Chapter 1.

Silly Billy all to no refrain.  Silly Billy all but onto himself.  Silly Billy, a looser loner with nowhere to go but his own head.

The sun crested the bald hill to the side of the Chevy S10 as it whisked down the highway.  It was Tuesday morning and Billy was headed for work as his usual custom.  The inside of this vehicle was stained with coffee and old coffee cups not washed since they found there way into this vortex of coffee cups.

He worked the day shift in Langerphlates, Texas.  A weld inspector for twelve hours a day or more and a recluse by night.  He knew he was late because the sun never rose above that crest before he passed it on his daily commute between his home thirty miles away.  The radio was not working as well as his heater.  He disconnected the heater coil at the end of last winter thinking he did not need all that much heat in the summer.  He now knew why he did need heat.

He fumbled with the locking box for his .45 M1911.  He couldn’t take that into work, but he felt somehow safe by locking it in his truck while at work.  As he rounded the last curve in the road before getting into Langerphlates, he saw the first traffic light was green.  “Double ding dong dang!”  That is going to cost me another few minutes.  Billy knew that if the light was green when he passed the last curve before town, that it would ultimately turn red when he got to the intersection of FM2009 and the hwy.

He cursed himself for not setting his alternate clock that morning.  He’d worked at this fabrication plant for fifteen years with nary a day missed or late to work.  The truth was that most of the people there really did not care when he clocked in as much as they cared that he was there to inspect the product and move it to shipping.

At the other edge of the main drag in Langerphlates, he turned off unto a gravel road and drove another five miles through a white chalky mess to the plant.  He was always worried someone was going to get “his” spot in the matching gravel parking lot.

Inside the plant, Billy unlocked his office and powered up his PC.  The last of the twenty e-mail messages talked of different orders to be inspected.  He was not a CWI, but qualified under AWS to be called an inspector that was qualified as a level II Non Destructive Testing Technician.  He was the only one in the department qualified to conduct any inspection, and that is what provided job security.

After starting the coffee and unlocking his file cabinet and donning his weld gauge, micrometer and four different tape measures, he left the office and walked out onto the shop floor from his mezzanine floor office.

At the first turn from the rusty and badly peeling painted stair case, he saw John and waved to him.  John was friends with Billy from way back, but not far enough back to be remembered before he went to work for Langerphlates Manufacturing Industries or simply known as LMI.  John was the shape cutter and could cut some pretty good parts as long as they were cut from metal no more than about 5/8” thick.  Anything larger, and Darrel would have to get it on his Grizzly Table.

Down the corridor and into the welding fit up area, Billy paused to look at his print out of all the items to be inspected today.  He consulted with the foreman and grabbed some dirty and torn prints to begin his inspections.

By lunch time Billy was hungry, and really wanted to get out of the shop and back to his office where he could nuke some of his left overs from last night’s meal.  In his office he also kept a TV that received some reception from a major network affiliate nearby TV station.  He turned the set on with a pair of wire pliers and began to eat and watch the noon hour show.  It had a guest on from some handgun violence prevention group.

While this usually ended up making him cross his eyes and choke, as if someone welded over some flux from a mig welder, he always enjoyed the process of going from civilized to insane, or better yet “throwed off.”

“and remember, the FBI crime statistics clearly show that you are forty-seven times more likely to have a hand gun taken away from you and used on you if you try to defend yourself with one.”  “Thank you so much for coming on our show, next up a vigilante citizens watch group will be here to tell us about the alleged problems with terrorists coming over the border and our government is doing nothing about it.”  The co host was laughing as if it was the most ridiculous thing every contrived.

Just as he predicted, his eyes were crossed, and he was ready to go back to work.  Billy slammed the door to his office as he stomped back down the stairs and past several of his friends going back to their stations.  By the end of the day, Billy was satisfied he did his best to uphold the latest in inspection criteria and was ready to go back home to his guns and his dogs.

On the way home, Billy forgot to bring some of his coffee cups from the office to his truck cab.  He always had more money for coffee cups, but not a new truck.  Oh well, I guess I am going to have to clean these in the truck first, but not today…

The next day, Billy was an hour earlier in his morning routine.  He figured that he would stop by the range on the way home to pop off a few magazines from his latest project.  He lovingly zipped up the .458 SOCOM rifle along with a few boxes of .458 rounds he hand loaded his self.  For giggles and grins he also tucked in his favorite .22 rifle, an old beat up tube fed arrangement that he modified to look meaner than it was.

His armament manifest complete and locked away behind the seat of his pick up, Billy remembered the most important thing of all, his forty four ounce Red Neck mug filled with ridiculously sweet and creamy coffee.

The road was dark as he left the quiet subdivision.  He turned onto the hwy and headed toward Langerphlates.  He was the better part of fifteen miles outside of the town when he had to slam on the brakes!  A large semi trailer was turned over in the middle of the road.  There were no flares or other warnings.  Billy quickly got out of his truck and ran over to the cab laying on its side.  There was a lot of blood in the cab, but no one was there.  He saw something strange on the lower part of the door, as he climbed up to see in.  It looked as if there were many bullet holes in the door.  He thought of this as he hurried back to his truck to light some road flares to warn other motorists.  As he got to his truck he heard rushing foot pounding on the road behind him.

Billy turned just in time to see a small Hispanic looking male running towards him with what looked like a…. a….gun?!  Billy’s mind went into over drive as he comprehended the threat, and pulled his .45 from inside his jump suit.  He would always remember the sight of his hammer falling slowly and the slow motion bullet leaving the chamber…

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, Billy’s alarm clock sounded off as usual.  He woke from his nightmare in a cold sweat.

Chapter 2.

He really wished he knew why he had these dreams.  At least they were different than the nightmares he experienced sixteen years before.  Well at least he scared himself awake instead of oversleeping as he did the day before.

As Billy made his way to the kitchen, he turned the coffee pot on as he set it the night before.  Soon the entire kitchen and adjoining family room began to smell like rich roasted coffee.  He took a sip and surmised his goals for the day.  He would go to work, and just as he intended in his dream he was going to pack a few of his rifles and stop off at the range on the way home to plink a few rounds out of his new .458 Socom.  The Marlin 60 would get a work out as well.

After his breakfast, Billy dressed and began loading the truck for the day.  He felt a strange pang of hurt as he bent over his rifles laying behind the seat in his S10.  He loved to shoot and loved his firearms.  He could vividly remember the days his firearms were not for recreation, but for survival.  “I guess I will see those ghosts again.” He murmured to himself.

The twelve-hour day ended up being an eight hour day, and Billy got to go home earlier than planned.  The compressor failed and that halted all grinding and buffing.  He left the familiar gravel parking lot and headed North back out of Langerphlates towards the range and his home.  

Clang! Clang! Clang!  Billy was really excited at his new project rifle.  The .458 Socom was hitting every gong he aimed at.  He fired about forty rounds before his shoulder began to feel its age.  The therapy of shooting the .458 Socom made him feel better than his shoulder hurt.  It seemed that the thing he loved to do the most when shooting also caused him the most grief.  With every pull of the trigger, he could almost see in a flash the things he saw that caused him grief when remembered.

There were many things that caused Billy to remember the good with the bad.  Sometimes in the winter, the smell of the air tool oil the welders used at work reminded him of the solvent he used on his machine guns a long time ago.  That made him smile as he remembered the cold days he spent on ranges and the resulting smell of discharged shells and the warm pile of brass to his right.  He remembered the good times spent with his fellow soldiers, but that often turned to bitterness when he also recalled the last time he saw several of them.

Sometimes Billy burned the barrels and hand-guards on his AR15s with hundreds of rounds often fired into targets that the middle point of aim and impact long before disintegrated with the first couple of magazines.  He decided that the .458 Socom would not be one of those rifles he used to visit his past with like the others.  Maybe one day Billy would make it right, but for now he let himself cry it out by himself in the desert.

Chapter 3.

The hwy through Langerphlates, Texas runs roughly north and south.  Langerphlates is approximately one hundred miles from the international border between Mexico and the United States.  Langerphlates is not a stranger to being exposed to danger from the instability that traditionally favors that region in Mexico.  In town there is a monument that roughly resembles the Confederate Soldier monuments that used to grace the courthouse lawns all across the southern states.  This monument, however, is a tribute to the Langerphlates Rangers.  The Poncho Villa Golden Cavalry organized the Langerphlates Rangers after the first raids into the U.S.

Five thousand people populate Langerphlates, Texas.  It is not the county seat and is patrolled occasionally by the Sutton County sheriff’s office.  There is a high school, two Lutheran Churches, a Baptist Church and small Catholic congregation.  In town, Langephlates has two gas stations that are on the access roads on either side of town.  As of yet, there are no major fast food restaurants in town except for the ubiquitous Dairy Queen.  There is one new Mexican food restaurant called “El Chupo Cabra” and a Barbeque place run by Peter Langerphlates, the great great grandson of Augustus Langerphlates, the town founder.  The main or largest employer for the town and surrounding area is Langerphlates Manufacturing Industries.  Outside of LMI, only the High School claims as many employees.  

Augustus Langerphlates settled in the area in the year 1859.  In 1860, the state of Texas platted the town of Langerphlates on land that Augustus Langerphlates sold for the township.  The major industry was goat and sheep ranching and Augustus Langerphlates was known for the special breed of “Langerphlates Sheep” that he raised on his ranch.  The town almost disappeared into obscurity until a major corporation constructed a steel manufacturing plant in Langerphlates after they received a generous tax break from Sutton County to build there in 1975.

Aside from the scrub land that surrounds Langerphlates, only rolling hills and Peter’s Creek, make up any significant natural landmarks in the area.  Prong Horn Sheep hunting on private game reserves does bring some business to the town, but otherwise, most of the traffic on the north south hwy is usually coming from somewhere else and going somewhere else.

Chapter 4.

Three men sat a table in a seedy bar in Juarez, Mexico.  All three were dark complected and appeared to be visibly worn by the weather and the lives they led.  The discussion in this meeting was not so much about the cost of corn tortillas as much as it was the cost of people.  All three ran an export business that sold Mexican nationals to drug gangs in the United States.  There business kept all three in enough money to continue their trade.

Tonight there were going to meet a new client that wanted his own people smuggled into the United States with a special cargo.  It really didn’t matter the group of men singly or corporately who or what they moved, as long as they were paid.

Emilio Estrada was a U.S. Citizen, but spent most of his time either on the border or in Mexico gaining new contracts for his export business.  Jose Villarreal didn’t have a nationality except that of money.  The third man, Hillario Mendez, stood six feet three inches tall and weighed in at about two hundred sixty pounds.  Hillario also sported a deep scar under his chin that resembled a raised red welt.

Ibraham was disgusted with what he had to do this evening.  He had to meet with these infidels to serve Allah this evening.  Maybe he could vary his morals a little.  What were the Americans liked to say in those ridiculous commercials for Las Vegas?  What happens there stays there?

Emilio greeted his new client as he sat at the table.  While he sensed the loathing from Ibraham, he also sensed the money to be made from the rich Arab.  “I will require two eighteen wheelers able to transport two forty foot sea land containers from Vera Cruz, Mexico to San Antonio, Texas.  Once this shipment is in the United States, it must not stop for anything.”

“El Jeffe, I am not a gunman and I will not risk fighting their police!” protested Emilio.  Ibraham answered the protest with more information.  “You will have no need to fight in America.  I will provide the armed escorts for your convoy once in the U.S.”  “All that I need for you is to provide the trucks and drivers.” Continued Ibraham.

The rest of the conversation covered the responsibilities of both the coyotes and the Arabs.  One thing that Emilio did not like was the fact that he would not know whom he was smuggling across the border.  There was some shrinkage of the cargo if some of the people he was transporting appealed to his base needs.  Young women and teenage girls appealed to him most.  Sometimes he allowed these girls to make it to their destination for the right compensation whether both parties agreed to the transaction or not.

Emilio wondered if any of the cargo contained drugs or other contraband.  In the United States, very few things could be considered contraband that might be illegal in Mexico, unless the bribe was correct.  On the Mexican side of the border, most petty law enforcement types collected bribes from people that they could strong arm into jail.  Those beyond their social structure and means normally escaped notice of these petty tyrants.  The drug trade proved too costly for businessmen in the exports.  Large illegal drug cartels often took most of the trade away from such small entrepreneurs as Emilio.

Jose Villarreal did not have a nationality for a good reason.  The countries he used to live in wanted him dead due to his involvement with the Marxist inspired revolutions in Central and South America.  What he did for the “people” did not often mean that he benefited.  Once he became involved with raising money for his cause, he realized that Capitalism was not the enemy of his well being.

On his last mission for “the people”, he stole the money that he gathered for a group of Maoist Rebels in Peru.  He faked his own death to make it appear that he was killed along with his cell during a raid in Lima in 1989.  Since that time, he worked for various Drug Cartels, until they too gained knowledge of his embezzling ways.  Recently, he fell in with Emilio and his export enterprise.  He too enjoyed the “shrinkage” of certain cargos.

Hillario Mendez did not live as his two partners all of his life.  He worked for a church group in Mexico City, Mexico that catered to those leaving for the United States.  On one of his mission trips across the border, he fell into an ambush conducted by a gang of local red necks that rounded up the party of people he was with.  After the rape and slaughter of all the immigrants, which he was tied up and forced to watch, they cut his throat and left him for dead.  He survived and made his way back into Mexico, never to return to serving God, but serving to bring money to his family and church by smuggling people.  He did not approve of what his two associates did with the “shrinkage”, but he pretended it did not occur and usually found a way to be away from them when they did their immoral things with women.

Chapter 5.

Billy pulled his truck into the gravel driveway of his home.  All of the homes in the subdivision were situated on twenty to thirty acre lots.  The properties once intended to attract business from the Oil Barron novou riche never occurred due to the Federal Government regulation of where to drill in this part of Texas since the 1980s.  Billy purchased the property and initially lived in a travel trailer until he built his home.

He never shunned visitors, but he also did not encourage people to associate or visit with him more than he wanted.  Most of all the social interactions, Billy wanted desperately to maintain control at all times.  Getting married and having a family was too much of an overwhelming sacrifice in his emotional armor to give up.

Billy did not extend his ban on relationships to animals.  He was a dog lover, but one would never know it unless they were to watch Billy and his dogs.  None of his dog herd, as he called it could produce a family tree with any straightness.  The Heinz 57 mutts he kept were all strays or runaways.  All thee dogs followed Billy everywhere on his property, until he occasionally shot pests.

Inside his modest two story Jim Walters wood frame home, Billy built a secret vault under the house.  Most homes in West Texas did not have cellars, but Billy’s did because Billy built it himself during the construction of his home.  Down in the cellar, he kept plenty of ammo and food, along with some of his non-disposable firearms.

In the kitchen Billy began to cook some supper.  He turned the T.V. on and saw more torrid coverage of the latest war news from Iraq.  The reporters and their running dogs all blathered on about how unfair it was to the people of Iraq to impose our military occupation, and how the present presidential administration only wanted their oil.  All three of Billy’s herd waited eagerly for their snacks before supper as Billy carelessly allowed pieces of what ever fat to fall into one communal bowl he allowed in his house.  It got washed every night before bedtime.  Bedtime, sometimes a horrible place that Billy traveled to in his dreams he wished would go away…

Chapter 6.

