The Guardians (10 page)

"Stay put," Sargent Wilson again said to Nate as he exited the Humvee and joined up with the others outside. 

Nate again tried to see what was going on from his vantage point.  The five TSG members and the three TCG men seemed to be making a game plan of some sort.  Shock left the group for a moment, and then returned with some rope that he had retrieved from one of the Humvees.  The men then split up and disappeared into the darkness of the neighborhood.

After a few moments of silence, Nate heard a gunshot followed by several others.  Another minute of silence went by and then another shot was heard.  This time he noticed a muzzle flash light up a dark room inside of a large two-story house at the end of the street, located in a cul-de-sac.  His eyes focused on this house now as he desperately wanted to know what was going on.  What had he gotten himself into teaming up with these guys he thought?

Just then, Nate saw a woman and a small child come running out of the house in their nightclothes, followed by Sargent Wilson, who was dragging a man by a rope that was tied to his neck.  The man was desperately struggling with the rope around his neck as he was being dragged across the yard.  One of the other Humvee's behind Nate started up and drove past him and into the front yard of the house.  At this point, Nate could not believe what he was seeing.  While Sargent Wilson was holding the man down with his boot on his neck and his M45 pistol pointed at his head, Chop threw the rope over a branch of a large tree that was in the front yard.  They tied the loose end of the rope to the front of the Humvee as it began to back up, pulling the man up into the air by his neck. 

"Oh my God!" Nate said to himself aloud while he sat and watched from the Humvee.  Do I get in the middle of this?  Should I get in the middle of this?  If I do, what will become of me?  I am an outsider here and these guys are my only link to my brother.  Unanswered questions swirled around inside of Nate's head.  He was totally confused about the situation.  He assumed this must be Jose Gutiérrez, the man believed to be behind the killing of Carlos and his family.  Maybe it needed to be this way.  Then again, maybe they are wrong.  Maybe he had nothing to do with it and they are stringing up an innocent man.  Nate's hand clinched the door handle of the Humvee ready to exit the vehicle at any second, but he was paralyzed by his confusion. 

The Humvee pulling the rope was stopped just as the man was on the tip of his toes.  He was being strangled by the rope, but was still gasping for air and was still alive.  Maybe they were just trying to scare him to get him to talk, Nate thought to himself.  That thought quickly passed as the Humvee was again directed rearwards by Sargent Wilson and the man was pulled up into the air hanging by his neck.  He was flailing around, desperately trying to get his fingers in between the rope and his neck to breathe, but he quickly began to slow his movements.  A few last twitches and the man went limp hanging silently from the tree.  Shock got out of the Humvee, and he and Chop untied the rope while they held it to keep the man in place.  They then tied the end of the rope to the fence going along the sidewalk to keep the man's now lifeless body suspended in the air.

Nate was mortified.  He had seen a lot of violence and suffering over the past year, but it was usually a cut and dry case of the innocent and guilty.  He had not witnessed such a brutal act where he had begun to doubt who the good were versus the bad.  His hand went limp and fell to his side off of the door handle.  Shock and Chop got back into their Humvee and drove out of the yard back onto the street.  Parker and Clarke, who had been standing guard over the events taking place, returned to their Humvee as well.  Sargent Wilson walked back over to the TCG horsemen, who had just came back out of the shadows.  They apparently had been laying back in the darkness while the acts of violence were carried out.  Sargent Wilson shook their hands and they mounted up and rode away.  He walked back over to the Humvee where Nate had been waiting as ordered and climbed back inside.  He started the engine and they drove away, forming back up with the other two TSG Humvees.

The first mile or two out of town was eerily quiet.  Nate just stared off in the distance while Sargent Wilson drove.  The only thing to break the silence was Sargent Wilson fumbling around for a can of Copenhagen as he packed a dip into his lower lip.  "That had to be done," he then said.

