Dan and the Bottle

Ok, folks, as promised, here's the next part. I know, each part is taking a bit longer, but it's getting tougher to write, too.... I promise, though, there are still a fair few installments to go, and I'm starting to see how this will eventually end up. I hope you enjoy it, and look forward to any comments you may leave, good or bad.

Oh, by the way.... as previously noted, I am not politically correct, and I am a strict Constitutional libertarian. If that offends you, to be honest, I don't care.

Part 12

Karl Mitchell rubbed at his eyes, wondering if he could believe what he was seeing. This wasn't some Chinese soldier, that much was clear. The uniform was all wrong, for one thing, and the load bearing suspenders appeared to be old US military....Very old. He kept his hands away from his weapons as he and the stranger approached each other.

"Who the hell are you, mister?"

Gene grinned and replied "A friend, if you're an American.... but if you're workin' for the Chinese, I'm your worst fuckin' nightmare!"

"Uh huh.... I've heard that there song before. Can you prove that?"

"Not really... but I can't really think of a way to disprove it, either."

"So where does that leave us?"

"Beats me... I guess we can either shake hands and get acquainted, or throw down. I'll leave the choice to you."

They closed the distance between them and studied each other as they came face to face. Gene held his hand out, empty, and introduced himself.

"Gene Dickinson... Wyoming State Militia."

"Karl Mitchell.... Jackson Hole rebels."

"Well, then.... sounds like we're on the same side."

Mitchell eyed the other scouts coming out of the warehouse behind Gene warily, seeing the men were heavily armed and apparently were no strangers to a fight, and nodded, more as a survival instinct than an agreement.

Gene smiled... "You look like you've been through a bit. Anything your boys need help with?"

"We ran up on a base, about fifteen miles from here; lost quite a few good men... if you've got a decent medic around, we have a few guys who could use a bit of patchin' up."

Gene looked over his shoulder at his men, nodding, and Mark Dennison stepped forward.

"Lead me to 'em, guy."

Gene and three more of the scouts went along with them, ensuring Mark's safety, and they walked over to the abandoned house to see what was what. Karl walked in first, and the five men already inside were reaching for weapons as they filed inside; he gave a hand gesture, telling his boys to stand down. This was a fight he knew for a fact they couldn't win.

Mark looked over the five wounded men carefully, over the next hour, removing a bullet from one man's arm, setting the broken bone and putting on a splint before bandaging it, using up nearly a full jar of antibiotic ointment, and giving several injections of antibiotics and painkillers, besides, bandaging up the rebels as best he could.

Gene and his team handed the men a few of their ration bars, each, while asking questions about the Chinese base. They soon learned that this base was on a state of high alert; possibly because of their own actions against the last few bases the Cavedwellers had seen to. The rebels had walked into an ambush, and had lost their CO and eleven other men in the fight. They hadn't even gotten a chance to retrieve the bodies, or their weapons.

This group was carrying a hodgepodge; one had an old bolt-action hunting rifle, two others had AK's, one had a shotgun with most of the stock cut off and the barrel cut down a few inches, the fourth had three different pistols, and the last guy had what appeared to be an old Ruger .22 and a Desert Eagle .50 caliber pistol. He was the one who spoke up.

"You guys got any ammo to spare?"

Gene looked over their weapons. "Not for most of those, no... we've got some extra .45 ACP, but our rifles are all .223 and .270. "

The man with the three pistols looked up at this. "Could you spare a few of the .45 rounds? I'm down to half a magazine for mine."

Gene pulled the pack off his back, rummaging around in the bottom, and came up with three boxes; fifty rounds apeice. "No problem, guy. Will these do you?"

The other man looked at the three boxes in amazement... factory made, and hollow points, to boot! "Holy shit! Where the hell did you find these!?!"

Gene grinned and lied through his teeth, not wanting to give these men any ideas. "Found 'em in an old hardware store, a ways northwest of here.... hiding under a stack of old newspapers in a stockroom."

"Wow! I haven't seen any factory loads in.... forever!"

