Chapter 15
MARCH 25, EARLY MORNING
ADRIAN WAS ALERTED TO THE incoming scouts and prisoners by a runner. “They’ll be here in twenty minutes, General.”
“Thank you. You’re Lindsey, aren’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good work. I’ve heard good reports on you. I understand that you are one of the fastest and quietest runners we have, and better yet, your accuracy in relaying messages is top notch. We’ll be relying on you heavily when the fighting starts. I want you to know I appreciate what you are doing and how critically important your role is to our success.”
Lindsey’s chest swelled with pride as she said, “Thank you, sir! Any more messages for me to relay?”
Adrian smiled a little and said, “Not now, carry on.”
Lindsey saluted, did a perfect about-face, and took off running, her feet flying over the broken ground.
When Clif and Linda arrived with the two prisoners, Adrian had the two men separated and taken to different rooms in the house. He posted a guard on each man and had their blindfolds replaced with new ones that had no slits. He cautioned the guards to not talk to the prisoner in their charge. Once this was done, he turned to Linda and said, “Report.”
Linda reported on their scouting trip and the position of the raiders. “Not much has changed, other than that they are getting close to the battlefield. They should be there in about two days, three at most.”
Adrian said, “Tell me about the prisoners.”
Linda replied, “We could see them coming from a mile off, and they were moving in a straight line. I thought maybe if we intercepted them, we could bring them back and see if they had any valuable information. Will you torture them? Not that I mind—just curious.”
Clif smiled at the question as Adrian responded, “Torture works, but it can take a long time. With two of them, I’ll play them against each other and not only get better information faster, but I’ll also get corroboration, as well. Unless I miss my guess, by tonight I’ll know everything they know and have it verified. They’re in for a long day, but not much else. At least for now.”
Linda asked, “What do you mean when you say ‘at least for now?’”
Adrian looked her straight in the eye and replied, “It means that when I have all they have to offer, they’ll be killed. They won’t know that, of course. When they are killed, they won’t know it or feel it.”
Seeing the tightening of Linda’s jaw, Adrian said, “It’s harsh, but the reality is that prisoners will weaken us. It takes manpower to take care of them, to guard them. Even then, let’s say we do keep them as prisoners: for how long? What do we do with them, turn them loose? Men who live by killing women and children? Men who rape? Should we turn them loose to continue doing that? Turn them loose on unsuspecting and innocent people? I’ll tell you what, if you can come up with a better plan by morning, I’ll damn sure listen to it.” Adrian truly hated to kill prisoners, yet he knew it was the only valid choice. The fact that it had to be done didn’t make him like it any better. Instead, it created internal conflicts that he knew he could never resolve. That is what made him jump on Linda the way he did. If she could conceive a better method of dealing with prisoners, he truly was ready to listen.
Linda smiled a grim smile and said, “Those may be the men who burned my home, would have killed my son, would have raped and then killed me. If they weren’t the ones, they were certainly part of that gang of animals. No, what I was wondering was, can I be the one who kills them?”
Clif guffawed loudly and then caught himself. “She’ll do, Adrian, she’ll do.”
Adrian was looking at Linda in a whole new light. This is one tough woman. Rare to find one that hardcore and honest about it. He once again began feeling the warring factions of attraction and guilt roaring through his mind. Barely able to keep his voice steady from the internal onslaught, he said, “Linda, you did a damn good job bringing in those two prisoners. When the time comes to kill them, you can certainly take part.”
Linda was shocked at herself for saying out loud what she wanted to do. She wanted to kill these men, yes, but two days ago, she would never had said so, and would never have believed she could do it. Now she was aware she not only could, but it would bring her a certain satisfaction, though not pleasure. She heard Adrian’s praise as though from a long distance and pulled herself together again, answering, “Thank you, General, thank you very much.”
Adrian wasn’t sure if she was thanking him for the praise or for allowing her to take part in killing the prisoners. He just nodded and turned to interrogating the prisoners. He no longer had any doubt that he’d chosen the right person to lead the women.
As Linda watched him walk off, she wasn’t sure which she had thanked him for, either. She was still shocked by her request, and even more shocked that she had meant every word of it.
