People's Republic

by Kurt Schlichter

  No one who fought guerillas for a living would mess with such a tempting find before checking it out very carefully, but maybe guys whose job was shooting civilians would.

  He turned and scrambled low over the ridge, taking care not to silhouette himself on the crest.

  The little valley was down a steep grade, with about 25 yards to the line of bushes and shrubs. He went straight downward and found a tree whose branches swayed slightly in the dry breeze. Using his hundred mile an hour tape, he attached the tracker to a branch. It would not sway much, maybe a foot or so, but on their tracker it might look like it was moving around a little, like it was on a person shifting around in a hiding place.

  He then went north about 25 meters to get off the centerline and started looking for a position with good concealment to keep out of sight. Ideally, it would have cover too – that is, protection from small arms fire, but the rocks were too small and the bush trunks too thin. His best protection was going to have to be remaining hidden.

  He moved through the brush as quickly as he could, favoring the broken rib and his sore hip. He considered several spots, finally choosing one about a yard back from the brush line under a shrub with a nicely shaped “V” in its trunk that would provide support for his M4 as he covered the crest of the ridge. Turnbull dumped his backpack there, along with his water bottle.

  Next, he went farther east and broke off several branches with small leaves, then brought them back, using them to obscure the position a little more. Another branch he put down flat on the ground in front of the “V” – it might help keep down the dust when he fired.

  Going out and around, careful not to trample any of the vegetation, he viewed his hide site from the perspective of the hilltop, where they would be coming from. Merely okay – not particularly good, but his time was limited.

  Next, he looked to the right and left of the position. There was a dry wash running generally parallel to the ridgeline, and it would provide a high speed avenue of approach for an enemy right into his sides. This was why being alone sucked – there was no one to cover his three and nine o’clock. He figured he had about ten minutes to create a field expedient solution to defend his flanks.

  Finishing that, he moved another 25 yards north and slowly crept up the eastern face of the hill, pausing to pat dust into his face to at least try to help subdue any shine from his skin – it was already scorching and he was sweating.

  He found a small pile of rocks near the top, probably the best he would be able to do, and carefully peered around them toward where he had come from.

  The enemy was closing in, though they were moving slower than he had estimated. They were out about 200 yards, still in clusterfuck formation. They were fixing on the clump of trees where he and his group had rested, and on the tracking device that was taped to a bough directly to the east over the hill. Turnbull was off center to the north. They were not looking at him.

  He hoped.

  He counted twelve guys in black tactical rig, with about eight of them spread across an uneven 100-150 yard wide frontage about 225 meters or so from the ridge. All carried M4s with optics, and they were scanning and panning with their weapons as they advanced. Behind them another 25 yards were four more PBI guys. Two had carbines up. Another was looking at a screen – that had to be the tracker operator. And then another was stumbling along without a long weapon. Rios-Parkinson? Turnbull figured the Director had to be in a helluva a lot of trouble if he was coming out personally to fix it.

  To fix him.

  Turnbull observed them as they came forward. He noted who was giving hand signals and verbal cues, and who was listening and obeying. It looked like the eight guys in the skirmish line were divided into two fire teams – it was easy to peg the team leaders. The closest one was second in on the right from his perspective.

  The school book maximum effective range of an M4 is 500 meters, but this was not a school, nor was it a maintained Army rifle range. It was hot and there was dust. His broken rib hurt like hell. He was using a close quarter battle sight, plus he would have to move fast – no loitering in order to set up the perfect shot. And he was not merely shooting center mass. He knew right where he wanted to hit the team leader.

  All this meant that the guy had to be closer than Turnbull would have liked. He waited until his target was at just over 150 meters.

  At that point, Turnbull carefully swung the M4 around the rocks and took aim through his optic. A dot danced on the black of the team leader’s body armor. The team leader was waving his men forward as Turnbull dropped the dot to the lower abdomen, mentally adjusting for the round’s downward flight trajectory, and exhaled. At the bottom of the exhale, he squeezed the trigger, gentle and steady.

  The carbine cycled smoothly, and the weapon barely flinched from the recoil. The sound of the action clacking was louder to him than that of the round itself – the suppressor dissipated the hot gasses, leaving only a thwack. The enemy was too far away to hear anything at all.

  The impact was only a couple inches off from his aim point; the round came from the side as much as the front, so it entered into his target’s belly below the protection of his vest and proceeded to tear across his gut. Turnbull watched the target fall as if his legs had been swept out from under him. He was pulling the weapon around when the man began screaming, then yelling obscenities. Turnbull had pulled completely back off the crest by the time the remaining team members opened fire for what seemed like a full minute.

  He ran back to his hide position as best he could – lying on his stomach had been agonizing thanks to his broken rib – and took up his position with the M4 in the “V” of the trunk, sighted to the crest of the ridge. He figured he had a few minutes at least until they sorted out the mess and evacuated the wounded man. That would take at least a two-man carry.

  So now, he was only facing odds of nine to one.