Nate just sat there silently, not knowing how to respond.  Sargent Wilson then said, "Look, I know that was a tough thing to watch, especially in your situation being new to things around here.  You have to trust me though.  It had to be done.  There isn't any real law around here.  Carlos was as close to a lawman that acted only in the best interest of the people as they had, and he was taken out for it.  The cartels are hot and heavy on towns like these.  All they have to do is apply the same force and intimidation as they did in their own towns in Mexico, and soon the resolve of the people to fight back simply collapses.  They put men like Gutiérrez in power as a puppet mayor who simply does their bidding.  The town's people are held captive in their own homes knowing that the streets are ruled by the cartels.  Right now, this town is on the edge of caving to the cartels.  Acts of violence against people like Carlos and his family if gone unanswered will simply intimidate the next man who may have stood up.  We need to show the people in this town that are working as the eyes, ears, and networks of the cartels that any act that is complicit in turning on your own people will result in the same extreme response that they aim to inflict.  We've known about Gutiérrez for a while now.  The people here tried to work against him in a civil and rational manner, but the slaughtering of Carlos and his family was the last straw.  That sort of thing simply will not stand."

"What if you were wrong?" asked Nate.  "What if Gutiérrez wasn't involved?  Without a trial of some sort will you ever really know?"

"Trial?" responded Sargent Wilson.  "A trial by whom?  Any person who would step up to sit on a jury would have their own families murdered and their houses burned.  Our Federal Government abandoned the people in the border towns long before it all fell apart.  Now, except for us, they are completely alone.  These are not people you can deal with on a rational level.  You can't good-guy your way through a situation when your opponent is pure evil.  Just look at the crap our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan had to deal with.  Rules of engagement that were designed to make the media and political pollsters happy, rather than allowing our guys to be in a fair fight.  We were cut to pieces in the name of decency.  Letting my men die, so that the jihadist has a fair chance, isn't my idea of decency.  It's sick and twisted.  If the bastards writing the rules were standing in front of those bullets and driving by those IED's, they wouldn't be so pussy foot with the enemy.  These cartel scumbags are no different.  They will do the unspeakable to women and children to scare and intimidate, and you want me to wonder if Gutiérrez was really guilty and let other good people die while we try to sort it out the political way?  I don't think so.  Enough good people have died playing that game.  Trust me, if you had been in the middle of this for as long as I have, you would be seeing things the same way."

"My bad.  I shouldn't have said that," replied Nate.  "I've pretty much been on my own for the past year.  I've seen some bad things, but I haven't been deep enough into the weeds to get into a situation like this.  I guess it's just a lot to take in all at once."

"It's all good," replied Sargent Wilson as he spit his dip into an empty water bottle.  "Just don't second guess anything if it all starts to fall apart while we are out here.  If we are taking action, it's because it needs to be taken... Period."

"Roger that," Nate replied.

****

Chapter 9: Haley's Journey

After the events at Isaac Murphy's place, the people of the Homefront and the rest of their confederacy were feeling a little uneasy about how close to home such a horrible thing can happen.  After the dust had settled and everyone returned home, Evan and Jason made their rounds to the rest of their partner homesteads to let them know what had happened.  They wanted to make sure that the relative safety of the hills of East Tennessee did not lull anyone else into complacency in regards to their security.  What happened to Isaac could have happened to any of them.

Ollie and Mildred volunteered to take in the young girl that was rescued from the Murphy home.  They had plenty of room, Mildred had all the time she needed to help look after the girl and to care for her during her physical and emotional recovery from the horrors she had endured.  The girl's name was Haley Middleton.  She was only thirteen years old, and had been held captive for the past two months.  Haley had not yet begun to talk much about what had happened.  She was very quiet and often seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.  Mildred was a very patient woman though, and was she was just what Haley needed to begin to trust again. 

The only details that Mildred had been able to get Haley to share with them was that she lived in a mobile home park in Cedartown, Georgia, which is located just Northwest of Atlanta.  Her parents did not have much before everything began to fall apart, so when it did, times where exceedingly hard on them.  Her parents had decided to try to make the trek to Chattanooga Tennessee, where they had relatives that lived on a small rural farm just outside of town.  They felt that it was their best chance of survival in a world now filled with starvation and need.  This need was made even clearer by the hoards of people vacating Atlanta in search of food and opportunity, spilling over into the outlying rural areas such as Cedartown.

