Rise of the Death Walkers (The Circle of Heritage Saga) (24 page)

When she had to return to work I had more time on my hands than I liked to have. I spent a lot of time in the local library reading up on various European cultures. My meeting with Blake had come and gone. We had talked about this operation during the most of the meeting and I gave him three weeks to solidify the intel on this area. I had chosen to come in alone for the verification because more than one man was hard to hide. Alone, I would move faster than a group of men. It had been my own stupidity that got me into the situation I was currently in and I would get myself out of it.

Closing my eyes I extended my senses outwards and began my own campaign of terror on the camp occupants. Once I located the alpha male for a group of the Hyenas not far away. I took control of the alpha and made the group close in on the southern most patrol. It was a simple matter to take them out. By the time my men has moved into attack position I had eliminated the entire south line of patrols leaving the gate wide open for them.

I heard the click on my communicator as each group of four men moved into position along the southern line. When all four groups were in position, I signaled them to start the operation. Since the sun had settled behind the horizon I used a pair of infrared binoculars and watched as men from two of the groups set explosives on the various positions in camp. Each position had been chosen from satellite imagery. I waited for them to slip back into position and signaled for the attack. Explosions rocked the night. The entire rebel contingent poured toward the south end of the camp.

Since I was behind the explosions, I could do my damage particularly well. I slid my modified AR-15 into position and flipped to single shot. I then proceeded to part the hair of a few very ugly looking rebels. When I was finished with them their own mothers would have been hard pressed to know who they were. I spotted a lone rebel moving in on Johnson’s position and double tapped him in the back of the head. It was a rather rude way to say hello but I wasn't really watching my manners at that point in time.

My attention was diverted from the clean work my men were doing below. I smelled him long before I saw him and I already had my knife in my hand. I was not sure he had actually seen me so I lay absolutely still in the dark night. An immobile target is very hard to see in the dark. Usually you were looking for motion. The ape who was moving toward me had no idea how to move during the night. He was about eight feet away from me when I finally did move. One eye was no longer in any shape to see me. It is rather hard to look through the hilt of a combat knife after it has been jammed into your eye. His other eye was also rather busy rolling up into his head to bother trying to find out where the movement had come from. I let him lay where he was hit and waited for the all clear signal to come over the radio.

When the signal came I was all over it. "Scouts out in all four directions and clear the landing zone. Medics meet me at checkpoint alpha."

Johnson's voice came over the com unit. "Medic one here Serge. Are you hurt?"

I clicked the com as I moved toward the designated area. "One round left shoulder clear through have the Quickclot ACS+ ready and some pain pills." We were not equipped for any more care than that in the field so I would have to wait until the retrieval chopper arrived to airlift us out. "Clear the com. Silent operation until retrieval unit touches down. One click when unit is spotted, two if we have trouble coming." After that communications was quiet.

I reached checkpoint alpha two minutes before Johnson did and had my flak jacket off. "Hold tight Sergeant I am going to hit you with some morphine."

I waved him away. "No morphine. I need to be alert until we get all the men out of here." I turned to one of the men in the unit and stabbed in the direction of a box of explosives. "Wire the shipment. If we have to move out before retrieval then I do not want anything left behind that they can use."

Johnson objected. "Those were not our orders."

"Corporal, when Uncle Sam sees fit to give you your own black ops unit and several hundred thousand dollars worth of explosives to play with then you call the shots. Until then I am in charge! Understand?" I waited for him to acknowledge and then said. "Point position, eyes open." I leaned back against the crate I was near and fought with a wave of blackness. I looked at my watch and was surprised we had taken the objective with ten minutes to spare.

"Nighthawk this is Golden Cobra waiting for instructions." Came over my secondary communicator.

I checked to make sure I was still scrambled. "Dinner guests have been fed and dishes waiting to be washed." I gave them the coded phase to move on the primary landing zone. "Dishes still need to be loaded into the dishwasher but soap is already on them." I continued to let them know shipment was secured but rigged for destruction. "Nighthawk out."

It was an hour later when everything was loaded and the whole team in the choppers and in the air before I let the doc do his job.

"Dammit Jeran, you are in pain let me give you some morphine!" I nodded once and he reached for the needle. I never felt the stab of the needle because I let loose and darkness descended on me.

Two weeks later I was still in the base hospital in Karlsruhe listening to Blake spout off on me. "Look Gerald I don't care if the General wants to give me a purple heart or any other damn medal. If he is hot for a medal tell him to pin it on his dog. I certainly won't take part in any damn parade you know as well as I do my unit does not exist and this is exactly the thing that we do not want to do."

He nodded at me and said. "I know this but he has a total different reason for wanting you there."

I shook my head and said. "No. I rate two weeks medical leave before I return to duty and I am going to take it. You were not the one sitting out there for six hours with your lifeblood dripping onto the desert floor. I was and I want to rest.." I slapped the tray from the table onto the floor. "Away from these flipping nurses who constantly shove something in any orifice they can reach." I turned at the sound of the door opening and spotted Dr. Mendex entering the room. "Now what, Doctor?" Have you thought of some new test to inflict on me so satisfy your morbid curiosity of how much torture one man can take while recovering from a gunshot wound?"

He laughed at me and grabbed my chart. "No Sergeant I came to tell you that I am releasing you today and you are on two weeks of medical leave, beginning tomorrow." He turned to Gerald and said. "Captain I do not appreciate you coming in and disturbing my patients. If you will not take into consideration I am the doctor then consider the fact that I am a Major and you are a Captain and get the hell out of my hospital."

I shot a grin at Gerald as he started cursing and headed for the door. "I will see you in two weeks Jeran." I nodded at him as he left the room.

