Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  Then the yelling started and doors started flying open. Men spilled out of the burning trailers first, most dressed only in undershorts, several in less than that. A few T-shirts, all barefoot. Dylan watched, transfixed, through his scope as the scale of the disaster they’d created continued to escalate.

  At the far end—the barracks he thought of as Trailer One—one of the evacuees was clear of danger before he turned and ran back inside. As far as Dylan could tell, he never came out again. He pretended that he couldn’t hear the screams of those who were being burned alive. On Jolaine’s side of the street, from what would have been Trailer Three, one man dragged another man out of the inferno, only to collapse on the ground. Neither of them moved after that. Dylan felt sick. He’d faced down what had seemed like certain death countless times over his career with the Unit, and he’d always found the physical strength and the strength of character to pull himself through. If faced with the certainty of burning to death, however, he believed he’d eat his own bullet before he’d allow the flames to consume him.

  Suddenly, the streets were filled with soldiers. Those who streamed from the trailers that had been spared the horrors of the thermite raced to help those who fled from the infernos.

  Across the street, Jolaine’s rifle burped. She fired a second time, and then a third. “Am I working alone here?” she bitched in his ear.

  Dylan snapped his head back in to the game. Anyone with a gun dies.

  And per their training, no doubt, many—maybe most of those fleeing from the unburned structures—had spilled out into the street carrying rifles, either in their hands, or slung over their shoulders.

  Dylan checked to make sure that his selector switch was settled on single-fire and he settled his reticle on a soldier’s head. The trigger broke, his rifle barked and the man fell. At this range, there was no consideration of additional elevation or Kentucky windage. At this range, you pressed the trigger and the target dropped.

  The terrified soldiers didn’t seem to understand that they were under fire. Dylan settled his reticle on another soldier, took a settling breath, and didn’t shoot. “I can’t do this,” he said, apparently into an open mike. This was murder. And no matter what Jolaine chose to think, this was different from the agents he’d killed. They had betrayed him. They had betrayed Behrang, too. Those killings had been justified. Those men had been trained killers.

  These poor bastards . . . They weren’t even soldiers. They were amateurs with guns and delusions.

  Who’d already killed a congressman, and had attempted to kill a senator. He tried one more time to shoot. It wasn’t in him.

  But Jolaine kept shooting. And men kept falling. It took the longest time, but when the reality finally sank in, the terror among the men blossomed to full-blown panic.

  “Hey, Scorpion,” Rollins called over his shoulder. “Have you considered that we’re going to be silhouetted against those fires as we approach?”

  “Have you considered that you’ve got the steering wheel and the gas?” Boxers replied.

  Jonathan ignored them both and keyed his mike. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. Time’s getting kind of short here. If you have a picture of Carrington available, now would be the time to share it.”

  “Workin’ it.”

  The sporadic gunfire from the barracks down the hill was less intense than Jonathan expected. He interpreted it as either a lot of fatalities or a lot of panic. Either one suited him as well as the other.

  Apparently reacting to his own observation, Rollins swung a hard right at the base of the hill that would have taken them to officers’ country. The Hummer bounced hard as the wheels left the paved surface and ran into the grass, tossing Jonathan into Boxers’ side. It was like colliding with a stone wall. Rollins drove with both speed and purpose across the grass, and then perilously close to the woods on the right side as he advanced to whatever landmark he had in mind.

  “Think he knows where we’re going?” Boxers asked.

  “I hope so,” Jonathan said. “At this pace, we’re going to be there very soon.”

  “Put your weapons down and no one will get hurt!” Dylan yelled to the swirling mass of panic that was the street in front of the barracks.

  “They can’t hear you,” Jolaine said over the air.

  Then, as if to emphasize the point, one of the idiots down there opened fire in their general direction. It wasn’t close, but it was the thought that mattered.

  “Full-auto,” Jolaine said.

  “No! What about the wounded and unarmed?”

  “The wounded and unarmed are either dying or arming themselves. The smart ones are running.” She opened up with a long burst. People fell.

  This just wasn’t right. It was like fishing with dynamite. With the ammunition they were shooting, after a bullet hit its target it was likely to penetrate all the way through and hit another. Maybe more. At a cycling rate of six hundred rounds per minute, it was devastating. Not a problem when the guy on the other end of the sight was armed, but this was different.

  Well, it used to be different. While many ran, too many stayed, and they were, indeed, arming themselves.

  Dylan moved the selector to full-auto, picked a cluster of armed survivors, and opened up.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The renewed sound of gunfire encouraged Ian. He hoped it meant that his troops were fighting back. The gunfire was sporadic, though. Hesitant and unsustained. Less encouraging. More officers had joined him from the other barracks, and they’d expanded the defensive circle.

  And somewhere out there, beyond the single arc of shooters that defined his defensive perimeter, he heard the sound of a vehicle on the move. “Do you hear that?” he asked to whomever stood nearby. He’d hoped it would be General Karras, but he wasn’t sure where the good general had disappeared to.

