White Wasteland by Jeff Kirkham (best color ebook reader .txt) 📕

that? And why would you want to?” Jeff hated asking so many questions, but it wasn’t like Chad was going to fly off on a talking streak and give Jeff the information he needed. It would have to be pried out of him. The last thing anyone had seen Chad do was punch Jason Ross in the face. The part of Jeff that’d labored long years in U.S. intelligence knew that “fifth column shit” could cut both ways.

“I’ve met their new prophet. He’s a fuck stick. He needs to go down for the count. Dirt nap. This whole north/south church thing is a big ego trip for Burnham and he’s going to get a bunch of kids killed. I can end this war in one shot, but I gotta to do it without burning my situation over there. I’ve got things to do with the fundamentalists.”

“Okay,” Jeff made the hand motion for get to the point. “What do you propose?”

“I’ll stick an infra-red flasher on Burnham’s tent the night before the battle and you guys kill him from a stand off position. You brought the Ferret with the big thirty cal, right?”

“We can get it here,” Jeff didn’t admit the armored vehicle was already near.

“Okay. Then, I’ll mark President Douchebag’s tent with an IR beacon and you dump a belt of thirty cal on him. False prophet dies. Bob’s your uncle. War’s over. Does that work for you?”

Jeff couldn’t think of a downside to the plan, except that Chad might lay an ambush and take out the Ferret, but Jeff had two Ferrets and he could use the second one to provide overwatch. Unless the fundamentalists had tanks, it would be hard to overrun a Ferret, particularly with overwatch. If the fundamentalists had tanks, they were screwed anyway.

“Wait,” Jeff held out a hand. “You say they’re planning to attack next week?”

“Yeah. That’s what they said, at least. Tuesday morning. Burnham won’t get into camp until a day or two before. They aren’t expecting much resistance, by the way. How many guys you got?”

Jeff ignored the question. “So, on Monday night, you’ll mark Burnham’s tent?”

“Yeah,” Chad answered as though agreeing to pick up a pizza on his way back from work. “Can I borrow an IR strobe?”

Jeff dug two strobes out of the bottom of the pocket in his pack, long forgotten and covered in lint. Jeff looked Chad in the eye as he put the VIPIR strobes in his hand.

“Take this too.” Jeff unclipped his Baofeng radio from his chest rig. He fiddled with the frequency settings. He erased the command freqs from memory and added a new frequency as the default. “Don’t use this unless you have to. It’s an open channel. We’ll monitor it if the fight kicks off.”

Chad reached for the radio, and Jeff held on to it for a second. The men locked gazes. In Chad’s eyes, Jeff saw no deceit, but he saw no friendship, either.

Lion’s Garrison

Draper, Utah

“So just like that he’s going to whack their prophet?” Evan asked, still incredulous.

Evan and Jeff were both Army, and since Chad had been a frat-boy Navy SEAL, neither believed in SEAL magic. In their minds, the army did the work of war. SEALs mostly played at it.

Even with the internecine rivalry, both Evan and Jeff had worked with dozens of SEALs, and they were top notch operators. They knew Chad could handle himself. But could he perform in a predictable manner? In this case, all Chad had to do was throw an IR strobe on top of a tent. Not even a SEAL could screw that up.

But the machinery in Chad’s head might become the proverbial fly in the ointment, the wrench in the gears. The man did not think “normal” thoughts. Chad made the word “unpredictable” seem pithy and insufficient.

They sat around a campfire on campaign chairs inside the Lions’ Garrison, enjoying a bottle of Jameson and beating back the frigid winter night with fire and booze.

“We will be the ones to take down their commander in chief.” As a former Mormon, Jeff wasn’t inclined to brag about killing a prophet. “Chad’s just going to mark the HQ.”

“Okay. I’ll play ball,” Evan conceded. “So, Lord Clovenhoof, what’s the big plan if this little trick of Chad’s doesn’t work?”

Evan, Jeff, Wheaton, Tanya and Tommy sat in the camp chair circle around the fire. Since he lost his NVGs, Colton had been kicked out of the Whiskey Circle. Evan passed the bottle to Tanya. She took a drag straight from the mouth. She and the crew hadn’t witnessed the flu like the others— bunkered up in the South Towne Expo Center. Their group hadn’t yet been terrified into being prissy about germs like the others.

Jeff slid forward on his camp chair. “We’ll set you up, Evan, in the Ferret on top of Traverse Mountain and you can pour 30-06 into the beacon. It’s around two thousand meters from the mountain top to the encampment, so you shouldn’t have any trouble walking the rope into the VIPIR. Did you bring tracer rounds?”

“Yep. That shouldn’t be a problem considering its plunging fire,” Evan agreed. “You’ll have to bring up some overwatch. I don’t trust Chad not to screw us.”

“I don’t trust him either. Who knows what’s happened to him over the last three weeks. The dude is AWOL, as far as I’m concerned.”

Tommy spoke the first time. “So, if this assassination attempt works, maybe we don’t fight a war? Their prophet dies and everyone goes home?”

“Maybe,” Jeff sat back. “I consider it a long shot. Easy plans have a way of complicating themselves. I’m sure there’s a name for it in physics.”

“Mem-trunphy,” Tanya gurgled, her mouth swimming in Jameson whiskey.

“Baby. How many times do I gotta tell you don’t talk with your mouth full unless it’s full of me.” Evan thought it particularly funny since they hadn’t had any form of sex. She was still mad at him, and he was still deep in the friend-zone.

Tanya slugged Evan