The Retreat (Book 5): Crucible Page 7

  Nutter rolled his eyes. “Aw no, you’re coming with us? I thought you Guardies were going to stay in the Underground Hotel!”

  “Not gonna stay trapped in a hole in the ground,” Campbell said as she dropped down beside Nutter. “Those aren’t my people, anyway.”

  “What, we are?”

  Campbell looked at Nutter squarely for a long moment, her dark eyes flat and unreadable. “For the moment, Nutter. For the moment.”

  “Gee, that’s great,” Nutter said.

  “You think you don’t need every gun you can get, lightfighter?” Campbell asked. “Why you down on me, man? Because I’m Guard? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m black?”

  “None of the above,” Nutter said. “You just talk too much.”

  “A little conversation bother you, Nutter?”

  “Only when words have multiple syllables, like ‘delicatessen,’” Muldoon said. “Our Colonel Nutter isn’t exactly an intellectual heavyweight, so conversation tends to leave him bewildered and confused. A lot like a Navy sailor trying to order a cheeseburger in a Whole Foods.”

  “Like you know anything about Whole Foods, Muldoon?” Rawlings said as she settled in beside Campbell. The two National Guard girls were like peas in a pod all of a sudden, and Muldoon didn’t know if he liked that. And that bothered him, too. He was slowly coming to realize that he rather liked it when Rawlings was around, especially since she could dish out what she took. But to an extent, she depended on him more than she would ever admit. The Campbell girl would diminish that, and Muldoon found he was irritated by the notion.

  Knock that shit off and get yourself squared away, boy.

  “So Sergeant Muldoon. Why we headed to Fort Stewart?” Campbell, his new rival, asked.

  Muldoon considered his response. “I’m not really in the know. The colonel and I aren’t on the best terms, but I’m pretty certain we’ll all know when we get there. For now, though”—he nodded toward the two armed Humvees idling in front of the truck they sat in—“it looks like we’re getting scout duty. We’ll be on the column’s point.”

  “God damn it, why us?” Nutter said. “We’re always in the shit! This makes my balls retract, man!”

  “Hadn’t noticed they’d dropped, sweetheart,” Campbell said.

  “Campbell, shut the fuck up,” Nutter snapped as the rest of the troops climbed aboard the truck.

  “Hey, take it easy there, Colonel,” Muldoon said. “You know you’re in the Army, right? We’re lightfighters, we always get the shit duty.”

  Nutter looked across the truck bed at Muldoon. “It’s getting kinda old, Duke,” he said. His eyes looked hollow, and that worried Muldoon a bit.

  “Can’t promise you nothing bad’s going to happen,” Muldoon said. “But I can’t promise you anything good is gonna go down either, so there’s that.”

  Nutter slumped back against the truck’s side rail. “You’re a bright beam of sunlight in the darkness of my eternal night, Duke.”

  “Damn. That sounded profound.”

  “That’s because I forgot to add ‘motherfucker’ at the end to make it profane.”

  Muldoon was about to release a salty salvo of his own, but the soldiers at the rear of the truck suddenly stirred. Rawlings turned toward the lowered tailgate and straightened suddenly, mouthing a silent Oh shit! before she swung her eyes back to Muldoon. Muldoon frowned and leaned forward a bit so he could look down the length of the five-ton’s truck bed.

  He found himself locking eyes with none other than First Sergeant Boats.

  “How do, Sergeant Muldoon,” the senior NCO rumbled, his thin lips barely moving as he spoke. “I hope you don’t mind if I have a seat?”

  “Hey, First Sergeant, what’re you doing here?” one of the soldiers nearest him asked.

  Boats kept his eyes on Muldoon. “I was tasked to provide some much-needed adult supervision and demonstrate necessary tactical proficiency when dealing with enemy threats through the appropriate use of precision fires in accordance with the warrior ethic. What are you doing here, soldier?”

  “I’m just here to kill klowns, First Sergeant,” the soldier replied.

  “Then we are brothers in arms, son.” Boats stalked up the truck’s bed toward Muldoon. Muldoon gritted his teeth and kept his eyes locked on the older man. Boats carried an M4 in his hands and a heavy ruck on his back. Sticking out of one of the ruck’s flaps was the butt stock of his beloved shotgun.

