A long Lonely Road Box Set 3

by T J Reeder

  I woke up sandwiched between Beth and Sandy. I saw she was awake and held her close until she dozed off, I could tell she was better already. May came in and snuggled the other side of her until JC let us know that…

  a) Being in jail sucked.

  b) He was starving and

  c) He was pissed.

  …his usual state when awake. He reminded me of somebody, but it escaped me who.

  We all untangled and headed to his rescue. Kid had coffee going and had got him out of jail before we arrived. Sam was just looking at him in a disgusted manner. She held her arms out for Sandy instead of Beth, which made us smile. In my mind I saw the Coven as complete and was rewarded with stares from all five of the females. JC had a cookie so he didn’t give a shit. Molly was watching him like a hawk. I wondered where Walker was; he never left unless the kids were going someplace.

  Charley showed up shortly, so we took our coffee to the stump. He sat a moment and said, “Why do white people build their homes out in the sun instead of in the shade?” I shrugged and said, “Why do the Navajo build under the trees where the birds can shit on their houses?” He nodded and said, “OK, one for you and one for me.” We laughed. I often wished I had met Charley when we were both young, damn we would have been a pair to deal with. Hell, we still were when the young bucks let us in on the fun.

  He said Old Woman told him Sandy’s spirit was fine and held no bad (a word I didn’t know as it was in Navajo). He apologized, but added there was no translation for it. I was fine with that as long as she was OK. He said it was more of a case of holding in the rage combined with a steady flow of the adrenalin that kept her going. He said she might never talk about it, but apparently she moved at a run most of the time and just over-ran their ambush attempts, killing everybody left behind.

  I’ve seen her in every kind of fight possible and never saw her like this. It worried me a lot but he said she was fine. I once tried to count the number of people she had killed but I couldn’t. With her abilities she could have taken out the Earp brothers plus Hickock with Doc thrown in and never blinked. I often wondered if it bothered her, but she never said. She never acts without cause and after she does it’s over and she moves on.

  I don’t dwell on it too much because she’s saved my slow ass on too many occasions. She can read a scene and pick out the problems and deal with them while I’m setting my coffee cup down. May isn’t far behind her, and Kid? I know she’s damn good and has all of Sandy’s insights, but I think she will never be another Sandy- more a combo of May and Beth with a lot of Old Woman mixed in and that’s a damn good mix!

  Joe showed up dragging Walker on a leash; said he had a female in heat and Walker showed up and handled the situation before anybody knew he was there. Joe didn’t mind but said he wasn’t gonna feed the big bastard and get him laid, too. I thought it was funny as hell and the girls heard me laughing so they joined us and had to be told. They all looked at me and shook their heads and headed back inside. Walker tried to go with them but Sandy called him a slut and said he was staying outside. Kid stuck her head out the door and informed Joe that she got first pick of a puppy since “we” provided the stud service. That was grounds for another laugh.

  Joe, Charley and I talked about the coming trip South. All of us were sick and tired of these scum bags. They brought death and misery everywhere they went and it was time to deal them out of the game.

  Charley said he knew a couple of very tough men who would go down south to scout the situation. Both were half Navajo and half Mexican, spoke both languages and had spent time below the border. He said they would be on their way by day after tomorrow and would know what there was to know in a week. I hoped so and hoped they could make it back. That was dangerous country down there. We had a hint of the place they were hanging out and with luck we could catch them all in one place and end this.

  Sandy had joined us knowing we were planning the fight; she just listened and agreed with the plan. She was doing much better than I expected her to be. She is one of the toughest people I know yet one of the funniest and fun to be with. Loving, sweet, kind, sexy and a little bit crazy. I love her.

  The next morning I was up and on the move by daybreak- lots to do. I made coffee and started breakfast. Kid showed up asking what got up my ass. I offered to wash her mouth out with soap; she took a while to stop laughing. By the time the rest of the family was up and moving around JC smelled breakfast cooking and demanded to be un-jailed. We sat at the big table like a family, dogs on alert for the dropped crumbs. As soon as we were done I took off down the ridge with Sandy and May right on my ass. I asked who was cleaning up, and they said Beth sent them to keep me out of trouble. I really doubted that.

  Charley was at the communal feed trough, Old Woman was stirring a huge pot of something that smelled good but wouldn’t be ready till supper. Joe and Willy showed up with the rest of the people who were more or less squad or platoon leaders. We spent the morning brainstorming the trip south.

  We decided that we would give Charley’s people several days’ head start, then we would ease south; not pushing, just getting close so when the information came we would be right there.

  The biggest problem was not knowing if this was a move by a smallish force like 50 to 75 shooters, or was it bigger like 100 or more? But that’s why Charley sent his two men down there. We had time to get things ready on all levels, the gear heads were using the time to double check the vehicles, the gun thugs were doing the same. People were spending time on the range making sure the pointy things went where they were supposed to go. In other words, these ass wipes had interrupted our quiet happy routine which really pisses us off…or not, since most of this pack of wolves need to be let loose to run pretty often, but they need a target to run at. Now they have one and seem relaxed and almost happy.

