My words rang out like rubber bullets, and they hit with about the same impact. The woman sprang up onto her feet and raised her spear. The only thing that stopped the situation from spiraling anymore out of control was a half-asleep Walter. Who came bursting through the tarp door. ‘Thank the lord above that the stupid bastard didn’t have a gun.’ I thought as 2 rifles and a pistol’s barrels swung to bare on him.
To the dum asses credit, he didn’t piss his pants. I spoke up in order to regain control of the situation.
“Alright, lower your guns boys. That one is ours and I am about to get briefed about the other one.”
Mc’cullen along with Alexei lowered their guns without much hesitation, it took an extra half a second for Xavier to get the memo and lower his pistol. But he did it. I lowered my rifle but still kept an eye on the woman while I walked over to Walter.
“What’s her story?”
Just then Bunden poked his head through the tarp. This normally wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest but, Walter found the perfect person to dump this explanation onto.
“Ask Bunden over there. I am going to try to calm down the nice lady, before she tries to kill us all.”
Walter said before walking away noticeably faster than normal. I turned toward Bunden with my best pissed NCO expression. As he was about to start talking I held up a hand, instead of just going straight into the debrief I told Les about the friendly status of the hilltop FOB. Then I shouted back over my shoulder.
“Get comfy ladies and gents, we are probably going to be here for at least an hour. So brake out the beef ravioli MREs and grab a bite.”
I walked closer to Bunden with what might have been an evil grin on my face. Bunden’s face immediately went stoic but, his eyes pleaded toward the campfire for help. Unfortunately for him, none came. When I got close enough to Bunden I put an arm on his shoulder and led him back into the cave.
An hour later I had finished getting updated on the situation by Bunden, and consequently chewing him out. We both walked out of the cave and into the afternoon sunlight. A fire was blazing happily in the fire pit surrounded by I assumed everyone, except me and Bunden. We quickly fixed that as both me and Bunden walked over.
Something was stuck on a spit and roasting over the fire. The smell filled my nose and produced saliva in my mouth. Snow came over and started cutting pieces off. Of course, I watched as she used her own stone knife to cut the beast to pieces. But, then I came to my senses. Snow was dressed in ragged beast skins and had no boots, I looked over to my right where Kasamir was sitting on a log with his hands outstretched towards the flame. He and Walter were joking around with each other. The jokes seemed to consist of Walter trying to sing and Kasamir holding his hands over his ears.
But Kazamir was still dressed in cloth rags with leather wrappings for boots. The helmet he had borrowed from Walter had been returned. So his messy brown hair lay bare in front of the afternoon setting sun. Mc’cullen and Alexei were passing a metal flask between each other and telling stories in-between swigs. Of course, Snow who probably had a better sense of smell than the two men combined made her way over and started asking for a sip.
She ended up having to trade some strips of meat for a swig. I didn’t see Les or Xavier at first but then I looked down toward the riverbed. To where we had parked the vehicles. Les was in the passenger seat of the missile truck with the door open. Probably because he was talking to Xavier, who was watching the missile pod swivel. ‘At least their pointing the damned missile launcher away from the rest of us while their fucking around with it.’ I thought as I started walking over.
The Grass was slick with the morning’s rain, so I had to try extra hard not to eat dirt on my way down. I was surprised with how wet the grass was, I came from the deserts and rolling desolate hills of the southwest US. The humidity was so low that if you spilled a glass of water on your driveway then you could watch it evaporate before your eyes. So, I was always a little surprised by the more humid climate and the lack of wind.
My idle pondering came to a stop when I reached the parked vehicle. I had walked up behind Xavier, but I don’t think he noticed me. I didn’t want to scare him and get shot, so I just gently cleared my throat. Xavier stiffened slightly and slowly turned around as if he was a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar.
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“Jesus christ cabrón (you fucker). You scared me half to death.”
I was taken aback a little by the unexpected Spanish. Maybe it’s because I know what it means? I shook off the questions that sentence raises and got on with why I was here in the first place.
