Over the next few nights, we slipped easily back into our guerilla warfare mode. Each morning, we set traps in the road in front of them to slow them down. Each night, we sabotaged their camp or killed one or two of their guards. Finally, we had them down to a single Humvee and the truck.
Those last vehicles had all of the fifty-caliber ammo, but at least we had them pinned down. Or, at least that was what we thought until daybreak three days later.
“Sensei, wake up!”
If I had gained nothing else from the months of fighting, at least I had finally learned to bring my mind into focus the second I awakened. I opened my eyes to see Sarah hissing at me from a short distance away. “Problems.”
I sat up and started belting on my gear. “What’s wrong?”
“Larry’s gone.”
“What! How the hell did that happen?”
“They turned the tables on us. Sent scouts out and got our guards. I figure they pushed the vehicles down the road far enough that we couldn’t hear when they started up.”
“Even with the truck, they couldn’t all fit into two vehicles.”
“No. Tracks show most of them walking.”
“Damn it! Any idea how long ago?”
“Shift change was less than three hours ago. It has to have been since then.”
“Wake everyone up!”
We broke camp in record time and, within ten minutes, we were on the road. About half an hour later, we came across a small group of the enemy standing on the side of the road with their hands in the air. Another man lay on the ground at their feet. They must have heard our engines long before we saw them, but they made no attempt to hide.
Sarah and Billy led a small squad to surround the seven men and get their story. The rest of us kept a nervous eye on the surrounding forest, painfully aware that this could be a setup for another ambush.
After only a few minutes of questioning, Sarah trotted over to me. “They say Larry squeezed as many of them as he could in the Humvee and the truck and left the rest to fend for themselves. Most of them took to the woods, but this group wanted to try their hand at trading with us.”
“Trade?” I snorted. “What the hell makes them think we’d be interested in trading anything but bullets with them?” As soon as I said it, though, I realized I had missed the obvious question. “What do they have?”
Sarah cocked her head back to the man lying on the ground. “Eric.”
Megan and I both scrambled out of the Humvee. She beat me there by half a second. “Pops?” She lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. “Pops? What happened?”
He was in bad shape. Both eyes were swollen shut, and his body was a mass of blood and bruises. His right arm looked like it was broken in at least two places, and his left knee bent at an unnatural angle. Worst of all was the rib protruding through his side.
“-egan?” His speech slurred, and I realized that his jaw was broken, on top of the other punishments he had sustained. Tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes. “-egan? Ith your fadder he’e?”
“Right here, Eric.” Up until that moment, I hadn’t known how I would react when I finally found him again. Seeing my old friend like that, though, I couldn’t maintain my fury. For the moment, at least, all I could feel was pity. “I’m here.”
He turned his face to me and tried to open his eyes, but the swelling was too severe. “Thorry, Lee.” He swallowed, wincing as if he had swallowed broken glass. “Had ta do thomething ta ge’ clothe ta Lawry.”
“Yeah. Well, let’s not worry about that just now. We’ll work it out when we get back.”
He shook his head. “Ah not gonna make it back. Fucker meth-h-ed me up too bad. Th’ thombitch ith good, Lee. Be cayhful.” Megan looked up at me with tears in her eyes as she realized what Eric was saying.
“Who?” I asked. “Who’s good? Was it Han?”
Eric swallowed slightly. “Yeah. Methhed me up inthide.”
“Why now? What made them do this now?”
“Ah tried ta get Zach out this mornin’. Kicked Larry’th ath, too.” Eric grinned for a second, then grimaced as the movement sent pain through his jaw. “Almoth’ made it out, bu’ Han caugh’d me. Be cayhful, Lee. He don’ feel nuttin’. No pain… nuttin’.”
“It’s all right, Eric. We’ll get him.”
Eric nodded. “Yeah, jutht don’ fight ’im.” He reached out his left hand blindly, and I took it in my own. “You get th’ chanthe, you thoot th’ bathtard.”
“You can count on it,” I told him.
I held his hand like that for a time while Megan cradled his head, until his hand finally lost its strength. As I lay his hand on his too-still chest, my emotions were so mixed up that I could hardly sort one from the other. In those last few minutes, I was almost surprised to find that I genuinely and completely forgave him. Once more, I found myself weeping over the loss of a friend and, as my daughter’s eyes met mine, I think she finally forgave me as well.
No one bothered us for the few minutes that we grieved, though we all knew that time was pressing. Finally though, I felt it was time to go. As hard as it was to leave Eric, there was a more impending matter. “Come on, Megan. Time to go get your brother.”
She nodded. “Just give me a minute alone with him?”
“Sure. I’ll be in the truck.” I walked away with a lump in my throat.
I didn’t make it far before a soft voice from behind stopped me. “Sensei?”
I sighed. “What, Sarah?”
“Ahmm, the others?”
“What?” I turned, confused.
She jerked her chin back at the men Larry had abandoned. “They want to know about their trade.” The men who had brought Eric to us in this condition.
“Trade?” I spun and growled, “What the hell do you want?” Running up to the nearest one, I grabbed him by the shirt and drew Brad’s dagger from my belt. “You march into our town! You kill our friends!” I jabbed the dagger at his throat, letting the tip break the skin. “Our families! Our neighbors! You destroy half the damned town!” I twisted the knife, and a bead of blood welled at the tip. “You steal my son!” His terror showed in the wide eyes that stared in shock at my reaction. “And now you have the balls to ask me for a trade?”
“Sensei!”
Sarah touched my hand, and I flinched away, withdrawing the dagger. I had nearly killed a helpless man. Worse yet, at that particular moment, I didn’t really care. I walked a few paces away to try to cool off and heard Sarah come up behind me again.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. When I felt calm enough to be halfway civil, I turned to her. “What do they want?”
“Tattoos.”
“What?”
“They heard about the slave tattoos from when Larry captured that foraging group a couple of months back. Seems they’ve decided they’d be better off as our slaves than fighting in Larry’s army.”
I thought about it for a while, then walked back to the bedraggled men standing around Eric and Megan. “You’re asking for tattoos? You know what that means?”
“Yes, sir,” a particularly rough-looking man at the far end of the line spoke up. “Some of the men who were part of the group that…” He hesitated. “That captured and tortured some of your slaves before… before the big fight, they told us about it.”
I walked over to stand in front of him. “So what does it mean?”
“It means we’re slaves for the town. Means we serve our time and, eventually, we get the chance to work our way out of it.”
“It means you would get a chance to live!” I hissed. “So what makes you think I should let you live?”
They looked at one another wildly. It had apparently never occurred to them that we might not allow them to become slaves. “But we brought you-” He stopped as he realized what he had brought us.
