Foreign Enemies and Traitors (41 page)

****

Phil Carson reluctantly
accepted Doug Dolan taking the point position.  Boone was gone, but he had unambiguously left Doug in charge.  Doug had the new set of night vision goggles, he knew the way to their hideout—and he was a lot younger.  But what kind of an operator was he?  How good was he at night patrolling, how quietly could he move?  Would he find a good path, or would he lead them blindly into impassible obstacles, or worse, lead them into an ambush?  Well, they’d find out soon enough.  Except for the girl, they were going to be carrying extra heavy loads: their own packs, plus sacks of food and gear brought from Zack’s house.

                They stood in the little clear space behind the Subaru, packing what they would take and leaving the rest cached in the back of the vehicle.  The dome light inside the car had been turned on, providing the little area with just enough light to work.  The baby was squirming and restless, fussing, threatening to break into a full-throated cry at any time.

                “Maybe I should feed her here?” suggested Jenny.  “I’ve got a bottle ready.”

                “Not yet,” Doug answered in a loud whisper while strapping extra bags to his pack.  “It’s less than two miles to the cave.  The snow might stop anytime, so we have to move out fast and hope it covers our footprints.  Save the bottle for if she really gets loud.  Zack, help me get my pack on.”  Once his load was on his back, he slid his rifle’s sling over his neck.

Zack said, “Doug, you’ve got night goggles and you know where you’re going, but we’re going to be tripping all over the place behind you.  The moon’s down, and even with the snow it’s too dark for us.  Once we turn off the car’s light we’re going to be as blind as bats.  We’ll be lucky if we don’t get split up and lost.  Let me hang this on the bottom of your pack.  Your flashlight is too bright, but this one is just right.”  He showed them his finger-sized light, removed from his compound bow.  Its single LED bulb cast a small pool of red light on the ground.  “It’ll let us see where we’re walking, and we won’t lose you.  I don’t like to use lights at night, but this is an exception.  Nobody else will see this light unless they have night vision or they practically walk into us.  We have to take the chance.  It’ll be worse for us if we get separated and have to call to each other, or if we’re falling down and making noise.”   

“I don’t know about using a visible light…”

“Zack is right,” said Carson.  “Without a light we’ll have to move too slowly.  We’ll be stumbling around like blind men and that means noise, and somebody might fall and get hurt.  Then we’ll have a bigger problem, because there’s not enough of us to carry somebody with a busted leg.  The red light’s a small risk, but we have to take it.  What’s your name again, honey?”

“Jenny.”

“Sorry.  Jenny, you walk right behind Doug there, close enough almost to touch him.  Then Zack—and I’ll bring up the rear.”  Carson didn’t ask; instead, he used a positive, commanding voice.  It was essential that they not lose one another in the dark.  Zack clipped his cigarette-sized penlight to Doug’s pack.  If enemy soldiers were out on ambush patrols tonight, the light would give them away.  But if they were patrolling with night vision or—God forbid—infrared thermal imaging scopes, they’d be seen anyway, red light or no red light.

Zack asked Jenny, “Do you want me to take your stuff?  You’re carrying the baby.  I can take your pack, I can carry it in front of me.”

“No thanks—I’ve got it.  It’s not that much.  Really, I can deal with it, if it’s only a couple miles.  That’s nothing.  I’m used to it.”

Doug adjusted the dead traitor’s night goggles and pulled his black watch cap back on his head, over the straps.  “All right, we need to go.  Is everybody ready?”  The others nodded their assent.  He reached inside the car and switched off its light, and they were plunged into darkness, except for the dim pool of red light behind his feet.  He whispered, “I’ll take you across the trail now.  Wait for me there right where I leave you.  I’ll get the car ready and close this place up, drop the branches again, and I’ll sweep our tracks out.  It’ll take me a few minutes.  Then we’ll get going.  Once we’re out of here, no talking unless it’s an emergency, and then only whisper right into an ear.”

“Like we’re hunting,” suggested Zack.  His small compound bow was tied vertically to the back of his pack, but he held his lever-action rifle at the ready.  A pair of daypacks full of food were tied to the sides of his main pack, a compressed sleeping bag was strapped below it, and a ten-pound sack of rice was lashed on top.  They were all heavily laden for their short trek, but none more than Zack.

