Dark Coup (13 page)

Amanda nodded and looked around.

Kyle keyed his microphone twice and a minute later Eric materialized out of the dark.

“Ma’am,” Eric said.  “My name is Eric Tripp.  Technically, I’m a Captain in the US Army and this guy’s superior Officer, but right now we’re kind of AWOL–that’s Absent Without Leave–so we’ll see how long either of us keeps our rank.”

Amanda really hadn’t had any experience with the military before the power went out, so she just nodded again.

“How bad is it getting,” Eric asked.  “Or, maybe I should just cut to the chase.  What’s the likelihood of someone else stepping in to fill a leadership void if Clint were…no longer in charge?”

Amanda thought for a few seconds before she answered.  “It would have to be more than Clint,” she said.  “Cooper and Tony would both have to go, too.

She made a face and then continued.  “You know, six or eight months ago I would have said the same thing about Earl too,” she said, “but not anymore.  Earl’s…changed.  He isn’t the creepy, aggressive guy he used to be.  Clint still tries to lean on him a lot but he just isn’t like he used to be.”

Eric looked at Kyle and nodded.

“In that case,” Kyle said, “here’s what we were thinking…”

…

“Who’s got first watch,” Kyle asked the next night, knowing they were going to need all the sleep they could get for the next several nights.

“You sleep,” Eric said.  “I don’t seem to need as much as I used to anyway.”

Kyle nodded and chose not to get into it with Eric.  Now that they were out of the base and on their own, Eric had picked up the grieving and he just needed to let it run its course.

…

Two days later, Amanda finally had a chance to bring things to Clint’s attention.

Clint had been trying to spend more time with Amanda recently, although he was all but ignoring William.  He’d made dinner for the two of them and they were eating in the kitchen of his trailer.  Clint was running the small generator that powered the air conditioner, so they were eating inside for once.

She was struck, again, by the double standard he lived by.  He ran the generator whenever he thought it necessary, like now.  He had someone come in and clean the trailer once a week, but would have thrown a fit if anyone else took someone from their job to perform such menial labor.  As much as she hated to admit it, he ate better than everyone else, too.

Once dinner was over she figured it was her best shot at telling Clint their story without him reacting…badly.

 “Uhm,” she started.

“Uhm what,” Clint said.

“I did something I really wasn’t supposed to do,” Amanda said.  “But I think it’s a good thing that I did.”

Clint gave her a sidelong glance.

Amanda blushed and looked down for a second and then looked back at Clint.  “I thought I saw something,” she said, “or someone, in the tall grass outside of the field I work in a couple of days ago.  After lights-out I went back to the field and found where someone had been laying in the grass.  I followed their trail back to their campsite.”

Amanda looked away again.  “I know,” she said.  “I’m not supposed to leave our camp, but it kind of had me freaked out.”

She looked back at Clint who did
not
look happy.  “Nobody saw me,” she said quickly.  “I doubled back on my own trail on the way back to make sure I wasn’t followed, too.”

Clint shook his head.  “And this is the first I’m hearing about it?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I knew you needed to know but I was afraid you’d be really upset.”

Clint took a deep breath.  As upset as he was, and it seemed like he was always angry these days, it wasn’t really at Amanda.  “You should have told me as soon as you thought you saw someone outside of your field,” he said.  “I can understand not mentioning it to Tony, but you should have told me right away.”

He reached out and grabbed her chin to make sure she was looking at him.  “And don’t do anything like that again,” he said.  “Ever.”

Amanda realized that if things didn’t go exactly as planned, she might never see Kyle again.

…

 “I could find it again,” Amanda said, “but I don’t think I could pinpoint it on a map.”

“Going out and looking for them without knowing where they are is just asking for trouble,” Coop said.

“Going out and looking for them is what we do if we don’t know where they are, Coop,”
Clint thought. 
“You have had it too easy with me for too long.”

“From the looks of the campsite,” Amanda said, “there were only two people.  If you, Coop, and Tony go, and you take me, that’d make it two to one.  Plus, we’d have the element of surprise.”

