Time: Short Stories in the Jack Randall World Read online




  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Two Hours with Jack

  Six Hours with Eric

  Six Hours with Larry

  Six Hours with Dr. Dayo

  Twelve Hours with Lenny

  Eighteen Hours with Sydney

  About the Author

  Other Works by Randall Wood

  TIME

  Copyright © 2013 by Randall Wood.

  ISBN: 978-1-938825-40-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  “Two Hours with Jack” © 2012, Randall Wood

  “Six Hours with Eric” © 2012, Randall Wood

  “Six Hours with Larry” © 2013, Randall Wood

  “Six Hours with Dr. Dayo” © 2013, Randall Wood

  “Twelve Hours with Lenny” © 2012, Randall Wood

  “Eighteen Hours with Sydney” © 2013, Randall Wood

  For information contact:

  Tension Bookworks

  PO Box 93, Nokomis Fl, 34274

  www.tensionbookworks.com

  and the portrayal of the screw are registered trademarks of TensionBookworks.

  Ebook design by JW Manus

  Cover design by Derek Murphy, creativindie.com

  “Time is the fire in which we all burn.”

  —Delmore Schwartz

  ABOUT TIME

  Time is the title I’ve chosen for this selection of short stories. This started off as a writing challenge to myself. The goal was to improve my own writing—publication of the end product was never intended. I simply wished to see if I could write six different stories, each of them surrounding one of the six main characters in the Jack Randall series, and have each story tie into the next, visiting each character over the course of twenty-four hours. I worked on it on and off over several months and eventually the pages piled up to a respectable thickness.

  I sent them off to my beta readers.

  “When are they being published?”

  “They're not. I just did them to help improve my writing.”

  Wrong answer.

  Long story short, I was convinced that they needed to be published.

  People liked the insight into the private lives of the main characters. Some of the stories lack arc. Others were written to help me write detail or practice pacing. Still others were ways for me to comment on and research current events or subjects that were new to me. A couple are from first-hand experience.

  Regardless of the reasons for them being on the page I have caved to pressure and am publishing them as an ebook. A short story collection and companion piece to the Jack Randall series, if you will.

  So this is Time. I hope you enjoy it. If so, please let me know. I may just make this a “living book” and add to it from time to time.

  (See what I did there?)

  • • •

  SPOILER ALERT:

  If you have not read the first three novels of the series, Closure, Pestilence, and Scarcity, you will not know all of the characters portrayed here, and there will be spoilers within these short stories.

  All of these characters, with the exception of Dr. Dayo, will appear in the next full-length novel. With a working title of Security, look for it to arrive in the second half of 2013.

  “Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day.”

  The sound of the overhead explosion cut through the sporadic rifle fire and echoed across the city. Soldiers and militiamen paused to gaze up at the sky and watch the crippled helicopter trail a cloud of thick smoke as it limped to the east. The radios crackled to life with voices crowding an already busy net.

  “You’ve been hit!”

  “Heavy smoke from the tail rotor.”

  “Set it down, Bull.”

  “Tail is sluggish.”

  “Set it down!”

  “Let Six-one make the call!”

  “I’ve got the field in sight. Gonna try and make it.”

  “Smoke’s getting worse.”

  “I’m . . . I’m losing the tail.”

  “Super six-one is going down! Super six-one is going down!”

  “Damn it . . .”

  “Hold on!”

  Listening to radio chatter from the crashing helicopter, Jack shook his head to re-seat his helmet. Rounds zipped down the alley with their now familiar sound and the Ranger across the alley spun to return fire. After a couple of short bursts the kid turned and gave him a thumbs-up. Jack nodded in return. Unlike Jack and his fellow operators, the Ranger wore a standard Kevlar helmet with no communications gear. Jack wore a black hockey helmet that contained both an ear piece and a connected throat mic. The kid had no way of knowing that another Blackhawk had been shot down.

  The mission had gotten drastically worse.

  The Blackhawk had come down upright on the roof of a building then fell on its side in a narrow alley, leaving the nose crumpled around the two dead pilots. The rotors had shattered, sending shards of carbon-fiber across the neighborhood. The tail section showed damage from the RPG that had shot it down and it was full of bullet holes. Some Rangers and a couple of Jack’s fellow Delta operators were attempting to get the bodies free while Jack and a few others kept the enemy fire suppressed as well as their small numbers could. One man used a piece of shattered rotor blade to dig in the dirt plowed up around the nose. So far Jack hadn’t seen much progress.

  “Where’s the damn convoy?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Jack took off his helmet, closed his eyes and let his mouth fall open, listening hard to the sounds around him. The noise of a ferocious firefight seemed to come from all directions but eventually Jack filtered out the sporadic weapons chatter and turned his head to the east. The sound of a fifty-caliber machine gun going cyclic traveled from left to right. Jack planted his helmet back on his head and pressed his throat mic.

  “They’re to our east! Traveling south I think!”

  “How the . . . okay.”

  Jack saw a head poke around a corner a block down. He leveled his CAR-15 in that direction. When it poked out again the familiar outline of the Kevlar helmet saved the Ranger’s life. Jack waved the man forward. The Ranger crossed the road. Seven Rangers followed.

  “Friendlies to the east! Covering fire!”

  Jack pointed to make sure the Ranger shot in the right direction. The soldiers crossed the street one by one and hugged the wall until they reached Jack.

  “Chalk seven,” the lead man yelled.

  Jack said, “Okay, get off the wall before you catch a bullet! You two, I want a SAW there and there. Four more of you cover the road to the south. You two go help in the bird. Yell if you see the convoy!”

