So, around eleven, he crawled his way out from under the MATV, agonizingly slow because his left arm and leg were uncooperative and because he wanted to stay quiet for the other two bodies that were huddled under the MATV—Brinly and his second in command.
When he’d freed himself from the confines of the undercarriage, he rubbed blood into his face, hefted his rifle, and found the nearest sentry.
It was a woman, sitting a few yards out from the line of vehicles, her back against a thin pine tree, her eyes scouring the darkness. Her sharp hearing alerted her to his approach, and she turned to face him.
She jerked when she realized who it was. “Major Harden.” She started to rise.
Lee waved for her to relax. Took his time sinking down to one knee with a quiet grunt. “What’s your name?” he asked her.
She seemed confused by the question. “Linn,” she murmured back, her voice barely above a whisper.
“How long you been on post?”
“Three hours. I’m off at midnight.”
Lee nodded. “Why don’t you catch an extra hour of shut-eye?”
By the half-moon above them, he saw her eyes blink a few times. “Are you sure?”
Lee nodded. “Yeah, I can’t sleep anyways. Go ahead.”
She considered this for a moment, but then rose quietly to her feet. She cocked her head as she looked down at Lee’s kneeling form. “You need to rest too, major.”
He smiled, cognizant suddenly that he didn’t have his eyepatch on, and wondered what his smile looked like in the darkness with that ruined hole in his face. Linn didn’t seem to react, but Lee looked away anyways. “I’ll rest. Later. Go on. I got your post, soldier.”
Linn nodded. “Alright. Thank you, sir.”
She disappeared into the night, to whatever vehicle had become her home, either to sleep inside of it, or under it, or maybe on top of it, if she were the type to enjoy the stars overhead while she slept.
Lee settled into her spot, the ground still warm from her body. Exhaustion and heightened awareness washed over him in alternating waves, one constantly scouring away the other in an endless cycle.
With no reason to keep his thoughts in check anymore, he allowed them to run in their random directions, allowed the worries to overtake him, allowed his mind to obsess over them. After all, how else are you supposed to occupy yourself in the middle of the night?
Would Sam get inside Greeley? How would he do it? And would he even be successful when he did get inside? Was Lee wrong to trust him with such a big task? Was he wrong to let Sam convince him to trust the others? Johnson and Frenchie. Sam barely knew those guys, but had vouched for them nonetheless.
Lee knew why that was. It’s difficult to go into battle with someone and come out the other side, having put your life in that person’s hands, and then not trust them.
But just because you’ve been to war with someone, doesn’t mean they won’t fuck you over in the end.
Anyone could. That was the thing. Didn’t matter who they were, because everyone was an individual, with their own fears and desires and obsessions. Everyone was the hero of their own story. And that’s what made them dangerous to Lee. Because no one was truly with Lee. They all had their own reasons for being there.
At what point would their paths diverge? And when that happened, as it inevitably did, then what would they do? You could never know. Not until it actually happened.
You could never know who to trust, and so Lee trusted no one.
Everyone had the potential to become his enemy in the end.
And, of course, this assumed they survived long enough to get to that point. Which was a whole can of worms unto itself. Because everyone had to die. Eventually. And they did it often around Lee. Sometimes he wondered if God had rendered some curse over him, that he would always survive, only to watch everyone around him die.
Who’s next? He wondered. Who’s next to die? And who’s next to betray me?
Why did he even keep doing what he was doing? Was it hubris? Did he think he was some weapon of God? Or was it just violence begetting violence, an eye for an eye until the whole world was blind?
Was he a part of the problem? Was he just dragging everyone down into the depths with him?
Why so much fighting? Why so much killing? Why so much bloodshed? What was it at the core of him that guided all these things, that had brought him to this place right now?
It was in this soup of thoughts, sometime after midnight, that the satphone in his pocket vibrated.
