“Well Elijah, you know you boys aren’t supposed to be crossing the border.”
“Uh huh. So how far do you want us to take you in?”
“To the link up with your cousin, if you can.”
The vehicles slowed at the DMZ checkpoint on the edge of town, manned by regular military. The troops waved the USDF vehicles through. Under the Treaty of St. Louis, as mere paramilitaries, they were authorized inside the 10 mile wide demilitarized zone to perform routine security duties.
The DMZ was not empty. Many people, like the Meachum family, still had ranches and farms inside. The local residents took the lead on security for the border near their homes. Most were Mormon hereabouts, hence the nickname of the local brigade. They went to church together, they worked together and, when necessary, they fought together.
“Any raiders lately?” asked Turnbull.
“More than in a while. My cousin about 20 miles up ambushed a half-dozen last week that had hit a couple out for a picnic. Raped the woman, killed them both.”
“I take it those raiders did not get back over the border.”
“No sir, they most certainly did not.”
The People’s Republic barely watched the borders out in the wilderness. They probably figured their internal movement controls would keep most people from getting out there, and that no one would be crazy enough to try to sneak into their failing country, so there was little point. As a result, the borders on the PR side often tended to devolve into a more savage version of the Wild West. If some of the violence and anarchy spilled over into the US, well, that was pure gravy.
The Meachum ranch was large and modern and readily defensible. Brush was cut back 300 meters so an enemy would have to approach over open terrain. Turnbull’s trained eye noted the loopholes running across each face of the house so the family could defend the redoubt while reinforcements were being called via the antennae on the roof.
Meachum’s wife met them on the porch with lemonade and no questions – she knew that when visitors came to this remote part of the border something was going on that was none of her business. The house was modern and comfortable. A huge big screen monitor, tuned to a correspondent speaking from Fox News’s Dallas headquarters, hung on one wall. On the next wall was a rack of at least a dozen M4s and other weapons, plus piles of neatly stacked loaded magazines. A second monitor displayed a map of the local border sector, with icons over the locals’ homes and key infil/exfil routes displayed.
After lunch, they inspected their old Army surplus packs again. Both were worn and stained. Sewn up inside the lower back pad of Turnbull’s ruck were 20 one-ounce gold coins. There was some basic gear, like binoculars and wire cutters. There was a roll of OD green hundred mile an hour tape and a couple hundred feet of 550 parachute cord. And then there were the weapons. The M4s were broken down inside too, out of view. In the top pocket were worn clothes from the other side – they would walk over in USDF camo and change at the handover point. The goal was to look like another pair of homeless men wandering the byways of the People’s Republic.
Turnbull handed over Junior’s documents – ID card, ration cards, and various receipts and papers that made up a typical resident’s pocket litter. Clay had come through for them. There was cash too, lots of it, new series bills with extra zeros on the denominations the government printed to try and catch up with the hyperinflation. Clay had come through with that too. They stuffed as much as they could into old, cheap wallets and the rest they rolled up and stuff down into their packs.
There were other things too, blue state toiletries like sour toothpaste, flimsy razors and runny shave cream. Turnbull carried a PR pain reliever bottle, but the pills inside were high quality Motrin made in Louisiana. Hidden at the bottom of the pack, where a cop would have to really dig to find it, was a medical kit, complete with forceps, syringes and vials of morphine and antibiotics.
And then there was toilet paper – Turnbull handed over one of the rolls.
“Charmin?” asked Junior, puzzled.
“I’m telling you, that’s gold when you need it. And you will. The water quality is bad and the food is worse. Take your Cipro today and every day. Don’t forget. The only worse thing than being over there is being over there with the runs.”
“They can’t even operate a water system? “The kind of people who actually run things mostly left; the good ones that stayed got replaced. Too much privilege, so someone else had to get those jobs. And, shockingly, when the place your great-great-great-grandfather was born is your key criteria, competence is rarely your end product.”
“Well, if you make everyone sick because you aren’t doing your job, don’t you get, you know, fired?”
