The Battle: Alone: Book 4 (9 page)

     The old man seemed to take great delight in Dave’s smile.

     He asked, “You know what this is?”

     “A big damned silencer, is what it looks like.”

     The man laughed.

     “Well, you’re half right. It’s a big damn silencer, and a big damn flash suppressor.”

     “What kind of rifle is it, and where the hell did you get it?”

     “It’s a sniper rifle. It uses a regular .556 round, but it’s meant to take out targets at up to a thousand meters. At least that’s what Billy said. I don’t speak metrics myself. I wouldn’t know a thousand meters from a hole in the ground. I’m too old to learn a whole new measurin’ system just ‘cause the government said we oughta.”

     “Who’s Billy?”

     “Billy
was
one of my son’s deputies. He was killed in the same ambush as my son. Billy was an agent for The Drug Enforcement Agency before he got tired of the federal government and decided to try something a bit slower. They took this off a couple of nomads right after the blackout. No way of telling where they might have gotten it.

     “Anyway, Billy said he’d only seen one other one like it, when he was working for the DEA. He said they confiscated it along the border with Mexico, not far from El Paso. The drug lords down there were hiring snipers to shoot their rivals from long distances.”

     “He said it was a shame the night vision don’t work. Takes batteries, you see, and as you know they’re a thing of the past. But you can still use it in the daytime. The silencer suppresses the muzzle flash, so not only can they not hear where the shot came from, they can’t see the flash either.”

     Dave almost told him that he had batteries, but he thought better of it.

     “Can I borrow it?”

     “Hell, son. You can have the damn thing. No one used it while we had it, and now there’s no one left to use it. And if you take out just one of those bastards who escaped prison, then I reckon it’s for a good cause. Because every one of those scumbags you shoot will help make this county just a little bit safer.

     “And besides, it’ll help ease my conscience a bit. See, as much as I’d like to, I can’t help you with reinforcements. If you walk out of here with this, then I won’t feel quite so bad. I’ll know I helped you in another way.”

     “You got any ammunition to go with it?”

     The man produced two boxes of shells and placed them on the counter next to the weapon.

     “There you go, son. Good luck to you. You’re gonna need it, going up against that kind of odds.”

     “I’ll prevail,” Dave stated matter-of-factly. Because I have right and justice on my side. And the good guys always win in the end.”

Chapter 15

     Dave said goodbye to his new friend, and decided to stay in Dugan until nightfall. He couldn’t retrieve his vehicle until after dark anyway, and he didn’t want to carry his new sniper rifle down the lonely road in daylight.

     He was afraid that if he came across a band of armed men, they might try to take it from him.

     And he didn’t want to have to kill them for it.

     Dave didn’t like killing men. He had killed several insurgents in Iraq. The Marine Corps never actually told him so, but he knew it. In a firefight, when several Marines are firing at the same target, there exists a comfortable sense of plausible deniability.

     Those who freak out at the prospect of killing another human being can always justify to themselves in their own mind that someone else’s bullet was the fatal shot.

     Dave, because he was a great shot and didn’t rush his shots as most others did under fire, assumed that some of his bullets found their mark. Knowing that he more than likely sent men to meet Allah left a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. But then again, they were trying to kill Dave. And better them than him.

     He’d apply the same logic to anyone he met on the road who tried to take his weapons. Leaving him to battle the escaped convicts without firepower was, in essence, condemning him to death. For Dave knew that he’d go in with his bare hands if he had to. So if the only choice he had was to kill in order to keep his weapons and increase his odds of success, then he had no problem in doing that.

     But he’d rather not, if he could avoid it.

     So he’d sit under a tree on the outskirts of town, the sniper rifle stashed in the bushes behind him, until it was dark enough to travel the lonely roads safely.

     He napped under the tree as he waited for nightfall, and was awakened by a swarm of pesky mosquitoes just before midnight.

     It was longer than he’d intended to sleep, but his body wouldn’t have rested if he hadn’t needed it.

     By two a.m. he was back on Highway 71, the Explorer safely tucked between an abandoned tractor trailer and a rusty old dump truck.

     By the time the sun broke on the horizon he’d made three fast trips back to the tunnel, shuttling water and provisions. He’d decided to make the forest end of the tunnel his base of operations while he continued his recon, and stay there day and night until the battle was over. The big green fiberglass box was just as secure as the sleeper cabs and was comfortable day or night. The tunnel was cooler in the daytime, since it was several feet below ground and well ventilated. At night, there were no mosquitoes, and he could come and go from the fiberglass box without much chance of being seen.

     After he locked himself inside the tunnel for the last time he took stock of what he’d brought. He had food and water for at least four days. That might not be enough for an extended campaign, but he wouldn’t be ready to wage war for a couple of days anyway. As much as he’d like to go immediately, he was still short on intel.

     And intel was as important to his family’s survival as were weapons and bullets.

