“Where the hell are they going?” Trest asked. “To watch a launch?”
“There’s nothing going up today, sir.” Baldo replied.
“What color are your flanges?” Sheridan asked Yarbo as they drove down a paved road with arid sagebrush scrub on one side and a dried river bed on the other.
“Red. Yours?”
“Blue. And just to make sure the terms are clear: I win and you take all the Yemen footage.” Yarbo nods, apprehensive. “And if I win?”
“Why worry about it?” Hal laughed. “That ain’t happening!”
“Wha—” Hal cut off Yarbo’s reply by gunning it hard left, off the road into sun-baked dirt and mounds of weed and sagebrush. Hal chuckled, watching Yarbo bounce around on the passenger seat like popcorn in a popper. Hal spotted a dirt road and edged his wheels up on it. Their ride smoothed out to a vibrating rattle. Calm enough for Yarbo to peer through the desert brush with Air Force issue binoculars.
“Now where they going?” Trest asked. He spotted the Force Recon Humvee only a couple hundred yards back. “The Marines are getting close. Tell them to ease up.”
“Roger that.” McCreary replied, forwarding the order to the Force Recon.
Yarbo aimed his binoculars to the left and spotted something on the horizon. “Bogey at ten o’clock. He sees us. He’s running.” Hal cranked the wheel and went off road, bounding through the desert, dodging mounds of sagebrush.
A small heat signature appeared ahead of Hal’s truck on the IR monitor. “What are they chasing?” McCreary asked, “It’s too small to be a deer.”
“Looks like a wild hog, sir,” Baldo answered.
“A what??”
“You haven’t heard? New Mexico is being overrun by feral hogs. They’re all over the desert. Good eatin’ too!”
The brush thickened in Hal and Yarbo’s path. Screeching along the outside of his truck. Giving both sides a fresh layer of New Mexico pinstripes. Hal took the truck as far as he could, pulling to a stop. “Keep an eye on it. I’ll get the gear.”
Both men jumped out. Hal scrambled through the equipment in the back while Yarbo spied the wild hog through the binoculars. Shielding himself behind tall sagebrush.
Hal handed Yarbo his compound bow-and-arrow.
“You’re not going to shoot me, are you?” Yarbo asked. Hal didn’t get the joke. “You know, hallucinate that I’m one of these javelinas!” Pronouncing the J hard.
“Javelina?” Hal pronounced it correctly. “That’s not a javelina. You don’t want to eat one of those. Where’d he go?” Hal asked. Prepping his bow and arrow, heading into the desert.
“He’s just down in that river bed. Eating something. So, are you still hallucinating?”
“I was never hallucinating.”
“What about those dreams you were having. The visions. They gone?”
“They’re gone. I guess the right drugs can cure anything.”
“Good! I didn’t want you to confuse me for one of these desert pigs!”
“You’re in the clear— We’re not hunting cocky assholes today!” Hal nudged him with an elbow. Letting him know he was busting his balls. “I’m gonna’ go up the river bed. I’ll give you the first shot. If you miss, it’ll flush him toward me.”
“Wait! Hold up!” Yarbo said. Hal paused. “You forgot your walker in the truck!”
Hal chuckled. “Douche,” he said, pronouncing it like touché, then continued along the dry river.
“What should I tell recon?” McCreary asked.
“Tell them to move ahead, set up a lookout.” Trest said. “It seems like a harmless hunt, but who hunts on base property?”
“Roger that.”
Hal reached a small hill and stealthily ascended to the ridge. He spied through binoculars down at the dry valley carved by a prehistoric river. The bulbous gray hog with thick, matted fur grazed peacefully, seventy-five yards below. Hal drew back his bow string, lining up for a shot. He rationed that Yarbo had plenty of time to shoot, and he must have fired and missed. Just then Hal heard the whiz of an arrow streaking through the air into sagebrush beside the wild hog — a wild miss that only startled the plump beast. It took off. Yarbo appeared behind, chasing and yelling, “Here piggy, piggy, piggy!” Hal collected Yarbo’s misfire and loaded his bow on the run. Hal darted to the next hill, aiming to cut the hog off.
The Force Recon duo were on a hilltop, concealed in dense desert-scrub ghillie suits. As Marine Force Reconnaissance SF operators, their primary mission was intelligence gathering. This pair of Force Recon specialists consisted of a sniper and a spotter. The spotter peered through his M151 spotting scope — a compact telescope on a small tripod. “I’ve got a pig. Don’t know if it’s the one they’re after.”
“It is,” His sniper partner answered. “I got a man on foot at three o’clock. Carrying a bow.”
Hal reached the top of the hill and scanned below with his binoculars. No sign of the hog or Yarbo. He panned to his left and paused — catching the glint of a shiny reflection. He focused his binoculars — revealing a bright glare on the spotter’s M151. Then making out the spotter and sniper in ghillie camos. Hal lowered his binoculars, ducked low in the scrub and headed up the hill to flank them.
“We’ve got a man on foot in the valley,” the spotter said over the radio to McCreary. “He’s armed with a bow and arrow, but no sign of the other one.”
A radio-static reply sounded… “What’s your position?”
“We’re on the side of a hill, a hundred yards north of the Humvee.”
Trest and the others watched with intrigue from the command center. The IR monitor showed three human heat signatures in a cluster north of the Humvee.
“How copy the number in your unit?”
“Two, sir,” the spotter replied.
“We’ve got a heat signature of a third party right—” A boot came down on the barrel of the sniper’s MK11, pinning it to the ground. The spotter and sniper both looked up in dismay as Hal stood on the rifle, aiming his bow in full draw at the spotter.
“Toss your weapons,” Hal ordered.
“Hey, take it easy—” the spotter replied.
“—Now!” Hal commanded. The spotter tossed his M4 machine gun in the dirt.
“And your sidearms.” The spotter and sniper both complied, throwing their 9mm sidearms on the ground.
“Name and rank?” Hal asked. More of a demand, really.
“Sergeant Ronald Hughes,” the sniper said. “First Recon.”
Hal looked to the spotter. “Lance Corporal Sean Merrick.”
“What are two Marines doing in the middle of the desert on an Air Force base?” Hal asked. Before Merrick could speak, his sergeant did.
“That’s classified, sir. I can only direct you to my commanding officer.”
“Who is?”
“That’s also classified, sir.”
“What are they doing?” Trest asked, watching the three men in infrared. “Put it on the main screen and zoom in. I want to know what the hell is going on.”
“Yes, sir.” Baldo zoomed into the image, which clearly revealed Sheridan from above. Aiming his bow on the Marines.
“What the—”
“—How did he do that?” Baldo asked.
“Can we hear them?”
“No.” Baldo said. “Unless they open the channel on their radio.”