He dragged it out and glanced at the screen before answering, his heart already accelerating, while his gut tightened with apprehension. “Abe. What’s up?”
Abe sounded like he was moving. His voice was quiet, just a murmur over the connection. “Lee. We got a problem. Pack of primals has been spotted moving towards Position Two.”
Lee’s mounting blood pressure crescendoed into a hum in his ears. He stood up, swearing. “Abe, what are you doing?”
“We have to greenlight the op, Lee. Me and my team are preparing to move into position.”
“But Sam’s not inside Greeley.”
“We don’t have an option at this point, Lee. If we wait, Position Two might have to engage those primals. And if they do, then it’ll be too late. The sentries in Triprock will hear the gunfire and know that we’re out here. We have to move now.”
For a flash, Lee tried to come up with a legitimate reason why this was foolhardy. But he couldn’t.
The primals were a variable that Lee could not control. No matter what he tried to do, he could not get rid of the possibility that they might close with his men on the ground, and then the shooting would start, and the op would be ruined.
Things were moving, and he couldn’t stop them.
“Alright, Abe,” Lee hissed, stalking back towards the line of vehicles, and then breaking into a stiff jog. “Do it quick and quiet as you possibly can. I’m gonna scramble the forces and have them moving to support you right now, and I’m gonna try to close off that northwestern corner so no one gets out.”
“Roger that, Lee. We’re on the move.”
Lee hung up and crammed the satphone back in his pocket. He stopped along the dark bulk of the MATV that he’d tried to sleep under. He kicked the door panel. “Brinly! Wake up!”
There was a snort and a thrash from underneath the vehicle. Brinly’s head appeared near Lee’s boots, blinking rapidly. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“We gotta move on Triprock right-fucking-now.”
Brinly was already clambering out from under the vehicle.
“Get as many squads as you can on the road within the next five minutes,” Lee continued. “Have them come in from the west of Triprock and get on the main comms with the teams on the ground there. Provide support where it’s needed.”
Brinly hauled himself onto his feet. “Where are you going?”
Lee was already backing away from the MATV, heading for the end of the column of vehicles. “I’ve gotta cover that northwestern corner, make sure no one gets out of Triprock. Tell Angela and have her coordinate anyone you don’t take with you.”
Lee didn’t wait for a response or an argument. He turned and began running as best as his raggedy hip would allow him. Vehicles flashed by on his right, the dark woods to his left. Sentries were coming alive all over the place, hearing the general stir that was spreading through the ranks like a gust of wind.
“What’s going on?
“What happened?”
“Are we in danger?”
Lee didn’t answer any of them. There wasn’t time.
By the time he reached the back of the column, the wave of heightened tension had preceded him. At the very rear of the column was the Humvee he’d left the previous afternoon. Three figures hovered nearby, looking lost and unsure of themselves. One of them was a woman in civilian clothes, the other two were men in Army fatigues.
“You three!” Lee ordered, stabbing a finger at them. �
��Get in the Humvee! Now!”
Lee made for the driver’s door, as the others jolted like they’d been stuck with cattle prods and jumped for the other doors. Lee had no idea who in the hell these people were, but they were his people, and now they were going to be his team, like it or not.
Lee threw himself behind the wheel, dragging his left leg in with his hands, then slamming the door, his rifle stuck between his thighs. He flipped the switch on the dash, waited two agonizing seconds for the ignition to be ready, then cranked the Humvee up.
The other doors slammed, a jumble of limbs and cursing filling the interior. Pure confusion.
Lee yanked the shifter into reverse. “One of you get in the turret, the rest of you—guns out the windows.” He slammed on the gas. The engine roared, skidding dirt and gravel. The Humvee rocketed backwards, and Lee spun the wheel, ramming the backend carelessly into a stand of saplings. Shifter into forward. He cranked the wheel, hit the gas again, and then they were off, tearing down the dirt road, heading for Triprock.
