The Bonner Incident: Joshua's War (27 page)

“What mistakes?” Moore asked, following the men up the dirt road.

“He stays too long at an ambush site,” Schmidt said, walking beside Moore. “You hit and run.”

“He wants supplies,” Moore said.

“He doesn’t need them and at an ambush, you get away because your enemy knows you’re there,” Schmidt said. “I think Joshua does it just to make us mad.”

Moore smiled and lowered his voice, seeing the men ahead scanning the ground and woods. “Very good Schmidt,” he said.

“And that’s the other mistake Joshua has made, he’s taking this war personally. In combat, you fight, not get revenge,” Schmidt whispered.

“Well, in all fairness to Joshua, we forced him to take that mindset,” Moore said as he eased his hand up to rest on his pistol. The tension from the men ahead was starting to get contagious.

“That’s what I mean, he let us dictate his state of mind. That gives us an edge,” Schmidt mumbled, glancing around.

Behind them and listening, Winters began to really want Schmidt to be a Minuteman. Besides his insight, Schmidt was moving with confidence. “So, how do we capitalize on that?” Moore whispered back.

“Send a team out to get hit and have another close by. When Joshua hits them, wipe him out,” Schmidt said and looked at Moore. “From here on, stay quiet.” Moore nodded as Schmidt moved in front of them. 

The group walked the last mile to Joshua’s cabin with several panting when they stopped just below the steppe Joshua’s cabin sat on. “He hasn’t left. Team one will breach with team two on the front and team three on the south,” Wagner whispered and waved his hand for the men to move.

When the men moved off, Wagner moved back to Griffey. “Sir, move up to the tree line and watch your problem disappear,” Wagner grinned and moved into the woods, heading up the rise.

“I’ve waited for this,” Griffey smiled, pulling his pistol out and following Wagner.

Schmidt turned to look at Moore and Winters. “Stay close, these boys are trigger-happy big time. I would say wait here, but one of them might see you and just start shooting.”

“Sounds good,” Moore said, pulling his pistol out and gripping it with both hands. As the two walked off, Winters pulled out her pistol and followed.

“I swear, if you’re in there, I’m kicking your corpse,” Winters mumbled.

They stopped inside the trees and saw Joshua’s cabin thirty yards away. Ten men moved out of the trees in a staggered line, facing the cabin and aiming their rifles at it. Moore and Winters knelt down beside a large fir tree, keeping their pistols aimed down.

Wearing a huge grin, Moore tried to calm down as the team approached the steps. When the first man put a foot on the bottom step, Moore realized something and the grin dropped into a gaping mouth.

When the point man reached the top step, ‘BOOM’ shook the earth.

Like it’d happened in slow motion, Moore watched the first four men vanish in a mist. The next six were thrown back as projectiles flew through their bodies.  A loud thunk sounded on the tree and Moore turned to see a large bolt stuck in the trunk.

Suddenly, he heard screaming beside him as gunfire erupted from the tree line. Moore dropped down to his stomach and looked up at the cabin and saw hundreds of shells hitting it, chewing away at the wood. A ‘blump’ sounded to his left and a small explosion sounded inside the cabin.

Hearing the screaming beside him still going strong, Moore looked over to see one of Wagner’s team holding his left leg. A large hole was over his thigh squirting out blood. Schmidt moved over, pulling out a dressing and put it over the hole as Moore saw another man lying down with his face missing.

“Grenade” was shouted and Moore dropped back on his stomach.

“They didn’t learn a lesson last time!” Winters shouted on the ground beside him.

“Those guys at the door are dead!” he shouted back.

“I’m talking about us!”

Moore lifted his head and heard a larger explosion from the cabin and turned as another grenade sailed through a window on the side of the house. “Seems their aim has improved,” he said, dropping his face to the dirt as another explosion shook the ground and the roar of gunfire continued.

“How much ammo do these guys carry?” she shouted, covering her ears.

