This Shattered Land - 02 (31 page)

Gabe
shrugged, staring flatly through the gloom. “Suit yourself.”

John
smiled and nodded. “Alright then.”

Just
as he was about to begin speaking, Tom and Sarah came over from the edge of the
loft with Brian in tow. Plywood creaked and groaned under their feet as they
approached.

“Did
I hear you right when you said your name is John Rollins?” Tom asked.

The
old man nodded. “That’s right.”

“I’m
Tom Glover. This is my wife Sarah, and my son Brian.”

 The
four of them exchanged a quick round of greetings. Rollins waited for the
family to settle in and get comfortable while Brian fished a wind-up lantern
out of his pack and spent a couple of minutes working the hand crank. The
lantern was round, with LED lights on the inside, and was roughly the diameter
a man’s palm. In spite of its small size, it was surprisingly bright. I picked
Brian up around his waist and held him near a rafter while he tied the lantern
to it with a length of para-cord. I was familiar with the little lantern, being
that I had one in my own pack, and I knew that we would have more than thirty
minutes of light before we had to wind it up again. God bless pre-Outbreak
technology.

The
moans of the undead grew louder as more of them congregated beneath us. I
doubted that any of us would be likely to get a good night’s sleep. Figuring
that we might as well have some entertainment to pass the time, I asked Rollins
to go ahead with his story.

“Let
me ask you a question,” He asked, looking at Gabriel, “you look like a man with
some military experience under his belt.” He held up his necklace with the drilled-through
bullet again. “What do you know about these things?”

 “It’s
a hog’s tooth.” Gabriel said, then reached underneath his shirt. He pulled out
a thin length of nylon cord that ran through a hole drilled into an identical
bullet. He held it up into the light for the old man to see. Rollins smiled.

“I
thought as much. You got that look about you.” He said. “The cartridge that
particular projectile came from wouldn’t happen to be a 7.62 by 54, would it?”

A
slight smile tugged at the corner of Gabe’s mouth as he slipped the cord back
around his neck. “That it would.”

“And
I don’t suppose the rifle you pulled it out of was a Dragunov, was it?”

“As
a matter of fact, it was.”

Rollins
laughed, his voice rough and grating. “Well, I guess that means you and I have
something in common.”

He
took another pull from my water bottle before continuing. “You see, way the
hell back during the Cold War, Uncle Sam sent me and a few other fellas on
quite a number of missions into places that the good old U.S. of A. wasn’t
supposed to go.”

“You
mean in Vietnam?” I asked, guessing that must have been his conflict, judging
by his age. He nodded.

“Some
of the time, but the more dangerous assignments took me into China, Cambodia,
and even into Mother Russia herself. Hell, I’m probably one of only a few
American men you’ll ever meet that can honestly say they’ve set foot on North
Korean soil.”

“No
shit?” Gabe said.

“No
shit.” Rollins replied. “That’s where I got this thing.” He tapped the bullet
hanging from his neck.

“Okay,”
Sarah interjected, “would someone mind explaining to me exactly what the hell
you two are talking about?”

Gabe
glanced over. “Trophies.” He said. “A hog’s tooth is a trophy. They gave me one
when I graduated from scout sniper school at Fort Benning, but a real hog’s
tooth is taken from the barrel of an enemy sniper’s rifle.”

Rollins
nodded in agreement. “You see, soldiers in general are a superstitious lot.
Marine snipers are especially so. There is a general belief among us that every
warrior has a bullet out there with his name on it. If by chance we manage to
kill an enemy sniper that was trying to zero in on us, then the bullet in his
rifle’s chamber is the bullet that was meant for us.”

Gabe
broke a smile. “And if we kill said sniper and take the round from his rifle,
then we can wear it around our necks and thus render ourselves invincible.”

The
two Marines exchanged a glance, and burst into laughter.

“Oh
hell, if only that nonsense were actually true.” Rollins said.

Gabe’s
laughter faltered, and his expression darkened. “Yeah, if only.”

John
heaved a sigh, and continued. “So anyway, me and a few other folks who showed
some proficiency at sneaking into enemy territory and living to tell about it
got rounded up into a task group and sent in under cover of darkness to North
Korea. One of them was a fellow you might have heard of, name of Carlos
Hathcock. That ring a bell?”

“You
have got to be kidding me.” Gabriel said. “No way you did a mission with that
guy.”

John
laughed. Sarah glanced at me in confusion. “Okay, who is this Hathcock guy?”

“He
was probably the greatest sniper in the history of the Marine Corps. Guy is a
legend in the military.” Gabe offered. “That being said, I don’t recall ever
hearing about him doing any missions in North Korea.”

“Nor
would you have.” John replied. “It was classified beyond top secret. We all had
to agree that we would never speak about the mission under penalty of
imprisonment on the charge of treason.” John frowned and stared off into the
distance over the fields for a moment. “They also dropped a not so subtle hint
that anyone who ran their mouth wouldn’t live long enough to stand trial. I
didn’t think too much of it at the mission briefing, but Lord, does it make a
whole world of sense now.”

“What
happened?” Brian asked.

I
had to admit, the old man had a bit of a gift for storytelling. He certainly
had everyone’s attention, including me.

“Back
in those days,” John continued, “we didn’t have all them fancy stealth
helicopters and such to get us behind enemy lines. We had to do things the old
fashioned way—on foot.” John chuckled a bit and shook his head. “Man, that was
miserable. We got dropped off about ten miles north of Yeoncheon, and had to
hump it damn near a hundred miles over rough terrain with our guns and all of
our gear. There were five of us. Me, Hathcock, a couple of South
Korean-Americans named Cho and Park, and this spook asshole that called himself
Green. No first name, just Green. Hathcock was probably one of the funniest
guys I ever met, and the two Korean fella’s were alright too, but that Green
fucker was one creepy bastard. He probably didn’t say more than ten words the
whole trip into North Korea.” John shook his head, remembering.