  Most had visited the grave of our young pilot and gained resolve from it. As predicted, we missed his funeral because out here we tend to get our dead buried rather fast. But while he was gone, he wasn’t forgotten and he would be revenged. It won’t bring him back but it will help the living cope with our loss.

  Sandy’s legend had grown again. It showed in the faces of those who don’t live here full time. They all seemed to pause and get quiet when she passed by, and it was starting to piss her off. It would stop soon enough as they saw her being just like them- laughing, playing with the kids, sneaking bits of food to old Molly…she is just a normal person who has uncommon talents (unless she’s a witch with common talents).

  But whatever it is, she’s my wife and I love her and show it every chance I get.

  One thing that bothers Sandy and the others of my flock is when they go to the pistol range a crowd shows up to watch. They don’t do more than watch. I told them that most people don’t, nor ever will, have their talents with a pistol so maybe most are there to get some pointers. It didn’t help much and even sounded lame to me.

  Almost a full five days after they left, Charley’s two men showed up. Their report was confusing. They saw lots of people with weapons (which wasn’t unusual), but what they didn’t see was any activity of people gathering in a large group. They did speak to a few gunmen and learned that the brothers were in fact recruiting and offering pay in gold, dope and young girls.

  They were hand picking the ones they wanted. This was different than the usual gang-banger mode of operation, this showed that somebody knew something about force building. If you take a smaller force of the best and train them, they will be more effective than a much larger force of people with less motivation and skill. That was proven by the abilities of troops like the Special Forces or Force Recon, Rangers and Seals. We might be in for a fight.

  The most important bit of information was that these people were on the move all the time and in every direction. They would split up into smaller units and come together days later many miles from where they left and shortly after would do it all again.

  Something about this was tickling my
brain but I couldn’t get it pinned down. Charley kept sending scouts out to track these people but nothing new was coming in. We couldn’t even catch them all together in one spot long enough to act

  .

  Then word came that they were in one big camp many miles across the border and looked to be there for a while. Now was the time. Scouts headed out while we got the people together for the trip south. We waited for the scouts to give us the latest word but when it came it wasn’t good news.

  The first two Charley sent out had gotten into the main camp and after two days got out and after two days on the road hooked up with another scout team who had communications gear. They reported that the camp was full of gun-toting thugs, but these weren’t the same ones they had seen in the beginning. These were the rejects and had to be bait…but bait for what?

  And where were the hotshots? The “special troops”? We were sitting in the communal area hashing it out when Jackson the head gun thug said this reminded him of a few times back in the old days when his four man recon team would mix in with a company-sized unit of grunts making sweeps in hopes of teasing Charlie into attacking them, but some place along the way the four man recon team would drop out and stay behind. I slapped my head and said, “Shit!” in several different languages. Jackson had hit the nail that was sticking up.

  All the moving around they had done was to drop out the hotshots and pick up the dregs, and we had bit right into it. Someplace out there was a force of maybe two hundred real shooters- men who had the skills and training to kick ass. But where was the ass they wanted to kick?

  Charley said he had wondered why his scouts back here hadn’t picked up any trails of infiltrators after the information Fox got out of the dying Mexican. It was like they had gone out looking for somebody who wasn’t there.

  After looking at each other for a bit, Kid said maybe they were out there in small numbers, watching how we handled it when we were looking for bad guys sneaking up on us. She was right. It was there all along but we didn’t see it. They got into place before we even knew they were around and never left a trail to follow. If you don’t move you don’t leave tracks. It takes special people to be able to lie in a shadow of an overhang for days without a fire and not moving around, smoking and scratching.

  I asked Kid what she thought it all meant. She got a far-off look on her face and sat still for a long time. Nobody moved or said a word. Finally she was ‘back’. She smiled a wolf’s smile and said, “They are drawing us south to fight their second-rate fighters and are gonna hit our homes while we are gone.” And there it was. Kid just has that ability- the one that every great intel officer has, except she’s a kid, a girl, but she has it in spades. We all looked at each other and then started laughing. I hugged Kid and said, “Baby, you may have just saved our people.”

  We spent the afternoon brain-storming the whole thing. In the end it boiled down to sending our convoy south while enough of us stayed behind and prepared to kick the shit out of these people. We talked about how they would come in on us; we all agreed it had to be on the water (or at least part of it). If the front door is attacked all eyes are on it, leaving the back door vulnerable. Or so they thought.

  Joe and Willy would be in charge of the southbound convoy with the task of closing with the bunch just across the border. They would have everything they needed to get the job done from a 105 and several mortars and the Hummers with guns mounted. Sam would be flying a spotter plane for them and two of the Blackhawks were being hauled down on lowboys; they had around two hundred shooters. I was worried about them being a little light on shooters, but between that and leaving a force here we were spread thinner than I liked.

