“I see the report regarding these raiders and their practice of trading women to the camp guards, but I don’t see anything about a second source, Sergeant.”
“That would be me, sir,” Aaron finally said. Up until this point, the slender biker had managed to stay at the periphery of the conversation. More like an escort than a participant. Now, though, was his time to step up.
“Aaron Courtland, sir. Lately of the Copperheads motorcycle club, but before that…I was a special agent with the FBI out of Fayetteville. I’ve had contact with another agent who is being coerced into cooperating with the Homeland forces occupying the campgrounds at War Eagle, sir.”
Hotchkins paused, as if processing the information.
“Were you operating undercover, Agent Courtland?”
“No, sir. I had an informant on the inside of the club funneling me information regarding certain activities that came to light. When the lights went out, I was able to talk my way into the group.”
Catching the colonel’s skeptical expression, Scott rolled his eyes. Even after more than four months of hell, Scott noticed some people were still clinging to the old ways of doing things. Hence, Aaron’s pussyfooting around the facts.
“Aaron, tell him the whole thing, okay? No reason to keep things from the colonel. We don’t have time to mess around.”
That admonition broke the ice, and Aaron laid out the arrangement in some detail, including the identity of the agent on the inside. Hotchkins seemed to perk up immediately, sensing the bond between Aaron and Alex Scofield. As well as the relationship between the senior FBI agent and the chapter president of the Copperheads.
“Do you have a fallback method of contacting Agent Scofield?”
“No, sir. That dead drop was an absolute last resort kind of thing. However, I believe if we can leave him a message at the same location, he will contrive a reason to check, but it may not be for days. Not sure we can wait that long.”
Scott listened as the two men spoke, and idly watched the other soldiers working around the room. They looked like no other headquarters outfit he’d seen while in the Marines. All of the men carried slung rifles, holstered pistols, and extra magazine pouches. Their clothes were neat but needed washing, with that kind of ground-in dirt only men accustomed to crawling around on their bellies looking for cover could get. These men had seen action, and some still bore bandages under their body armor.
Scott realized the colonel was utilizing his walking wounded as his HQ troops. He also realized that the day was slipping away and he had other places to be.
“Colonel, I hate to interrupt, but may I be excused, sir? You have my reports and Aaron can answer any questions you may have. I hate to be rude, but I have an op kicking off shortly. I need to get my men briefed.”
For an enlisted man to interrupt a colonel was a major no-no, even in times of war. Maybe especially then. However, Scott was merely a civilian auxiliary, not a real soldier, and that designation served as a fig leaf to cover their own independent actions. Scott’s unit was a militia in everything but name, though both sides resisted the urge to call it such. Usually the ex-game warden was fine with playing nice, but not this time. He’d managed an hour of sleep before meeting the Humvee dispatched to ferry him, and Aaron, to this meet, and now he was feeling the urge to keep moving.
“What kind of operation, sergeant?” Hotchkins asked, and his question might have included a little touch of frost around the edges. Colonels, even National Guard colonels on a combat footing, didn’t always appreciate having their elbows jostled.
“Extermination, sir.”
That response garnered a wrinkled brow from Colonel Hotchkins. Clearly, he was wondering what the hell was going down this night, and how it might affect his own plans.
“Care to explain, Sergeant Keller?”
“Yes, sir. Are you familiar with the scouting report passed on by Sergeant Barden and Lieutenant Conners regarding the other hostile camp, the one in Lowell?”
The wrinkled brow relaxed as Hotchkins considered the older man’s words. Keller might be a pretend sergeant, but he was a for-real manhunter and expert scout. Yes, Hotchkins remembered that report.
“Yes, I believe I do. I also recall the request for assistance your brother Darwin made for handling these animals. Regretfully, you also know the response I had to give.”
“Yes, sir. The unknown forces assembled at this second base, which we now believe to be encamped at War Eagle, represent the bigger threat for the moment,” Scott replied respectfully. “We have been tasked with neutralizing this group while the Guard focuses on that threat. This is our intended mission.”
