As a primary mission, Base Camp Bravo was to make seasoned soldiers out of raw recruits sent from the plague-ravished land back east, and somehow by their very presence, bring law and order to the new frontier.
The camp was reachable by vehicle if you had gas, which most did not. The army had meager supplies of fuel, hoarded and confiscated from civilians, but those supplies were for very special occasions.
This must be one of those occasions, Trent thought. He watched, slightly amazed, while a green truck, the back covered with a green tarpaulin, disgorged a squad of men dressed in green clothes, faces streaked with dark green paint, and carrying mottled green packs on their backs full of the standard army issue of useless equipment. It had been a long time since the jungles of Central America. The lessons learned, and paid for by blood, still ignored.
He rode toward the main building where he hoped to give his dispatches to Colonel Bonham, passing by the soldiers on the way. He carefully looked them over as he rode by. All had packs piled high on their backs. With the packs catching on every tree limb they passed, coupled with wearing a steel pot on their heads, those men would be deaf and blind in the forest while their enemies would be able to hear them coming hundreds of yards away. Trent saw one man looking at his SATCOM navigation gear, while another was calibrating motion and heat sensors. Amazing. Useless.
The variety of expression was typical. Some looked at him with scorn, some with suspicion, most with open hostility. He knew the drill. He’d been part of it once, so he could walk the walk, and talk the talk. He wasn’t dressed like them. Therefore, he wasn’t with them. Anyone not with them was against them. Their confidence in themselves revealed a subtle arrogance, the result of superior weapons and training—they thought. What they didn’t know was how inadequate their training was. Fire teams and massive firepower would not save them in the dense forest. They would need to think, to adapt. And fight. Fight as they’d never dreamed. Hopefully, they would learn. If they lived.
Guiding his horse from shade to shade, tree to tree, he finally ended his round-about route under the spreading arms of a box elder tree. He tied the reins to a branch, and threw the saddlebags across his shoulders. Finding his way into the building, he walked down a short corridor. The floor shined enough he could see his face in it. Some things never change. There was a desk at the end of the hall, manned by a starched young private busily trying to look important as Trent approached.
“Colonel in?”
The man looked at him, wrinkling his nose a little at the smell. You don’t ride a sweaty horse all day without picking up a little fragrance along the way.
“Not here.” Nonchalant. He didn’t care.
Trent stared at him until the young man started to show color in his cheeks from the inspection.
“Son, suppose you got a place for these dispatches? The colonel will want to see them.”
Jumping to his feet, the private took the bags, a slow warming of respect in his eyes. Even new recruits knew about couriers. “You could have told me you were a courier. I thought you were one of the locals, in to beg food or ammo from the colonel.”
“Not likely.” He turned away, adding over his shoulder. “I’ll be at the Bucket if he wants me.”
He took his horse to the white-boarded corral and turned it loose. Carrying his saddle and extra pack into the barn, he was accosted by a shriveled imp of a man wearing faded overalls and sporting a long tobacco-stained white beard. Trent idly wondered how long it would be before the old and battered gimme cap, with the picture of a green tractor on it, would move.
“Thought you was dead, Trent. Them raiders must be getting soft, lettin’ you traipse around the country all the time with no consequences.” He moved his green baseball cap to set jauntily on the back of his head.
About ten seconds.
He gave the old man a wry grin. “Got close a couple of times. How ya been, Pop?”
“Been better—been worse.” The old man cackled, showing stained teeth, and pulled the cap level again.
“All right to leave my stuff here?” He’d no idea when he was moving out again, but knew all his gear would be safe with the old man. “Maybe overnight?”
“Just a night? You go over to the Bucket, you may not come back for a week. I hear they’s a new batch of girls over there.” He smiled wickedly, shifting his cap around. “Wouldn’t know myself, of course.”
He grinned at him, shaking his head in mock amazement. Tossing his pack in a corner, he pulled the rifle from its sheath and checked the hammer was half-cocked—what passed for a safety on it.
“You still got those old guns? Why ain’t you got one of the new fancy Colt shoot-all-day guns the Army’s givin’ away, or one of them AK-90s you can find layin’ about? There’s something called the M-4 that’s really sweet, too.”
He looked at his rifle with affection. True, it was old and had seen a lot of use. Even so, it was still accurate to a hundred yards—all you need in the forest—and a formidable weapon. Of more importance, it used the same ammo as his revolver, so he didn’t have the weight of two different types of ammo. “This one hasn’t worn out yet. I put bullets in it and the thing goes ‘boom’ when I want it to. That’s what matters.”
“Know what you mean, I guess. Though, I never could figure it. Army boys take a gun that’s supposed to be accurate to half-way ‘roun the world, shoots from now to next week, then they duck into the woods with it where you can’t see more’n fifteen feet, an’ if you can’t get it done with one shot… hell, you won’t get another. Don’t make sense.”
The old man’s eyes clouded over as his mind went down memory lane. The cap shifted to a more serious angle.
“I remember how it was. Street price on that gun was sixty bucks, with a box of five hundred rounds of ammo for another twenty. There must have been thousands of them. Had a sign over in the hardware store—war surplus AK’s and SKS rifles. Only dropped once.”
Chuckling at his own humor, the old man moved his cap to the back of his head and waddled back into the barn, his skinny legs bowed like parentheses.
As Trent was leaving, he turned and asked the old man, “Seen a young girl come in—tall, blond, well set up and riding a mouse-colored gelding?”
The old man shook his head. “Nope. Wished I had. I get lonely at night.”
“Yeah, keep wishing.” He laughed as he passed through the door. The day before Katie had decided to go on ahead of him to Base Camp. She said she needed to think.
Whatever that meant.
“Won’t do no good to watch for her. If she sees me first, she’ll never look at you again.” There was a short pause. “Hey.” The old man shouted at Trent’s retreating back. “You ain’t getting soft on some woodsy girl are you?”
He could hear the old man cackling for a block.
14
The Bucket-O-Blood had sprung up overnight, even faster than the base camp. Running pack trains into the deserted cities, Charley Walsh brought fresh supplies of liquor and hard goods into the camp almost weekly. His place was always crowded, the noise level maintained a dull roar, and today proved no exception. He had two things making the frontier bearable for men who didn’t really want to be there, women and liquor.
Trent paused at the doorway, wiping sweat from his forehead as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting in the room. Settling his webbed duty belt, he stopped long enough to tie the leather thong, at the bottom of his holster, around his thigh. He kept the thong untied while riding, mostly out of convenience. Now, it might make all the difference if he needed his gun in a hurry. He had Velcro fasteners once. They were easy to use, but once dirt got in them… modern and new wasn’t always better.