"They're out there... hard to find, but not impossible. I kinda found 'em by accident.... I was looking for old newspapers to, uh, take care of some--- other-- 'business', if you know what I mean. Found an old case of them under the papers, with seven of those boxes inside."

The man with the pistols grinned. "I've got a good idea of it, yeah.... old phonebook pages are good for that too."

Gene suddenly put his hand to his ear for a moment. He frowned as he caught the words coming in over his headset.

"Sir, we've got a Chinese patrol coming down the street... a Humvee with two inside, runnin' real slow, and five walkers, checking every building." It was Bill Jackson, who'd stayed behind in the warehouse to keep an eye on the vehicles with the other seven scouts. "Do you want us to take them down?"

"Hold off a minute.... I'm sending Huett out the back, now... I want to know if there are any on the next block." he replied, shooting a look at Phill, who nodded in acknowledgement, turning to the back door with his silenced .45 in his hand.

He was back in less than a minute, nodding to his CO... "Two more Humvees on the next block, with half a dozen walking troops behind them.... I think they're looking for our new friends here. They've got tracking dogs with them, but they're inside of the vehicles."

Gene didn't even have to think about this one. Clicking the throat mic, he told Jackson "Ok... standard op. Hit 'em last to first, silenced rifles. Take out the guys in the Humvees and the mutts last." He shot a look at Huett again, knowing that he'd follow the same orders, and the snipers with his team ran up to the second story of the house, taking up position at the windows facing the street.

They waited until all of the Chinese were within range, firing on the last man in the walking columns first, so as to not tip their hands too soon, but one soldier realized what was happening too soon and managed to get undercover in an old garden shed.

Dickinson grinned at this, reaching back for the M203 grenade launcher that hung from his left shoulder, chambering an incendiary frag round and taking a few dozen steps forward. Taking careful aim, he locked on to the side window of the wooden shed and squeezed the trigger.

His aim was a little off, the projectile just barely sneaking in through the far edge of the window before exploding, eliciting a dying scream from the small building's lone occupant; there must have been some sort of solvent stored inside, because the entire building went up like a torch. He grinned as the screaming reached his ears.

The other half of the enemy patrol came running, and the snipers went back to work. The second Humvee turned the corner, almost coming up on two wheels, and Dickinson helped it along with a high explosive round under the front wheels.... the vehicle flipped over on it's back. Two of the snipers took advantage of this, zeroing in on the vehicle's fuel tanks with tracer rounds, turning it into an inferno as it came to a stop.

The other Humvee rolled along slowly, as the driver and passenger had both been hit with multiple armor piercing rounds, until one of the ground level troopers from Gene's team ran up and tore the door open, pulling the corpse from the driver's seat and reaching for the ignition switch. He got the engine shut off just in time to be grabbed by the teeth of one of the german shepherds, the only living occupant of the vehicle. He jumped backwards and the dog was left with a patch of his sleeve.

He barely got his pistol out as the dog cleared the door, and shot the mutt in the face before it could get a better bite at him.

The third Humvee rolled around the corner, at speed, but barely got past the second house before the snipers took it out, as well, their .270 armor piercing rounds turning the windshield into something resembling swiss cheese.

Karl Mitchell watched the men, stunned at their efficiency; in less than four minutes, they'd taken out a Chinese patrol without losing a single man, and now had a spare Humvee to boot!

Dickinson saw the look on the man's face and grinned. "I believe you gentlemen were saying something about being low on ammo?"

Mitchell grinned back at him, shooting looks at two of his men who weren't wounded, and the three of them ran outside to strip the dead Chinese of weapons, ammunition, field rations, and other equipment.

Within twenty minutes, they were staggering under their loads. Both of the Humvees had been carrying full containers of extra ammunition as well as numerous Chinese grenades and RPG's.

Dickinson clicked his throat mic, telling his team to do a quick clean up behind them, moving the bodies to the basement of one of the abandoned houses, piling up boxes of junk on top of them and leaving them to rot.

Within another hour, they had the enemy Humvees hidden in empty garages, the fire had burned itself out, and the men from both the militia and the rebels had moved to another section of the small suburban town, to the stockroom of a small clothing store. They propped the back door open to vent the small building, got out several camp stoves, and the two teams shared a meal while Gene Dickinson and Karl Mitchell talked off to one side.

