Harden

by D. J. Molles

  Lee moved his rifle a fraction and brought Building Four back into his sights. Despite the feeling of his gut souring with not-so-great news, he said, “Now let’s hold off judgement. Buildings Two through Four are all hangar-sized. Plenty big enough to hold fuel tankers.”

  Carl responded. “I agree. And that’s where I’d put them.”

  “Crash Pad copies. Is there any way that you guys can see inside one of those buildings and confirm whether there are tankers present?”

  “From my current vantage point,” Lee said. “I can see there’s a sizeable rolling door that they just pulled up. I think it’s big enough for a truck to get through, but I can’t see inside. Carl, can you advise any better?”

  “Negative,” Carl said. “I can’t even see the doors you’re talking about from this perspective. Are you able to move closer, Lee?”

  Lee glanced sideways at Deuce, laying at his side. “I can, but I got Deuce with me. If he smells something and starts barking, the jigs up.”

  “Roger that,” Carl said. “I’m going to move now before it gets any lighter out. See if I can’t get a look through that big door.”

  Up to this point it had been long-distance recon. The closer Carl got, the more their chances of being seen rose. And Carl would be looking into the rising sun. Which meant, in order for him to see inside that dark doorway, he’d practically have to be in the shadow of the building.

  The thought made Lee’s heart start knocking inside of his chest.

  They had one chance to do this, and it was entirely predicated on them having the element of surprise. If they blew that, they might get out alive, but they couldn’t just come back later and try again. The hostiles inside the airport would be on high alert.

  Lee couldn’t, in good conscience, tell his team to assault a compound when they weren’t even sure that what they were risking their lives for was there.

  They had to confirm the presence of fuel tankers.

  Lee didn’t like it. He felt like the circumstances were forcing his hand.

  There’s another option, he thought. You just have to think about it…

  “Carl, standby,” Lee ordered. “Everyone hold on for a minute. Let me think about this.”

  Silence on the comms.

  Lee’s mind pursued several possibilities, like a chess player thinking through the cause and effect of his next move.

  But this was more like speed chess. A decision was needed quickly.

  “Alright,” he transmitted. “Carl, maintain your current position. Crash Pad, I think there’s another option here. I think it’s a better option. It’ll involve less risk. But…” he trailed off, pursuing trains of thought again. Released the PTT button while he considered them.

  After a moment, Abe prompted him. “But…?”

  Decision.

  Do or die time.

  “But it’s going to move our timeline up,” Lee answered. “Sorry, I don’t think anybody’s gonna get any sleep. Abe, grab a paper and a pen and get ready to start drawing.”

  THIRTY

  ─▬▬▬─

  TANKERS

  Miles Tugger—better known as Little T—pulled up to the tiny airfield outside of Hurtsboro at about nine in the morning.

  Little T wasn’t exactly little. He was short, yes, but he was very broad across his shoulders, and his chest was the approximate size and shape of a whiskey barrel. His hands looked more like thick-cut steaks with five muscly protrusions apiece. They looked more suited to crushing bone than pulling triggers, but he still had his shotgun in his lap.

  Little T was unhappy and worried, although he could not express worry, so it came out as anger. His broad face was scrunched down into a Neanderthalic expression of distaste.

  His driver pulled them to a stop, facing the gates.

  The wheel-man was actually little. Small in height, and small in frame. Wiry. A redhead with a mouth full of teeth that ran off in separate directions from his gums, like his tongue had called out a bomb threat and the teeth were fleeing in panic. Little T legitimately couldn’t remember the guy’s actual name. Everyone just called him Ginger.

  “I don’t see the Suburban,” Ginger said, then cast a worried glance at Little T.

  Little T glowered and didn’t say anything. Inside, though, his stomach was in knots.

  The Nuevas Fronteras boys had come out to the airfield to do their dirty deeds against Paolo’s little group of dissidents. They were supposed to send word back to Browers County Correctional when everything was clear.

  They wouldn’t be sending the word back to Little T, mind you. They didn’t give a fuck about Little T. He was just a means to an end. They played nice with him so that they didn’t have to waste the ammo to exterminate him and his people.

  No, the message was supposed to be sent back to one of El Cactus’s lieutenants, a slim, sallow-faced Mexican who’s entire demeanor exuded insanity. His name was La Pala, which Little T understood to mean “The Shovel.” Presumably because he buried people.

  La Pala was not happy that his boys hadn’t brought the good word of Paolo’s destruction back to them. So he sent Little T to figure out what the fuck was keeping them.

  Little T didn’t care to be ordered around, but he was terrified of La Pala. He was terrified that the news he might bring back would be bad news. La Pala didn’t subscribe to the old “don’t kill the messenger” way of thinking.

  “You want me to honk the horn?” Ginger asked.

  “No,” Little T answered quickly. “Don’t do that.”

  Little T shuffled his thick self around in his seat so he could access the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a silver key. The key to the lock on the chain that kept the gate closed. He passed this over to Ginger. “Open the gate.”

  Ginger nodded and hopped-to. Exited the vehicle. Walked over to the chain with his weird, scarecrow gait. Fiddled with the lock. Stopped.

