Early helped him stuff the pouches of the vest with magazines for the rifle and then told him to walk around so he could get used to the weight. Between the armor plates and magazines and the four full canteens it was a struggle for Jason even to get to his feet. Early hid a smile and watched the kid walk away, then turned to peer out the back windows of the house.
“Early?”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t we take prisoners? Why were Weasel and George killing their wounded?”
Early looked and saw the teenager was seriously bothered. “Well, there’s two answers to that. First one is… where would we take them? It’s not like we’ve got a base. Or vehicles to transport them. We wander around, causing trouble, living in empty houses and borrowed basements, and then when the cold rolls in either do more of the same or we hol’ up with friends or relatives or in our own houses, far away from the trouble.”
“We could let them live, let the Army treat their injuries.”
Early nodded. “And that’s the other part of it. At the start of the war we let them be, tried to do the civilized thing. Let the Tabs recover their wounded. Not now. Not after ten years. Because they just keep coming back, like the tide. At this point we’ve all realized we’re in a war of attrition—that means neither side is going to surrender, the war only ends when one side has been ground down so much they’ve got no one left who can fight. They’ve had their chance. Any Tabs still fighting are either too mean or too stupid to know they’re on the side of evil.”
“And after the war? In any other war, you capture POWs, at the end of the war you send ‘em home. Which is somewhere else, a whole ‘nother country. Over there somewhere.” He waved his hand vaguely. “After World War II the Germans were sent back to Germany, where they could be Germans, and be nowhere near us. That’s not what this war is. The Tabs live here; win or lose, they’re not going anywhere. Even if they’re not fightin’, and we’re all peaceable and neighborly, they’ll still believe the same things that caused the war in the first place—socialism, communism, vegan grocery bags, twenty-seven genders, guns are evil, America has never been great, never hit back, government should be in charge of everything, all of it. That’s not peace or victory, that’s just a temporary ceasefire. Their beliefs aren’t just evil, they’re a poison, a cancer, a rot. Winning doesn’t just mean the war stops, we want to have a healthy country after all this.”
“It ain’t pretty, son. It ain’t even nice. Maybe it’s our own brand of evil. You don’ like it? Good. That means you’ve got a soul. But it’s the only way we not just win the war, but win the peace afterward.”
“Cap’n?” Ed turned to see Early squatting nearby. The squad leader was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, studying his map.
“Yeah Earl?”
“We spendin’ the night here?”
Ed looked out the small kitchen window, then glanced through the doorway into the dining room. Mark was up on the second floor again, and George was somewhere out behind the house keeping an eye on their back door. The rest of the squad, having received their share of the gear, had spread out through the house. Ed caught snatches of their murmuring conversations and wished they’d get some rest, but they were probably still as wired as he was. He hadn’t heard a helicopter in almost an hour, but it was far too easy for him to imagine an armored search column rolling right for them. He hadn’t been able to sleep properly since he’d put on his first plate carrier.
“Yeah. I’d like to put more distance between us and the column, but they’re going to have high-flying fixed-wings and probably a satellite or two spinning overhead all night looking for something that looks bomb-able. Or missile-able, if that’s a word. We were a little too lucky today. Twelve KIA without so much as a scratch. Well, one scratch. And who knows how many with Weasel’s little present.” Although at least one of the soldiers had been killed by the unknown sniper. Ed would like to have a talk with him. Or her, he’d known two women over the years who had racked up a lot of kills behind a scope. Sniper-initiated ambushes were actually a military tactic, except Ed didn’t like surprises. Then again, would the patrol have passed by without spotting one of his men? Maybe not. Maybe that’s why the sniper had fired.
The tanned southerner nodded, and squinted at the window. “Thought I’d head out for a bit, see if I can’t find us something to eat.” He patted the suppressed .22 pistol in the holster under his arm.
Ed chewed on his lip for a while in thought.
“We’ve been running on empty for almost a week, Cap’n,” Early said in a quiet voice. “It’s a big city. Lot a people still running around that don’t want nothin’ to do with the war. One man alone, even if they spot me from the air, ain’t gonna give ‘em much pause. I’ll leave the rifle here.”
Ed chewed his lip for another second, then nodded. He stuck a finger at Early.
“You watch yourself. For some reason you get cut off, don’t try to make it back here. You know where we’re going.” He rubbed his nose, then looked past Early. There was no one else in sight.
“Jason?” he asked pointedly.
Early looked his leader in the eye as he responded. “Boy was scared spitless, but he stood up and fought when there was fightin’ to do.” He paused. “And hit what he was aiming at, at least once. Saw that much.”
Ed sighed and looked back out the small window. He could see part of a wispy cloud scudding across the blue sky, and listened to the hum of insects on a late summer afternoon. When he looked back at Early his eyes were weary. “Do what you can to keep him safe.”
Early smiled, flashing his big white teeth. “Be back in a bit,” he said.
Jason near the back door, saw him heading out and stood up. Early waved him back. “You stay here, keep outta trouble,” he told the boy.
“Where are you going?”
“Shoppin’,” Early said with a grin. “Practice working that new rifle, shoulderin’ it and flippin’ the safety off. You don’t want to be fumblin’ with it the next time bullets are whuppin’ by your head.” He silently stepped into tall grass of the back yard, slipped between two bushes, and disappeared from sight.
Two hours later Jason was sitting with Ed and Quentin in the downstairs hallway. He was sitting there in armor, with a new rifle, surrounded by dogsoldiers, still having flashbacks of the gunfight… and even with all that, he was bored. They’d been stuck in the house for hours, and now they were going to be spending the night there. He had no cards, no book to read (he’d checked the house) and had practiced shouldering his M4 until his shoulder and hands were sore. So he sat. And thought.
“Sir?” he finally said.
Ed looked up. He’d been daydreaming. “Yeah?”
“I saw a couple of radios with those soldiers. How come we didn’t grab one, to listen in on them?” He figured there was a good reason, he just had no idea what it was.
Ed nodded. “SOP—standard operating procedure—for the Tabs, when they’ve suffered an ambush or had any other sort of incident where they think a radio might have been snagged by us, is to immediately switch channels. All those radios are encrypted, which means to even listen in on a new channel you’ve got to punch in a code. Which we don’t have.”
“And we’re not sure they can’t triangulate our position with one of those things,” Quentin added.
“They kicked our asses at the start of the war,” Ed told the young man. “We had encrypted burst transmitters, military grade, and even though they couldn’t understand what we were saying, they could triangulate our position. We ate a lot of missiles, and lost a lot of people before we figured out how they were locating us, and we figure they could do the same with one of their radios if we took it. It’s not that we don’t have more high-tech gear, we just can’t use it. We’re low tech because it keeps us alive.”