“Yes sir. Sir, I know when it comes to war and tactics I don’t know anything about anything. Never been to West Point or read von Clausewitz… but I have a question. Do you trust him? Jasper.” The man in question had left the house fifteen minutes earlier.
“Trust him?” The Captain snorted. “I barely trust myself these days.” Ed nodded. “Why?”
“Because when he was in this house, standing right there, every fiber of my being was telling me to get the hell out. Get away from him.” Ed made a come-hither gesture with his hand and pointed out the nearest window of the house. “That house, right there, at the end of the block. It’s taller than its neighbors, just like this one. Great view of this house. I know we’ve got guns, and drones, but staying here… Put one person there on the second floor, and hide the rest of the squad a couple blocks away out of sight, in a basement or something. Jasper shows up, and nothing looks wrong, he’s all alone, the person in the window there can signal to him when he comes out wondering where the hell we went. Shout, flashlight, whatever. Meet him halfway between the two houses and get whatever intel he has.”
“Are you always this suspicious?” the Captain asked Ed. His expression was unreadable.
“This is the first job I’ve had where the competition actually wants to kill me,” Ed told the man. “I’ve been learning on the fly.” He gestured at the other house. “If I’m wrong, no harm no foul, other than Jasper maybe getting his feelings hurt a little bit. If I’m right…” He shrugged expansively. “I’m just saying, whether you trust him or not, he knows exactly where we are.”
The Captain stared at Ed for thirty solid seconds. “Shit, you’re right,” he said finally. “Sergeant!” he barked.
“Yes sir?”
“You remember that Godawful ugly green house we passed on the way here? Maybe half a mile back? Probably less. You think you can find it again?”
“With my eyes closed, Captain.”
“Well, the house next to it was all brick and stone and obviously abandoned. We’re heading there. On the fucking double. Ed here,” he turned to Ed and smiled grimly, “has volunteered to wait on our skittish friend.”
“Yes sir, glad to hear it sir.” He turned and began getting the rest of the men up. They started pulling down the thick sheets on the walls and stuffing them in packs. The man controlling the eyeball drones that were doing a surveillance pattern over the house hit the recall button.
The Captain turned to Ed. “You’ve got a flashlight if you need it? Good. Jasper shows up, you give him my apologies for not being here. Pressing, urgent matters elsewhere, yada yada. If it’s not just Jasper who shows up, you either go to ground or you pull back to us, whichever is safer. You remember where that green house is? Think you can find it?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Do you know the next rally point, if you can’t make it to the green house?”
Ed always made a point of studying the Captain’s map whenever it was out, and had paid attention to every Rally Point there and back. “Yes sir.”
The Captain nodded. Then he pointed at the grenade launcher slung over Ed’s shoulder. “You fire that thing off, everybody within half a mile is going to know exactly where you are. So my suggestion is don’t, unless the alternative is even worse.”
Which is how Ed came to find himself alone, deep in enemy territory, armed with weapons he wasn’t even sure he could use correctly. He was standing in a dilapidated musty-smelling lilac-painted bedroom waiting for someone to show up. Waiting for something to happen. At first he was terrified, but after an hour of waiting the terror turned to boredom.
Jasper appeared not quite three hours after he’d left, walking down the sidewalk past Ed’s position. The sun was very low in the sky, but it was reflecting off a bank of low clouds. Jasper didn’t appear as twitchy as before, but he also wasn’t moving very fast. He was heading straight for the rendezvous house, not looking around at all.
Ed fought the urge to call out to the man as he walked by below, and instead hugged the window frame in the second story bedroom where he’d been waiting rather impatiently. He watched Jasper walk down the block, away from his position and toward the house they’d sheltered in for nearly twenty-four hours. Ed had the grenade launcher in his hands but had no idea what he’d actually do with it if something happened. And what would happen? What could happen? Jasper was alone and either unarmed or toting a pistol small enough to conceal.
Doing his best not to expose himself, Ed looked out both windows in the bedroom, one facing east, one facing south. He could see where Jasper was heading, and where he’d come from. Nothing was moving in either direction.
He turned back in time to see Jasper pause briefly, then the man headed across the street and up the walk to the front door of the house where he expected to find the squad. Jasper paused again, then went inside.
Ed guessed it was less than ten seconds, long enough for Jasper to look around the house and realize that it was, in fact, now empty, before Jasper appeared at the front door. He raised his arm, Ed wondered later if he was trying to wave someone off, then there was a blinding flash and Ed found himself on the floor of the bedroom, the huge crashing boom echoing around the city.
He struggled to his knees and peered over the windowsill. The house at the end of the block, where they’d all been just a short time before, was now a smoking ruin. The roof was ruptured, and the back of the house was a spray of bricks across the lawn. The explosion hadn’t thrown him down, he was too far away for that; he’d fallen down in shock.
Thick black smoke poured out of the roof and windows, and after a few seconds he began to see the orange licks of flame. Then Ed spotted Jasper. He was facedown on the grass beside the street. The explosion had blown him thirty feet through the air, and he wasn’t moving. From the unnatural positions of his limbs, it didn’t seem likely he’d ever move again.
Ed blinked and shook his head. What the hell had happened? If something like that had occurred before the war it would be blamed on a faulty gas main, but here? Now? He squinted, and looked at the hole in the roof. Just as he started to realize a missile had struck the house, he heard the faint sound of a straining diesel engine. Several of them, coming from the south… but heading his way. Fast. Growlers. And something… bigger.
“Time to go!” he barked to himself, climbing to his feet. Whether he should hide in the basement of the house he was in or try to make it back to the rest of the squad, that was the question.
They’d never made it to the depot downtown. None of the squads had. Their plan to assault in numbers and ransack the armory was turned on its ear as the government revealed that it could, in fact, do a pretty good job of triangulating the positions even of encrypted frequency-hopping radios. The two-day running gun battle which had resulted could best be described as a fighting retreat, one where the guerrillas had suffered almost fifty percent casualties. But, by the end of it, Ed was a bloodied veteran, and had used the grenade launcher several times to save his life and the lives of others.
He realized, thinking back on the incident after all this time, that was the last big defeat for what had become the ARF Irregulars. Since that time they’d had losses, sure, but they’d consistently chewed away at the government forces, giving as good or better than they got, on average. No big losses… but no big victories, either. Then again, what would constitute a big victory in what was left of this city? He couldn’t picture it, but Uncle Charlie’s BIG FAMILY REUNION message had him strangely hopeful that things were about to change.