  Little T watched him in annoyance. Was the lock too much for this cretin to handle?

  Ginger turned around and held up the lock for Little T to see.

  The hasp was cut through cleanly. Bolt cutters.

  Well, that’s not a good sign.

  He rolled down his window and poked his head out.

  “What do you want me to do?” Ginger asked.

  “Open the fucking gate so we can figure out what happened,” Little T answered.

  This is gonna be bad news.

  Maybe I can send Ginger to deliver the bad news.

  Ginger shrugged, tossed the broken padlock off to the side. Undid the chains.

  Little T settled back into his seat with a huff.

  Ginger pushed the gates open.

  The world exploded.

  Ginger’s body seemed to come apart at the seams.

  The windshield of their truck shattered in a dozen places.

  Little T felt something hit him high in the shoulder.

  Out of pure reaction, Little T ducked in his seat, his angry eyes gone wide with fear. Behind the glove box, he turned his head to look at his shoulder and saw the ragged wound there, dribbling blood. His ears rang, committing the rest of the world to silence.

  Little T waited for gunshots. Waited for more explosions.

  They didn’t come.

  After a few ragged breaths, he straightened in his seat. Peeked over the top of the dashboard. But he couldn’t see anything out of the pebbled windshield.

  He pushed his door open. Slid out of his seat and stood on unsteady legs.

  The gates were mangled by the blasts. Smoke that stank of high-explosive wafted through the air.

  What was left of Ginger was piled in the spot where he’d pushed open the gate. It wasn’t recognizable as human.

  Booby-trapped, Little T thought. Someone booby-trapped the gate.

  And it sure as shit hadn’t been the Nuevas Fronteras fucks.

  Little T evaluated himself after a moment of standing in shock. The wound to his shoulder was bad, but survivable, he thought.<
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  Still, he found his stomach doing loops.

  Bad news.

  And now Ginger was dead.

  Which meant that the only person left to deliver the bad news to La Pala was him.

  For a moment he considered running away. But just as quickly he dismissed it. Where the fuck would he go?

  His unsteady legs began moving again, and they carried him around the front of the truck. The hood looked like someone had gone to town on it with a pick axe. A lot of big holes in it. Shrapnel. But…it was still running. For now. The radiator would be fucked at the very least.

  Little T realized that his biggest fear at that moment was the truck dying. Which would delay him getting back to the Correctional Facility. Which would delay him getting to La Pala. And while he didn’t even want to report to La Pala, he thought that maybe if he did it quickly, La Pala would appreciate his diligence. But if it took him half the day to hike back…

  Little T shuddered.

  He shuffled to the driver’s seat and got in.

  It was still warm from Ginger’s skinny ass.

  He slammed his door closed. The engine was making funny noises, which only increased Little T’s sense of urgency. He backed out onto the road, turned, and headed quickly back to Browers County Correctional to deliver the bad news.

  If he delivered it fast enough, perhaps Nuevas Fronteras could stop whoever it was that had blown Ginger to pieces. And maybe that would save Little T’s own hide.

  ***

  Carl slipped through the trees, a few hundred yards from the fence line of the airport.

  It was getting on towards eleven hundred hours now. The sun was still ahead of him, but it wasn’t glaring into his eyes as it had been that morning. It would have been better if the sun had been at his back. Would have been better for his visuals, and also to conceal his movements.

  But you had to work with what you had.

  Carl had set out from his hide on top of the hill over an hour ago. Moving down the face of the hill, he’d kept low to the ground, duck walking when the trees created a wall that would conceal him, and low crawling with his face in the dirt when he was exposed. Inch by inch.

  His clothes were soaked. Sweat was pouring down his face and into his eyes. A stalk was no easy task when you were healthy. With an injured ribcage it was slow and agonizing.

  But he kept picturing Tomlin’s body under that flow of crude oil, and that made his injured ribs seem like a small thing.

  He kept picturing the heads of the men inside of that compound snapping back as he put .338 Lapua Magnums through their brains, and that gave him the energy to keep moving.

  Lee had kept a running tally of hostiles over their squad comms.

  So far, there were thirteen men accounted for. What sounded like a roving patrol of six that skirted the perimeter in pairs. Three more in a truck with an M60 machine gun on the back—one to drive, and two to serve the weapon. Four more that Lee had identified, just milling about the compound, going in and out of the buildings.

  Carl couldn’t see any of this from where he was.

  When he’d been slithering down the face of the hill, he’d spotted one of the roving patrols, but that was it. And the truck with the machine gun was sitting stationary between the two sets of buildings, covering the gated road into the airport.

  Now he was at the very bottom of a draw in the land, and coming back up. He couldn’t see anything, but the nice part about it was that because the earth around him was over his head, he could walk upright.

  He started to make his way up to the top of the draw, getting lower as he did.

  Through the trees, he saw the top of the roofline of Building Four. It glinted brightly in the sunshine. The closer he got to the top of the draw, the more of the building came into view, and the lower Carl had to crawl.

  At the top, he was on his hands and knees, breathing heavily. Everything around him was the scent of his own sweat, mixed with the earthiness of the forest floor. When he held his breath for a moment, he clearly heard voices. They seemed very close.