  “Kind of far away from the headquarters company aren’t you, First Sergeant?” Muldoon said.

  Boats stopped right in front of him and gazed down at Muldoon with eyes that were as full of emotion as a barracuda’s. His thin lips spasmed slightly, as if he was trying to smile.

  “HHC is in this fight as well, Sergeant Muldoon,” Boats said. “Everyone gets their turn putting their face into the grinder.”

  “Hey, aren’t you the guy who tried to kill Muldoon?” Campbell leaned forward, peering up at Boats. The first sergeant slowly turned his gaze toward her. Campbell drew back a bit when she felt the weight of the man’s cold stare.

  “You need to move, Guardsman. You’re in my seat.”

  Campbell couldn’t scramble to her feet fast enough. She grabbed her gear and scurried to the front of the truck bed, where she wedged herself in between another soldier and the troop manning the M240 in the rig’s gun ring. Boats shrugged off his pack and slid in between Rawlings and Nutter, then pulled his ruck back toward him.

  “So what gives, Boats?” Muldoon asked as casually as he could. “You coming out into Indian Country like this? A little old for it, aren’t you? I hope you brought your own Geritol, because we don’t stock that in this platoon.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Muldoon. But looks aren’t everything.” If Boats was bothered by the jibe, he didn’t let it show.

  “Seriously. Why are you here?”

  “Equal parts punishment and reward,” Boats said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’m being punished for pointing a firearm at you when you lost control of the drop zone and cost us a Stryker and some troops,” Boats said. “Because of that, I now have to watch over you. That’s punishment.” Boats cleared his throat, turned, and spat over the side of the truck. “The reward is you might fuck up again, boy. And if that happens, the next time I point a firearm at you, it will absolutely go boom.”

  “Oh really,” Muldoon said.

  Boats smiled then, big and bright. “It’s all on you now, John Wayne. Or is it Duke? It’s Duke, is it?” Boats nudged Nutter roughly. “That what you call this towering piece of shit with the gorilla face and sunglasses, soldier?”

  “We call him Duke like John Wayne, First Sergeant,” Nutter replied. “And hey, easy on the elbows. All right?”

  “Duke.” Boats looked across the truck bed at Muldoon and snorted. “Duke. That’s fucking hilarious.”

  “First Sergeant, did someone order you to come here?” Muldoon asked. “Because honestly, I really don’t have a lot of time for your bullshit.”

  “Of course I was ordered to come join your merry gang, Sergeant.”

  “Lee,” Muldoon muttered, shaking his head. “God damn that pencil-necked motherfucker.”

  “Lee?” Boats let out a loud guffaw. “Muldoon, seriously—you can’t actually think the colonel has your interests in mind? Fuck that. It was Turner who ordered me to step up. Because just like me, he knows you’re going to lose your shit again, and he wants someone on hand who can clean up the mess and save your troops after you go all belt fed. But until then?” Boats reached forward and patted the exposed stock of his Remington shotgun. “My buddy and me, at the moment we’re just along for the ride. So don’t bother us, all right?”

  “Sure thing, Boats,” Muldoon said. “Sure fucking thing.”

  THIRTEEN.

  After days of easy duty—if guarding the High Point Special Facility from almost continuous klown attacks could be considered easy—the battalion was on the roa
d again. Winding its way along back country roads, the Humvees and tactical trucks slowly began their movement, carrying just over three hundred lightfighters, National Guardsmen, and armed civilians steadily southward. The plan was to avoid the more built-up cities and residential areas, which meant the One Fifty-Fifth had to bypass the highways and stick to the narrower, winding roads that at first led them along the northern ranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The battalion would remain in the higher elevations for as long as possible, as Lee figured the majority of the infected would still be lurking amongst the larger population centers to the range’s east. There, if not embroiled in combat with the remaining defenders of Washington, DC, they would be preparing for their march onto Fort Stewart. And beyond that, the safe haven in Florida. While the battalion might have the initial lead, their route was necessarily more circuitous. And the klowns wouldn’t have any problems hopping on Interstate 95 or any of the other highways that ran straight into Georgia.

  Lee wasn’t too worried about it just yet. There were already thousands of enemy fighters encircling Stewart. A few thousand more wouldn’t make a difference. The battalion was still going to have to fight at some point, possibly on the way in, definitely on the way out.