Turnbull laughed. “What’s the fun of accountability when it means admitting you hired incompetents? No, it’s better to blame greedy wreckers and saboteurs and, of course, the US. Because all their misfortunes are our fault. Just remember that. Make it your default when talking to people. If someone complains about something, mutter about how the United States is to blame and you’ll be fine.”
They ate a big dinner with the large Meachum family that evening. A whole bunch more children and relatives appeared and, after grace, they set upon the spread of roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, bread and vegetables.
“Enjoy,” Turnbull told Junior. “It’s the last decent grub you’re going to get for a while.”
They set out at sunset with Elijah and a half-dozen boys. Everyone carried a long weapon, including Turnbull and Junior, who had reassembled their carbines from inside their rucksacks. They looked like what they were supposed to look like – a regular USDF patrol. The moon was up enough that no one needed night vision. At the edge of the farm, they dispersed in a 360 position and took a knee for ten minutes to let their eyes and ears adjust to the night. Elijah’s radio man called in that they were crossing the line of departure and the small column moved west, trudging up the hills quietly, not needing GPS to know where they were. The Meachums had been here for more than a century, and they and their neighbors were intimately familiar with every rise, bluff, wash, and boulder within 20 miles.
Turnbull and Junior walked in the middle with Elijah, following a trail they would not have seen if their guide had not taken them along it. One of the older boys, a citizen, was at point. Another son was trail. The radio man monitored comms via his earpiece. No one had to say a word; in the few instances Elijah needed to give an instruction, he did it with hand signals that his team instantly understood and obeyed.
After an hour, Elijah stopped and whispered in Turnbull’s ear, “We’ve crossed.”
Turnbull nodded, and they kept moving.
About ten minutes later, the radioman suddenly turned and nodded to the leader. Elijah made the sign to rally off the trail, and the team silently formed a 360 degree circle facing outwards, Elijah and Turnbull in the middle, each of the six other men taking security over a 60 degree piece of the pie.
“Our motion detectors picked up multiple contacts forward–looks like about a klick ahead–coming this way,” Elijah whispered.
“Our people?” asked Turnbull.
“No, not yet. We don’t know who they are. But they might be raiders.”
If they were just refugees – unlikely out here – then the USDF would evaluate them. If they looked useful, like they might contribute to the US, they would lead them back for processing. If not, they would just turn them around. But if they were raiders, then they were coming to steal and probably worse. They couldn’t be allowed past.
“Okay, where do we take them?” asked Turnbull. Elijah was visibly relieved that detouring from the insertion was not going to be an issue with his charge. If these were bad guys, the people they were coming to hurt were his people, and that simply was not going to happen.
“There’s a stretch over the next rise, very tight. We can do a good L-shaped ambush if they’re raiders.”
“Let’s do it.”
Elijah knew how
to pick his kill zone, and how to distribute his men. The trail ran along the side of a hill and up for about 50 meters in a straight line. Elijah put one son with an M14 at the top, his field of fire straight down the path. The rifle’s .308 rounds would be able to cover the length of the kill zone. He placed himself and the rest of the team on a low, brushy ridge perpendicular to the trail segment, his son at the far end charged with locking down the kill zone and ensuring no one else entered or exited from the west.
Turnbull and Junior took their place on the line, lying on their bellies facing the kill zone. Each of their M4s held a 30 round magazine of the 5.56 mm ammo the USDF troopers carried; they did not want to waste their untraceable, sterilized rounds.
They waited.
The night was warm and very still. Turnbull’s eyes, already acclimated, grew clearer in the moonlight. He heard everything, right down to Elijah’s calm breathing to his immediate left. Slowly and deliberately, he put rubber plugs in both ears.
Even with the plugs, he heard their voices. They were laughing, and swearing too, like they were on a hike to some remote party spot to smoke some dope and drink some beers.
“How fucking far is it?” one complained from down the trail in the darkness.
“Few miles. Are we over the line yet?”