  He estimated his distance to the building. Maybe a hundred yards?

  He chose a thick oak tree and used this as concealment, keeping it between him and the building as he crawled toward it.

  One of the more unnerving parts of a stalk was hearing all the leaves rustle beneath you. It sounded like you were raising a racket, but Carl knew from experience that no one more than twenty yards from you could actually hear it. It was difficult sometimes to put your faith in the tricks of the trade, when you knew your life was on the line.

  He got to the base of the oak tree and stopped. Took a moment to catch his breath and give his ribs a chance to stop aching so damn bad. Then he leaned out, very carefully.

  He saw the fence ahead of him, at about the fifty yard mark. Beyond that, open space for another fifty yards. Then the face of Building Four. Huge. Tall. Broad.

  From this perspective, he could see the shape of the open rolling door that Lee had identified earlier. But there was still too much visual interference. There were a lot of trees between him and that door, and there was a particularly dense bit of evergreen that was sitting right in the middle of his view.

  “Shit,” he whispered to himself.

  He tried anyway. Lowered himself to the ground, painstakingly slow. Brought his rifle up.

  He was hoping to get a keyhole through that screen of evergreens.

  But the image was just a green blur.

  He cursed again, adjusted the focus on the scope, trying to see through the copse of green, but still, no joy.

  Carl was not a man to be easily daunted, but an hour of stalking while injured had sapped him hard. He laid his head on the rifle stock and whispered another litany of curses at the dirt.

  Alright. You gotta shift.

  Lee’s voice in his ear: “How you doin’, Carl?”

  Carl leaned back behind the concealment of the oak’s trunk and keyed his comms, keeping his voice at a whisper. “I’m within a hundred yards. But I came up on a bad angle. I’m going to need to adjust. Give me another fifteen minutes.”

  “You got it, Bud. Take your time.”

  ***

  Seven of them, crouched in tense silence in the woods.

  They were close enough that Julia felt like she couldn’t breathe without being heard.

  It had taken them most of the morning to get into position. Everyone was tired and ragged. But they held their positions despite aching muscles and cramps. They had to. They were fifty yards from the gate, and the woods were thin. If they started rustling around, they’d be seen.

  Julia was prone in the leaves. She didn’t have cover. She was acutely aware of that. Cover stopped bullets. Concealment didn’t. All she had was the underbrush to hide her.

  She leaned her head to the right. A little window through the brush that provided her with a view straight ahead into the airport. She saw the tall fencing. Beyond that, the truck with the machine gun on top.

  She heard the men in the bed of the truck talking. Laughing.

  They were speaking Spanish, she was pretty sure. She was close enough to hear the individual words, but she didn’t understand them. She was close enough to see the expressions on the men’s faces. Close enough to see that one of them was very young and had the wispy beginnings of a macho mustache. The other was older. Clean shaven. A military bearing to him, even as he laughed and made conversation.

  She kept thinking how that M60 would chew through her pathetic concealment.

  And her body.

  A daytime raid was no one’s idea of a good time. But Lee had a point: if Carl was spotted, their only chance was to assault the objective while they still had a few seconds of surprise on their side.

  If all went well, they’d exfil quietly after dark, get a few hours of sleep, and hit it in the early morning hours.

  At least I’m prone, she kept telling herself, trying to look on the bright side. At least I’m comfortable.
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  But if she was being honest, she couldn’t wait for darkness to fall so she could get the hell out and stop staring down the barrel of that machine gun.

  ***

  Lee was coughing and trying not to.

  A cough could be heard from a long ways off. Maybe even six hundred yards.

  He bent down below the cover of the fallen pine tree and wheezed, as quietly as he was able. Then held his chest still, trying to overcome the urge to hack through sheer willpower.

  When the coughing fit past, he spat what was in his mouth onto the ground. It was dark and unpleasant looking, but at least it wasn’t bloody. That was a step in the right direction, he thought.

  You’re good to go, he told himself.

  He raised his head back up and settled back into his rifle.

  Behind the scope, he moved the rifle by small increments, scanning along the fence line closest to where he estimated Carl to be, and then branching out from there.

  Two of the roving patrols were on the far side of the airport. The third patrol was coming around and would be directly in front of Carl. But it would take them a while. They were lazy and didn’t think that anyone was after them. They sauntered, and they spent more time looking at their feet and laughing at each other’s jokes than watching the woods.

  “Carl,” Lee transmitted. “Just as a heads up, you’re gonna have a roving patrol adjacent to your poz in about five minutes.”

  Carl clicked his mike twice to indicate silently that he understood.

  Lee shifted his scope to the left, all the way to the truck with the M60 on the back.

  That was going to be a problem.

  But if Mitch did his job, then hopefully they could mitigate the damage. That was the best they could hope for at this point.

  He scanned the grounds again, looking for any additional hostiles. He kept track of them by their clothing, or any other distinctive features. Sweatshirt Guy. Bloused Boots Guy. Cowboy Hat Guy. Etcetera, etcetera.

  He spotted no one that he hadn’t already made note of.

  Carl’s voice, very quiet on the radio: “Standby. I have a keyhole on the big door…”