The Battle: Alone: Book 4 (2 page)

    Dave applied the same process he’d learned in combat in Fallujah to remain calm under tense situations. He forced himself to breathe, in long deep breaths, and he forced himself to think of at least two possible courses of action.

     It was a technique one of his lieutenants taught him.

     “It’ll help stop you from rushing into something you shouldn’t be into out of anger. Looking for a second course of action will force you to examine the first one more closely, to determine which is the smarter move. And often you’ll find that your initial response, your knee-jerk reaction, is an action that would have gotten you or your Marines killed.

     Lieutenant Harper was killed himself not long after that, when an IED exploded beneath his Humvee. Dave missed him. He was a good man. The Corps was full of good men, and too many lost their lives or left their limbs on the burning Fallujah sands.

     The good lieutenant left behind a legacy, though. He’d made an impression on Dave that would last a lifetime. Dave took that particular lesson, and many others, to heart.

     And now, seven thousand miles away from that battlefield in Fallujah, he’d take the lieutenant’s advice.

     He watched his wife hanging laundry and began hatching his plan.

Chapter 2

     Dave needed intel more than anything else. There were many questions he needed answers to.

     “If you go off half-cocked, there’s a good chance you’ll come back whole-dead.”

     It was a saying he’d heard in the Corps. Several different Marines he knew took credit for it. Word was that the saying had been floating around since the Korean War, and the man who first uttered it was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

     But it was just as likely to have been dreamed up by a handful of Marines during a late night poker game.

     In the end, it didn’t matter where it originated. It was sound advice, and a reminder to Dave that he needed a good plan. He needed to gather as much information as he possibly could before he began an assault against a much stronger aggressor.

     He’d seen two of the bad guys. One on horseback just after he broke through the woods to see the house in the distance. And the other standing guard over Sarah. But surely there were others.

     The man on horseback was riding the perimeter fence, watching the woods where Dave lay hidden. That meant they’d set up a security system.

     It also meant that they expected attacks from the outside. And that regardless of his planning, he’d likely never catch them off guard.

     Bad news for Dave. But he’d deal with it.

     He needed a lot more information before he could decide on a particular course of action.

     He needed to know, first of all, whether his girls had survived. If Sarah was here, that meant the plane didn’t crash. Sarah would have defended her girls and protected them to her dying breath. So in all likelihood they were somewhere inside the house, probably being forced to cook and clean and do laundry for their captors.

     Dave shuddered to think what else they might be forced to do, but quickly put that thought out of his mind. It would incense him and prevent him from keeping a clear head.

     And a clear head was essential to keeping his family alive.

     So, he created a list of things in his mind. Actually two lists.

     A list of things he needed to do. And a list of things he needed to know.

     Once he determined that his girls were still alive, he needed to know how many other friendlies were in the house as well.

     He needed to know exactly where in the house they slept. His assault would likely take place at night, under the cover of darkness. If it was at all possible, he’d sneak them out, right under the noses of the bastards.

     But if that was impossible, if there was to be a battle, he’d have to make sure it was as far removed from the innocents as possible.

     He needed to know more about the enemy as well.

     A lot more.

     He needed to know how many there were, and what type of weaponry they had. Karen and Tommy were preppers, just like Dave and Sarah. As preppers, they had weapons and ammunition stored. Probably a lot of weapons and ammunition.

     Hopefully it was hidden well, and the bad guys hadn’t been able to find it. If they had found it, Dave needed to know, and in the meantime he’d assume they had an unlimited supply of bullets and maybe even some hand grenades. Frank Woodard’s ham radio friend, the one from Kansas City who’d told Dave about the prison break, mentioned that a National Guard armory had been broken into and looted three days after the prison break. The lone guard left behind when all the others had scattered to the winds was shot dead on the spot. And somebody… or several somebodies, made off with a scary array of munitions.

     Dave would assume,
had
to assume, that some of it may have wound up here.

     He needed to find out everything he could about their security system. He already knew they had sentries riding the perimeter on horseback. And that their hostages were escorted with armed guards while they were outside. But there was much more he needed to know.

     Did they send people into the woods to search for aggressors?

     How often did the sentries patrol the grounds?

     Were they in radio contact with one another?

     Did they avoid certain parts of the property? Property that might be booby-trapped?

     He’d have to try to determine which of the bastards was in charge. He’d be Dave’s prime target.

     And he needed to know of any weak links he could take out to even the odds a bit. And any cracks in their armor he could exploit.

     Dave knew that Karen and Tommy had a video surveillance system in their home. They showed it off to him when he’d come to visit. It was an elaborate array of twelve cameras, with motion sensors, tied into a central control center in an upstairs bedroom.

     Dave picked his brain, trying to remember details about the system. They had three monitors, as he recalled. The first showed live video from any of the cameras that were tripped. The second switched from one camera to the next, every few seconds, in a continuous cycle. The third was reserved for a particular camera, chosen by the operator, and would stay on that camera until the operator switched to another one.