In Langerphlates, Texas at the “El Chupa Cabra” Jaime Torres loved to cook hot spicy food to feed these locals.  They all pretended to like their food hotter than summer, but Jaime new better.  This was his dream come true, even if his mother did not approve of what he named his little restaurant.  “I’ll take the number two,” said the Texas State Trooper”.  His partner ribbed him after Jaime left with the order and said “I know who is going to give what he gets with the number two tonight!”  Both of the men laughed lowly at the crude observation.

Sgt Tom Horn was a twelve-year veteran of the Texas Highway Patrol.  His younger partner Trooper Justin Gates was just finishing his third year in the THP.  Sgt Horn was the district’s champion rifle shot.  As a member of the Texas State Guard, he participated yearly in the Texas Military Forces marksmanship contests in the fall.  Trooper Gates was not a gun guy and really did not care for firearms outside the scope of his job, which his senior partner regularly provided him static for.

“Do you think we are going to run into Billy this evening?” asked Gates.  “No he is usually either asleep or getting ready to turn in.  If we’ve not heard complaints about those mag dumps he does by now, you can be sure we won’t hear from or of him for the rest of the evening.” Replied Horn.

“I don’t know why people like him are allowed to own assault weapons and weapons of mass destruction.” Observed Gates.  “We’ve discussed this before Justin, Billy has the right keep and bare any legal firearm he can purchase.”  And for the last time he does not own assault weapons.” Admonished Horn.  “You know he is probably one of those gun nuts that we will end have having to arrest or shoot.” Said Gates.  “No, Justin, he will probably be the one that helps us out one day.” Replied Horn.

Billy slowly climbed the stairs to his bedroom on the second floor; he reluctantly pulled back the bed sheets and lay down.  He prayed the same prayer he did for the last fifteen years in that room.  “Lord, please forgive me for what I did wrong.  Its all my fault and I accept the burden.  Please let me rest tonight without reminding me of what I didn’t do.  Amen.”  He put his .45 into a lock box and turned the key.  He began fifteen years ago sleeping on the floor with his constant companion under a pillow.  He gave that up after emptying the magazine into a mirror after a nightmare.

He closed his eyes and began to count backwards; he was snoring in a few minutes.  Inside his head, the same trauma visited him.  He felt sometimes like the kids in that movie “Nightmare on Elm Street” who couldn’t go to sleep.  It always started the same way.  Maybe it will end differently…

Boom! A cloud of dirt and debris rained down on the hood of the 2-½ ton truck.  A huge gaping hole now contained the remains of the truck that was in front of him.  His truck was now disabled as well.  CPL Jackson looked to his right to see what was left of Sgt Moore’s body next to him.  He climbed into the ring above the cab of the truck and cocked the M2 .50 cal.  He didn’t wait long before he was rewarded with targets.  Just as the smoke cleared from the wreckage in front six men ran towards him from his eleven o’clock with AKMs.  Billy didn’t even do much more than swivel the gun onto target and ripped into them with six round bursts.

He managed to kill them before they got within one hundred meters.  “I got some!” He yelled to Sgt Moore.  He looked down as he was visually reminded of why he did not get a response.  Just then several more of the ambush party emerged with rifles blazing!  I’ll see you in Hell!”  The .50 caliber machinegun belched with a comforting cadence.  Even the targets missed seemed completely frightened of its power.  “Time to get Some!” came from his lower right.  Billy looked down and now the dead Sgt Moore was talking again.  “What’s wrong with you soldier!?  Time to get Some!”  As he looked up, he saw his entire platoon now crowding him saying Time to get Some! Time to Get Some Time to…

Chapter 7.

Billy woke up at the usual time.  His favorite dog was waiting patiently beside the bed with his tongue hanging out and panting.  Billy really likes the animal because all he expected was for Billy to take care of Snuffy.  Snuffy did not know about PTSD and did not really think anything different.  He did know that Billy slept restlessly and often talked in his sleep, but as most dogs are, Snuffy only cared that Billy was his master and nothing else.

Down the highway and about halfway through his travel mug of coffee, Billy noticed a few Border Patrol vehicles in a convoy going north from the direction of Langerphlates.  I guess they missed a few more again thought Billy.  He made it to work on time as usual and did the same things he did everyday.  Make the coffee, check the e-mail, and drink the coffee get the inspection report from the shop foreman.  Drink some more coffee, inspect, drink coffee, inspect, and drink coffee and so on….

On the way home, Billy decided to splurge and stop at his favorite restaurant “El Chupa Cabra.”  Inside he ordered the spiciest dish he knew.  Jose loved it when Billy stopped in, because of the spirit that Billy showed and never admitted to anything being to hot or spicy.  “I’ll take the number two, and make it hot!” said Billy.  Jaime just smiled as he walked back to the kitchen with a smirk on his face.

Somewhere in an arroyo near the Mexican side of the border of Texas United States,
Emillio Estrada checked his watch.  “Just like clock work,” he mumbled aloud.  “El Jeffe, the lights are gone!” reported Jose Villarreal.  “Then it is time to make some money,” said Emilio.  The groups of twelve migrants were eager to make it to El Norte America.  Most dreamed of making money to send back to their families they left in poverty.  Two of the group, however, was not interested in economic situations much less improving themselves, at least not in this life.

Once across the shallow Rio Grande, the group walked about ten miles north of the border where they stopped at an abandoned garage.  There, they were locked into a sea land container that would be picked up the next day and transferred to points north, probably Chicago or one of the mid western states.  Emilio and Jose placed twenty-one gallon jugs of water into the container and left an empty five-gallon bucket to use as El Bano.

When Billy got home the next day, he noticed a package from a catalog he ordered last week.  It was a new radio for his truck.  He eagerly opened it up and installed it in his dashboard.  He sorted through some bills and got ready for bed as usual.  This night he would not dream, he would sleep.

Chapter 8.

Billy read the posting with a flaccid face.  He was now going to change his hours briefly.  Instead of coming to work at 7:00 A.M. he was going to come in at 3:00 A.M. and go home after 3:00 P.M.  He was going to have to alter his schedule a little, but nothing more than a minor inconvenience to him.

In Nuevo Laredo, The three coyotes met with their Middle Eastern clients.  They saw the sea land containers on the backs of three tractors.  All bore Mexican license plates and contained fake logbooks.  As planned Emilio supplied his clients with some of his countrymen as cargo to go on the third trailer.  “Tomorrow we ride through the border and stop at the way station.  On the day after we will start driving after 2:00A.M. In the morning.  We will stop briefly in Langerphlates, Texas at the intersection of FM 2009 and the hwy we will already be on by that time.” Said Emilio Estrada All agreed and slept in the trucks so as to not lose time in the morning.

The next day, Billy got up and pulled on his jump suit and .45 shoulder holster.  It’s ironic that he did much the same thing daily back in the day when he was a soldier.  He like it so much that he forgot and often confused his present routine of life of what it was almost two decades earlier.  “Tomorrow I will go shooting.” Said Billy as he poured his coffee.


Continued Tomorrow or the day after.
John R. Fuller

OK, good start. Wanna read more!

Nice start! Don't hesitate posting more as soon as you have it written.

AKASL

LIVE FREE OR DIE

Here is some more.  I continued the story.  I've been a little busy lately and will try to be a little more regular.  Please comment, as I really need as many suggestions as possible to make this a more believable story.  Thank You

I am liking the story so far, the only suggestion I have is please mark the area where you have started the new portion of the story.  Thanks.

Just a little suggestion for something that threw me off.  When writing dialogue for characters remember that each is its own paragraph.  I'm by no means a grammer nazi but this helps in distinguishing which character is speaking.  If I'm wrong someone please chime in but I believe this is the way it's suppose to be.  Example:

"I don't know why people like him are allowed to own assault weapons and weapons of mass destruction."  Observed Gates.  "we've discussed this before Justin, Billy has the right to keep and bare any legal firearm he can purchase."  And for the last time he does not own assault weapons."  Admonished Horn.  "You know he is probably one of those gun nuts that we will end up having to arrest or shoot."  Said Gates.  "No, Justin, he will probably be the one that helps us out one day."  Replied Horn.

The way it should be is:

"I don't know why people like him are allowed to own assault weapons and weapons of mass destruction."  OBserved Gates.

"We've discussed this before, Justin.  Billy has the right to keep and bare any legal firearm he can purchase.  And for the last time he does not own assault weapons."  Admonished Horn.

"You know he is probably one of those gun nuts that we will end up having to arrest or shoot."  Said Gates.

"No, Justin, he will probably be the one that helps us out one day."  Replied Horn.

Chapter 9.

“Jackson! Watch where you are driving!” warned Sgt Moore

The 2-½ ton truck barreled down the road at a dangerous forty-five miles per hour.  The potholes were fresh in the dirt road, and so were the land mines.

“Sgt Moore is it always like this?” asked Billy

“It will always be for you,” responded Sgt Moore with a grin and a chuckle.

“Where does this all end, I mean with all the poverty in this place and the mud homes?  Why can’t these people live in peace.”?  Replied Billy

“They won’t live in peace until they are allowed to.  They have no choice, just like you had no choice in where when or how you were born.”  Replied Sgt Moore

Up ahead the column of trucks and jeeps, a thick column of oily black smoke angrily scorched the tropical deep blue of the sky.  On this ride bodies strewn dead and stripped naked by the drug lords scattered the landscape.  The year was 1989 and the central government was on a push to rid their small Central American nation of this riff raff with the aid of the United States.  Cpl Billy Jackson was on his way to earning the jack rank of SGT when this convoy ended.  He would be allowed to wear something coveted by many young enlisted men of all ages.  He would wear the .45 M1911 in a shoulder holster as he drove through the coastal areas in a truck with armaments.  Today he had to be content with the M2 locked in the turret above him and SGT Moore.  Even though he wanted to, he knew his job was to drive while SGT Moore would engage targets with the M2.

Billy was excited about the next day, as he would be the one riding and the one to be the designated gunner.  He didn’t expect to really have to use it, as he only fired a few shots since his six-month rotation down in Central America while he served in an OP overlooking the border of Honduras and Nicaragua.

Sgt Moore was like an older brother, almost a father since he was almost twenty-six years old!  Billy never thought about being that old.  He could hardly wait to get the next day started so he could impress Sgt Moore with what he learned from him.

The balance of his Engineer Platoon was in the truck in front and riding in the rear of the covered 2 ½ ton Billy was driving.

Boom! A cloud of dirt and debris rained down on the hood of the 2-½ ton truck.  A huge gaping hole now contained the remains of the truck that was in front of him.  His truck was now disabled as well.  CPL Jackson looked to his right to see what was left of Sgt Moore’s body next to him.  He climbed into the ring above the cab of the truck and cocked the M2 .50 cal.  He didn’t wait long before he was rewarded with targets.  Just as the smoke cleared, from the wreckage in front, six men ran towards him from his eleven o’clock with AKMs.  Billy didn’t even do much more than swivel the gun onto target and ripped into them with six round bursts.

He managed to kill them before they got within one hundred meters.

“I got some!” He yelled to Sgt Moore.  He looked down as he was visually reminded of why he did not get a response.  

Just then several more of the ambush party emerged with rifles blazing!  

“I’ll see you in Hell!”  The .50 caliber machinegun belched with a comforting cadence.  Even the targets missed seemed completely frightened of its power.  

By this time Billy heard the ringing in his ears.  Just as he regained his composure, he saw movement from his right!  He swiveled the big gun right and began to rain death on twelve more AK clad targets.  Boom boom boom boom boom boom!  He repeated many times until the gun ran out of ammo.  With the barrel smoking, still more targets tried to surround his position.  Billy jumped from the truck and grabbed his M16A1.  A few minutes later that was dry as well.  He eased back in to the truck to grab more ammo and saw Sgt Moore’s .45.  He grabbed it and took his magazines for his rifle and returned to the fight.  Although he did not know it, the convoy was well beyond him and he was left as the last one standing.

“Hey yall come on I got em on the run” he yelled over his shoulder.

Up to this point Billy didn’t realize that he was the sole survivor of the ambush.

Billy looked behind him to see a mass of twisted metal where his friends used to be.  

“Oh my God!”  Billy vomited when he was able to get to the back of the truck and see nothing but twisted bodies in grotesque positions missing limbs and heads.

A hornet zipped pass his ear, and he even swatted at it, and then realized the following hive was emanating from an AK wielding woman about fifty meters to his rear.  Anger flushed Billy as he went from grief to rage!  Recklessly he began firing and running at the shooter, putting half a magazine into her chest.  He ruthlessly tore out his bayonet and began searching for survivors among his now grounded attackers.

At last, one of them appeared to get up and try to limp away.  Corporal Billy Jackson U.S. Army threw down his rifle with a bloody blade and drew the .45.  He jerked the slide back and calmly walked up to the fleeing combatant and emptied the pistol into his back at five feet.  “THAT WAS FOR SGT MOORE YOU ASSHOLE!”

Once the quick reaction security team made it to the ambush site they found Corporal Billy Jackson standing with an empty .45 slide locked to the rear looking off into the distance.  Around him were the dead of 2nd Platoon Bravo Company and one hundred dead Sandanistas.  When asked what happened later at the hospital, Billy would only reply with “Time to get some!”

Continued Tomorrow or the day after.
John R. Fuller

All right folks here is Chapter 10.  I hope you enjoy it.  I took some of the tips yall provided.  Keep them coming!  I need all the help I can.  

Sorry for the intense chapter yesterday, but I was shocked that I could imagine that happening to anyone. I want to take this time to show my gratitude for all Veterans of our conflicts, especially the ones that must live with the debilitation of PTSD.  The war never ends for them, and they must bear that horrible burden for life.  Freedom is not free and defending our country costs greatly.  

From here on out this will be a roller coaster ride.  Please enjoy.


Chapter 10.

Billy woke up this morning fresher than ever before, and couldn’t recall such a peaceful night’s sleep in a long time.  He was ready for work in about ten minutes as he rolled out of the bed and practically into his industrial looking jump suit.  

He started the coffee and remembered that today he was going to shoot after work, so he walked downstairs to his unique basement and collected some of his favorites.  He also picked up about five hundred rounds of that Serbian 5.56MM TWO HUNDRED round of his latest roll your own .458 SOCOM.  Lying in the corner was an old box of .45 ACP ball ammo he bought several years before and forgot about.

The list of weapons he was going to take included the Marlin Model 60, for a warm up, his CAR 15 for the bulk of his amusement, his .458 SOCOM on a dedicated lower, and now the thing that pulled at his heart the most, the .45 he wore perpetually in a well worn leather shoulder holster.  It was Sgt Moore’s and he kept it next to him as a memento of better days even though it usually tended to remind of things he wanted to forget.

He left the house at 2:00 A.M. and began his southerly route to Langerphlates, Texas.

One hundred miles south of Langerphlates, Texas at the abandoned truck stop, a curious convoy pulled into the run down station which long ago ceased to help anyone but the local riff raff.

Emillio Estrada was walking around the last truck to view his “cargo” one last time.  He and his most sympathetic partner Jose Villarreal were wondering what they would lighten this load with.

“El Jeffe! the younger chica is mine!” gleamed Jose.

