“And what about these boys here?” Alex asked, looking to the other Dommies, who stared at the sergeant with a certain reverence. “Are they just as ready to die as you?” he demanded.
“They’ll do as I say,” the sergeant said, directing the statement more to his men than to Alex. “And they’ll keep their mouths shut.”
“Fair enough,” Dag said as he drew a pistol off his belt, shoved it between the bars of the prison cell into the sergeant’s gut, and fired.
The bullet passed straight through the Dommie, spraying blood across the two men standing behind him and the back of the cell. The third Dommie caught the remnants of the slug in the arm as it flew out of the sergeant. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground. All the prisoners suddenly seemed to be shouting. Two of them were now kneeling with the sergeant, trying to cover the wound with their hands.
“Dag! What the hell are you doing?” Alex hissed as he yanked his brother away from the cell.
Dag shook off Alex’s grip and strode forward to the cells once more. He pulled back the hammer on the pistol to cock it and pointed it at the remaining Dommies. “You boys probably haven’t seen a lot of action, so you have no idea what a gut wound will do to a man,” Dag said. He had never shot a man in the gut, but he had shot a bear there once and had to listen to it die in agony over an hour as he did not have the ammunition to spare on putting it out of its misery. “He could still live, providing that we get him medical attention,” Dag continued. “As soon as someone tells us what we want to know, we send for the medic.”
As the angry shouts and curses from the Dommies continued, Alex took Dag by the arm and pulled him over into a small room that served as the chief constable’s office. Alex practically shoved Dag inside, sending him into a small desk, and knocking a pile of paperwork and one tea mug to the floor. It shattered into a hundred pieces as Alex slammed the door shut behind him.
“What the hell happened to talking?” he demanded angrily. “You were going to give me time to…”
“Your talking wasn’t getting us anywhere,” Dag replied. “All I did was provide them with a little incentive.”
“You shot a prisoner!” Alex shouted.
“You are damn right I did,” Dag retorted. “We just finished telling them how they were going to be shot by firing squad. All I did was save the captain some paperwork.”
“You know as well as I do that I was just saying that,” Alex spat as he grabbed Dag by the collar. “It was a bluff.”
“No, you just thought it was,” he argued as he shoved his brother’s hands off of him. “Aleksian, I know that you’ve studied warfare and morality and everything else they want to teach you to be a fine, upstanding young officer. In another time, I would admire you for the stance you’re taking now. But there’s a reality to war that they won’t teach you in the classroom and that you won’t find in any textbook.”
“And what wars have you fought in?” Alex demanded angrily. “Where did you gain all of this knowledge?”
Dag sighed. “Buy Tangrit a drink or two sometime and you’ll know all you need to know about the face of war,” he said. “Burned villages. Murdered children. Women raped. Gold teeth ripped from the mouths of the dead. Mutilation and maiming of the living just to extract a small measure of vengeance. Men set on fire just so you could watch them dance. If half the stories he tells are true, then he deserves every damn drink everyone buys him.”
“I had no idea,” Alex said.
“No one does until they see it for themselves,” Dag responded. “I count myself lucky that I haven’t. That is the suffering that awaits our family, every family, and our country. I weigh that suffering against one bullet in the guts of a Dommie bastard and I know what I have to do. And I know I’m right to do it.”
Alex was at a loss for words, so Dag pushed past him and opened the office door. He walked up to the cells where two men in the sergeant’s cell were doing what they could to stop the bleeding. The one man who caught the ricochet had placed his arm through the cell bars so his comrades in the next cell over could wrap the wound with torn pieces of cloth from their uniforms. The sergeant appeared to have blacked out from the pain. Dag did not think he had much longer.
“Have you made use of the time I have given you to think?” he demanded, re-drawing his pistol. “Our do I need to make some additional statements before you will tell me what I want to know.”
He studied the eyes of each man in the cells as he spoke. Most of them stared back at him angrily, but one had the look of someone desperate not to appear afraid. Dag pointed at him.
