Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Restoration

Edwards turned to the First Sergeant and spoke loud enough for the Team to hear.

“Sergeant, you are my witness. “These men—irregulars who assert I have no command over them—are going into the woods against my orders. They have acknowledged that they’re on their own. I wash my hands of them.”

“Yes, sir,” the First Sergeant said.

Pow turned on his weapon light. It lit up an amazing swath with its 110 lumen Surefire. The rest of the Team did the same. It suddenly became easy to see.

And easy for the enemy to see them. The Team knew it.

“We made a pact,” Bobby said to the Team. “We don’t leave anyone behind and we take care of each other’s families.” The Team started to think about Kellie and the baby she and Wes were expecting.

“I couldn’t look Kellie in the eye,” Scotty said, “and tell her I didn’t go out to get Wes.”

The Team started to move out into the woods.

Not very well. It was pitch dark and their weapon light almost over-illuminated the woods. They were getting blinded by their lights. And their weapons lights couldn’t light up the foliage at their feet unless they constantly swept their rifles up and down. Their arms were going to get tired from all the sweeping of their rifles to see their way.

They had no idea where they were going or how to get back to the road. They knew that, in general, they needed to go downhill to find Wes, and they needed to go uphill to get back to the road.

Bobby thought about how he had punched the gas when they got ambushed. A heavy sense of remorse came over him. He shouldn’t have done that, or he at least should have realized Wes might not be braced back there. But when all those machine gun rounds came at them, Bobby just punched the gas. There was no time to think, only act. He knew it was crazy, but he felt like this was his fault.

Ryan was also feeling a sense of guilt. He should have been ready to catch Wes. If he’d caught him, Wes would be here right now. If something bad had happened to Wes, he’d have no one to blame but himself.

By now, it had been almost a half hour since the firefight and when Wes must have fallen out of the truck. They wanted to get into those woods and find him.

Bobby checked his dump pouch, the pouch on his kit where he put empty magazines. He had two in there which meant he was two mags down out of a total of seven.

“Could we grab a couple of mags from you?” Bobby yelled back to Edwards.

“Why the fuck not?” Edwards said, bitterly. “You disobey my orders and now you want stuff from me. First Sergeant, get them replacement magazines. Anything else you ladies want? A pedicure?”

Despite being pissed at these guys for disobeying his orders, Edwards understood why they were doing what they were doing. He had a moral obligation to provide them with the magazines. At the very least, he knew that the Team would be flushing out Limas and not interfering with Bravo’s mission of sealing off the two entry and exit points into Watershed Park. Edwards hated to admit it, but the Team had been useful getting Bravo Company to Watershed Park. He didn’t need them anymore. They could go do stupid shit on their own.

The First Sergeant came up to the Team and gave two magazines to each man. The Team changed their partially used magazines out and inserted new ones.

They finally started out into the woods. No one said anything as they got a few yards off the road into the woods. It was almost impossible to move because it was pitch black and the brush was so thick. They had a point man illuminate the woods with his weapon light while everyone else behind him used their weapons lights to light up the ground in front of them and navigate through the brush and trees. It was hard work to move a few yards.

Ryan put Wes’ rifle over his shoulder as he walked through the woods so he could give it to Wes when they found him. He couldn’t wait to give it to him.

“Take point, dude,” Pow said to Ryan, who was much better at moving through the woods with people trying to kill him since he’d done it before as a Marine. The rest of the Team was pretty good at urban stuff, but not this. It was new to them, and it showed.

They moved slowly. The streams of light looked like the Star Wars light sabers when they went into the brewery for the first time. The trees and bushes threw off ghoulish and frightening shadows, like a scene from a movie.

They occasionally heard bushes move or twigs snap. Twice they saw glimpses of moving shapes that looked like people. There were definitely people in the woods, and they were trying to kill the Team.

This was the most afraid they’d ever been, except for Ryan. This was as frightening for him as a couple of times in Afghanistan.

Ryan stopped suddenly. He gave the signal, a clenched fist, to stop. Ryan stared ahead, trying to see, but the weapons’ lights had destroyed his night vision. There was definitely something up ahead, something strangely bright.

Finally, Ryan turned around and whispered, “Lights up ahead.” He peered at them some more. “Stationary lights.”

Ryan signaled that he’d go ahead and look some more and that the rest of the Team should sit tight. He quietly moved ahead, but only got about twenty-five yards until he turned and motioned for the Team to come up to him. “Looks like an outbuilding or something,” Ryan whispered.

“The rest area,” Bobby said. He had been in this park before, a couple of years ago and remembered a rest area on the trail.

“Yeah,” Ryan whispered, “That’s what it looks like it could be.”

“Let’s go check it out,” Pow whispered. They started toward it with Ryan still on point and a few yards ahead of them.

They got about fifty yards when Ryan suddenly gasped. “Oh God!” he said loudly. “No!”

The Team rushed up to him. Then they saw it.

Wes was hanging from the light post at the rest area, dangling and swaying in the wind. He was hanging from a rope like a criminal, like Frankie, the meth head, they hung at Pierce Point. Wes’ body was absolutely still. His life had been taken out of him; it was just his body swaying on that rope. It was strangely silent, the rustling wind being the only sound.

They heard some bushes moving very close by and quickly clicked their safeties off. A person suddenly flew out of the bushes and started running away. Pow was scanning the area by looking through his Aim point red-dot sight. He saw the movement and put the red dot on the shape of the person running away.

“Boom! Boom!” Pow put a quick double-tap into the person running away. The others swung around and got some rounds off in the general direction of the movements.

Pow ran toward the person he’d shot, with Scotty and Bobby following him. Ryan headed straight for Wes.

When he got up to him, Ryan looked up and could see that Wes had been beaten. His face looked purple in the sodium lights of the rest area. He was just hanging there, limp, vacant. With a smile on his face. A smile.

Ryan grabbed a garbage can from the rest area to use to climb up to Wes. Once he got up to him, he unsuccessfully tried to find a pulse. Wes was still warm. Ryan tried again, but could not find a pulse in him. He must have been hanged just a little while ago. Wes was dead. Ryan held him.

“I should have braced you, man,” Ryan cried. “I should have braced you.” Ryan remembered how Wes was just standing in the back of the truck; Ryan could have done something. Ryan realized how easy it would have been to hold onto Wes, but Ryan was busy ducking the machine gun tracers. Ryan looked at Wes and remembered all they’d done together. He remembered the first time he met Wes, his rich North Carolina drawl, his overpowering love for Kelli, their plans for a baby. Ryan could see all things in life Wes would never experience — a baby, training wheels on a bike with his child, high school graduation, his child getting married, and then growing old with Kelli. Ryan was overcome with the feeling that just a few minutes ago, Wes was alive and had his whole life ahead of him. Now he was a beaten corpse swinging on a rope. His life had been taken. Taken. Stolen.