Patton instinctively crouched down while simultaneously pulling the large pack off of his back. He brought his rifle to the ready—something that was more a reflex action than a necessity. He didn’t want to kill anybody. In fact, much of his ammunition was non-lethal, made out of the composite material he’d invented while he was in the Army. While the bullets didn’t kill, they definitely didn’t tickle.
While lying on the hard, rocky ground, Patton steadied his breathing, trying to concentrate on the sounds around him. There was a strong gust of wind from his left, but through it, he could still hear the truck’s engine. He guessed that it was down below him to his left, although sound in this terrain often did strange things.
It was mid-afternoon now and the sun was creeping towards the west. There were still a few hours of daylight left, so Patton had to decide what he was going to do. With the possibility of a search party closing in, he couldn’t just trek across these hills as if he were alone—he had to wait these people out. If they decided to build some sort of camp, Patton would have to confront them at some point.
The daylight hours passed without incident. Luckily for Patton, he was able to find a large outcropping of rock to hide in. He wouldn’t call it a cave, but it did give him good cover and concealment and protection from the sun. He made a temporary camp under the rock and ate and drank a canteen full of water. He decided that he would set out at dusk and reconnoiter the area down below him. He needed to be sure that the Blue Creek security people, or police, or whoever they were, were gone so he could move on towards the prison.
When the sun dipped down below the horizon, Patton covered his face with camouflage paint, grabbed his rifle, a canteen, and headed out. The rocky ground was loose with weeds and dry prairie grass. The terrain made it difficult to stay quiet, so Patton moved slowly, often crawling on his hands and knees when the ground was too steep. He made it to the edge of the hill, to the point where he could look down below him. Just as he’d expected, the small search party was setting up a camp about two hundred yards below him and to his right. They’d probably picked the spot because it was as far as their truck could go.
‘Lazy,’ he thought, ‘and stupid.’ Patton had been in this situation many times, both as the hunter and as the prey. ‘The best prey is the creature that thought it was the hunter,’ Patton thought. He was outmanned, yes, but he had the training and the will to fight that these people probably did not. They were Asher’s dupes, Patton realized, and that was why he didn’t want to harm these people. One man—just one evil man—was responsible for all of the misery. If Patton could neutralize him, he knew that this little war could end.
It was fully dark now and Patton finally had a plan. He watched the men set up camp, including tents, a generator, and cots and then made his way back up to his temporary camp. He counted nine people, possibly ten, with two large pickups. Many in the party were carrying rifles, he saw, no doubt loaded with lethal ammunition. Patton would carry some regular ammo with him just in case, but both his M4 and his pistol were loaded with his non-lethal bullets. Also with him were his non-lethal concussion grenades and a special toy he’d built when things started going haywire in Blue Creek.
Things had quieted down at the camp and Patton quietly made his way towards it. The idiots had built a fire, he could see. He shook his head and grinned. It was going to be too easy. David Asher was going to regret sending these amateurs into the fray. Moving like a panther now, Patton was only fifty yards from the camp. He crouched and pulled a smaller pack off of his back and set it down at his knees. He removed two round devices, about the size of baseballs, and shoved them into his cargo pocket. He was ready.
Armed now with his rifle and two homemade grenades, Patton circled to the left, making sure to stay the same distance away from the camp. There were two tents, likely with five people asleep in each tent. Two men were on guard now, but neither of them seemed to be excited about their duty. One looked to be half asleep, the other was smoking and looked to be reading. Patton shook his head again, in disgust this time. Both in his time as a Ranger and a member of Delta, Patton and his comrades always took guard duty very seriously. In fact, it was one of the most basic, vital aspects of being a soldier.
Patton was now completely out of the view of the guard force and he began to close the distance with the tent. He fished the two grenades out and examined them in the dull glow of the fire. They were perfectly round, a dull brownish-yellow color, with a button instead of a pin and lever. When activated, the grenade would explode like any other, but with the composite material instead of metal as the casing, the blast wouldn’t be deadly. Instead, anyone within the blast radius would be knocked out and possibly receive some cuts and bruises.
And that’s the way Patton wanted it to be. He was an enemy to these people, but he didn’t consider them his enemies. The more that he could incapacitate Asher’s people without killing them, the less likely they would be to hunt him. More importantly, he didn’t want to give the government any fodder for propaganda against him.
Patton approached the first tent, depressing the button on one of the grenades while he moved. He reached the flap of the tent and tossed the grenade as close to the middle of it as he could. Before it went off, he had already depressed the button on the second grenade. After tossing the second grenade, Patton sprinted away. Before he could reach the spot he’d approached from, he heard and felt one explosion and then another. He turned back to watch the guards’ reactions to the detonations. The one closest to the tents was knocked off his feet, almost landing in the fire. The other guard brought his rifle to the ready and pointed it towards the tents. Patton raised his own rifle, sighted in the man’s back, and pulled the trigger. His target arched in pain and fell to the ground, writhing around, trying to catch his breath.
With everyone seemingly incapacitated, Patton approached the camp, rifle at the ready, prepared to shoot at anything that moved. When he was within twenty yards, a man stumbled out, holding his face in his hands, bleeding from what must have been a gash.
Patton increased his pace and yelled, “Get down! Get down now!”
The man was too stunned by the blast to follow Patton’s orders, so he just staggered out towards the fire. When Patton reached him he slammed the butt of his rifle into the man’s head, knocking him out cold. He looked up and surveyed the rest of the damage. He could hear moans and groans from inside both tents, but no one else emerged. Patton waited. When no one else exited the tents, he grimaced at the carnage, angry at what David Asher had forced him to do. Patton had won this little skirmish, taking down ten men with no fatalities. Of that last fact he was very glad, but he was sure he was going to have to deal death at some point.
By dawn, Patton had all but two of the search team flex-cuffed and in the two vehicles. He left the hands and legs of two of the search team so that they could drive the rest of the men back into town. All had been injured in some way—the man he’d shot in the back definitely had a broken rib or two. Three or four of the others had concussions, and everyone had a laceration of some sort.
Before sending the vehicles away, Patton warned the men that he wouldn’t use his toys next time they came after him—instead, he would kill them. The tougher ones scoffed at him, but he could tell his message made a few of the others nervous. He was sure that many would quit their new line of work rather than try to hunt down a man that was outmanned ten-to-one and had still beaten them.
Patton made his point by reloading his rifle with lethal bullets. He kept his rifle pointed at the vehicles until they were out of sight. Once gone, Patton made his way back to his temporary camp underneath the outcropping of rock. Every ten steps or so, Patton turned back to make sure the search party hadn’t doubled back. Satisfied that they were on their way back to town, Patton double-timed it to his camp to rest up.