“Mi amigo, then I will get her sisters,” replied Emillio.

Both men were intent on opening the back doors and not watching their backs.  From inside the stuffed and smelly confines of the trailer came three girls barely out of their teens.

Emillio closed the door while Jose led the three girls around to the opening in the wall of what used to be a service station.  Pre-positioned were several mattresses that the two used all to well on many rides north.

While one held the other two at gunpoint the other would rape and trade off.  Tonight, however would be different.  While the two coyotes prepared for refreshment they did not see the doors to the second sea land container open.  

Hillario Mendez was fast asleep in the cab of his truck.  He knew what his two partners were up to and wanted no part of it.  He often did this at the “way station” and was not observant of what was transpiring at the rear of his cargo container.

Ibraham and a few of his lieutenants calmly followed Jose and Emillio unawares to the other side of the building.  He was very mad at being forced to do business with such scum that Allah would certainly will dead, as long as it did not compromise the mission.  They arrived just as Emillio was tearing the clothes off of the first girl.  

Jose wondered why the two girls stopped whimpering and became wide eyed as if in shock.  He never saw the long curved blade circle around his upper chest before he felt as if is whole head was being sawed off.  

“Jose! Make them be quiet so I can…” Emillio turned in time to see Jose’s head roll on the ground.  In this bizarre turn of events he didn’t even think to grab the pistol out of his pants before he and the three girls died in a hail of gunfire.

Hillario thought he heard gunfire.  He woke with a start and grabbed his emergency bag and launched himself out of the truck.  He did not want to encounter the gringo policia and did not want to see why anyone was shooting.  

Ibraham did not count on the third coyote to run and consequently did not make plans to stop him if he did.  Knowing that these types of animals did not want contact with the authorities comforted his worry that the mission might be compromised.

Ibraham rounded up his men and shouted “Allah Ackbar!”  “Now Allah’s will be done.” Surmised Ibraham.

Very good

Ok how is this chapter?  Thanks for the encouragement.
Chapter 11.

Billy hummed to himself as he drove his truck to work in the dark.  He wished that the Chupa Cabra were open for business at this early hour so he could get a Cowboy Omelet from Jaime.

In town Peter Langerphlates unlocked the door to his restaurant to begin cooking bar b q for the day.  He looked over his shoulder at the Langerphlates Rangers monument before going inside and locking the door behind him.
Ibraham and two of his men resumed driving the three sea land container tractors north headed for Langerplates.  In his mind he went over the plans for the mission.  The first truck in the convoy with the immigrants would drive to the far side of Langerphlates and jackknife about a mile north of the intersection of the hwy and FM2009.  

The second truck contained twenty of Allah’s best followers that were ready to show a missionary zeal with lessons taught by Infantry squad level weapons that included belt fed machine guns.  After the first truck would jackknife, the second truck would disgorge its occupants to deploy south of FM2009 and into the town setting up a roadblock.

The third truck driven by Ibraham would continue its northward journey towards San Antonio where Ibraham would detonate the mother of all truck bombs.  While this was no ordinary truck bomb, it was a full on nuclear war head designed to wipe out entire cities.

Billy was beginning to round the familiar corner that would give him a prime view of the traffic light when he noticed a huge semi truck with one of those rectangular convexes turned over in the road.  He felt something change within him as he slowed to a stop.  It seemed that he was sapped of strength.  Something familiar with this scene in his head…

Omar waited on the opposite side of the truck and curiously watched as the small pick up truck approached the wreck site.  

In town, Ibraham stopped to exchange hugs with his men before continuing on when he got a radio message.

“One truck just stopped and someone got out.  They won’t approach me and who ever it is is just standing there.” Reported Omar

Just about that time Peter remembered that he forgot something in his truck, so he unlocked the front door and walked out.  What he saw chilled him to the bone.  Several men were walking down Main Street with what looked like rifles.

“I can’t believe this,” thought Billy  “This is just another dream I am having.”

Just then he heard some moaning or screaming from what looked like that cargo box on the overturned trailer.  

Omar was very worried that this truck was blocking the road and Ibraham would not be able to get through.

A single state police car almost smashed into the rear of Billy’s truck as they saw the overturned rig.  “Base, this is Orphan Four we have an overturned”

A thin line of green flashes emitted from behind the over turned truck cab into the police car that just arrived.

Billy by now was awake to the reality in front of him that he so rudely deduced not a dream.  He flung himself to the pavement and drew his pistol.

More bursts of automatic fire came from the truck

“I wonder what he’s shooting at,” thought Billy.  He crawled around and saw the flashing lights of the state police cruiser.  He noticed that the front windshield was smashed but couldn’t see anything else.

In town, both the wrong doers and Peter heard the automatic weapons fire from outside of town from the direction of the hwy.

Ibraham drove the truck behind a building to decide what to do next.  He did not count on these types of complications.

Billy knew that no good came from people shooting into police cars.  He did not know if they were ok, but he sure knew that the moron firing that automatic rifle needed to be stopped now!

Omar rocked in the fourth magazine of ammo and began to plink at the now still police car.  He completely forgot about the man from the truck that stopped initially.

Billy instantly realized that he had better tools to take care of this problem in his truck than in his hand.  He slowly crawled back to the truck and opened the door from the ground.  He reached in and drug out the first rifle case he could get his hand on.

Omar thought he caught some movement with his diminished night vision.  It looked someone was crouched about twenty meters to his front with a rifle.

Billy already loaded the chamber of the .458 SOCOM AR15.  He took careful aim with the red dot scope and only saw the head and exposed shoulders of the bad marksman.  He lined up his sites and squeezed the trigger.  BOOM!

Omar’s head exploded like an over ripe watermelon.

An here is the next chapter...
Chapter 12.

Billy was fully aware that he was no longer in a dream real or imagined.  He comprehended that he just probably shot and killed someone firing a fully automatic weapon at a police cruiser.  He was also aware that there was an overturned tractor-trailer with a very long container on the pavement in front of him.  All of this added up to trouble.

After some faints to standing, Billy ran back towards the patrol vehicle and saw that no one was in or around the car.  The lights were still flashing, and there was blood and glass all over the front seat of the vehicle’s dash and interior.  The passenger front door stood open with a trail of blood leading away from it.  As he quickly surveyed the scene he heard faint voices coming from the direction of the accident.  He turned and saw that one of the doors was bulging as if something was pushing on it from the inside.  He walked over to the container and noticed a broken lock with the latch bent.  He shouldered the SOCOM and studied the latch.  He finally figured it out and stood back as he let the door fall to the ground.

“Por favor Aqua por favor aqua.” Came the plaintive voices inside the box.  

Billy took out his miniature mag light and shined it inside.

“Oh no!”  Billy silently shuddered on the inside.

He could think of no good reason to stuff people inside a metal box like this.  As he was examining the inside of the trailer, he heard automatic weapons fire again, this time from the road coming from Langerphlates.  

On the ground as instinctive as he was to this as if it was normal to him, Billy looked intently into the darkness and identified four men walking up the road with rifles as if they were searching for someone.

Billy knew in an instant that this was a situation with no good end. “Time to get some!” he silently muttered under his breath.

The four men walked quickly towards the overturned truck.  They last heard a radio transmission from Omar and then the shooting stopped.  They heard a loud boom and did not recognize the source of the noise.  They did notice however, that they ceased to get any word form Omar after the single boom.

Ibraham shifted sideways in the cab of his truck.  This would put him at least an hour behind schedule, but what did it matter?  His gift from Allah would kill the unjust at any hour.

Peter Langerphlates peered from the side of his double glass doors to his restaurant.  He watched as four armed men run into the direction of where the gunfire erupted.  More shocking, he saw another three men set up what looked like a belt fed machinegun nest at his edge of town facing north.  Consequently three more men toted the same arrangement past his store heading towards the other side of town.

Billy slowly led the first one with his red dot site.  He estimated about fifty meters between him and the nearest gunman.  This was perfect in that he was laying prone on the edge of the road and the four coming against him had nowhere to run.

Peter Langerphlates was usually armed with a 4” barreled Colt Commander, but not today.  He only had an NAA .22 Magnum in his pocket without reloads.  In his truck outside was a Winchester .3030 lever action rifle.  He really couldn’t get to it without opening the front door.  He went to the back room office and tried to dial the Sutton County Sheriffs office.  The line was dead.

Billy slowly pulled the trigger on the .458 SOCOM.  He closed one eye before the trigger squeeze…BOOM!  BOOM!  BOOM! BOOM!  All four gunmen ceased to be living breathing gunmen.

Ibraham was frantic now.  He couldn’t raise his recon party he sent to reinforce Omar with.  He called for the northern post, and they did not have their night vision set up yet.  

“Begin shooting into the sea land container and try to start a fire,” ordered Ibrahim.

Billy was about ready to stand up when he saw tracers light up the early morning sky.  Most of the rounds seemed to be directed towards the overturned truck.  He could hear the screams from inside the container as the bullets tore through it.

Peter used the gunfire as a distraction to get to his truck outside.  He though he was home free as he crouched and reached up to turn the key on door to his truck.  As he opened the door, the interior light came on!

By now Billy wasn’t scared or confused as much as he was incensed that these people would purposely wreck a truck full of people in a sea land container and then recklessly fire a machinegun into without knowing that people were still in there.

The firing stopped, probably to cool the barrel or ran out of ammo, Billy used the chance to run back to his truck for more ammo and a few different tools he needed.

Peter grabbed the rifle case and left the door open.  He had a box of round nosed hollow points in the case with the unloaded rifle.

One of the nine remaining men with Ibraham noticed a light coming from a truck across the street.  Being suspicious, he walked over to the truck to see what caused the light to come on.

Peter was unzipping the case as silently as he could when one of the men with rifles rounded the corner of his truck.  He jerked the little NAA out, pulled the hammer back and…

Billy knew that the .458 SOCOM was a good choice, but the CAR would provide more ammo capacity.  For fun he also grabbed his .22.  He was beginning to feel like he hadn’t in years.

Ibraham’s guard looked intently at the man squatting down as if to defecate.  Then he saw a shiny metallic object in the man's hand.  He thought it was a lighter.

Peter was so nervous that he had to try twice to pull the hammer back.  When he did he stood, deliberately shoved his hand and arm out in the direction of the gunman and pulled the trigger… POW!

He smelled the gunpowder slightly before he felt the sting of the .22 magnum hitting his chest.  Unbelieving he looked down and then back up.  The squatting man was gone!

He turned to go back to Ibraham and get more help, as he sprinted around the corner of the truck, one of his trigger happy comrades finished what the little .22 revolver started.

Billy could hear the faint crackle of gunfire in town.  He knew where the machinegun was set up and framed a plan to flank it from Peter’s Creek.  He was still a little nervous about not finding the injured policemen.

Ibraham heard the firing from just outside his cab.  He jumped out of the rig ready to defend his cargo.  When he saw the source of the shooting, he sickly turned back to his cab.  

Peter was motivated by the gunfire that killed his attacker, because he thought they were shooting at him.  He finally stopped long enough to load the tubular magazine with five rounds.

The men at the northern machinegun position were getting ready to begin shooting again.  Just as the first burst cleared the muzzle, the spotter fell over, and then the assistant gunner fell as well.  The gunner turned just in time to see a man dressed in a dark jump suit shoot him.

By now Billy was worked up and ready to continue his mission.  Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a familiar shape in the dark.  He fought himself for the last scraps of sanity to prevent him from slipping into a flash back.
Continued Tomorrow or the day after.
John R. Fuller

Nice job.

Its coming along nicely!

Chapter 13.

Peter worked his way to the other side of the street, trying not to gain the attention of the automatic rifle wielding men.  As he got to the other side without being noticed, he noted that he still had not loaded his rifle by operating the lever of his rifle.

Ibraham began to wonder why the northern machine gun nest was not firing as much.  They ceased to fire and would not answer any radio calls.  He could not for the life of him understand why his operation was quickly deteriorating as it was.

It was now 4:00A.M. In the morning.  People would begin to arrive in town or leave to go to work soon.  Langerphlates was not known for its economic hub of activity, but it did claim several residents that commuted to work in a hundred mile circle of their small community.

Jenna Hartman usually left for work at this time of the morning from her home to the south of Langerphlates.  She worked in the Langerphlates City Hall as a jack-of-all-trades clerk.  As she neared the town, an arc of angry green flashes slammed into the front of her car.  One of the 7.62X54 rounds from the belted RPD machinegun struck the top of her head and glanced off.

BEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!  The horn on Jenna’s car continued to blow as the unconscious woman leaned on her steering wheel.  Without civil guidance, the 1999 Buick LeSabre slammed into a power pole sending multiple showers of sparks in every direction.  What few lights burned in Langerphlates went out.  Consequently, this tripped the main sub station outside of town and plunged the large plant five miles from town into darkness as well as shutting it down.

Fifty miles away, in the Cactus Electrical Cooperative head quarters, a technician noticed a spike in the power distribution.  He knew that the Steel fabrication plant in Langerphlates was eating up more than their fair share of the grid due to their increased round the clock shifts.  He was just about to call the number to the plant operations office when he noticed that the power was suddenly cut and the grid like a low flying aircraft jumped back up after losing a heavy load.

Errol Lynn knew a problem when he saw one.  Probably some drunk ran off the road and hit a power pole.

“Darkness surrounds everything.  Darkness is the absence of light.  As soldiers in the U.S. Army, you will own the night.  Whoah!!!”  The drill sergeant held every young basic trainee in a trance of awe.  He held up a cool looking PVS 7 night vision scope that could bolt onto the carrying handle of any M16A1.

Private Jackson looked in fascination at the new concept.  He’d spotlighted some deer in his time, but never had the tools to exploit his nocturnal hunting like this.

“Hey Billy, check that out” said PVT George Sweeny.

“I’ll bet you back woods hicks never had something like that to hunt with.” Continued George.

The drill sergeant continued.  “Tonight you will all own the night and conquer your darkest fears on the movements course.”  You will transfer yourself across this ground in the dark with machine guns firing over your heads form the front.”  There will be explosions and barbed wire obstacles for you to negotiate”

“Do not stand up!”

Billy shook his head again.  He kept on slipping back into the past.  Each time he did it was almost as if he was drifting to sleep.  Even more disquieting than the current problem he found himself inserted into was the familiar shape he could not identify that kept on following him like a shadow.  “Time to get some!” said Billy to bolster his resolve.

Hillario Mendez was shocked at what he found when he made it back to the old truck stop.  The sight of his two former partners laying in the floor, one with his head no where to be found and of the three girls incensed him.  Worse yet, he was depending on the pay from this job.  He knew that he couldn’t get paid, but he could certainly get even.

Back into the building was an old Ford 150 truck that they kept as a get away vehicle should they be compromised.  In it were a rifle a pistol and enough ammo to shoot their way through any flimsy local yokel policeman this side of the border.

Hillario started the truck and left the station into the direction he last saw the big trucks go.

Sgt Tom Horn, now recuperated from the violence of the windshield exploding, kept a steady pace as he parallel the movements of the man with many  guns.  He knew it was Billy Jackson, but did not know what he was up to.  He was certain that Billy was not the only one involved in this gun fight.  He just wanted to make sure that he could make contact without Billy shooting him too.

