The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time (9 page)

“Yes, Sire,” Jamal said as he started for the motor launch.

“And Jam?” Jamal stopped to listen. “When this is over, I only want the leaders of the resistance executed. Offer everyone else amnesty.” Even in the moonlight he could see Jamal’s raised eyebrows.

“This is a new land and for the time being, we need friends,” he explained.

“Of course, Sire,” Jamal said before he stepped into the boat.

Next, John turned to his brother. “Have you heard from Bonetti?”

“Not since he told us his spies penetrated Provo and the Freeholds,” Prince Anthony answered.

“No word on the Garcias?”

“Nothing, baby brother.”

John clenched his teeth. He hated being called “baby brother.” Two lousy Goddamned minutes. “Well, tell him to send out more search parties, dammit. I want them found!”

Chapter 8: The Enemy

Maroon Bells Wilderness, Colorado

Late October, 12 AI

From high among the tumbled rocks that lined the walls of Castle Creek Canyon, Michael Whitebear and Jim Cantrell peered through field glasses at the large group of men making camp below. He and Jim were one of several teams sent out to locate and spy upon the King’s Army, while others contacted the Mormons at Provo. After more than two weeks of tracking everyone but the King’s army, Michael hoped they’d hit pay dirt this time.

Several patrols rode out as others came into the camp. The smell of cooked food drifted up, reminding Michael of how long it had been since he’d had a decent meal. His stomach rumbled. To quiet it he bit off a piece of venison jerky and washed it down with a swallow from his canteen, offering both to Jim.

Michael could tell the men below were at least fairly well-disciplined. They had set out sentries and as soon as they were done cooking the fires were put out. Also, they used dry, almost smokeless, wood for their fires and had lit them at dusk when smoke would be even harder to spot. No doubt about it, the quality of this outfit was far superior to any others he and Jim had observed in the past two weeks. Their tents were laid out with military precision. The largest was obviously the mess hall, but one other tent attracted his attention. It was sited in the middle of the camp.

Michael nudged Jim. “I bet that big tent belongs to their leader.”

“Well move over Sherlock,” Jim deadpanned. “Did you figure that out all by yourself?” He winced as he rubbed a large bump on his head.

“Look, man, I said I’m sorry I laughed.” Michael quickly faced back toward the men below so Jim couldn’t see the grin he was failing to suppress. A few hours earlier, an honest to God tiger had spooked Jim’s horse. It bolted and while he was struggling to stay in the saddle an “incredibly hard” branch decided to make the acquaintance of his head.

Whack! Pleased to meetcha.

Maybe it was the way Jim’s eyes crossed just before he fell, or the way he rolled ass over tea kettle, cursing, into a cluster of wild roses that set Michael off. His laughter added insult to injury and he’d been fielding Jim’s barbs ever since.

Suddenly, a metallic whistle split the air. “Damn!” Michael muttered. “For people who are taking such pains to hide a fire they sure don’t care how much noise they make.” Sure enough, below him all was hustle and bustle as men scurried to form ranks. A tall black man wearing the uniform and insignia of a U.S. Army Captain strode crisply from the tent Michael had been watching.

For just a moment hope flared that perhaps some remnant of the U.S. Government survived and this was some sort of military expedition to contact surviving citizens and survey damages. Well, he thought, it isn’t entirely beyond the realm of possibility. But then he was brought back to reality as a burly hulk of a man wearing a sergeant’s stripes stalked from the same tent dragging a naked woman by her hair.

He sensed Jim stiffen as he trained his field glasses on her. She hung limp and unresisting, her buttocks and feet scoring lines in the dirt. Her face, breasts and belly were covered with bruises and burns. She was bleeding from her ears, nose, mouth and from between her legs. Either she knew something they wanted to know or, even worse, they were just having fun.

The sergeant jerked her to her feet and when she started to collapse, backhanded her viciously across the face. She steadied herself and from somewhere deep within found the strength to hold herself erect. Her head came up and she looked at her tormenters with a mixture of contempt and pity. Even battered and naked the woman projected a sort of proud dignity that quieted those who had sniggered when she was first pulled from the tent. Michael didn’t know her, but he sure admired her guts. He doubted if she had ever been very pretty, but right now, facing her torturers with courage, she was glorious. Her expression faltered slightly and then she smiled with relief, almost gratitude.