“Right, like we’re hunting,” agreed Doug, who had grown up in the Maryland suburbs and had never stalked an animal in his life.  “That means no shooting unless we absolutely have to.  Not unless somebody shoots at us first, and they’re damn close.  And don’t shoot just because you hear rounds popping.  The bad guys might be shooting at somebody else, or they might be doing recon-by-fire.  Don’t fall for it.  Don’t kid yourself: once we go loud, we’re probably screwed.  There’s hundreds of Kazaks, and only four of us.  Make sure you keep that thing on safe, Zack.  An accidental discharge could get us all killed.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he responded coolly.  Under his breath he muttered to Carson, “Damn Yankee, givin’ me gun advice…”

Doug ignored him and continued.  “We know the Kazaks are around us, it’s just a question of whether they’re running patrols tonight.  I’ll be stopping once or twice a minute to listen.  Stop when I stop.  I’m going to take you guys a little way off from here now, then I’m coming back to sweep up our prints and let the holly branches down to hide the car.  Okay?  Let’s go.”  He led them out into the darkness.  The three waited a hundred feet from the vehicle.  Doug’s light disappeared under the holly trees, and then reappeared.  No one without night vision would be able to see the small circle of light on the ground, unless they were very near. 

Doug returned in a few minutes to where the others waited.  He approached them walking backward, feathering their snowy tracks with Boone’s pine bough, then he handed it off to Carson, who was going to walk at the rear of their file.  “The car is booby-trapped now: don’t go back for any reason.  Not unless I’m with you to disarm it.  I’ll try to keep us out of deep snow so we don’t leave too much of a trail.  Mr. Carson, clean up what you can of our tracks, but don’t fall behind or lose us.  Okay?  Okay.  Follow me.”  They kept an interval of only a yard or two between them, almost touching distance.

Carson had placed the girl at the second position, where she would benefit the most from the tiny red light.  Carrying a baby inside her parka against her chest and a pack on her back would be a challenge, he knew.  If she fell, the baby could be hurt, or at least it might start crying loudly.  She must have been made of strong stuff, though, to have endured the past day’s events as she had described them.  For that matter, she had to be tough just to have survived the last year in Tennessee.

Zack needed no help or advice about how to follow along silently; the boy was a born hunter.  They made steady progress.  Most of their route was under tree cover, zigzagging from woods to tree line to woods, occasionally crossing unavoidable segments of open fields.  Most of the terrain was slightly hilly, folded land, up and down a couple hundred feet of elevation.  Some of it was steep enough to require bending forward and using hands for balance, or to pull up on roots or saplings.  At times they had to slow their pace almost to a crawl when climbing steep, slippery stream banks, or while negotiating thickets and clambering over fences and through deadfall trees.

After almost an hour, they were ascending a steep slope, the higher side of a small valley.  The snowfall was diminishing; the snow on the ground was heavy and wet.  Their boots compressed the snow to slush, through to the frozen mud below.  Carson knew that four sets of boots would leave a trail a blind man could follow, in spite of his sweeping their tracks when he could.  Fortunately, most of the time they were walking through underbrush and bushes, which were obscured beneath bare trees and some evergreens.  Otherwise, their trail would be readily visible from the air once daylight came, if aircraft were up and looking.  Another inch of snow was what they needed, to obscure their back trail, but that was looking doubtful.

Doug slowed again, stopped, looked around, then whispered, “This is it.  Come on up close so you can hear me.  The opening is pretty small, so take your packs off here.  We’ll have to push them in, one at a time.  I’ll go in first.  Wait here, and give me a minute to get inside and get some lights turned on.  Zack, take your light back now.  Use it out here to make sure nothing gets left outside the cave, and see to it our tracks are swept up around here.  Okay?”  Doug stripped off his pack, went down onto his knees and then onto his stomach.  Then he snaked his way forward and out of sight, his boots the last thing seen in the red glow of Zack’s light.  The others gratefully downed their own loads and waited, stretching their necks and shoulders.  The cave opening was at the bottom of a rocky cliff, which extended vertically about twenty feet from the tree-covered slope.  Thorn bushes grew thickly around the base of the rocks, concealing the cave’s irregular angled entrance, which was only about four feet wide and less than two high.  The only way in was on one’s belly, the way that Doug had gone.

