Watchers in the Woods

by William W. Johnstone

  “Now we know where Cathy went,” Dennis said.

  “I’m carrying a Colt AR-15. I got it slung. I got a Beretta 9mm in a holster, right side.”

  They could all hear him panting as he came closer.

  “You must be carryin’ a heavy load,” Nick called.

  “I am. I brought all the grenades I could swipe and a lot of ammo. But fear is a good part of my breathing hard. Crossing that valley will take it out of you.”

  Nick chuckled. “I think he’s all right. He’s honest about his fear, anyway.”

  “You see anybody else with him, Nick?” Dennis asked.

  “No. He’s alone.”

  Matt opened the gate and Jones ducked inside. The gate closed behind him on rope hinges. With a sigh of relief, he slipped out of his pack and set in on the ground. “I thought I was in good shape, but that thing must weigh a good hundred and fifty pounds.” He handed his rifle to Matt. “Just to show you I’m friendly. You want my pistol?”

  “I don’t even want your rifle.” He handed it back. “Have you eaten?”

  “No, sir. I’m Hal Jones. Ex-airborne, LRRP in Nam, ex-accountant, and I’m wanted by the law for killing the man who raped my wife. The courts cut him loose on a technicality. My Betty went insane and killed herself shortly after she was raped . . . and sodomized,” he added.

  “I hope the son-of-a-bitch suffered for a long time,” Norm said, walking up to the group.

  Jones turned to face the man. “Yes, sir. He did. I kept him alive for three days out in the desert, outside Las Vegas. He was a black man. I had a lot of unreasonable hate in my heart for the black race for a time.”

  Norm grinned. “That’s understandable. I did some LRRPing in Nam myself. What outfit were you in?”

  “I was with the 82nd originally. I transfered over after LRRP school to a ranger company and volunteered for another tour.”

  “No kidding? I did the same damn dumb thing.”

  The men walked off, laughing and talking about the war.

  * * *

  Jones leaned back in his camp chair and smiled. The group had taken a large tarp and made a kitchen and dining area that was more or less waterproof, depending upon where one sat. “That’s the best food I’ve had in weeks. My compliments to the cook.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” Polly said. “The stew was my doing. ”

  “You don’t know whether the CWA took the deal Cathy offered?” Matt asked.

  “No, sir. I saw my chance and got out of there while I could.”

  “Knock off the ‘sir’. I’m Matt. We’re in too tight a situation here for formalities.”

  “Yes, sir . . . Matt.”

  “Make a guess as to Monroe’s decision,” Matt urged.

  “Oh, he’ll take it. Then just as soon as they overrun us—if they overrun us—that woman will have them all killed. I never got a look at her, but her voice chilled me.” He looked across at Frank. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

  Frank waved him silent and smiled. “There is no need to apologize for the truth. I’ve resigned myself to what she is.” He looked at Nick. “And I don’t mean her heritage, either.”

  “I know what you mean,” the guide said.

  “If you don’t mind telling me,” Jones said, “just what is she?”

  He sat very still and silent while Matt explained part of it, then let Nick finish. Jones’s eyes were open wide when Nick wrapped it up.

  They were all watching him closely for his reaction. Jones refilled his tin cup with coffee and sat back down. “I used to hunt when I was a kid back in Indiana. By the time I was seventeen, I’d quit it—not on moral grounds, because I know that herds have to be thinned due to the lack of the game animals’ natural predators. It was a certain type of hunter that finished it for me. They wouldn’t care if they were killing the last of a species. They can’t wait to get out in the woods and kill something—anything. It’s a blood lust with them that I never had. To kill anything. Hell, each other, sometimes. And I believe that all of God’s creatures have a right to live. Including the members of this tribe you talked about, those who want to relocate and survive. Sure, I’ll go along with that. But I want to tell you all now, lay it all on the table, if I’m attacked by these tribe members, I’m gonna take some with me before I go down.”

  Nick smiled across the way at him. “So am I, partner. Believe it.”

  * * *

  Matt told them all to go to bed and get as much rest as possible. He believed the attack from the CWA men would come just before dawn, during his watch. They would wake up at the sound of the first perimeter banger going off.

