299 Days VIII: The War (34 page)

They moved on the highway and went under the overpass where they immediately turned
their rifles upward to see if anyone was above them or on their flank. Nope. No one.

Then they kept their rifles on their flanks and looked to see if anyone was along
the onramp to their sides. Nope.

They kept moving this way, silently in the dark. Without their lights on, and with
their dark colored fleece jackets, it was nearly impossible to see them. The highway
lights illuminated them somewhat, but not too much. They kept looking for their next
piece of cover as they advanced, just like they’d done a thousand times. They had
this down.

They went all the way down to where the onramp merged onto the highway, which was
several hundred yards. Grant realized that they’d overrun their sniper coverage. The
sniper team was four hundred yards back from the overpass, which was now a thousand
yards from where Scotty and Grant were. They would need to come up with a better plan
for this next time.

Then again, Grant thought, maybe not. The main attack would come from the side of
an overpass facing the convoy, not the back side, which was what the enemy on the
overpass would want to stop: the coming convoy, not two scouts that had gone past
the overpass. So the sniper team would stay where they were in future scoutings to
protect against an attack on the convoy.

Once they got to the end of the onramp, Grant pointed up toward the on-ramps and made
a motion for them to go up it and meet back up on the overpass. Scotty knew exactly
what Grant would want to do, so his motions made sense to him, even if they wouldn’t
have made sense to anyone else.

“Making this shit up was we go,” Grant whispered to himself. They were. Like that
thing about going up the on-ramp and back to the overpass. They just made it up. “Free
styling” as Lt. Col. Hammond said back at the Boston Harbor briefing. Free styling,
indeed.

Scotty and Grant were moving up the onramp and getting closer to the overpass.

Oh God. Grant had a horrible thought. He and Scotty would be on the overpass and Pow
and Donnie wouldn’t know it was them. The sniper team might think they were bad guys.
Grant wanted to yell to Scotty to radio in that they were the ones about to be on
the overpass, but he couldn’t yell, and Scotty was far away.

Of all the ways to die, getting shot by your own sniper was the worst one. Oh well.
He had to secure this overpass, and fast. The convoy was idling back there and needed
to get to Olympia to get in the fight.

Grant got to the overpass. He looked over and Scotty was there, too, on the other
side. Scotty looked, and to Grant’s relief, he was on the radio and waving his arm
for the sniper team to see. Scotty knew to radio in that they were the ones on the
overpass. Grant was relieved to have smart and well-trained team members. They went
down the off ramp and headed back toward the truck, moving much more quickly now that
they knew that there were no obvious ambushes or booby traps.

Now they could use their lights. When they were down the off ramp where it met the
highway, Grant turned on his weapon’s light and motioned for Scotty to go down the
highway with his light and look for any booby traps, which he did.

They took their time on this phase. They had just done a semi-quick sweep of the area
without their lights. Now they could look for odd packages on the side of the road
or wires, although those were hard to see even with the 200 lumens from their Surefire
weapon lights.

It took a few minutes to go the length of the highway and then past the overpass with
the lights on. Grant was getting tired. He had walked a lot with a tactical load,
and was concentrating very hard. He was shouldering his rifle and sweeping the areas
in front of him. His rifle was relatively light, but after about twenty minutes of
moving with it, he was tired.

Finally, when they got to the far end of the back side of the overpass where the onramp
met the highway, they were satisfied the area was clear. Grant gave a thumbs up to
Scotty and he did the same. They jogged back to the truck with their weapons’ lights
on and swept the area one last time.

That jog was getting tougher as Grant went. He was in good shape, but this was hard
work. Plus, he had that fleece jacket on. He was boiling. He felt sweat on his baseball
cap. It was his favorite one, the tan Survival Podcast “ant” hat. He didn’t want to
get sweat stains in his favorite hat.

Wait, he thought. “You’re in combat and don’t want to get a hat dirty?” he asked himself.
That hat was going to get sweat stained. It would give it character.

They jogged up to the area where Pow and Donnie were. They couldn’t see them because
the sniper team was hidden and Grant and Scotty’s night vision was gone with all the
lights they’d been using.

As they ran by Pow and Donnie’s area, Grant heard Pow’s voice.

“Cover us.”

Grant and Scotty stopped and got down on the ground in a prone shooting position.
They covered the overpass, which they knew was clear, while Pow and Donnie ran back
to the truck.

It felt natural for Grant and Scotty to get on the ground and cover their teammates.
They’d done it so many times in training that they didn’t even think about it.

Grant enjoyed the time on the ground to rest. His heart rate was so high from all
the running that his EO Tech red-dot was jumping all over the overpass target. He
would be worthless as a sharpshooter at this point. That was okay. There wasn’t anyone
on that overpass to shoot at.

Scotty’s radio crackled. “At the truck,” said Pow.

Grant and Scotty got up and jogged back, slower than before. They were tired. Even
twenty-three year-old Scotty was slowing down. Grant, who was twenty years older,
didn’t feel so bad about being tired.

Mark’s truck never looked so good. They had made it back safely and now they could
rest. They took off their tactical vests so they could remove their fleece jackets
and cool off. It felt great to get that jacket off.

“Get in guys,” Bobby said. “I want to be all the way past the overpass when the convoy
comes through. I want to be well ahead of them.” He was smart.

Grant and Scotty threw their vests into the truck and got in. Mark’s black Silverado
slowly started up and drove straight toward the overpass that had seemed like a death
trap earlier. It was a regular overpass now; a dark, empty overpass. They went under
it and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Now on to the next one.

(January 1)

The sun was starting to come up. It was 7:20 a.m. according to Grant’s watch. There
he sat, with all his friends cruising through a sunrise. It was just like a road trip:
his buddies, a long ride, a sunrise; except for the part about people trying to kill
him.

