Reclamation (Best Laid Plans Book 4)

by Nathan Jones

  Vernon glanced at Trev. “What about the gold I paid him for the vehicle?”

  Davis slammed his fist down on the table behind him. “You can't pay for something you stole!” he snapped. “If Smith wants to return it to you that's his choice, but as far as I'm concerned that gold is a gift, or you could consider it reparation for the suffering and danger you put the man's family through.” He motioned for the Marine waiting by the door to escort Vernon out. “Get your men settled, Sheriff. I'll talk to you more then, give you an idea of what we expect of you and fill you in on what you need to know. Oh, and welcome to the Rockies.”

  Once Vernon was gone Davis whirled to Trev. “You going to have a problem with that?”

  Trev hesitated. He thought the sergeant was making a mistake, but if Davis had made up his mind then that was probably that. “If you think he can be trusted then I'll trust your judgment. I just hope you won't let your guard down with him. I certainly won't.”

  The sergeant swore at him again. “I like you, Smith. You're the kind of person I can respect, and you and your people do your jobs well. I don't even blame you for seeking justice.” He pointed an accusing finger at Trev's chest. “But you and your Aspen Hill irregulars came in with a deserter from the US Army who'd spent the winter robbing innocent people! Remember that?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Trev said reluctantly. And unfortunately it was a pretty good point.

  “You expected me to look past that because Gutierrez had earned your trust and was trying to pay for his mistakes, and you were lucky because my orders were to look past it, if he was willing to fight for us. And you know what? I looked past it.” Davis waved vaguely at the tent's entrance. “So do the same for Vernon and his people and don't let me hear about you causing problems. Understood?”

  Trev couldn't think of a way to argue with that. “Understood. Hopefully he'll do the same.”

  “He better,” the sergeant growled. “We ignore past crimes, we don't ignore current ones. Those we come down on like a ton of bricks.” He reached behind him and absently tapped his map. “On the subject of keeping you apart, I hope you realize he was going to be your reinforcements at Cedar Creek. Next group of volunteers to show up, right? But I guess you'll have to wait a little longer for more fighters.”

  That was something he could've done without hearing. “Couldn't you reassign people from another camp and swap him out there?”

  “No,” Davis said, with finality. He rounded his desk to lean over his map again, obviously considering the meeting over. Trev stayed where he was, though, waiting patiently until the man finally looked up. “What?”

  “Vernon was telling the truth about the army coming north out of Mexico,” Trev said, “and you knew about it.”

  Davis set his jaw. “And?” Instead of answering Trev just waited in silence, and finally the sergeant growled in annoyance. “We haven't known about it for long. The blockheads managed to sneak it into Mexico without anyone on our side knowing. A hundred thousand conscripts from newly inducted Gold Bloc countries, who were just positioning themselves in Mexico to push northward when the Retaliation happened. Since then, as best we can tell they've taken Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, and the parts of California that aren't irradiated slag. And from our reports Vernon's spot on about how they're treating the refugees fleeing their way.”

  A sudden realization struck Trev. “That's why Erikson pulled back to Utah. If the blockheads have a force that big coming up from Mexico they could've easily pushed right between the two arms of the Rockies where we'd set up, dividing our forces.”

  Davis nodded. “Yeah, that's right.”

  “So why didn't you guys tell us that?” Trev demanded. “We all thought either Erikson had suffered some major defeat you weren't telling us about, or he'd just retreated with his tail between his legs and put up barely a fight.”

  The sergeant's eyes narrowed. “Morale, Smith. Our soldiers are having a hard enough time fighting on against a vastly superior force that's already swallowed up most of our country. You want to tell them that on top of that there's nearly a hundred thousand more blockheads coming up from the south that none of us knew about? Who'd stayed so well hidden from us that not a single nuke targeted them during the Retaliation, leaving them completely intact with all their equipment and plenty of supplies?”

  Unfortunately that wasn't the worst argument. Lassiter and Erikson had done their best to scrape together every single available soldier they could find all over the country who'd managed to survive the chaos, as well as recruit as many civilian volunteers as they could find, and their forces still barely numbered over 100,000 people.

  If those brave defenders found out that the enemy that already outnumbered them 10 to 1 had a fresh army as large as their entire ragtag group that no one had even known about, that was about to flank them from an entirely new direction, that would be more than disheartening.

  “That's why General Lassiter's got as many people here in the south as General Erikson is positioning up north, even though most of the blockheads we knew about were coming from up there,” Trev guessed. “He has to hold our flank.”

  “If he can,” Davis said grimly. He slumped down on the cheap metal stool behind his map table, vacantly staring down at the wrinkled paper. “The casualties in Colorado massively favored us, but the blockheads were still positioning themselves and hadn't even started really throwing bodies at us to try to break our defenses.”

  The sergeant sucked in a breath. “Once they do that here we'll be closed in, and the casualty numbers are going to get worse as they grind us down and we use up all our fuel and munitions. If we can't outlast them they'll bury us like a tide coming in, and that'll be it for the US.”