Peter nervously took out the box of 30 30 shells from the box and stuffed them into his shirt and jean pockets for quick reloading.  All night he only fired one round and he thought little of that.  It looked like he missed all together.

Ibraham confirmed the source of the power going out when he talked with the southern machinegun nest.  He needed to go now if he was going to make It to San Antonio in time for the south west festival.

Billy took stock of his weapons and ammo.  He still had a tube full of .22LR left over from the machinegun ambush.  He hadn’t even fired a round from his CAR15 yet.  He also still retained the .45 in its leather shoulder holster.  As he got into town, he immediately saw the two large trucks that looked similar to the one jackknifed on the road from whence he fought.

He took a mental note and labled the area around the two trucks as a possible target.  Whatever these guy were upto was no good.  Suddenly, one of the trucks turned the headlights on and began to roll his way.  Billy took a knee and brought up his CAR15 and began to fire at the front two tires of the truck.  After a magazine into the wheels, the truck was effectively stopped.

An epic gun battle began.  The nine men remaining in town began to take wild bursts of auto fire in the direction the truck was going.  Nothing could seem to help the thugs use better judgment than to shoot aimlessly into the street.

Peter took this as his cue to begin shooting.  He dropped a couple of the men until they noticed his exposed position.  He got up and ran to hide behind the Langerphlates Ranger monument.  

Within a few minutes, Billy either shot or killed most of the nine men sent to chase after him.  

Ibraham was livid with rage by now.  He couldn’t even take his bomb back to where it was assembled.  He was going to have to detonate it here….

I'm hooked keep it up.

Chapter 14.

By now, the remaining security force protecting Ibraham’s truck bomb was aware that they were probably surrounded.  Gunfire from all sides was now plaguing their progress anywhere.  

Mahmoud was used to taking missions ending in success.  He volunteered for this special mission last year when approached in Pakistan.  The most nascent aspect of the current predicament was the source of the resistance being encountered.  Thus far Mahmoud could only confirm the presence of one state trooper killed in the opening moments of this phase of the operation.  None of the fire his men were encountering was from automatic weapons, yet he knew for a fact that now he was down at least 60% of this forces from what seemed to be random shot taken from inside the town at his men.

Sgt Tom Horn of the Texas State Police edged around a corner of Peter’s Bar B Que restaurant.  He noticed Peter with a lever action rifle taking fire and returning it from behind the Langerphlates Rangers monument.  Sgt Horn instinctively had his Sig P229 chambered in .4OS&W at hand.  He saw the toll that this force of gunmen was taking by counting at least five dead bodies laying near the truck in front of some of the buildings across the street.

Mahmoud deduced that he would need some better cover and a higher vantage point.  He took one of his men and tried to enter a home next to the stalled truck bomb.

Kasandra West lived in Langerphlates all her life.  She was a schoolteacher and the widow of Tom Tiner West a former mayor.  She was awakened by all of the gunfire beginning at 3:00A.M.  She could not get through to anyone because all of the phone lines were down or too busy to get through.  She found her husband’s double barreled 12 gauge shot gun from what used to be his closet.  She loaded it and grabbed a box of shells and went to the landing of the second story where her bedroom was.  The banging on the front door terrified her.

“Hurry and break down the door” yelled Mahmoud.  “What are you afraid of, some old woman?” admonished Mahmoud.

Kasandra heard the door break off its hinges; she aimed the shotgun toward the door loaded with upland bird regulation steel shot high brass shells.

Peter in a lull noticed that two of the thugs were breaking down the door to Kasandra West’s house.  He shifted his point of aim toward the house.

Mahmoud chose to cross the thresh hold first with his assistant behind him.  He made it to the foot of the stairs when he looked up and saw an old woman wielded a very big gun.

Kasandra squeezed and touched off both barrels at the same time…KABOOM!

From ten feet in front of the muzzles a pattern the size of a fist opened a grizzly and fatal wound in a figure eight pattern across Mahmoud’s chest.  The shot chewed through one of the chest straps that held the man’s magazine chest vest.

Instinctively, the last man in the door tried to be the first one out.  He tripped and fell while running toward the door.  Kasandra reloaded two more shells and walked down the stairs half way before peppering the man in the back with a single load of high brass steel shot.  

By now, the wounded gunman was in a full panic and running toward the door he kicked in.  Just as he cleared the threshold, the upper part of his head ripped away as a 30 30 round from Peter’s rifle ripped through him spraying blood and brain matter across the front living room.

Sgt Horn viewed the carnage of the attempted home invasion and concluded that he would only get one side of that story while taking statements later.

On the south side of town, the three gunmen operating the machine gun nest were very nervous.  They lost contact with both Mahmoud and Ibraham.  They did not know what to do.  All that they could deduce was that a huge small arms fur ball ensued in the middle of town.

Peter waved at Kasandra as she appeared in her nightgown at the doorway with her freshly loaded shotgun.  

Billy Jackson seemed to come out of a trance again as he made it to the truck.  He noticed the activity behind the monument and Peter’s bar b q restaurant.  He observed what he thought was the last of the gunmen sneaking around to the back of the truck.  He checked his CAR15 and noticed he was out of ammo.  He snatched the .45 out of his holster and uttered “TIME TO GET SOME!”

It was now about 5:45A.M. And the sun was beginning to chase the night away.  Most of the town’s people were looking out their windows with a shockingly frightful array of small arms.  Already several were exchanging shots with the last machinegun position in the south of town.
In the center of town, Sgt Horn visually identified Billy as he was following the last of the combatants behind the truck.  He would try to help Billy bring this last one in alive.

Billy and Ibraham met face to face.  Billy knocked Ibrahams AK Krinkov variant to the ground.  The door to the container was open, and Billy could see inside, and what he saw incensed him.

“You’ve got a big bomb in there, don’t you” said Billy

Ibraham sneered back and Billy and retorted with “It is too late, you and all of the people of this town are about to face the judgment of Allah!”

“No one’s gonna face anything from you or Allah, and you are about to face the judgment of a good old fashioned pistol whipping!” and with that said, Billy struck the top of Ibraham’s head with the butt of his pistol.

Ibraham saw the world begin to spin as he fell to the pavement.

Corporal Billy Jackson U.S. Army looked down on the man as he tried to get up.  “Sgt Moore will want me to get some.  IT IS TIME TO GET SOME!”  Billy was in a rage by now.  The pistol was loaded and the safety was off as he pointed the pistol down towards Ibraham.  He could feel the trigger pull begin to give way as he centered the front site of his .45 on the man’s head.

“Please don’t shoot me” begged Ibraham

“shut up and take this like a man!”

“Coporal Jackson!” shouted a figure beside him.

Billy turned and saw Sgt Moore.  He was wearing his BDUs with shiny black Cochran’s and a piss pot helmet.  He knew now that he’d finally lost it.  He reached out to touch the specter.

“What are you doing Corporal?” inquired the specter.  

“IT’S TIME TO GET SOME!” shouted Billy

Sgt Tom Horn of the Texas Hwy patrol heard the better part of a one-way conversation as he carefully approached Billy and the last gunman.  As he gathered a better vantage point, he saw Billy talking to someone as if they were right there.  Horn only saw one man standing, because the other possible participant to this conversation was quietly whimpering and bleeding from a large gash on his forehead.

“Billy, I am not what you think I am, it is not time to get some.  It is time to make it right.” Continued the specter.  “It wasn’t your fault that I and the rest of our platoon died that day in Honduras.  You did the honorable thing and defended your position as if it was the last thing worthy to give your life for.  You are forgiven for shooting the last surviving member of that ambush party.  You asked for forgiveness long ago, but you never accepted it.  You now have the power to do the right and honorable thing Billy, so do it.”

Billy hung his head and let the hand holding the .45-drop to his side.  When he looked up again Sgt Moore was no longer there.  The sun was rising in the east and a few people were tentatively approaching him and the man on the ground.  Just as the sunrise chased away the darkness, it chased away the demons in Billy’s mind.  He felt as if the weight of the entire world was removed from his shoulders.  He knew that he would never again punish himself for the things that happened almost twenty years before.

“Time to make it right” said Billy.  He holstered the .45 and reached down to pick up the man he beat to the ground a few minutes before.  This time he chose life instead of death.

Just when you think its over it is not!  To be continued some time in the future.

John R. Fuller

"Just when you think its over it is not! To be continued some time in the future."

ARRGH!!!

Fuzzy:
No worries, as I will probably motivate ole Billy to make more things right as new situations occur.  I just needed to establish Billy as a believable breathing human being before sending him and his tools to more fun jobs.

Remember:
Billy is a weld inspector.  I hope he didn't get fired from his job due to the detour he took on the way to work.

A couple of other things as well to remember:
1.  Hillario Mendez never made it to Langerphlates by the time Billy and the other armed citizens took back their town.

2.  What information is there that this was the only sea land container with a nuclear weapon inside?

3.  I just contacted the really Bad Guys are us division in my mind and see many capable and dastardly people waiting to meet Billy on future "jobs"

Stay Tuned:
Same Black Rifle Channel
Same Black Rifle Time...

Oh yeah, time to get some.....

I really liked this story.  I do think you have done a good job of making Billy believable.

As Promised:

Chapter 15.
“This morning, Langerflates, Texas and most of Sutton County experienced a power outage that began at 5:00A.M. This morning and lasted until noon today.  The Cactus Power Cooperative along with Texas Highway Department are closing the road through Langerphlates down for twenty-four hours while Hazmat Crews from Texas A& M clear the road of debris caused by a petrol chemical truck turned over just north of Langerphlates.” Said the radio commentator without batting an eye.

Back in Langerphlates, all of the bodies were counted, and many of the citizens, despite the quarantine from going outside tried to count the bullet holes from last night’s shoot out.

Jaime was able to open the Chupo Cabra for breakfast in spite of the bullet holes in his front windows facing the street.  Some of the DOE agents and Homeland Security personnel took advantage of the situation and ordered their breakfast meals.

The USAF Security Police from the Texas Quick Reaction Force formed a cordon around Ibraham’s truck and re manned the checkpoints where the two machine gun nests were.

Billy Jackson, Tom Horn, Peter Langerphlates, and Kasandra West sat in the dinging hall of Peter’s restaurant answering questions from two BATFE agents.

“Billy Jackson, now tell me again what type of weapon did you use to kill the men at the northern Machine Gun Nest.” Asked the Agent.

“I used my .22 rifle.” Replied Billy.

“This is a serious matter Mr. Jackson.  Do you realize how much trouble you are in right now?” asked the agent.

“Yeah you are right, the plant operation’s manager will be looking for me because I’ve missed my clock in time of 3:00A.M.  Can I go now, this will be eating into my forty hour work week if I miss anymore time here.” Replied Billy

By now the other agent was in tears to keep from laughing.  

“Just answer my original question truthfully, what weapon did you use on the victims on the north side of town?” asked the agent again.

“My .22.” replied Billy

“How do you expect me to believe that you used a .22 to kill those men?” reacted the agent.

“My .22 worked really good as a boy when I was spot lighten deer.  You wouldn’t believe the amount of meat that rifle’s got for me.” Answered Billy
The door to Peter’s restaurant swung open and three more men in dark business suits walked in on the interview.  The two BATFE agents looked up from the table to acknowledge their presence.

“Please excuse us while we speak with these citizens.”  Said one of the newcomers.

The two agents left with a look of disgust on their faces.

“My name is Special Agent Tom Watson.  I am here to debrief you all and provide instructions as to what you will and will not say about what happened last night.”

“You four stopped an Alqueda Cell from detonating a nuclear device in a large city in Texas.  As of this time all of you may keep any weapons that you used, and you will not be charged or bothered with this issue ever again.” Said Tom Watson.

“My name is Sgt Tom Horn of the Texas Highway Patrol.  None of these good folks committed any crime and should not have to answer for their actions, especially Billy Jackson.” Angrily said Tom Horn

“No one is accusing any of you of anything.  We need to keep this quiet as to what really occurred last night.”  Continued Tom Watson “As of right now, there is only one survivor amongst the attackers.  The only other people that were directly involved with this are you four.  No one else needs to know about this.” Said Tom Watson.

“We are currently fabricating cover stories for each of you in case anyone asks about your whereabouts this morning.  You are not even to speak with each other about this…”

Chapter 16.

Two weeks later, everything seemed to be back to normal in Langerphlates as well as with Billy Jackson.  Today was Friday and he wanted to go shooting again.  As he walked to his truck in the dusty parking lot of LMI, he noticed a note under one of his windshield wipers.  

Billy waited until he sat in his truck to open the note.  It said;

Billy Jackson:
We know who you are.  If you care about what is happening to our great country, meet us at Kasandra West’s home at 9:00P.M. This evening.

Billy wondered what this was about.  It was 3:30P.M. Already and he did not have plans to get home late anyway so he decided to go to this meeting and see what was what.  But first, Billy needed to shoot.  He could always come back into town and eat at the Chuppo Cabra before going on to Kassandra West’s home……

Excellent story!! I really have a lot of respect for you guys who post your work up for all to read.


GET SOME!!

Hey guys:
I am sorry that this is taking so long.  I've been on hurricane deployment off and on for the last month.  Here is a coninuation of Billy...

Chapter 17.
Billy returned to town after blasting in the desert for a half hour with his new .458 SOCOM.  He could hardly wait for the meeting or the Cowboy Omelet Special at the Chupo Cabra.  As he ate the meal, several things occurred to Billy.  

1. Why did things happen the way they did in Langerphlates that night?
2. How did Peter Langerphlates and Kasandra West know each other?
3. Why did they think they were fooling anyone of their special relationship, more especially Billy?
He mulled over it as much as his taste buds allowed the distraction.  When he finished, he tried to pay the cashier, but the proprietor emphatically told him “your moneys no good here AMIGO!”

Billy elected to walk to Mrs. West’s home instead of driving the half a block down the street.  When he got there, he hardly raised his hand to knock on the screen door, when the solid door pulled open surprising him.

“Good evening Billy!” Said Kasandra

Billy nodded at her as he took his hat off before going into the parlor next to the stairs.  He noticed some fresh paint on the door jambs along with not yet finished Spackle where Kasandra tried to fill in the holes the pellets from her shotgun caused that night.

Peter Langerphlates was sitting on the couch with several other men that Billy was either acquainted with at work or knew by reputation.  After taking a mental census in his mind, Billy counted ten men and one woman in the group counting Peter and Kasandra.

“Billy we are glad that you came to us this evening” said Peter.  “You undoubtedly are one that is concerned about what goes on around here.”  “To say that you saved this town last week is an understatement.” ”And for that, we are eternally grateful.  It is for that reason that we are going to expose something of our personal lives to you.”

“I don’t want any compensation or recognition for what I did,” protested Billy

“We are not trying any of that Billy, we just want to give you a chance to…how do you say it MAKE THINGS RIGHT!” said Tom Horn.

Up till now it did not faze Billy in any way that these people saw what he did.  Tom Horn caused shivers to go up and down Billy’s spine when he repeated “MAKE THINGS RIGHT!”

He thought that he was the only one that heard or saw his old friend talking to him that morning.

“Billy come sit in this chair over here” motioned Peter.  “I think that you know everyone in his room, don’t you Billy” continued Peter.

