299 Days: The Restoration

Chapter 296 Coyote Bait

Jim Q. was up on the fourth floor since the radio reception was better and it was the hub of activity.

“Make sure HQ doesn’t know of any friendlies around here,” Sap said to him. Jim Q. started talking into his radio in his weird language. One word of English slipped out: “brewery.” Apparently there was no word in their language for a brewery, which made sense, given what part of the world his people were from.

“Still walking down the street,” Barlow said. “Right in the middle of the street, not even trying to take cover. Just strolling down the street and getting ripped.”

“No known friendlies in the area,” Jim Q. said. “But, then again, HQ doesn’t claim to know where everyone is.”

“They’re kicking a garbage can,” Barlow said. “There’s no way they’re ours.”

By now Ted had raced up the stairs. Sap told him what Barlow was seeing.

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Ted said. “We got people out there. Squad 4, right?” Ted asked Sap. Sap nodded.

“They got a radio?” Ted asked. Sap nodded again.

“Tell them to take these jackasses out if, but only if, they come towards us,” Ted said matter-of-factually. “Tell everyone else to be on alert. Once the bang bang starts, we’ll attract a lot of attention, which is what I’m trying to avoid.”

Well, then, Grant thought. This was it. A hot engagement. They got lucky in Frederickson and didn’t have to start shooting. But now, with these drunken jackasses strolling toward them, they were on the edge of their first real combat. Months of training were about to be tested. At least they were taking on a handful of drunken thugs. “Always avoid a fair fight,” Ted used to tell the Team before the Collapse. This certainly would not be a fair fight. Good.

“Two hundred yards,” Barlow said. “They’re at the intersection.” Grant knew exactly where the drunken Limas were. During peacetime, he had gone through that intersection — Capitol Boulevard and North Street — a thousand times on his way home. It was near the Baskin Robbins where he used to take the kids. That felt like a lifetime ago.

“They’re turning left and going down that street,” Barlow said with great relief. That meant they were going down Capitol Boulevard, the big main street that went straight to the capitol campus, which made sense. HQ said that was where the Limas were concentrating. Those clowns must be reinforcements, drunken reinforcements. The Limas were really hurting.

“They’re getting away!” Corporal Sherryton exclaimed. She had come up to the fourth floor observation point after reading the kids bedtime stories.

“Avoiding a fight is a good thing,” Ted replied. In the Special Forces world, where they are usually operating covertly behind enemy lines, avoiding a fight—and thereby remaining undetected—was the goal.

“Sgt. Malloy, could I see you over here?” Grant asked. Once they were out of earshot of the others, Grant said, “I disagree, Ted.”

Grant looked out the window of the fourth floor and could see the drunken idiot Limas at the intersection. “Those guys are going to hurt people,” he told Ted. “They’re a walking time bomb. They’re going to the capitol to reinforce the Limas. We need to take them out. What if they end up killing some of us or other Patriots or civilians? Especially civilians who are unlucky enough to run into them. These thugs might just knock on someone’s door and start killing and raping. We need to take them out. That’s my strategic call. Whether it’s possible and how to do it is your tactical call. So, to be clear, it is ultimately your call. But I want to take them out.”

Ted thought about it and knew that Grant was right. Ted’s years of training and experience of avoiding fights when a unit is trapped in a jungle or desert didn’t apply here. Sure, avoiding a fight was always best, but not if it meant letting those violent bastards walk down the street to kill people.

“Yep,” Ted said, after very little hesitation. “This’ll be easy. A nice little training mission for our green unit,” he said in a whisper.

“Yeah,” Grant said. He knew it sounded sick to be glad they had some easy kills so they could get some blood on their hands, but these Lima gangbangers deserved to die. And the 17th needed the experience.

Grant shrugged. “So what if the Limas know we’re in this brewery? They’re pinned down at the capitol. They can’t do much about us. This isn’t like the kind of war you’ve been trained for where the bad guys can call in an airstrike on your position if it gets known. Besides,” Grant said, “killing douchebags like this is why we came here.” He wasn’t being macho, just telling the truth. Killing shitbags like this was, indeed, exactly why they’d come here.

“Roger that,” Ted said with a nod. “We’re the ‘good police’,” Ted said, referring to the story he heard about Pow’s talk to the kids a few hours before.

Grant and Ted went back over to the group of observers on the fourth floor.

“Okay, we’re going to take them out, despite their best efforts to avoid us,” Ted said.

“How?” Barlow asked. “They’re walking away from us.”

“Coyote bait,” Grant said. Everyone looked at him like he was insane.

“When I hunted coyotes,” Grant quickly explained, “we’d use bait to bring them toward us.” Grant and Ted had worked up this idea about a month ago. Using “bait” to get bad guys to come to them.

“What bait?” Barlow asked.

Grant and Ted looked at Corporal Sherryton, a very attractive twenty-something woman. She was in civilian clothes so she didn’t look like a soldier.

“Sherryton,” Grant said, “you wanna be the bait?”

“Yes, sir!” she said without a pause. She had been eager to get even with thugs after what they had done to her family back in Chicago. It was a different gang, but all part of the same thing. They were the bloodthirsty bastards that the “legitimate government” allowed and even encouraged. She wanted some payback. “Go out there and act like you’re drunk and horny,” Ted said. “They’ll come over to you. Run back toward Squad 4 and they’ll chase you. Once you get them within fifty yards or so of the squad, find some cover and plug your ears.”

“Yes!” Sherryton yelled as she jumped up. She got her coat and looked around for instruction.

Sap said to her, “Follow me.” The two of them ran down the stairs and out to Squad 4 and quickly told them of the plan.

Sap pointed to a big utility box on the street that the Limas would be running down toward them. “That’s your cover.” Sherryton nodded.

“Put your rifle over there behind it,” Sap said. “Go!”

Sherryton took off her AK-47 and hid it in the bushes by the utility box. It was one of the sweet Century Arms C-39s they got from HQ. She made sure the safety was off. She didn’t want to mess with that in a critical time.

She looked up at the intersection and felt a surge of adrenaline. This was it. It was what she’d been working so hard for the last few months. Payback time.