Home Coming (The Survivalist Book 10) by A. American (best business books of all time .TXT) 📗

I took a knee beside the two men. The Cuban looked up at him as he tried to take a drag on the smoke. A fly landed on his face and I waved it away. With the cigarette bouncing, he asked, “agua.” I took a canteen from my belt and opened it. Perez took the cigarette and cradled the man’s head as I slowly poured water into his mouth. He swallowed with much effort and Perez placed the smoke back between his lips. An expression came over his face, almost like a smile but not quite. Then the cigarette fell from his mouth and he was gone.

Without saying a word, Perez and I wandered off on our own missions. I helped Ian and Jamie load a 120-millimeter mortar onto a truck. Along with crates and crates of ammo for it. We had enough of this commie hardware to start an army. Sadly, a lot of our army was killed in the attack on Eustis. But we have everything we need to build one.

However, an army was something I hoped we’d never need again. I prayed that this action, this final task, would remove the need for further such actions. That we’d finally be safe and be able to start rebuilding. Of course, there would always be individuals that would need to be dealt with. But the thought of facing a large organized force was hopefully a thing of the past now.

It was late evening when everything was finally loaded. Mike had prepared a large pile of munitions with explosives we took from the Russians. We lined all the vehicles up, even more now that we found several Russian trucks that ran, on the far side of the lot closest to the highway. Mike stretched out the det cord and prepared the blasting machine.

“Finally!” Mike shouted, “I get to have some real fun!” He was almost giddy as he finalized the task of getting the blasting machine ready for its job.

“Just hurry up and blow this shit already,” Sarge barked. “I want to get home before dark.”

“Oh, I’m gonna blow it!” Mike shouted back over his shoulder. Then he looked around and shouted, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!” Then he twisted the blasting machine and there was a thunderous, earth-shaking explosion.

The primary explosives set off all the ordinance piled under them, sending debris high into the air which then began to rain down on our heads. After the explosion, Sarge kicked Mike’s boot and shouted, “What in the hell? How much demo did you use?”

Mike looked back at the crater in the ground and replied, “Enough I’d say.”

“Too damn much, I’d say!” Sarge countered.

“It’s done,” Ted said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“A sad day,” Dalton lamented.

“How you figure?” Sarge asked.

Dalton nodded towards the crater and said, “Blasting all that fine Russian hardware.”

“You like those commie bastards, don’t you?” Sarge asked.

“Respect, I have respect for them.”

Sarge jerked his chin in the direction of the Colonel. “You got respect for him?”

“I do. He’s a soldier. He was doing his job. Just like we were doing our job. We just did ours a little better.”

Sarge grunted, “You still going to respect him when he’s swinging from a rope?”

“If that’s what it comes to, I’ll tie the knot.”

“You can like them all you want,” I said. “They’re an occupying force on our land. Fuck ‘em all.”

“And how many times have we been the occupiers? How many countries did we go into and kill people and take over their lands. Now, we know what it feels like,” Dalton replied.

“Enough philosophy,” Sarge grumbled. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Put the prisoners in Morgan’s Suburban and let’s head home.”

During the course of our search of the place for weapons, we found two other survivors of the airstrike. One was Cuban and the other was a Russian private. Both men were terrified and offered no resistance when found. Sarge said he was going to call Eglin and let them know we had them; they’d probably want them and would send a helicopter to get them. The men were just an annoyance to me because I had to deal with them until we got rid of them.

I led the men to the truck and opened the back door. Looking at the Colonel, I said, “You give me any trouble and I’ll shoot you in the fucking face. I don’t care if you’re ever interrogated or not. Now turn around.”

He did as instructed, and I used large heavy tie wraps to bind his hands behind his back. The other two were likewise restrained and all three were piled into the back of the truck. Perez volunteered to ride with me, to keep an eye on the prisoners. He sat in the front seat with his back to the door. Much to the chagrin of our guests, he chain-smoked all the way home. They were obviously dying for a smoke and Perez fucked with them by blowing the smoke at them as he smiled like an ass.

We made it home just as it was getting dark. I drove over to the old man’s house to drop off the prisoners. A line of vehicles crowded the road in front of his place as everyone found a spot to park. We eventually cut a section of fence down bordering the pasture across the street from his house and lined all the trucks up there. Perez led the prisoners to the garage where Ted was preparing their accommodations, such as they were. Unlike the previous guests in the garage, these men weren’t going to be hung from the rafters.

Since we didn’t know how long we’d have to hold onto these guys and there really wasn’t anything we needed to know from them, we prepared them for a long stay. Ted drilled a hole in the floor in the middle of the garage and anchored a large