“Before we get started, would you care for some coffee or water?” asked Kasandra

“Ninety three years ago, a man named Pancho Villa attacked a town in the the New Mexico Territory.  While it is easily researched and documented of what happened in Columbus New Mexico, it is not for what occurred in Langerphlates that same year.”  Finished Peter Langerphlates.

“That isn’t possible,” said Billy.  “Everyone knows that he left defeated with his Golden Cavalry never to return while General Pershing chased him three hundred miles into Mexico.” Continued Billy.

“Well Billy, I’ll be willing to wager with you that you know that Pancho Villa died at the hands of his own contemporaries in 1919.” Said Peter.

“Yes that is true,” agreed Billy.

“One part of that is true” affirmed Peter.

“What is not true about that?” asked Billy

“Pancho Villa did die, only I know it didn’t happen in Mexico.” Said Peter with a wry grin.

Chapter 18.

Peter stepped out of the room and returned with an ancient looking leather rifle scabbard.  He pulled the ancient looking lever action rifle out of the leather cover and handed it to Billy.

“Billy, that rifle is a Winchester lever action chambered in .35 Whelen.  Most people around here have not seen or heard of that cartridge.  You are holding the rifle that my great grand father Joseph Langerphlates used to kill Pancho Villa with.” Said Peter soberly.

“Are you still interested?” asked Peter

“I’ll take you answer” Billy interrupted Peter and said

“Well, if yall know I talk to dead friends, then I can know that your great grand father killed Pancho Villa”

Billy saw a wide grin come across Tom Horn’s face as well as Peter’s.  He knew then that he passed whatever initiation of trust that they were examining him for this evening.
Peter Langerphlates finished telling why and how Pancho Villa came to attack Langerphlates when he did in 1916, the year after the Columbus raid.

Joseph Langerphlates was continuing his father’s business of sheep herding at the turn of the century.  He lived well as his circumstances and financial situation allowed.  He left Langerphlates to fight in the Spanish American War after joining the Texas State Militia.  His unit arrived several weeks after the cessation of hostilities.  He returned home to continue his usual occupation.  The only thing that bothered or worried Joseph was the constant turmoil in Mexico.  Bandits often crossed the border from both sides and took valuable livestock.

No one would help, as the Sutton County Sheriff was powerless against that many marauders. If anyone was going to secure their own property it had to start with the property owner.

These fears of Joseph Langerphlates along with many in the states of Texas on the border with Mexico came to life in the form of raids by not only the usual cattle thieves, but hundreds of armed and lawless men on horseback raiding their neighbors in Texas for cattle and any other thing of material assistance to the raging revolution in Old Mexico.

While General Pershing and his brigade though they were chasing Pancho Villa in Mexico, Pancho Villa organized another raiding party to attack those meddlesome North American Gringos in Texas.  This unit consisted of three hundred men organized into a Regiment and three battalions.

Pancho Villa never intended to take Langerphlates; he only wanted a pair of the regionally famous Langerphlates sheep to take back as one of many spoils of war to his impoverished Mexico.  Just as another famous military leader did in 1836, Pancho Villa made the same mistake of assuming the people in Texas would just roll over and allow him and his men to take what they wanted, when they wanted it.

On December 15, 1916, Pancho Villa crossed the border between the United States and Mexico.  He rode hard north on his way to rob a train of a delivery of Winchester firearms making their way west.  He also wanted to burn a few towns down, just to show who was boss.

On the 18th of December 1916, Pancho Villa and a group of his private security detail rode into Langerphlates, Texas.  The residents were terrified as well as the Sheriff of Sutton County.  As he crossed Peter’s Creek to gain access to the Langerphlates Ranch, Joseph Langerphlates was already waiting in ambush along the creek.  He had five rounds for his .35 Whelen and there were exactly five coyotes going for his flock.

Joseph looked down the octagon shaped barrel of his rifle waiting for the five coyotes on horseback to cross the creek.  He’d shot plenty of the four-legged variants of coyotes; these two-legged varmints riding horses didn’t stand a chance either.

Joseph slowly pulled the trigger on his rifle and felt the resistance giving way to his trigger finger.  The flash and bang of the rifle affected the coyotes worse than it did Joseph.  He worked the lever four more times.  Each trigger pull dropped a man off of his horse.  The only movement was of the last man’s sombrero rolling down the bank of Peter’s Creek.  He realized the possible consequences of his actions, but felt this was the only way to stop these varmints from ever bothering his sheep again.

By the time any of the rest of Pancho’s men found out about what happened in Langerphlates, Joseph recruited some help.  This time more than one sombrero rolled off a head into Peter’s creek.  From that time on, this group came to be known as the Langerphlates Rangers.  Since no one knew the names or membership lists, no one could tell the bad actors where to take revenge.  In the 1920s, the town businessmen paid for and erected a monument commemorating the event.

“Billy what do you know about horses?” asked Peter Langerphlates…

It's been a month, I'm anxiously awaiting more reading material!!!

Good work, keep it up.

Ditto.

Thank you so much for your comments.  I will get back to writing as soon as the ideas come to me.  I really like the character of Billy as he represents the best in men.  He is not perfect and seems to be flawed at some point, yet he is able to recognize his demons and use them to his advantage.  I hope this portion of my itenerate story telling is as interesting as you make it to be in your comments.  Here goes...  Please enjoy.  Thank You

Chapter 19.

Billy left the meeting with a new found sense of belonging that he missed for the last decade and a half.  Uneasiness due to the fight he lodged against Middle Eastern terrorists, and uncertainty of people just like him yoked together, made for a new form of anxiety for him.  Before, his only care was of his brothers in arms and recently the people he worked with.

One often asks him or her self the question about the people they encounter or work with every day.  It is the question that asks why do they do that?  What motivates them?  How far will they go to…

In the following weekend, Billy found himself at Peter Langerflates ranch learning to be around horses.  It wasn’t as easy as it seems in the movies.  He had not ridden a horse since he earned his Horsemanship skill badge as a Boy Scout.  Approaching a horse requires skill, but also camaraderie with the animal.  The horse is considered a partner that will selflessly sacrifice it self for the rider, provided the rider fulfills the unwritten contract to care for the horse better than his or her self.

Not long after the first couple of visits, Billy found a way to mount Gen’rl Patton without ending up on the dirt floor of the corral.  They made a striking scene of an industrial clad man on top of the dark gelding.  A few practice trail rides around the house led to longer rides into the pasture and eventually the interior of the ranch.  Most of the time Peter road along with Billy to make sure he wasn’t stranded should Gen’rl Patton decides to take off without Billy.

One day that winter, Peter took Billy to a streambed on the far outskirts of the ranch.  There on the far side, were five well-cleaned crosses in the ground.  The obligatory mounds of earth still showed where a body displaced the dirt.  No names adorned the crosses, but no explanation was needed to cue Billy in to the reason for the visit either.
“From where we are now, my great grand father shot those men to death with this rifle.” Said Peter.

Billy looked on as Peter pulled the octagon shaped barreled lever action rifle from the scabbard on the saddle.

“This is why we fight, and this is what we fight with,” said Peter.  

For a moment, Billy felt a lump in his throat and felt sad for the men that died that winter day in the 1920s.  He felt sadder for Peter’s great grandfather for having to do that to these men.  Then a rage completely filled the void that formed once his sadness was over.

The rage was against anyone that caused another to kill in order to live another day or just to get along in the day-to-day world.  The flame burned bright in Billy’s mind.  Here on this ground, a rancher needed to look down the sites of a rifle and deliberately take aim and fire on men that were bent upon the destruction of his way of life and livelihood.  He could feel the heat rise up in him and radiate from the back of his neck.  Yeah, his hackles rose high like a family dog defending its owner’s home at night.

The two men turned as one and rode silently back to the stables.

Thanks for keeping the story alive.

Chapter 20.

Alone, and without communications of any kind with his handlers, the Prince could only go so far on the other side of the world.  His message to the terror cell in Pakistan was grim.  What the Prince could not understand was how it all went so wrong and still no news mention in any of the media outlets.  He only found out until the next morning when the expected blast did not occur in San Antonio.  

He slowly turned over in his hasty scrape position on the last hill on the side of the road leading into Langerphlates, Texas.  He once again pulled out his SVD Tiger and glassed the town.  He could not even tell that something as horrendous happened in the last month.  The only evidence left was the downed power line recently replaced with a metal distribution tower.

He’d lain there the night of the attack watching helplessly the going on in town.  He could not fire his weapon for fear of being discovered.  He left just as the sun cracked the horizon and returned within a week to continue his reconnaissance of the area.  No where in his experience could he dig in his tool kit of tips and tricks on what to do now.  He could only observe and wait until he found a suitable source to communicate back to his headquarters located in Monterrey, Mexico of the events.

Certainly, his Battalion and Brigade Commanders knew that the attack failed as they did not see the expected mushroom cloud.  They probably assumed that the Prince was either captured or better killed.  That is one thing that actually went well on this mission.  Despite being overwhelmed by enemy forces albeit a few alert and armed citizens, he was still at large and not even known to exist by the American Security Forces.  He could probably live on for another few months before resorting to taking risks to obtain food water and shelter.  The Prince of all things is an expert in his training experience and now his will to survive to fight another day.

The Prince, through with his daily glassing of the objective lovingly replaced the scope protectors over his POSP scope.  He finished writing down his observations and tore open an energy bar and his canteen.

Chapter 21.

Billy huffed and puffed his way through the first two mile run he’d experienced since he left the U.S. Army.  He never felt so out of shape in his life.  He was surprised that he didn’t feel any fatigue the night of the attack, and yet the next two days, his muscles felt worked over more than he could ever remember.  Somewhere along the line, Billy remembered to start eating bananas.

“I wonder how far I can push myself tomorrow?” asked Billy of this canine running partner.

The small Shepard collie mix looked up at Billy and smiled between the labored pants while wagging his tale.

“Come on Sarge, first one to the house gets to collapse on the couch!”  said Billy as he tried to beat his dog to the house.

Once inside his house, Billy checked his answering machine for messages and then logged onto the computer for e-mails.  He rarely checked his computer other than at work before he joined the Langerphlates Rangers.

As he opened an e-mail from the Langerphlates Historical Society, a return receipt message popped up on his screen.  He knew what came next.

The telephone began to ring and he picked it up.  “Hello” said Billy

The caller on the other end of the line said “I am sorry, I think I’ve dialed the wrong number.” And then hung up.

Billy then picked up the GMRS radio and keyed the mike twice before shutting it down.  He quickly grabbed his M4 and tactically made his way to the well house.  Inside was an old military surplus field phone.  He turned the crank a couple of times and began to talk in the clear.

“Billy, clear the target area of all enemies at 0200 hours at escarpment four.” Said the metallic voice.

“Roger that” replied Billy.

Early the next morning, Billy crawled to the preplanned vantage point and looked down into the gorge.  He could see his objective and began to adjust his night vision scope on the .458 Socom.  The enemy was no more than one hundred meters away.

At exactly 0200 hours, Billy pulled the trigger.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

All the enemy targets rested flat on the gorge floor.

TWEEEEEEEEEEEET!  The whistle broke the tension as Billy stood on his feet to greet Tom Horn and Kasandra West.

“Good shooting Billy!” exclaimed Tom Horn.  

“I think that those paper targets are probably through with their days of being bad guys after tonight” replied Billy.

Thanks again.

Chapter 22.

Billy packed up his gear and hiked a half-mile back through the canyon opening to find Gen’l Patton waiting on him patiently.

“Good boy” said Billy soothing his horse before mounting.

The ride back to the Peter Langerphlates ranch lasted about two hours.  On the way, he practiced land navigation at night via horseback.  He began to appreciate the full moon and its affects in the desert at night.  He now understood why the Comanche Indians loved a full moon.  It lit the desert like a sunny day while wearing a dark pair of sunglasses.

Billy was able to make to his work a little tired, but satisfied the next morning.  No one at the plant seemed to take notice of Billy’s new hobby.  Since no one really associated with him outside of work, they probably did no spend much time wondering about what the eccentric weld inspector did in his off time.

To Billy, the deprivation of sleep and exercise reminded him of the military.  In times past that would put Billy into a deep trauma of depression, but not this time.  His activities outside of work took on more importance than anything to him.  It also gave Billy an outlet to associate with real people and believed in the same things he did.

On the other side of Langerphlates, the Prince sulked and wanted more out of this mission.  It was not after his entire fault for the outcome, yet he was not one to question the reasons, his was to do as ordered.

Earlier in life, the Prince was a member of the old Soviet Union’s Red Army in the Spetz Natz.  He was a highly trained sergeant motivated to kill for no more than the whim of his superiors.  There was order for the Prince in such an organization.  He received food, clothing, and shelter.  More important, however, the Prince received a purpose for his life that he just could not get as a boy growing up in Turkmenistan.  His parents were divided in faith.  His mother was a Muslim and his father a former Eastern Orthodox Christian now converted to an atheist.

He grew up watching people he knew die of alcoholism and drug addiction.  His ticket out of this mess came with his conscription into the Soviet Army.  He did not need to worry for anything to include a God to believe in.  His God, if he ever remembered truly believing, now resembled the Soviet Army.  While training was tough, life was harder.  He could still look forward to a new medal or new assignment.

Due to his skin color, he suffered some, but more than made up for it in what he did for his unit every time he deployed.  His assignments grew from being a simple private in a Parachute Regiment to being a team member in a Spetz Natz unit that worked in conjunction with KGB personnel destabilizing governments though assassination.  He could kill far off and close up.

As a soldier the Prince could be the best at something he loved.  Serving the Soviet Fatherland did not motivate him.  Serving his unit and his commanders did.  When the Soviet Union began crumbling in 1991, the Prince faced an awful dilemma.  He could not go on as a soldier.

Faced with starvation, the Prince resulted to robbing people of food and anything he needed to continue his crime sprees.  After hearing from a friend about some “contract” work in Algeria, he decided to recon that situation by joining the French Foreign Legion.  He did not find the type of work that he expected in Algeria, but he did find some employers that preferred men of his skill and skin color.

His first contact with Al Queda operatives was surreal at first.  These were the same people he fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s.  Once he got over the fact that they were not out to overrun him anymore on the battlefield, the Prince accepted his new handlers.  They wanted him for his skill and not his life as they did back in the old days.

The Prince never really understood why these people persisted in dieing for a cause he could never believe in.  He did, however, understand money that these zealots paid him.  For every assassination, the salary increased with bonuses.  Most of the time he did nothing more than wait on his target to enter the kill zone and dispatched him her or it with the tools of his choosing.

Lately, he fell in with this paramilitary group that Al Queda formed to get some professional personnel to facilitate mission success while supporting those dieing for Allah.  And that brought things full circle.  Just as he served his parents for food water and shelter, he served the Soviet Union.  Now that both were gone, he served these Al Queda zealots for the same reasons.  There is no right or wrong in this line of work, only mission accomplishment.

Chapter 23.

Hillario Mendez found himself the loser of the last financial transportation venture.  He did have some money in stocks and bonds with the balance going to his Grand Cayman bank account and the other account that he laundered money through.  He was upset more over how the last clients killed his partners in cold blood.

He spat on the floor as he thought of Ibrahim and his henchmen and what they did to his life style.  While Hillario did not agree with his partner’s life styles or morals, he did care for his personal life style.  He often tried to reason it with the fact that most of his earnings found there way into the church coffers albeit anonymously.