“But you mentioned extermination, sergeant. I was under the impression the overall plan was to confuse and mislead the gang members raiding out of Lowell.”
“Well, sir, we figured the best way to do this was to weaken and possibly eliminate the command structure there. And the op we’ve got planned is a major step in that direction.”
“And…” Hotchkins prompted.
“And we are going to poison their water supply and kill anyone who tries to leave the camp for more water. Simple as that.”
Hotchkins regarded Scott for a long moment, considering the barebones of a plan the man had explained.
“What about their prisoners, Scott? Seems more than a tad rough on them.”
Scott cleared his throat, feeling the urge to spit.
“Sir, these monsters don’t keep prisoners. Anyone going into their camp is either already dead or killed within an hour of arrival. After being raped and tortured for the amusement of the gang members. Then they are butchered and eaten.”
“I read the report, Scott,” Hotchkins said, his voice going low. “I was hoping it was just an exaggeration. We know some of the survivors have resorted to eating the dead, but what Sergeant Barden and his men reported was beyond anything I’d imagined.”
“I was there, sir.” Scott ground out, finding it hard to put what he’d seen into words that properly conveyed the horror. “My team and Sergeant Barden’s. We split the perimeter so as to observe the entire layout. Two days we watched. We watched them murder and desecrate our neighbors, and all we could do was watch. So, yes sir. Our plan is to exterminate them, and we won’t we taking any prisoners.
“If you want some kind of accounting of the dead, I suggest you send in a team after we are done to count the skulls of their victims. They had quite a pile already started. And just remember, the men running the camp at War Eagle? They set these ghouls up in business. Think on that if you start to feel the urge to be merciful.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Crawling into hell lugging a fifty-pound backpack full of powdered death turned out to be harder than even Scott imagined. Especially when he started the trip in daylight. He didn’t have much room to complain, since the plan was his own. So he continued inching forward, using his knees and elbows and keeping his butt down, pushing the pack in front of him as he went. It was nearing four p.m. and he had another thirty yards to go to reach the drainage ditch.
The modified Ghillie suit featured black, brown and gray strips of cloth added to the more common shades of green. Taking this route, Scott mapped the undulations in the ground, these ripples in the earth, and used these slight gullies like switchbacks to shield his presence. Once at the ditch, he would hold until nightfall to complete the crossing.
Pausing, Scott opened his mouth to allow his ears to gather more sound. There, he heard it again. The deep grumble of diesel engines groaning to life. Tracking the sounds, Scott knew the engine noises originated inside the camp. He knew what that likely meant, and he hoped the rest of the force was up to the job. Well, he thought, it depends which road they take, doesn’t it?
Thinking back, Scott reflected on how he came to be here at this juncture. Their combined force set out two hours after dawn. That was later than Scott wanted, for they would need time to get the men in place, but he was glad for the reinforcements. Fi
rst, his own group had expanded to over twenty shooters from the Keller community to support his own six-man scout team. Then, Max and his hand-picked band of ten, mostly club members with a few of the neighbors with the requisite skills thrown into the mix.
Finally, Bobby Accord and nearly his entire crew, sixteen strong, pulled up to the gates. They came with apologies, since two of their trucks refused to start due to dead batteries. They also showed up with a completely illegal M60 machine gun that one of the retreat’s members claimed he “found” while out salvaging. From the way he kept twitching, Scott figured the man found it out the back door on an armory somewhere. Everybody had a good chuckle at the evasion and Scott wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Nick Keller, by mutual agreement, was in overall command. This decision was not a hard one to make, since Nick had a reputation from leading the Keller community defense force from the beginning and he showed an aptitude for the job. Also, and maybe most importantly, he had the respect of the leaders from the other allied communities.
Nick took ten minutes to remind everyone of their roles to play in the upcoming mission, and then he led out to their designated rally point. For Scott, the trip was nerve-wracking, as he couldn’t stop searching the sky.
