All of these thoughts ran through his mind in the time it took the soldier to walk to within twenty feet of Boone’s bare maple tree. He slowly revolved around the thick trunk, keeping it between the two of them, until the soldier passed by and walked onward. There was no way to alert the other three men by the car. He looked back toward the hollies and could see the side glow of Doug’s dim flashlight. Even without night vision, this straggler would see the light in a few moments.
When the soldier was just a few yards past him, Boone silently drew the Randall knife from its sheath. The blanket of snow would silence his footsteps. The enemy soldier was not stopping to listen and look around, but was marching at a steady pace.
Boone stepped from behind the maple and began taking long but stealthy strides forward. He matched his steps to the enemy soldier’s pace, further hiding any slight sound of his approach. An unwanted memory from Afghanistan invaded his mind: hot arterial blood gushing from the throat of a Taliban sentry. He steeled himself mentally to do the deed. In the last meter, slam him from behind with a hip while the left hand wraps around the face and pulls the head back sharply. Then the blade goes around in a flash, and with one deep backslash it will be done, his carotid and his windpipe severed. The man will be too shocked and have too little time left alive even to make a shout. Then he will be dead in the snow where he drops.
Only six feet separated them now. Boone’s steps matched the lost straggler’s in cadence, but each of his steps was a little longer. Covering more distance, gaining ground, a few inches closer with each stride. Knife held in the right hand, the left hand up and a little forward for the head grab. A few more steps, a few more seconds to contact, and it’s throat-cutting time—again.
****
Jenny had to walk ever more slowly, because of the diminishing moonlight. Her pupils were already dilated to their maximum, only the white snow was still faintly visible. Trees around her dissolved into blacker obscurity and then disappeared altogether. She put out her left hand, to keep from walking directly into an unseen trunk. She set each foot down carefully, lest she put her weight down on a hole or trip across a root or a rock. She knew she must try to find a stick or a pole, to probe ahead of her like a blind person. Part of her wanted to simply draw her pistol and turn on its light, but it was one of those super-bright police lights, and anybody within a mile might see it. She wished she had an ordinary small flashlight, just enough to faintly illuminate her path a few steps ahead.
For all she knew, there might be one in the pack on her back, but she had departed the old woman’s trailer in too much haste to inspect its contents. Perhaps she could jury rig a filter for the gun’s light? A glove perhaps? For now, a blind man’s stick would have to do. When she ineitably walked into some bushes, she would break one off by feel and strip off its leaves. If she wandered into very thick cover, she’d use the gun light to explore the rest of her backpack, and search it for a weaker light. Or she’d try to rig a filter over the gun light. At least the baby was sleeping warm against her chest, resting in the hollow pouch between her pack’s straps, where the pistol belt pinched in the dead man’s big parka. Every few minutes she had to pull down the front of the parka beneath the belt; otherwise, the baby was no real bother to her. Pregnant mothers carry a baby for nine months, she thought. I can carry one for a day or two.
12
Boone was half a head taller than the enemy he was stalking. The unlucky Cossack had no idea he was being followed by a hardened killer with a razor-sharp Randall fighting knife in his hand. According to his father, the knife had been used to kill several Viet Cong and NVA fighters. Decades later, it had dispatched one Taliban. Now it was going to cut a foreign enemy’s throat right here in Tennessee. The wars were sure getting closer. They couldn’t get any closer than this one—this one was walking distance from his old childhood haunts. No Air Force transport plane or chartered jet airliner was needed to deliver him to this war. At least he had the home field advantage for a change.
Just a few more steps now. Without night vision goggles, the enemy was nearly blind. His hands were outstretched to feel ahead for unseen obstacles. He was walking slowly, tentatively. Boone focused on breathing silently, and matching the Cossack stride for stride. Only one more yard, he was close enough to touch the soldier’s pack. His right hand held the knife blade forward, ready to strike. He visualized his next moves: left hand over the face, pull back his head, and slash the throat.
