Hey, Militia This

1: Prelude

When my VaporStream device sounded, I put the footrest of my recliner down, went in my sock feet into the bedroom, and swiped the device out of the crystal bowl on the nightstand. Then I sat on the bed, pressed the On button, and watched as five lines of bright green text unfolded across the little dark-grey screen:

Eyes only

TWP Malcolm Howell + 12-1

Militia

[Nearest town to target]

Sunrise [Target date]

That’s how it always starts, except sometimes that first line is different. That particular first line meant I pretty much had to accept. TJ sends eyes only messages to only one operative at a time, the operative he prefers to make the hit. In theory, I could reject the assignment, but that would put me on TJ’s radar as a potential target, and that is not a good place to be.

I committed the information to memory, then pressed Accept and watched the message disappear like vapor—hence, VaporStream—and pulled out my laptop to do the necessary research.

2: Settling In

A little over an hour before sunrise and some six miles from town, I drove my beat-up old ’87 4-Runner along a muddy road that wound through hills. A gentle drizzle was falling, and now and then I had to switch on the wipers for a swipe. For most of that six miles, heavy, dark, thick pine woods clung to hills on both sides of the road. But as I climbed, the terrain on the left—the east—was slowly leveling out into a valley.

Finally the woods on that side stopped abruptly and I spotted the shack, my target location, some thirty yards off the road. No vehicles yet. Good.

South of the shack, as I’d seen on Google Earth, there was only a marshy, swamp-like depression for a half-mile or so before the woods started again. And in the headlights, the depression was covered with individual tufts of low brush, maybe a foot high and three to four feet in diameter. Perfect.

When the shack was a good three hundred yards behind me, the road curved back to the west. I pulled off to the west side into a thick stand of low brush sheltered by the inevitable pine trees and parked.

The drizzle was still falling as I stepped out of the truck. I closed the door silently. I slipped a few times in the slick mud and pine cones as I walked past the ticking, cooling engine around to the passenger side. When I opened that door, I could just make out the Tavor 7 rifle in the back seat. I patted the stock. “Enjoy, my friend. This is the last time you’ll be dry for a couple of hours.”

I reached into the floorboard and pulled up my ghillie suit, flopped it out, and then shrugged and tugged myself into it. Despite the rain, the smells of talcum powder and dust came with the suit. Then I reached in for the Tavor and slung it upside down over my left shoulder.

*

Maybe ten minutes later, I’d crossed the road and started trudging through the perfect semi-swamp terrain. There were no big puddles of water, but the tan mud was slick and occasionally the brush tugged at my suit. After a few minutes of watching the ground to maintain my balance, I looked up for the shack.

A little over two hundred yards to the north, it barely stood out as a sightly darker solid square against the uneven tree line behind it.

I peered more closely a little to the left.

Still no vehicles either. When they come, they’ll park between the road and the shack. Slightly farther to the left, the black ribbon of the muddy road was pocked here and there with silver puddles as it led into the trees and disappeared.

But I’ll be shooting with open sights. I need to be a little closer.

I put my head down and trudged forward, using my pace-count to measure distance. I have a seventy-two inch pace, more or less, given the mud, so I’d advance two yards with every other step.

Several minutes later when I finally found my spot and settled in, I was maybe a hundred and forty or fifty yards from the shack. Thanks to the ghillie suit, even in broad daylight, I would look just like any of the other clumps of low brush in the depression.

Before I positioned the Tavor, I glanced at the eastern sky. It was just beginning to grow light. Short of the horizon, the same woods that passed by the north side of the shack curved back to the south in the distance, marking the far side of the depression.

I faced front again, watched the cabin, and listened to my own quiet breathing.

*

After a time, the sky grew lighter, but the overcast and the drizzle remained. The targets began to arrive, all in pickup trucks, around a half-hour after I settled in.

Still, in the predawn light under the overcast sky, I could only make out shadows. Shadows of the vehicles. Shadows of the people who drove them. Shadows of the few who had opted to be passengers instead of driving their own. Those shadows had vague faces, making them a little easier to separate from the tree line behind them.

As the smaller shadows stepped away from the vehicles, each ducked his head and ran to the door of the shack, as if they were escaping a downpour or a lightning storm instead of putting up with a little light drizzle. Over and over again, the door of the shack opened, one or two militiamen filed inside, and the door closed.

The remaining slip of night was a little chilly, but it wasn’t cold. There was no breeze to speak of either, so no wind to account for.

So no rear-sight adjustment. This is gonna be easy-peasy.

3: The Real Deal

Finally the vehicles stopped coming. I counted eight in all. So almost everyone had come with a passenger.

A few minutes after a the last pickup pulled onto the grass outside the shack and parked and the last man ran through the drizzle to the shack, the sun peeked over the horizon. A long moment after that, the door of the little wooden shack opened again.

Showtime.

I reestablished my cheek weld and looked through the rear sight with my right eye. With my left eye, I looked past the rifle and counted as the targets emerged. They weren’t so shadowy then, but they might as well have been. Each man wore black lace-up boots, grey trousers, a narrow black belt, a grey long-sleeved shirt, and a grey boonie hat.

I flicked off the safety and slipped my finger into the trigger well.

On they came in single file, like good little targets. Like good little ducks in a row. And they were definitely amateurs, which is to say fools. They couldn’t have spotted me anyway, but they should have at least been looking. Yet none of them was looking anywhere but at the back of the guy in front of him.

I sighted in and focused on the man at the front of the column.

Maybe young-middle-aged, about six feet tall, dark hair, good build.

That was my primary target. That was Malcolm Howell.

I took my focus off him and watched as two, three, four exited one at a time and turned left. Five, six, seven, eight. A few stumbled through a change-step as they came out.

