CHAPTER 37
“You sure he’s dead?” Hernandez asked, as soon as Luke crawled into the hole. With the four of them, they fit cozy in this scrape in the earth. Luke left the bundle of scavenged rifles outside, wrapped in a white bedsheet Silcott carried in his pack as a spare snow cover. That was a good idea, and Luke planned to copy the idea when he had the next opportunity to resupply.
“Yeah, he’s dead. Grenade,” Luke replied, exhaustion creeping into his voice. He was coming down off the rush of the fight, and the lack of sleep left him more irritable than usual.
“But you didn’t get his tags,” Hernandez persisted. “And how do you know it was a grenade? Could have been a rocket. Hard to get a grenade into these narrow slits once the door’s shut.” The door was little more than a second sheet plywood propped up to cover the slanted trench leading into the shallow depression.
“Well, none of their dead had a grenade launcher,” Luke stated plainly, growing aggravated with the questions. The real question, Luke thought, was why were these guys here, and why now? This was the second scouting party aimed at this comparatively unguarded flank, and Luke was no military genius by any stretch, but he could at least see a pattern. Unless it was something that happened routinely, and he was still just too green to know it yet.
“So, how did they get so close to stuff a grenade in the OP?” Hernandez demanded. “You fall asleep on guard, son?”
“Sergeant, I can’t swear to it, but I think the grenade belonged to Mansour,” Luke said, his voice losing the previous hard edge. He’d been thinking about the corporal, and what might have occurred.
“The corporal went to sleep just as soon as you dropped us off, and he was still asleep when I detected the enemy squad approaching. I tried to wake Corporal Mansour, but he didn’t respond. I counted seven in the group and had to engage when they approached.”
Luke paused again, trying to make his tired brain function.
“I think…I think Mansour heard the shooting, thought we were being overrun, and reacted on instinct. Unfortunately, when he pulled the pin on his grenade, he failed to take the roof in account, and…”
Luke stopped there, his words trailing off, but everybody in the OP got what he meant. Once the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend. Hernandez, to his credit, said what they were thinking.
“You think he tried to throw the grenade, and it bounced back on him?”
“That’s what I think happened,” Luke replied, stressing the word ‘think’.
Luke might not have liked Mansour but speaking ill of the dead held no appeal to him. That the man died of his own bonehead move wasn’t something his family, if he had any left, ever needed to find out about.
“So, you haven’t had any sleep, Messner?” Hernandez queried, back to business.
“Correct, Sergeant.”
“We got at least another ten hours before sunup,” Hernandez calculated. “I’m halfway tempted to move our location, but I don’t like the idea of messing around in the dark after we’ve already had one attack. You think you got all of them again this time, Private?”
“Can’t say,” Luke answered honestly, “but all I saw were seven and that matched my count of the dead. I had to move back a good thirty meters further up their trail to find the last guy, and I didn’t see sign of anyone else in their party.”
“I still can’t believe you managed to kill seven enemy soldiers all by yourself,” Hernandez muttered.
He might have been talking to himself, but Luke was too tired to self-censor at this point.
“They weren’t very good,” Luke explained. “Sounded like elephants in the trees out there. Plus, no body armor and they only had two spare magazines. Must be the conscripts I’ve heard about,” Luke finished with a yawn. “Those food volunteers.”
“Probably,” Hernandez agreed, his earlier temper vanishing when he realized just how lucky they were to escape with only losing one man. “Silcott, you were on watch when the fireworks started, but I think you and Messner can hit the sack for now. Beatty, you up for a two hour watch now?”
“I can do that,” the big private affirmed. “Wake you in two, then who?”
“If I get four hours to get my head down, I can take a turn,” Luke interjected, already maneuvering his weapons and gear. He then unrolled his poncho liner and ground sheet, laying down in the slot against one of the walls. The space was too short to really stretch out, but Luke bent his knees and ended up in an exaggerated fetal position. Not comfortable, but with the body heat of the four men and the low position, still warm enough to sleep without the heavy thermal sleep bag.