  He remained sighted along the ridgeline. From his position, he could see and cover about the 100 yards straddling the centerline of the enemy’s avenue of approach to the tracker he had taped to the tree. He waited, breathing slowly and steadily. The pain in his left side morphed from a knife sticking into him and twisting to something more like a mace pounding on him every time he was forced to breathe.

  The shade kept some of the sunlight off of him, but the air was already wicking away the moisture in his nose and mouth. He took his water bottle and had a swig.

  The grenades went off – he saw the explosion’s cloud of dust and debris rise right in the middle of his field of fire. “Sorry about your pack, Amanda,” he muttered. He could not believe these guys were so dumb.

  If he was lucky, he got three, maybe four.

  Which meant, best case, the odds were now five to one.

  Rios-Parkinson cajoled and threatened the remaining five PBI tactical team members in a low voice, which only made it more threatening. He had briefed them on their task, and warned them to be careful not to kill his deputy as he crossed their axis of advance. He then put them in a line, about three meters apart, just under the crest and ordered them to wait for his command to go over the top. He ordered each to set his selector switch to “Auto.”

  All of them silently calculated whether his personal chance of survival would be better fighting against whoever was on the other side of that hill, or defying the Director of the People’s Bureau of Investigation. Each chose to go with having a fighting chance of surviving this ungodly misadventure. Each chose to charge over the top when the call from Larsen came.

  Larsen low crawled over the ridge about 200 meters south of their positions, then slowly worked his way down the eastern face on his belly through the brush line down to the dry wash that ran parallel to the hill to the east. In the sandy soil of the wash, he got up into a squat and observed north. The guy had to be up there, somewhere. Larsen was almost certain the round that took down the Alpha team leader had come from the north side. Carefully, deliberately, he began working himself north along the
wash, scanning the brush for signs of the enemy. After all, if it had been him ambushing the PBI team, that’s where he would have put himself.

  At about where the tracker was reading, Larsen paused and observed. Nothing. No one. It was a diversion. The tracker had to be over there in the bushes somewhere.

  If he hadn’t run away, the enemy had to be to the north. And in Larsen’s experience, sons of bitches like this guy never, ever ran.

  He went another five meters, gun up, ready to engage. The guerilla had to be close – Larsen could feel him up there ahead.

  Speed, aggression. Those were his allies. He checked and confirmed that his M4 was set to “Auto.”

  His left hand came off the fore grip to key his mic; Larsen had muted his speaker before coming over the top so that Rios-Parkinson would not get him killed by sending some damn fool radio traffic.

  “Go. I say again, go!”

  Rios-Parkinson looked up at his five men.

  “Go! Go now!”

  They stood up as one and charged over the crest as Rios-Parkinson watched them from the safety of the west side of the hill.

  Out of nowhere, five black shapes crested the ridge, silhouetted against the morning sky. Turnbull sighted on the first one who appeared in his optic – it happened to be the south most one. He squeezed the trigger twice, the first round kicking up a puff of fabric and dust over the target’s chest plate, the second slicing through his neck and out the back after severing his spine at the C2 level. The man fell like a black bag of Jell-O, his carbine flying out of his grip, his body rolling down the hill.

  The other four opened fire on full automatic, initially randomly. Yet whether they had heard a sound or seen dust or simply guessed well, they began to direct their streams of lead in Turnbull’s general direction as they charged down the hill.

  Turnbull shifted his aim. This time the dot came to rest over the face of one who was screaming something – you couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the guns. Turnbull squeezed, the M4 kicked, and the man’s black helmet flew off to the rear, along with a healthy portion of the back of his skull. He managed to take two more perfectly normal strides, still firing his weapon, before he collapsed in a jumble of his suddenly limp arms and legs.

  Larsen was charging now at full speed, not yet firing, but seeking a target. To his left, the other five had crested the hill, one dropping before he got a meter over. Yeah, the enemy was here, somewhere ahead.

  Larsen pressed forward. Rounds were shredding the brush ahead of him. The enemy had to be there.

  A round took most of the head off another man in black, but that left three. Three targets for the enemy to focus on while Larsen came up unseen from the side. He ran faster, his eyes scanning the bushes to his left.

  A shape, there, amidst the hurricane of lead from the survivors. The enemy.

  As he ran across the wash, he brought the M4 up to follow his eyes, which were locked onto his target. He felt something catch his legs, just for a moment, before it gave. He took another step, distracted, and his eyes turned downward.

  550 cord, stretched across the wash. He had run through three trip wires which were now tangled around his legs and trailing little metal rings.

  “I’m a fucking idiot, too,” he thought as the three hand grenades detonated.

  The trunk in front of him exploded in a cloud of wood chucks and splinters. Turnbull shut his eyes tight. Rounds hit the dirt right before his position. There were sparks in front of his face as rounds tore into his M4’s receiver assembly. He crawled backwards. There were three more coming.

  This was it.

  The grenades in the wash’s south approach exploded each within a split second of each other. They were 40 feet away, but he felt the concussion and so did the three shooters, at least for a moment. His ears roared, and he rolled over on his stomach, the pain from his rib like a bayonet in his kidney, and began to crawl back toward the wash.