“I’m holding a meeting at the campfire, and you two were the only ones missing.”
Les leaned out of the passenger’s side window and said.
“Do I have to go, I kinda want to play around with this new toy.”
I quickly responded with,
“You want an ammo resupply and some good high-grade MREs or you want no ammo and only get veggie omelet MREs.”
Les’s eyes widened at the mere mention of the dreaded veggie omelet. He hurriedly open the door and ran up the hill towards the fireplace. Xavier after a quick glance at me and then the rapidly fading figure of Les, started to follow him at a jog. But before he went out of earshot, I could hear him mumble.
“What in Saint Maria’s holy kitchen is a veggie omelet?”
I casually strolled up the green-covered slope after the two gremlins. I let out a slight chuckle at the thought of both men being little green men. Turns out that climbing a wet hill is a lot less pleasant than going down a wet hill. I made sure to place my steps carefully onto rocks and drier pieces of foliage. Because of this sure foot placement, I didn’t fall once.
Les and Xavier must have spread the word because when I reached the edge of the firelight’s flicker, everyone was dead silent. Snow and Kazamir were sitting a little straighter than everyone else if that was possible. I let out a sigh as I took a seat near the campfire. I looked them all in the eyes as I began to speak.
“Well, it’s been a while since I got myself elected, so if anyone feels like they want to take over now is the time.”
No one moved.
“Going once, going twice, going three times.”
I sighed as nobody moved.
“Sold to that man with the stars and stripes,”
I sarcastically muttered under my breath. But whatever I thought about being the commander doesn’t matter now, so I just continued.
“Alright, now that’s out of the way. I am going to be focusing on organization and logistics for our little group. We have about enough people for about a squad-sized element, so I’ll split us up into 3 fire teams of three people each. First fireteam leads, of course, I’ll be the leader of fireteam alpha, Bunden you’re going to be Bravo team lead, and Les you're going to be Charlie team lead.
Any objections?”
Les immediately raised his hand.
“How much paper and red tape do we got.”
I made a goose egg (zero) with my hand. He nodded and began to smile. I gave another second of silence, the crackling of the firepit being the only sound from the assembled group. When nobody moved, let alone speak, I continued.
“Alexei and Kaza you’re with me, Walter and Xavier you’re Bunden’s problem now, Les you get Mc’cullen and Snow. any objections?”
Les and Mc’cullen looked over to the cat woman a little bit nervously. Snow seemed to miss read them entirely and started blushing. But other than that there wasn’t much else fan-fare. These are professionals after all, well ‘professionals’ I thought as I saw Walter staring at Snow.
“Good, then everyone get to know each other. But first who needs what?”
It took us a good 30 minutes to figure out how much ammo was needed, what size uniform Xavier, Kazamir, and Snow were, and other such details. Some highlights were, convincing Snow that Xavier was just trying to figure out her size for clothes, and not trying to touch her breasts. The argument ended when Xavier professed to liking the toe hooks and rims of the trucks more than he liked her breasts and Snow responded by kicking him ‘lightly’.
Another less serious event starring Snow is when Walter began to ask her what gun she wanted. This spiraled into her wanting a javelin missile launcher, an M1A2 main battle tank, and an F35 stealth jet. But to give credit where it’s due, Walter managed to talk her down into just wanting an M1014 semi-auto shotgun. Walter didn’t even have to ask me to put it on the list. Mainly because Snow was talking so loud that I couldn’t not hear them.
Luckily Kazamir was easier to handle than Snow was. Mainly because if he started acting up then I would promise that he wouldn’t get his present. The present in this case was essentially the rifle Alexei had in order to standardize calibers, plus some better clothes so he could stop looking like the 15th-century farm boy he was.
I had a hard time trying to fit everything we needed into the 100-pound (45.35kg) weight limit. Then I just was like fuck it. we are getting two, a small drop only costs 3 points each and we have 17 points. That leaves us with 11 points so we can get an A-10 strike if any shit situation gets bad enough.