Alistair McIntyre - Shallow Creek

As he bumped the once-clean truck across the barren dirt, Brendan thanked God that no one had installed a fence or a gate back there. That lane was so narrow that he’d never have gotten the truck turned around if an obstruction had forced him back the way he’d come.

A glance in his rear mirror showed nothing but a giant cloud of dust pouring up into the sky. Brendan winced at the thought of some deputy getting smart and deciding to check out his trail, but he’d deal with that if it happened. Force Recon trained him to adapt and react quickly to volatile situations, so it was time to put that education to task.

The edge of the field approached quickly, and Brendan’s aim proved true as the break in the fence appeared to his right. He slowed the truck and carefully maneuvered out onto the trail that would lead to the highway. The cloud behind him settled to a lower altitude as he shot down the gravelly road, and he caught a glimpse of the side of the truck in the side mirror. Kim’s mom was going to be pissed; mud caked every inch of her truck in grime, but hey, weren’t trucks meant for this sort of stuff?

At the highway, Brendan yielded to a couple of big rigs and then darted out in front of a slow-moving RV piloted by a guy who looked like he had one foot in the grave already. Brendan threw a friendly wave in his rearview as he jetted down the highway, but he doubted the old man could see half that far.

Brendan had a couple of hours to kill before he reached the turnoff towards the old cabin he’d vacationed in as a kid. He settled in for a long ride without much to see, but noted the adequate level of his gas tank and the excessive pressure in his bladder. It had been a long day so far, and an opportunity to use the men’s room hadn’t exactly presented itself.

With the lives of two federal agents on the line, that need would have to wait as long as possible, so he focused on the empty landscape surrounding him instead of on the nagging call of nature. As much as Kim’s mom would kill him, Brendan wasn’t above pissing inside her truck if that made the difference between Spee living and dying.

In the Marines, he’d rarely known exactly what was going to happen during a mission, despite the best intel available. Some of the brass claimed a full-blown firefight as evidence that a mission was a complete failure, regardless of the outcome. That applied better with the Army, where they decimated their targets with Apaches and M1 Abrams before the Bradleys rolled in with the ground-pounders. If the enemy still had numbers to fight back at that point, something had gone tango uniform on the op.

Force Recon played by a different set of rules. Even compared to the other branches’ Special Forces units, Force Recon did some crazy ops, and not always intentionally. Delta got into some heavy shit, but they also spent a lot of time going native and subverting the enemy from within. The SEALS were primarily a search and rescue unit, despite a few high-profile encounters that received a lot of publicity. Brendan meant them no disrespect, but rarely did any of those groups dip in behind enemy lines with the expressed purpose to blow some shit up.

The formation of MARSOC, the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, had pulled a lot of the guys out of Force Recon who specialized in direct action, but more than one of Brendan’s green ops had turned black at the drop of a hat, or the drop of an artillery shell. Either way, if some unlucky son of a bitch discovered them on deep recon, the team went weapons hot without hesitation, and the op adopted a no-holds-barred philosophy.

Now Brendan barreled into unknown enemy territory with no eyes on potential hostiles and no backup ready to save his ass should he encounter heavy resistance. On top of that, he had no gun, no knife, no camouflage, and no explosives.

In fairness, that probably evened the odds a little for the bad guys.

Chapter 45

Cigarette smoke marred the clean, natural air of the dry forest. Brendan slowly lowered his body to the ground, only barely disturbing the carpet of leaves. After a few painfully slow movements, Brendan spotted the lone sentry pulling a fresh cigarette from a white and red package. Judging from the amateur mistake of smoking while on guard duty, Brendan fancied his chances against his prey.

The man wore what could only be described as lumberjack apparel: big boots, big hat, flannel shirt, and the prerequisite bushy beard. He leaned lazily against a tree marking one side of presumably the only driveway leading up to the cabin, which looked to be a step up from the cabin Brendan had shared with his brother growing up. Brendan had left his borrowed truck well back and carefully navigated his way through prickly bushes and treacherous poison ivy. He’d spotted and avoided plenty of it as he’d wrestled to his current hiding spot, on the edge of the parking area for the cabin, but he knew the three-leaved bastards weren’t always easy to see, so more than likely his bare arms would develop a hellish rash in a few days.

What concerned him now was taking care of the lookout without alerting anyone inside the cabin. No other patrols made rounds while Brendan observed from concealment, so he made his move.

Carefully he stretched out and plucked a fist-sized rock from the grass next to him. The ever-vigilant sentry yawned loudly and shuffled his feet against the gravel driveway. He faced away from Brendan, staring idly down the road. A smarter man would’ve realized that in this almost silent environment, a truck would be heard a mile away, so it was more pertinent to camp out in a secure spot.

That was his loss.

The lumberjack continued to grind the heel of his boot into the gravel. Brendan looked once more at the trucks splayed erratically across the open lot, checking for any unwanted visitors. All was quiet. From his position, Brendan could see the front corner of the cabin, where a large, open porch led to the front door. No activity there either.

Brendan hefted the rock from his prone position. The missile soared majestically into the back of the sentry’s shoulder, knocking him forward a few paces.

“Hey!” the man said, turning to face the parked trucks. “Is that you again, Jim, you son of a bitch?” He stomped toward a green Chevy regular cab, which happened to be the closest vehicle to Brendan.

The lumberjack walked around the truck a few times and then stood facing the cabin, rubbing his shoulder forcefully. Only when Brendan crunched down on the gravel one step behind the man did he try to turn. But it was too late. Brendan was on him in a flash, quickly wrapping the man’s neck in a constrictive hold. Despite his smaller size, the man thrashed and struggled, but no sound left his mouth as Brendan restrained him and forced him down to the ground, using the truck to block the view of any random onlookers in the cabin.

The noise of the man’s boots scrambling around on the small stones of the parking lot irked Brendan, but he knew that the sound wouldn’t penetrate the thick walls of the cabin. Slowly, but surely, his prey eased into unconsciousness. Brendan quickly released the man, not wanting to kill anyone who hadn’t attacked him first. Self-defense was one thing, but he’d have a hard time explaining why he choked a guy to death in a premeditated ambush.

Using a brand new roll of duct tape that he’d found in the pristine toolbox in the bed of Kim’s mom’s truck, he bound and gagged the man quickly, but effectively, and then dragged him into the bushes. He didn’t pay any special attention for poison ivy this time, but that would be the least of this chump’s worries by the end of the afternoon. Crouching next to his victim, Brendan pulled his cell phone out and hit the power button to activate the touchscreen.