to acknowledge that the enemy was stalking us tonight with the intent to kill us. I mean, I knew it intellectually, but I didn’t accept it. The whole concept of waiting here in my hole, ready to defend my friends from a group of fellow survivors was mind-blowingly surreal to me. The last thing I wanted to do was kill another human being, but I realized that Pepper, Pops and everyone else I cared about were counting on me and my teammates to protect them. I was determined not to fail them.
A light breeze washed over me, and I reveled in the coolness it brought. The load-bearing vest I wore didn’t allow much air circulation and sweat was beading on my forehead and under my arms.
The main body of fifteen people were now picking their way through the bottom of the glen. They weren’t bunched up, but they weren’t really all that dispersed either. I itched to release my weapon on them. Along the east and west sides of the glen, I could see a total of four more people, two on each side. These outliers were moving more cautiously than the others, crawling over rocks and darting from knoll to knoll. I knew that when the shooting started, I would need to target the bigger group first, but these four stalkers worried me. Once they knew we were on to them, they would go to ground, and we would have to dig them out.
Just when I thought Buck had waited too long and had allowed the main group to get too close, I heard a shot. Through my sights, I glimpsed a silhouette in the back of the main body of attackers fall. There was a micro-second of shock which put everyone in a state of inaction; then I opened up with my weapon. I swept the red laser beam across the thickest concentration of bodies and watched pieces of people fly into the air. The chunks of flesh were warm, and they showed up in my sights as white flecks.
Full auto rifle fire erupted from both groups, friend and foe. The raiders had been caught out in the open, and the survivors of our first barrage now scrambled to find cover. There wasn’t much cover to find; Buck had let them blunder into an area in which there were no nearby rocks or trees. I saw several of them drop to the ground and start shooting. I used my laser to target three of them, the M-240 finding each one with short bursts. One white outline found a slight rise in the ground and dropped behind it, rising up now and then to fire strings of bullets in our direction. His head popped up, and I was about to light him up when I heard a shot and saw the man crumble, reminding me that Buck also had electronic sights.
I kept shooting, and the enemy bodies kept falling. My ears screamed at the punishment they were taking. Everything seemed to be going our way when the darkness around me exploded, and the world turned a brilliant white. I was thrown backward into my pit with the air knocked out of me, and the sounds of the battle seemed like th
ey were reaching me from under water.
I lay there for a few moments, waiting to recover my breath, my sight, and my senses. I knew a rocket or a grenade had struck very close to my position. The light from the blast, amplified by my fancy electronic sighting system, had produced the same white and blue dots in my vision that one experiences after looking into a flashbulb, only magnified fifty times. I had limited peripheral vision but couldn’t see anything in front of me. I had no idea how badly I was wounded, but I felt pain from several different parts of my body, especially my earlier wounds. My mind slowly reoriented itself, and I heard footsteps, and they were running. Someone was coming at me fast, and I didn’t know if it was my people or theirs.
The bright blue dots still covered my front vision, so I cocked my head to the side and used my peripheral sight to glimpse a person dressed in army clothing. He was running straight at me, and he had his rifle raised. I ducked low as a stream of bullets impacted the dirt around me. If not for my fox hole I would have been torn apart. My M-240 was missing, so I yanked my Glock free and held it over the rim of my trench and fired three quick shots in the man’s direction without looking.
A body fell into my hole with me, impacting on my shoulder and causing me to scramble around so I could face the threat. I brought the Glock up to shoot my attacker, but he twisted around and grabbed me by my gun arm with one hand and my throat with the other. My goggles flew from my head, and it was too dark to see my attacker, but I could tell he was big and heavy. The pressure of his hand around my throat almost caused me to pass out. He was using his weight to press me down, trying to get his knee on my chest so he could free one hand and access his own handgun which was slung low on his thigh in a drop holster. I had no idea what had happened to his rifle.
I had been clutching at the hand around my throat, but I took a chance, now, and released that hand. I twisted my torso so that my side was presented to the attacker and delivered three quick hooks to the guy’s liver, just like Buck had taught me. The blows had the desired effect, and he released my throat so he could cover his side with his elbow. That allowed me to put both hands on my weapon and attempt to wriggle it free.
Pain exploded in my side as my adversary repaid my liver shots with two of his own. The spotlights in my vision had faded to fireflies by now, but the strikes to my body made them grow bright again. He shifted his free hand back to my Glock, and we squirmed, gouged and wrestled for control of the weapon. Each of us knew that the one who lost control of the pistol was going to die. Unfortunately, my foe was stronger than I was and his body weight was making it impossible for me to control him. He flipped me over onto my back and fell on me. I felt at least one rib pop when he dug his knee into my side, but I couldn’t do anything about it other than to ignore the pain and fight back hard because I was losing this fight and I knew what that meant.
My foe was leaning close to me now, our faces only inches apart. I smelled his foul breath and felt his beard on my chin.
“You’re dead, bitch,” he snarled.
I went a little crazy then.
I don’t know if it was anger over his comment or sheer terror over the situation, but I reacted like a wild man. I thrust my jaw forward and clamped my teeth onto his nose. He screamed like a little girl as I bit down as tightly as I could manage, hearing the cartilage snap and tear.
