by D. J. Molles
Daniels gave their prisoner a sidelong glance. “You weren’t intending to use that on me, were you?”
The man quaked, his knees looking like they might go out. “No, sir! I promise! I was just trying to show you where the satphone was!”
Daniels put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Alright. Okay. Calm yourself down.”
Griesi spent a moment further inspecting the interior, and Daniels knew he was checking for booby-traps. When he decided there wasn’t a trap, he scooped up the pistol and the satphone and took them to Daniels.
Daniels ignored the pistol. Griesi checked the chamber—loaded—and slid it into the back of his waistband, beneath his plate carrier. Daniels took the satphone, extended the antenna, and turned it on. The little screen blinked into life.
Daniels was quite familiar with these little devices. They seemed to be all over the place nowadays. The Project Hometown bunkers each had a quantity of them. It was a good sign that Tully had given one to Mosquero. That meant the town meant something to him. Otherwise he might’ve just left them with some radios and repeaters. Or nothing at all.
Daniels scrolled down the screen. Only one number appeared, which was a common occurrence. The satphone was only used to contact Tully directly, so only one number would be present in the call log.
Daniels turned away from the others, looking out the window of the upstairs bedroom. Three bullet holes marred the glass. Beyond it, Daniels saw one of the houses that had contributed to the smoke columns he’d seen on approach. It had begun to burn down now, the flames low, the structure just a blackened skeleton.
He glanced at the man that had led them here.
Daniels’s word was golden—most of the time. But it came with caveats. “You can leave us now,” he said. “It’s in your best interest to convince your friends not to be stupid. Keep me happy, everyone keeps their lives. Very basic, quid pro quo.”
The man swallowed. Nodded.
Daniels shooed him away.
He hustled out of the bedroom door.
Daniels listened to his feet tumbling down the stairs.
He turned back to the satphone. He selected the only number in the call log, and pressed the call button. He brought it to his ear, feeling his pulse accelerate. Feeling…satisfied. Maybe even happy.
A gruff, weary voice answered. “Tully here.”
It felt like taking the first long gulp of an ice cold beer after working in the hot sun all day.
“Captain Tully,” Daniels said, unable to contain a smile. “This is Mr. Daniels of Cornerstone Military Applications. I’m here in Mosquero with a good amount of your folks. A lot of women and children. And I’ve been dying to speak to you. Do you think we could meet, face to face?”
EIGHTEEN
─▬▬▬─
TANKERS
La Casa fell in a roar of flame and a burst of gunfire.
Lee, Abe, and Menendez’s crew, hit it right at the tail end of dusk.
Usually you waited until the wee hours of the morning, but a few things had occurred that made them decide to accelerate their plans.
Obviously also under the assumption that attacks happened in the wee hours of the morning, the cartel men at La Casa had all gathered in for an evening meal, and they’d left only two men on guard, and those men weren’t even on the perimeter.
They were close in with the rest.
In fact, Lee watched them receive plates of food from the fire.
And, as the sky turned a deep orange, and the land around them turned navy blue, the lonely two sentries were distracted by eating their plates of food, their rifles slung on their back.
Lee couldn’t help but let out a wheeze of dark humor as he watched the sentries constantly turning back towards the blazing campfire of their companions, and trading jokes with them. They were cooking away their natural night vision.
Lee couldn’t have asked for a softer target.
He’d already scrambled everyone into position along the perimeter of La Casa when he’d seen the entire cartel crew gathered in one spot. Seeing the sentries destroy their night vision decided him.
Menendez’s crew had loaned him one of their radios and earpieces—the batteries kept alive by judicious and obsessive use of a solar recharger—and it was over their squad channel that he transmitted, keeping his voice to a low husk: “This is a go. Everyone open up on my first shot.”
He aimed his .50 caliber Barrett right at a sentry’s chest. Through the optics, the man smiled and shoveled food into his mouth.
Lee almost felt like he was standing right there with the man.
He wondered what he was smiling about.
Lee wasn’t positive about the vertical adjustment he’d dialed into the scope when he eased the trigger back and let the bullet fly. But then a massive hole opened the sentry’s chest and sent his body tumbling.
The western and southern perimeter of La Casa suddenly twinkled, like a cloud of lightning bugs had erupted into existence, and a second later the sound of a rolling fusillade of gunfire thundered over Lee.
Thirty seconds after that, all was quiet, and nothing inside of La Casa was moving, save for the dancing flames of the campfire.
Lee and Abe jogged across the mile of plains between them and La Casa.
Over the comms, he heard Menendez’s men quip back and forth to each other, and an occasional security round blasted out into the night as they cleaned up a survivor.
Seven minutes after Lee’s first shot, he arrived at the fence surrounding La Casa.
He keyed his comms. “Lee here. Me and Abe are coming over the perimeter on the west side. Check fire.”
“You’re clear. Come on,” came Menendez’s reply.
Lee climbed over the fence, his arms tiring from lugging the heavy Barrett. Abe followed him, and then the two strode casually into the wreckage that had been La Casa.
