Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “But they were enjoying it, especially killing blacks. They called black women ‘breeders.’ Hardesty said, ‘For Pete’s sake, don’t let the breeders get away!’ His friends laughed and said, ‘We’re finally breaking the cycle of poverty. We’re the best welfare reformers in history.’ And they meant it, too. After they shot them, they usually dragged their bodies into the river. ‘Sending them down the river,’ that’s what they called it. ‘Mail us a postcard from New Orleans,’ they’d say. If they were too far from the river, they’d drag the bodies over their own campfire and burn them. Or they would just leave them where they fell. There were already so many bodies, who would ever notice a few more? Like you said, Jenny, there were no police anywhere.

  “Most of the time they just snuck close enough to campfires to see if they were black people. Then they’d start sniping away, with their night scopes and infrared lasers and their sound suppressors. Fish in a barrel. But once we did actually rescue two white girls. They had been raped and beaten for days and days, so it wasn’t entirely clear in my mind that what we were doing was just plain out-and-out murder. That night when we found the two white girls was a real rescue mission, no doubt about it. That night, we really were ‘rescue rangers.’ Hardesty was a perfect gentleman toward those two, and he returned them to their families. One of those girl’s brothers joined up with Hardesty’s band right on the spot, after Web brought her home. That one mission made me question if what they were doing was more evil, or more virtuous. I was actually proud to be with Hardesty then.

  “That, plus we shot plenty of looters, and we found some more evidence of cannibalism. Cooked, half-eaten evidence. Humans were on the menu at a lot of those campfires. In those cases I didn’t mind shooting them so much, but murder is still murder. I knew that what Hardesty was doing was mostly wrong…but nothing was completely clear after those two earthquakes. Normal reality had definitely gone off-kilter after those quakes. Nothing was the same after the earthquakes, especially that first month or two when there were aftershocks all the time. There were no police, no military…and no laws. Web Hardesty’s law was the only law for miles and miles around. I’ll be the first to admit that I went off the deep end. Way off. My hands are not clean, far from it.

  “So anyway, that night with the Mexicans, Hardesty thought they were white Americans until we got up real close. And I think those Mexicans thought that we were the real military, or the National Guard or something. At first they were smiling, like they thought we were there to help them or maybe give them some food. Until Hardesty started to rant and scream and shout questions at them in English. He switched from infrared to a visible red laser on his rifle, and he’d put that bright red dot on somebody and ask that person another question, in English. They were just numb with fear, petrified, crying and pleading in Spanish. When Hardesty got tired of it he opened fire, and so did the rest of his team. It was just a pure massacre. Very different than sniping at blacks from a hundred yards away.

  “While their attention was focused on shooting everybody around the fire, and getting the ones who were running away or crawling under the cars, I went the other way. Why I didn’t shoot Hardesty and his team, I don’t know. I was behind them, I could have. Maybe because I owed them my life. But I went the other way, and they didn’t find me. I don’t know what they would have done if they had found me after I ‘deserted’ Hardesty’s group, but lucky for me, they didn’t. A week after that, Boone Vikersun found me.”

  When Doug finished, he looked down at the table. His folded hands were trembling.

  ****

  “So, what’s the point of that story?” Jenny asked. “That white people are just as bad as blacks? I can guarantee you that for every Web Hardesty, there were a hundred blacks that did worse, a lot worse. And at least being shot is quick, a lot quicker than being raped and tortured to death at the hands of savages! And then eaten! And you even admitted that you rescued some people, and found more looters and cannibals.”

  Then Doug was talking, but Jenny was not hearing his words. She was hearing her mother’s last screams. Unbidden memories were once again taking her back to her hiding place in the cellar of her family’s home in Germantown, and to later painfully evil memories from the long journey to Mannville. When her mind returned to the present she heard him say, “But those two white girls were the only time we rescued anybody, other than me. The rest of the time they were just shooting innocent people in cold blood.”

  Jenny snapped back, “How do you know they were innocent? You said some of them were looters and cannibals. And Web Hardesty’s group rescued you, didn’t they? If it wasn’t for him, you’d have been roasted over a fire and eaten.”

  “I know, I know, and that’s why I still have mixed feelings about them—but you can’t ever excuse cold-blooded murder, no matter what. Or you’re no better than the worst savages.”

  Carson had been a silent listener to this emotional exchange, occasionally glancing between them while examining the pages of the newly discovered notebook.

  Jenny was about to tell Doug that she wished that Web Hardesty’s group had not rescued him and thus prevented him from becoming a cannibal feast. Before she could utter these words, the line of Christmas lights that marked the passageway back to the cave entrance blinked out, and then came back on. Then it blinked twice, and stayed on as before.

  18

  Doug said, “Boone’s here! That’s the signal.”

  “What time is it?” Jenny asked Phil Carson.

  “Almost one.”

  “One a.m. or one p.m.?”

  “P.m. It’s Sunday afternoon.”

  After a minute, Boone crawled beneath the last low portion of the tunnel into the main room, and stood upright. He was wet through and his clothes were streaked with mud, his face red and streaming with sweat and grime above his beard. Huffing and panting, the first thing he said was “Doug, is everybody ready to haul ass?”