Mitchell looked over the men as he thought through his words.

"Ok, Gene, we've got to send some men back to report to our CO; the thing is, what do we tell him? That we got our asses hauled outta the fire by a State Militia group? He'd think we were all eatin' some of them funny mushrooms!"

Gene grinned at this.

"Well, how about we do this.... you guys stay here for a few days; we have to scout that base that you boys got shot up at. We'll be back in two, three days, tops, and we'll trade a few men... one or two of yours can come back to our base, talk to our CO, and one or two of ours can go back with you guys, talk to your CO. Maybe we could team up, share intel and resources. I've got a few satellite phones in the trucks; our commander sent 'em along in case we got into trouble we couldn't handle. I can give one to the guys who go back with you, and our CO's can hash it out between them after this op is over and done with."

Mitchell nodded, hand on his chin as he thought it over.

"You realize that's one big fuckin' base, right?"

"How big?"

Mitchell reached over to a pile of old wire coat hangers, straightened one out, and used it to draw a big L-shaped box in the dust on the floor.

"Guard towers at every corner, with lights and machine guns... three men on each of two levels of each one; two of 'em have rifles with scopes. Roving patrols with dogs, looked like Dobies, Shepherds, and Rottweillers, and they use radios to keep in constant contact. From the number of barracks, I'd guess there are probably a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred men on that base. It's going to be a rough one for your people, make no mistake. They've got three of those bigass helicopters, and they use 'em.... patrol at least a few times a day, rain or shine. Rifle rounds won't touch 'em, either."

He sat back in thought for a minute, then added "I think they've got something out around the outside of the fences, too... we were still fifty feet from them when the soldiers picked up on us.... they knew we were there, in the middle of the night. They opened up on us without warning.... we went runnin', but not before they tagged a few of us, as you saw."

Gene sat back, digesting this before asking "Did you see any sign they had prisoners?"

Mitchell nodded, pointing to one area of the drawing.

"Prisoner barracks here.... south western corner. They've got about fifty women in there, use 'em for sex. Local girls, mostly.... they raid the surrounding towns for them.... and anything else they want--food, building materials, slaves, you name it. I think some of 'em are perverts... they also take a few small kids."

Mitchell looked up from the drawing and cringed.... the look on Gene's face would have frightened a demon. He had absolutely no use for child molesters.

They talked for two more hours, Gene taking out a note pad and writing down several pages of notes, including copying the crude drawing in the dirt to the last detail. A plan was already beginning to form in his mind, but he didn't want to say too much, too soon.

Maybe it was time for the Wyoming State Militia to show off a bit of it's air power.

He and three men from his team left that night, long after nightfall, with one of the rebels along as a guide. It was a bit cramped in the Humvee, even without the supplies that they'd unloaded from the cargo area, but it cut the time traversing the distance to the enemy base to a matter of a twenty minute drive, even with the headlights off, slowing to a crawl in some spots to get around the old wrecked cars and trucks in the roads.

Half a mile from the base, they found a quiet suburb to hide the big truck in, taking the last bit of distance on foot, staying well back from the place but well within the range of their cameras.

The base was well lit, and these guards appeared to be much more attentive than any they'd encountered up to this point; the searchlights were sweeping the area outside the fences regularly, and walking patrols inside the camp were both numerous and frequent. Gene counted a full ten guard towers, and the men occupying them were attentive and alert.

They took several hundred photos of the base, working their way around it slowly, taking their time and making sure to get overlapping shots of the entire perimeter, taking particular note of the hanger and motor pool, and a smaller building that all of the power cables ran to, with a big above ground fuel tank beside it... obviously a big, heavy duty diesel generator, possibly more than one.

Even as he took dozens of pictures and several pages of notes, Gene was already formulating a plan to destroy this base.

The only part that worried him was the possibility that they wouldn't have any way to save the prisoners; he had never liked the idea of collateral damage, if there was any way to avoid it.