     He’d go back out the following night and lug back more food and water from the Explorer. He wanted enough for at least a week before he started. Because his guerilla campaign would put the enemy on high alert, and his movements would be extremely risky after the first shots were fired.    

     He had three weapons, including his new sniper rifle, and over four hundred rounds of ammunition. He wasn’t one to waste his shots, so that was plenty.

     He had his Army Ranger knife, which he’d selected to bring with him instead of his favorite hunting knife.

     The Ranger knife was lighter, and had a wrapped grip. He’d be able to hold it better when it was covered with blood.

     Lastly, he had a comfortable sleeping bag and an inflatable air mattress. He could have left the air mattress behind, but good quality sleep was essential to keep him battle ready. And a sleeping bag on a bare concrete floor would be anything but comfortable.

     He was tired from walking several miles, but not yet sleepy enough to crash.

     So he sat on the floor of the tunnel, his back against the tunnel’s cool wall, and used his AR-15’s cleaning kit to clean the sniper rifle while he thought of Sarah and the girls.

     He couldn’t wait to see them again.

Chapter 16

     Dave didn’t even remember crawling into the bag. He had a vague recollection of blowing up the air mattress and wishing he’d thought to bring a portable air pump. He hadn’t blown up a mattress since he was in the Corps, and he’d forgotten how much effort it took.

      It was pitch black in the tunnel and he reached around in the dark for his night vision goggles so he could see what time it was.

     He wished he’d brought some small candles with him on his journey. But candles were just another one of several things he’d wished he had since he set out from San Antonio.

     He could get along without them, just as he could get along without a watch without luminescent hands.

     It was just past four a.m.

     He could go back to sleep for a couple of hours, but in the process of determining what time it was he’d awakened himself completely. He was no longer sleepy.

     What he was, was anxious.

     Anxious to start battle. Anxious to save his family. Anxious to hold his wife and girls again.

     Anxious to get them back to San Antonio and put this hellacious chapter in their lives behind them.

     He put his hands behind his head and pondered a dream he’d had just before he woke up.

     Dave seldom dreamed. On the rare occasions he did, he enjoyed them tremendously, even to the point he’d describe them in great detail to Sarah.

     Sarah usually rolled her eyes, not really wanting to hear about his fantasized exploits of frolicking on the beach with whatever hot supermodel was currently in vogue. Or which engine he dreamed he was dropping in a cherry red ’57 Chevy.

     “Oh, come on,” he’d plead. “It was so cool, I just have to tell somebody about it.”

     Dave used to say his dreams were like going to the movies, only free and without popcorn.

     “I’ve heard that dreams are black and white for most people,” he once told Sarah. “But mine aren’t. Mine are in vivid color. In Technicolor.”

     She’d laughed at him then and told him he was silly. Sarah dreamed all the time. Almost every night. Most of them she kept to herself, either because they were intimate and private or because she wasn’t one to share something so personal.

     But, being the caring wife and lover she was, she generally sat and listened as Dave went into great detail in describing his own dreams.

     She even listened as he described his encounters with the supermodels, although she always had the sense he was holding certain parts of the dream back. Out of self-preservation, probably.

     On this particular night, at the mouth of the tunnel, on that cold hard cement floor, Dave hadn’t dreamed of any supermodels.

     Or classic cars.

     He dreamed of Master Sergeant Billy Gene Holliman.

Chapter 17

     Sergeant Holliman was legendary in the United States Marine Corps. Right up there with Archibald Henderson and Chesty Puller. Those who’d met Holliman bragged about it. Those who’d never met the man wished they had.

     Dave had not only met Holliman. He was trained and mentored by him.

     And threatened.

     But that part Dave deserved.

     MSgt Holliman was the go-to guy when it came to hand to hand combat. He could take a knife from a man twice his size and use it to slit the man’s throat before he knew what hit him.

     But he only did that with people he was trained not to like.

     The ones he liked, like his fellow Marines? He taught them how to do it too.

     Dave was assigned to Holliman’s hand to hand combat class before his first tour in Iraq. He paid attention and learned all the moves, and graduated from the course with honors.

     On Dave’s third day in country, Camp Freedom was infiltrated by an Iraqi posing as a Department of Defense contractor.

     He was the worst kind of Iraqi infiltrator. He was in a hurry to see Allah and to get his seven virgins, and strapped a suicide vest under his flowing white thobe to help him get there faster.

     Dave saw the man come through the gate and something about his behavior caught Dave’s attention. The soldier who inspected his pass was nearing the end of his fourteenth hour on duty and was getting tired and sloppy.

     A tiny flaw in the English portion of the forged pass should have caught his eye. “Canp Freedom” should have been a glaring mistake. But it made it past the guard, and many people could have died were it not for Dave’s keen eye.

     Dave remembered MSgt Holliman’s admonition, as he taught his students jabs, kicks and punches.