Jeff smiled, noticing how even his mind hadn’t adjusted to the new world. There might never again be a state-regulated deer hunt and here he was, thinking about the annual hunting trip with his brothers.
If Jeff could see the deer, so could the neighbors. Sure as hell, they would start trespassing, hoping to shoot some meat. It would be impossible to tell the difference between a neighbor and an invader. Both would be wearing camo and carrying scoped rifles. He would need to nail down a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to hopefully avoid shooting the locals.
Jeff’s job was to keep the Homestead from being overrun, and that meant keeping strangers out of the Homestead and away from seeing their supplies. He couldn’t allow anyone to even look at the Homestead grounds. If Jeff wanted to attack this place, he would recon it, nail down the security patterns, and hit it when it was most vulnerable.
Step one of defense, and perhaps the most important step, was to keep anyone from conducting a proper recon. That meant shooting people before they got a look/see. If the weak-willed jack-offs back at camp didn’t like that, too bad. Jeff didn’t want to kill anyone who didn’t need killing, but that desire ran a distant second to fulfilling the mission and protecting his men and his family.
For now, the threat level hadn’t risen to shoot-at-first-contact because Jeff hadn’t seen anything to make him believe they were facing organized opposition. They had seen and deflected dozens of hungry wanderers. Almost every one of those wanderers had been carrying a gun. But they had responded like one would expect―like starving idiots heading to the hills. But if he were going to recon this place and take it down, that’s just how he would make himself appear, like a lost soul wandering onto private property.
The SOP he would implement today would order a single warning shot to give trespassers one last chance to turn around. It would require more men, since they would need one position to provide the warning shot, while another position would be preparing to kill the intruder. It would be dangerous to have a warning shot come from the primary position, forfeiting surprise and putting that man at risk.
Adding more duty slots meant adding troop fatigue, and adding fatigue meant degraded readiness. Morale would dip, and that mattered quite a bit, especially when almost all of his men were civilians, and half of them were crippled by culture shock as it was.
Jeff toyed with the idea of using megaphones to give verbal warnings, but he didn’t think they had enough megaphones to cover the perimeter. Plus a verbal warning would take several seconds, and that would give an enemy shooter time to dial in the location of the megaphone. He would be putting his guys at too much risk.
He could use non-combatants as the megaphone operators. But, if just one woman or kid got shot through the head while blabbing on a megaphone, the civilians back at the Homestead would lose their ever-loving minds. He might well lose a third of his civilian gunmen to the psychological trauma of a dead woman or kid. He couldn’t rely on any level of discipline or mental toughness. These civilians were fragile, whether he liked it or not. A lot of them had trained to shoot fairly well, but that didn’t mean a damned thing when it came to facing the foul realities of killing.
The best option would be a single warning shot. That was still bad, since a good enemy sniper could use that information to locate the shooter. Most of the perimeter was comprised of steep hills and canyons. That would work to their advantage, making the sound of a rifle bounce around like a racquetball.
On second thought, they could set up dummy locations around the perimeter: fake bunkers with shiny stuff, maybe make a dummy that resembled a dude’s head. Perhaps they could sucker a shot from anyone meaning harm to his defenders. Decoys might be a good option.
The sun broke the hilltop, and that meant time for philosophizing had come to an end. Jeff would now have to talk to other human beings, not his favorite kind of work.
In fact, Winslow was walking up the drive, beelining toward him.
Jeff reminded himself of his priorities today. Get the security guys briefed. Assault the three targets down in the valley. Hospital. Pharmacy. Refinery.
Assaults… the word made Jeff smile. He could use a little adrenaline today, and he was pretty sure nobody would get shot rolling up on a hospital and a refinery. Easy stuff. He would get to put the wood to some targets, and it would be for their own good. What could be better than that?
Easy day.
Oakwood, Utah
Canyon Hospital
Jeff took a last look at the little hospital through his binos. It was the same as the recon report from yesterday: one rent-a-cop standing at the entrance to the emergency room. The guy must not have a family, Jeff guessed. He looked like he was in his twenties and soft around the middle. Typical single guy. The guard carried a sidearm, but Jeff was pretty sure he could win him over with his sparkling personality.
They were ahead of schedule. Turned out, the building Jeff had designated as the Objective Rally Point—where they rallied to assault the hospital—was also a pharmacy. Taking that pharmacy had been about as hard as asking your mom to dance.
An old gal, the former manager, had been there on duty, but she wanted to go home real bad and she was more than happy to turn the place over to anyone willing to take it. Amazingly, nobody had screwed with the drugs in the back. All the meds were right where they were supposed to be, with plenty of narcotics in neat little slots on a big rack.
Jeff checked in with the other elements of his assault team and gave the go command on the hospital. He didn’t have to belabor the process with his lead guys; Evan and Alec were already moving their teams into flanking positions. He could count on them like a morning dump.
Jeff, his rifle slung around his back, walked straight up to the rent-a-cop in front of the emergency room. “Hey, buddy.”
His two wingmen, both guys from the Homestead, fanned out, drifting behind cover but keeping their hands off their bang-sticks.
“Stop right there!” The security guard held out his hand and placed his other hand on his handgun.
“Whoa, brother.” Jeff put both his hands out front, using the universal sign for whoa.
What the security guard didn’t know was that Jeff had practiced quick draw and shooting from this very position about ten thousand times. Jeff didn’t doubt he could drop the security guard before the guy’s gun cleared his holster.
“Stop right there!” the security guard repeated.
“Here’s the deal, bro. We’re here to help. We’d like to join your security detail.” Jeff figured it was only a small lie. “We want to help protect the hospital from looters. You good with that?”
The security guard kept his hand on his gun, his eyes darting about. “Wha… What do you want?” he stammered.
“Take your hand away from your gun and we’ll talk this through. We want to help secure the hospital. I’m National Guard and so are my buddies.” Another small lie. “We’re from the 19th Special Forces Group and we’re here to help.” That one was a whopper. Only he and Evan could claim any connection to the 19th Group, and they definitely weren’t here on orders.
“Okay. Do you have some ID?” The kid really wanted to believe him.
“Sure. I’m going to reach into my pocket, so don’t shoot me, okay?” Jeff had no concerns about the guy shooting him. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeff could see Evan off to his right, leaning over the hood of a car with his M4. He would drop the security guard if he so much as itched his arm.