Adrian addressed the first prisoner, “In a moment, I’ll remove your gag and let you have a drink of water. The blindfold and ties stay on. I’m not interested in your comfort. Then I’ll begin asking you questions. You can choose to answer, and if you do so and answer truthfully, you’ll be taken far out of camp, still blindfolded, in the opposite direction of your band, and released. If you’re ever seen around here again, you’ll be shot on sight.
“On the other hand, if you decide not to answer, then you’ll be tortured until you do. I know how to torture. I know how to bring you near death just from the feeling of pain while actually keeping you quite healthy. I can stand it a hell of a lot longer than you can. It’s your choice. You think about it, and I’ll be back soon.”
Adrian then went to the second prisoner and repeated the same instructions, then sent Clif in to question him. Adrian returned to the first prisoner. Adrian removed his gag and held a canteen to the man’s mouth, letting him have two long drinks.
Adrian said, “Okay, we’ll start with your name, then where you’re from and how you joined this band of raiders. Then you’ll tell me everything there is to know about them—how many there are, how they’ve trained, what their tactics are, the ultimate goal of the group, everything you know about the leader, and anything else you think I would find useful or interesting. You should realize that if you try to go back to your group, they’ll know by now that you were taken prisoner and will not believe you if you tell them you didn’t talk. They’ll torture you to find out what you said and may have learned while here. So holding back will do you no good. Your best bet is to tell me everything, then get turned loose and hope that I use your information to kill all of them so you don’t run into any of them later on down the road. Oh, and one other small thing. Your buddy has already started talking up a storm in the other room. You’re behind. I’ll be comparing notes on what you two are saying. Any—and I mean any—differences between your stories, and out come the tools. Got that?”
The first prisoner nodded and began talking, his words coming out so fast that they were tripping over each other. “My name is Gerald Franklin. I’m from Baton Rouge. I joined up with Rex’s gang about a year ago. They were—”
Adrian interrupted. “Rex? Rex who?”
“Rex Gambian,” Gerald replied.
Adrian felt a cold chill run down his spine like a shock wave, and he came as close to feeling fear as he was capable of. He said in a steady voice, “Continue.” While the prisoner talked on, Adrian sat quietly, barely hearing him. He picked up what was said, but only in a background way. Nothing else the prisoner said was of much value, nothing his own scouts hadn’t reported. As soon as he heard the name ‘Rex Gambian,’ Adrian knew everything he needed to know, and it was bad news.
After Gerald seemed to have run down, Adrian said, “All right. In a minute, another man will be in here and you’ll start over from the beginning.” Adrian left the room, shutting the door behind him. He went over to the other prisoner’s room and entered. Clif had been interrogating this prisoner using the same procedure. Clif looked up at him, and Adrian could tell by his grim expression that he had already heard about Rex.
Adrian picked two men and briefed them on what the prisoners had said. “Now, go in there and make them start over and interrupt them often by picking on details. Go back and forth with the questions; don’t get into a rhythm. Try to trip them up. Dig out all the details you can, take notes, and when you’ve wrung them out as much as you can, come see me.”
Adrian told Linda, “Get all the key people to meet us at Roman’s house. We have a lot to talk about.”
When they were all gathered in Roman’s living room, Adrian said, “Linda, you taking those prisoners was far more valuable than I would have ever imagined. You got us some extremely important information. Good work. The key information is that the raiders are led by Rex Gambian.”
All of Adrian’s Army buddies’ faces fell at the news, all but Clif, who just continued to look grim.
“Rex? That psychotic son of a bitch? Jeeesus,” Bollinger growled.
Lind asked, “Who’s this Rex?”
Adrian said, “Bollinger, you tell them.”
Bollinger replied, “I hate to foul my mouth with that name. He was a sergeant over in Company E. He led a group just like Adrian did, going out on the same kind of assignments. He’s a stone cold psycho killer of the worst kind. The only emotion he ever showed was a violent hatred of Adrian. He was jealous of Adrian, eaten up with it, always trying to outdo him in every way. He was in constant competition with Adrian, although Adrian ignored him. He was obsessed, tried to kill Adrian once in a bar and almost succeeded. He shouldn’t have been in the Army at all—too insane—but command group was willing to use that cold bastard, and I’ll admit he ran very good operations. An IQ off the charts, but he’s a psychotic genius killer, not someone you really want to keep around as a pet. He trained with us, knows everything we know, knows how we think and how we act and react. This is, without a doubt, the worst news we could have heard.”