“Yeah, I think so,” replied another near the tail of the column, peering down at a GPS screen. It was bright enough it might as well have been a searchlight. Amateurs.
The first of them came into view, a ghostly apparition in the dark. Then another, and another, until there were six walking up the trail.
Each male, each relatively young.
Each carrying an AK.
On his left, a faint click. Elijah would initiate with a burst. Using his thumb, Turnbull flipped the selector on his carbine from safe to automatic, and placed the third in line in the center of his sight.
Slow your breathing.
Relax.
Then Elijah fired a stream of bullets, the roar of the M4 slicing through the ear protection. Turnbull reacted as if on auto-pilot; he squeezed the trigger and the flash swallowed up his target. All along the line, the troopers were unloading into the kill zone. The night was ablaze with muzzle flashes.
The rate of fire dropped off, and the glare subsided as the targets came back into view. There were fewer standing, maybe two or three. Then one jolted to the side once, and again, as the heavy thud of the M14 rounds from the trailhead echoed over the desert. Turnbull pivoted to another target; he was vaguely aware of Junior firing to his right. The raider in his sight had his AK up; there was a flash from the AK’s muzzle. The crack in the air above his head told Turnbull his target was panic firing high.
Sight picture.
Center mass.
Exhale.
Squeeze and hold and release.
The target stumbled back under the impact of three bullets to his sternum, dropping his rifle and falling flat back against the hill.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” It was Elijah yelling. Turnbull swung his weapon from black lump to black lump, gauging them for movement. None.
“Let’s go!” Elijah was rising to his feet and Turnbull followed, as did the other troopers not engaged in securing an end. They moved forward quickly, but carefully, weapons up at their shoulders and on the potential targets. At Benning, they called this “assaulting the kill zone.”
Five of the raiders were clearly dead. Another lay groaning, gut shot and a forearm hanging by a thread.
“You need him?” asked Turnbull. A prisoner might have some good info. But then there were other considerations, like the logistics of carrying him and the fact he was ambushed in his own country.
“No,” said Elijah. Turnbull nodded and shot him twice in the head. The sound echoed over the desert.
“Jesus,” said Junior. In the Army, they took prisoners.
“Them or us,” said Turnbull. “Reload.”
A search of the bodies came up with some interesting information. The dead men were all young and lean, and all appeared to Turnbull, though not an expert, to have gang tattoos. They all carried nearly identical rifles. The similar serial numbers indicated the weapons all came from the same lot, meaning it was likely someone armed these guys all at once. And the only entity in the People’s Republic moving that many weapons was the People’s Republic itself. The conclusion that they had been sent here was reinforced by the fact each had a valid travel pass from Sacramento to this zone.
“It looks like they’re shipping scumbags out here to mess with you guys, Elijah.”
“We’ve started to see this a lot,” Elijah replied. “The local PSF and military know not to mess with us. You know, until the Split we never even noticed the Utah-Nevada border. All the locals, the ranchers–they’re all relatives and they’re all LDS. You mess with one and you mess with all of us on both sides of the line. So anyone from here or even stationed here for a while knows not to poke our little beehive.”
Turnbull smiled. Early on, the PR’s officials had tried to pick on the local ranchers on their side of the divide the way they had other industrious, religious folks elsewhere. Believers, particularly ones who lived traditional lives, were a perpetual scapegoat for blue state failures all over the PR. But those officials kept ending up dead out here, often with a .30-06 bullet through the forehead. Guys like Elijah saw the Old Testament as an instruction manual, and “an eye for an eye” wasn’t just a cliché in the desert. Eventually, the local poohbahs figured out that messing with the Mormons was a helluva a lot less fun than messing with other, less feisty Christians. So to live, they let live. And they left the dying to the clowns the government shipped out of the inner cities to make trouble.