“Our
assignment was to make our way north to this little shithole village in
middle-of-nowhere Kangwon Province. The CIA pukes that did our briefing gave us
all pictures of some fat Chinese general that we were supposed to take out if
we could, but mostly our mission was to get in and do surveillance. They gave
us some kind of high-tech encrypted radio to send reports back. I remember thinking
at the time that the whole damn thing just seemed strange, you know? I mean,
couldn’t the spooks just buy a few spies, or something?”

“What
do you mean ‘spooks’?” Brian asked.

“CIA.
Or NSA, or anybody else in the intelligence community, we just called them all
spooks.”

“Why?”
Brian asked.

John
shrugged, and held up his hands. “Hell if I know, the name just stuck.”

“So
what happened in North Korea?” Tom asked.

John
scratched his beard, and then continued. “Well, after we finally reached the
village, it became pretty obvious that something big was going on. The whole
damn place was surrounded by a twenty foot high electrified fence, and there
had to have been at least three hundred commie soldiers running around. The
troops had barracks outside the village, but the villagers themselves were
quarantined inside. Things looked normal enough inside the fence, at first.
People went about their business, feeding chickens, cooking meals, kids running
around, that sort of thing. Every once in a while, a few soldiers would go in
and take someone outside the fence to a big white cinderblock building on the
other side of the hill, out of sight of the villagers.”

John
shook his head again, his expression grim. “I don’t know exactly what they did
to those poor people, but the only thing that ever came out of there were
trucks loaded with body bags. As time went on, and more people started
disappearing, the folks in the village started getting restless. I remember
this one time, the soldiers came to these people’s house and started dragging
off one of the young boys who lived there. Kid couldn’t have been more than
nineteen or twenty. His momma didn’t take that too kindly, and started raising
a fuss about it. Next thing you know, those soldiers were surrounded by an
angry mob that looked just about ready to rip their asses apart.”

John
was silent a moment before continuing. “I tell you, I learned something that
day. Fear and intimidation will only get you so far. People can reach a point
where fear of death just ain’t enough to cow them anymore, especially when they
all get to thinkin’ that their gonna wind up worm food anyway no matter what
they do. The commies raised their Kalashnikovs and fired a few rounds over
their heads, trying to scare ‘em off.”

His
shoulders hitched a few times in a silent chuckle. “It didn’t quite have the
intended effect. That mob converged all of a sudden and bashed those
sons-of-bitches skulls in with rocks and hand tools. A few young men took up
the rifles and started shooting at the soldiers on the guard towers, but that
didn’t last too long. The rest of the soldiers came pouring through the gate
and made quick work of the guys with the guns and anybody else that got in the
way. Everybody ran off and hid in their shacks while the soldiers rounded up
the dissident ringleaders and took them off to that damned white building.”

John
sighed. “Now, what you need to understand is that this operation wasn’t no picnic
for the five of us. It took us the better part of a week to get where we needed
to be, and then we had to spend the next couple of weeks running around in the
damn woods trying to stay hidden, and collect as much information as we could.
It was hot, miserable, nasty work. North Korean commandos patrolled the hills
where we set up our hides, and we had a lot of close calls with those fuckers.
Me and Hathcock stuck together most of the time, and we managed to help the
other three to not do anything stupid and get us all caught. Sometimes we could
move around with impunity, and other times we had to lay face down in the dirt
with bugs crawling all over us, and sweating under our ghillie suits for hours
on end, waiting for patrols to go away. Hollywood used to like to make a
sniper’s job look glamorous, but believe me when I tell you that it was
anything but. Hell, ninety percent of what we did didn’t even involve shooting
people. We were out there with our asses in the weeds gathering intel.”

Gabe
nodded. “That’s a fact.”

John
leaned over to rest on one elbow and stretched his legs out to the side. “Now,
the North Koreans weren’t stupid. They knew that whatever they were doing down
there, someone was likely to hear about it and send spies. After all, every man
has his price, even brainwashed commie bastards. Back then, the CIA liked to
use snipers for that kind of work. As it turned out, the North Koreans knew how
to fight fire with fire. Speaking of…”

John
pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and shook one
loose. He produced a book of matches from his hip pocket, struck one of them,
and the acrid scent of burning sulfur diffused into the night air. The little
flame lit his craggy face up in orange and yellow for a moment, and then he
shook out the match and blew a jet of smoke into the air above him. I frowned,
not being a big fan of cigarette smoke, but I let it go. He was, after all,
just as trapped as the rest of us. If poisoning his own lungs made him feel
better then I was willing to let him get away with it. This time.

“We
were on our way to a nearby stream one night to get some water when we found
sign that someone had been there recently, and had done a half-assed decent job
of covering their tracks. I probably would have walked right by it if Carlos
hadn’t noticed something out of place. I tell you, that man must have been part
bloodhound, you couldn’t get anything by him. He’d sniff you out no matter how
careful you were. He found the edge of a boot-heel track, and we spent a couple
of hours following the trail into the hills. Just as we were crawling over the
side of a ridge, I spotted movement on a hillside down across the valley from
us. Sure enough, we saw two camouflaged Commies with Dragunovs over their
shoulder’s moving away back toward the village. We decided to let them go,
rather than take them out. The spooks back in Pusan were happy with the intel
we were feeding them, and they wanted us to keep at it. In hindsight, we
probably should have just shot the bastards and high-tailed it out of there.”     

John
took another drag from his cigarette. The tip lit up a bright cherry red for a
moment, then dimmed back down to a tiny pinpoint of dark orange. He reached
over and tipped his ashes through a gap between the plywood platform and the
wall.