The last favor Mansour did him was completely inadvertent, but no less appreciated, Luke reflected. By pulling ‘rank’ and demanding Luke take the first watch, the teenager hadn’t even had a chance to lay out his sleeping arrangements before the attack. Had his poncho liner or ground sheet been unrolled, Luke had no doubt the combination of shrapnel and bloody gore would have made a real mess.
Luke tried to sleep, but before he drifted off, he heard the other men in the OP whispering, not five minutes after he’d rolled over. Luke started to just ignore the noise, then he wanted to curse his curious nature that made him eavesdrop anyway.
“Did he really kill all of them? By himself?” Beatty asked, his voice barely audible. He was occupied, staring out the slit toward the lumberyard and the road, and he didn’t move his head when he spoke.
Luke’s kept his eyes slitted and saw the young black soldier shrug from his own bag, then he answered just as softly.
“I think so,” Silcott replied. “I didn’t see much of Mansour, but his rifle was laying on the other end of the hole. I think the kid is right. You know how the corporal was about shitting on the new guys.”
“Silcott, just shut the fuck up and let me sleep,” Hernandez grumbled. “You can grill the new guy tomorrow after we get back to camp. For my two cents, I think he was on the level. That kid is just good at killing. Next time we get in the shit, maybe you can hide behind him.”
And that was the end of it.
Luke hunkered down lower in his spot and let sleep take him. He dreamed of Amy, and the ranch. Somehow, despite all that was going on, he knew she was dreaming about him as well.
Waking a few hours later, ready to take on the next guard shift, Luke lay in the dark and thought about his situation. In the silence of his own head, he was honest enough with himself to admit he’d been a dumbass to leave her like he did. Amy deserved better, but the bitter hatred in his soul needed an outlet he wouldn’t find at home. He knew he would never lay hands on her in anger, but he feared what he might become, and what she might see him do.
Luke was here to punish those that threatened everything he held dear, and he once again vowed to inflict an awful vengeance on those who’d made the decision to mess with his family. This sounded melodramatic even in his own head, but that didn’t make the emotion any less real.
CHAPTER 38
After the eventful night, the small squad saw nothing of interest for the rest of their time observing the area around the lumberyard. The hike back to camp started early, and the sergeant allowed Luke to parcel out the captured rifles amongst the four members of their depleted squad. He cautioned the men about using the old M16s until they’d had a chance to clean them, but he figured that would last until the first time they had their own M4s jam in a fight. Then they would be better than throwing rocks. As near as Luke could tell, the M16s were old, with the black worn off in spots, and in the poor morning light, he couldn’t be sure but the barrel looked nearly shot out on the one he checked. An M16A2 model, he thought.
They did pause to collect Mansour’s dog tags, his rifle, and the dead man’s half-shredded pack. Hernandez volunteered to do the honors, and though he gagged at the scene, he managed to avoid throwing up. In these times of scarcity, none could afford to waste the calories, Luke mused.
Mansour also had three more hand grenades, and
none of the privates balked when Hernandez elected to keep them for himself. Beatty admitted that the two-week orientation he’d gone through with Silcott only touched on the use of the now-scarce munitions, and Luke revealed his experience was limited. Other than using one to blow up the living room of a house in McAlester and what he’d done when the stormtroopers hit the family compound, Luke had little experience with the M67 hand grenade and no formal training. Further, he preferred using the 40mm projectiles fired from the M203, which was an entirely different beast altogether.
“You have an M203 in that pack?” Hernandez asked quietly when they started back toward the narrow highway. The sergeant wanted to parallel the road for a half mile, in search of recent activity, before heading back south and west. Their mission at the lumberyard had yielded nothing in the way of usable intelligence, save for the annotated map fragment Luke retrieved from what was thought to be the enemy sergeant.
“No, Sergeant. Didn’t bring it,” Luke replied as he slid forward along the staggered line to take lead.