It was almost too easy, like a jungle panther stalking a lost suburban poodle. Boone matched another step and held his breath, now less than a yard behind his oblivious victim. The man was several inches shorter, so the reach for the head and the cut across the throat would be easy. Boone had every possible advantage, the foreign soldier had none. The soldier’s pistol was holstered, his hands groping blindly in front of him. He had a pack on his back and was carrying only a pistol, not a rifle. Only a pistol…
Boone looked again and saw three small stars arranged in a triangle on each soft shoulder board, just outside the straps of his pack. And the pack: it was not in the Russian flecked-camouflage pattern, it was a plain-colored model, an American commercial type that he recognized, similar to those purchased privately by American soldiers and SWAT cops. The exterior gear attachment system was of the current American standard. And there was another small kit bag, riding by the soldier’s left side, that did not look military at all. To his green night eyes, it appeared to be bright, shiny plastic.
The pistol and three stars meant he was not just a Cossack or even a Russian soldier, but an officer! But a foreign officer with an American-style pack? This man was a find, a prize, worth far more alive than dead. Boone reached over the pack to its front, between the pack and the enemy’s collar, and jerked sharply rearward while stepping back and to the side in an aikido pirouette. The soldier, thrown off balance and totally surprised, flew past him and thudded onto his back, landing across his pack like an upended turtle. Boone followed and pounced down on him, straddling his body at the hips. The cutting edge of the knife was laid across his enemy’s throat in a second.
Any Russian words that Boone had ever learned did not rise to his lips tonight. Not “stop” or “surrender” or “hands up,” which he had learned to say in a half dozen languages over the years. But he didn’t need to speak—the enemy spoke first.
“Don’t hurt the baby!”
“What the hell?” Boone replied, stunned by the sudden turn. The soldier’s face was smooth, not bearded or whiskery. “You’re not one of them? You’re not even a man!” Clearly this was not an ordinary Cossack officer. The person below him was a female—that was becoming obvious. Boone was not expecting to hear English, and he was certainly not expecting a woman. Once they were both still, her face was clear to him in the green light of his NVGs. The soldier was a woman, and a young one at that.
“You’re—an American?” returned the female voice, struggling for breath beneath his weight.
“Yes, I’m an American.” He pulled the blade back away from her throat, but only an inch. “What are you doing here? Why are you wearing a Russian uniform?”
“Do you mind getting off me? I’m carrying a baby, and you’re crushing her.”
“You’re pregnant?” Boone relaxed a fraction and lifted up some of his weight, while kneeling in the snow over the prone form pinned beneath him.
“No I’m not pregnant, I mean I’m carrying a baby. Right here, under my jacket.” The baby, roughly jostled and pushed, began to cry.
A white light flashed on above them, shining down on Jenny’s face. She was blinking upward against the sudden glare. From above Boone’s shoulder Doug said, “Well, now I’ve seen everything. An American girl, in a Russian uniform, in a snowstorm, with a baby.”
Boone tipped his NVGs from his face up onto his forehead, then pushed himself up and pulled Jenny to her feet. Doug covered her with his M-4 carbine, its muzzle a yard from her torso.
Boone ordered, “Ju
st keep your hands up until we figure out what’s going on.”
“I can’t keep them both up—I have to hold the baby with at least one arm.” The infant was visibly squirming inside her parka, and began to cry.
She was not following the script. Who was this girl in a Russian uniform, with a gun and a baby, out in a snowstorm? “Okay, then keep your right hand up, up away from the pistol. You’re alone?”
“No, I told you about this baby.”
“But nobody’s following you?”
“God, I sure hope not. You’re really an American?” She looked back and forth between the two men.
“Yeah, I’m really an American. Okay, let’s get you out of the snow.” They were not far from the holly trees, and with Doug holding a flashlight they were able to walk back in less than a minute. The rifle was aimed at the girl’s back.
