As he fingered the frayed yellow Kevlar material that blossomed through the helmet’s woodland camouflage cloth cover, he asked, “What should we do, Dan, bypass the roadblock?”
After a moment’s thought, Fong replied, “No way, Kev. Those S.O.B.s drew first blood. No warning or anything. They’re looters, for sure. I say that we take them out.”
Kevin nodded his head and delivered in a quiet, low voice, “Agreed. Let’s go find a place where we can hide the Bronco and lay up until it’s full dark.”
As the sun set, Kevin and Dan applied a fresh coat of camouflage paint to each other’s faces and the backs of their hands. Dan carried his HK-91. As was his habit, Kevin carried his riotgun. They walked slowly in single file for an hour until they got to the point where they had planned to separate. There, they once again compared their watches. Dan reached out to Kevin’s hand.
Kevin grasped it firmly in response, but asked, “What’s the handshake for, Fong man?”
“This might be goodbye, my friend.”
Kevin shook his head. “Nonsense. As Jeff would say,we’re going to‘kick tail and take names’ like the Kolodney brothers and the Rugsuckers. Just think positive.”
After a pause, Dan agreed. “Okaaay. Then let’s do this one right the first time.”
By 11 p.m., they were both in position. After approaching from the east, Kevin sat crouched sixty yards away from the bandits’ camp, which lay just across the railroad bed, below the road barricade. Dan Fong was lying prone just back from the edge of the road cut, sixty feet north and twenty feet above the campsite.
Kevin pressed the red “push to talk” button on his TRC-500 twice. He then heard Dan break squelch twice in reply. At the camp, both men could plainly see six sleeping bags clustered around a small fire. A man holding a riot shotgun walked around the perimeter of the camp. The man could see little as he looked out into the darkness, as the light of the fire constantly ruined his night vision.
Both Dan and Kevin waited, watching the half moon’s slow track across the sky and occasionally consulting their watches. Just before midnight, the guard walked up to one of the sleeping men and kicked him in the feet. “Hey, your turn, asshole,” he yelled at the recumbent form. Shortly after, the second man sat up, extracted himself from his sleeping bag, and put on a pair of boots. Just after midnight, he stood up and took the shotgun from the guard he was replacing, who rolled out his own sleeping bag, and was soon asleep.
Shortly after the new guard took over, he began walking almost directly toward Kevin. Kevin held his breath. He could hear blood pounding in his ears. When the guard was thirty feet outside the camp, he stopped, dropped his pants, and squatted to relieve himself. Two minutes later, the guard resumed his normal route around the perimeter of the camp. It took ten minutes for Kevin’s pulse to settle down.
A few seconds before 2:15 a.m., shortly after the moon had set, Kevin stood up and stretched silently, using a fencer’s stretch. He then quietly padded toward the camp with his shotgun held to his shoulder. As he entered the dull light of the fire, he could plainly see the man on guard, who was facing away obliquely. Kevin judged the distance to his target at ten to twelve yards. To be sure that he hit his mark, he lowered himself onto one knee. As he lined up the glowing green tritium sights on his shotgun, he saw the guard’s head jerk around to face his direction. Just then, Kevin squeezed the trigger.
The guard fell to the ground with Kevin’s first shot. Kevin fired once more at the prone form. Then he deftly shoved two fresh rounds from the buttstock holder into the Remington’s magazine. He stood and advanced toward the center of the camp, at a 90-degree angle to Dan’s line of fire. As he walked forward, Kevin could hear Dan firing from the top of the road cut. Kevin began to fire steadily as he walked, tromboning the pump action with the gun still held to his shoulder. Meanwhile, Dan was firing two rounds at each of the men in their sleeping bags. As Kevin reached the fire, he heard a click when he pulled the trigger. The gun’s seven-shot magazine was empty. He then quickly set the shotgun on the ground and pulled his Special Combat Government .45 automatic from his hip holster and brought it to bear, firing at any movement or any sleeping bag that still looked intact. None of the five bandits made it out of their sleeping bags before they were killed.
After emptying his .45, Kevin ejected its magazine, slapped in a fresh one from his magazine pouch, and thumbed down the gun’s slide release, chambering a fresh cartridge. Dan’s HK fell silent. Much more deliberately now, Kevin walked in a slow circle around the fire, putting one 185-grain hollow point into the head of each of the bandits, to make certain that they were no longer a threat. He walked back to the downed sentry and did the same. Speaking into the microphone of his TRC-500, Kevin reported, “They’re history now.”
Dan replied with a terse, “Roger that.”
Kevin retrieved his shotgun from where it lay on the ground and then quickly reloaded both of his guns from the pouches on his LC-2 harness. Soon after, despite the ringing in his ears, he could hear the distinctive sounds of Dan reloading his rifle. Lendel began examining the camp in detail, while Dan continued to provide security from his over-watching position. Lendel found that all six men were quite dead. He also discovered three shallow graves at the west end of the camp. He assumed they were the bodies of the three other bandits that had been killed the previous day. He spent the next twenty minutes examining the mens’ guns and packs.
The packs were the sort of inexpensive nylon packs with alloy frames he used to see at sporting goods stores for under forty dollars. They outwardly looked like real backpacking packs, but were imported from China. Not only were they of shoddy construction, but they were made with brightly colored nylon material. Even in the dim light of the fire, Kevin could see that they were sky blue and fluorescent orange. He snorted in contempt. One of the backpacks contained a large quantity of paper currency, which Kevin threw into the fire. Several others contained silver and gold coins, which Kevin set aside.
Aside from some ammunition, he found nothing else of value or usefulness in the packs; mainly clothes, canned food, and liquor bottles. Most of the guns were not worth bothering with. They consisted of two badly rusted Winchester .30-30s, a Universal M1 Carbine, a deeply pitted Rossi .38 Special revolver, a Mossberg Model 500 shotgun that had been crudely sawed off. Two caught Lendel’s eye. They were a Remington Model 700 bolt-action .30-06 mounted with a Weaver K4 scope, and the riot shotgun—a well-made Benelli M/P.
Kevin decided to collect all of the guns. At first he was only going to take the Remington bolt action and the Benelli shotgun and burn the rest. Then he realized that the others, despite their poor condition, might still be shootable and have some barter value. If nothing else, the .30-30s and the Mossberg might have some usable parts that could be bartered.
Kevin tossed the looters’ entire pile of firewood onto the fire and threw on the backpacks. Next, he filled a sleeping bag stuff sack with the coins and the ammunition. After looping the stuff sack through his belt and tying its draw-strings to one of his web gear straps, Kevin slung the captured rifle and shotgun across his back. Dan came down the hill and picked up the rest of the guns.
When they got back to the Bronco, their arms ached from carrying the load for the long distance. Kevin stowed the captured gear from the looters beneath the backseat. Next, they reloaded their empty magazines from the ammo in cans packed in the rig, and replaced them in the pouches of their web gear.