On the plus side, the barracks where the female prisoners were kept was close to the fence; the downside was that it was in clear view of not one but two guard towers, and foot patrols passed by it frequently. They could, conceivably, take out the guards in those two towers with snipers, cut a big hole in the fence, and have the women cut loose and running out of the building relatively quickly; but there were still the foot patrols and whatever had tipped off the Chinese to the rebel's presence the other day.

Quite aside from all of that, the women were unlikely to be in much shape to run; at the last base they'd hit, the women had barely been able to walk.

Karl Mitchell sat alongside of Gene, barely inside of the treeline, answering questions as best he could and marveling at how his Militia counterpart's mind worked. Gene asked questions he himself might never have thought of.

He also noticed things Karl hadn't; like the small building all of the heavy wires ran from, that had the twin chimneys coming up out of the roof. He'd never have guessed that building provided the base with it's electricity; but to be fair, his experience with electrical power was limited, at best.

After two full days of taking pictures, observing, timing the Chinese patrols, and gathering as much intel as they could, they all pulled back, again relocating to another small town, further back from the base and outside of the patrol range of the enemy.

This small suburban town had a sporting goods store, and they searched it thoroughly, coming up pretty much empty, until one of the rebels found a concealed trapdoor in the floor under the counter leading into a hidden basement room. There, they hit a jackpot.

It had, apparently, been the owner's private stash, and the owner of this little shop had clearly been a bit of a rebel himself; there were numerous rifles and pistols, and some of the AR-15s had been converted to select fire weapons.

There were well over fifty cases of ammunition of every description, as well as all manner of survival supplies, everything from camouflage clothing to tents to small 'pellet' fueled camp stoves with boxes of fuel and cases of military rations... MREs, mostly, along with dozens of cases of dehydrated foods. These, of course, were suspect, being nearly two centuries old; still, Karl peeled back the foil cover on one of the cans, marked as 'Beef stroganoff' (though he couldn't read it), opened the foil bag inside, took a small amount out on his fingertip, and let it expand on his tongue. It tasted wonderful.

Gene saw the look on his face and asked "May I?"

Karl handed over the big can reluctantly; then watched as Gene poured a small amount into his canteen cup, added a bit of water, and watched as the food reconstituted itself. Setting it on top of one of the pellet stoves, he lit up one of the pellets and allowed it to heat up for a few minutes, gave it a couple of quick stirs with his knifepoint, then handed the cup to Gene by the handle and said "Careful, it's hot." while handing him a fork from one of the mess kits from another shelf.

Karl took a small bite of the beef and noodle concoction and smiled.... his lads would eat well tonight!

They fired up two more of the small stoves, and pulled a mess kit from the shelves for every man there, emptying the big can and two more just like it, and every man there ate his fill before they posted guards for the night and bedded down, closing the trapdoor leading to the shop above and settled in.

In the morning, they saw to it that all of the rebels were outfitted with new weapons and plenty of ammunition, stout military boots and clean camo clothing, packs, mess kits, canteens, web gear, proper holsters for their sidearms, backpacks for their mess kits, rations, and extra boxes of ammunition, and pellets for the small pellet stoves that several of them would take along, along with numerous fighting knives, magnesium firestarters, and all manner of other survival gear.

Gene sent Phil Huett and Mark Tanner back with the rebels; they would drive one of their Humvees and the one they'd taken from the Chinese patrol back, along with one of the satellite phones.

Jim sat in his living room with Bob Gunderson and Art Perry, explaining what he had in mind, and both of them agreed that letting the produce go to waste was a bad idea... they would get some of the adults from their respective villages together and have the fields harvested in a few days, max. Art was all in favor of doing the same with their fields and gardens to the north, of course; he and his people had put a lot of work into them, and they weren't any too happy about letting those months of work go to waste.

On the subject of some of them moving out to help the next village they 'liberated', they were a bit more reticent. Even with the prospect of some of the Cavedwellers coming along, bringing with them a small arsenal of both light and heavy weapons, and truckloads of other supplies, they still feared the possibility of Chinese attacks.

They would both have to have long talks with their people about any sort of arrangement like this. Of course, there was always the possibility of relocating all of them to another suburban setting, closer to the Cave, which sounded like a better idea.