“They will pay for this,” mumbled Hillario as he shuffled down a side street in Monterrey, Mexico.

On the other side of town, Ibrahim sat in the command center that was built inside one of the many compounds that dot Mexico.  Often built by multi national corporations and Gringos that did not want to have to look at how the locals lived.  The locals that worked in service jobs within the compounds were considered ok as long as they left when they finished their work.

This compound belonged to a construction company from Egypt.  From the outside, it resembled any normal compound in Monterrey.  Large SUVs often arrived and departed at the main gate guarded by two visible carbine-wearing guards.  Their uniforms resembled a new contract security company called Clear Ground.

The Clear Ground security-company originated in France founded by two ex French Army Officers.  In the beginning they took many of the physical security jobs for EU nations that did not want to hire American and British contract security forces due to domestic political reasons.

Clear Ground took a stance that they provided contract professional security for any operation around the World as long as the guards themselves did not take part in any illegal activities or any offensive combat operations.  On the face of it, this company appeared to be legitimate in its goals and aims.  Secretly, however, they also carried out larger missions that would appear more than of a defensive posture.  These types of services never appeared as options in their slick brochures and web site.  These services could only be provided as a result of higher bonuses paid to the guards themselves.  This way the money and operations causing collateral damage could not be traced back to Clear Water.  

Most of the guards served in elite European military and police units.  They kept their nationality and received pay in the country of their origin.  While no one could really be denied employment, there always seemed to be enough guards previously hired.  The operators, however, rarely appeared in their company uniforms.  In fact, they resembled special operators wearing sanitized uniforms.

In order to shield their company from scrutiny and also to protect the identity of their clients, Clear Ground received its compensation from Swiss bank accounts with a one-year delay in payments held in the bank.  One of these clients, a wealthy Saudi businessman sat in the internal control center.  He sat at the conference table pouring over satellite pictures of major North American Cities.  Ibrahim, it seemed wanted compensation for the mission scrubbed in the last three months.  It seemed that Jihad warriors were not enough these days to carry out missions.  It mattered not to him in the least that he was using Infidels to carry out Allah’s will.  

“Mr. Ibrahim” said a well-dressed man in an Armani Suit to Ibrahim as he entered the conference room.

Ibrahim stood and shook the man’s hand as he proffered it.

“I am so glad that we can be of further service to you,” said the Armani Suit.  “What is it that we may do for you this time?”

Chapter 24.

Billy slowly read through the checklist again.  He really hated bothering with these things, but his company human resources department insisted that everyone take part the yearly election of benefits.  He only supported himself and his dogs.  No immediate family to his knowledge depended on him.

“There we go!” exclaimed Billy to the human resources secretary.  

“Billy, now you know that you must pick a beneficiary” replied Sandy.

“I’m not married and I am already dead.” Replied Billy.

“Billy we go round and round about this every year and you end up doing what I ask you to do.  Don’t you have someone you care about to pass on this benefit if you die?” said Sandy.

“You know, I think I do this time around,” replied Billy.

“I want all of my benefit in life insurance to go to the Langerflates Historical Society.”  Continued Billy.

“I didn’t know you were interested in that kind of stuff Billy.” Replied Sandy.

“I’ve got some relations that are on the other side of Sutton County.” Said Sandy.  “They are all distantly related to the Langerflates family by a distant cousin that came over after Bismarck took over the old country.” Continued Sandy.

“Do you have any family history out this way?” asked Sandy.

“My Great Great Grandfather died at Glorietta Pass in 1862.  He came from Colorado with his brother in the 1860s to avenge his Uncles death in a Comanche Indian attack.”  “We Jacksons are a fighting lot, but never seam to finish any of the fights we start in history.” Replied Billy

“I’ve got to go, their working overtime again and will probably be needing me”  “Some of the new hires in the welding department are giving me good job security.” Said Billy.

Gene Reboudt sat down with his client in the conference room of the compound headquarters.  His opposite sitter wore a face of bitter hate towards someone or was it something?  His last job for this client did not go well for him or the client.  All of the resources were lost in an inconceivable occurrence while in route to the end state of the mission.

In the last twenty years, Gene Reboudt led many missions for the company.  In his present job he was in what other businesses called customer service.  In Gene’s business, a dissatisfied customer could lead to ruin for the company if they even breathed what Clear Ground did for their client’s worldwide.  He’d seen many clients like this and assisted many petty, yet rich progressive revolutionaries carry out their plans as support mainly.

This client that calls himself Ibrahim gave him a cold chill.  This was one time that Gene really did not want to do his job.  As his boss once told him “business is business.”

“Mr. Reboudt, I understand that you still have an operative in the area of our last business trip.” Said Ibrahim.

This is A Great story

Chapter 25.

The prince could not contain his joy that he finally got his radio to work.  It took the better part of a day’s journey to the cache, pre-positioned before the last mission.  Aside from the many weapons and munitions, it contained radio equipment.  None of the contents could be traced to any one source and many of the components might be purchased on the legal open market in the United States.  That was the beauty of working in this country; it is so free and open without suspicion from anyone.

He did not take any ammunition and did not take any weapons.  The only thing needed was a few parts for his radio and a temporary codebook to make his initial up link to the commercial satellite that would broadcast a misdirection of his position.  This information of course, gathered by the subscriber would tell them to listen in on a pre -planned frequency at a set time and date.  From there, further air wave dead drops would lead to infrequent communication enough to continue an mission or to retrograde to base.

Out in the Gulf of Mexico, a shrimp trawler received the message.  Down below the deck, radio operator recovered the signal from the GPS locating device subscribed to in Cozumel six months earlier.  The radio operator sent an uplinked code to a satellite phone in Madrid, Spain.  There, a street vendor made a discreet call on a disposable cell phone to a number never to be used again.

Back in Monterrey, Gene Reboudt got the message one day after the Prince broke radio silence and announced his status.  An asset in the field is worth two missions.  Already infiltrated in the operational area, they could conceivably continue to operate on many follow on missions while inserted in country.  This operator was specially trained in both highly specialized and advanced military skills/field craft, but also in espionage.  His dossier and resume confirmed his background.  This was why Gene Reboudt knew that the company personally and professionally picked this man for whatever job was going on.

Gene Reboudt provided the reply in a simply and terse message that amounted to a voice mail message to an answering service in Cleveland Ohio.  Something about the dinner not being kosher without bread.

The Prince laughed inwardly at the ridiculous amount of communication security he went through just to tell his handlers that he was still alive and in play.  He looked to everyone else in the Mall in Houston to be just another Mexican, possibly illegal or an American with Mexican roots.  If caught by the police, his fingerprints would not be found on any file, and his cover story complete with Honduran sounding broken English would get him a one-way deportation ticket back to one of his safe houses.

Chapter 26.

Billy checked his bug out bag for the second time since getting home.  All of the essentials were there, but he still missed something.  He preferred to use his .458 Socom to the 5.56MM CAR.  His only shortcoming was the limited amount of ammo he could carry in the .458 magazines.  He also carried a suppressed Ruger .22LR 45/22.  The silencer was included in the five-inch custom bull barrel.  

He was planning on a training mission to a large city.  There he would meet up with operatives from other organizations much like the Langerphlates Rangers.  They came from all walks of life and all parts of the United States.  Just as the Langerphlates Rangers arose from a public need for self defense when government could not or would not protect them.  For the most part, these operatives did not consider their duty as anything approaching vigilantism.  They were there to protect their neighbors and other Americans.

The mission was to train in an unincorporated part of Houston on the South East side.  The shoot house was “salted” with targets marked for each operative to make and “Deal With” according to the dictates of the mission.

On the drive down to Houston, Texas Billy was under no circumstances to appear as anything but someone on a vacation to see the Houston Live Stock and Rodeo Show.  This meant a compulsory attendance for most of the entertainment before and after the practice mission.

Overall the mission was to meet up with the other operatives and to liberate a schoolhouse being held by a terrorist group.  No one really thought that under normal circumstances that their groups would supplant normal police response, this was planned to deal with these types of problems when civil order broke down, or that the usual first responders were already engaged elsewhere.

doing a great job!!! Can't wait for more

Chapter 26.

Billy checked his bug out bag for the second time since getting home.  All of the essentials were there, but he still missed something.  He preferred to use his .458 Socom to the 5.56MM CAR.  His only shortcoming was the limited amount of ammo he could carry in the .458 magazines.  He also carried a suppressed Ruger .22LR 45/22.  The silencer was included in the five-inch custom bull barrel.  

He was planning on a training mission to a large city.  There he would meet up with operatives from other organizations much like the Langerphlates Rangers.  They came from all walks of life and all parts of the United States.  Just as the Langerphlates Rangers arose from a public need for self defense when government could not or would not protect them.  For the most part, these operatives did not consider their duty as anything approaching vigilantism.  They were there to protect their neighbors and other Americans.

The mission was to train in an unincorporated part of Houston on the South East side.  The shoot house was “salted” with targets marked for each operative to make and “Deal With” according to the dictates of the mission.

On the drive down to Houston, Texas Billy was under no circumstances to appear as anything but someone on a vacation to see the Houston Live Stock and Rodeo Show.  This meant a compulsory attendance for most of the entertainment before and after the practice mission.

Overall the mission was to meet up with the other operatives and to liberate a schoolhouse being held by a terrorist group.  No one really thought that under normal circumstances that their groups would supplant normal police response, this was planned to deal with these types of problems when civil order broke down, or that the usual first responders were already engaged elsewhere.

From outside, the school appeared as if the terrorists barricaded all of the windows and doors to the gymnasium.  The older style campus was spread out and not all of the classrooms offered a contiguous path under cover or otherwise.  Many of the terrorists could be seen manning their security posts looking for any type of intervention.

Five hundred meters away, one sniper team focused in on their mark.  The assistant sniper lazed the target and provided the shooter with all of the pertinent wind direction and speed along with the distance to target.  The shooter adjusted his dope and placed the crosshairs of the scope so they covered the target’s mouth.  Many years before, he served on a USAF Emergency Services Team as a sniper.  He remembered his training to shoot through the teeth would most likely result in immediate immobilization of the target with death coming in minutes.

Closer in, one of the entry teams acknowledged the time checkpoint and the signal to begin the final take down of the terrorists in the school.  They were exactly twenty-five meters from the entryway they were to overwhelm.

“I’ve got the target in sight and am ready for firing commands.” Said the assistant sniper.

“Fire!”

Steve Longmayer slowly squeezed the trigger on his .338 caliber Remington 700.  He felt the rush of the recoil and followed up with a second shot to the secondary target.

The assault team tossed a flash bang grenade into the black void of the entryway and rushed into the hole while shooting targets as they entered the gym.

BANG BANG BANG BANG!  Several small arms could be heard popping from outside of the gym.  Steve Longmayer pulled the bolt from his rifle and poked an orange bicycle flag into the ground by his position to show he was safe and clear.

Inside, chaos and cacophony of sound reigned as the entry team drilled all of the targets.

“Clear!” yelled Billy

“Clear” yelled the adjacent entry team leader.

“Everyone hear lock and clear your weapons!” shouted a man walking into the scene with a bright blaze orange hunting vest.

“Everyone check yourself and your buddy, then police up the brass.  We will commence the AAR at Check Point reefer time orange” continued the authoritative orange vest.

Ten hours later, the AAR began in the back of an old refrigerator truck outside of Brenham, Texas in a pasture.  The meeting lasted approximately forty-five minutes followed by a round of handshakes and see you next time comments.  Within one hour of the meeting beginning, no one or no thing remained to tell the proceedings.  All participants left for home or for follow on missions that further enhanced their operational security.

Chapter 27.

The Prince glassed the all to familiar objective again.  This time instead of Langerphlates, Texas he was looking at a suburban High School on a road that the locals referred to as a Farm to Market road.  The Prince’s understanding of the English language could not compensate for such a contradiction.

While this objective was definitely in a rural setting, it was on the outskirts of a built up area south of San Antonio, Texas USA.  The mission this time was a kidnapping of a prominent daughter of a Jewish businessman.  At least that is what he understood the mission to be.  He would not physically take part in the mission other than to oversee the area and provide vital reconnaissance to the operatives being supported by Clear Ground contract forces.

The Prince never physically got involved.  His contract was strictly one to provide information to help his clients obtain their mission goals.  If he needed to fire his weapon, it was only to provide covering fire or to protect him self from imminent capture.

The routine was shockingly similar Monday through Friday.  Chandra Goldstein arrived at the school via a small Ford Taurus with two doors.  Blue in color and regularly washed on a weekly basis, he watched his mark for several weeks now.  Her Black long flowing hair reminded him of the women of his youth.  They had coal black eyes and black hair.  He often wondered what was different between him and Jews.  They looked a lot like the Muslims around the world that wished to kill them.

School always let out at 3:15 P.M. on a daily basis. The target then transitioned from school to the field house where she changed into a scandalous looking outfit.  He learned through his own intelligence gathering about something Americans called “Cheer leaders.”  These scantily clad women would then dance in rhythmic convulsions to excite the crowd of spectators and encourage lewd and rude yells directed at the opposing team.

Back to the front of the school, the Prince glassed over to the only other armed opposition.  The local constabulary walked back to his car parked in front of the school offices and main entrance.  He could see the large caliber auto worn on his right hip, with two reloads on the belt next to what the Prince found out to be called a taser device.  The less than lethal weapon puzzled the Prince as being anything useful to a security force member.

He did admire the auto tucked neatly into the basket weave holster.  While school massacres did occur in the United States they were relatively rare when compared to other problems facing schools.  The Prince was able to penetrate the school’s physical premises within two days of being on the objective.  He intimately remembered and took pictures of the school’s interior.  He knew of every classroom that his mark would go to on any given day.  

All of this information made it to his handlers in Monterrey, Mexico via an internet link provided by the school’s high speed access wi fi zone foot print.  One thing confused the Prince with his entire intelligence gathering was this; the information on schedules and routines of local traffic patterns and potential armed interference made no sense for a simple extraction of a lone teenaged girl.

One thing popped up in the Prince’s mind Beslan.  He knew of a friend that participated in the liberation of the school after several Islamic terrorists held the school’s children hostage.  Not that these things bothered the Prince’s conscience, it bothered his sense of a professional job of a professional soldier.

Chapter 28.

Darren moved cautiously through the port facilities of the Galveston, Texas Cruise Ship berths.  He looked for just the right picture.  Just as he was getting within fifty feet of the dock where passengers were loading, a finger tapped him on the soldier and put the camera down.

“May I help you?” asked the Gulf Way’s contract guard.

“Where is the public affairs office located out here?” replied Darren.

“Probably not here.” Retorted the guard.

“You’re going to come with me.  Please this way.” The guard motioned back towards the warehouse that Darren thought he snuck through unobserved.

Just as the pair was about to enter the warehouse, a huge explosion erupted from the direction of the harbor.

Chapter 29.

“Wow” came the hummed expression of the guard.  He seemed to temporarily forget where he was and what he was doing before the explosion.

Darren got up off of the ground in time to see the ships gangway fall to the docks.  As if on cue, the capstans holding the ship’s moorings exploded in a series of muffled pops to the witnesses present.