     It was a good system, and had impressed Dave so much that he asked Sarah whether she thought they should invest in one of their own. They’d ultimately decided against it because of the cost involved, and because they didn’t live on an expansive farm. They lived in a house in the suburbs. Their dollars were better spent on their food and ammunition stores.

     He remembered Tommy telling him that they were thinking of upgrading their system, because infra-red surveillance cameras were just then coming into the market. Infra-red cameras with motion detectors that could spot and track an intruder any time, day or night.

     Dave hoped they hadn’t done the upgrade. It would make his infiltration of the property infinitely harder.

     He remembered Sarah, who he considered the more logical half of the couple, asking Tommy a pointed question.

     “What if it looks like you’re going to be overrun? If you have to abandon the farm to get reinforcements, and a gang of marauders takes over the house in your absence, is there a way you can sneak back in without being spotted so you can take it back?”

     It was typical Sarah, always playing devil’s advocate. And always thinking outside the box.

     Tommy had looked at Karen, then shrugged his shoulders. It was something he’d never thought of.

     And Sarah’s question had generated a long brainstorming session over dinner that night.

     “I suppose that if it looks like we’re being overrun, and if we have to abandon the farm temporarily, we can take the power cords to the computer system with us.”

     Again, Sarah pointed out the obvious.

     “But isn’t that power cord the same one that’s on your other PCs? Will you have time to gather all of them?”

     “You’re right. The cable leading from the camera array to the back of the computer is unique. We’ll take that one instead.”

     Dave had his own idea. It was something Sarah wouldn’t have thought of. Because Dave was a guy, and guys like all things dirty. And little boys have an obsession with digging tunnels that some never outgrow.

     “Why don’t you dig a tunnel, from the woods and into one of your barns or your tool shed? If you camouflage it well on both ends, nobody will know it’s there except for you guys. And you can use it to sneak up on the marauders if you ever need to.”

     Dave remembered seeing the sparkle in Tommy’s eyes. He was another, apparently, who’d never lost that little boy urge to dig.

     “It would be a lot of work. But it’s a great idea!”

     Dave wondered whether he’d ever actually done it. That had been over three years before. He had plenty of time to finish such a project.

     But if a tunnel existed, how would he find it? And where would it lead? And how could he use it to his advantage?

     Dave ducked down as a rider on horseback came over the horizon.

     He checked his watch. It had been almost exactly twenty minutes since he’d broken out of the woods to find the farm in front of him. Almost twenty minutes since he first saw Sarah being forced at gunpoint to do laundry for the bastards who were holding her.

     He stayed down as the sentry slowly passed him by.

     This one wasn’t the same man as the first sentry. That made sense, for the farm was much too large to get around in only twenty minutes. They had at least two sentries. Probably more, to make such frequent rounds.

     Were they on high alert for some reason? Or did they have so much manpower they could patrol their perimeter several times an hour, twenty four hours a day?

     Dave started to wonder if he was up against an Army.

     He turned his attention back to Sarah. She hung up the last of the men’s shirts, and stood talking to the man with the gun.

     The conversation appeared cordial. She didn’t appear to be afraid or cowed. Dave hoped that meant that she and the girls weren’t getting beaten or physically assaulted.

     Sarah walked back into the house, followed closely by the guard.

     He fought the urge to call out to her, to let her know he was there.

     Instead, he counted the number of shirts on the clotheslines. It was information he’d be able to use when forming his game plan.

Chapter 3

     Dave stayed in that spot, just inside the woods and out of view of the sentries, until just after nightfall.

     He was hoping to get another glimpse of Sarah, when she came out to get the dried clothes, and half hoping she didn’t come out. He was half hoping that his daughters would be sent out to get them instead. At least then he’d know they were still alive as well.

     But that wasn’t the main reason he’d stayed.

     The main reason he sat for so many hours, thirsty and hungry and being eaten alive by ants, then by mosquitoes, was to glean more information.

     Just as the sun was setting, someone came out to retrieve the laundry. But it wasn’t Sarah, or his daughters. And it wasn’t his sister-in-law Karen. It was a woman Dave had never seen before. Middle-aged and thin. As though she hadn’t been eating well in quite some time. Or maybe she was just built that way. Sarah didn’t look malnourished. But this woman certainly did.

     As before, she was followed by a man with a rifle who kept a close eye on her. It wasn’t the same man as before. But Dave tried to commit his face and other features to memory.

     Dave pondered the meaning of this new revelation. At the very least, it meant there were others besides his family who were being held hostage. And it confirmed the fact that the marauders were all or mostly men, and that the women hostages were being forced to care for their needs.

     But it opened up a whole lot of additional questions, many of which Dave didn’t want to think about.