“You got an itch, uncle?” Nick asked, serious as he saw the older man’s fidgeting. Nick knew from experience to listen when veterans started feeling that indescribable sensation of enemy eyes on them. He’d felt that way more than once, and lived because he’d heeded the unseen signals. If Scott was feeling twitchy, then Nick was prepared to abort the mission before it started.
“No,” Scott replied, knowing what his nephew meant. “Just not comfortable going this overt, that’s all. Since this shit all started, I’ve stuck to the shadows as much as possible. But for the plan to work, we need the extra men.”
They were riding together in one of the older King Cab pickups Stan and his crew of mechanical geniuses had resurrected. Ben was driving, with Scott riding shotgun and Nick, with his mapcase laying on the seat, riding on the back bench. Nick and Scott considered changing up the seating to ride in separate vehicles in case of an attack, but finally decided they needed more time to discuss the deployments before hitting the rendezvous point and splitting up.
“You decided how you want to divide up the group?” Scott asked over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the green expanse to his right. Their riders in the bed of the truck were likely also watching the tree line and the ditches, but Scott would not rely on another’s senses if he could watch as well. That was the new normal for survivors. A watchfulness that might have seemed insane in the world before.
“You said the four-lane to the east was obstructed at the mini-mall plaza?”
“Unless they sent in a crew yesterday to clear it, those buses are still blocking the route,” Scott replied, thinking back on the ambush and the improvised explosives used. They’d taken the powder charges from a pair of homemade claymores at the farm. Surplus, you might say, after the black powder had been replaced with a more potent ANFO and aluminum mix their backyard chemists had cooked up.
“Alright. I’ll set up Bobby’s group there with the M-60, with a squad under James for stiffening,” Nick said finally. “I’ll get Max and his people to cover the two-lane route. You sure they can handle the job? No offense, but you’ve seen him in action, and I haven’t.”
“Yeah, they can do it. Max picked only guys who’ve seen the elephant.”
“Jeez, how old are you?” Nick teased. “I thought that phrase went out of vogue after Iwo Jima.”
“Mind your elders, sonny,” Scott shot back, trying for the same humor his nephew was exhibiting. Truthfully, Scott was feeling his age, and despite the stretching exercises learned from Yalonda, since he refused to call it yoga, he was hoping his body wouldn’t fail him on this next phase of the mission.
Hours later, Scott was still thinking about that conversation as he pushed on through, leveraging his tired limbs into yet another creeping motion that bought him six more inches. This wasn’t lactic acid buildup, heck, he wasn’t even breaking a sweat despite the heat of his suit, but still his bones ached at the repetitive motion. Probably just getting old, he thought as he heard the trucks rumble for the gate. Would they go left or right?
Either way, not his problem at the moment, Scott reminded himself. Get to the ditch, shelter in the shadow of the drainage pipe, and wait for nightfall. He was still fifteen yards shy of his goal when he heard the distant sound of gunfire. First, it was the boom, boom of large caliber rifles, followed by the pop, pop, pop, pop of carbines and then the budda budda budda budda of automatic fire. Machine gun fire.
That’s the M60, Scott realized, and he knew then it was Bobby’s group that drew the short straw. Well, they might look on the matter differently, as many of the members of Bobby’s group wanted a chance at these cannibals. Now, they were certainly getting their opportunity.
Nobody doubted their sincerity, Scott knew. They were just not as experienced as say, Max’s group or Nick’s defense force members, since many in both the other groups had prior military backgrounds. That didn’t make them all John Rambo, but chances were likely they’d been deployed at some point, and Scott knew most had at least one or two instances of being in a ‘two-way shooting range’ as Mark called it.
The firing died out after less than five minutes, and then there were the occasional pop, pop, pop, as the battlefield was cleaned up. That cheered Scott immensely, as he doubted the ghouls would have wasted a bullet on lunch if they’d won the gunfight. What the butcher’s bill might be, Scott had no way of knowing for hours yet, but the trucks never returned.