NINE
─▬▬▬─
INFILTRATION
Nug stayed glued to his scope, the big objective lens soaking in enough moonlight to illuminate the scene of Triprock. Behind him, Scots held a rapid and quiet conference.
“Stetter, Jerzyck, Holmes, I need y’all to hightail it to the vehicles,” Scots said.
“Shit,” Holmes breathed back. “They’re gonna be right on our asses.”
“I know that. And I’m sorry. But you gotta do this. Get to the truck—and try to get them to follow you. This is our only chance to stave off the shooting long enough for Abe and his team to take Triprock.”
“Roger that, sern’t.”
“I’m staying with Nug,” Scots said. “Nug, you catching all this?”
Nug didn’t move from his scope, but murmured, “I copy.”
Down in the darkness, Nug’s eyes kept creeping to the left edge of his field of view through the scope. A black stripe ran diagonally off of the border of Triprock: A shallow arroyo, cast into absolute dark by the sharp angle of the moon. That would be where Abe and his team would make their incursion.
“Alright, gents,” Scots said. “Haul ass. And listen to me: If you have to shoot, then fucking shoot. I’d rather the op go to shit than lose you guys. But…”
“But try not to fuck everything up,” Stetter finished for his sergeant. “We got it.”
“Roll out,” Scots commanded.
There was the shuffling of boots and brush, and it rapidly faded into the night.
Down in Triprock, the stationary sentries continued their endless scanning of the terrain with their night vision. The foot patrols continued their rounds. Oblivious.
Nug felt Scots settle in next to him. “Scots to Position One. Gimme a sitrep on those primals.”
“They’re milling around about seven hundred yards from your pos. I got eyes on your boys running. So far no response from the primals.”
“Keep me updated.”
Abe Darabie’s voice cut in over the comms, just a whisper: “Assault element is drawing within a few hundred yards. We need the comms direct with our overwatch. If you’re not on overwatch right now, switch to the secondary channel.”
Scots shuffled around beside Nug, cursing under his breath as he switched the radio channel over. “You’ll need to keep me in the loop about what’s happening on the main channel.”
“Will do,” Nug murmured.
“Abe to Nug, we’re about two hundred yards from the fenceline. You got us?”
Nug shifted his optic to the left a bit. He searched the dark rift of the arroyo, but saw nothing. “Negative. Y’all are still hidden. Be advised, the stationary sentries have NODs, so no IR until they’re down. How copy?”
“I copy. No IR until the stationary sentries are eliminated. We’re moving in. Try to get eyes on us. I’m gonna need you to guide me into that sentry on the south side. That’s our point of entry.”
Nug swung the scope back over to the fenceline where the sentry stood. “Roger that. I got eyes on him. Let me know when you’re close to being exposed and I’ll coordinate your movements.”
The radio went silent.
Nug could just barely hear the murmur of the secondary channel through Scots’s earpiece. “Primals have spotted our runners,” Scots whispered. “But they’re not pursuing yet.”
Nug adjusted the magnification of his scope, focusing in on that sentry on the south side of Triprock. The mobile patrol had just passed him by, and were now striding on towards the west side. The other mobile sentry was approaching the east.
“Nug to Abe. Your south sentry is alone. Mobile patrol just moved past. You’ve got maybe four minutes before the next mobile patrol reaches your insertion point.”
“Copy.”
They didn’t have four minutes.
“Primals are breaking towards our runners,” Scots hissed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Please don’t let them chomp on my guys…”
Nug’s heart slammed the hard dirt beneath his chest. He never stopped his breathing exercises. It was the only thing he could control. It was the only thing that gave him a measure of calm in the chaos.
How much time until the shooting started? Because Nug was sure about one thing: His squad mates weren’t gonna reach their truck before those primals reached them.
***
Abe moved like a wolf spider. Sprawled out on all fours, just his palms and toes touching the ground, the belly of his chest rig skimming the top of the dirt. His rifle was strapped tight to his back to keep it from dragging. The side wall of the arroyo stood to his right, banking sharply towards where a drainage culvert ran under the fenceline of Triprock.