They walked into the circle of orange light made by the campfire. It crackled merrily, as though unconcerned with the carnage around it. Men lay in every state. Spread eagle. Curled up. Slouched in sitting positions. Heads scooped empty by passing rounds. Eyes staring at nothing.
Their blood was splattered across their food, and sat in patches that looked black in the pale dirt.
Lee surveyed the scene without expression, then went to a weathered old picnic table where several dead shapes were slumped.
He set his heavy rifle down in the center of the table. The two men sitting on the bench seat seemed to regard it with empty eyes. Lee shoved them so they fell backwards into the dirt.
Old habits died hard.
You never assumed anyone was dead. And you certainly didn’t want them within arm’s reach of a loaded weapon.
Abe poked around the plates of food, but didn’t seem to find anything that wasn’t contaminated with blood and brain matter.
Two of Menendez’s men made the rounds, stripping weapons and piling them up off to the side. A few others had taken up positions on the outskirts of the camp, keeping watch.
Menendez approached, holding something. He shoved it into Lee’s hand.
It was a satphone.
“One of the guys was holding it,” Menendez said.
Lee turned it on. “Did you check the call log?”
“It wasn’t on.”
Lee checked anyways. “Few calls placed today. Nothing within the last hour.” He turned it off. “Still. I’d prefer not to stick around. Just in case they managed some sort of distress signal.”
Menendez nodded. “I’ve sent runners to get our vehicles.”
“Good.”
Menendez pointed to the satphone. “That a Project Hometown satphone?”
Lee eyed it. “Could be. We knew Greeley had given Nuevas Fronteras some bunkers.”
Abe appeared at Lee’s side. “That thing still work?”
Lee nodded, knowing what was coming next.
Abe looked at Lee with an expression of hope. “We can contact Fort Bragg.”
; Lee looked down at the satphone in his hand.
It felt, for one heart-stopping second, that the little brick of plastic and microchips was going to pull him off the face of the earth, into some black void from which he could never return.
He shoved the satphone into Abe’s hand. “Go ahead.”
Abe looked at him, a question in his eyes.
Lee knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the second he touched that satellite phone to his ear, and it connected him to any of the people from the United Eastern States—people that belonged to a version of him that felt buried and dead—then he would cease to be.
Not him, exactly.
But the version of him that he needed to be right now.
It would dissolve like a puff of smoke, and he wasn’t sure what it was going to leave behind. He wasn’t sure what was left anymore, underneath all the armor he’d build up, all the calluses. He wasn’t sure who he was without it.
Lee cleared his throat. “You remember the number?”
A tinge of concern crossed over Abe’s eyes as he regarded his friend, but he nodded. “Fort Bragg Command is the only number I have memorized.”
“Same,” Lee responded. “Make the call, then.”
Abe hesitated for a moment longer, but then extended the antenna and dialed the number.
Lee looked away from him, a slight grimace on his lips as his stomach continued to turn circles inside of him.
Distantly, he heard the line ringing against Abe’s ear.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Abe pulled the phone away after a few more moments. “No answer.”
Lee shrugged, trying not to show his relief. “Try again later.”
Menendez cleared his throat. “Where you wanna go after this?”
Lee considered going back to the hideaway a mile from here. But that was too close. “Well, worst-case scenario here, but if they managed to get some sort of distress signal out, I don’t want to be too close when the cartel cavalry rolls in.” As an aside, Lee perked up and looked at Menendez. “You wouldn’t happen to have any Claymores, would you?”
Menendez smirked, but shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”
“Damn.”
“Good idea though.”
“Well, sergeant, here’s the situation. We need to get in contact with Tex, if he’s still alive. You knew him best out of all of us. Where do you think he is?”
Menendez grew uncomfortable again, as he had back at the hideaway. “Frankly, Lee, I still think he’s dead. I think he would have tried to make contact with me if he were still alive. And I’ve been to every outpost within fifty miles of here over the course of the last month. If he’s taken up residence anywhere, it’s not around here.”
Lee looked thoughtful. “The bunker north of Caddo. The one we ran the power plant operation out of.”
“Yeah?”
“You said that you’d been there. Watched it for six hours.”
Menendez nodded. “We did. No sign of anyone.”
“But you said that Breckenridge and some wounded had been left there before we assaulted the power plant.”
Another nod.
“Did you get close enough to the bunker for the security systems to see you?”
This time Menendez hesitated. After a moment, he shook his head. “We weren’t real sure of what was happening, or who was in control of what. We didn’t want to reveal ourselves.”
“So it’s possible that Breckenridge and twenty-some-odd number of wounded are still holed up in there.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s possible.”
Out on the road north of La Casa, a series of headlights appeared.
Lee watched them for a moment. “Those your guys, right?”
Menendez confirmed via the squad comms.
It was them. Menendez’s two trucks incoming, as well as the one that Lee and Abe had stolen. They’d given the keys over to Menendez’s men to bring the vehicles around.
A moment later, the trucks pulled into La Casa.
Menendez turned away from Lee and hollered at his men. “Weapons, ammo, ordnance and food go in the trucks. Leave the bodies where they are.”
