A Dish Best Served Cold

by T J Reeder

  I did leave a note saying I was sorry but I needed to do this and couldn’t do it and worry about them and that I loved them and would be back as soon as the job was done.

  Now I know the note won’t save me and won’t buy even a tiny bit of understanding, but I needed to do it.

  I fired up the truck and eased out and away and was gone. I also figured I had maybe a few hours before they would miss me. And that was all I needed.

  I met up with Charley within the hour and loaded my gear in his truck while one of his scouts climbed into my truck, he was smiling and said you two are so gonna get yer asses kicked when you come home and the entire people will be here to see it. And he was gone.

  I looked at Charley who said he’s right you know, and I’m a fool for getting involved in this, I pointed out that the old woman would protect him, that got me a head shake and the comment of “ No, she like them better then me so as you whites are fond of saying. We are good and well screwed”

  I’ve been in more then a couple of wars, small wars but still a war is a war and I’ve never had a dread of coming home, now it was there. But I was gonna live with it.

  We headed South on highway 491, and keeping in the cover of our role of a couple of old coots from the rez we just putted along at about 55 mph, ever watchful because this was rather strange country to us at least since the troubles hit.

  The people we were after had handled their job right, they used horses and stayed off the roads and out of sight but that also implied to us that they had a base camp close to the area simply because it was a long ride from the border to our canyon and I doubted they made that ride.

  I heard a garbled voice which caused Charley to reach under his seat and pull out a radio mic and start talking of course I didn’t understand a word of it. After putting it away he said the scouts were reporting the two runners had gone to ground in an old ranch house back in the rough country and that they had people there so it wasn’t gonna be as easy as we thought.

  I didn’t care, hard, easy, makes no never mind coz I’m ending this shit before I return home to face the girls. One fight at a time, this one I knew we could win, the one with “them”? not so.

  We drove on until late into the night until a light flashed from the side of the road where we pulled over and were surrounded by dark shapes, with the motor off and in the pitch blackness of a moonless night I listened to the scouts starting to report in their native

  Charley said English, and the head scout who was just a voice from the dark said “Sorry John” I said it’s fine go on.

  He said we were about five miles from the old ranch and everything was quiet there after a night of boozing and much laughter and bragging they all passed out, the scouts had gotten close enough to hear the two shooters bragging how they blew my head off and killed one of my “Puta’s” that one might take a while to die.

  I had been pretty calm and quiet ever since I woke up but deep inside me was a burning fire that was about to rage out of control, I’ve never been a hater nor one to even think about inflicting pain on another human, kill them? Hell yes but that’s war, torture is a different thing but if it gets me what I want I’ll personally pull their finger nails off with red hot pliers one at a time. Did I mention I was angry?

  We drove the truck slowly over the old washed out path leading to the old ranch house but got only about a mile from the highway before we had to get out and mount up on the horses the scouts had with them. Charley thinks of everything. How the white man ever took their land is beyond me.

  Riding in the dark can be interesting in the Mountains where there are tree limbs just waiting for you to forget to keep your head down, out here is was rather beautiful with only the stars to see by but the ride ended soon enough and we were walking in to our positions.

  I had brought my 308 with the can plus the Ruger 10-22 with it’s can, that and my 45 and knife was it. Charlie’s lads were armed for just about anything.

  The plan was simple, we would wait until we could see and then ease in and take them out. Or at least the ones we had to, I wanted talkers.

  These fools didn’t even have sentry’s out! Some sleeping by the fire and some in the old house, the barn had fallen in and I doubted any were sleeping there. The scouts had reported only ten people here and with the two we wanted that made twelve and I could see at least six by the fire.

  I whispered to Charley asking how he wanted to do it, he took the 10-22 and gave it to one of his lads and whispered something to him, he smiled in a very wolfish way and was gone. I next saw him by the fire shooting the sleepers in the head, I couldn’t even hear the bolt rattle on the rifle and knew he was holding it shut when he fired. I watched this young man snuff out six people like it was nothing and I guess to him it wasn’t.

  They all knew Beth and her getting shot was a matter of grave importance to them because they believed they had some how failed by allowing strangers to infiltrate into their home unseen.

  I told Charley I didn’t agree but he said it didn’t matter what I thought it mattered that they felt it was a matter of honor to end this problem and leave a message to stay out of Navajo country.

  I couldn’t argue with their logic. I felt like I had taken my family right into an ambush and even Walker had been slow picking up the danger, but he had saved my life when he scared Buck so I owed him big time, shit I might start being nice to him, Charley quietly laughed. Shit now he’s reading my mind. He sighed.

  After the six by the fire were out of the picture the rest of the scouts just seemed to lift from the earth and like shadows flitting across my vision they were gone. I started to jump up but Charley stopped me and said wait. Shortly a small light flashed from the dark and he said ok lets go and simply walked right in.

