Tales of the Forgotten (7 page)

9.

He
was startled awake by the sound of Brooks closing the cage door. “All clear,”
he said. “There are a couple of them in that Zen state about a hundred meters
out, but we should be able to drop them with no problem,” Brooks finished.

“Okay
fellas, I recommend you drain your bladders and take in as much water as you
can hold. Let’s be ready to move out in ten minutes,” Sean told the team.
“We’re going to make as direct a path as possible toward the gates. If you see
personnel on the ground, we’ll stop for quick ammo collection but that’s it.”

“There
are sealed cans of ammo in the guard shack, near the gate,” Brad said.

Sean
gave him a puzzled look.

“Sorry,
I forgot about that earlier,” Brad explained. “But I know where it’s at and I
can grab it on the way out,” he added.

Sean
nodded and they lifted their heavy bags of goods to their backs. When they were
all stacked on the door, Brooks unbolted and slowly opened it.

Just
as he’d said, the outside was clear of primals. Silently, Brooks moved in a
crouched run to the nearest barrier, his footfalls barely making a noise. He
lifted his hand to point out the two meditating primals at the end of the
street. Calling his men to a halt, they all took a knee while Brooks and Sean,
in perfect timing, took synchronized shots that dropped the two. They listened
intently to make sure they hadn’t alerted any of the sleeping lions before they
got back to their feet and moved toward the gate.

They
moved quickly and silently without stopping until they arrived just short of
the exit. Brooks again put his fist in the air, calling the group to a halt. He
pointed at Brad and called him to his position up front. “Where’s this guard
shack?” Brooks asked.

“Right
there, next to the wall,” Brad pointed to a spot less than a hundred meters
away. Alone and against the ‘T’ wall sat a plywood structure with Plexiglas
windows. Sandbags covered the walls halfway up, and they were also stacked
along the roof. From a distance, the structure appeared empty.

“Okay,
go clean it out, the shack looks empty from here,” Sean whispered, looking through
his scope at the guard shack.

As
Brad started to move towards the shack, he looked behind him and saw that Hasan
was following. He nodded his approval to the man. Brad stopped just short of
the shack and then signaled to Hasan that he was going to open the door and
peek inside. Brad walked the last few feet to the door and slowly turned the
handle and pushed on the door. When it was opened just a crack he looked
inside. He saw a decomposing uniformed soldier crumpled on the floor, his
corpse blocking the door. Brad slowly put his weight against the door, pushing
and sliding the man’s body out of the way. When he was able to finally enter
the shack, he felt a deepening sense of grief as he looked down at the dead
soldier. Even though he didn’t recognize the man, the body represented everyone
he had lost. He quickly shoved the feelings aside and sucked it up.

He
pushed the door the rest of the way and stepped over the soldier. He found the
ammo cans in an unlocked locker, right where he remembered them to be stored
from his time on guard duty. Brad lifted all four cans of rifle ammo from the
trunk, then another two cans of the pistol ammo. Hasan stepped forward and tied
a rope through the handles of three of the cans and lifted them to his back.
Brad did the same with the last three cans and they moved back towards the
team.

They
linked back up with Brooks and Sean and followed them out through the gate and
onto the road. As they put some distance on the gate, Brad felt his levels of
anxiety begin to fade. Brooks guided them rapidly down the road and to the
large formation of rocks where they had hidden the vehicle. Brad was relieved
when he rounded the corner and saw it sitting there just as they had left it.
He had been nervous that the primals might have torn it apart or some other
survivors may have driven off with it during the night. Wasting no time, they
stowed their duffel bags of gear and the thousands of rifle and pistol rounds
salvaged from the guard shack. After a last, careful look all the way around,
they boarded the Defender and Brooks started the engine. He backed them up and
pulled the vehicle onto the road, speeding away from Forward Operating Base
Bremmel, the camp that now housed an army of primals. Brad glanced back one
last time at his old home, knowing that he’d never see it again.

