“Ah, I recognize Sergeant Barden’s handiwork here,” Scott said, leaning down to absorb everything he could make out from the color-coded map. “So, he found where the drones were being controlled?”
“Sure,” the colonel replied in a mild attempt at humor, “I just told him to look for the area where geeks with Coke-bottle glasses were strutting around with fake flight suits, and he spotted them right off.”
After the round of laughter, unforced and strangely comforting, died down, the colonel continued.
“All kidding aside, we think we have the trailers marked out, here,” he said, pointing at a small rectangular box neatly drawn into the hand-drawn representation of the compound. “Drones are locally operated from a special trailer equipped with some extremely large generators attached. These will be the first target, followed by the vehicle park here,” he gestured, “and the barracks we’ve identified.”
“So you are going to use artillery? To soften up the camp?” Aaron asked.
“Yes. Well, mainly using mortars, but I towed a couple of howitzers, too. And by the way, picked up some additional ammunition from the good folks at McAlister. Still don’t know if it will be enough, especially if we are rushing things. And I have to ask, Scott. How solid is this intel you got from the spy sent into your camp?”
Scott shrugged before answering. “I guess she could be lying about things, but not this.”
“Shit,” Max broke in, his voice dripping anger, “after we showed her Bennie, she couldn’t talk fast enough. Still think we should have capped her right there for what she did to Nick’s wife.”
The colonel sighed before asking, “Do I want to ask about this Bennie person?”
Scott shook his head.
“He was a learning tool, and an example, sir. And no, you don’t want to know the details. He’s dead anyway. Killed him myself less than an hour ago.”
“Cold,” Hotchins said simply before getting back into the intelligence his men had gathered.
“Cold world, colonel,” Scott replied, then added after a beat, “If it makes you feel any better, he helped murder an elderly couple and sold several girls into slavery. He was the source of our first details about the War Eagle compound.”
“Executed for crimes against humanity, then,” Hotchkins pronounced with no trace of sarcasm. “It will read better in the history books, if we ever get around to writing new ones.”
“Oh, great,” Scott moaned. “I can already see the indictment they will be filing against me at the Hague. Enough counts to fill up a Manhattan telephone book.”
“Steady on, Marine,” Colonel Hotchkins added. “You’ll likely be long dead before things get civilized enough for the revisionists to come out and rewrite history. Or send anyone to the World Court.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Scott said with more than a trace of mockery before shifting back to a more serious tone. “Now, let’s figure out how to kill these guys, shall we?”
CHAPTER FORTY
With a sense of deja vu, Scott traced the fence line around the boundary of the camp until he located the drainage pipe running into the target area. Once again, he was garbed up in his Ghillie suit, watching the clouds drift past the pale half-moon, preparing to penetrate another enemy perimeter. This time, however, he was bringing friends. With that, he thought about Max and wondered how his team was doing. Scott thought they had the harder job, and it was reflected in the fifty men he’d folded into his mission, with Aaron as his second in command.
Using his trusty wire cutters, Scott laid on the ground as he snipped away a semi-circle of the chain-link fencing approximately twenty feet to the left of the half-buried concrete drainage pipe. Scott made the hole larger than he needed, since he knew some of the guys in the team waiting in the tree line were carrying huge packs for this mission.
Even at this late hour, Scott could hear engines idling, and caught snatches of muted conversation on the cool night air. Well, early morning, he mentally corrected himself. 0200 hours, in military terms. This was a military camp, or at least, paramilitary.
Not for the first time, Scott wondered where Chambers and Homeland Security came up with all these armed and trained men. Unlike so many conspiracy theorists, Scott actually knew some things, or thought he did, about the department. For instance, he knew the Federal Protective Service only employed a little over one thousand officers. On the books, anyway. Even as he was entering the lion’s den, Scott couldn’t help but wonder. How the hell did Chambers get enough men from Immigration, Customs, and the Coast Guard to pull this force together? I guess those tinfoil hat guys were right about Homeland’s hiring spree of contractors before the lights went out, he decided. Maybe security hired for FEMA.