  “Stand fast, gentlemen,” he said to the twenty or so soldiers who had dispersed themselves in a wide protective arc. “I believe they’re sending an assault vehicle our way.”

  “They’ve killed everybody down below, haven’t they, Colonel?” someone asked from the line.

  “It was a surprise attack,” Ian said. “We can repel it.”

  A few seconds passed.

  “You can repel it,” one young man said. He stood. “This isn’t what I signed on for. They’re killing everybody down there.”

  “What’s your name?” Ian challenged.

  “You don’t know? Why should I tell you?”

  Ian brought his M4 to his shoulder. “Because I don’t want to kill strangers for desertion,” he said.

  “My name is the same as it was two months ago when you didn’t give a shit what it was,” the kid said. “I’m out.” He made a show of throwing his weapon to the ground and started walking toward the woods.

  “Don’t make me shoot you!” Ian shouted.

  “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” the soldier said.

  Just like that, Ian found himself in a place he’d never been before. He’d read stories of General George Washington executing conscripts who’d deserted or who disobeyed orders, and while he’d understood the decision on principle, he’d never considered the practical elements. Was there any psychological formula that showed fear of execution to be a positive motivator?

  “Stop!” Ian yelled.

  “I’m leaving,” the soldier said. He continued to walk.

  “I will shoot you in five seconds,” Ian said, raising his rifle to his shoulder.

  “Do what you gotta do.”

  Ian’s bullet literally separated the kid’s head from his shoulders, in a massive pink spray of bone and brains.

  Ian turned to face the others, but took care to make sure that the muzzle was pointed in a safe direction. “Any questions?” he asked.

  As if in unison, the others turned to face the direction of the approaching threat. Individually and as a group, he knew that they were ready to throw him to the first wolf that presented itself.

  T
his was going to be a difficult night.

  “Scorpion, Mother Hen,” Jonathan’s radio crackled. “Check your handheld. I think I found Victor Carrington.”

  Jonathan fumbled for his phone/lifeline, and entered the appropriate codes to bring it to life. “You think or you know?”

  “Given the time constraints, I think the two are about equal, don’t you?” Venice said.

  His phone lit up with the image of a tall, slender man at what clearly was the checkout stand at Bud’s Hardware. “Okay,” Jonathan said. “I have the picture. Do you have an identification on who it is?”

  “That’ll take a couple extra minutes,” Venice said. Her tone showed him that she was not happy with his lack of appreciation for what she’d already accomplished.

  “This is who we’re looking for,” Jonathan said, passing the phone to Boxers.

  “He looks like everybody,” Big Guy said. He handed the phone and its image up to Rollins.

  Madman glanced at the phone, then turned his eyes back to what he was doing. “Light discipline’s a lot harder when you’re looking at lighted pictures,” he said.

  Point taken.

  Ian was horrified by what he’d done. He’d murdered that young man. That wasn’t discipline. That was murder.

  The reality crystalized for him with horrifying clarity. The Patriots’ Army wasn’t an army at all. It never would be an army. It lacked the discipline and any pureness of purpose. They were a team of attackers. The mission was a noble one, a necessary one, but it was so based on anger and revenge that there was no room to stand for anything else. While armies trained equally for offense and defense, the Patriots’ Army had trained only for offense. That had left them vulnerable to attack.

  But how much could Ian reasonably be held to anticipate? He’d focused his training on the missions they were facing, not on the defense of the camp. That had been a distant goal, but it had never elevated to primary importance. And now it was the weakness that would kill them all. There was no reasonable scenario in which law enforcement authorities could attack him. There was no constitutional construct that would allow the military to intervene. And if the military was even close to intervention, General Brock would have intervened. At the very least, he would have issued a warning to his own army.

  So, who were these people who were tearing everything apart? How many of them were there? Why had no alarm been sounded?

  And where were they? Literally, where? Engine noise did not occur naturally, so where was its source?

  More of the officers poured from their barracks and gathered around him. Eight, maybe ten more men, bringing his effective force to nearly thirty.

  “The colonel shot Dennis,” someone said from the darkness. Ian interpreted it as an attempt to foment mutiny.

  “As I will shoot anyone else who tries to run. This is not the time for cowardice. This is a time for action and valor.” Those words were meant to inspire, but they sounded flat even to him. It’s the rare soldier who would rally around a man who would kill his colleague. “You are officers in this army, gentlemen. You are the leaders.”

  “Jesus Christ, they’re killing everyone down there,” a newcomer said. “Why aren’t we down there helping?”

  “Because that’s exactly what they want us to do,” Ian said. “Those fires are a diversion.”

  “Those fires are an attack, Colonel.”

  “Our forces are in disarray,” Ian said. “We cannot shoot from here because we cannot see the enemy. If we go to their fight, they win. We stay here and defend until such time as we can plan a counterattack.”

  “How many are there?” another voice asked.

  “To hell with how many,” said yet another unknown. “Who are they?”

  “We don’t know any of the above,” Ian said.