Once Scott slid into the drainage ditch, he saw he had company, and froze. Be still and be silent, he thought, and maybe it will go away. In the shadowed ground of the narrow ditch, the black ball of coils was not immediately identifiable to a layman, but Scott knew. The dark, striated scales told Scott the story, even before the head eased into view and he was treated to the telltale white, open mouth as the reptile slithered with an undulating motion in his direction.
Water moccasin. Cotton Mouth. These were common names for the deadly viper, and they all indicated the creature’s natural proclivities. Attracted to wet terrain, lakes and small bodies of water, this species of snake had a bad reputation. Rightly so, in Scott’s considerable experience. Then, he caught a whiff of the snake’s odor, that pungent goat stink, and he knew this was going to be a problem. That was the scent of a pissed-off water moccasin.
When the snake struck, Scott just managed to angle his arm in the way to protect his face, taking the fangs on the reinforced cuff of his left glove instead. Before the snake could recover, Scott neatly separated the head from the rest of the body with his curve-bladed Spyderco knife, his right hand smoothly bringing the knife around and cutting from the bottom up. The snake’s body hit the side of the ditch, continuing to writhe for several long seconds while Scott used the unsharpened back edge of the knife to pry the frozen jaws apart.
After that, Scott kicked back, adrenalin bleeding off as he tried to get comfortable in the ditch. Slowly, he relaxed and let his mind wander back to the memories of the scary snakes he’d seen in the Amazon basin. From the freaky-looking whipsnakes to the massive anacondas, and finally, to that equally terrifying cousin of the water moccasin, the bushmaster. He hadn’t known their names then, just that he didn’t like snakes, and his antipathy had not lessened over the years.
After getting over his close brush with the viper, Scott began to refresh his recall about the features of the camp, and most especially, the water tank. Made of corrugated metal, the white cylinder looked about twenty-foot tall and ten feet in diameter, as best they could tell from a distance.
The key element was the access port atop the tank, since no one had a good enough vantage to tell if it was padlocked, screwed into place or otherwise secured. Scott carried a short-handled set of bolt cutters as Plan A, but he wasn�
��t completely certain that would be enough.
As Scott tried to game all the angles, he heard a shuffle of feet, several pairs, and he realized it was already drawing close to dusk. Morning and night, some of the camp dwellers, usually those ranking lower on whatever pecking order determined their status, would walk down to the creek behind the facility and dip up buckets of water for their daily use. The contents of the big water tank were apparently reserved for the higher class of scum. This observation gave birth to the plan that brought Scott here in this warm fall evening.
As Scott hunkered down, pretending to be a pile of trash in the debris-littered ditch, he allowed his mind to drift away from the immediate concerns. He had hours to kill, and no Angry Birds to help fill the time. So he thought about his daughter, and his family, and hoped they were all safe. His nephew, Nick, was somewhere out there, coordinating the upcoming festivities, and another other nephew, Glenn, was a rifleman with James’ squad, and likely part of that earlier furball with the ambushed raider force. He was glad Mark, much to his nephew’s disgust, had been detailed to help Bruce in holding the defenses at the farm.
Then there was his team, minus Mike. Ben and Keith were creeping into place near the fire-blackened and hastily repaired front gate, while Kevin Perkins was working with Yalonda and Sarah at their rendezvous site. If Scott were successful, he and the rest of his team would make their way back to that position to regroup.
Thinking about Sarah brought other matters to mind. She was in his thoughts a lot lately, and he wasn’t sure he liked where those thoughts led him. Despite chopped off hair and the absence of any kind of makeup, Sarah was an attractive woman. Weeks of hard physical labor and plentiful diet gave her a trim, athletic figure, and Scott enjoyed the way her pixie-cut hairdo tended to puff out when she removed her hat, giving her a short, light brown halo.
But mainly it was her eyes that drew his attention. They seemed filled with a fathomless depth, Scott felt them look directly into his soul. Those eyes disconcerted Scott, and made him step careful when he was in her presence.
Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain Page 25