As soon as Scott found a place to hunker down behind a ragged line of low scrub, he broke squelch on his radio three times, paused, and did it again twice. The short range tactical radios they’d liberated from the police station in Siloam Springs so many weeks ago were now coming in handy. The Homeland boys might be listening to all their broadcasts, but the little radios now served a purpose beyond voice communications. A message didn’t have to be verbal to be understood and passed along.
Of course, his men still needed to find their way to his position. In pairs, the men sprinted across the dead ground and snaked under the cut, then hunkered down to make their way to their assigned rally point. The first dozen, in six groups, located Scott’s position easily enough. Scott would have preferred the men to travel individually, but he had to admit the pairs worked well when one hit the fence and the other stood watch before they repeated the evolution. They’d simply lacked the time for a more thorough workup.
The whole plan was a rushed affair, and Scott worried he and his men would pay the price for the hurried pace of the mission. Not that he had any room to complain, since the whole thing hinged on the assumption that Katrina Warren’s warning was correct. He worried about a trap, but the truth was, neither the National Guard nor the allied communities in the area could afford to wait.
When the last two fighters looked like they might wander on by, stumbling deeper into the camp, Scott caught their attention with a low hiss that caused their heads to jerk to the right so quickly, the action looked painful. Chastened, the two men low crawled to the end of the team and took up defensive positions while Scott lensed the camp with his light-amplifying binoculars.
Not for the first time, Scott wished they all had night vision goggles (NVGs) for this mission, but even most of the National Guard troops had to make do with the Mark One eyeball. At least he’d managed a few hours with the new men placed under his command, including his old friends, Corporal Arness and PFC Wallace, along with three other NG troopers from Lieutenant Conners’ platoon.
No, the only real wildcards were the last five men added to their team, which consisted of a mixed bag of locals and volunteers. Three were bikers known to Scott from the Porter farmstead, solid guys who’d all served “Downrange”, as the saying went, but Scott hadn’t personally seen them in action. The last two were a pair of bearded older men, one in his forties and another in his late fifties if not older, sent along by Colonel Hotchkins. He’d included his personal endorsement for the duo, saying they were good at sneaking into things and breaking stuff.
Scott was curious, so before they pushed off from the staging grounds, he went to his best local source. According to Corporal Arness, the two men just showed up at the Colonel’s office and asked for an appointment with the colonel. Inside Fort Chaffee. While it was under siege. Whatever was said behind closed doors, the two men soon earned the trust of their colonel, running missions that Arness only heard about as a ghost of rumor from the troops brought by Colonel Hotchkins.
As Scott slowly glassed the camp from their vantage point, he heard soft-spoken instructions being passed around by his corporals. Arness, being the most experienced man in the team, was his second, or XO, and ran the four NG troopers with a skill that marked him for promotion so
on. For the rest of the team, things were a little murkier.
Sarah, due to her maturity, Scott presumed, was picked by the rest of his civilian scouts to serve as their corporal, and lastly, the five newcomers all seemed to pay attention when the older of the two men from Colonel Hotchkins barked. So, for this mission, Joe was their corporal. No last name given by either man, just Joe and Tommy.
Picking out the pair of Greyhound buses parked a hundred yards from their target, the two massive tents that housed their prisoners, Scott studied the layout carefully. In that area, he spotted a pair of roving guards as well as two more stationary sentries manning their posts at the front and back of the buses. Still three hundred yards away, Scott knew he needed to get closer to gather more intel.
Gesturing for Arness, Scott leaned in close to relay his instructions. The team would hold their position, using the time to orient themselves on their objectives and the opposition. He started to order fighting positions, what they used to call foxholes, to be prepared, but decided at the last minute to delay that activity for now. No sense digging in this far out, and risk the motion-drawing attention.