  The closest one fired again, one round striking his rear trauma plate and shattering it, the second slamming into the plate’s left edge, driving a piece of it down into the back of his ribs, breaking them too. Turnbull collapsed on his belly with a grunt.

  It felt like a dozen bayonets jabbing his kidney.

  The shooting stopped for a moment and Turnbull rolled onto his back. It hurt so bad it actually stopped hurting for a moment, as if his brain simply could not process that sheer volume of hurt. The bastard who shot him was pushing in a fresh mag as Turnbull drew his Glock with his right hand and raised it.

  Instinctively, he ordered his left hand to come and join the grip. But his left hand simply declined, and lay flopped on the dirt. One handed, Turnbull fired. The round hit the PBI officer’s chest plate. He fired again, then again, both into the chest plate. He continued firing, losing count, the man in black staggering backward, until it occurred to Turnbull to try shooting him in the face, which he did and which worked.

  Turnbull scrambled to his feet, dizzy, his ears ringing, seeking the other two targets. One was lying on his face 25 yards away. Turnbull stumbled west, up the hillside. The other one lay on his back, headshot. Had he shot them? Had they shot each other?

  Where was Rios-Parkinson?

  Turnbull staggered up the hill, forcing one foot forward, then the next, pushing himself upward. He spit out a coppery, salty wad of red blood. Lung puncture from broken ribs. He didn’t have much time. But that didn’t matter now.

  That little fucker had to die.

  The pain came back and, unimaginably, it was worse than before. He gasped, nauseous, the pain fighting to dominate his mind and force him into a fetal position until it might fade. But the pain was wrestling with his desire to finish the job. In agony, Turnbull crested the hill and fell to his knees, the blood spurting out of his mouth and over his chin as he coughed and sought to regain his breath.

  A little man in black, down there, running west, back to the vehicles.

  Turnbull lifted the Glock and fired as best he could aim. The man kept running. He fired again and again, one handed, until he squeezed the trigger and nothing happened and he realized the slide was locked back on his empty gun.

  Down below, Rios-Parkinson was still running.

  Turnbull fell face first onto the rocky ground. He coughed, and blood splattered the dirt. Something grabbed his shoulder and turned him on his back; it hurt way too much to cry out.

  A bear hovered overhead, blocking out the sun.

  No, a man.

  “Kelly, Kelly, you still with me?”

  “Shoot him,” sputtered Turnbull, “Shoot him, Meachum.”

  “I can’t,” Meachum said. “Orders. I was supposed to stop you from doing it too. Looks like I almost blew that.”

  “Shoot him,” Turnbull said. Meachum’s face was spinning now.

  “Nope, Clay would not like that one bit,” Meachum said, before saying more words that Turnbull at first could not understand and soon could not hear at all.

  19.

  “I’m guessing I’m in a hospital,” Turnbull said to Clay Deeds, who put down his tablet when the patient began stirring. A variety of machines surrounded his bed. There were a number of lines running into his arms. It hurt to breathe.

  “St. George Combined Hospital. You are in the civilian side. Prettier nurses. You’re welcome.”

  “My people?”

  “All out. All safe. All in Dallas for debrief. When you get better, that’s where you’ll be going.”

  “If,” said Turnbull. “If I get better. I feel like shit.”

  “The doctors say you’ll be fine. And you need to be fine. We need you.”

  “Ha!” Turnbull began to laugh, but it hurt too much so he stopped. It wasn’t that funny anyway.

  “I think I know what you want to ask me,” Clay said.

  “Meachum could have taken the little bastard easy, Clay. The son of a bitch massacred two dozen people who worked for you.”

  “You’re right on both counts.”


  “So why not?”

  “Because he’s compromised, thanks to you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You. Not just bringing out the hard drive, but your little discussion with him about working for me. You compromised him. And we can use that. That was some solid initiative there, Kelly.”

  “How do you know about that?” Turnbull asked. “I did it when everyone else was out of the room, so they couldn’t tell you. So how did you know?”

  Clay smiled, proud of himself.

  “You bugged me. You son of a bitch, you bugged me.”

  Clay continued to smile.

  “How? Not my clothes, I could change those. Something I’d always – my Glock. You bugged my gun?”

  “Yes, and not just bugged. Tracker too. Fascinating technology. The transmitter is actually inside the metal of the slide, which acts as a microphone and an antennae. Funny thing, we assessed that it would keep operating only until you fired maybe nine, ten rounds. But we all thought, you know, what are the chances that he’ll even have to draw it? Then, of course, you reminded us that you are Kelly Turnbull. You fired a lot more, and it kept working. Out of curiosity, is there anyone you met in the blue who you didn’t shoot?”

  “Give me a second. I’m thinking. Nope.”

  “See, I know you and you will always, always have your gun. We followed you the whole time. And we listened in. By the way, I hope those intestinal issues from the food over there clear up. Sometimes we heard more than we really wanted.”

  “That’s how you knew where we would be coming out.”

  “Yes, we had to protect you and, since you gave us the opportunity to turn the future Director of the PBI, we had to protect him from you. So once you said where you were going, we vectored Meachum’s guys in to pick you up and bring you across.”