Read The Battle: Alone: Book 4 Online

Authors: Darrell Maloney

The Battle: Alone: Book 4 (3 page)

     If the women were being forced to do the men’s laundry, then surely they were doing the cooking and cleaning as well. But what other “needs” were they being forced to fulfill for their captors?

     The woman’s appearance… the fact that she looked as though she hadn’t had a good meal in a very long time. Did that mean the hostages weren’t being treated equally? Were some being withheld food? Perhaps as punishment for trying to escape or other transgressions?

     And what about the male hostages? Were there any? If there were, why weren’t they being forced to do chores? Were they kept at all? Or were they deemed too unmanageable, too much of a security risk? Were they executed so they wouldn’t have to be dealt with?

     He’d counted the number of men on horseback who’d ridden by periodically throughout the day. There were five men, total. And they weren’t spaced at regular intervals. The second man came by twenty minutes after the first. The third fifty minutes after the second.

     It may have been that way because some of the horses walked at a faster pace than others.

     But Dave didn’t think so.

     Dave thought it was done that way by design.

    Dave thought it was done that way to surprise outsiders who might see a second rider come through an hour after the first. And who might assume they had an hour to prepare their assault, only to be surprised by the third rider just a few minutes after the second.

     The Marines used the same tactic on the battlefield, staggering their patrols to keep the enemy guessing. And occasionally to come across them planting IEDs or setting booby traps in areas they thought were safe. It worked well in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many insurgents were caught off guard and blown away. Many American lives were saved by IEDs and booby traps that were never detonated.

     He noted that as darkness fell, he’d seen a total of seven men, all different.

     He had to assume he was up against a very large force. For them to maintain a perimeter team of such numbers twenty four hours a day would have meant a minimum of twenty men, not counting those guarding the hostages inside the house and their command team.

     Dave knew that to control such a large number of men meant the group had a hierarchy… a chain of command, and a commander who was probably the worst of the bunch. He’d almost have to be especially brutal, in order to keep the others in line.

     Every one of the seven men was working alone. He’d seen none of them communicate with each other. Had he done so, he might be able to start to form a picture. Which one seemed subservient to the other, which might give him clues on which men were just grunts. And which ones were their lieutenants or captains.

     Every piece of information he filed away, planning to use all the pieces of his puzzle to craft his battle plan.

     In all the hours he watched, he saw only one thing that pleased him.

     The men seemed to have no radios, at least that he could see.

     That meant he could use guerilla tactics to take some of them out without the rest being called out as reinforcements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

     As darkness fell, Dave was exhausted. It had been a trying day, and he still had to hike a couple of miles back to Highway 71 to get back to his Explorer. He needed some rest because he couldn’t think with a tired mind.

     But there was another question he needed to have answered. A question that could only be answered after darkness.

     He held his position, although it was painful. Every muscle in his legs ached from sitting or squatting in the same spot for hours. His back was beginning to bother him, and the mosquitoes were eating him alive.

     His mind wandered back to his younger days. For a while he wanted to be a Marine Corps sniper. Even went to sniper school. In training, he was covered with heavy camouflage and had to lie perfectly still for hours at a time. He learned to regulate his breathing and to ignore insects, even when fire ants crawled all over his face and stung his eyelids.

     He’d learned to count his breaths to mark time. Eleven breaths per minute. Hour after hour.

     He was permitted to move one limb every minute during training, and only four inches. And so slowly that his instructors couldn’t see him do it. If an instructor walked past and noticed his arm or leg moving, he’d be yelled at unmercifully.

     During his last exercise the sniper trainees were tasked to take up a position in a stand of trees atop a hill, zero in on their target four hundred yards away, and take their shot.

     The stand of trees was thirty yards away, and it took Dave the better part of a day to get there. But he made it and took his shot. The shot missed its mark by only three inches or so. But that was enough to fail the test. Dave was a good shot. He even won his marksman badge using the M-16 rifle.

     But even that wasn’t good enough to make him a Marine Corps sniper.

     He remembered protesting to the Gunnery Sergeant in charge of the exercise.

     “But sir, I still would have killed him, even if the shot wasn’t dead center mass.”

     “Probably so, son. You probably would have. But this was only four hundred yards away. Sometimes our snipers have to shoot at targets twice that far or farther. They lay in wait in heavily occupied territory for days at a time, creeping up on their targets.

     “They only get one shot. And if they miss, all of that time and energy is wasted. And it may well be a once in a lifetime target opportunity. If you miss center mass at four hundred yards, you’d miss him completely at eight hundred. I’m sorry, son. But in this business, close ain’t good enough.”

     He’d washed out of sniper school, instead being placed in the infantry. He didn’t miss lying for hours at a time on the ground, and he wondered how loud his muscles would be screaming right now if he were still a Marine, and still in the field as a sniper, creeping up on a target a few inches per minute.

     Then he wondered why it was that muscles ached more when they got older.

     Then he didn’t wonder about anything. Another rider approached, and his attention snapped immediately back to the task at hand.