  The house was really trashed and inside we found six men on their knees with their hands on top of their heads, all looked like they were seeing a dark pit in front of them, I guess in a way they were.

  Charley pointed out two of the men and said they are the shooters who got away. Both jerked their heads up and looked at me and I swear they turned white.

  One made a moaning sound while the other tried to cross himself and was rewarded with a rifle butt tap to his head. I just stood there looking at them for a bit then said separate them all well away from each other, put blindfolds on them and plug their ears with something and strip them.

  This was done in quick order and Charley and I started asking questions, when your naked, kneeling on rocks and have a blindfold over your eyes you have a come to Jesus moment and all these ol boys were finding God pretty fast, every time one tried to make the sign of the cross he was smacked with a rifle butt, no asking for forgiveness in this church.

  All I wanted was a name and a location for the mystery man who had evaded me and caused this whole mess. The first man knew nothing and it was obvious, he was just a gun thug along for the food and any loot he could find. Charley said something to his men and they tied the man while one of them fired a rifle shot into the dirt, we left the man shaking and pissing himself but unharmed.

  It went that way until we got to the third hired man who gave us a name, El Gato Negro. Of course, The Black Cat, uh huh, gonna be the dead black cat soon enough. But he didn’t know where to find the man, he too was “executed” so to speak. The forth man gave the same name and told us the man was hold up near the town of Twin Lakes which is a Navajo town, this surprised me.

  But if he was keeping his head down and not hurting anybody I guess the people would leave him alone. After “shooting” this guy we got to the two we had been chasing.

  We asked them the same questions and got the same answers but a more precise location for the one I wanted.

  After we had pumped them dry I had them stood up and their blind folds removed. Both stood there blinking in the bright sun light. Both were sorry examples of humanity, also one had been clipped with a bullet. I was so proud of my wives, they had charged into an ambush with guns blazi
ng and took out three men and clipped one more and I’ve no doubt would have killed these two but for worry about Beth and me.

  I just looked at them and tried to work up to just shooting them out of hand but I just couldn’t, they deserved a nasty end but just shooting them seemed to easy. One of Charles men spoke up and that started a long discussion which I didn’t follow but I believed it was more to confuse the prisoners then me.

  Charley took me aside and said his man had a really good idea, we drop them off naked, alone and with only a canteen of water each out in an area with no people, blindfolded until they were tossed out of the trucks.. If they had their shit together they might make it.

  I said I was fine with it as long as there was no good folks living within miles of the drop off point. Plus we could drop them close enough that they would maybe find each other and fight over the water. I liked it.

  As soon as it was dark we did just that, we dropped them about half a mile apart in the dark with one canteen each and then we drove on into the dark and drove in circles just to confuse them more. I think Charley felt better and I know I did. They could survive if they used their heads, but therein lay the problem facing them.

  Now all we needed to do was locate the Cat and finish his nine lives. And I wanted that task for myself. As my old grandpa said Revenge is a dish best served cold. In other words don’t rush in all heated up, ease in slow and get the job done.

  We gathered back at the old ranch house and loaded up everything usable to us, we took their horses and vehicles with us. We left nothing for them if they made it back here.

  Charley had sent a couple of his men into Twin lakes to see what they could find out about strangers in the area. We met up with them several miles from the town which was almost empty because the people were heading into the canyon lands where it was safer with the coming sickness.

  But they said some of the younger boys had seen signs of people in a canyon several miles out in the dry country where there was a spring. The didn’t go look as it wasn’t smart these days but they were willing to show us. Couldn’t be better! For us, not so good for the cat.

  I was a bit worried that this could be a trap to draw us in since this was Navajo land and not the best place to hide.

  We rolled into the small town and were greeted by the few folks left, Charley went to talk to them and returned to say as soon as we were done these people would leave with us for the canyons.

  Charley sent five of his scouts with the boys who reported seeing the signs of movement, they would learn what they could and report back. We had nothing to do so we just rested and cleaned weapons and waited. It was dark by the time they returned, three of the scouts stayed behind to observe.

  The two that returned reported a camp of around fifty men, all heavily armed with HV’s with machine guns mounted. They also said these people weren’t slack like the ones we took out, they had people out and weren’t making any smoke. Just waiting.

  They reported seeing a big Black man who was clearly in charge and was doing a lot of pacing. I had to wonder why he was so restless, the people we took out had no commo gear so he couldn’t be expecting to hear that way. It was something to ponder along with how we were gonna handle such a large force. And frankly we were out gunned by a lot.

  We talked about it from every side of the picture we could but could find nothing to get our teeth into. We laid out our bed rolls and went to sleep, And in the night I had a dream where my old gunny was talking about how when your looking at your enemy and he’s doing something that don’t make sense then there is something you’re missing so hunker down and wait a bit while looking for the logic of it all.

  Time is always on the side of the one who takes his time, well most always.