  Jones slept for a few hours, in Matt’s tent, and then came out to join him on the dogwatch. The rain was still coming down, slow and steady.

  “That Norman Hunt, he seems like a real nice fellow,” Jones said.

  “My best friend in high school. He’s all right. This whole bunch, with the exception of Tom Dalton, is a very nice group of people. And they’ll stand and fight, too. I saw that yesterday. Had you been married long, Jones?”

  “No. I got married late. I was forty, she was thirty. We’d been married two years when that bastard grabbed her that night.”

  “I think I might be able to help you with that warrant that’s against you. But I can’t make any firm promises.”

  “I won’t do time for killing that man,” Jones said. “And that’s firm with me. If we get out of this mess, I’ll just drift back out of sight.”

  “That’s no way to live. Let me see what I can do. If the right strings are pulled, it isn’t as difficult as you might think to set someone up with a new identity: social security number, driver’s license, background, the whole bag. Are the charges state or federal?”

  “State. Nevada.”

  “That’s even better. Just stay the hell out of Nevada.” Matt lifted his rifle, hesitated, then sighted in a lump on the ground that hadn’t been there an hour before. The lump lay directly in front of the stockade, about a hundred yards out. He pulled the trigger. As the slug struck it the lump howled and turned into a man wearing cammies. The wounded man lurched to his feet and Matt put another bullet into him, the slug knocking the man down. The rainy night was filled with charging CWA men coming at the stockade from three sides.

  The hour before dawn was shattered by men hitting trip wires, setting off the perimeter bangers. One CWA man stumbled into an ankle-high wire and pitched forward, impaling himself on sharpened stakes. Another stepped into a punji pit, driving sharpened stakes into his foot and calf. He lay on the wet ground screaming in pain.

  The defenders had fortified their positions with extra logs and rocks. Those not using weapons, especially the kids, jumped behind a three-foot enclosure in the center of the camp built of logs and rocks and dirt. It was wet and cold and soon very muddy behind the small inner fort, but the walls would stop any bullets that got past the bigger stockade.

  On that wet and cold early morning Wade got his initiation into blood. Using Nick’s lever-action .30-.30, he pumped lead into the air and saw one of his bullets strike a running man—quite by accident. The CWA man folded up and tumbled to the ground, both hands holding his shattered belly, and died with a scream on his lips.

  Wade turned his head, vomited on the ground, and began shoving fresh loads into the rifle. He hadn’t come here with violence in mind, but by God, if they wanted a fight, he’d do his best to give them one.

  “Back! Back!” Monroe shouted. “Fall back, north and south.”

  “We can’t let them stay out there and plink at us come the daylight,” Matt said. “I’ll take the timber on the south side. You feel like taking the north side, Norm?”

  “Just try to stop me.”

  “Grab some grenades and let’s go!” While Norm was gearing up, changing into cammies that Jones had loaned him, Matt ran across the sloppy compound ground to Nick. “Can you sense or smell any Sataws out there?”

  “No. I think they laid back
for this first rush and let these kooks and bums spill their blood. I’m goin’ out while it’s still dark and collect weapons and ammo from the dead... and finish off any still left alive. You be careful, Matt.”

  “Same to you, partner. See you.”

  Everything came rushing back to Norman Hunt as he left the stockade and belly-crawled on the ground toward the timber. All his hundreds of hours spent in life-and-death situations in Nam returned, springing loose from where he’d carefully tucked them away. The tangled jungles and rainforests and mountains and flat, dusty deadly plains of Nam came ripping back. His Mini-14 slung, he crawled forward, knife in hand.

  He’d helped Matt lay out the bangers and the pits and the trip wires. He avoided them, some by just inches, as he worked his way into the timber. The ground was wet and slick, and Norm made no noise as he made his way into the brush. He muddied the blade of his knife to prevent reflection. His heart was pounding and the adrenalin raced through him. He did not realize it, but he was smiling.

  Matt slithered to a halt just a few feet from the bulk of a CWA man. He waited like a great predator, animal, silently checking out that which he stalked.