Phil Carson and Zack Tutweiler were waiting by the holly trees when the others returned. Their weapons were leveled, Carson’s 9mm Berretta and Zack’s lever-action Winchester 30-30 rifle. Boone said, “We found a pair of strays. Relax, put up the guns.” They stood under the raised holly branches, at the back of the Subaru. Its hatchback was lifted, showing the packs and bags stowed tightly in the rear cargo area. Boone had to adapt his plan on the fly. Doug held his flashlight pointing at the ground, but it provided enough light, reflecting back up off the snow.
Boone said, “Okay, let’s start with your name.”
She couldn’t speak again until she had caught her breath. “Jenny McClure.”
“All right, Jenny, first, take out your pistol very slowly and hand it to me.”
“Oh, no. No way. It’s mine. I’m not giving it to anybody. You guys already have guns—I need one too.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Boone answered curtly. He was accustomed to being obeyed by prisoners.
“You know what?” she replied. “The last guy who said I didn’t have a choice tonight is dead. This used to be his pistol. This was his uniform too. I killed him a few hours ago.”
She was clearly serious about keeping the gun, so Boone let that go for the time being. “Let’s back up, Jenny. Where are you from?”
“I used to live with my family in Germantown, that’s just outside of Memphis.”
“So where do you live now?”
“I’ve been staying with my aunt and uncle, just south of Mannville.”
“Where exactly? Be specific.”
“Ben Duggin Road, on the south loop. The new houses.”
“I know the place. Hank McClure is your uncle?”
“Yes, they took me in after the earthquakes. Hank and Rochelle.”
“Good man.”
“Very,” she agreed.
Boone was satisfied with her story, at least for the time being. Hank McClure was a former Marine Corps officer who helped train and organize the neighborhood defense teams around Mannville. They had met, and Boone remembered hearing something about his young niece, who had trekked solo from Memphis to Radford County after the earthquakes. “So Jenny, what’s in the pack? Is it yours?”
“It is now. It belonged to the guy I killed. Now it’s mine—so don’t get any ideas.”
“He was a Cossack officer?”
“No, he was an American, but he was working with them. He was a translator or something. It was his pack. Other than a sausage and some water, I don’t know what’s in it. I haven’t stopped to look—I’ve been in too much of a hurry.”
“Well, we need to look, right now. Doug, help her take it off. Jenny, where did you get this pack, and the uniform? And what’s that, a diaper bag? And what about the baby? Is it yours?”
She looked between the men. “You’re really Americans? You’re not working for the…the Kazakhstans or whoever they are?”
“I already told you we’re Americans,” said Boone, “And no, we’re not working with the Cossacks. We’re fighting against them and against all of the other foreign enemies. And against the American traitors too, for that matter. Foreign, domestic, we don’t care.”
“So you’re fighting against the Kazaks?”
“Kazaks, Cossacks, same difference. That’s what we do, every day,” said Boone.
“Well, I escaped from them tonight.” Jenny sat beneath the hatchback, on the wide rear bumper. “I’ve been walking for hours, since before I found the baby. That’s what I need to tell you, about where I found the baby. If you’re fighting the foreign soldiers, I need to tell you a lot. I was in Mannville today, at the Saturday swap market. You know the place?”
“At the high school. I’m familiar with it,” said Boone.
“Well these Russians came, or Kazaks or whatever they are. It was an ambush, a trap. We were penned up inside the fence, on the high school parking lot. I can’t believe how stupid we were! They came on horses and they had trucks and helicopters, and little tanks on wheels. They had a machine that burned our skin like fire. Then they put everybody on buses and took them to a ravine, back there, back where I was coming from. That’s where I found this baby. Everybody else there was dead, dead in the snow. Hundreds of them, I think. They were all shot.”
“Hundreds?” asked Boone, perplexed. He’d seen a lot of death in his years of war fighting, both abroad and lately at home, but this was a new level of atrocity—if it was true. Only some of Saddam Hussein’s old mass graves in Iraq had been on that scale. And some in the Balkans that he had read about, but not personally seen.
