Author's note: Still a sexy tale, but with a hearty helping of action and intrigue thrown in for readers who are into that sort of thing. It ran a bit longer than I had planned, but sometimes it seems my muse is a marathon runner. Enjoy, and as always, your ratings and comments are very much appreciated.
* * *
I glanced at the caller ID on my phone, answered the call.
"Hey, Cap, what's the occasion?" I asked. The caller was an old Army buddy of mine, Jason Lang. He made it to Captain, served six and got out. I did the whole twenty before getting out. We stayed tight throughout it all, us and a few of the guys from our old unit. Jason went back to college, got his master's in Political Science and was elected Governor seven years ago. Talk about riding a meteor. That was a hell of a victory party, what I remember of it, anyway. When you're hungover for three days, you know it was a hell of a party.
"Gabriel!" came the voice at the other end. "You picked up, so I assume you're back stateside."
"Been back three days, now," I returned.
"How was it?"
"Ahh, you know. Same shit, different faces." Eighteen days in fucking El Salvador. Pretty ladies, but a seriously fucked up culture and politics. Their normal ain't my normal, that's for damn sure. We did our recon, gathered intel, and dealt with the target. I'm just happy I didn't get the squirts this time.
"Well, my friend," Jason replied, "I'm glad you're back safe."
"Thanks, Cap," I said. "Is everything cool? I know you're crazy busy most of the time." The phone was quiet for a few seconds.
"Yeah, probably," he began, "but the whole 'father's paranoia' thing is messing with me."
"Did something happen to Tara?" I asked, concerned. Tara was Jason's only child, now twenty. Throughout her childhood, I was always
Uncle Gabe
to her, a role that I cherished. Women in my life came and went, none feeling right for any kind of lasting relationship, so Tara was probably the closest thing to a daughter that I'll ever have in my life.
"No... no. It's just, Gabe, I hate like hell to ask this, I know you just got back..."
"No worries," I interrupted, "I'm already getting bored. What's the issue?"
"Well, you know how frustrated she's been the last few years about being the Governor's kid, right?"
"Oh, yes," I chuckled, "she's been very clear about her feelings on the matter."
"That's a nice way of putting things," Jason continued. "So, she's got this new boyfriend, now, kinda light in the ass if you ask me, but I'm not the one who has to hang out with him. Anyway, she got it in her head that she and Pee-Wee want to go camping -- like normal people, she says -- and threw a tantrum over ditching her security detail. Gabe, it's not a good time for any of us to be without security, right now. I got several death threats for refusing to pardon Enrico Zavala, and these dickheads are highly insane and unpredictable." True. Guatemalan drug lords may talk a lot of shit, but on any given Tuesday they can send a wagonload of shit to your front porch.
"So, how'd the conversation play out?"
"Well, she's got a lot of her mother in her," Jason explained.
"Meaning you lost?" I asked, even though I knew the answer. Tara's mom, Donna, was Jason's first wife. Donna always won their disagreements. Always. Donna was as brilliant as she was beautiful, and that's saying a lot. Jason lost her to cancer five years back.
"Yeah," he confessed, "I lost. She said she's an adult, now, and can pretty much decide things for herself. She and her man-child are heading off tomorrow to some double-top-secret campsite, someplace remote where her security team can't stop by to check on her."
"Is there such a place," I laughed.
"Hell, no. But, if I do send them in and she spots them, she will lose her fucking mind and I'll never hear the end of it."
"So, what you need is a security team of one, someone who won't be spotted." I didn't need to see Jason's face to know he was smiling.
"Gabe, that's exactly what I need."
* * *
Tara and her boyfriend left the Governor's estate around nine o'clock the next morning. I followed his pickup from a discreet distance as they drove odd patterns all over the city, presumably to see if her security team was behind them. Before hitting the highway, they stopped at Walmart for last minute goodies. I made good use of the time to put a magnetic tracker in his wheel well. From that point on, it was a simple matter to follow them, staying a couple miles behind the boyfriend's truck.
When Tara told her father she planned to go someplace remote, she was serious. In a state park, they turned off the paved road onto a very rough, seldom used dirt path that led straight into the heart of some heavily forested, somewhat rough terrain. I held back as they crawled through the woods in his little Toyota truck, taking nearly an hour to go the six miles to their campsite. When I saw that the tracker had stopped, I moved forward in my Jeep.