“We don’t want to know,” Moore said, hearing a crash and lifted his head up to see half of the front porch had caved in.

“Cease fire!” Wagner shouted and the gunfire stopped. “Team two on me!” he shouted and charged the house.

Lifting her head up, Winters was in awe, seeing Wagner lead the team to the house. “I can’t believe that yellow bastard is doing that,” she said.

“Why not? Nobody could live through that and all those explosions would’ve set off any more traps,” Schmidt said, tying a tourniquet on the man’s leg.

Nodding and getting to her knees, “Good point,” she said, watching Wagner kick the shattered door aside. The men poured in after him and she held her breath.

“He’s not in there,” Schmidt said, working on the wounded man. “Nobody would put that kind of charge to go off and stay inside a structure.”

“That wasn’t a claymore,” Moore said getting up.

“No, that was black powder. Several pounds of black powder that Joshua used to make a claymore,” Schmidt said. “A one-inch ball bearing is what went through this guy’s leg.”

“Yeah, there’s a huge bolt stuck in this tree,” Moore said, watching the cabin as Wagner stepped out, waving his hand. “What’s that?”

“All clear,” Winters said, getting to her feet.

Griffey took off in a sprint toward the cabin. “Where’s the body?” he shouted, jumping over the remains of the entry team.

“You have to love his concern for his fellow agents,” Schmidt said, looking up.

“Yeah, he really is a lower lifeform,” Moore said, turning to Schmidt. “You need some help with him?”

“He’s dead,” Schmidt said, getting up. “His leg was bleeding so much, I missed a hole in his pelvis.”

“You tried,” Moore said. “You think it’s safe to move up?”

“To the cabin, yes, but let me check the barn or whatever that other building is,” Schmidt said, walking away. “I’m not checking the outhouse, so if something’s there, you clear it.”

“I’ll shit in the woods,” Moore said, then headed to the cabin to see Griffey in a towering rage.

“How could he leave?” Griffey screamed and spun on Wagner. “He can’t be far, have your men search around the cabin!”

As Wagner yelled out orders, Moore stopped at the steps and saw a metal hook screwed into the post beside the steps. “That’s why Joshua didn’t use the steps,” he said, and Griffey spun on him.

“What?”

“Remember in the video, Joshua jumped up on the ends of the porch. He never used the steps,” Moore said, looking at the destroyed stack of firewood beside the door. A large metal rectangle was embedded in the logs of the front wall.

Schmidt came up behind him. “That was Joshua’s claymore,” he said, jumping on the porch. He looked through the debris and reached down lifting up a piece of wire. “Man, this fucker is good. This is a twelve-volt light bulb and there are pieces of a battery up here. That’s how Joshua rigged the gunpowder to go off.”

Griffey spun around and got in Schmidt’s face. “Get your ass out there and find him, he can’t be far!”

“Gladly, but don’t you want someone close, in case Joshua starts taking shots from a long way off? I think I would want someone with a long rifle close,” Schmidt said, laying the wire down gently.

Griffey’s eyes got wide as he ducked down, looking around in terror. “Stay here,” he said in a low voice then eased inside the destroyed cabin.

“Moore, his calling card is in the barn, along with a new set of cards,” Schmidt said.

Nodding, Moore walked over to the barn with Winters following. They walked in and saw the scrench stuck in a wooden table with playing cards beside it. “Royal flush,” Moore said, looking at the cards.

“I wish we could get the rules to the game Joshua’s playing,” Winters said, looking around the small barn.

Moore walked out, “He expects us to be smart enough to figure it out,” he said.

Seeing Moore walk out, Winters smiled. ‘I don’t know why this chapter didn’t bring in Joshua but man, they missed a warrior’ she thought and followed Moore.

She ran to catch up as Schmidt walked out of the cabin. “There is a hole cut in the floor under the bed. He dropped into the crawl space,” Schmidt said, motioning them to follow. He walked off the porch and pointed at the back corner. “There is a small ditch there running to the trees. My guess, he dug it for drainage because this area is flat. He crawled into the ditch and then into the woods with none the wiser.”