“Pity, we could’ve use the extra firepower,” Hernandez commented.
“I thought we were supposed to be all snoop and poop,” Beatty quipped from his position guarding the rear. “Fast and nimble like ninjas.”
“Yeah,” Hernandez grumbled, but he continued to teach his young charges. “Next time we are trying to break contact with a superior force, then you’ll see how much you wish you had a grenade launcher to keep their heads down. Now, why don’t you practice some of that ninja crap and don’t give up our position. Game faces on, gentlemen. Messner, lead out.”
Luke, using a compass and a decent contour map, found a route next to the road and led the other three men through thick stands of evergreens and over an intervening barbed wire fence that hadn’t seen maintenance in at least a decade. He carefully avoided game trails, concentrating on keeping them concealed and away from likely boobytrap magnets. Clearly, the other side patrolled these woods too.
While the squad was out snooping, the rest of their company should already be occupying the trench position just over three miles away from the lumberyard, so they didn’t expect this return to take but a few hours. Luke kept a cautious pace, since he still didn’t see the sense in risking their lives to keep a timetable.
Captain Jefferson wanted the enemy position opposite theirs scouted, and Lieutenant Fisher promised to have Second squad take a look. So, they could expect a quick debrief and a rapid turnaround for this next scouting mission. If they could get a few hours’ sleep before heading back out, Luke would be fine. He’d topped off his ammunition from the dead enemy patrol, and he felt anxious to find out what else might be out there. So far, he’d seen no sign of the enemy fortifications, but that would change tonight.
On their next break, Luke sidled closer to Sergeant Hernandez and asked a few of the questions that’d been bugging him since he’d arrived at the arrival camp in Neosho.
“Sergeant, why are we back to trench warfare? And what’s up with all the artillery parks we’ve got set up? I see the gun tubes, but never hear them shelling anybody.”
Hernandez regarded Luke with one bushy eyebrow raised and then gave a little chuckle before answering.
“I keep forgetting you missed the orientation. Answering last first, we’ve got arty and so does the other side. We got them to stop shelling the city by bombarding the shit out of their positions until they stopped. They’ve got their drones up now, hunting for our howitzers, and so we’ve learned to spread them out, and also build a bunch of dummy locations. We also don’t have a plentiful supply of 105, so the bosses are holding on to what we have for the time being. Make sense?”
“Yes, it does,” Luke replied, wondering if the McAlester Ammunition Plant was back in business yet. He thought he’d heard mention of manufacturing artillery rounds there, but he didn’t know about raw material or manufactured components needed for the location. His knowledge base on the topic petered out after he’d gotten past reloading .50 caliber rounds for their sniper rifles back home.
“The Committee fucks want this town,” Hernandez continued. “And they want the power plant, but they don’t need the civilians. We’ve evacuated a lot of civilians, but we need some for the war effort. So, we have two lines of defense around three sides of the city.
“The east side where we are deployed is the weakest, since the Brigade doesn’t have enough men to make the circuit around the city twice, and the enemy seems to be focusing the bulk of their attention on the north and west sides. That’s where they’ve tried to hit us the last three times. Ugly stuff, man,” Hernandez added with a sigh. “Human wave attacks, and we’ve got mortars and even a few minefields disbursed there.
“We have a perimeter to the east, but not nearly as thick as on the others. Our trenches form an ‘L’ shape that hooks into the end of the northern defenses, and then behind that there’s Baker Company, and then a company of the Missouri National Guard, stiffened with a platoon of Army Rangers. Our company is the linchpin to the defenses, and our asses are kind of hanging out there.”
“Wait, we got Rangers backing us up?” Luke asked, suddenly intrigued. From what Luke had gathered, Army Rangers were some of the best trained soldiers in the U.S. Army.
“Yeah, but like I said, spread pretty thin. They were doing something at Fort Leonard Wood when all this shit went down.”
“Fucking Missouri National Guard,” Luke whispered, so only Hernandez could hear. “Do not trust them, Sergeant.”