“You, step forward,” he demanded.
The Dommie hesitated.
“Step forward or I put a round in the knee of every man in there with you,” Dag growled.
Slowly, the soldier stepped forward until his face was a few inches away from the bars that separated him and Dag. He was young- maybe seventeen- with a round boyish face and a spattering of teenage acne. A few rogue blonde hairs were growing out of his chin in a pathetic attempt at a beard. His hair was almost completely shorn, leaving a small blonde streak running down the center of his head.
Young people, Dag thought to himself as Alex emerged from the chief constable’s office and walked over to stand beside him. His face held none of the doubt it had before. The Dommies had probably heard them arguing, Dag realized. It reinforced their fear when the soldiers realized that the brothers were presenting a united front.
“What is your name?” Dag asked him.
“Private First Class Yakob Lorenzen. Dominion Armed Forces. Serial Number 44-AA-8417458- blue,” he responded. He was attempting to sound automatic, like that was the only thing that he was capable of saying. This one had seen one too many video dramas at the Cineplex.
“Listen to me, Yakob,” Dag said. “You’re a brave man to not have spoken up even with your sergeant shot and lying over on the floor there bleeding to death.” Yakob glanced down at the sergeant and Dag saw the momentary look of anguished pity on his face. “I’m sure your sergeant there would rather die than have you spilling your secrets to me. You’re doing what he wants.” He paused. “Do you think that’s what the others want?” he asked as he began pacing the length of the cell and then back again. “Would all of you rather die slowly than give up a few pieces of information that will probably be useless to us anyway? I mean, there were only ten of us or so fighting you last night. What could we possibly do to your force? There must be a hundred men or more.”
“You can’t trick me into telling you anything,” Yakob said.
“This isn’t a trick, Yakob,” Dag said.
“It’s easy to lay down your life for your country, for your comrades-in-arms,” Alex said. “But will you allow them to lay down their lives for you?”
“I don’t understand,” Yakob said.
“It’s quite simple,” Alex responded as he drew his pistol and pointed it at the soldier nearest Yakob. “In ten seconds, I’m going to blow his brains all over you. I will then wait a minute and I will shoot this one in the groin. It will probably sever the femoral artery and take him a long time to bleed to death. The moment he passes out from the pain, I’ll shoot him again.”
Dag pointed to the last man in Yakob’s cell. “That one we set on fire,” he said, “See if we can’t get him to dance a gig for us. We’ll throw the carcass back in with you of course. It should make for a pleasant evening: lying in a pool of your comrades’ blood, the scent of death and charred flesh cloying at your nostrils, the agonized screams of your dying friend curdling your blood, the brain matter of your other buddy there still drying on your uniform. That’s all before we come back for these other three,” he added, pointing into the cell where the sergeant lay dying.
“There are two hundred and fifty men,” Yakob said quickly. “They took up position on this side of the gorge and have fortified it with a half-dozen machine gun nests and even more sandbags. They have picket lines patrolling through the woods and they h
ave mined the easy approaches.”
“Yakob!” one of the men interjected, but Yakob ignored him. “The armor units and the main infantry column ran into trouble on the road. They had to widen it as they went. They were three full days behind us.”
“Thank you, Yakob,” Alex said. He turned to Dag and said, “See about bringing in someone to tend to the sergeant there.”
11
“Well, that ended up being easier than I thought,” Dag said as they walked outside into the town square.
Alex immediately turned his head to the side and retched.
“Are you all right?” Aria asked as she strode over toward them, her face creased with concerns for Alex.
“I’m fine,” he rasped.
“It got a little bloody in there,” Dag replied. “Is Tangrit back yet? We need Dr. Dirks as soon as possible.”
“Got back just a minute ago,” she replied. “Everyone’s over in the practice yard behind the HQ.”
“Right,” Alex managed as he straightened himself back up. “I’ll go get the doctor and send him over to you.”
