“Nope,” I said, letting the PTT button go.
I heard cussing, then Jessica got on. “What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice crackling with emotion.
“Watching. Waiting,” I replied. “We talked about this, I’m not alone.”
“The Bird is the word,” Jay said quietly from about ten feet away, but I could hear his voice over the radio.
“I see,” Jessica said softly.
“Save me some supper tonight. I won’t be gone long. Silent is out.”
I turned down the volume and started moving slowly. Jay and I were closer to the homestead than anybody would have liked, us included. We weren’t the only ones out here. We had eyeballs up and down every approach leading to the homestead. We’d taken as much as we could, and used the trucks to empty out as many of the supplies as we could. With the homestead empty, except for the chickens, would they torch the place?
Jay and I had snuck out early that morning and our old watch posts had been booby trapped. The five or six men who were watching the approach in along the roads were all hidden the same way Jay and I were, and hopefully, as good at staying hidden. Nobody was supposed to engage, even if the homestead was put to the torch. It would be obvious to anybody that the homestead had been abandoned, and in a hurry. What we didn’t want was them looking too hard for where everyone went.
Emily’s betrayal, if I could come to terms with the words myself, hurt. Was anything she’d said real? I’d been questioning everything I ever thought or knew about her. Had her coming on to me been a ruse to get close to the inner circle? My head hurt thinking about this. Still, Jessica had argued that I hadn’t had to do what I was doing. I did, I needed to know the depths of her betrayal and how bad it was going to be for us. Were Spider’s words about wanting her legit, or was this another huge mind game?
“Movement from the North,” one of the scouts whispered softly into his radio.
“Copy,” Linda said.
She herself was situated between our group and the families at the homestead. She was once again in a familiar tree, with her long gun. This time she wasn’t going to be shooting at me. I hoped. Nobody had wanted me to go, and when I had refused to compromise, everyone had gone to bed early, angry and upset. I had always planned on watching. If I saw the two guardsmen who had betrayed us, I knew I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d send lead down range. Linda and Jay had been close enough to confirm their identities before they’d bugged out, seeing their faces clearly in the firelight of the campfire.
One of Les’ last gifts to me the day before was some more of his hand loads for my M4. My suppressor was on, and I had some armor piercing in the regular loads, just in case things got hot. I wasn’t planning on shooting, but you never knew. I’d been hunting this same field when I’d been shot at before so…
“Small teams half a mile out, working both north and south side of the road,” another voice whispered into the headset.
We’d argued about switching our frequencies and encryption again, but we had the same problem the Keggers had, they had guys like Michael who could break and crack things within hours. Our solution had been to switch things up and only use it at the last minute so they didn’t get a chance. They might be scanning frequencies, but we hoped they didn’t crack it during our sneak and hide operation. In case they did, we’d all been coached by Jay about not saying anything over the radio about where our families had gone.
“Dust cloud coming from the South,” Linda said quietly.
South? They were hitting us from both sides at once? How had they gotten around town without alerting the folks we had watching them? I was glad we’d stashed the APC, that was going to be our last line of defense for the families. I’d thought about using it as bait, then the hammer to anvil the KGR into paste with my mock plan I’d told Jessica about. Now? It was being held back, because we weren’t looking for a fight on this day.
“Small teams breaking up into ones and twos,” said the same voice who’d reported the squads coming from the north.
“Copy, anybody got eyes on what’s making that dust cloud?” Linda asked. “My elevation has me seeing treetops.”
“Negative,” another voice said. “But we hear engines.”
“Have a count?” I asked into my mic.
“Negative.”
“Keep your heads down,” Linda said softly. “Might be fast zombies approaching.”
I wanted to grin. As much of a badass as Linda was, I remembered when we’d been at the gas station and the thought of the dead coming back had unnerved her.
“Headshots. Double tap. Copy,” Jay said softly into his mic.
I waited. Jay and I were almost center to where the sightings had been called in, so we’d be the last to see who was coming, but the first to be eyes on the homestead. We waited, sweated and endured the mosquitos and spiders. Two minutes. Five. Ten. I wanted to swat a mosquito, but I was pretending very hard to be a clump of vegetation and let the sweat sting my eyes and the bloodsuckers feast on my brow that I’d blacked out.
One tic came over the radio, then four fast ones. That was Jay signaling me he had visual on something. I waited, scanning through my scope left to right slowly. I slowed my breathing as much as I could, my ears pounding at the lack of sound. Then I saw vegetation to the left of the barn swish in a direction the wind wasn’t blowing. I zoomed out a little bit and saw a small path had been made, then noticed a twin of it.
Two men slowly stood from a belly crawling position at the edge of the long grass, and one held a radio to his lips. He cocked his head, then turned and waved. I was startled to see another half a dozen men stand behind him. All were dressed in camo ghillie suits. This was the KGR? Those guys usually had an identifying patch on them. What was going on here?
“Military convoy coming,” the voice to the south of us said into his radio.