The ship seemed to drift away from the dock and then, as if on it’s own power pulled away.  By this time, the bedazzled guard was actually walking away from his charge and back towards the ship as it floated into the bay.

No one seemed to want to get up and stop the ship from floating away from the docks.  Just as the smoke cleared and the ear ringing was down to a dull thud, the police appeared from the Galveston Police Department along with some Port Authority personnel.  Just as the first responders arrived, another large explosion racked the docks sending a shockwave into the adjacent Mechanic’s Avenue on the Strand.

All of the people standing lost their footing as the blast cut them in to two pieces.  The fishermen on the inland side of Texas City observed a mush room cloud waft up from the direction of Galveston Island.  Every piece of glass that separated from the warehouse buildings along with the glass of the adjacent two inner blocks from the blast at first shattered and then melted.

No one seemed to care anymore about the ship that floated away from the docks.  It now resided in many places.  The explosion preserved the hull on the bottom of the channel.  The explosion accomplished what two centuries of recorded hurricanes failed to do.  Galveston was completely flat, and devoid of any living thing.

Chapter 30.

The first thing many people noticed on the Gulf Coast was the lack of phone and Internet service.  The refineries on the south coast facing Galveston and Texas City immediately lost all power.  Once the slack jawed survivors began to process information on I45, the inevitable exodus began south of Houston.  Traffic backed up immediately followed by panicked drivers and passengers leaving their cars and trucks still running to evacuate on foot away from Galveston.

On the objective, the Prince noticed a power black out.  He even lost the wireless connection for his computer and communications equipment.  He turned on the transistor radio that he carried and was shocked at what he heard next.

Within an hour of the small nuclear yield in Texas, Gene Reboudt of Clear Ground heard of the explosion.  He had men in the field within the region, not to speak of his recon asset near San Antonio, Texas.  The entire border crossing stations between Mexico and the United States closed.

Houston, Texas along with all of the other Gulf area within one hundred miles needed to be evacuated.  Many saw the mushroom cloud as it briefly hung over Galveston Island.  

As the Prince listened in on his transistor he heard an announcer.

“There’s been a chemical plant accident close to the Houston Ship Channel this morning.  All residents living in that vicinity are ordered to shelter in place.”  Everyone north of the 610 by pass is ordered to evacuate immediately to the north.  I45 is off limits to all non-governmental vehicles.  Do not try to drive south towards Galveston Island.  Effective today at the noon hour, the Governor of Texas is placing all of the area south of the bottom 610 loop under State Martial Law.  He is also in communication with the President of the United States gaining relief and supplies to alleviate this disaster.”

Hundreds of miles apart the Prince and his handler Gene Reboudt both muttered a curse.  This changed everything on their operation.  Kidnapping this prominent daughter would probably not happen now.  The Prince needed to gain this information before abandoning his post.  He did know that there would be a plethora of security forces both military and law enforcement looking for people like him.  He might even resort the escape and evasion plan to get out of the United States.

Just as he was mulling the current situation, two trucks drove at a high rate of speed through the parking lot from the access road to the school.  They screeched to a halt and the back doors flew up.  Twelve men armed with Kalishnikov Rifles swarmed the front entrance.  The school resource officer got off two shots before he took a chest full of slugs.

In the next few minutes screams and muffled explosions rocked the school.  The Prince was intently looking through the scope on his Druganov Rifle.  His hidden microphones were still in place, but he couldn’t get them to work with the wireless network being down.  At the front of the school, two rifle bearing men stood guard.  The Prince needed to change positions to gain better intelligence of the situation.

Back in Monterrey, Mexico Gene Reboudt began to frantically call his assets in the field and exfiltrate them back into Mexico.  He wondered if his currently client caused the explosion in Galveston, Texas.  

Outside the walls of the compound, two hundred men waited to assault the headquarters.  They were waiting for a signal from the inside.  This little violence in the streets would certainly be ignored since Ibrahim bribed the local constabulary.  Clear Ground did guard its asset, but the force consisted of ten men with five as backups in the ready barracks.  The other twenty employees of Clear Ground, including Gene Reboudt carried Glock 17 pistols.  They stood no chance of surviving this type of attack on their facility.

I know this story is dragging a little, but I am trying to force some sort of action in my mind for it.  If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to let me know.  Thank You

good stuff!!!!

OK Here is some more.  Please enjoy!

Chapter 31.
Billy was at work when the bomb detonated in Galveston.  He didn’t know anything until the shop foreman from the welding area asked him to unlock his office and turn on the television.  Just as he let the door open with about ten people piling into his small office his beeper vibrated.

“Kelvin make sure you lock the office up when you leave.”  Said Billy

“Where are you going?” asked Kelvin.

“I just found out one of my dogs is loose in the neighborhood.  It seems the HOA wants me to put him down right now.”  Replied Billy as he brushed past Kelvin.

Billy put his truck into gear as he tore out of the white gravel parking lot in front of LMI.  He started to look around on the gravel road for traffic so he could pull over to the side and take the text message on his “other” cell phone.  Billy dialed the voice mail code feverishly, hoping this was some sort of test.

“Prom Crasher.” Stated the recorded voice on the other end of the phone.

Billy smashed the phone on the pavement and sped off dropping pieces as he drove.  This was really happening and Billy did not relish the thought of what that coded message meant.  Simply stated, Prom Crasher was the code for a School Massacre by terrorists.

As he neared the main thoroughfare through Langerflates, Billy noticed that no one had power in town.

In the United States there are three power grids that control all of the electricity and its distribution.  There is one on the West Coast, the East Coast, while the third is so large that it carries all of the power for the Great State of Texas.

The state Strategic Operating Center in Dallas, Texas was manned by all of the state’s emergency and law enforcement agencies.  Most of the time they even contained representatives of the Texas State Guard.  The state contains many of these centers that track floods, fires, disasters, hurricanes, and power outages.  When people say everything in Texas is bigger, that the scale of the situation qualifies statement.  Today, however, the SOC saw two events not encountered since their inception.  A nuclear blast in Galveston, and reports of a school hostage situation just outside of San Antonio attracted most of the attention of the hard working staff.  The third problem of today did little more than compound the first two and their attendant issues.  The power inexplicably shut down for the entire state of Texas.

The traffic grid in and around San Antonio stuck solid as ice at the arctic.  Thus far, only two deputies from the county could respond to the shootings at the high school.  Their only clue was that the school resource officer reported engaging men with automatic rifles forty-five minutes earlier.  Subsequent radio calls and telephone calls did not raise a response from him.

As they neared the school, everything was eerily quiet and still.  Deputy Conte stopped his car in front of the building next to one of two white non descript delivery trucks.  He radioed in that he was in front of the school.  His back up, Deputy Harris stopped at the entrance of the school to over watch Deputy Conte.

“This looks strange,” mumbled Conte into the mike clipped to his shoulder.

He heard what sounded like shooting and screams further back into the school.  Just as he stepped closer to the entrance, a yellow white intense yellow flame enveloped Deputy Conte and vaporized the front of the school.

Pieces of debris including Deputy Conte’s right arm fell on top of Deputy Harris’s car.  His melted .40 cal Springfield XD cracked her windshield as it too dropped from the sky.  When Deputy Harris pulled herself off of the ground, she had just enough time to see flashes of gunfire erupt from the top of the school.  She stood immobilized until a .30 caliber slug tore through her right shoulder and spun her around to the ground behind the patrol car.

From his vantage point, the Prince turned his head to sneeze when the explosion removed the first policeman from the scene.  From the Prince’s amended vantage point, he noticed that all of the power was out in the surrounding area.

While glassing the parking lot, the Prince noticed some dark green objects spread in a uniform fashion in all of the open areas to the front of the school.  They looked like LAND MINES!

He next saw two men placing what appeared to be cased the size of a medium suitcase in various approaches of open ground all of the way around the school.  Within a few moments all of these cases exploded sending more land mines on the perimeter.

Billy pulled out his BOB and rummaged through a few things.  Back inside his house, he picked up a few weapons and three ammo cans of ammo.  He arrived on the outskirts of the objective near San Antonio within three hours.  He rendezvous with the other members of the Langerphlates Rangers along with the Gonzales Grabbers.  Within an hour they were all briefed on the situation inside the high school.  They knew about the land mines and one sniper scene moving from position to position carrying what looked like a Druganov Rifle.  Two Sheriffs Deputies lay dead or dying in the parking lot.  There was no one left to save the children except the militia.

Chapter 32.
On any given day, the highways and roads south of Houston exhibit heavy traffic.  It may take forty-five minutes to drive from Tiki Beach to Houston an hour after the morning rush is over with.  The same may be observed on any part of the 610 loop and the Sam Houston Toll way surrounding the city of Houston.

During the last four hurricanes, beginning in the fall of 2005, the Houston area evacuated at a disorderly pace jamming the roads and bridges with idle cars.  During the Hurricane Rita evacuation, cars and trucks created a massive four-lane parking lot as far north as Huntsville, Texas for two days.  People not prepared literally idled the gas out of their vehicles waiting for the snarled traffic to move.

Today, the blast in Galveston acted as barrier that pushed the populace between a hammer and an anvil.  What was to come described the hammer and anvil, but not in the way anyone could predict.

In Monterrey Mexico, the terrorists were finishing up the last of the defenders of the Clear Water Compound.  Ibrahim was furious in that he could not locate Gene Reboudt.  He clearly was nowhere to be found and could not operate any of the communications equipment that Ibrahim and his men found.  What infuriated Ibrahim was the fact that all of the radios and Internet phone lines were useless without the codes that Gene Reboudt kept on his person.  The teams in Texas would need to communicate with Ibrahim to carry out their plans in the coming days.  The problem was that they all relied on the communication equipment supplied by Clear Ground.

Ibrahim lost about sixty of his men storming the compound.  These losses were acceptable as they were a means to an end.  He was going to have to send out some of his men to find this French man to get the codes.  He wanted this Infidel alive, as he loved to strain the life out of Infidels through some of the most heinous types of torture.

On the east side of Houston on Sam Houston Toll way 8, Randy Courts was sitting in traffic.  He started off the day bad but could count the only positive outcome was getting his Remington 700 chambered in .338 out of the gun shop.  The gunsmith was empathetic to this customer because he missed the last chance at Mule Deer hunting in West Texas.  The parts he ordered for Randy Courts took longer than expected to get to the gun shop where he worked.  He provided Randy with a couple of boxes of V Max Varmint rounds in with the services he provided at no extra charge.

Randy expected to make it back to work after getting his rifle back over his extended lunch break.  On the way back, that chemical plant blew up with a huge fireball in what looked like the direction of Galveston Island.  His worries about getting back to work on time were now second to the snails pace of traffic as the citizens south of the 610 loop now drove north as fast as the traffic would bear.

In a yellow school bus about five hundred meters in front of Randy Court’s place in traffic, with “Macedonia Free Will Baptist Church School” painted on the side sat twenty six graders.  They were on a field trip to see the San Jacinto Battle Field Monument for the day.  The only monument these East Texas kids were getting to see was the endless line of cars and trucks to their rear and front.  They were sitting on toll way 8 just about to intersect with 45 when they stopped.  The driver could see red and blue lights flashing, but he could not make out where the policemen were standing.

A few minutes’ later people began to get out of their cars and run back into on coming traffic.

“Now that is odd,” said Gerald.

Priscilla the one and only sixth grade school teacher from Cut and Shoot, Texas got out of her seat to see what Gerald was talking about.

“What is it?” asked Priscilla

“why are all of those people getting out of their cars and running back here for?” she asked again.

Just about when Gerald was leaning back to speak to Priscilla, his head exploded as the bus was raked with gunfire!

Chapter 33.

On the Objective, the Prince felt a vibration in his pocket.  This couldn’t be happening.  His satellite phone began to vibrate again.  Knowing that unplanned communication on the Sat phone meant something bad was going to occur, he pulled it out and answered it.

“The customer is not always right,” said the strained voice on the other end.  This operation is Cameron” and the phone went dead.

The Prince came to an abrupt realization.  Their client was not only going to default on payments due for the operations, they were literally killing the men in Clear Ground back in the Compound.

He was duped just like the rest of his comrades.  He now knew he was on his own now.  There was one thing he could do, however.

Inside the high school, dead bodies of students, teachers, janitors and other employees scattered where they fell dead.  Close to six hundred students came to school that morning.  When the shooting started, twenty died within the first ten minutes.  Close to three hundred students got out the back of the school before the terrorists began to shoot into what turned into a mass of human flesh at the exit doors.

The final seventy survivors were herded into one room.  About every other hour, a gunman would take a screaming student away to be tortured in the next room.  Within an hour, the emergency generator for the school sputtered to life.  This provided electricity.  This provided another means of hurting the captives as well as spreading high tech terror.  Two sessions into this living hell, the heartless terrorists hooked up one of the school cameras from the media department and fed the live feed of their classmates being tortured onto a television where the other hostages waited for their fate.

Once the power came on in the school, the wi fi returned.  The Prince was able to look into the school to see what was going on.  Once he saw the impromptu torture chamber, something snapped in his mind.  It was one thing to kill civilians for reprisals in Afghanistan, it was another to torture and kill for no reason other than for shear terror and personal aggrandizement.

It was years since he felt this way, and a slow trickle of emotion slipped from the Prince, as he became something else.

In the torture chamber Amber Chambers sat terrified in the chair she was bound to.  They stripped her of all her clothing before tying her up to the chair.  She was terrified, as she could see what was left of the students that sat in this chair before her.

The two men stood to her side wearing burkas laughed as they began to slap her roughly.  When that subsided, one of the men took out a big knife and cut one of her fingers off behind her back.

She could feel the searing pain and passed out.

The Prince painted his face and checked his Druganov.  Today he was going to be a sniper like he always was before the fall.  He selected his first target standing just inside what was left of the front of the school.  He laid the graduated reticules of the scope and placed them at the base of what was probably his chin.

Billy began the initial recon from the end of the road going into the parking lot.  He could see the deputy’s car with what was left of the light bar still flashing.  A motionless deputy lay bleeding on the ground between him and the car.

He moved forward until a rifle round skipped on the pavement inches from his face.

Slowly, the Prince moved the crude safety to the fire position on the blond wood Tiger Druganov.  He allowed his grip to increase on the pistol grip while watching the space between him and his target read the wind and dope on the geometric equation going through his head.

Billy lay motionless while members of the supporting fire team from the Langerphlates Rangers laid down suppressive fire in the direction of the rifle shot.  He could hear the female deputy moan and saw her chest moving up and down with labored breaths.  Two more shots skipped across the pavement closer to Billy’s face and caused him to wince and look away.

The Prince’s finger coiled like a viper and squeezed the life out of the resistance between the sear and the trigger.  The hammer fell, the firing pin moved from the momentum of the firing pin and struck the back of a 7.62X54 rimmed rifle round.  The barrel whipped as it launched the .30 caliber projectile speeding to its destiny.

Amber awoke as they began to cut another finger off of her hand.  She did not know how long this could go before they killed her, raped her or any number of horrible things she imagined.

Back outside, Billy heard a rifle shot from an unknown direction.

Chapter 34.