He must require them to walk in step. Well good for you, Malcolm.

Nine, ten. One slipped and almost fell as he came through the door. Eleven, twelve, and—there, thirteen.

The message from TJ read Malcolm Howell + 12-1. And that’s what I had.

The minus one meant he wanted me to leave one alive, presumably to serve as a witness and warn others not to form a militia of the same kind. Whatever the kind was.

Thirteen in the column, all in step, all still coming on. And the shack, its door finally closed, was a good twenty yards behind the last one.

So they were almost far enough away from the shack. Far enough that they couldn’t turn and run in time when the shooting started.

Keep waddling, ducks. Come to Papa.

When the last man was thirty yards or so from the shack, I closed my left eye, blinked my right, then peered through the sight again and selected my first target: the last man in the line of ducks.

Then I squeezed the trigger.

4: The Hit Unfolds

As I fired, the last man in the column slapped hard onto his back, his arms outstretched.

I squeezed the trigger again, and the twelfth man in line followed suit—flat onto his back, arms extended.

I fired again, and the eleventh man did the same.

From above, they’ll look like a row of crosses.

In my periphery, the primary target stopped and jerked his head around to look over his shoulder, then jerked it to the front again, his eyes wide, to search for the shooter.

I shifted my position slightly, moving my body instead of the rifle.

He crouched as he swept the depression with his gaze and reached to flatten his his palms out to his sides. Just as he opened his mouth wide—I assume to yell “Get down!” or some such thing—my fourth bullet took him in the forehead. He slapped over backward too, sat down hard, then onto his back, his arms still splayed.

Another cross.

I fired again and took the second man in line, though the bullet caught him in the front corner of the right temple as he was turning away.

As he fell onto his face, I shifted again.

At the back of the column, numbers nine and ten had turned.

Number ten was slipping, sliding, and racing north past the dead men toward the trucks.

He didn’t even bother to check any of his comrades.

I squeezed the trigger and he pitched forward to the ground.

I shifted slightly and fired again.

Number nine had almost reached the southwest corner of the cabin when that bullet took him in the back of the head. I was trying for the medulla oblongata, but at this range with open sights— I only hoped he was switched off like a light. Then again, with a 150 grain 7.62 millimeter bullet, pretty much the whole head is a light switch.

By then numbers three through eight were scattering, one toward the vehicles, three toward the road, and the other two to the east. One of those curved away to the left and raced toward the back of the shack.

There might be another door back there. They might have radios inside.

I fired at the one headed for the vehicles first. One target had to survive, but it definitely wouldn’t be one who would drive off toward town while I was still shooting.

He fell face down and slid a little, his arms dragging behind him like a seal.

I shifted my body again, fired, and caught the one who was headed for the shack.

As he fell forward, his left shoulder caught the southeast corner of the shack and he spun to the right, his arms lifeless and flailing with centrifugal force.

I shifted my body back to the right, brought the barrel to bear on the three men headed toward the road.

The one on the right was almost there.

I fired.

He flailed forward like the others and plowed what was left of his head into a large rock. He seemed to hover there for a moment. Just as he rolled off to the right and down toward the house I fired again, then again.

Two more fell in the muddy, grassy tire tracks between the road and the shack.

I stopped. Counted.

Twelve.

That left only the one who was headed east. I looked in that direction. That was appropriate. He represented the least threat.

I continued watching him as I rested the Tavor on the low bush to my right, then pushed up to my knees. The ragged front of my ghillie suit was covered with mud.

I glanced around and gathered up my spent brass, then got to my feet. Finally I bent and picked up the Tavor. As I lifted it I looked for the running man again.

Maybe I should send a bullet past him to be sure he’ll keep running.

But he didn’t seem to need any further persuasion. He was fading rapidly to the east, and he appeared to be composed primarily of heels and elbows.

I slung the Tavor over my shoulder, turned west, and trudged a beeline to the road. There I followed the road back to the curve and my 4-Runner.

Soon I’d be homeward bound. In my line of work, everything’s a matter of efficiency.

5: The Egress

I’d rented a motel room in the nearby town for two days. After a good night’s sleep last night, this morning I dropped the key to the room on the dresser that held the television. Then I hung the Do Not Disturb tag on the doorknob and carried my duffel to my truck.

*

When I reached the 4-Runner, I opened the passenger door, peeled off the ghillie suit and flopped some of the mud off it. Then I rolled it up with the front on the inside and packed it into the rear floorboard next to and partially over my duffel bag, which was behind the driver’s seat.

I laid the Tavor on top of the ghillie suit, then released the latches on the backrest of the back seat and laid it forward.

After I knocked most of the mud off my boots on the trunk of a fallen tree, I walked past the engine again and got in behind the wheel. Then I started the truck, put it in low, and drove forward, south curving southwest, until I found a place where I could get back on the road.

On Google Maps I’d seen that the little forestry road wound only a couple of miles farther up into the hills before it crossed another forestry road. That one would lead a few miles farther down to the east to an asphalt county road, which would in turn lead nine miles north-northeast to the state road that would take me home.

A few hours later, when I was around halfway home, I took the 4-Runner through an automated car wash.

In a truck stop two towns farther along, I slipped my duffel out from under the ghillie suit, carried it inside, and changed clothes.

I pulled into my driveway just after 2 p.m.

Hey, another day, another dollar.

*******

About “Hey, Militia This”

This short story was excerpted from my novel Blackwell Ops 38: Paul Stone.

About the Author

I was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona, so I'm pretty well done.

For a time, I wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but I take a pill for that now and write only under my own name. Mostly.

I am a prolific professional fiction writer by pretty much any standard. In just over 8 years I’ve written 110 novels, 10 novellas, and around 280 short stories across several genres. None of that is a typo.