We were too close to transmit back, so I gave two tics on the PTT to let them know I heard. The rest of the team did as well. Were these Young’s men? The group who’d stood up at the edge of the weeds looked up suddenly and one pointed to the South. That was when I realized I could hear the motors also. Instead of coming out to greet folks, they suddenly got back into the foliage and hunkered down out of sight again. I mentally tagged the location of each of them.
“This doesn’t look good,” Jay whispered, not using the radio.
“Are they KGR?” I asked.
“Didn’t see any insignia, but they’re under wraps still.”
I didn’t answer, remembering how McKinney’s uniform had been inside his outer layer. I really needed to spend some time picking Jess’ head on uniforms and rank. I was always the last to figure out that kind of stuff, and someday it might be important for me to know. Hell, it was already important for me to know. My brain was bouncing around, my body craving action, while my nerves were screaming danger. I was a hot mess of confusion.
A horn sounded a long blast, almost sounding like an air horn sound from a semi. It was unnerving. Instead of sweating in the heat, I suddenly fought to stay still as a chill ran through me. An explosion ripped through the air, and I could see the fireball further down the road as one of our traps went off. Somebody started screaming in a high pitched, shrill voice wracked with pain, screaming for help.
“Got too close to one of our former lookout spots,” Jay said softly.
“Can you see how many hit?” I whispered back.
“No, just debris and smoke,” he said, which was basically what I had seen as well.
Our radios stayed silent as the sound of the motors got louder. A shadow snagged my attention at the back right corner of the barn, where the thermite had been placed before. If it hadn’t been early in the day, I never would have picked out the long, man-shaped shadow that hit the ground that had been scratched clean by chickens. It moved slowly and was joined by another as the screamer’s voice went silent abruptly.
They had a team in the back by the barn. I grinned, hoping they had a lot
of bad guys there. Another boom shattered the morning, as another charge Jay had put in went off. This one was a bread pan that had been half buried into the dirt floor of the barn just inside the door, angled towards the back wall. Jay didn’t tell me what he’d packed the bread pan with, but I was thinking home-made claymore. Smoke and fire belched, and I saw several shadows drop and writhe on the ground.
“I hope we’re not killing the good guys,” I whispered softly, crawling forward slowly so I didn’t make any movement.
“If they came sneaking in like that, they ain’t good guys, no matter who they are,” Jay whispered back.
I had to agree with him. We waited, watching. The men who hadn’t set off any of our traps seemed to pull back to the edge of the field once again, one man speaking into his radio. One of the things we’d had to leave behind was my grandpa’s old antenna that we used for our base radio. Without it, we could only do line of sight with handhelds at shorter ranges. If we’d had Michael on it right now, he might have had a chance to crack their codes, again, and we could hear what they were saying.
“I wish I knew how to read lips,” I whispered.
“I can, but I can’t make out what he’s saying from here. His handset is in the way,” Jay answered.
There was a sharp cracking sound that had us both move our heads slowly to the south as a line of military vehicles came out of the billowing dust cloud. In front was an APC that made the one we’d captured from the KGR look like a tinker toy. A large turret on the top swiveled in the direction of the barn as it turned in. Half the HMMVs followed, with a string of troop carriers and the rest of the hummers pulling to a stop along the roadside, a good thirty yards from our position.
“Hope they don’t have thermal,” Jay whispered back to me.
I didn’t answer; fear, real fear, had taken grip. The markings on the sides of the vehicles looked like the ones I’d seen earlier in the year from the National Guard, so I went with the idea these were the reinforcements that were coming behind McKinney’s team. I wished I had paid more attention and asked him more details about that before he’d left, but as evidenced right in front of me… That thought went astray as men emerged from the canvas-topped troop carriers, all of them armed heavily.
“Frontline watchers, do not respond to this message,” Linda’s voice came out of the radio. “I’ve got eyes on two or three different small groups trying to retreat from the military forces now on site. I know at least a couple of you have suppressed weapons. Give me one tic on the radio if you are in a position to fire on the retreating groups.”
I pressed the mic button once and waited, watching the troops swarm the barn and house. Somebody yelled for another when they found the bodies at the back of the barn. I was looking in that direction, because I’d seen the two men who’d been standing nearby talking into the radio blend back into the bushes when the heavy gear had rolled into sight. I breathed out slowly, settling my crosshairs at the last known position of the man I’d seen on the radio and gently took the slack out of the trigger, letting the shot surprise me. The suppressed gun made a mechanical clacking sound that was almost immediately drowned out by gunfire from the spot I’d fired upon. They were spraying bullets towards the National Guardsmen, thinking they’d been attacked.
“Target hit,” Linda said. “Taking aim—”
“Target hit,” Sheriff Jackson’s voice said over the radio almost at the same moment the firing started.
The National Guard returned fire, heavily. It looked like they’d focused on the muzzle flash from the man I’d shot and peppered that entire area, with dozens of troops firing short bursts. Men screamed, and a couple of the Guardsmen dropped to the ground, slapping at places they’d been shot. The APC idled up and the turret began moving. I mentally cringed at what I knew was about to happen.
The heavy machine gun on top started mowing into the grassy hillside, leveling anything and everything from almost point blank range. My hearing was about shot, and I was a good hundred yards away from that monstrosity. I kept scanning, listening to the radio and watching for movement. Somebody got up and started running, his ghillie suit standing out as he silhouetted himself going over the hill. I fired, my crosshairs at the base of his head.
