Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (ebook reader web .txt) 📕

he shouts into the radio. To his right, four commandos work their way down the ridge, but oblique fire from the bunker stops them just short of the coulee. They take cover behind dusty rocks in the dry riverbed. Unit two's leader scans the left flank with his binoculars but cannot see any movement except for a jackrabbit that runs a zig-zag route away from the shooting.

"Unit three, where are you?" Gabriel demands. "Matthew, go now!"

"We're halfway there. Relax, brother." The voice is calm and reassuring. Halfway down the ridge, Matthew clicks off the radio as he leads his men through dense underbrush. He is tall with a thick neck and arms cabled with veins, his hands work-hardened. His men move quickly, breaking twigs, kicking over rocks, their movements masked by the blazing gunfire to their right. Speed, not stealth, is their ally now.

As they cross the coulee, the four men slide into the rectangular "echelon left" formation with Matthew at the point. They have flanked the bunker and have a clear shot up the ridge to the miner's cabin. Moving at double-time now, with rifles at port arms, they break into the clearing twenty meters from the cabin.

Just outside the cabin door, a soldier has his back to them. He is peering down toward the bunker on the far side, his hand resting on an M-9 service pistol in a holster. They storm him, the soldier turning just in time to catch sight of Matthew slashing at his chest with a fixed bayonet. The soldier instinctively leaps backward, and the blade catches in his flak jacket. Matthew pivots and swings the rifle butt in a horizontal arc, belting the soldier across the jaw and toppling him to the ground. Two other commandos stand over him with rifle muzzles pointed to his chest as Matthew and a fourth commando burst through the flimsy cabin door.

They tuck and roll and come up in the firing position. Their rifles are pointed directly at the head of a long-haired, handsome man of thirty who sits at a redwood table reading the Bible. The man, who calls himself Brother David, calmly presses the button on a stopwatch, closes his Bible and looks at Matthew with dark, piercing eyes. "Your best time, to date, my brother. Sliced a minute thirty-five off last week's maneuver." His serene smile is that of a king pleased with a loyal subject. "I believe we are ready."

Matthew takes off his helmet. His long hair is tied into a ponytail. "Perhaps two more weeks would be better."

"God waits for no man."

Matthew nods. His leader has spoken. "Thy will be done, Brother David."

The soldier from outside staggers into the cabin, his chin in his hand. Blood seeps from his mouth as he approaches Matthew. "You broke my jaw," he whimpers through swollen lips.

Brother David stands and clasps an arm around the wounded man's shoulder. "That is nothing compared to the pain you will inflict on the army of Satan."

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5

Graveyard Shift

The sun blinks through the tree tops on a crisp Wyoming morning. Towering blue spruce and Ponderosa pines form an umbrella over the two-lane road. It is September, and the Aspens are turning gold, their round leaves fluttering, whistling their songs in the wind. A red-headed woodpecker beats out a staccato beat against a fir tree, and somewhere in the underbrush, rabbit-like pikas are squeaking their distinctive sounds.

The Air Force Jeep emerges from the forest and begins climbing through the Rattlesnake Hills. Road signs warn of moose crossings. Whitecapped mountains are visible on the horizon.

Senior Airman Sayers is at the wheel of the Jeep, Airman Reynolds next to him. Jack Jericho is sprawled across the back seat, his helmet pulled over his eyes. "Sarge asleep?" Sayers asks.

"Asleep, hungover, dead, or all of the above." Reynolds runs a hand over his crew-cut. A freckled redhead with a southern accent, he wore his hair in a pony tail before joining the Air Force, and even now, cannot believe the stubbly bristle he finds under his hand.

"Yo, Jack! You awake?" Sayers asks.

From the back seat, an unintelligible grunt.

"C'mon Jack. Get up."

"Leave me the hell alone."

Sayers jerks his thumb in Jericho's direction. "That's what two weeks on the captain's graveyard shift does to a man."

"Not to mention ten years of hard drinking," Reynolds adds.

Sayers downshifts as the grade becomes steeper. A stream runs alongside the road, clear water tumbling over rocks as old as the earth itself. Above the bank of the stream, a porcupine gnaws at the trunk of a pine tree. Across the road is a seemingly endless chain-link fence topped by razor wire. "No Trespassing" signs emblazoned with the Air Force insignia dot the fence every several hundred yards.

"Uh-oh," Sayers says, looking toward the sky and slowing down.

"What is it, Spike?" Reynolds asks.

Sayers' first name is Timothy, but with his round glasses and narrow face, his buddies back in Brooklyn thought he looked like Spike Lee. Before he joined the Air Force, Sayers sometimes cadged free drinks and impressed aspiring models and actresses by claiming he was scouting the neighborhood for a movie location. He still tries the scam occasionally while on leave, but less successfully. At a bar in Laramie, he discovered, the locals didn't know Spike Lee from Robert E. Lee.

"Buzzards dead ahead," Sayers says.

Jericho stirs and sits up, sliding back his helmet, squinting into the morning sun. He's unshaven and his eyes are puffy. He pulls a warm can of beer from a rucksack, pops the top and puts it to his lips. He gargles noisily, spits into the road, then opens the wrapper on a Twinkie and gobbles it in two bites.

"Disgusting," Reynolds says. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Back home, I'd have hominy grits, black coffee and molasses bread every morning."

"Hey Reynolds," Jericho says, his voice thick from a case of the dry tongue. "If I gotta hear one more time about