Each of Elijah’s men took an AK – you didn’t leave perfectly good rifles lying around – and they moved out to the west. After another fifteen minutes of marching, they observed three quick light flashes from a dry wash up ahead. With a nod, Elijah sent two of his boys to make the link up. After another five minutes, one returned to guide them all up to the wash. There were three men in civilian clothes waiting, one a ringer for Elijah minus the beard: clearly Elijah’s cousin, Matt Hansen, and a couple of his boys. While Elijah and Matt talked – Turnbull caught a few fragments about the ambush earlier that night – Turnbull and Junior packed up their M4s and changed into the civilian clothes they had brought. One of Elijah’s sons would pack out their fatigues.
“Kelly, Matt here is going to take you as far as a truck stop on the old 15. You can catch a ride into Vegas from there.”
“Thanks, Elijah. I owe you.”
“Yeah, again. You boys be safe. Come visit sometime when you don’t need to cross.”
Turnbull shook hands with the big man. It would be a while before they might see each other again – Turnbull never came back out the way he came in.
Matt was not much of a talker, nor were his boys. Together, they waited in the wash until the last of Elijah’s squad disappeared back toward the east – they took a different route home than the one they had come west on. Matt gave it a few more minutes, then stood up and motioned Turnbull and Junior to follow. By now there was a chill in the air and the moon was low. It took a great deal of effort to keep their footing, and a turned ankle out here could be a disaster. They walked for about an hour, covering only two miles, until they came to a battered Ford pick-up truck parked in a wash off a dirt road running north-south. The travelers hopped in the back with their gear and one of the Hansen boys, who was about as chatty as his father. Bundling up in his threadbare leather jacket, Turnbull tried to keep warm as they headed south.
It was another hour or so before they came to a bluff overlooking the long ribbon of freeway that was I-15. To the northeast, about 20 miles up, it ran into the DMZ and the border at Arizona. The town of Mesquite, on the Nevada side, had been a prosperous vacation spot before the Split. There were resorts and golf courses kept green by piped in water. Those were gone, the grass a memory and the hotels des
erted except for squatters, addicts, and “voluntary labor” draft dodgers. Other than them and some PR security forces, it was pretty much abandoned now; Turnbull had passed through there once on his way out and ended up in running into a couple of overly inquisitive PR military at a checkpoint. Their commander probably listed them as deserters since one night they just seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Junior got out of the pick-up first and Turnbull handed him their packs and hopped out on the ground beside him. One vehicle, some kind of truck, was heading west. Other than that, nothing was moving down there.
Hansen stepped around to them and pointed out to the southwest, finally speaking.
“Over that rise is a truck stop. Probably five miles. You can buy a ride into Las Vegas from there. They may or may not have fuel. Usually don’t, but the drivers will stop to eat at the diner anyway, so you might not have to wait that long.”
Turnbull nodded. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome. Now, take care in there. That’s the only place for 20 miles either way and it attracts a bad crowd. Mind your business and you should be fine.”
“Can I give you some cash?”
“Don’t worry about us. You just forget us if you get caught.”
“Forget who?” Hansen’s leathery face broke into something like a smile, then he got back into the pickup.
Turnbull’s watch told him it was almost 6:00 a.m., just after dawn, when they reached the truck stop. But it was less a truck stop than a ramshackle old gas station next to a diner that had seen better days. Its whitewash was now a dull brown, and one of the front windows had been replaced by a sheet of plywood some time ago. Through the other windows, they could spot a little movement inside. The hum of a generator explained where the diner got its power; the two hours of morning electricity did not usually start until 8:00 a.m.
The big gas sign that had lured in customers from the freeway years ago was rusting and hanging at an off angle. It hadn’t worked for years and seemed on the verge of falling to the ground. Turnbull could not make out the brand – some of the plastic was a faded blue so he suspected it was a Chevron. The shape was right, as he remembered. It had been replaced by a smaller painted wooden sign reading simply “FUEL FOOD” held up by two wooden posts pounded into the ground at the foot of the old sign. Brand logos and such were consumerist and frowned upon; genericism was in fashion in the People’s Republic.
People's Republic Page 5