  Trev was a strong believer in the mindset of knowing the reality of a situation so he could deal with it. But at the moment he almost wished he wasn't hearing any of this. It made defending his little canyon seem a lot less useful to the overall war.

  After a grim silence the sergeant finally looked up at him. “I could've done without you hearing all that from Vernon. I told you even more because I trust you can keep your mouth shut and, to be honest, it's nice to tell someone else.” His eyes narrowed. “But I do mean it, Smith. Keep your mouth shut about this until the time comes to tell everyone. If it ever does.”

  “I will,” Trev promised.

  “All right then, dismissed. And keep away from Vernon!”

  Trev saluted, forgetting that he didn't have to, and with some relief exited the tent.

  * * * * *

  On Davis's orders Matt's squad had been on hunting and meat preserving duty almost nonstop over the last couple days.

  There were plenty of good reasons for that. One was that for the moment, at least, the two squads of Marines were enough to hold the canyon. Another was that the sergeant wanted to store up as many supplies as possible before the enemy rolled in and occupied all their focus. There was also the fact that Davis felt like it was his duty to give the refugees coming up Highway 31 heading for safety in the mountains at least one meal to see them on their way, as well as a place to sleep if they needed it.

  All in all it meant that no matter how much game they bagged each time they went out, it was never enough to satisfy their needs. And when luck wasn't with them, like with this current hunt, Matt almost felt bad returning to camp.

  It didn't improve his mood much to see that while he'd been gone another section had been added to the permanent part of the camp, housing a dozen or so more volunteers. Not that he had a problem with having more people fighting with them, just the opposite, but it meant more mouths to feed.

  Who knew, maybe Davis would send the new guys out in hunting parties too.

  Matt set Rick and Pete to cleaning the few varmints they'd managed to find while he headed over to the new camp to introduce himself. He'd only made it halfway there, though, before Graham intercepted him.

  “Probably don't want to go over
there,” the specialist said.

  Matt frowned. “Is there a problem?”

  “Only with you guys.” The soldier shrugged. “Your buddy Trev brought those guys in. Under arrest.”

  “What?” Matt demanded, incredulous. “What did they do?”

  Graham shrugged again. “Stole a truck from him or something. But whatever they did, Sarge has pardoned them and let them join up. He doesn't want trouble so you'll probably want to keep your distance, just to be on the safe side.”

  Matt looked over at the camp and the few unkempt men in view around the tents. It wasn't possible that was the sheriff Trev had told him about, the guy who'd robbed them in Newtown. Was it? “I'll give them a wide berth,” he told the specialist. “Although if Davis let them join up and wants me to keep the peace there wouldn't be any trouble from my end either way.”

  “That's the spirit.” Graham clapped him on the shoulder and walked away, so Matt turned to head back to his camp and help his friends with their work.

  He'd only gone a few steps when there was a burst of laughter, not quite friendly, from the camp behind him. He looked back to find a few of the newcomers staring his way and grinning like he was the butt of some joke. One of them flipped him off.

  Terrific. He kept going, ignoring more laughter from behind. He'd been hoping Davis might put the new guys on hunting duty to help his squad out, but under the circumstances maybe he didn't want a bunch of armed pardoned criminals who apparently had a grudge against the Aspen Hill volunteers roaming the forests with his people.

  He hoped Davis knew what he was doing.

  It turned out that only a few hours later the arrival of Vernon and whatever tension it was bound to cause became the least of his worries. That was when word reached them that the fighting in Colorado was mostly done. Erikson had broken away as cleanly as possible and his force was making a beeline for northern Utah, to take over the defenses there as planned. Meanwhile Lassiter's troops that had been stationed to the north made their way south to cover central and southern Utah.

  Less than a day behind them, the Gold Bloc forces were in close pursuit. Equally alarming, to the west the Chinese army had finally sprung into motion in a big way. They seemed to have some intel on the way the US Armed Forces in Utah were reorganizing, and were trying to race Erikson to northern Utah to take it first. And from the looks of things it was going to be a close one even though they had to go around the fallout zone.

  But as dire as those events were, they were a distant concern compared to the warning Davis's Marines and the volunteers soon received that directly concerned them.

  A Gold Bloc army had materialized out of nowhere in the south, pushing up hard towards Utah. It was smaller than the other two forces but much more mobile, and expected to be in position to attack days ahead of the Russians to the northeast and Chinese to the northwest. By some reports it would engage Lassiter's position along I-70 as early as tomorrow afternoon.

  If the General turned them back, as everyone desperately hoped he would, that was a mixed blessing for Matt and his volunteers. It meant the enemy would be heading their way next.

  Chapter Sixteen

  First Strike

  For the rest of the day Davis led everyone in frantically making final preparations for whatever came their way. Matt and his squad worked hard, but were always partially distracted by listening intently to radio chatter hoping for news.

  There was plenty of that as afternoon turned to evening, none of it good. It looked as if Erikson would barely make it before the Chinese, and Lassiter had redirected thousands of his soldiers heading south back to their previous positions to hold off any of the enemy's advance units. That left the south weaker than the Generals would've liked when it came to the army headed their way along I-70, but there was no help for it.