“You going to take out those guards?” Joe asked conversationally, and Scott nearly jumped at the soft words spoken into his ear.
“Perhaps,” Scott managed to say, keeping his shock out of his voice.
“If you are, take Tommy,” Joe continued. “He’s real quiet for his size, and handy with a knife. Or that little entrenching tool he carries.”
Scott turned his head slightly to catch the older man’s eye. Up close, Scott was surprised to note the weather-beaten, balding man was even older than he’d first surmised. Closer to seventy than sixty, he judged. Lean and fit, the old man managed to hump in the ten miles with the rest of the troops without asking for any extra breaks, and now he looked ready to get this party started.
“Y’all done this before, I take it?” Scott asked.
“Time or two,” Joe drawled. “If you can get those guards down, quiet-like,” he continued, his eyes taking in the dark terrain with no apparent difficulty, “we can move up to the other side of the buses, dig in, and set up a base of fire with the SAWs. That’ll provide cover for the hostages being moved from the tents to the buses, and allows us inflict more damage when the time comes.”
Scott grunted as he considered the slight but potentially more hazardous change. Their part of the plan was simple. Secure the hostages, load them in the buses, and then send them to the east gate. Team Baker would have the guards neutralized and the barriers moved at the gate. A similar mission was being mounted on the other side of the camp, where the families of the FBI agents and others being held, was going down at the same time. Yes, the plan had too many moving parts, but no one was willing to allow those prisoners to die without making the effort.
Joe’s suggestions merely moved up their defensive line, which could be a problem when the team had to make their exit. Because when that time came, Scott had no wish to be stuck within these fenced walls.
Thinking fast, Scott nodded. The night assault was designed to achieve two goals: get the hostages out, and serve as a spoiling attack to throw off the Homeland troops already gathering for a likely dawn attack of their own.
Fortunately, since the National Guard had gotten word about the War Eagle camp, they’d wasted little time getting their best men in to scout the area. The little community of War Eagle itself was deserted, and from the look of the broken doors and spent shell casings in the streets, they hadn’t gone down without a fight.
Most of the shell casings were 5.56mm, government issue. Someone had policed up the bodies of the murdered inhabitants, but the chilling evidence did little to deter the four-man teams scouring the scene. More dead civilians, murdered by these thugs, only served to make them more determined.
The scouts had two days to scope out the camp and they’d used the time wisely. The nearby foothills that ringed the relatively flat camp grounds offered plenty of elevation for the scouts to peer into the compound, and they’d quickly determined the layout of the encampment. Key points, such as the presumed command post, the motor pool, and the various barracks were not only mapped but entered into a grid-square map with coordinates. The prisoners in the family complex were allowed out in the fenced yard, but the prisoners in this section never saw the light of day as the scouts observed. They only knew of the slaves because men would enter the tents, stay for ten minutes to an hour, and leave.
Taking a few minutes, forcing himself to burn time he really didn’t have, Scott used his binoculars and concentrated on memorizing the sequence and pace of the circling guards until he spotted their patterns. As ‘the hunted’ for too long in the Amazon jungle, Scott learned a long time ago to watch his hunters for their tells, and for any predictable behavior. The two roving patrollers kept a steady pace as they circled and passed each time near the two stationary guard posts, thus staying in view to either one or the other for almost all their circuit. Almost, but not entirely in view.
For one guard, it was a tendency to wander a bit wide, avoiding a now dormant berry patch, the twisted limbs looking particularly spooky in the uncertain moonlight. This detour took him out of the line of sight of the southern post, as his form would be briefly shielded behind the gaunt bulk of the thorny accumulation.