The
vehicle bounced on the rough road. Brooks kept his speed slow enough so that he
could safely navigate the potholes and abandoned vehicles that occasionally
blocked his path. They drove silently until they were back at the intersection
to the Hairatan road. Brooks stopped the vehicle in the middle of the street
and looked at Sean.

“Well
gentlemen, we seem to be at a cross road. Do we continue or head back?” Sean
asked.

“We
go forward,” Hasan answered sharply.

“Bro,
if we go back, I don’t think I will ever leave that compound again. Let’s just
keep moving until this is over with,” Brad said.

“I
go where you go,” Brooks said, looking at Sean.

“Well,
start it up and let’s get moving,” Sean said as he fastened his seat belt.

They
drove forward and passed the Hairatan road. After a while they passed a sign
that indicated “
Kholm 40km”.
Sean pointed to the sign. “What do you know
of this place, Hasan?” he asked as they passed by.

 “Kholm?
The town is Tajik, they are farm people, and they keep to themselves,” Hasan
said. “They have a good market, but there is little else in the city. I suggest
we skip the city and go to Aybak instead. If you will stay on this road, and
continue out of the city, it will only be another couple of hours. I know a
place we may be able to seek shelter. There is a safe house that is known to me
outside the village on the main road,” he finished.

“Very
good. Brooks, you heard the man, follow the road,” Sean said with a smile.

As
the vehicle sped along, Sean reached into his pack and pulled out the satellite
phone. Then he pulled out the box the new phone had come in. Digging through
the box, he found what he was looking for, grabbing a long twisted cord and a
charger for the phone. He plugged one end into the phone, the other into the
vehicle, and heard a beep as a green light indicated the battery was charging.
“And now as long as we have this ride we can charge our phone,” Sean laughed.

The
vehicle continued on and entered the city of Kholm. They stuck to the main
road, being careful to go around abandoned vehicles. To the sides, they could
see the same signs of struggle and violence they had witnessed in Hairatan.
Many of the storefronts were burned out; there were corpses on the sidewalks.
The city was eerily quiet and they had yet to spot a primal in the city limits.

Brooks
drove slowly as he weaved through the idle traffic, braking only if he had to
drive over a curb to avoid a downed vehicle or a barrier. Kholm was small and
it didn’t take long to clear the city center. As they began to pull away, they
heard the
crack, crack, crack
of automatic gunfire. Alarmed, they
all began to look around but saw nothing. A loud metallic impact smacked the
vehicle; a hole appeared in the back of the cab, and another pierced the rear
window, spiderwebbing it.

“Floor
it!” Sean yelled to Brooks as he lowered his window and readied his rifle.
Brooks gunned the vehicle and they raced away down the road, taking no more
shots as they left the city behind.

“What
was that, Hasan?” Sean shouted.

“Kholm
is obviously not a friendly place these days. They can be very territorial. If
you ask me, that was a warning,” Hasan said. “If they had wanted us dead, they
would have ambushed us on the road into the city. Those were warning shots;
they let us clear the city and gave warning for us not to return,” he
continued.

“Fair
enough, but if they shoot at me again I will park this car and sneak into that
shithole in the middle of the night. They will have more to worry about than
just the primals!” Sean snapped back.

They
continued down the highway and once again found themselves on open road. The
terrain was rockier and more mountainous here than it had been in the north.

“Where
is this hideout of yours?” Sean asked.

“Soon
you will see it, but we still have a ways to drive,” Hasan answered, then
leaned back into the seat and lowered his hat to cover his eyes while he
drifted to sleep. Brad watched Hasan and liked the idea of sleep. He stared out
his side window and watched the terrain go by. Dwellings and ruins were growing
closer and closer together as they entered the heart of the country. Soon, he
too had drifted to sleep, lulled by the sound of the purring tires on pavement.

When
Brad woke, the Defender was pulled to the shoulder of the road. There were high
mountains on both sides and the sun was still shining brightly. Brad lowered
his window and called to Sean, who was leaning against the side of the truck.

“What’s
up? Why did we stop?”