  But good things happen to the worthy (as the good book says). If it says that. If not, it should. In the afternoon, the communications shack got a call that a plane was coming in to land. I headed that way along with everybody who heard the message.

  We watched an unmarked plane drop in and touch down on our dirt runway. The boys had done a fast sweep to move any of the livestock that might have wandered over there. Planes and horses don’t get along well when they meet; everybody is a loser in that case.

  We all knew the gent who stepped out onto the runway. It was the aide to the head of the Texas Guard, and he wasn’t in the uniform they usually wore, he was looking more like a cowboy than a military type. We shook hands and headed for the shade and coffee of the communal center.

  Beth was there with the kids, as well as the dogs and half the tribe. I can’t say I ever warmed up to this guy because he always seemed to have a stick up his ass, kind of over impressed with himself and his stock went down even more when he looked around the area and his lip seemed to curl a bit. He asked if I had someplace where we could talk. I swear I heard the girls growl. This was gonna be fun.

  I said, “Sure” and pointed to one of the stumps we us as stools. He wasn’t impressed; he said we needed a place for a confidential meeting. I was about to say something but ‘they’ took over. Sandy said, “ This is as good as it gets, Jack.” May said, “What could you possibly have to say that is so important that you need to hide away to discuss it?”

  He was saved by the arrival of Harry and Bear. Taking in the scene in a flash Harry said, “Jones? if you have something to say, spit it out. It’s almost chow time, Bear is hungry and you know how he is when people hold up his feeding time.” We all laughed. Sandy said, “Bear could stand to miss a bunch of feedings.” May said, “Bears are pussies.” Everybody was laughing now except the stuffed shirt.

  One of the ladies who seem to live at the cook area came over, took him by the hand, led him to a stump and said, “Here ya go, sweetie. Sit down and drink this coffee while I find you a nice hot brownie.” Jones was looking a bit overwhelmed, but did drink some coffee and then took a huge brownie. He started to sit his coffee down, but I said, “I wouldn’t do that, Jones, and pointed at JC, who was the world’s top coffee snagger. I also warned him about the kid and the brownie. Jones won points by giving a nice chunk of his brownie to JC; he made a friend for life.

  Jones wasn’t a bad guy- he was just out of his depth with us. He hadn’t been here and hadn’t had much contact with us (except in Texas) and then he was just in the background. By now we all had brownies and coffee. People had wandered off now that things had settled down. Harry helped by asking about folks back home. Jones said everybody was fine, he had brought mail for all of the Texas immigrants living here. He laughed for real when told how Kid had labored making a ‘Green Card’ for Bear. It had a dozen things listed that could get him deported back to Texas.

  After the chitchat and treats he handed me a dispatch case with a letter in it. It was from the commander of the Texas Guard.

  In it he said they were monitoring what radio traffic there was and knew we had a problem and was offering to help stomp out this bunch of trash.

  Their offer was to let us plan out the fight and where we wanted the Texas people. He proposed they swing down across the border and come up underneath the bad guys and do a hammer and anvil on them. I liked it, I felt much better knowing there would be more boots on the ground down there with me stuck up here.

  We spent the rest of the day with maps and laid out a battle plan. Jones about choked when Kid took over and did the actual layout; she had the latest intel from Charley’s scouts, who were watching the bunch. Jones just sat with a look of amazement on his face. When she was done, she double checked it and said, “OK, that’s how I see it” and then said she had a class in Apache that she needed to get to. He watched her walk away, a very nice looking girl, armed to the teeth and aged someplace between 14 and 40.

  Jones watched her leave and asked how old she was. I said I really didn’t know, but it didn’t matter because she was our Intel Officer and having survived several firefights, she was an adult by our standards. He was further shocked when I explained this whole plan was hers- she had figured out what was going on, and laid out the way we were going to bea
t these people once and for all.

  Jones had done a bit of growing up in the hours he had been here; the stick up his ass had gone away, he spent a lot of the meeting time holding JC, feeding him brownie and looking like he didn’t even realize it. Being young, he was also very impressed by the abundance of attractive young women wondering about. He commented that he was beginning to understand why several of the pilots had moved here.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon showing him around. He was starting to see how folks out in the ‘wilds’ lived. He took it all in; everything from the cooking area where the ladies were putting together supper, to the zip line over the water. He couldn’t believe the young people had done it themselves with little input from the adults. He couldn’t believe it when he observed the open-air classrooms where kids were learning different languages. Hell, I still get impressed when I stop by. We arrived at the range to find my ladies starting their daily shooting session. We sat under the shade awning and watched them. As usual, Sandy and May were going at it and not paying attention to Kid (who was kicking their asses).

  Finally Sandy woke up to the times and scores and the fight was on. Jones was simply blown away. He asked if they were always like this. I said, “No. Sometimes they fight like cats. I will say that they were better today than yesterday and would no doubt be better tomorrow than today.” How they could improve was beyond me. At some point a person has to hit the ceiling and go no farther, but they were on an express elevator with no top floor.