  “Sanborn?” came the hoarse whisper off to Matt’s right. Matt lay perfectly still.

  “Yeah,” Sanborn softly called.

  “How many got hit?”

  “Bugger and Monty for sure. I seen Marcel get a slug in the leg.” Sanborn left the protection of the tree and inched his way toward where Matt lay in wait.

  “I seen Danny die,” the second man whispered. “It was awful. A trip stake caught him in the belly. He died awful hard.”

  Sanborn was almost on top of Matt, crawling on his hands and knees, when Matt swung the big knife, the blade catching Sanborn in the hollow of his throat. Blood squirted out and the scream on Sanborn’s tongue died there, no sound able to push past the ruined throat. Sanborn’s legs kicked and jerked as Matt drove the blade deeper into his throat, twisting it, almost decapitating the man.

  “Sanborn! God damn, boy. Cut out the noise! What’s the matter with you? You’ll get us all in trouble.”

  Sanborn’s troubles were just beginning as he winged his way into the afterlife to face his maker. Sanborn would never make any more noise on this earth.

  “I seen Nutley go down with a bullet in his shoulder. He didn’t look too bad to me.”

  Silence.

  “Sanborn?”

  Matt had sheathed his knife and pulled the pin on a grenade, holding the spoon down. He waited.

  “What’s all that racket over yonder?” the call came about thirty feet in front of Matt.

  Matt released the spoon and tossed the grenade. It exploded in a flash of fire and shrapnel. Someone had his finger on the trigger of his weapon when the full force of the explosion blew a leg off the man. The finger pulled the trigger and a full thirty-round clip was emptied into the dampness, sending CWA men diving for cover.

  Matt tossed another grenade and the explosion rocked the predawn.

  “Get the hell outta here!” Judd screamed. “Back into the valley, boys!”

  Norm looked down into the face of the man with his throat slit and almost cut off an ear to take back for confirmation of the body count. He mentally shook himself back to reality and crawled on just as the first of Matt’s grenades exploded. He sheathed his knife and pulled a Fire-Frag from his pocket, pulling the pin and holding the spoon down, his eyes searching for a target.

  He soon found a target: two men crouched together behind a log, their heads sticking up. Stupid, Norm thought . . . you never look over something; you always look around it.

  He tossed the grenade, the mini-Claymore striking one of the men in the head.

  “Oww!” the CWA man hollered. “God damn it, who the hell’s a-chunkin’ rocks?”

  The grenade exploded and two more CWA men would never cause any more trouble on this earth.

  Norm slipped his rifle from sling and began shooting at running shapes in the gray of dawning. He got one righteous hit and probably wounded another before the GWA men had fallen back out of range, leaving the edges of the flat and heading back across the valley.

  Norm, like Matt, began collecting weapons and ammo. Norm found a wounded CWA man.

  “Help me!” the man cried. “Oh, God, please help me. It hurts so bad.”

  I’ll help you, all right, Norm thought. He shot him between the eyes.

  4

  “We’re fucked, Monroe,” Jim Bob told it like he saw it. “We both seen how at least a couple of them is like ghosts in the woods. They got grenades. They got the weapons off the dead, and that is Bugger, Monty, Danny, Sanborn, Reed, Ellsworth, and Maynard. And that gives them one hell of a lot of firepower. We got a half dozen wounded, two of them real bad off. They gonna die if we don’t get them to a hospital. That’s a government man over yonder, Monroe, from the damn CIA. I don’t want the CIA on my ass . . .”

  Monroe waved him silent. “Shut up, Jim Bob. I know all that. Don’t you think I know all that? All right. We can’t leave, Jim Bob. So put that out of your head. We made a deal with that... woman, or whatever she is, and she’s gonna hold our feet to the fire and see that we keep our end of the bargain. We either kill all them folks or we die. That’s as plain as I can make it. We just don’t have any choice in the matter. None a-tall.”

  “Some of the boys is talkin’ about leavin’, Monroe.”

  “Im-press on them that they can’t do that. Them links would kill them before they got a half mile from camp. How many men we got that’s able to fight?”