  Things were going FUBAR, as the Marines put it, and the next few days were going to be critical. Needless to say Matt didn't sleep very well that night, and he doubted anyone else had either.

  The next morning Davis gathered everyone in camp together. “We're 99.9% certain the enemy will attack us today,” he began bluntly, “along at least one front and possibly along all of them at once. So from now on all our other duties take a distant second priority to manning our positions, which we'll be doing 24/7 starting now. I suggest you get used to sleeping in foxholes and eating lean, at least until we solve this current crisis and things settle down a bit.”

  He fell silent for a few moments, letting that sink in, then abruptly barked out, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is US soil! We do not let any enemy trespass on US soil. Highway 31 will not be where the blockheads break through into the mountains. Is that understood!”

  The Marines responded enthusiastically, while the volunteers were more subdued. Matt did his best, but he was too nervous to get swept up in a pep talk.

  Davis seemed to notice it. He gave the volunteers a slightly impatient look and gestured down the canyon. “Everyone to your emplacements!” he snapped. “Take what you need to stay there for a few days, assuming you'll be fighting that entire time. Including a change of pants if you think you'll need one; I don't care how scared you are, I don't want to see any of you abandoning your posts on my watch unless I give the order to fall back!”

  As motivational speeches went that left a little something to be desired, but it got them moving. Matt had his squad pack up and lug their gear to the emplacement they'd set up, on the other side of and slightly up the canyon from the rocky slope Davis had rigged to bury the road.

  Aside from Williams's squad across the canyon they were the farthest forward position, but it wasn't all bad because it was also one of the more inaccessible ones from below. The enemy would have a hard time getting to them through a dense thicket of scrub oak closer to the road, and this emplacement was also situated next to a slope thickly treed with spruce and Douglas fir.

  If they had to fall back they'd almost immediately be in the cover of those trees, which would offer close to complete protection from anything but the luckiest stray shot. They'd cleared a good path to the fallback position ahead of time as well, which would allow them to quickly relocate and begin firing from their new spot.

  Matt got his people situated in the shallow trench behind the line of sandbags they'd set up over a week ago, which was lined with branches and other forest debris for camouflage and extra cover. Everyone looked tense, and Carl Mitchell actually threw up from nerves. Matt put them to work checking their gear, not just because it was an important task but also to occupy their minds. Once they were busy with that he got in touch with Davis to let him know they were in place.

  “Good hustle, Larson,” the sergeant said.

  “Thanks. What do we do now?”

  Davis snorted. “What do you think? Wait until you're needed, and find that balance where you somehow manage to stay sharp for long periods of time without turning into a complete basket case.” His tone sharpened. “Keep an eye on the area around us, too. I may have scouts out to give us advance warning, and General Lassiter has people even farther out, but that's no reason you shouldn't keep watch too.”

  “Roger, Sarge. We'll keep our eyes open.” Matt thumbed the transmission toggle off.

  “Oh, and the enemy is really hoofing it. Last word was they'll be here hours earlier than expected, maybe even before noon. Davis out.”

  Matt exchanged worried glances with the rest of his squad, who'd gathered around him as the conversation began. “They got here sooner than we expected,” Pete said. He looked almost excited by the prospect.

  “The early bird gets the worm,” Rick replied, sounding half joking, half dour.

  Matt knew it was probably good for morale, but he wasn't in the mood for banter. “And the early worm gets the bird,” he shot back with finality. “Let's be the bird, guys. We'll make them regret showing up at any time. Everybody get your gear in order and remember your training.”

  His squad burst into activity, hastily moving back t
o their assigned positions and setting up there for the wait.

  * * * * *

  Twelve volunteers. A dozen people to hold against whatever came their way.

  Davis had finally spilled the beans to everyone about the army coming up from Mexico, right before that army leapt down their throats. Not the best timing, but better late than never.

  Trev thumbed his radio toggle. “Two rules, people: be alert, and no heroics. We're not here to fight the enemy, we're just here to take out this road if it looks like they're coming up the canyon. If they continue to come on foot in small numbers we drive them back, otherwise we fall back ourselves and wait for Davis to send help.”

  His squad gave their acknowledgements, sporadically and with more than a little trepidation. They'd been set up in their positions since last night, since Trev wanted them to get used to the idea of staying there, although he'd let them pitch their tents outside their emplacements for a more comfortable sleep. He also wanted them to be as rested as possible for whatever happened.

  Still, twelve people, and the less experienced of the volunteers from Aspen Hill. Not to mention that most of the toys the town had sent along with them were with Matt and Davis in the other canyon. Realistically he knew Cedar Creek Canyon's road wasn't ideal for the enemy, and they weren't far from the main camp along 31 if they needed help.

  In spite of all that he felt like he and his people were standing in the doorway just before the start of the Running of the Bulls, while everyone else was safe behind the barricades.

  He had to hope it wouldn't be as bad as he feared. They'd prepared their positions to have escape routes with fairly good cover, so if his people needed to run they could do it safely. He also had Molotovs and grenades captured from the raiders in case things went wrong and they needed to cover their escape with more than just small arms fire.