“Why do
you
want to go so bad,” Tony asked.

“Because they were watching my field,” Amanda said with a little heat in her voice.  “I want to be there when they get…whatever!”

Clint nodded.  “I can see that,” he said.  “We, the three of us, haven’t been on a raid in a while.  It’ll look good if we throw something together and execute it on our own.”

“Bad juju, Boss,” Coop said, “but it’s your call.”

“Yes, it is.”

…

“When are they going to show up,”
Kyle thought to himself.  It had only been three days, but now that they had a plan it was driving him nuts that it wasn’t moving forward.

He couldn’t sleep and had his radio next to his head, volume down low when “–. –-” came through in Morse code.

“Go.  Finally,”
Kyle thought and relaxed for the first time since he’d sent Amanda back, hopefully for the last time.

Sure, if something went wrong some time in the next half hour or so he, Eric, or Amanda could end up dead, but at least things were moving at last.

Kyle stopped breathing.

Amanda could end up dead.

That was the first time the thought that something horrible could happen to her as a result of their plan had crossed his mind.  Up until now he had only been worrying about himself and Eric–not because he was self-centered, but because he really didn’t think anything would happen to Amanda.  The story they had concocted seemed pretty airtight, and he was confident in both his and Eric’s abilities.

For Kyle, the next fifteen minutes made the last four days seem to fly by.

…

“We’re getting close,” Amanda said quietly, but not in a whisper.  After the failed raid on the base, Clint had taught his people just how far a whisper carried and how to communicate in a low voice.

His people had gotten better at moving quietly in the woods, too.  On this trip, Cooper was by far the best, since he’d been hunting all of his life, and Tony was a close second.  They’d both honed some skills while on the police force before the power went out.

After a couple of minutes she saw the orange glow of the banked coals and held up her hand.

None of the would-be raiders saw or heard anything less than fifteen feet to their right, in the woods.

…

Kyle’s radio was in his bag with the volume turned off.  When the single “.” came through, it lit up a red light that only he could see, and only because he knew to look for it.  His bag was unzipped and he’d practiced getting out of it at least a hundred times just in the last couple of days.  He took the safety off of his .45, which was already cocked with one in the chamber, and got ready to…surprise…the raiders.

…

Eric was inching closer to the group and would come into the clearing behind them.  Kyle was notified, and Eric was both relieved and worried to see Amanda in the group.  Theoretically, it evened the odds; potentially, it put Kyle’s head in a bad place and gave Clint a hostage.  Eric was ready to kill all three of the men himself if necessary, though.  Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but he and Kyle had decided that the threat to the base, Redemption, and the surrounding area came to an end tonight.

…

Kyle was trying to keep his heart-rate down and his breathing even, but it was a constant battle.  It had been a while since he’d seen combat and the adrenaline was starting to flow.  He could hear the frogs croaking in a pond that had to be at least a quarter-of-a-mile away, the ever-present crickets, and a couple of birds that didn’t realize it was after midnight.  Then, like someone had thrown a switch, the woods were silent.  Kyle heard the footfalls of the people in his campsite and he had to remind himself that it was all part of the plan.  He knew where Eric would be coming in from and was just waiting for his cue.

…

Eric could see the entire clearing and the raiding party was just beginning to spread out when he stepped into the clearing.

…

The couple of people in this camp looked to both be in their sleeping bags and asleep.  The fire was going out and, if nothing else, they could simply grab a rifle and their backpacks.  Clint was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when several things happened almost simultaneously.

First, someone turned on a flashlight too early and Clint’s night vision was completely ruined.  That registered, and Clint was about to hiss something when the second thing happened.

A voice from behind them, vaguely familiar, said “Nobody move.”

As soon as the voice behind him started talking–shouting, actually–one of the people on the ground jumped out of their sleeping bag and Clint’s heart stopped.  He was wearing Army fatigues.  Then Clint was blinded almost completely as a second flashlight was shined in his eyes and then swept over the others in the group.

Eric came up behind one of the men; it turned out to be Tony.  “Give me your weapon,” he said.