As the younger Dagenham brother stalked off to go get the Dommie sergeant a doctor, Aria nodded toward the closed doors to the constabulary and asked, “Just what the hell happened in there?”
Dag looked back for a moment and then said, “Uh, nothing really. One of the prisoners might have been shot.”
Aria’s eyes widened. “You shot one of them?” she echoed.
“Only a little bit,” Dag replied. “Hence the need for the doctor.”
Aria shook her head, giving Dag a moment to size up the wounds on Aria’s face. There were several cuts into her cheeks and there were a large gash running across her forehead. Combined with her shorter haircut, it gave her a very severe look that for some reason he found attractive. It was not something that he had really noticed about her before, but for some reason his mind was focusing on how pretty her eyes looked. Maybe it was because they had both just survived a battle the night before, he thought to himself.
“What are you staring at?” she demanded suddenly.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Just admiring your battle scars.”
She laughed darkly. “You Dagenhams are cut from the exact same cloth,” she said.
“Well, we are family. That tends to lead to similarity,” he replied. “Of course, I keep telling Alex that he’s adopted.”
“I haven’t even had a chance to look at my face yet,” she replied, stepping closer to him and thrusting her face in front of his. “Is it bad?”
Her lips were only a foot or so away from his face. Her lower lip was cracked and bleeding and a small dab of crimson blood had formed on her chin. The confidence she still had in herself was hypnotic. Most people would feel embarrassment or shame, but Aria seemed possessed of a toughness that few men had, let alone women. Suffice to say, Dag was suitably impressed.
“Well, it’s not great,” he replied. “But I’d still be willing to date you.” He did not know why he had said that; the words had just escaped his mouth seemingly of their own accord. The comment seemed to hang between them for an eternity, before Aria laughed. It was a sincere sound and her eyes lit up as she made it.
“It would have to be pretty bad for me to fall down to your level, Raslan,” she said with a smile.
“I should have tried to sell it more,” he responded in equally good cheer.
Alex returned with Dr. Dirks and nodded to his brother as he led him into the constabulary. “Back on the clock, Dag,” he said.
“I better go make sure the Dommies don’t try to jump Alex and the doc while they’re working,” Dag said to Aria.
“Alright,” Aria said. “My father’s in the HQ trying to raise the government on the radio or get his superiors on the phone. You and your brother should meet us over there once Dr. Dirks is done.”
“Will do,” he said before turning to head back through the double doors.
12
The brothers Dagenham held their weapons at the ready as two of the Dominion soldiers picked up their sergeant, carried him out of the now unlocked cell, and placed him on a desk underneath the main light fixture in the constabulary. Alex ushered the two Dommies back into their cell with a wave of his weapon and then relocked the door.
Dr. Dirks was an elderly man with a mostly bald, liver-spotted pate and a crown of wiry white hair wrapping its way around his head. He was tall and frail looking with long, gangly arms, but he had bright brown intelligent eyes and his hands were steady as he began to work on the sergeant.
“I haven’t patched up a bullet wound since the war,” he said in his creaky, septuagenarian voice. He started pulling items out of his medicine bag: alcohol, opiates, scalpel, and gauze. “I’ll need one of you to assist.”
The brothers looked at each other with uncertainty. “Dag will do it,” Alex said definitively.
“What?” Dag demanded. “You’re the college boy. You’ve probably taken a biology class or two. More than I’ve done anyway.”
“You’re the one who shot him,” Alex countered.
Dag considered this, nodded and conceded, “Good point. Alright, Doc, what do you need me to do?”
Dr. Dirks went to work on the sergeant, administering a shot of opiates to dull the pain, then pouring alcohol on the entry wound. He had Dag hold gauze pads over the wound as he grabbed his scalpel and forceps and then started working on removing the bullet. Using the scalpel first to open the wound a little more, Dirks probed into the opening with the forceps and pulled a small, bloody piece of lead out, half of the original bullet, and dropped it on the table.