With the sun rising and the fact that the last few overpasses had been clear, everyone
was lightening up on the strict no-talking atmosphere from the beginning of that long
night.

“Dudes, I’m starvin’,” Grant said. That MRE wasn’t keeping him satisfied. They were
pretty filling, but he’d burned off several hundred calories running around overpasses
since he last ate.

“Want my HOOAH bar?” Bobby asked. “I’ve been just sitting here in the truck. I haven’t
been running all over like you. And I’m not an old man.”

“Hell, yes, I want your HOOAH bar,” Grant said. “And your momma says I’m in great
shape.”

Everyone laughed. They needed that release. It had been the first laugh in hours,
which was rare for the Team. They realized that they were making lifetime memories
right then. This would probably be the biggest and most memorable day of their lives.
They were soaking it in. After a couple minutes of joking around, mainly about Bobby’s
momma, it was lighter outside and they were going fairly fast.

“Hey, next overpass. Let’s get Ryan and Wes out of the back to come along,” Pow said.
“They’re probably getting sore back there and we could use the extra rifles.”

Great idea. Plus, after doing one overpass, Ryan and Wes would know how to get through
them in the future and could teach others, if necessary.

“Whoa,” Bobby said as he put on the brakes. It was barely light, but Bobby could see
a vehicle ahead, parked on the side of the road.

“SUV on the side of the road at…” Scotty said into the radio. He checked the area
and his map and added, “At about mile marker 21. We will check it out. Stop the convoy.”

“Roger,” Jim Q. said over the radio. Pow had his radio off to prevent feedback.

“Time for Ryan and Wes’s first scouting mission,” Grant said. They stopped the truck
four hundred thirty-five yards from the SUV, according to Donnie’s laser range finder.

“Escalade,” Scotty said after looking through Donnie’s good binoculars. “Fancy one.”

Gang. That was a gang vehicle. They were the only ones who drove Escalades, and just
about the only ones who could get gas.

Donnie and Pow set up near the truck. Grant and Scotty got out. Grant went to the
back of the truck. “Get out, guys. We have a vehicle on the side of the road to check
out.”

The tarp flew up and Ryan and Wes sprang out of the pickup bed. They were ready to
finally see some action.

Grant quickly explained how it would work with the sniper team cover and the four
of them moving up on the vehicle.

“Ten bucks says it’s an abandoned gang rig because they ran out of gas,” Ryan guessed.
He was probably right.

The four of them took off toward the Escalade. They were spread out and had four different
angles of fire on the vehicle, but not into each other. Dang, Grant thought to himself
as he watched Scotty, Ryan, and Wes advance on the target. They had a very smooth
combat glide.

Scotty was the first to get close. “Looks abandoned,” he whispered into the radio
mic he had clipped to the left shoulder of his tac vest. There wasn’t much highway
light on the SUV and there wasn’t much sunlight from the dawn yet. Scotty was basing
his assessment of abandonment on the fact that no lights were on and there was no
movement. That didn’t mean there weren’t people in it. Or hiding near it.

How to see if there were people in the SUV? Wes beat him to it. Wes motioned for everyone
to hold their positions, which were about twenty-five yards from the SUV. Wes bent
down and got a rock, which he threw at the SUV.

He missed. He tried it again and made contact.

“Ping!” The rock hit the rear door of the Escalade.

Nothing. Wes threw another rock. It hit and nothing happened. Finally, Wes got closer,
got a bigger rock, and threw it at the rear window. It cracked.

Nothing. The Team advanced on the SUV. It was locked. Ryan took the muzzle of his
AR and broke the driver’s side window. It took a couple of good thrusts to do that.
The safety glass wasn’t shattering, just staying together like it was made out of
fabric. But after a couple of good pops, Ryan had the window broken.

“Trick I learned in the Marines,” he said with a big smile and pointing to the flash
hider. Those brakes were coming in handy, Grant thought, as he remembered how he had
used one to disable an oncoming threat at the meth house.

Ryan had gloves on, as did most of them, so he could unlock the door and open it without
worrying about broken glass.

Nothing. The thing was empty.

“They’re into the vehicle,” Pow’s voice said over Scotty’s radio. Everyone looked
at Scotty. He had forgotten to turn down the volume. He quickly fixed that.

“Probably ran out of gas,” Ryan said. They searched the SUV quickly. No bombs or booby
traps, but that wasn’t a surprise. These were just gang bangers, not sophisticated
terrorists.

Grant found some notes written in Spanish. He took them and would get them to Ted
later so that one of the Spanish speakers in the unit could see if they were of importance.
Probably not, but it didn’t hurt.

“Let’s let everyone coming past thing in the future know that it’s not a threat,”
Grant said. He took his AR and started using the flash hider to break out a window.
The rest of the Team did, too. It felt great to be smashing up a gang car. Everyone
else in a fifty-mile radius would be terrified of that Escalade. The Team felt somewhat
powerful breaking something that others would be afraid to mess with.

“We’ll be doing more to the gangs than just smashing their windows when we get to
Olympia,” Wes said. “Their teeth. They’ll be lucky if that’s all we smash.”

“Testicles,” Ryan said. It felt great to talk shit and break stuff. It was a tremendous
release.

Grant realized that their work was done. He opened up all the doors on the SUV and
popped the hood, which would make it clear to anyone that this vehicle was not going
anywhere.

Ryan took out his K-Bar knife, the one he got in the Marine Corp, and was under the
hood about to cut lines to render the vehicle inoperable.

“Stop!” Grant yelled. “Our guys might need a gang-looking car for when we’re cruising
around Olympia. I mean, its windows are smashed up, but we still might be able to
use it.”