“Yes, hundreds. Everybody who was at the swap market, and at the Baptist church across the street. They were taken away on our own Radford County school buses. Taken to a ravine…and shot.”
After a brief silence Boone asked, “How did you get away? Did they miss you when they were shooting? Did you play possum?”
Jenny shook her head, “No, no, it wasn’t like that, not for me. I didn’t go there with everybody on the buses. I was with—well, there was a group of girls. We weren’t taken to the ravine. We were put on an Army truck, an American Army truck, and taken to a big house, a mansion like they have on a plantation.” She paused, remembering. “It was called Barton Hall.”
“I know the place.”
“The Russians were having a party…”
“Kazaks, they’re Kazaks,” Boone reminded her. “I just call ’em Cossacks, their old name. Most of them speak Russian, but they’re from Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. It used to belong to Russia, back when it was the Soviet Union. There’s almost a thousand of them in Tennessee now.”
“Well, we were the main event. At the party, I mean. There was an American with the Kazaks. He dragged me upstairs, and he tried to rape me. That’s what the party really was: a rape party. Now he’s dead. There was a fireplace in the bedroom, and I lit the whole house on fire before I climbed out the window. Now I’m wearing his uniform and his boots. I was hoping he had food or valuables in his pack, but I couldn’t stop to check. I had to keep running away; I was trying to get far away before the snow stopped, and before daylight. Then I found the baby in the ravine. You know the rest.”
There was silence as the men digested the incredible tale. Boone began mentally ticking off the names and faces he would have expected to be in Mannville yesterday morning, at the church, the swap market, or both. Most of his local network was probably wiped out. Most of his half year of working to organize a guerrilla insurgency was gone. Mannville was a vital linchpin. It was the center of a small region where he could occasionally surface and live a semi-overt life, find support, and slip in and out of the areas under the traitor government’s control. It would be difficult to recover from this blow, if she was telling the truth. His last operational sanctuary was gone.
After a period of silence, Carson asked Jenny, “Is the baby all right?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. I hope she is. I gave her a bottle of instant milk. I stopped in a house trailer by a junkyard that’s not very far from the ravine where I found her. There was an old blind lady there. That’s where I found the m
ilk powder. She gave it to me.”
“I know the place you mean,” said Boone. “Lots of old refriderators and washing machines.”
“That trailer is real close to where the people were shot.”
“And it’s not very far from here either. Listen, Jenny, we need to see what’s in your pack.” Doug held the flashlight while Boone spread out a green poncho on the ground between them, mostly beneath the Subaru’s hatch. Boone removed the contents from the side and back pouches, and then the main compartment. The holly branches above their heads blocked most of the falling snow. “This pack belonged to the American, the traitor with the Cossacks?”
“Yes. He was the one on the loudspeaker back at Mannville, when they attacked the swap market. He was the one that gave the orders, and told us what to do. When we didn’t move fast enough, he burned us with some kind of a heat ray that looked like a big TV screen. Later he showed up at the house they took us to—the girls, I mean. Then he dragged me upstairs and tried to rape me, but I killed him instead.”
After a pause, Boone redirected the conversation. “Jenny, those three stars on your shoulders mean he was an officer. Like a senior lieutenant or a captain, or maybe a major. At least I think that’s the Russian rank system. I don’t know what his American rank was. He was probably assigned to the Cossack battalion as a liaison, not just as a translator. That means he was a go-between, to take orders to the Cossacks. They gave him a Cossack uniform so he could blend in with them. Too bad he’s dead—he’s the kind of traitor I’d really love to talk to. But I’m glad you got away, even if it meant killing him. Don’t get me wrong, we would have killed him too. I just wish we’d had a chance to interrogate him first—before hanging him. That’s what we do with traitors when we catch them alive.”
Carson asked, “But who was giving him his orders? An American, or a foreigner? Who’s in charge of this thing?”
Foreign Enemies and Traitors Page 30