Adrian said, “This is all beginning to make sense now. I’m the reason they are coming straight here. I’m guessing he heard those damn stories on the ham net about me and it flared up his obsession again. The reason he has been taking his time getting here, burning everything along the way, must have been to draw me back here. Had to have been. He knew I was in Colorado, and that it would take time for word to get to me and then for me to come back. He’s not coming here for the food and women; he’s coming here for me. He is definitely that crazy. That man hates me with every molecule in his body. He probably told his men they were coming to a land of plenty, ripe and easy pickings. He’s kept them half-starved and made sure everyone in the countryside was willing to kill them. It’s kept the men in line; they’d be too scared to desert, knowing how everyone in the countryside feels about them. Now that they are almost here, it’s do or die for them. If they don’t take this village, they’ll starve to death, and they know it. It’s classic psychopathic manipulation.”
Adrian said, “If there was a way to get him one on one, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
John replied, “Won’t happen. He knows that you would kill him, so he won’t let it happen that way. He wants you dead, but he wants to be alive afterwards, too. Besides, even if you removed him, we would still have to deal with his men; they will likely starve if they don’t take the village, and they know it.”
Bollinger said, “With Rex in the lead, we can pretty well guess what he’ll do, how he’ll move his men around.”
Adrian replied, “We’ll know what he will do, but he will know what we will do, too. It’s like a chess match: trying to outguess the opponents moves several steps ahead based on what they know of each other’s game style. We can throw some surprises at each other, but how many and how effective?
“We have different strengths and weaknesses. His strengths are that his men have fought and maneuvered together for a long time, they have to take the village or starve, and they have no base that has to be defended. His weaknesses are that his men are hungry and maybe a little weak from that, their ammunition supply probably can’t sustain a lengthy battle, and his men’s motivation may not stop desertions when they find out it’s going to be a hard, brutal fight they don’t have much chance of winning. They won’t be used to the kind of fighting they’re about to see. I doubt they’ve ever been up against anything remotely like what we’re about to throw at them.
“Our weaknesses are that our men haven’t had enough training, haven’t fought in a pitched battle, don’t have all that much more ammunition, and haven’t worked together before. Our strengths, on the other hand, are formidable. We are fighting for our family’s survival, we are well fed and strong, we have trained as realistically as possible and are well organized. Plus our men, while not exactly battle hardened, are all grid survivors and tough as nails. Not many weaklings survived this long after the grid.
“I’d say that on the field it’s a pretty even match, except for their numbers. We have to overcome their numbers and their other strengths by being faster and more effective than they are. Simply put, we can win if we strike hard and fast and out of nowhere.
Roman said, “Get the ambush team moving before daylight. I want you to start hitting them as soon as you can; small, quick strikes, then fade back, regroup, and hit again somewhere else. Put those bastards in a bind. Your job is to slow them down, keep them busy, and to kill as many as you can in the process, but the primary goal remains slowing them down. Linda, begin the process of evacuating the villagers to the secondary location. Clif, notify the main assault force to be ready to move out at noon tomorrow. Get extra scouts moving out tonight, I want position reports as fast and as often as you can get them. We should be in position to hit them hard in two days, on our terms and on our choice of terrain.”
Before dark that evening, Linda and Clif tied the two prisoners together as before and led them north from the village. After traveling a mile Clif gave Linda the nod and they quietly pulled their pistols. Clif told the men, “Ok, this is where we release you. When the blindfolds are off, just keep going the direction you’re facing until you are a hell of a long way from here, then you can untie yourselves.” With that, Clif put his pistol just behind his prisoner’s head, and Linda, seeing what he was doing, did the same. Clif fired, and Linda fired a split second later. The two bodies crumpled straight down without a twitch.
Clif gave Linda a long, searching look. Seeing no sign of remorse or guilt in her face, he said, “Let’s head back.”
Linda followed him back to the village. She was amazed at how she felt. It was as though she had done nothing more than shoot a snake in the garden.