“What? What’s bugging you? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in Missouri, kid.”
Luke just shook his head before trying to reply. “When I was coming south through Missouri, I had a chance to see them in action around Jefferson City. They had the rape tents up and running within six weeks of shit going down. Officers said it was to improve the morale of their troops.”
Sergeant Hernandez jerked like he’d touched a live wire and gave Luke a speculative look. “You were really there?”
At Luke’s slight nod of the head, Hernandez read the scowl on the young man’s face and continued.
“I heard there was a problem with discipline, but hell, we had almost two companies of the Texas Army National Guard massacred in Marshall. Desertion was high back then, Private. People just walked off to see to their families. The colonel, Colonel Martin that is, finally got the idea to start fortifying the bases for the families, and that stopped the losses. Strength in numbers.
“So, times have been tough all over. Anyway, scuttlebutt was the Missouri National Guard had a shakeup about two-three months ago and half a dozen officers just up and disappeared. They ended up declaring for President Dandridge not too long after.”
Luke grunted. He’d had some of his questions answered, and they’d stayed too long in one spot already.
“Thanks, Sergeant. I always do better with more information. I’ll replace Silcott on watch, let him grab a pit stop, and we can get back on the road, so to speak,” Luke added with an ironic eyeroll at the surrounding frost-bitten greenery. The temperature was technically back up above freezing, but the shade thrown off the old oaks dominating the forest meant much of the ground remained frozen.
Checking his compass, Luke consulted with the sergeant one more time and the quartet headed out. They maintained their previous spacing and lineup, with Luke on point, Beatty covering the rear, and Silcott and Hernandez ranging out a bit as flankers in the middle.
While Luke moved, he kept his center of gravity low and tried to take slow, deliberate steps to minimize the sound of his passage. Not exactly ninja-like, though compared to the other men, he was a freaking ghost in the forest. Next best, he judged, was Silcott. The slender African American private seemed to understand the concept of stealth, while Beatty and Hernandez, God bless them, were loud and careless with their passage. Right then, Luke made a decision for later, when the captain wanted the squad to make an approach on the enemy lines.
Luke guided the men th
rough one last tangle of downed trees before he caught a glimpse of the cleared space ahead and waved his hand, bringing the men to the ground. Hernandez wormed his way through the scatter of dried brush and halted adjacent to his point man. Luke estimated they were about five hundred yards out from what he’d been led to believe were friendly lines.
The barricade wasn’t much at first glance, with a four-foot wall of rammed earth and what looked like a ditch in front, but Luke studied the strong points and made out likely machine gun nests mounted at key points along the wall.
“How much of the perimeter is our company holding, Sergeant?”
“Six hundred yards,” Hernandez replied sourly. “And that’s too much for our numbers.”
“And that’s supposed to be our guys out there?”
“That’s the word on the street, Private,” Hernandez affirmed as he took the map from Luke and gave it a cursory glance.
“So, how do we get in without them lighting us up?” Luke queried. And this time, Hernandez gave him a tight grin.
“Very carefully. Without radios, we’ve had to go old school, but all our guys know to watch for the identifier,” Hernandez replied, and he began fishing around in one of the thigh pockets of his uniform pants. Once he’d produced a small, round signal mirror, Luke managed to return the older sergeant’s smile.
Making contact didn’t take long, since the sergeant turned out to be skilled with using this old school method for passing on information in Morse code. Luke tried to follow the signal coming from one of the bastions, but quickly figured out the other sender was using a shorthand version of the ancient flash code.
Once Sergeant Hernandez gave a satisfied grunt, he motioned for the other men to follow his lead and he began the long crawl toward the safety of their own troops. Since none of the three privates had ever been on the perimeter duty before, Hernandez quickly explained the low profile wasn’t intended to sneak up on their own men, which was a good way to get killed, but to prevent any enemy snipers from taking pot shots at them while they neared friendly lines.
Midnight Skills Page 28