“Gauze,” he said to Dag, who immediately reapplied a fresh piece of medicinal fabric to the wound which was bleeding anew. “I’ll need to sew him up. Try not throw up.”
“I’m fine, doc,” Dag replied. “Do what you need to.”
Another twenty minutes of work was required from the doctor with his needle and thread, but soon the Dommie sergeant’s wound was closed and the bleeding had stopped for the most part. Dirks took a look at the other Dommie in the cells, whom part of the bullet had passed through, and pronounced it just a graze. He applied some fresh bandages and said he would be fine.
“We’ll need a stretcher to get this one over to a bed,” Dr. Dirks said. “We can’t have him sitting in a cell or he might pull out his sutures.”
“We set up a small hospital in the municipal center,” Alex said. “There’s another Dommie over there who may need your help.”
“None of our people?” Dr. Dirks asked. Alex just looked away.
“They all died during the night, doc,” Dag answered for him. The implication in his tone was clear to the doctor.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dagenham, for leaving the way I did,” he said. “I presumed that after everyone was evacuated that you would abandon the town.”
“You presumed incorrectly,” Alex said.
Dirks gathered up his surgical and medical supplies into his leather satchel and said as he left, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
He passed Constable Logan on his way out the door, who gave the doctor a cursory nod. Logan eyed the sergeant on the desk and asked, “What the hell happened to him?”
“A small weapons malfunction,” Dag replied.
“Can you watch the prisoners?” Alex asked. “We need to get a stretcher to take him over to the municipal building.”
“And we need a pair of handcuffs,” Dag added. When Alex looked at him crosswise, he explained, “We don’t want this one getting loose now, do we?”
Logan shrugged, nodded and handed over his set of handcuffs. “After you get done moving the prisoner, you might want to go help Torrace and Paulson,” he said. “They’re off-loading all the guns they scavenged from the dead Dommies.”
The brothers agreed that they would go help and then filed past Logan, Alex first, followed by Dag. As the elder brother walked by Logan, the constable grabbed his arm and looked him in the eyes for a mom
ent. Dag assumed that he was about to get a tongue lashing about what had happened to the prisoner.
“I saw the bodies around the mortar launcher,” he said. “That was some damn fine shooting, Mr. Dagenham.”
Dag gave him a half-smile and then followed his brother out the door. It took them twenty minutes to find a stretcher, get the sergeant onto it, and then carry him back to the make-shift hospital. Dr. Dirks was over-looking the other wounded Dommie and he did not look at the brothers when they were handcuffing the sergeant to the radiator in the room. They next headed over the National Guard Headquarters to see if they could help Torrace, but there were dozens of men already on the job, unloading captured machine guns, sniper rifles, ammunition, pistols and the relatively colossal mortar cannon.
“Pretty good haul, Torrace,” Dag observed.
“Yeah, nae bad,” he agreed, mopping his brow with a rag as he watched the others unload the goods.
Tangrit already was distributing weapons to the townsfolk who had come back with him and showing those who did not know how to use the weapons the best way to work them. It looked like maybe thirty or forty men and teenage boys had come back with him. Even a couple of women were now practicing working the actions on the weapons. Tangrit had done a good job convincing them, especially considering no one would have considered getting into a car Tangrit was driving yesterday, let alone one that was going to drive them into a possible battle.
“God, I’m tired,” Alex said.
Dag nodded. “We just need something else to do. Keep us going,” he said. “Can’t afford to crash now. We’ve got way too much to do. Besides we need to find the captain and let him know what we’ve learned.”
They inquired with Tangrit who said that the captain had gone back to the town center a few minutes before. More and more people that had hidden during the bombing were coming out of their homes and looking for answers or help or family members. Beaurigar was trying to supervise them and get those that needed to be evacuated out, while trying to convince as many of the men as possible to stay and fight. The brothers headed back over to the town center, where they spied Beaurigar with his hands in the air, trying to command the attention of a small crowd that had gathered around him.
Partisan (The Invasion of Miraval Book 1) Page 5