As I’d hoped, the bullet fell, hitting him square in the back, and dropping him. I’d realized I’d held my breath for that shot and started breathing again slowly. The radio crackled but I was focused on what was going on ahead of me. I knew I’d hit the man where there should have been a plate, and by the way the foliage on the hill had snapped when he’d darted off, he’d been seen from the ground forces of the National Guard.
A HMMV rocketed up the hill in the lull of the main gun on the APC went silent, tearing through the brush. Two more men suddenly stood and started running, but the vehicle was blocking my line of fire, so I held off. Sparks hit the armored vehicle as it was fired upon from further away. Those gunshots I could only hear the faint echo of, but that was soon drowned out as the rest of the vehicles that had been on the roadside gave chase, cutting through the grass and fields.
We waited in silence as the National Guard went through the barn thoroughly and then the house. We’d put the chicken coop back over the Bilco doors before bugging out, hopefully hiding the stash we had been forced to leave behind. Several of the areas we’d set explosive traps in were found and disarmed if I had to guess, because nothing else blew up. A shorter man who almost looked like a ghost, his complexion was so pale, got out of the lead APC and marched up to a trio of soldiers who seemed to be in charge. I’m a civilian, but to me, if they are ordering others around and are holding a clipboard and a stack of papers, it’s gotta be the boss, or somebody working for them.
I put the new man in my crosshairs, more to see if I could make him out better and increased the magnification. It was Monty. He pointed to the barn, then to the house, his back turned to me, but I knew he was talking. One arm was in a sling, something that hadn’t happened while he’d been with us just a short time ago. He also wasn’t one of the wounded or dead from earlier. They had dragged the KGR corpses to the edge of our property where the grass had been mowed down by feathered dinosaurs. One of theirs looked to be down hard, but the others who had been hit in the crossfire by the KGR had already been treated and moved back to the transport trucks nearest to Jay and I.
The four men walked to the house, and Monty held up a hand, and went in first. The trio waited. An entire group had already come in and out of there once. After a couple more minutes, Monty came back out, holding one of the green bottles I’d stored on the top shelf over the door of the pantry. I could see he was smiling and, in the hand that was in a sling, he was holding four paper cups from the dwindling supply we kept on the kitchen sink for Mary.
He poured drinks and laid them out on the front porch railing. The trio hesitated, but they took a cup. Monty took one as well and they all downed it like a shot of vodka. Two of them immediately spit it back out, but Monty and the one who’d been holding the clipboard put their cups down, smiling. Monty made a gesture with the bottle and the trio shook their heads. He headed back in and came out empty handed. Had he put the bottle up?
For the next hour they searched all around the homestead, and a few of them even started walking up the hill towards Jay and I, but they never came close. The homestead looked the way we wanted it to: as if we’d left in a hurry, having been tipped off that the KGR was about to attack us. We didn’t really know that the Guard was coming on the same day, but I should have. McKinney had mentioned it right after I’d shot him, but nobody else had mentioned that tidbit later on. I worried the guard unit would see that we had hastily left the area and would come looking for us, but when we’d shot the guys who were hiding out, having been caught cold by the guard’s presence, they thought they’d been fired upon by them.
“Think, Wes,” I chided myself silently. “If I was them and found somebody sneaking into an abandoned homestead dressed like a ninja, if I was the
m I don’t think that I’d assume they were there to sell Avon. With Monty there, he probably told them we were bugged out.”
Problem was, I really wished I believed that.
12
We stayed in position for a good hour after the Guard troops split forces, and the heavy vehicles and a couple troop carriers moved in the direction towards town, in Spider’s direction. The smaller force had loaded the wounded and dead, heading back in the direction they’d come in from.
“Safe to pull back to camp,” Linda’s voice said over the radio.
I listened as everyone acknowledged.
“Silent Hunter, do you copy?” Jessica’s voice came over the radio.
“Copy, but I need to go to the house to look,” I said into the mic as I sat up, finally wiping the bugs off my face, and finding a couple smears of red where the little vampires had left their mark.
“I’m going with you,” Jay said into the mic for the benefit of others.
“That’s not necessary,” Linda said. “We can do it in the daylight.”
“Monty was there with the guard unit. I need to see something.”
“What?” Jessica asked, then added, “over.”
“I don’t know yet, over,” I said, remembering the etiquette.
“Dammit, Silent,” Linda said. “Will you wait for Jessica and I to join you?”
“Sorry, no, over.”
“I’m sending you the hellhound,” Jessica said simply.
“Sure,” I told her. “He’ll find me.”
We didn’t belly crawl the entire way to the homestead, but got to our feet as soon as we made it to the road. That was where my pup found me. A joyful bark alerted me before almost a hundred pounds of him bumped me hard in the dark. Raider was growing into his large paws finally.
“Hey boy,” I said, putting my free hand down and patting his head, getting every exposed surface of my hand licked.
Still Surviving (Book 5): Dark Secrets: Page 8