"Now Jeran there is a young lady who insisted on being here the day you were released. She almost tore the throat out of the admissions nurse every time she came here and was told that only relatives and military personnel could visit you. I waived that for today since you are going home. She is just outside the door."

The doctor left and before the door closed Irma was though the door and on me. She was talking so fast I could barley understand her. "Whoa Irma, Slow down I may know the lingo but you are talking so fast I can't understand what you are saying."

She stepped back and took a deep breath. I could see she had been crying. "What happened to you Jeran they would not tell me."

"It's stupid really just a training accident. I need to pay more attention to signs when I am walking around a firing range." I could see she was not buying it and I shook my head and pointed to my ear.

She nodded at me and then asked. "Where?"

"My shoulder. Don't worry the round went through and I am feeling fine. I have a couple weeks medical leave and will work on getting it back into shape before I go back on duty." I saw her eyes light up. "What have you been up to?"

"Well I am fighting with my parents again so I have been using your place, like you said, while you were gone." She blushed when she said that.

"Well good for you. At least the place has someone in it. Lord knows I haven't been there much. After all I gave you the key didn't I?" She nodded at me and blushed again. "Let's blow this joint. I want to get home so I can relax." I looked around for my backpack and walked over to pick it up.

Irma grabbed it out of my hand and said. "I will carry it."

I nodded to her and walked out the door down to the admissions nurse’s desk. I could see the look she was shooting at Irma and I chose to ignore it. Irma looked at her and rolled her eyes. After I signed the release forms I headed to the elevator and then I realized that somehow Irma had managed to get on a closed base. "Wait how in the world did you get on base?"

She blushed and said. "Well one of the gate guards has a bit of a crush on me and he let me on." I laughed at her and made a mental note to thank the guard but also to let him know that Irma was indeed unavailable for the duration. "My car is over here." She said and she steered me in the proper direction.

I stopped near her tan/orange Opel Ascona and waited for her to open the passenger door. "You better ride on the way out, it will cause less problems." She nodded and got in the passenger side. She reached over and opened the driver side and I got in and started the car. Before we reached the gate I asked. "Which guard?" She pointed him out and I stopped at the gate. "Hand me your driver's license please." She did so and when the guard arrived I flashed my ID. He looked startled at the clearance code and when I handed him Irma's driver's license I said, "Add it to my access list. I will wait outside the gate."

The guard snapped to attention and said. "Yes, Sergeant Whitemar."

When I parked outside of the gate Irma looked at me and asked. "What was that all about?"

"I should have taken care of this earlier but better late than never. I have a special security clearance that allows me to vouch for multiple local nationals for access to any base I can go on." I flashed a smile at her. "This will be the best I can do until something more permanent can be arranged." I left it at that and waited for the guard to return the license. "I will let you drive the rest of the way Liebling." She nodded at me and we switched places.

We were quiet the rest of the drive home but I could see her peering from time to time out of the corner of her eye at me. I was sure about my feelings for her and about hers for me but I needed the approval of her parents before I even considered what logically came next. I did not want to see her at odds with her parents because of me.

Was I ready to take the relationship to the next level? I knew I was physically, from the moment that I first laid eyes on her but I did not trust a reaction that was governed by hormones. Was I mentally ready to go in a direction I had only gone with one woman in my entire life? I had been out in the world long enough to know that the morality I had been brought up with was old fashion and long out of date. Heck these days it was hard to find a thirteen year old who had not already done it.

We parked in front of my place. When I went to grab my backpack she took it away from me. I would have to get my gun from it and unload it and put it in the safe before she ran across it. She opened the door and dropped the backpack in my office. "Tyler brought your mail a couple of days ago so you will probably want to go through that. I will cook us some lunch while you do that."

She went into the kitchen and began to gather the fixings for a lunch. I went in the office and sat down behind the desk. Making sure the desk shielded me, I flipped up the section of the wood where I had hidden the safe and quickly unloaded the pistol and locked it in the safe. I then turned my attention to the mail that had piled up in my three week absence. It was mostly junk but one letter shocked me when I looked at the return address. How had he found me? I opened the letter and began to read.

Grandson,

You might guess how it surprised me when I finally discovered what you had done. Mimi was heartbroken when she found out about Katie. When you escaped from the sanitarium there was nobody seriously hurt and the aide you tied up had no idea what had happened after some mind tampering from Mimi. Dr. Grant and his wife insisted on carrying through on their desire to complete your wedding present and there is now a new home waiting for you when you should decide to return home. Your decision to join the army is an admirable one and the change in your name was not at all necessary. We have taken care of things on this end so that the person ‘Jason White’ is not wanted for anything. I am sure with your skills you will be able to effect the change back on that side.

I have already met the young lady who will in my opinion be the one responsible for healing your heart. Don't be so surprised Pasche, I am an old dog and I have many ways to find out what I want to. Please do not be angry with me when you realize how much of the manipulation you have experienced has been through my hands. The place you are at in your life right now is the way that the grand plan had foreseen for you. Please believe me that Katie's selfless sacrifice was not at all unexpected, by her. She knew she would only be a small part of your life but was happy to be there as long as she was. While she is not in this world be aware her spirit is alive and watching over you. You probably have felt her from time to time.

As for the present stage in your life. You will over the next six years be learning everything you will be needing in your later life. Irma the young lady you are currently with knows what her part is and she loves you Jason and will be with you until the time is right for her. I can tell you now she will not be taken from you as Katie was but will be around for your entire life. Do not press her for any details. When I say she knows, then I mean she will instinctively know what to do when the time is right. Know only this she is the right person for you, Jason. The son you will bare with her represents the next step in the evolution of our line.