  Beside him, Foster whistled an aimless tune as he drove the Humvee down the road in the number eight position of the column of vehicles. This time, it was Murphy who manned the big fifty in the cupola. Sienkiewicz sat directly behind Lee, surrounded by cans of .50-caliber ammo that had been secured with a strap. One of the belts ran up to the weapon; if Murphy had to burn through a belt, Sienkiewicz would link up another so the soldier could keep projecting hate at anything that got in their way. Lee studied his maps while simultaneously trying to keep an eye out. Foster’s aimless whistling suddenly transitioned to humming. Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”

  “Johnny Cash fan, Foster?” he asked.

  “Hell yes, sir. Greatest singer there ever was.”

  “Surprised you even know about him,” Lee said.

  “Yeah, they called him Thin Gray Duke, right?” Sienkiewicz asked.

  Foster snorted. “What? Who the fuck is that?”

  “I think he’s talking about David Bowie,” Lee said. “Witch, Johnny Cash was the Man in Black. David Bowie was the Thin Gray Duke, among other names.”

  “Damn straight,” Foster emphasized.

  “Well, hey. Wasn’t he married to that black girl?”

  “Who, Bowie? Yeah, married to a model named Iman.”

  “Then I rest my case. David Bowie was the man in black—as in, he was really in black.”

  Foster sighed and shook his head in disgust. “Dude, you are one fucked up unit. How did you get assigned to us again?”

  “Come on, man. It was funny,” Sienkiewicz said.

  “It was sad, not funny. There’s a difference, you freaking knob,” Foster said.

  “All right, guys. Settle down and keep eyes out,” Lee said. “Murphy, you still awake up there?”

  “Roger that, Colonel. Be better if you ask Foster that question though, he’s all over the road.”

  “Blow me, you freaking mutant,” Foster hollered back.

  The radio crackled and Lee waved Foster to silence as he listened. The lead element had just rolled up on a small town and had indicated there was no hostile contact. As per the plan, the scouts would motor on while the security team a few vehicles ahead of Lee’s would pull off and maintain control until the rest of the convoy passed through. It was standard procedure, and Lee marked off the phase line on his map.

  A few minutes later, the Humvee drove through the town. It was eerily vacant, and Lee saw nothing that indicated it was still inhabited. Old newspapers rustled across the dusty street. Store windows were smashed and broken, and the shattered glass gleamed in the sun like a scattering of rhinestones. A police pickup truck lay on its side in an intersection, twisted and burned. Something had T-boned it and with some great force, but there was no other vehicle at the site. One of the uparmored Humvees sat nearby, the soldier manning its Mk40 grenade launcher keeping eyes out while the rest of the vehicle’s complement provided additional security from dismounted positions. They all wore MOPP IV gear. On the other side of the town, a gas station had been set ablaze. It was surrounded by a horde of blackened corpses arranged around a fair-sized crater. All manner of charred vehicles sat in the parking lot, everything from small cars to recreational vehicles. Lee couldn’t begin to guess what had happened there, but the end result wasn’t pretty. That the klowns were involved was obvious.

  “Looks like one of the tanks lit off,” Foster said. “Kinda weird, I thought they weren’t able to do that.”

  “Where there are klowns, unfunny shit always happens,” Sienkiewicz said.

  Despite the fact the battalion stuck to back roads, there were still problems. The infected had cut through parts of the area like a red-hot knife through butter, and there were areas where they remained in control. Lieutenant Cassidy’s Bushmasters scouted ahead and radioed back the enemy positions. Even here in the mountains, the klowns were an occasional force to be reckoned with. Lee couldn’t afford to get decisively engaged, so the battalion was forced to maneuver around the enemy formations. Sometimes, the detours cost the unit hours. But at other times, the unit made good time. It rolled past a series of small towns, some of which were virtually untouched by the pandemic and the crazies it created. Others were no more than rubble and cinders. Desecrated bodies were a usual sight, hanging from trees, telephone poles, or simply lying out in the open. Most were what appeared to be helpless civilians, though on several instances, the bodies of klowns were a delight to see. Lee had no doubt the backwoods population in the area was well armed, and they could give back what the klowns tried to dish out on occasion. Every now and then, the battalion would roll by farmhouses that had been heavily fortified, transformed from simple country residences to virtual fortresses hidden behind stacks of sandbags, fencing, and carefully positioned farm equipment. The people of Virginia—and now North Carolina—were taking no chances.