Randy saw the people running a few seconds after he heard what he thought was muffled gunfire.  He turned the ignition key off of his truck and opened to door to hear better what was going on.  Several others did the same.  Just then a woman with wide eyes ran screaming toward him.  She fell into a heap on the ground sobbing.  Another burst of automatic gunfire and Randy actually saw a man with what looked like an AK47 pull someone out of a car and shoot them point blank.

It took a couple more iterations of that scene before Randy made a decision and it did not involve flight.

The passenger door to the bus was virtually impossible to open from the outside with out help from the inside.  Priscilla all ready made the kids lay on the floor.  She wished she had her pistol with her.  Due to recent changes in law for states such as Texas, individual citizens could carry concealed weapons after being properly vetted by the State Attorney General and taking a written and range test.  There were, however, reasonable restrictions on where someone could carry a concealed firearm.  A private school bus was a gray area, and now Priscilla was wishing she had taken a chance this morning with the law.  It seemed she feared the law less than the mad gunman trying to force the door on the bus.

Randy Courts pulled out his prized possession.  He pulled the bolt back and loaded one .338 V Max varmint round into the chamber of his rifle.  He vaguely remembered the gunsmith telling him that he zeroed the rifle at five hundred yards after installing the parts he requested.  A little guess work provided Randy with a solution that estimated about three hundred yard between him and that dirt bag killing people on the toll way.

The gunman got madder as he failed to make progress on the door.  Randy was in the bed of his pick up truck sighting in his rifle using his BOB as something to lay the rifle on to provide a rest.  He aimed for the sternum, but lost this view as the dirtback turned to face the bus straight on and proceeded to shoot into the school bus again.

Glass and debris flew as the 7.62X39 rounds impacted into Gerald’s lifeless body and drivers compartment.  Priscilla had the fire extinguisher and was already shouting commands for the kids to open the rear door and run for their lives!

The dirt bag needed to stop and reload his weapon.  Randy took advantage in the intermission of terror to remove this idiot from the gene pool!

The Prince slowly exhaled as if his very breath would keep the round true to its destination.  For a moment he was back in Jillalibad taking out Mudjehadine fighters.  The round encountered no barriers and landed square on the chin of the man standing in the school entrance.

His chin exploded, but did not stop the path of the deadly projectile as it started in his chin and exploded the esophagus as it key holed.  The terrorist fell in a heap on the broken glass bleeding profusely.

Prince changed his target view to the men he had watched for the last half day on the roofline.  They did not know the fate of their comrade below, but he was lining up his next shots so they would not be disappointed.

The headshots were spectacular to watch from the Langerphlates Rangers point of view in the over-watch position.  It looked like a precision shooting rifleman that would make anyone at Camp Perry jealous was taking these shots!

Once the men on the rooftop stopped shooting, Billy was able to make it to the injured deputy and pull her to safety.  One of the Langerphlates Rangers began to lead a team up to the school when he stepped on one of the land mines.

Back on the Sam Houston Toll way Randy Courts was about to exercise a bad case of road rage.  He squeezed the trigger and felt the recoil.  The gunman seemed to be stunned at being shot.  He looked toward the direction the shot came from and collapsed.

The massive bolt made a distinctive metallic click as the shiny brass was flung into the air.  Billy this time loaded three rounds into the magazine and rammed the bolt home for another shot.  He began to line up on another rifle carrying figure when shots rang out behind him.  He turned to see a bald fat man running towards his truck firing a Springfield Armory Long Slide Champion in .45.  Soon a few others appeared emboldened by Randy’s actions.

As soon as the bolt closed, Randy aimed his rifle to fire into the head of the next idiot.  The bullet erupted on the gunman’s face as it hit his forehead.  

“No more forward advances from you” murmured Randy as he chambered another round.

Priscilla saw what happened and ventured down to pick up the dead gun-mans AK47.  She pulled the full magazine from his cold dead fingers.

The two monsters in the improvised torture chamber attached a couple of wire clamps to some loose skin on their victim’s body.  There were just ready to shock her, when one of there comrades pushed open the door to tell what was going on outside.

Billy could see there was no hope for the man that stepped on the land mine.  He now recognized the familiar site of the Soviet Above ground land mines.  There were some tolerable sized safe gaps he and a team could cross provided they were not pinned down by suppressive fire anymore.

Unseen by anyone, the Prince was now on his way inside the school.

Great story! Thanks.

Chapter 35.

“What are we going to do?” asked the first masked man.  

“who are they?” asked the second masked man in the impromptu torture chamber.

“They are not the police.” Answered the man at the door.

“They certainly can’t be any security forces able to respond to this” mused the 1st masked man.

The Prince could see the three men down the hall in the classroom with the partially opened door.  He knew every inch of this building, but wanted to make sure before he began shooting.

Bullets are something the Prince never wasted.  Every shot needed to be productive in order support his comrades.  Today however, all of the comrades on this mission were either dead or getting that way fast.  Instead of shooting for the mission, he would shoot in memory of all the friends he met and knew through his life’s work as a soldier and a mercenary.

The shot was ridiculously close for such a weapon as the Druganov, but the Prince knew how this rifle’s point of impact was regardless of short distances.  His lighted reticule looked small against the chest of the first target.  One round in the chamber and ten in the magazine.  

Just as his target turned to face him, he could detect disbelief even though he was not concentrating on his face.

The bullet raced down the hall and ripped through the left side of the man’s chest.  Prince’s follow through stare saw the man topple forward with an astonished look on its face.  

For the first time since the unknown sniper finished his set, Billy heard another shot from inside the school.  Everyone wanted to rush the school, but Billy could not be sure this was a trap to get his fire team of Langerphlates Rangers in a kill zone.

For the first time the balance of terror left the terrorized and registered on the faces of the two masked men in the torture chamber.  

“They must be inside!  How can that be?!” shouted the first masked man.

“Go out and see what is in the hallway!” commanded the 1st masked man to the second.

He picked up his rifle and peeked around the corner, and saw nothing, not even the body of the man that was shot.

 Amber Chambers was now vaguely aware that something was amiss for her tormentors.  She heard them talking in what sounded like a Middle Eastern language.  They had to loosen her binds to cut at her fingers earlier.  The blood acted as a lubricant and she was just able to get her hands out of the binds.  Just as she was getting her hands free, the 1st masked man turned to look at her.  As he did she saw the man in the hall get jerked swiftly out of view of the door.

Masked man two tried to struggle, but quickly lost strength as his sight went dark.

Masked man one thought something was not right with what he saw in the chair, then darkness.

The Prince came into the room with his rifle slung.  He helped the terrified girl by untying the binds the rest of the way so she could get out of the chair.  Even though he already knew what they were doing to her before he got in there, he was shocked by what he saw.

“I want you to get dressed and help me” said the Prince.  

“Are you from the army or something?” Amanda asked?

“I am a soldier” confirmed the Prince.

“When I leave, you will need to guard a couple of prisoners for me” said the Prince.  “They are tied up and have no way of hurting you anymore.”  “All that I ask is that you do not look at them and please do not tell anyone of my presence here.”

Amber Chambers nodded her head in agreement with the Prince’s requests.

Outside, Billy prepared to take his team into the school.  He marked all of the safe areas as he blazed a trail through the mine field to what was left of the school entrance.  When he got to the door, he saw the bodies of students and a teacher on the lobby floor.  He motioned for the other members of his team to fan out left and right.  They began to clear the rooms one by one, and did not see any of them until they got to close and began to shoot at Billy’s team.

Of the twelve terrorists that began the attack on the school that morning, only four were left.  All four were guarding the last of the seventy prisoners.  The first foolishly stuck his head out of the classroom door.  One shot from Billy’s .458 SOCOM, ended his fascination.  There were no windows to the outside of the building from the classroom.  When the Langerphlates Rangers finally breached the room, ten students died as a result of the crossfire.

Down the hall, masked man one and two were hanging upside down with wire holding the bound feet up in the air.  In addition to having their wrists cut in a longitudinal way to cause both of the hands and wrists to be ruined for life,their eyes were removed as well, the Prince left both of them alive.  Billy found a note on the first masked man that detailed where the torture chamber was, and to ask the girl what happened.

Excellent Story

Great story, But giving the Rags if given the chance will do this in real life.

PSGT:
How unfortunately true.  I am getting ideas for this story from some of the issues coming out of the Bombay (Mumbai) massacre.  True believers or not, there is no excuse for what these people do to their captives.  Should they try their tactics here, I am more than certain that it will be a conflict that mirrors the Texans and Texas Rangers against the Commanche Indians during the 19th century.  There is a warrior culture in the United States much as in other cultures around the World today.

My character Billy exhibits this, but I do not think that the average American will have near the restraint that Billy is showing in this story of mine.  I am glad that you and everyone else is enjoying the story.  It is coming out as it pleases and sometimes I am shocked at what I start to write.

Chapter 36.

Randy picked out more targets and began to shoot each one as they presented any portion of their body.  Around Houston on this day, not less than twenty such teams of twelve men were trying to conduct a massacre on the Infidels at various choke points on the freeways and roads.

They often initiated a minor IED that would cause traffic jam from the resulting wreck and rubber necking.  When the Police arrived, there was no contest to the ambush awaiting them.  Once the last policeman fell, they would begin shooting drivers and passengers as they waited helplessly.  

At Randy Courts’ portion of this ambush, things were not going the way as expected.  Most of the terror highway ambush teams were well versed in shooting civilians in other parts of the world.  Here in America where the Infidels were deemed to be to weak or cowardly to defend them selves, this seemed to be an excellent plan to kill many of them.  The leader, Omar, of this particular team was having a bad day today.  Four of his team lay dead from what looked like headshots.  For some unknown reason, he was distinctly aware that the people he was trying to kill were trying to kill him and his men instead.

Priscilla knew a little about AK47s.  She graduated from East Texas Baptist University in 1991.  She also received a commission as an Ordinance Officer AUS due to her being a distinguished graduate of that ROTC class.  Unfortunately, she was rifted from the Army after she was wounded while serving in Somalia in 1993.  She went back to teaching upon returning from the service.  Due to her not being certified to teach in the state of Texas, she began teaching at the private church school in Cut and Shoot, Texas and never looked back.

She remembered firing an AK47 during ROTC Advanced Camp over the summer of 1990 at Fort Riley, Kansas.  Everyone got to fire a couple of rounds from an AK47 during Branch Orientation Day.  It also helped that she owned a Romy G that her boyfriend put together for her last year.

She rotated the magazine into the mag well and jerked the bolt back to let it fly forward.  It provided her with courage and a new sense of taking charge of this situation.

“How dare they shoot at my kids!” she fumed.  The last of the students were long gone after their getaway just before this guy dumped a magazine in the door of the bus.  

Priscilla let the two gunmen go past her as she squatted behind one of the bus tires.  She waited until they raised their rifles to shoot when she stepped out behind them and put a couple of well placed bullets between both of their shoulder blades.

Randy could see what was going on in front of him.  He yelled for the others around him with various pistols and some shotguns to hold their fire.  He could see the woman from the school bus dispatching the idiots in cold blood.

“What a woman!” exclaimed Randy.

“I sure would not want to get on her bad side,” replied the Bald Fat man with the long slide .45.

Omar finally saw the source of the AK fire coming their way.  It was a woman!  He ordered three of his men to flank her and kill this Infidel that did not know her place!

Randy took a couple of FRS radios from his truck and distributed them to various people involved in the counter attack on the freeway.

“Everyone these are set to channel 22 with a security code of 03.” Said Randy.

“I am going to take the right side of the road and you are going to go on the right side.  We should be able to surround them and shoot the last of these bastards!”

Omar was looking down the long line of the traffic jam trying to keep up with the three men he sent to flank that woman when he saw the opposite coming his direction!

Priscilla looked around and saw the three coming her way to probably flank her.  That was just fine as it meant less effort on her part to finish these guys off.

There was no sense of tactical movement and none was aped by anyone going up the road with Randy and his big rifle.  There was an effort by most to walk and run hunched over.  

The first man on the left side was Jack Haynes, an electrical contractor that lived off of FM1960 outside of town.  He was armed with his Mossberg 500 with a slug barrel.  There was no limit on the amount of rounds or slugs kept in a shotgun or rifle for deer season, this slugster was fully loaded with six slugs in his shotgun with a rifled barrel.  He had fiber optic sites on his vent ribbed 20” barrel.  

Jack’s son died two years ago serving in Iraq as a member of the 1st Cavalry Division.  He kept a picture of him in his wallet and missed him dearly.  Today he was going to make sure someone was going to feel the same pain from wherever these guys came from.

Priscilla saw them and waited behind a bright red Ford Focus.  She killed the first one and mortally wounded the second one.  The third gunman fired back with his last round creasing the woman’s head.  He began the high pitched lu lu lu lu lu as he did his AK dance.

Randy saw the man acting just like all the idiots he saw on little internet clips of insurgents dancing after killing Americans.

“Idiot” shouted Omar

He opened his mouth to begin the lu lu lu lu again, but a .338 round silenced him permanently.

“One down” crackled the FRS

“I just canceled his Ramadan,” continued the voice on the FRS.

“INFEDELS!!! ALLAH ACHBAR!!!” screamed Omar as he began to recklessly charge the Infidel Americans coming his way.

Jack Haynes saw the screaming man running toward him blazing away with the AK47.  He placed the butt of the shotgun against his shoulder and thought about his son.  Everyone else said he looked like he was shooting at wild coyotes.  He put the top of the fiber optic site squares dead in the nose and pulled the trigger.  Omar’s head exploded with the remains of the back of his head hitting the last of the gunmen behind him.  Jack Haynes was still pumping the shotgun and drying firing the gun for fifteen minutes as he stood over the dead and mutilated body of Omar.

The remaining two gunmen stood up and dropped their weapons to the pavement.  It was good for them that Jack Haynes was still obsessed with Omar’s body, as they would probably be savaged worse.

Chapter 37.

Power in Texas came back to most every home and business within two weeks.  The U.S. Government acknowledged the fact that terrorists detonated a low-grade nuclear weapon in Galveston harbor.  Most people knew of the attacks on schools malls and on the highways surrounding Houston and San Antonio.  None of the terrorists in the school massacres survived to tell why they did it.  As in the case of where the Langerphlates Rangers and Gonzales Grabbers fought, the police finally made it to the school within a day of the massacre.  A small report about the two mutilated terrorists found hanging upside down in the school did not generate much sympathy or interest.

Some gun control advocates were very upset at the level of vigilante activities of red necks on the roads during the crisis.  One District Attorney threatened to find the individuals responsible for taking the law into their own hands, but could not find enough support in the law enforcement community to help find these vigilantes.

Predictably, no one came forward to accept responsibility.  Martial law was never declared in Texas or the adjacent Gulf States.  The long and extensive clean up of the nuclear device began in Galveston.  Everyone else went back to work the next morning.

The Prince was a very resourceful man.  He knew how to make it even without the supply caches.  He was satisfied that he knew a new mission.  He knew Ibrahim by sight and knew exactly where to find him.

Billy Jackson and the Lagerphlates Rangers buried the one-team member that died during their mission to the high school.  The obituary simply stated that the man died in a traffic accident and the funeral was to be a closed casket.  Back to their everyday lives, all returned with the knowledge that they helped to stop the largest terror attack on the United States.

need more.....

Anymore on Billy??

I started reading this story so you better finish it!