Michael turned his glasses onto the sergeant. He was slowly drawing an automatic pistol from its holster.

“Do something!” Jim hissed.

“Like what exactly?” But he had already put the binoculars down and swung his rifle around, stripping the cover off of its Redfield scope as he brought it to bear on the Sergeant. At this range, a good 800 yards, he had very little chance for a hit, much less a clean kill. Maybe when he was younger, much younger, say, back during his old Marine Corps days. But not now and certainly not in fading light.

The most he could hope for was a distraction, he thought, as he centered the crosshairs on the Sergeant’s head, then lifted his sights to the very top of the man’s cap to allow for the distance, a nice distraction that would bring about a hundred men down on he and Jim and for what? She was welcoming death as an end to her misery. Maybe she’d like it better if he didn’t interfere.

He’d learned a long time ago never to fire a rifle when he was arguing with himself; he’d miss every time. He sighed bitterly and eased off the trigger. Better, perhaps, to let it happen.

As if they had shared the same thought, Jim reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I guess we wouldn’t be doing her any favors,” Jim said. His binoculars were locked on the woman, an expression of intense concentration on his face. “But it’s a damn shame. She’s grand.”

The sergeant had the pistol cocked and leveled at her head. Michael ground his teeth. She fell, but--he checked again--no silencer on the pistol and no report from the gun. “What the hell?”

From the way the sergeant was shaking Michael could tell he was laughing as he put away his gun.

It didn’t make sense, unless... “Mock execution,” he said.

“To break her will.” Jim nodded in agreement and relief. When the sergeant pulled the trigger and the hammer clicked onto an empty chamber, the letdown must have been too much for her to bear. “I think she fainted,” Jim said.

She stirred slightly as she was being dragged back into the big tent, confirming his suspicion.

What they had just witnessed told them a quite a bit about those so-called soldiers and a lot more about the woman.

“She knows something,” Michael said.

“Something important,” Jim amended.

“And she hasn’t given it up yet.”

“Agreed.” The men below would never have played out such an elaborate deception if she had already been broken. He was afraid their ruse may have worked. She had clearly been holding herself together with the last of her strength and he couldn’t imagine a woman of her obvious quality fainting except in final despair.

She had prepared to meet death with a smile on her face, secure in the knowledge that she was taking what they wanted to her grave. And if her information was that important...

Michael waged a silent battle within. His gut was screaming help her, while his mind demanded he do his duty to the Freeholds and complete his mission. Intellect versus instinct, duty versus desire to do what he felt was the right thing. He hated arguing with himself.

“We have to get her out,” Jim said.

“Okay,” Michael agreed, letting Jim make the call. The outline of a typically Michael plan was already forming. “First, we hijack a patrol...”

*

Michael moved like a ghost through the darkness, studying and circling until he had all seven of them spotted. One was watching the horses downstream from the camp. Five more were stretched out in sleeping bags. One tended a small fire and kept the coffee hot. Michael wondered where the hell they got coffee. The aroma made his mouth water and triggered memories he didn’t want to dwell on.

With hand signals, he gestured Jim into position, then left to take out the man guarding the horses.

The guy wasn’t very smart, but judging from the fact his companions had posted him solo instead of pairing him with someone, he might well be the genius of the group. Due to an unpredictable switch in wind direction, the horses knew Michael was there, but the horse-tender obviously didn’t know how to read horses. They shuffled and stamped and blew nervously. He was still trying to quiet them when a 1/2-inch diameter marble launched from Michael’s sling shot slammed into the side of his head, just behind and above the temple. He dropped so quick he bounced when he hit. Michael sprang forward, gagged and hog-tied the man, then splashed water on him to clear his head. The guy had a swastika tattooed on his forehead, a la Charles Manson.

When Michael had his attention, he loosened the gag and asked the man politely what he and his friends were doing. The man gave Michael a stony-eyed stare and tried to yell. He obviously thought he was tough.