Three miles out, I stopped and set up early warning sensors on trees that flanked the road, and a mile later I began placing a series of trail cams in quarter-mile intervals. A mile from their camp, I found a slight break in the trees where I could back my Wrangler a few hundred feet off the trail. I pulled my gear from the back and draped the vehicle with a camo net and some fallen branches. In a spot that was clear of overhead foliage, I set out my second-favorite toy, a quiet running drone with remarkable range, a kickass zoom and infrared ability. Already in my tactical clothing, I geared up with an ammo belt and mag holders, vest, helmet and tactical pack. I grabbed my rifle, my favorite toy, and headed out. Paralleling the trail but staying well away from it, I moved in on their campsite, stopping two hundred yards out.
For some time, I watched them, marveling at how my little Tara had grown up. Her silky, brunette hair was long and luxurious, a perfect match for her lovely, brown-eyed girl-next-door face. Toned and graceful, she was a joy to behold. Tara's C-cup breasts were pert and fabulously placed, with no discernible sag, and at only twenty years old she already had full, womanly hips and a gorgeous ass. Silently, I cussed myself for noticing, but how could any man not notice?
Setting up their tent seemed to be challenging, but they were determined to have a place to play in. By late afternoon the tent was up, fully stocked with their nighttime necessities, and the boyfriend actually set up a campfire worthy of photographing for a scouting handbook. I was already in my ghillie suit and had done system checks on the trail cams by the time they were cooking hot dogs over the fire.
I made a comfy spot to sit at the base of a tall cedar. Even without the directional mic I was using, I could hear them laughing and carrying on. Still, it proved useful. I learned that the boyfriend's name was Trevor, and that he suspected Tara's dad didn't like him, much. Not a total idiot, I suppose. With nearly an hour of sunlight left, I watched them enter the tent, giggling like a pair of middle-schoolers. They talked about where they had put the condoms, and when Tara told him she wanted to see his cock, well, that's when I aimed the mic back up the road in the opposite direction. I loved Tara dearly, and that was not something I wanted to listen to.
By midnight, the only sounds I could detect coming from the tent was that of someone snoring. I hoped it was Trevor. I heard an owl, and a raccoon scuttling about nearby. When a family of deer tripped the motion sensors on one of the trail cams, I watched on my phone as they cautiously went about their business. Around two a.m., I heard the distant huffing of a grizzly. It was probably a mile or more out, but I slid my rifle from its pouch and attached a thermal zoom optic into place. My.300 Win Mag AR was state of the art and would make short work of the bear if it got too close to the tent. I pulled the suppressor for the rifle from my pack and threaded it on. No sense in waking them up if the big predator needed to be dealt with.
It was quite a while before I heard the bear, again, this time sounding even further away. I let myself relax a bit, to breathe in the fresh night air and enjoy a swig of Kentucky bourbon from my flask. I was reflecting upon what a nice night it was when the three-mile sensors tripped. I pulled up the first trail cam on my phone, waited to see what was coming down the trail. More deer, perhaps? I waited. No, not deer this time. A dark SUV with several passengers was creeping down the trail, engine idling, lights off. A half-mile from Tara's camp, it stopped. I scoped them with my rifle and watched silently as three armed men got out and started toward the tent, one on the trail and one on either side, moving through the trees. A fourth man stayed behind, waiting in the driver's seat of the vehicle.
I remained perfectly still, watching as the three came on line with me, then passed by. I waited for them to get a hundred feet down the trail before I started moving forward, heading to a spot that was to their rear but did not put the tent in my line of fire. At the campsite, the two flankers emerged from the tree line and walked into the clearing, posting as security as the center man closed on the front of the tent, holding his rifle at the ready.
One, two, three... one, two, three...
ONE! TWO! THREE! The three men were down. I rushed toward the trail, found a clear line of sight to the SUV, braced against a friendly tree and took out the driver. Now, the suppressor on my AR helps reduce noise and muzzle flash a good deal, but it can only do so much with a supersonic round. Tara and Trevor were awake. I turned and ran for the camp, hoping to get there before the screaming started, but I got there too late. That Trevor was quite the screamer. The moon was nearly full and cast considerable light, and when Trevor saw me racing in their direction, a creepy forest monster in a ghillie suit, he ran screaming into the woods behind their camp. Tara looked like she would have followed him if she hadn't been paralyzed in terror.
Running into their camp, I pushed back the top of the suit, showing Tara it was me. She shook with disbelief, eyes wide.
"Uncle Gabe?" she questioned, still in shock from the dead bodies that littered the campsite. "Wha-what the..." she glanced around, again. "What the fuck is this!?!"
"
This
," I explained, "is why you should always listen to your father. Security teams exist for a reason, Tara, and this is the reason." I checked the three men for a pulse and found none. The two Hispanics I didn't recognize, but the Caucasian looked familiar. I motioned Tara over. "Hon, do you recognize any of these men?" When she looked at the Caucasian, her eyes lit up.