Tony tightened his grip on his handgun.

“Don’t be stupid,” Clint said with false bravado.  “There’s only two of you and four of us.”

Clint felt something cold at the base of his skull and Amanda said, “Actually, there are three of us.”

Clint closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.  “You cheating bi…” he started.

“Don’t finish that thought,” Kyle said as he swung the flashlight back to Clint while keeping his .45 trained on the other man.

“Give me your weapon,” Eric said again.

“You’ll just kill me if I do,” Tony said.

“No,” Eric said, “that’s not how we work.  You
will
end up giving me your weapon, though.”

“No,” Tony said, “I won’t.”

At ‘No’, Eric reached down and pinched Tony’s wrist with two fingers on the underside, where the blood vessels are, and his thumb on the top of the wrist. 
Hard.

Tony swore as he dropped the gun to the ground and lost control of his hand.

“The next time I tell you to do something,” Eric said calmly, “do it.”

Cooper was the only one who didn’t have someone within arm’s reach, covering him.  He had just decided to make a break for the tree line when Tony’s gun hit the ground.  Coop started to raise his own gun and lunged towards the tree line himself, when he realized he’d made a serious tactical error.  While the flashlight was pointed at Clint, the other Army guy still had his pistol pointed directly at him.

Instead of making a mad dash for the trees, Coop ended up dropping to the ground, and almost as an afterthought, dropped his own gun.  He wasn’t a coward, but he was smart enough to know how this was going to end and he didn’t want to die.

Dropping to the ground saved his life because Kyle was a little slow on the trigger.  The first bullet went about where his chest would have been, and the second where his back was heading.  Eric only fired one shot, also where Coop’s torso would have been.

“OKAY,
OKAY
,” Cooper yelled, his face planted firmly in the dirt and pine needles.  “I’m down, and I swear I’m not going
anywhere
now.”

“That just leaves you,” Kyle said to Clint.

Clint took his finger off the trigger and fanned his fingers while he ejected the magazine.  Then slowly, as he was now being covered by three people, ejected the round in the chamber and locked the slide back.  Finally, he grabbed the gun by the barrel and held it out to Kyle, grip first.

“While I appreciate the gesture,” Kyle said, “go ahead and just drop it.  Amanda, you can back up now too.”

Clint gritted his teeth and almost bent down to set the weapon on the ground, but instead simply let go of the barrel.

Clint turned his head slightly, just enough to be able to see Amanda.  “This is the thanks I get,” he snarled.

Amanda lifted her chin.  “It’s better than you deserve.”

Chapter Fourteen

All three prisoners had their hands tied securely behind their backs, with an additional length of rope leading to a slip knot around their neck.  None of them could be trusted as far as either Eric or Kyle was concerned, so they were gagged as well.

“Last stop before we get to your camp,” Kyle said.  “We’re going to take off the gags and give you some water.  Yelling would be…a bad idea.”

Kyle took off Cooper’s gag, gave him some water, and put the gag back on.  Coop had been very subdued, ever since he’d almost bought-it last night.

Eric took off Tony’s gag and was about to give him some water when Tony spit in his face.

Kyle stepped in and cold-cocked Tony, breaking his nose–and possibly some teeth.  As Tony created a diversion, Clint turned to make a break for it and, instead, received the butt of Eric’s rifle in the kidney.  Coop just stood there and shook his head in disgust.  It all happened so fast, Amanda hadn’t quite had a chance to react.

Kyle stooped down to put Tony’s gag back in and said, “Sorry, you won’t be getting any water there, pal.  Next time, think before you act.”

After Eric helped Clint back up, he held up his canteen and got a curt nod from a wincing Clint.  He took out the gag and gave him some water.

“What are you going to do with us,” Clint asked for the thousandth time since the raid had gone bad.

“Only what you deserve,” Kyle answered, yet again.

…

As they approached the camp, they eventually caught the attention of one of the guards.

“Halt!” he said.  “Who goes there?”

“Who actually says that,”
Kyle thought, and almost laughed out loud.