“Nature
calls, brother,” Sean answered back, pointing to Brooks perched behind a set of
large rocks.

Brad
undid his seat belt and opened his door; he was drenched in sweat from his road
nap. He reached into his bag and pulled out a water bottle. After opening it,
he drained what was left of the warm liquid. Hasan walked up from the other
side of the vehicle, then stopped, took a seat up on the hood, and perched his
rifle in his lap.

“So,
how much further to your safe house, Hasan?” Brad questioned.

“Not
much further, just over these hills and on the approach to Aybak,” Hasan
replied, not looking up from his rifle.

Brad
took a long look around. They were in a valley; the ground had gotten very hard
and this gave him a comfortable feeling knowing there were fewer dunes for the
primals to rise out of. He walked to the back of the vehicle and examined the
two holes there courtesy of the trip through Kholm. He went back to his bag,
grabbed a large roll of green duct tape, and plugged the holes. He placed a
large amount on the spiderwebbed hole in the glass to try and keep it from
breaking further. When he was finished, he noticed Sean and Brooks had made
their way back to their seats in the Defender. Brad took that as an indication
that their rest stop had ended and moved back to his position in the vehicle.

The
mountains had grown high and there were even patches of green appearing on both
sides of the winding road as they drove further south. They started to come
across several stone buildings and even an occasional mosque. But there were no
signs of life, or if there was any life, they were hiding it very well. As they
passed over a large hill, Hasan signaled for Brooks to move off of the road and
onto a small trail that broke east away from the highway. The trail was nothing
more than a heavily rutted goat path that wound down and into the
boulder-strewn terrain.

Out
of the terrain, smaller homes started to pop up. They were very old and most
were crumbled—many without roofs.

“This
village has been abandoned since the Russians came,” Hasan spoke. “Occasionally
some families will live here during migrations to the river, but for the most
part it is always a ghost town.

“At
the end of this trail, go to the right; our house sits at the top of the hill
against the mountain,” Hasan said to Brooks while pointing.

Brooks
eased the vehicle down the winding trail, careful to avoid rocks or large dips
in the road. At the top of the hill was a stone-walled home. It was very small,
unlike the villa they had stayed at on the Hairatan road. The house settled
into a very high mountain slope and faced an open view of the terrain below. It
appeared to be carved into the side of the mountain, as were other homes they
saw when looking at neighboring dwellings.

They
could see that all of the homes in the area did indeed look uninhabited.
Surprisingly, there was grass and vegetation in the area and a mountain stream
cut a path down through the back of the empty village. This home had obviously
been kept up by someone. Brad was surprised that the coalition forces would
miss it, but then again it was far off the trail and you could not see its
condition until being on top of it.

Brooks
pulled the vehicle in close to the stone wall and positioned it behind a pile
of stacked boulders to hide it from any approaching vehicles. The men stepped
out of the Defender, stretched, listened, and tried to remain quiet until they
were sure they were alone. After several minutes, Sean readied his rifle and
approached the house. Hasan indicated that he would check the home first.

“It
is often left booby trapped. I should go first and clear the way,” Hasan
whispered to Sean as he stepped forward and headed to the house.

The
wall here was badly damaged. Although it wrapped all the way around the home
until it ended in the face of the mountain, its height varied from one to four
feet at its highest point. The door to the home was made of planks, but Hasan
did not use it. Instead, he went to the window and moved his hand slowly along
the sill. Finding a wire, he traced his hand back to the corner of the
windowsill and, from within a carefully carved hole, removed an old
Russian-style grenade. He pulled a pin from his shirt collar and attached it to
the head of the grenade. He then grabbed a rubber band from his pocket and
carefully wrapped it around the spoon, then placed the grenade on the ground at
the base of the window. Next, Hasan leaned his rifle against the wall and
pulled the 9mm pistol he had found at Bremmel from his pack, then slipped into
the home through the window. After countless uncomfortable minutes, the door
unlatched and opened outwards. Hasan walked through the open doorway and
retrieved his rifle. “This home, as you would say, is clear,” Hasan said with a
smile.