  “Zack and the baby are still sleeping. I thought it was a good idea to let them rest.”

  “I’m awake now,” said Zachary from his sleeping bag.

  Boone hid his minor disappointment. It wasn’t reasonable to expect civilians to be as hard-core as he was. “Okay, but we need to make a new bugout plan and be ready to go ASAP. The whole area is swarming with Cossacks. And they’re going to be really pissed off when they find three of their buddies that I sent to meet Allah, or whoever they pray to. The snow’s mostly melted, but there are still a lot of tracks around the cave’s mouth where it’s shady. It doesn’t look good outside. It’s too slushy to do a good job sweeping the tracks. I tried, but the sweeping looks just as bad as the prints. The snow’s too wet. Just pray that the rest of the snow melts fast, and doesn’t freeze our tracks. A lot of places our footprints melted all the way through, so they’re like brown tracks on white snow. You can see them easy. Even from the air, I’m sure.”

  “Did you make it to the massacre site?” asked Carson. “Was it the way Jenny described it?”

  “Yeah, I made it. It was bad, just like she said. There were at least a couple hundred bodies in a ravine. Men, women and children. All shot.” Boone pulled a thick handful of ID cards from his parka’s upper left pocket, and placed them on the table. “These are all I could grab before I had to take off. A helicopter came and landed on top of the ravine, probably where the people were brought in the buses. The side where their bodies slid down.” He unzipped his parka and threw it over a stack of empty crates to dry. He left on his green combat vest, with its numerous pouches and pockets and pistols in holsters.

  “Did you get pictures?” asked Doug.

  “I did. Even the helicopter. It flew right over the ravine when it took off.”

  “They didn’t spot you? Where were you hiding?” asked Carson.

  “The only place I could: right in the middle of the bodies.” Boone shrugged. “A few minutes after the helo took off, three Cossacks showed up. Looters. They knew what they were doing: they were
there for the rings and the cash. Jewelry, anything they could find. They were about to walk right into me, so I had to shoot them. I hid their bodies in with the rest of them, and I hauled ass. I couldn’t come back the way I planned, because a truckload of Cossacks was in the way. Jenny, that trailer you stayed at? They burned it. Troops were out in squads, beating the bushes and torching houses. I hid in that junkyard out back of the trailer, under a car. I figured I could wait until the three Cossacks moved on, but then the damnedest thing happened.

  “A kid about eleven or twelve years old was out there, strolling around and jabbering like an idiot. He was wearing a red mechanic’s suit, wandering around the junkyard, climbing up on things and hollering. He walked right past me, a few feet away. I thought he was going to lead the Cossacks straight to me. I don’t think he was right in the head. There was no way I could help him, no way. The Cossacks started taking potshots at him, but he was pretty good at running and weaving. I think they were having fun with him. They took off after him like hounds after a fox. When the sound of their rifle shots moved away from me a little, I slipped out of the junkyard and made it into a woods full of little fir trees, like maybe eight feet tall. Planted for harvest, I think, but not really in rows.”

  Jenny nodded, following the story. She said, “The boy was in the trailer last night. I think he’s retarded. I guess his grandma is dead now.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” replied Boone. “All the while I was out there, I was wondering when I’d get blasted. I had no overhead cover at all, so if there were any UAVs up, I guess they were busy somewhere else, or maybe I was just lucky. Or maybe they just had too many targets to deal with. The little fir trees were nice and thick and I had great lateral concealment, so I wasn’t too worried about being seen by the soldiers. I was just worried about what was above me. But I never even saw a helicopter supporting the soldiers, except for the civilian chopper that landed by the ravine.”

  Carson asked, “Is it normal for the Kazaks to operate without helicopters?”

  “No, they usually have a couple of Chinooks or Blackhawks on big operations like this. Or even a Little Bird or just an old Huey. I don’t know why they didn’t today. The helicopters have American aircrews. Maybe they don’t want any American eyewitnesses to what was going on—especially at that ravine. If that’s why, it was sure lucky for me. I made it from the woods near the junkyard down to the road, and you might say I was pondering my next move. There was no good cover for the next mile of my trip here to the cave; it was mostly open fields. But the road turned out to be okay, because Americans were out walking on it: refugees. They were pulling wagons, pushing carts, taking what they could. I just stepped out of the trees and took my place among them. Actually, I helped an old man push his wife in a wheelchair. I said, ‘Let me help you,’ and I hunched way over and kept my head down and just pushed her along. I’m not exactly a little guy, and with this vest under my parka I’m basically huge.” Boone paced around the wooden-floor area of the cave, animatedly waving his arms.