Michael decided it was time for a game of bad cop, homicidal cop. He shoved the gag back in and sliced off the guy’s left ear, and with a cold smile and a crazed voice said, “That diamond will make this one stand out in my collection. And since you don’t hear too good anyhow you won’t miss it.”

The man, significantly less tough now, flinched away from the look in Michael’s golden eyes. Michael grabbed the guy’s hair and twisted his head up, then placed the blade of his knife against the lid of the man’s right eye saying, “Listen up, shit-head. I’m going to ask you a few questions. You’re going to answer them--quickly, quietly and truthfully. If I believe you, we’re all good. You’ll get to stay in one piece, more or less.” Michael punctuated his meaning by slapping the man’s face with the freshly removed ear.

Michael let his voice grow death-cold. “If I think you’re lying, you will lose another piece of you. And I’m not particular. If I decide I don’t like that broken nose, it goes. If I decide you’d look better as a girl,” shifting his knife for emphasis, “well, I can fix that too. Now, got any other parts you won’t miss? Or do we understand each other?”

The man’s eyes were as wide as an owl’s on a moonless night. He tried to nod his head yes, but could only shudder. Michael loosened the man’s gag.

Michael learned that the patrol was one of several companies looking for an old man who was supposed to know where something very important was hidden. One-Ear, as Michael dubbed his prisoner, didn’t know what. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if the Captain was important enough to know exactly what it was they were all looking for. Anybody else they came across was to be either killed, or “recruited” into their army. One-Ear added that his outfit was going to join up with the rest of their army and march on Provo as soon as they were done chasing around in the boonies.

“There’s too many of us to stop, man.” One-Ear said, regaining some of his bravado. “We’re gonna rule the world.”

Michael just shook his head in disgust as he shoved the gag back in. What a tired, corrupt old dream.

Michael checked One-Ear’s bonds and took off to join Jim.

*

The soldier sitting by the campfire poured a cup of coffee and prodded one of the sleeping men awake.

“Here,” he said, handing the cup of coffee to the grumbling man. “Go relieve Peters.”

The man slurped the coffee as he stumbled away from the fire in the direction of the horse herd.

Shit! Jim Cantrell knew what he was about to do would blow the timing of the attack, but he was clear on one thing. He couldn’t let anyone surprise Michael. He brought his rifle up to his cheek, centered his sights on the man and squeezed the trigger.

The sound of the shot echoed up and down the canyon, spawning a flurry of activity as sleeping men rolled from their blankets and dove into the woods.

Jim swung his rifle back to the camp but the man by the fire was gone and everyone else was moving fast. He fired too quickly and missed, then crawled toward a new position as bullets tore through the air overhead. They’ll try to flank me, he thought. And while they are, Michael will be flanking them. His lips twitched in a small smile as he realized he had them surrounded.

Fifty yards away, Michael had taken a fix on Jim’s location and was already stalking the first of the enemy soldiers. Like a spider, he waited and watched until the man was within range, then slid the bowie in and out so fast the man was dead before he knew what hit him. Michael eased the body gently to the ground then faded into the darkness, resuming the hunt.

The third man was less wary than the other two, possibly because he was tending a flesh wound. Michael eased out of the bush behind him. His right hand covered the man’s mouth and nose, while his left slipped nine inches of well-bloodied razor-sharp steel up under his victim’s ribs and into his heart. Michael felt the soldier stiffen briefly with surprise, then collapse and die as the last breath left his lungs.

He looked down with regret as he wiped the bowie clean on the dead man’s pants. A clean kill, he thought, easing the body to the ground and for a second Michael was back in the war against Viper, twelve years ago. He hadn’t liked killing then and he didn’t now. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have such a talent for it. He sighed softly then moved out. By his count there were two more out there.

Gunshots shattered the night and through the darkness Michael could see Jim struggling with one of the enemy soldiers. Too far to risk a shot; might hit the wrong one. He sped toward them with panther-like grace, leaping roots and small rocks, dodging low branches, small trees and bushes, making no more noise than a light breeze.