Around the compound, Menendez’s crew began to gather up the stacks of weapons they’d liberated, while others searched the compound’s buildings for anything else that might be of use to them.
Menendez turned back to Lee. “So you want to go stand in front of the bunker. Make sure Breckenridge sees you. If he’s still there.”
“That bunker’s our ticket,” Lee pointed out. “This raid will give us some guns and ammo. Maybe some food. But what’s sitting in that bunker will keep us operating out here for a lot longer. And it’s our best bet at figuring out what’s going on with the bunkers—and with Tex.”
Lee realized that Menendez bore an edge of suspicion in his gaze.
He understood the questions that must be rolling around in the sergeant’s head.
“We’re on the same team here,” Lee assured him. “We both want to figure out what’s happened to Tex. And we both want to rip Nuevas Fronteras to shreds. I think we’ll be more effective together. But I guess that’s up to you.”
“But you’re going to go to that bunker regardless,” Menendez reasoned.
Lee nodded. “Yes, I am. But not tonight. Tonight, we need to see what kind of goodies we pulled in. Re-up on ammo and weapons.”
“You got another place we can go? One that’s not so close to La Casa?”
“Yeah,” Lee answered. “We got OP Elbert.”
Menendez pulled his head back. “Those cannibal fucks?”
Lee gave Menendez a significant look. “Well. Let’s just say they’re not doing much cannibalizing lately.”
Menendez considered this and then shrugged. “Tex wanted them gone anyways. Guess I should thank you for saving me the trouble.”
It was strange to Lee to consider what a month had done to him.
Strange and uncomfortable.
He remembered being at one of Tex’s hideouts, and speaking secretively to Abe and Julia. About how they weren’t so sure of Tex’s motivations. How they didn’t like how he was planning to wipe out OP Elbert simply because they were a liability.
But…
Times change.
People change with them.
Abe shifted his weight. Rested both hands on the buttstock of his hanging rifle. “Lee.”
Lee had been tensing for it.
Dreading it.
Knowing it was coming.
The tension came out of him in an unforeseen blast of irritation. “Dammit, Abe. We’re this fucking close, and you wanna bail out now?”
Abe seemed taken aback by the unexpected heat of Lee’s response. But then his expression darkened, and his eyes flashed like thunderheads. “First off, getting some fuel back to the UES isn’t bailing out, Lee. That’s the whole reason we came down here in the first place.” Abe took a step toward Lee, and thrust his hands out wide. “And whaddaya mean ‘this close?’ Close to what? To knocking on the door of that bunker and seeing who answers? Of maybe finding Tex? Of maybe being able to run your vendetta against Mateo Ibarra for a little while longer? But for how long, Lee? How long are you gonna keep doing this?”
Lee faced his friend—and sometimes his strongest opponent—and he didn’t look away. His hands clenched into fists at his side, and he thought about just doing it—shit, they’d been heading for a fight for quite a while now…
But then he just bit his bottom lip until he thought it would bleed. And that was good. That was what he needed right now.
He needed a little more pain.
He needed to be reminded.
Abe stood, arms still outstretched, the question hanging between them.
Lee released his clenched fists. Then nodded towards the tankers. “Take them and go, then.”
“I can only take one, Lee.”
“Then do it.”
Abe’s hands flopped to his side.
They watched each other for another moment, both of them knowing what the other needed, what they wanted, and neither willing to give it to the other. They each held it hostage—Lee would never admit that Abe was right, would never let him leave on good terms, and Abe wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t let go of the original mission.
Lee was the first to look away. He was the first to cut the cord that bound them together.
Because he had other places to be. Other things to do.
He had his own mission to complete.
“Go on, then,” Lee said.
And said nothing else.
And neither did Abe.
What could either say?
They both knew that they weren’t going to give up what they wanted. So what was the point in saying anything else at all? To restart the argument all over again, so that it could wind up in the same spot?
Could they have wished each other good luck? Could they have told each other to stay safe out on those dangerous roads?
Maybe. But they didn’t.
Abe dipped his head, turned, and walked away, towards his own mission.
Lee watched him go for a few steps, and then turned and walked towards his own.
***
As darkness descended on Checkpoint Scarecrow, the Hunter-Killer squads started to get antsy.
Sam stood in the turret of their Humvee. Pickell had been in the thing for several hours straight, scanning the perimeter of their checkpoint. Billings had ordered Sam to swap out with Pickell so he could grab some food and water.
The other squad’s vehicles were arranged, as before, in a large circle, their gunners situated behind their various machine guns, facing out into the gathering darkness, and slowly getting more and more worried about sitting around after dusk.
It was one thing to run night ops, which was a shaky thing anyways. But at least during night ops they moved. They hunted. They did their job.
No one wanted to just sit around, waiting for the primals to sniff them out.
If they were going to be sitting still, they wanted to be sitting still behind the high voltage wires of the Butler Safe Zone.
At the back end of the Humvee, Billings and the other squad leaders were assembled. The fastback was popped open. Sam couldn’t see Loudermouth’s unconscious body from the turret, but he knew the severely injured man had been laying there for hours.