The man couldn’t stand the pain any longer and released one hand from the Glock as he tried to wedge it between my mouth and his nose. The pain had caused the enemy soldier to lift his weight off of me, so I released his nose and twisted my torso around. My body was now on top of my opponent, exposing the arm with which he was holding onto my pistol. Using my teeth again I tore at the flesh of his hand. The other hand pounded on my back, punishing the abused ribs but I wasn’t giving in to the pain. I got his thumb in my mouth and bit down hard, twisting my head from side to side like a wolf with a rabbit. The screams of pain from my rival faded from my hearing, and all I could think of was tearing that thumb off of my weapon. Blood flowed into my mouth as I felt the digit ripping away. I used both of my hands then to wrench the Glock free and twist so that I was facing my adversary. He had lost in his efforts to steal my gun and was now scrambling to free his own pistol. Unfortunately for him, the thumb on his gun hand was almost totally torn free from his hand, and he couldn’t get a good grip on the gun’s stock.
I screamed in triumph as I pumped three ten-millimeter slugs into his body.
The man’s face now reflected several emotions; fear, anger, and pain. He looked like he had been wronged somehow, that he had been preordained to win our fight and go on living, not me. I watched, transfixed as he slowly released his hold on me and slid sideways into the bottom of the hole.
I stuck my head up and glanced around, looking for another threat, but I couldn’t see anything in the dark. I could still hear sporadic gunfire in the distance. I looked back down at the wounded man in the foxhole. He was still breathing though both of us knew that would not continue. His ragged breaths were interrupted by coughs which sprayed blood onto the front of my vest. He seemed to be reaching for a pocket in his trousers, so I pushed his hand away. I thought he was going for a photograph of a loved one or something like that, so I reached inside to help him. Instead of a sentimental keepsake, I found only a big, flat folding knife. I tossed it out of the hole and took another look around my location, making sure no more enemy attackers were near me.
When I looked back down into the hole, the man was dead.
As I calmed down from my bloodlust, I heard a faint voice calling my name. I remembered my earpiece and searched around my disheveled vest until I found it hanging free on my side. I plugged it back into my ear and heard Buck’s voice.
“I say again, are you there, Virg? Answer me; damn it!”
I pushed the send button and tried to sound calm. “Go for Virgil.” There was no longer a need to use codes now that the jig was up.
“Virgil, what the hell is going on up there? Get that weapon back into battery.”
I didn’t take the time to respond, just started feeling around in the dark for my gun. I didn’t find it, but I found my NV goggles. I slipped the device onto my head, and the world around me took on the form of a green-tinged sunny morning.
The machine gun, now visible to my enhanced night sight, was a good twenty feet away from my foxhole, thrown there by the rocket blast. I crawled out, grabbed it by the barrel and dragged it back to the foxhole while my ribcage treated me to continuous sparks of agony.
“Virgil, c’mon, kid, they’re getting away. We need that gun.”
“Give me a second, Buck,” I shouted into the microphone. His tone was pissing me off. “I got hit by a damned rocket up here, and the gun was thrown clear. I have to check it out to see if it’s functional.”
He came back a moment later. “Sorry kid, but some of these guys are slinking back the way they came. I don’t want them getting away. By the way, I saw the explosion and was able to target the guy with the rocket tube. He won’t be giving you any more problems.”
I smiled to myself. I had been worried about another rocket attack. “Good to know, Buck. Give me a second to check out my sights, and I’ll jump back into the fight.”
I did a quick check using my night sights and my fingers to make sure the barrel and main receiver of the weapon had no bulges or dents before slipping the NVGs off my head. I flipped on the electronic sights, and the world lit up around me again.
I swung the sight around and located the four flashing fireflies of my team then searched for the signatures of our antagonists. I switched from infrared to thermal and immediately witnessed six white silhouettes crawling around hillocks and depressions, trying to make it back to safety. I had just experienced a bone-chilling fear of losing my life, and I knew what they must be going through. I reminded myself, however, that they were the ones who had brought this war to our home. They were out here trying to kill us. To kill Pepper. And Pops.
&nbs
p; I pushed my revulsion down deep as I opened up on the crawlers. My elevation allowed me to see them crouching in the rocks whereas my teammates were too low to do so. When my bullets blew three of them apart, the other three jumped to their feet and started running. I got one more of those, and my team got the other two.
A silence which felt out of place then settled over the glen. Around me I smelled smoke, burning gun oil, the carbon from the bullets and the coppery odor of blood from the dead man at my feet. I don’t know if it was the odor or the injuries I had sustained, but I barely had time to crawl out of the hole before emptying my stomach.
I lay there on my stomach for a moment, breathing deeply and waiting to see if I was going to puke again. I finally got the strength to roll over on my back and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. The night sky was vivid above me, stars blazing brightly, unobscured by pollution. I wanted just to continue lying there, watching the sky and feeling the breeze.
“You all right, Virgil?”
I shifted my eyes so that I could see Buck. He had his M1 in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. I pointed to the water, and he passed it to me after twisting off the top. I filled my mouth and swirled it around before spitting it out, repeated the action then took a deep swallow before answering.
“I think I have a broken rib or two. Can’t really tell but my side hurts like hell.”
The former marine edged over to the foxhole and saw the dead body. He shot me a confused look then dropped down into the hole. A second later he dragged the corpse out and over to a stand of bushes.
He came back, dusting off his hands on his britches. “Damn, Virgil! That must have been a hell of a fight. The man’s nose is barely hanging on his face. You’re becoming a real badass, kid.”
I found the energy to sit up. “I was lucky. I stuck my pistol up and fired a few shots blind. One of them must have hit his rifle because he dropped it before falling on me. If I hadn’t wounded him with the Glock, there is no way I could have fought him off.”
Virgil's War- The Diseased World Page 37