  I woke up fuzzy for a bit and laid there thinking and it came to me that it was a set up, the whole thing, he sent those fools in to draw me out with no thought that they might get lucky and get me. And we did just what he thought we would.

  He left the bait out for us at the old ranch and expected us to kill them getting information out of them, Why else would he tell low level people where he would be?

  I sure wouldn’t, nor would anybody I knew of so it is a trap! And for all I know we might be about to get hit. I whispered to Charley who was also awake and within minutes we had all the others awake and in place to meet a dawn attack. We were in a bad spot. Really bad. We could load up and run for it but if we were right they would have the roads blocked.

  We quietly pulled back into the town to the concrete block building the Feds built as a community hall of sorts. We got the people still in town gathered and filling anything they could find with water. We did an inventory of our ammo and weapons, we had gathered all the stuff we took from the bait crew and while it wasn’t a lot it beat the hell out of nothing.

  Charley got the people gathering anything they could fill with sand to build bunkers inside the hall, the block had concrete and steel in it but a machine gun could just saw thru it if they had the ammo. Better yet there was an inner room that was also reinforced blocks with a heavy door, I asked if they had tornados here in this area, Charley said when the gov did something they used one set of plans for everywhere. We now had a place for the old folks to be safe. Of course all the men were planning to fight and we had the weapons so WTF.

  Of course this might all be for nothing but I didn’t believe that for a minute. One thing I planned to do was be outside with my 308 and the can on it.

  I figured I could do more good there then inside. After thinking about it we decided we would meet them outside and when forced to we could withdraw to the hall. I like this better. So we eased out into the dark and into whatever we could find for cover with our ammo and water.

  I found my spot on a small hump that was trying to be a hill but not doing so well at it. We did keep the shooters in pairs so there would be cover fire at a flanking movement. I dug out a small trench and pushed the sand up in front of it with a thick bush right in front of it, the best I could do.

  I saw Charley head for the truck and figured he had remembered the extra ammo we had in there. Plus a bag with a dozen grenades from the girls stash, if a thousand grenades is a stash.

  I’d kill for one of Beth’s 50 cal. Barrett’s and a few hundred rounds of ammo, I think I hear my Grandpa whispering in my ear about rushing into things.

  Dying here in this place will piss me off to no end, getting Charley or his people killed will wilt my soul, I’m so pissed at myself I could just scream. Not seeing my baby coming into the world will surely rip my very being wherever it goes. Ok so I’m being a bit dramatic, I got my best friend in the world into this shit and I’m pissed.

  We were as set up as we could be and could only wait to see if we were right or wrong. I was hoping for wrong but think right will be the answer.

  And I can hear the sound of HV’s heading this way at speed. Charley eased in beside me for a moment before he would move to my rear. We watched as three HV’s roared into the town with guns ripping apart the small thin walled houses. We were not going to return fire until I gave the word and that would be hopefully when I had a shot at the Cat.

  The HV’s tore thru town and looped back still sawing the houses apart. It was a few minutes before they slowed down and started looking things over, Shortly another HV rolled in and there he was, the big man himself, stepping out of his HV. Only I had no shot, he was tall but he had others taller all around him, smart move!

  After looking around they finally spotted the meeting hall and opened up on it, the FMJ bullets were just eating thru the walls and that wasn’t gonna work so I shot one of the gunners thru the head , worked the bolt and shot the next one then the third one, when the guns all stopped it took a moment for them to realize they were being shot at, Charley and his people opened up and dropped everyone they could see. I shot out the tires of the HV’s including the one the boss man came in. He was hunkered down behind his and the one next to it leaving no clea
r shot but I kept the cross hairs on the area waiting for a target which didn’t take long, he shoved one of the drivers out into the open to draw fire, it did but not from me. I was now listening to Grandpa. Wait and them wait some more.

  I could hear more vehicles coming in the distance and figured his ground troops were almost here. I eased back from my hide and with Charley following headed around to the area where the troops would likely unload. I was now wishing I had brought my AR 10 for the greater fire power.

  Charles lads were still keeping the enemies heads down which was good but I wish a few were on the side like us, the incoming troops were going to be fish in a barrel for a bit. But Charley and I would do what we could.

  And they were here, four 6x’s with at least 20 to the truck. I made the decision to stop them as far out as possible so I shot the driver of the front truck and then the next one, both trucks rolled forward and ended up hitting the edge of the road causing one to flip on it’s side and the other on rammed it. The rest of the drivers were slamming on their breaks so I shot them as fast as I could work the bolt.

  The Cats troops were here but were a hundred yards or more out in open ground with nothing for cover but the trucks and they were no good to him out there. We had separated the leader from his troops and now we had to try to finish them.

  I felt Charley ease away and move to my right using all the cover he could find, I fired at any of the men behind the trucks that showed anything to shoot at. I figured a blown up elbow of foot was as good as a head shot.