Abe stopped, peered around the corner of the miniature canyon he was in. All of his muscles were locked. His core burned, but he held his position.
There. The south sentry. Maybe fifty yards away.
Abe settled himself silently into the dirt. He rolled slightly to his right, looking over his left shoulder at Menendez and the rest of the team strung out along the arroyo behind him. He raised one finger, then pointed dead ahead.
Menendez nodded, cinched closer, his rifle up.
Abe slid the fixed blade from the sheath on his chest rig. Then touched off his comms.
“Abe to Nug. In position. Going silent. Guide me in.”
Nug’s response was quiet, each word pronounced clearly and deliberately. “Shadowy spot on the side of a large boulder. You see it?”
Abe craned his neck around. Spotted what Nug had described—a big boulder with a deep, moon-cast shadow on the west side of it. About ten yards from him, right where the arroyo started to become too shallow for decent concealment.
He clicked his PTT twice.
“You’ll have about five seconds to get there while the sentry’s looking east. Standby to move.”
Abe waited, muscles clenched and ready.
“Move.”
Abe was a whisper of a shadow. He put absolute trust into Nug—didn’t even look at the sentry. Nug had told him the sentry was looking elsewhere and that was all Abe needed to now. He skittered across the soft dirt at the bed of the arroyo, up the other side, then rolled into position behind the rock.
“Perfect,” Nug whispered in his ear.
Abe glanced back to his original position. Menendez had taken it, his body pressed tight to the dirt wall of the arroyo, just one eye and his rifle barrel sticking out, trained on the sentry. Ready to take him out if Nug couldn’t.
“Stand of sage on the fenceline, right at your eleven o’clock.”
Two clicks of Abe’s PTT.
“Standby…move.”
Abe crabbed across the ground, took the sage brush, huddled on one knee. He peered through the brambles. The moon was right in his face, and he could see the silver outline of it across the sentry’s head, highlighting the NODs over his eyes.
The sentry swept his gaze across the arroyo. Then right at Abe. He seemed to be star
ing at him.
Abe didn’t move. Didn’t dare breathe, for fear it might stir the branches near his face.
After a heart-stopping three seconds, the sentry looked away.
He was about ten yards from Abe. Which meant sound was becoming more and more of a factor. Abe knew how to stalk silently, but it’s very difficult to get within arm’s reach of someone without them hearing you.
You can do this. You’ve done it before.
His fingers milked the grip on his knife.
“Abe,” Nug said. “You got no cover between you and the sentry. I’m gonna make a loud whistle to draw his attention east. Two clicks if you’re cool with that, one click if you don’t like it.”
Abe gritted his teeth. A single whistle wouldn’t necessarily bomb the entire op, and their options were limited. And time was running out. He clicked his PTT twice.
His pulse thrummed through his body, his lungs aching for air, everything in him focused on that sentry. There was nothing else in the world but Abe and that man, and the knife in Abe’s hand, and where he planned to put it.
***
“Primals aren’t taking the bait,” Scots hissed. “Motherfuckers. Nug, they’re still coming our way.”
Nug felt his throat tighten. He had to deliberately tell himself to breathe past his locked up lungs. “When I whistle, they’re gonna be on our ass.”
“You stay in that fucking scope,” Scots said. “Do what you gotta do. I got your back.”
Nug felt his lips tremble as he pursed them and took a deep breath.
***
The whistle. Long, and low, and mournful. It could’ve been a nightbird. But it was too loud.
Abe watched the sentry jerk his head, looking east.
He moved, all sense of reality fading down to this finite moment in time. He slipped across the dried earth, his footfalls just whispers in the sand. Closer, closer.
The sentry keyed his comms, still staring east. “Anyone else hear that?”
Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed Page 8