****

Dwight Granger lived
in the Unaccompanied Personnel Quarters on Fort Campbell, not far from Gate One.  A generation ago at the start of his former Air Force career, it would have been called the Bachelor Officers Quarters, but two of those three terms had fallen prey to political correctness.  The sprawling three-story structure was built of reinforced concrete, and it had come through the earthquakes with no more than cracks.  Granger occupied a single room, with a bed that converted into a sofa, a table, a desk, and a connecting bathroom that he shared with the next room.  It was not much more than his own cell in the low-rise building, one of hundreds of identical cement-walled cubicles, but at least he had a key to the door.  This bachelor’s room was a far cry from the three-bedroom home outside Las Vegas that he used to own.  Own?  That was not the correct word.  In the end, the bank owned it.  It always had, really. 

During his current employment contract with the Department of Homeland Security, it was a much better deal to live on the Army base than off it.  At least his room in the UPQ had reliable electricity and heat, unlike most of the housing opportunities off base.  Granger currently did not own an automobile, and gasoline was practically unobtainable anyway.  The UPQ was within walking distance of the Post Exchange store, the food commissary, and the Cole Park Buffet, where he could pay for his meals with voucher cards.  A free shuttle bus was usually available to take him to and from his job at UAV flight operations, but most of the time he walked instead of waiting for it.

Tonight he lay on his sofa bed, staring up at the constellations of bumps and holes in his stucco plaster ceiling.
 
The dots doubled and merged as he stared into and beyond the yellow paint.  He was still unable to focus on anything beyond the Predator video he had captured today.  He had the entire Mannville massacre recorded on several thumb-sized USB drives, but he was afraid to load the images onto his personal laptop computer.  He didn’t need to view it on his computer screen: the massacre at the ravine in Radford County played itself in his mind over and over again.

The flash drives containing the video files were fairly well hidden, taped to the back of a drawer, but in his mind’s eye, they glowed and pulsed like radioactive isotopes.  His tiny room could be searched to its concrete walls, ceiling and floor in mere minutes.  He wanted the drives out of his room, but he did not want the information contained on them to be lost.  He considered hiding them in one of the UPQ’s common areas or laundry rooms, but even there they might inadvertently be discovered.  Conversely, if something happened to him, the flash drives might lie unnoticed in the laundry room for years, or they might be thrown away in the trash unviewed. 

Regardless of where he temporarily hid the flash drives, what could he do with the information contained on them?  He supposed he could take them and leave Fort Campbell.  But to go where, without a car?  He would have to leave Tennessee and Kentucky, but to do that he would need official authorization, and travel papers for boarding an interstate train or bus.  He’d have to go to the national media centers in Washington or New York, he thought.  He’d need to take the flash drives directly to one of the big television networks or newspapers. 

He quickly reconsidered that idea.  In reality, there was no truly free press in America anymore, not during the long emergency.  National security was invoked so freely that the First Amendment had become an empty promise.  The major media outlets would never broadcast the Predator video, not without first running it past the Department of Homeland Security for approval and official clearance.  Under the emergency laws, he would probably be arrested on charges of…well, something.  They would secretly arrest him for conspiracy, sedition or the new catchall, “advocating violent radicalization against the government.”  Then he’d disappear into a detention camp…or worse.

He could make multiple copies, and try to mail them in the blind to various media outlets and hope for the best…but the mail was carefully scrutinized these days.  Even small parcels required a trip to the Post Office, where he would be filmed.  A flash drive would easily show up under an x-ray, the file could be opened by the security services, and then he would be arrested.  Perhaps he could send it out to the so-called free states of the Pacific Northwest?  He promptly dropped that idea.  He had no contacts out West.  When he lived in Nevada he was still on active duty in the Air Force, and he had no local friends outside of the military.  When he left Nevada, that state’s presence upon him evaporated like the desert’s morning dew.  To Dwight Granger it was no more than a hot and arid geographical location that he had occupied for a few years, and he had not put down the shallowest roots.