“Yeah, I think so,” replied another near the tail of the column, peering down at a GPS screen. It was bright enough it might as well have been a searchlight. Amateurs.
The first of them came into view, a ghostly apparition in the dark. Then another, and another, until there were six walking up the trail.
Each male, each relatively young.
Each carrying an AK.
On his left, a faint click. Elijah would initiate with a burst. Using his thumb, Turnbull flipped the selector on his carbine from safe to automatic, and placed the third in line in the center of his sight.
Slow your breathing.
Relax.
Then Elijah fired a stream of bullets, the roar of the M4 slicing through the ear protection. Turnbull reacted as if on auto-pilot; he squeezed the trigger and the flash swallowed up his target. All along the line, the troopers were unloading into the kill zone. The night was ablaze with muzzle flashes.
The rate of fire dropped off, and the glare subsided as the targets came back into view. There were fewer standing, maybe two or three. Then one jolted to the side once, and again, as the heavy thud of the M14 rounds from the trailhead echoed over the desert. Turnbull pivoted to another target; he was vaguely aware of Junior firing to his right. The raider in his sight had his AK up; there was a flash from the AK’s muzzle. The crack in the air above his head told Turnbull his target was panic firing high.
Sight picture.
Center mass.
Exhale.
Squeeze and hold and release.
The target stumbled back under the impact of three bullets to his sternum, dropping his rifle and falling flat back against the hill.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” It was Elijah yelling. Turnbull swung his weapon from black lump to black lump, gauging them for movement. None.
“Let’s go!” Elijah was rising to his feet and Turnbull followed, as did the other troopers not engaged in securing an end. They moved forward quickly, but carefully, weapons up at their shoulders and on the potential targets. At Benning, they called this “assaulting the kill zone.”
Five of the raiders were clearly dead. Another lay groaning, gut shot and a forearm hanging by a thread.
“You need him?” asked Turnbull. A prisoner might have some good info. But then there were other considerations, like the logistics of carrying him and the fact he was ambushed in his own country.
“No,” said Elijah. Turnbull nodded and shot him twice in the head. The sound echoed over the desert.
“Jesus,” said Junior. In the Army, they took prisoners.
“Them or us,” said Turnbull. “Reload.”
A search of the bodies came up with some interesting information. The dead men were all young and lean, and all appeared to Turnbull, though not an expert, to have gang tattoos. They all carried nearly identical rifles. The similar serial numbers indicated the weapons all came from the same lot, meaning it was likely someone armed these guys all at once. And the only entity in the People’s Republic moving that many weapons was the People’s Republic itself. The conclusion that they had been sent here was reinforced by the fact each had a valid travel pass from Sacramento to this zone.
“It looks like they’re shipping scumbags out here to mess with you guys, Elijah.”
“We’ve started to see this a lot,” Elijah replied. “The local PSF and military know not to mess with us. You know, until the Split we never even noticed the Utah-Nevada border. All the locals, the ranchers–they’re all relatives and they’re all LDS. You mess with one and you mess with all of us on both sides of the line. So anyone from here or even stationed here for a while knows not to poke our little beehive.”
Turnbull smiled. Early on, the PR’s officials had tried to pick on the local ranchers on their side of the divide the way they had other industrious, religious folks elsewhere. Believers, particularly ones who lived traditional lives, were a perpetual scapegoat for blue state failures all over the PR. But those officials kept ending up dead out here, often with a .30-06 bullet through the forehead. Guys like Elijah saw the Old Testament as an instruction manual, and “an eye for an eye” wasn’t just a cliché in the desert. Eventually, the local poohbahs figured out that messing with the Mormons was a helluva a lot less fun than messing with other, less feisty Christians. So to live, they let live. And they left the dying to the clowns the government shipped out of the inner cities to make trouble.
Each of Elijah’s men took an AK – you didn’t leave perfectly good rifles lying around – and they moved out to the west. After another fifteen minutes of marching, they observed three quick light flashes from a dry wash up ahead. With a nod, Elijah sent two of his boys to make the link up. After another five minutes, one returned to guide them all up to the wash. There were three men in civilian clothes waiting, one a ringer for Elijah minus the beard: clearly Elijah’s cousin, Matt Hansen, and a couple of his boys. While Elijah and Matt talked – Turnbull caught a few fragments about the ambush earlier that night – Turnbull and Junior packed up their M4s and changed into the civilian clothes they had brought. One of Elijah’s sons would pack out their fatigues.
“Kelly, Matt here is going to take you as far as a truck stop on the old 15. You can catch a ride into Vegas from there.”
“Thanks, Elijah. I owe you.”
“Yeah, again. You boys be safe. Come visit sometime when you don’t need to cross.”
Turnbull shook hands with the big man. It would be a while before they might see each other again – Turnbull never came back out the way he came in.
Matt was not much of a talker, nor were his boys. Together, they waited in the wash until the last of Elijah’s squad disappeared back toward the east – they took a different route home than the one they had come west on. Matt gave it a few more minutes, then stood up and motioned Turnbull and Junior to follow. By now there was a chill in the air and the moon was low. It took a great deal of effort to keep their footing, and a turned ankle out here could be a disaster. They walked for about an hour, covering only two miles, until they came to a battered Ford pick-up truck parked in a wash off a dirt road running north-south. The travelers hopped in the back with their gear and one of the Hansen boys, who was about as chatty as his father. Bundling up in his threadbare leather jacket, Turnbull tried to keep warm as they headed south.
It was another hour or so before they came to a bluff overlooking the long ribbon of freeway that was I-15. To the northeast, about 20 miles up, it ran into the DMZ and the border at Arizona. The town of Mesquite, on the Nevada side, had been a prosperous vacation spot before the Split. There were resorts and golf courses kept green by piped in water. Those were gone, the grass a memory and the hotels deserted except for squatters, addicts, and “voluntary labor” draft dodgers. Other than them and some PR security forces, it was pretty much abandoned now; Turnbull had passed through there once on his way out and ended up in running into a couple of overly inquisitive PR military at a checkpoint. Their commander probably listed them as deserters since one night they just seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Junior got out of the pick-up first and Turnbull handed him their packs and hopped out on the ground beside him. One vehicle, some kind of truck, was heading west. Other than that, nothing was moving down there.
Hansen stepped around to them and pointed out to the southwest, finally speaking.
“Over that rise is a truck stop. Probably five miles. You can buy a ride into Las Vegas from there. They may or may not have fuel. Usually don’t, but the drivers will stop to eat at the diner anyway, so you might not have to wait that long.”