The other guard would plow right through the middle of that patch, but then he would pause each lap on the northern leg of his route as he neared the sentry post there to check the illuminated dial of his watch. Here’s a man determined not to overstay his time on duty, Scott thought. Scott watched him do this three of the four times he completed a circuit, and Scott decided that would have to be good enough. Unfortunately for the guard, he lingered in the vicinity of a two skinny oaks that formed a “v” as they leaned away from each other. Neither tree alone would have offered much cover, but together, Scott thought the oaks gave sufficient ground clutter, even with their dropping leaves, to let him get close enough to strike unseen.
When Scott glanced around, he caught sight of Tommy peering out into the dark as well. Easing close, Scott asked softly, “You up for taking out one of the sentries?”
“Yeah,” he replied, “you want the one with the hot date or the Nervous Nelly? Once we take them, we should be able to just walk up to the stationary guards with no trouble.”
The analysis was eerily in tune with Scott’s own observations, and he turned slightly to ask, “What, you reading my mind?”
“No, just seeing the same things you are,” Tommy replied with a hint of humor in his voice. Scott had noticed the muscular, goateed man seemed to let his older, skinny partner do most of the talking, but when he did speak, one would be well-advised to listen.
“I’ll take the chicken,” Scott volunteered, “since I’m wearing this suit. Should protect me better from all those stickers in there.”
“Fair deal,” Tommy agreed. “Let them have two more rounds while we get to position?”
That still didn’t give either man much time, but they knew the time constraints of their plan meant moving rapidly to the next point. Especially if they planned to redeploy on the other side of the Greyhounds to provide that additional cover. Scott could already hear Joe making the necessary changes with the team to carry out that next step.
“Let’s move,” Scott agreed, his reply more a grunt than verbalization, but Tommy caught his meaning and slithered off in the opposite direction. Joe’s right, Scott decided. Tommy was good at this kind of thing. He had little doubt the clock-watcher would go down without making a sound as he died, still wondering what was happening to him.
Crouched low, bent nearly in half, Scott skulked towards the now-dormant patch of what he now could make out were blackberries bushes, leaves also gone, gnarled limbs bare, and prepared for a long winter’s sleep. Now laying in the collected clutter of fallen limbs and rotting leaves, Scott carefully twisted in a long-practiced manner, ditching his heavy kit, rifle, and pistol belt in the weeds. He
kept the poacher’s suit, body armor, and his unsheathed knife. Everything else would slow him down and might interfere with his ability to strike fast and true.
As he crouched there in the darkness, waiting for the next kill, his mind went back to a memorable conversation he’d had with a half-starved teenager some two months or more back. The topic of discussion being the silent execution of guards with a knife, and how at the time, Scott only possessed a rudimentary understanding of the process. Now, he decided, he carried around enough successful experience he could teach the course at a Master’s level.
Then his prey ambled into sight and all other thoughts faded into the gray background. Not looking directly at the approaching figure, lest his directed focus catch a cautious man’s attention, Scott counted down the steps until this man would join the now quite lengthy procession of dead men waiting for him on the other side.
Then the sentry was past his position, and Scott struck instantly, without hesitation or remorse as he snaked his gloved left hand around to palm the man’s face, stifling a shout, while punching the blade like a piston into the man’s kidneys. The pain was said to be excruciating, but the brutal force of Scott’s left hand and arm pressing against his jaw prevented the man from uttering more than a croak before the killer suddenly shifted his grip on the rough rubberized handle. With a single thrust, the point deep into the base of the dying man’s skull, Scott turned out his lights forever.
Then like a gentle lover, Scott lowered the rapidly cooling corpse to the ground without a sound and took a half step back to retrieve the rest of his stowed gear. He agreed with Tommy; the stationary guards should be easy pickings, but soon the other shoe would drop and the fight would become very loud, very quickly. And at close range, which was why Scott was carrying a short-barreled M4 carbine. He doubted he would be doing much sniping this night. No, he’d leave that chore to Ben and the rest of the “long rifle” crew. For most of Charlie Team, this fight looked to be a messy, up close and personal affair.
Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain Page 30