  “But we know they have vehicles. We heard them.”

  In fact, where was the engine noise now? At first, it had been at their twelve o’clock, directly in front, but now it sounded dispersed, seeming to come from several directions at once. And it was getting closer. Louder.

  So, why couldn’t he see it? Why wasn’t the vehicle silhouetted against the fires that raged below?

  “They’re circling around,” Ian declared. “They’re flanking us.”

  “My team is down there, burning to death, Colonel,” one of the officers said. This one had the courage to step up and confront Ian face-to-face.

  “Then let’s get to the business of killing the bastards who killed them. Fan out. And form a defensive circle.”

  The officer didn’t acknowledge, but he obeyed.

  “General Karras!” Ian called.

  “I think I saw him running the other way,” a voice said. “Sir.”

  This was sickening. Dylan wished that he could unsee all of it. The dead were merely dead, but the burned would suffer for a lifetime. He had little sympathy for those he shot because they were armed. And they’d learned. Apparently word traveled fast among the living because almost as one, they dropped their weapons and put their hands in the air.

  He and Jolaine issued no orders. This was the victims’ moment, and they would live or they would die based on the decisions they made.

  The smart ones ran. They scattered, heading to the woods or down the road toward the gates where they would no doubt find the remains of their security force.

  The courageous ones stayed to help their wounded colleagues.

  Into his radio, he said, “She Devil, if you shoot any of them, I swear to God that I will shoot you.”

  “What the hell kind of radio traffic is that?” Boxers asked, off the air.

  “Let it go, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. He had an image in his head of what Jolaine and Dylan were dealing with, and he preferred not to go there. It sounded to him as if Jolaine was having twenty percent more fun at her job than she should. That made her a liability, and he’d have to deal with that—

  “We’ve got a runner,” Rollins announced, pointing through the windshield. Up ahead, a guy was running directly at them across a field. In night vision, he was clearly visible, but if he knew that the Batmobile was there, he made no indication. He was fully dressed and appeared to be in full panic mode.

  Rollins said, “He’s got stars on his collar.”

  “Get him,” Jonathan said. “We need the intel.”

  They didn’t even need to chase him down. He literally ran right at them. When he was still thirty feet away, Jonathan opened his door and stepped out. Boxers mirrored him on the other side.

  The runner heard the noise and skidded to a stop. He clearly considered pivoting and running.

  With his MP7 up and at the ready, Jonathan said, “Don’t move or I’ll kill you.” His voice was barely louder than the engine. Sometimes, speaking softly carried more threat than barking an order.

  The man froze.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Make no loud noises. In fact, make no noise at all. You cannot see me, but I can see you as if you were standing in daylight. Give me two thumbs up if you understand.”

  His eyes huge, clearly terrified, the man held both hands high and wide and jutted both thumbs straight up. He said nothing.

  “Very good,” Jonathan said. “Now, I want you to lie facedown on the ground and remain silent. Do that, and we won’t hurt you.”

  The man complied precisely.

  “Okay, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. “Your turn.”

  While Jonathan kept the beam of his IR laser sight squarely on the top of the prisoner’s head, Boxers moved out into the night with a set of plastic zip cuffs and bound the man’s hands behind him. He assumed that Big Guy said something to him, but Jonathan couldn’t hear the words. Instead, he watched the shiver reverberate through the prisoner’s body. When Boxers lifted on the man’s bound arms, he stood readily and walked back to the vehicle.

  “Turn around and sit down,” Jonathan instructed, “and hold your feet out to my friend. We need to zip those, too.”

  “Who are you
?” the prisoner asked. He turned sideways in the seat and offered his feet to Boxers.

  “Think of us as the people who haven’t killed you yet,” Jonathan said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m nobody,” he said. “I’m just a soldier.”

  “You’re wearing stars,” Boxers said.

  “We’re looking for Victor Carrington,” Jonathan said. “Is he here?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  Boxers drew his pistol and pressed the muzzle against the man’s knee. “I know you can’t see images in the dark” he said, “but try to envision the future. I threaten to shoot your knee. You get all brave and shit and say again that you don’t know who Carrington is. Then, I blast a bullet through your knee just as I promised, and you’re, like, all in agony and shit, and then we ask you again, and you tell us what we want to know because it really, really hurts to get shot in the knee, only now you walk funny forever.”

  The man looked terrified. And he should have, because Boxers was not bluffing. It’s not how Jonathan would have handled it, but it was what it was.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “With that done, let me ask again. Is Victor Carrington up there?”

  The prisoner nodded. “Yes.”

  “Is he in charge?”

  A slight hesitation. Then, “Yes.”

  Boxers saw it, too. He pressed the muzzle a little harder into his knee. “If ever there’s been a time in your life where being forthcoming mattered more than anything, this is it. What’s the rest?”

  The prisoner hesitated.

  “Okay, fine, then,” Boxers said. He worked the de-cocker on his M9. That metallic click was a great motivator.

  “No! Don’t!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Jonathan reminded him.