The Peace of the Battlefield

I already knew. It always takes a beat — sometimes a fatal one — before a man realizes some lunatic has appeared at his back.

And because the gangers had thrown themselves into cover so abruptly, none of them were watching anyone else's rear.

I walked forward without a care in the world, as if I were strolling toward paper targets on a shooting range. No hesitation, no second-guessing. I followed the sight picture and squeezed the trigger on instinct.

The Saiga-12 roared and vomited lead.

The blasts came one after another, a rolling thunder of twelve-gauge, and the men crouched behind the vehicles came apart. Heads, torsos, arms and legs burst helplessly under the buckshot. I aimed, fired, and found the next target with mechanical precision.

Click.

Twelve rounds gone. The hammer falling on an empty chamber.

By then, luckily, they still had no idea I was coming from behind. The ones who did meet my eyes didn't keep them for long — a face caved in, a carotid torn open, a hand gone below the wrist.

I ducked behind one of their vehicles, ripped out the empty magazine, and pulled a fresh twelve-round mag from my tactical vest. But the AK-pattern rocking-in change was nowhere near as fast or intuitive as an AR-15's. You had to hook the front lug first, then rock the back of the mag up into the well. In a live firefight, it felt agonizingly slow.

"Damn it!"

A brief hitch — but training on enemy weapons was carved into muscle memory. Clack. The magazine seated. I hit the bolt release and was back in the fight.

Right then, an engine roared to life. One of their pickup trucks. Runners.

"Get that one!"

Someone shouted, and I dumped fire into the truck without discrimination. As if answering me, every gun on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the property — the barn, the warehouse, the third-floor sniper's nest — converged on that one vehicle. Dozens of rounds punched the thin bodywork into a honeycomb, blew out the tires, and shattered the windshield into glittering junk. The wrecked truck never even found a gear. The engine died with a helpless shudder.

I set the empty Saiga-12 on the ground and drew the VP9 from my hip. Time to police the field.

That was when movement snagged the edge of my vision. Behind the truck I had just wrecked, a man lying prone across another pickup had his muzzle on me.

I was faster.

I pivoted on instinct and pulled the trigger without a thought. Two 9mm rounds punched dead-center into his chest. The third put a hole through his forehead as he went down. He folded and hit the dirt. The Mozambique Drill I had practiced until I was sick of it — two fast shots to the body, then one carefully aimed to the head. That brutal piece of muscle memory had saved my life once again.

I was still sweeping the courtyard when another sharp crack split the air. One of the men down behind me had found a gun. Mike, watching from the third-floor tower, put him down.

I lifted my head toward Mike and locked eyes with him, saying nothing. He never took his eye off the scope. The finger bracing the rifle against his right shoulder simply uncurled in reply. Even in the middle of all this, he hadn't broken position.

I started working the fallen one by one, checking them as I went. Gunner burst out of the barn. Time to clear the field.

A wet, rattling groan came from under one of the vehicles. The man on the ground was blowing bloody foam from his mouth. I put the pistol to his head without hesitation and pressed the trigger. A single crack. Mercy — the kindness of ending the pain.

That was when one of their minivans screamed to life and bolted, engine howling like a thing possessed. Whoever was behind the wheel had never even gotten out. He'd been crouched in the driver's seat the whole time, waiting for his moment.

"Don't let him go!"

Gunner opened up with his M4, but the distance was already opening. The minivan swung toward the farm's front checkpoint and made a run for the road. I sprinted for the gatehouse at a dead run, snatched the TAC-14 I'd stashed on the shelf, and as the van tried to shoot past me I dumped the whole tube into the front tires.

Buckshot shredded the rubber. The minivan lurched, lost its balance, and started listing toward the edge of the farm lane. Cyrus, his son, and even Merle came pouring out of the warehouse and hammered the fleeing vehicle in a fury of gunfire. The van finally pitched into the drainage ditch beside the road and stopped.

I started forward to check it. Cyrus raised a hand and waved me off. Vengeance was burning in his eyes. He lifted his shotgun as if to say this one was his, and walked toward the wreck himself.

Two blasts. Whether they were confirmation kills or a man grinding a corpse out of rage, I couldn't tell. I didn't intervene.

After that, everyone — my people and the farm's — spread out across the courtyard, checking bodies and policing the field. Scattered shots cracked here and there. I couldn't tell which were insurance against a threat that might still be breathing, and which were a last mercy for men who had nothing left but pain.

The farmyard was painted in blood. Cordite and death tangled in the air and punched up into the sinuses. I keyed the PTT on my headset mic.

Almost in the same breath, Dave's frantic voice punched through the channel.

I released the transmit. This nightmare had to be cleaned up, and fast. Dave's mother and Frank's family did not need to see a hell like this.

That was when a dull, clattering diesel note rolled in from somewhere off to the side. I turned. Cyrus was bringing up a battered compact excavator. He climbed down, walked over, and said it like he was commenting on the weather.

"Leave the cleanup to us. You boys've done enough."

He climbed back onto the machine without another word and started digging into the grass along the roadside. His hands moved with the calm, practiced ease of a man plowing a field.

Gunner and Mike divided the work as if they had been a team for years, as if they had agreed on the split beforehand, and started taking the spoils. Mike stripped ammunition and magazines off the dead. Gunner checked the guns, setting aside anything worth keeping. His expert eye picked the usable pieces out of a pile of worn, ugly hardware.

"Oho. This'll do."

Gunner held up a Kel-Tec KSG shotgun, his eyes bright as a kid's. A moment later he let out a low whistle, the sound of a man who had just found treasure.

"Oh, shit… that's an MCX Rattler. Shoots .300 Blackout. How the hell did a bunch of rural gang-bangers get their hands on this?"

At a glance there had to be a dozen automatic rifles in the pile, and a fair number of pistols and submachine guns besides. Cyrus, his sons, and his brother Merle hauled bodies to the edge of the pit in silence. Mike tore through the enemy vehicles and laid out anything useful in the farmyard — canned food, emergency fuel, tools.

The seamless division of labor, the casual way they went about it, made them look like people who had been doing this for a long, long time. I looked at the growing mountain of guns and thought, Won't have to worry about weapons for a while.

The cleanup was still grinding on when a familiar pickup rolled into the farmyard. Dave. The door opened and he called out as if he owed the whole courtyard an explanation.

"Ah, hell — Wolf was making such a fuss I just brought him along."

"Woof!"

The bark punched straight through Dave's voice, and Wolf came flying at me. He threw his whole body against my legs and whimpered, a long, pitiful sound, as if he were scolding me. Do you have any idea how worried I was?

Dave, meanwhile, stood taking in the wreckage of the farmyard like a man whose soul had stepped out of his body. I pulled Wolf's big frame in against me and rubbed his back.

"It's okay. It's over, Wolf."

His warmth, the rough pull of his breathing, was what finally made the fight feel finished. I stroked his back with hands that still stank of blood. Strangely, I felt at peace. Someone once called this feeling the peace of the battlefield.

A strange stillness that only arrives after everything has been destroyed. Only then did I understand. I was no longer fighting to survive in this hell. I was becoming a part of it.