After dinner one evening, Mildred, Ollie, and Haley sat down to enjoy some fresh baked apple pie.  Luckily for the Thomas family, being homesteaders before the term was even a household word meant that they still had the means and the stores to eat and live well after the crunch.  Life with Mildred and Ollie was the closest thing to the old normal that Haley had seen in the past year.

As they sat there enjoying their pie, Haley spoke up and said, "Daddy got bit by a snake."

Ollie and Mildred just looked at each other and Mildred said, "What was that Dear?"

"We were riding our bikes to Chattanooga.  That's when Daddy got bit," Haley replied.

"So you were riding your bikes to get to Chattanooga from Georgia?" asked Ollie.

"Yes Sir.  Daddy said we didn't have any gas for the car and couldn't get any.  He said that even if we did have gas, somebody would try to take it.  He said we would just ride our bikes with our backpacks and it would be like a camping trip," replied young Haley.

"Your Daddy was a smart man," said Ollie as he swallowed the lump in his throat.  "If you're traveling by car these days unless you are well protected, people will want to take your fuel.  And if they know you have food they will want to take that too."

"Mommy, Daddy and I were riding our bikes down a little back road.  Daddy didn't want to take the big roads.  He said there was too many people on them.  We had been riding and camping for about three days.  Mommy couldn't ride very far each day because she had been sick for a long time.  Daddy made us a camp off in the woods and was going to try to catch us a rabbit or squirrel for dinner.  I thought that was gross at first but after I tried them both I thought they were yummy," said Haley with a smile on her face for the first time in days.

"Yes, they are both quite delicious.  Mildred here can cook up a delicious pot of rabbit or squirrel stew anytime you want it," Ollie said with a smile.

"Let her finish Oliver," Mildred said giving him a look that he understood very well after years of marriage.

"When Daddy went off for food, he never came back.  It got dark and Mom was afraid to leave camp in case he came back, so we just stayed there.  The next morning Daddy still wasn't back so we packed up our things, hid them, and went off in the woods looking for Daddy," Haley said as her mood began to get noticeably more somber.  "Later that day, we found Daddy by a creek.  He was all swollen and pale.  He wouldn't wake up.  He just laid there shivering and sweating.  Mommy saw a snake bite on Daddy's leg.  It looked awful.  Mommy started to cry and said she had to go get help.  She told me to stay with Daddy until she got back.  I just sat there with Daddy waiting for Mommy to come back, but she didn't.  It got dark and I didn't have my sleeping bag or anything.  I was really scared.  There were all kinds of sounds in the woods.  It sounded like animals were walking all around me in the bushes.  I just prayed and prayed and finally the sun came up.  I tried to wake Daddy again, but he was cold," she said as she began to tear up.  "Daddy, wake up, Daddy wake up, please don't leave me here Daddy, I said over and over again, but he never woke up.  I sat there with Daddy for two more days waiting on Mommy but she never came back.  I finally walked out of the woods and found our bikes right where we had left them.  There were still some old biscuits that Mommy had made with the last of the food from our house.  I ate some of them and kept the rest.  I got on my bike and rode for several hours looking for Mommy, but I never found her."

Ollie and Mildred just looked at each other with broken hearts listening to the young girl's story.  She then continued and said, "That's when some men took me.  They drove up in an old van.  I was scared and didn't know what else to do so I asked them if they had seen my Mom.  They said to get in and they would drive around and help me look, but they didn't," she said as she stared at the floor.  "They kept me and made me do bad things.  After a few weeks, those men traded me for some drugs and other stuff to the ones you found me with.  They were even worse than the others were.  They would just take over house after house, never staying anywhere for long.  They chained me up like a dog, wouldn't let me wear clothes, and barely fed me.  I prayed every day for God to rescue me.  I started to give up hope.  I just wanted to die.  And then you and the other nice men found me," she said as she looked at Ollie with gratitude.