  “Right at thirty.”

  “Tell Judd to take ten of the boys and get around behind them people. On that cliff behind them . . . what are you shakin’ your head about, Jim Bob?”

  “Can’t be done, Monroe. The woman said that half-breed guide, or whatever he is, picked that spot well. It ain’t no wooded mountain; it’s a sheer rock wall on all four sides. The links can go up and down it like monkeys—which they’s probably related to—but no human can.”

  Monroe did some fancy cussing of the down-home variety, then finally stopped for breath and said, “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

  “An’ it don’t look like this rain is ever gonna stop,” Jim Bob added.

  “Thanks, Jim Bob. You’re a real comfort to a person.”

  * * *

  “I figure if we can hold out another sixty hours, some of your people will be coming in,” Nick said.

  “Don’t count on that,” Matt told him. “It’s all right to let the others think that to keep their morale up. But don’t count on my backup teams until you actually see them.”

  Nick smiled. “I was just talkin’ to hear myself rattle. There ain’t no way we can last another sixty hours. I don’t give a damn how much firepower we got . . . we don’t have the people power. Oh, we’ll kick the asses off them CWA people. But the breakaways are quite another matter.”

  “Nick, you think you could lead the group out of here if there was a diversion?”

  The guide thought about it for a moment. “Maybe . . . but it’d be a slim shot at best. A one-man diversion?”

  “Two—Norm and me. Jones would go with you and the group for added firepower.”

  “I could maybe lead them into friendly country; I’m pretty sure I could do that. I’m talking about the tribe. But Jones had best stay back here. The tribe don’t like them CWA men, and Jones might be marked.”

  “The three of us could create one hell of a diversion, for sure. It might buy you the time you need.”

  “How do you know Norman will go for it?”

  “I asked him.”

  “Jones?”

  “Him, too. He feels like he should atone for joining the CWA in the first place.”

  “That’s crap. He’s not a bad person. I’d bet on that.”

  “Norm and me are, Nick. With our lives.”

  * * *

  “That’s about it,” Matt told the group. He had call
ed everybody together, including the kids. The children had proved to be brave troopers about this whole mess, and Matt felt it would be unfair to exclude them. “I don’t know why the Unseen, the Sataws, the breakaways, whatever you choose to call them, have let so many good opportunities to take us slide by; I’m just glad they did. But there’s no way we can last another two and a half days here. And there’s no guarantee that help will come if we do. It’s only a matter of time before we’re overwhelmed. For the moment the woods around us are clear, and I don’t know why that is so. But it tells me we’re up against a group of people who know little about battlefield strategy. So I’m going to suggest a pullout while we have the time. They won’t be expecting anything like it to happen during the day; that’s the last thing they’d anticipate. But I can’t order any of you to do it. You talk it over for a time, then decide. Take a vote. I’ll stand guard over by the fence.”

  Matt relieved Norm at the gate and told him to get with his family during the discussions. Jones stood at the north end of the compound and Matt took the south end while the family members mulled over the idea of a pullout.

  It was a good day for it, Matt thought. Cool, wet, foggy, with mist hanging over the valley. Sound would be muffled. He longed for a cigarette. Once he heard a flat popping sound followed by a muffled cry coming from the group. He decided he was wrong.

  It didn’t take the group long to make up their minds. Less than five minutes had passed when Norm walked over to Matt. “They voted almost unanimously to go for it.”

  “Let me guess who voted against it: Tom Dalton.”

  “Right. He said we should make a deal with both sides. He was outvoted.”

  “Nick laid out the risks involved?”

  “Yeah. He thinks Dan is tucked away out of sight across the valley, above the CWA camp, watching us through binoculars. He’s pretty sure Dan will see the pullout from his vantage point and know where Nick’s taking them.”

  “You don’t have to stay, Norm. You need to be with your family. Jones and I can handle it.”

  Norm shook his head. “We’re the only three with extensive combat experience. Hell, we’re the only ones with any type of combat experience. No, I’ve got to stay. If my family makes it out, that’s all that matters.”