  “The Americans around me must have known something was up, my just popping out of the woods like that, but they didn’t say a word. We passed a squad of Cossacks in a pickup truck. It was going the other way, and we weren’t hassled. Of course, if we came to a real checkpoint it would have been all over, because as soon as they searched me…well…it would not have been good.” Boone patted the .45 caliber Glock holstered on the bottom of his vest, and the frag grenades in their own pouches. “A five-ton truck full of Cossacks passed us that had a loudspeaker; it was playing a tape that was looped over and over. ‘You must leave the County Radford before night! You cannot be protected after this day! You must leave now, and you shall not be harmed!’ Over and over it played. It must have been a Cossack that made the recording—his accent was terrible, and so was his English.” Boone pulled a clear plastic water bottle from a box on the cave floor, drained most of it, and then sat down heavily, nearly cracking the fourth folding chair.

  “I’ll bet my American traitor would have made a better tape for them,” suggested Jenny, brightening. “That is, if he was still alive.” She was sitting across the square card table from Boone.

  “You’re probably right. Good work getting rid of that piece of shit. So I pushed granny along in her wheelchair for about a mile, and when we got to a nice tree line that I’ve used before, I said goodbye and took off again. I think the old guy understood what was going on. He actually said good luck to me, winked and gave me a thumbs-up. Yeah, he knew what was going on, I could tell. He could have ratted me out, and made a scene when Cossacks were around, but he didn’t. Nobody did. It wasn’t a big column of refugees, just dribs and drabs. There were maybe a few dozen that I saw, heading south toward Mississippi. I guess they’re cleaning the leftovers out of the county, after yesterday’s big massacre. There was a lot of smoke, too, from houses burning. Oh, and I even passed a lowboy tractor-trailer with a big bulldozer on it. Cossacks were driving the truck, and an Army truck that was escorting it. I’m thinking that maybe it was going back to the ravine to bury the evidence. What else would it be going that way for? Jenny, that’s how lucky it was that we found you last night, and that I took the pictures today. Once they bulldoze that ravine, nobody will ever know what happened there, at least not for years and years. They would have gotten away with it. But I’ve got the pictures, and the GPS coordinates.

  “So after I made it into that tree line I had to low-crawl for a while. I’d freeze while trucks full of soldiers passed on the road, and then I’d crawl some more. It wasn’t much of a tree line, not in the wintertime. Kind of sparse in the cover and concealment department—that’s why I had to low-crawl it. The only good concealment was down low.”

  Carson laughed. “Low crawling sure beats getting shot. I’ve got the scars to prove it both ways. Why, I can remember crawling so low, I was looking up at snakes—and they were passing me. Of course, that was a long time ago, in another war, and I’m a lot older now. Much too old for low-crawling.”

  “Yeah, well I’m getting too old for this shit too, but like you said, low-crawling beats getting shot anyday. And twice on Sunday, which is today—by the way, God bless you all and hallelujah, amen. The only thing I really worried about was what I couldn’t see: Predators. I had almost no overhead cover, and the whole time I was out there on my belly, I was wondering if I was going to get nailed between the shoulder blades by one of those skinny little UAV missiles.” Boone smiled, his teeth shining white against his dirty red face and his filth-crusted chestnut beard. “I even thought that if the rocket was a dud, it might pin me right to the ground like a bug. But I’m alive, and I’m here, so I guess I got lucky again.”

  Carson said, “Yeah, unless they just tracked you here on purpose, so they could find your base camp. For all we know, they’re surrounding this place right now.”

  “Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine. Hey, old-timer, let me enjoy my fleeting moment of glory, while my adrenaline burns off. Sure, that’s a possibility. It always is. And we’re going to get started on our new bugout plan ASAP, just in case. There’s another way out of this cave. It’s not as easy as the way in, but it works. We need to get our gear ready. And let’s square away our ammunition and battery situations. Doug, make sure all the rechargeables are good to go, and let’s divvy up the new ones that Jenny brought. We need to be ready, just in case we get visitors at the front door. That’s the one thing I hate about caves: the thought of getting an unexpected knock on the door from the other team.” Boone upended and drained the last of the water from the plastic bottle.

  “And even if we’re not compromised, we’re going to be leaving this cave soon anyway. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and this is what I’ve come up with: Jenny and Zack, you’re going south to Mississippi, with the baby. A newborn won’t last long if all it gets is that instant milk powder crap. I’ve got contacts all around Corinth that can take care of you and the baby, and Zack knows his way around down t
here pretty well too. I’ve got maps that I can mark with the best routes, for walking across the state line away from checkpoints.

  “Too bad we can’t just upload them onto the internet,” suggested Doug. “A few years ago, it would have been easy.”

  “No, forget the internet, that’s out, that’s over, the government has it all sewn up. We need to do this another way: person to person. That’s why we’re going to Fort Campbell. Zack and Jenny will be our backup, our insurance policy. They can take the other camera with them. That way we’ll have two chances of getting the pictures out. Okay? Great, now let’s make some chow. If we’re leaving this cave for good, there’s no point in leaving all of this food behind. Doug, get our big pot boiling. We’ll cook up a great big old mess of Zack’s Mississippi rice, enough for a whole platoon. We’ll throw in some ’taters and beans, canned corn, whatever you guys want. Even the last can of chicken, the one we’ve been saving. Let’s do it right. When we leave this cave, I want us to leave with full bellies…for a change. And plenty of extra cooked rice for the next couple days.”