  “Wonder what’s happening over at Bragg,” Murphy asked. He was back on the wheel while Sienkiewicz manned the fifty. Foster was sacked out in the back, snoring softly.

  “We don’t need to find out,” Lee said. When Murphy didn’t respond, Lee asked, “What’s the interest in Bragg, Murph?”

  “My dad’s posted there,” Murphy said. “He’s a master sergeant with the Eighty-Second.”

  “No shit. Well, he’s probably with the rest of the division in DC, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’ll be fine, Murph.”

  “Just like we are, right?” Murphy replied.

  Lee had nothing to say to that.

  At nightfall, the satellite phone Lee had taken from High Point trilled, rousing him out of the sudden lassitude that had descended over him during the course of the past hour. He picked it up and put the handset to his ear.

  “This is Wizard.”

  “Wizard, this is Warfighter. Triton on-station, initial recce underway. Good visuals, and we have your lead element in sight. We can send you the signals over SATCOM when you’re ready. Over.”

  “Warfighter, roger that. Stand by.” Lee abandoned the phone in favor of his radio headset. “Five, this is Six.”

  “Six, send it,” Walker said.

  “We have our recce bird in place. Go ahead and start monitoring the real-time video. Something comes up, you reach out right away. Over.”

  “Roger, Six. We’re setting up to receive now. Over.” Walker was traveling several vehicles back in the TOC rig. The tactical truck was outfitted with satellite communications gear that had also been liberated from High Point. Lee moved one of his earphones so he could speak through the SATCOM phone.

  “Warfighter, Wizard. We’re standing ready to receive the data stream. Over.”

  “Roger that, Wizard. Warfighter Six wants to know your timeline. Over.”

 
; “Warfighter, Wizard has about another six hours of road time. We’ll need a couple of hours to set up, so we don’t expect to commence infiltration until around zero five hundred. Over.”

  “Ah, Wizard. It’ll be daylight by zero five hundred. Over.”

  “Warfighter, Wizard. Understood, but unless Warfighter is willing to give us another twenty-four hours, then this is going to be a daylight op. I’d prefer the extra time if it’s available. Over.”

  “Wizard, wait.”

  Lee checked his watch. In less than fifteen minutes, the convoy would come to a halt to refuel their vehicles and refit for night vision operations. More troops would slip into their MOPP gear, as the nighttime hours would be cooler and through night vision goggles, the masks wouldn’t be as much of a hindrance. The one thing about using night vision goggles, they pretty much made a soldier’s peripheral vision useless anyway.

  “Wizard, Warfighter.”

  “Warfighter, send it.”

  “Wizard, Warfighter Six says you’re good to go with your plan. There are thousands of additional enemy headed for the objective. You can’t wait—you won’t make it out if you do. Over.”

  Lee winced. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Infiltrating Stewart during daylight hours would be incredibly difficult. Lee had hoped to be able to accomplish his mission and evacuate the battalion under the cover of darkness, but that wasn’t going to happen. The delays had cost them too much time. He’d hoped that Reynolds would have seen that and understood that the battalion needed the night as much as it needed ammunition. But the stakes were too high, and further delay was impossible.

  Of course, if the old bastard had chopped surveillance assets to us earlier, we could have avoided all of this…

  Lee tamped down on the bitter thought. “Roger that, Warfighter. Depending on the remainder of the movement, we should be in pos in around six hours. Over.”

  FOURTEEN.

  The approach to the western side of Fort Stewart was surprisingly easy with the assistance of the MQ-4 Merlin UAV—call sign Triton—orbiting over the area at an altitude of forty-five thousand feet. Walker and the rest of the crew in the tactical operations center had been able to relay enemy formation information with enough rapidity to prevent the battalion from encountering any heavy klown resistance. With active fires still coming from the troops defending Stewart, the klowns were oriented toward the besieged fort. They weren’t patrolling their outer perimeters as efficiently as they should have, and Lee considered that a boon.