     The horse and rider walked slowly past. Dave couldn’t make out any details, but noticed the man was smoking a cigarette. That told him that he wasn’t very smart. Smoking a cigarette at night was the same as placing a target on your head with a big neon sign that said, “Shoot here.”

     It also told him that there were chinks in the armor. Either the people in charge didn’t have total control over their men. At least enough control to keep them from doing stupid things like smoking on patrol.

     Or it meant that the men were stupid. Not trained at all in military tactics, even though these were probably the men who’d broken out of the military prison. Maybe this particular man rode a desk in the military. Never did field exercises. Never learned the principles of combat behavior. Was never taught that something as insignificant as the red glow at the end of a Marlboro could result in his death.

     Whichever was true, it was good news for Dave, bad news for them.

     If they had leadership problems, their discipline would likely break down when the shooting started. An unorganized enemy is always easier to defeat.

     And if they’re just plain stupid, Dave could exploit that to pick them off a couple at a time.

     In any event, he’d been there long enough to get at least some of the answers he was looking for. It had been a full two hours since the sky went black. The sentries were still staggered, but they saw no need in posting additional sentries at night.

     That could be a good thing or a bad one.

     It could mean they didn’t need additional nighttime sentries, because they were relying on high tech night vision cameras to back the sentries up.

     Or, it could mean that they didn’t have enough men to put additional sentries out at night.

     Dave hoped it was the latter.

     He slowly stood, and was upright for the first time in seven hours.

     Every muscle in his body ached and screamed obscenities at him.

     He got a sharp stab of pain in his lower back.

     He muttered softly to himself, “I’m getting way too old for this…” and made his way through the woods to the county road that would lead back to his vehicle.

     Dave walked along the shoulder of the road, his night vision goggles scanning the horizon in front of him for any movement.

     Any time he was going over a rise or around a blind curve, though, he moved over to the tree line. Just in case there was something or somebody just out of sight. If there were such a threat, he’d duck into the woods and bypass it under cover.

     By midnight he was back at the Explorer.

     He crawled into the back seat, confident of two things: First, that the heavily tinted windows would prevent anyone from peeking in and seeing him if he slept past sunrise.

     And second, that he wouldn’t sleep the day away. The temperatures in the black SUV would start to climb as the sun grew higher in the sky. He’d likely wake up mid-morning in a heavy sweat.

     And that was good, because he had a lot of places to go and things to do in the day ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

     Sure enough, Dave was wide awake at just after ten a.m. He was stiff and sore from crouching in the woods for so many hours, and from sleeping in the cramped back seat of the Explorer.

     One of the things he planned to do before night fell again was to find an abandoned tractor trailer nearby with a sleeper cab. It would not only be safer sleeping there at night. It would also be much more comfortable and he’d be more alert when the shooting started.

     The last thing he wanted to do was go into battle while he was sleep deprived.

     He wished he hadn’t had to park so far away. Highway 71 was a good ninety minute hike from Karen and Tommy’s farm. But it was the closest highway where there were enough abandoned vehicles to allow the Explorer to “blend in.”

     All the roads between Highway 71 and the farm were narrow farm to market roads or utility roads. A new vehicle suddenly showing up on one of them would attract a lot of attention. Even those who weren’t the brightest people around would surmise it didn’t just magically appear there. They’d put two and two together and know it was driven, and was therefore something extremely rare.

     A vehicle that actually worked.

     It wouldn’t last a day before some cretin hot-wired it and drove off in it.

     And Dave and his family would have to hoof it back to San Antonio.

     A thousand miles was a very long way to walk. It could be done. But wouldn’t be easy and could be avoided if Dave was careful to protect the big SUV now.

     So yes, it was a pain in Dave’s butt to walk so far to get to and from the farm. But it was necessary.

     He still fought the impulse to rush into the place, grab his family, and shoot his way back out.

     But Dave was a rational guy by nature. If he went in unprepared someone he loved would surely die.

     From what he could see, they were in no immediate danger. Yes, they were being held against their will. And there was a chance that at least some of them weren’t getting enough to eat.

     But Sarah looked strong and able. Not happy. But Dave would have the rest of his life to make her smile again.

     He had to believe that Sarah would be watching out for Lindsey and Beth too. If they weren’t getting enough to eat, she’d have shared her own food. If they were in danger she’d move heaven and earth, and kill whoever she needed to kill, to ensure their safety.

     So rushing in would be a fool’s errand.

     In all likelihood, they’d been held captive on the farm for close to a year.

     He’d formulate his plan slowly and carefully. They’d be there a little bit longer, yes. But when they came out they’d be walking upright.

     He couldn’t make the same promise for their captors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other books

Troubled Deaths by Roderic Jeffries
Les Standiford by The Man Who Invented Christmas: Charles Dickens's
Once by Morris Gleitzman
For the Love of Pete by Sherryl Woods
A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre
The Bloodgate Guardian by Joely Sue Burkhart
Band of Acadians by John Skelton
Dolly by Anita Brookner
Her Christmas Pleasure by Karen Erickson