“This man is getting on my nerves,” Moore said, spinning around and walking off.

Schmidt looked at Winters, “That is a mistake,” he said, then turned around. “You can’t take it personally.”

“Shit, who would’ve suspected a logger to turn out to be a ninja Rambo?” she said, following him as they both caught up with Moore. “We leaving?”

“Yes, I knew this was a trap and didn’t listen to my gut,” Moore said. “I gave up to false hope.”

***

Over a mile away, Joshua gave King a soft kick, steering him along the ridge. He had stopped, hearing the explosion and the torrent of gunfire. “Damn, I liked that cabin,” he said pulling out his map. “Well, let’s see if one of those search teams to the west will take the trail I’ve been waiting for.”

Putting the map up, Joshua felt good, but didn’t enjoy killing these men and women coming after him. He knew not all wanted to kill him, but they were looking for him and would hand him over to ones that would so in his mind, that justified any of the deaths. It was only because of the thermal scope that he’d seen that metal box strapped to a tree in front of the cabin. The box had been just a little warmer than the tree.

He had crept around and eased up beside it and saw it had a tiny window, and figured it was like those new game cameras that you could watch live from home. It was just very small.

Hunting around the cabin, he’d found another one on a tree in the back and figured there were more. He’d stopped searching for them and concentrated to see if any could spot him crawling out of the cabin in his drainage ditch. Just to be sure, Joshua had taken his thermal sniper blanket with him.

After entering the house, he’d dropped through the floor and crawled out through the ditch. Joshua had been half a mile away by the time Griffey had been notified.  “Have to say, reading all those books on spies, wars and frontier life has really paid off,” he said, adjusting his M4 across his body. “Can’t learn stuff like that from TV,” he grinned.

Moving carefully, Joshua headed for the trail he was hoping for one of the search teams to take. The trail was used by many around here to ride ATVs in the backcountry and he had ridden it many times with family and friends.

Reaching the trail, Joshua left King and Jack and moved over the ridge as the sun started to set. He could already see and smell the smoke from a fire, but pulled out his thermal scope. Ten bodies were around the small campfire and Joshua sighed. “Sorry for this, guys,” he said, and put the binoculars up.

He moved back and got on King, riding beside the trail to where the trail got steep going over the ridge. On one of his passes through he had stopped here, looking at a massive fallen tree that had been cut decades ago. Only a twelve-foot section remained, but that section was six feet around.

The rocky slope it rested on was nearly vertical and the only reason the tree hadn’t rolled down was a small pile of head sized rocks at its center. Joshua had seen this on his trips up over the years and had wanted to let the tree roll down the hill because it looked unstable, but he knew unless he got permission, he could get in trouble for ‘altering the landscape’. So he’d left it, hoping that one day the log wouldn’t roll down the hill, hitting the section of the ATV trail when someone was riding by. Now, he was going to help gravity assist the log in its journey that the log had started long ago.

Leading King and Jack to a small stream, Joshua left them, carrying a shovel and spools of quarter-inch steel cable. Staying off the trail, Joshua walked along the ridge to the rocky cliff where the log rested on. He looked down and saw the ATV trail running past the rocky area, then back into the trees where it ran up and over the ridge.

“About a hundred to a hundred and twenty yards to the bottom,” he mumbled, setting his stuff down. Taking a shovel and one spool of cable over his shoulder, Joshua eased out onto the rocky slope. The slope was so steep that Joshua was standing but leaning into the slope, using his hands and feet to ‘walk’ sideways along the slope.

“If this works, I won’t be here to see it,” he mumbled.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives Agent Aston Rustin held his M4 close to his chest as his team moved down the trail and a light rain fell. He pulled his Gortex jacket closed and glanced at his watch to see it wasn’t even eight a.m. “I’m done with this shit,” he mumbled, looking around at the chest high ferns between the evergreen trees.