  They jumped to. Jack and his fellow Delta operators had been surprised by the hoo-rah mentality of the Rangers. They were good soldiers—young, in shape, and fired-up for war—but thinking was not their long suit. The suppression of everything other than the orders of their officers was contrary to the way Delta operated. Thinking was their number one skill. For the Rangers it was, Don’t think—Just do, while for Delta it was always, Think first. From the start it had been an uncomfortable clash of fighting styles, but the Rangers saw the Delta boys as the pinnacle of their profession and treated them as such. In their eyes Jack was a God of War and they jumped when he spoke.

  They deployed themselves around the intersection. One Ranger worked his SAW and the rapid fire served to give the others confidence. Two of them kicked in a door down the street and cleared the space before setting up in the recessed doorway. Using hand signals, Jack repositioned three of them until he was satisfied that the rear approach to the crash site was protected as well as it could be. He stood briefly for a better look down the hill to the south. He saw a mass of skinnies approaching. Some of them didn’t seem to have weapons. There were woman and children among them. The warlord Adid had told his people that the Americans would not fire at them if they had women or children with them. Some had already learned the folly of that statement, but most had not. It gave the Rangers and the Delta soldiers some hard decisions. Incoming fire came from the crowd but Jack could not pinpoint its source.

  Jack fired a burst in the crowd’s direction and several of the Somalis scattered to reveal a man lying in the road. He had three women sitting around him with their hands covering their ears as he fired in the direction of the downed helicopter. Something tugged at Jack’s arm and he saw a hole punched through the sleeve. Cursing, he dropped to a knee and flung a flash-bang grenade at the shooter. Two of the women were knocked over by the blast but quickly rose to their feet and fled with the third. The gunner rose to follow, but before he’d gone two steps Jack cut him down.

  “Getting a little crowded over here, Tim.”

  His partner answered from somewhere on the other side of the crash site. “I hear ya, Jack.”

  “You see the convoy?”

  “No, but I can hear ’em.”

  Jack checked on the Rangers. One fired on an unseen threat down the street. So far the Somalis were keeping a distance, but Jack knew that would change
as their numbers increased. His radio told him more air support was coming, but it took time to reload and fuel the little birds. Until they had the reloads timed, the men on the ground would be on their own.

  A cow wandered into the middle of the street. Jack stared in amazement. Bullets danced all around it, but it made it unscathed to the other side only to appear a moment later to cross again. An old man with white in his afro attempted to use the cow for cover. The barrel of his ancient AK spit rounds down the road. Jack altered his aim to fire at the man. A little bird thundered overhead with its mini-guns blazing, raking the street. The cow and several Somalis fell as one and the remaining crowd fled, leaving the wounded kicking and screaming in pools of blood in the dusty street. The scene changed from a teeming mass of hostile skinnies to a deserted road of death. Hot brass rained from the sky. Jack ducked back into the doorway .

  “Hey, Jack?” Tim’s calm voice drawled in his ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe we better mark our position better?”

  Jack laughed. “Ya think?”

  Jack whistled until he had the attention of the Ranger across the street. He turned him around with hand signals and got him working his SAW down the street that Jack was covering. Jack pulled a panel marker from his pocket. It was two feet of reflective orange banner used to tell anyone in the air where friendlies were located. Jack tied it to a brick so the rotor wash wouldn’t blow it away and heaved it into the road. It landed and rolled, twisting the banner into a ball.

  “Shit.”

  The Ranger saw what happened and rose to go fix it but Jack waved him down. He pumped a fist and the Ranger responded by going cyclic down the road, the SAW spitting lead at a rate of 1100 rounds a minute. Jack sprinted into the street. He flipped the banner until it was flat and sprinted back through the flying lead to the cover of the doorway. Doing a quick self-inventory, he failed to find any new holes. He exhaled with a loud groan.

  “You okay, Jack?”

  “Yeah, just stupid.”

  “Get your marker placed?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Tim laughed. “How’s your side look?”

  “I got a crowd, maybe half of them armed. You?”

  “Small groups. They keep probing.” His answer was punctuated by a three-round burst of fire. “Any luck in the bird?”

  Jack craned his neck for a look down the alley. Someone had pulled the Kevlar floor panels out of the Blackhawk and placed them around the crumpled frame. He spotted a Ranger lying between two panels, providing cover for the soldiers inside. The panels blocked Jack’s view.

  “None that I can see. The pilots have to be wedged in pretty tight. We’ll need some serious tools to get them out.”

  “Shit.”

  There was no talk of retreating and leaving the trapped bodies of their pilots behind. They kept their focus on the fight.

  Jack squinted against the dust as a bird made another low pass, firing rockets at the growing crowd. Jack used the dust cloud kicked up by the rotors as cover and crossed the street to the Rangers’ position. He dropped behind the SAW gunner.

  “What do you see?”

  “Buncha skinnies are grouped up around that far corner.”

  As if to punctuate the statement a rifle appeared around the corner and fired in their direction. The Ranger squeezed off a burst. The rifle fell into the road and the arms holding it spouted a shower of blood. Another man ran out to grab the rifle, but the SAW gunner dropped him. A third man incredibly tried the same thing only to be brought down as well. The Ranger was amazed.

  “What the hell is with these people? Don’t they even care?”

  A woman ran across the street. She lugged four RPGs. Jack and the Ranger fired and the woman flopped into the street. To their amazement she crawled to her knees, gathered the RPGs and dragged them forward. Jack fired again and saw his rounds pass through her. The woman shivered but kept crawling. Jack put two rounds through her head and she lay still. The RPGs were coated with her blood and a heavy coat of dust.

  “Keep them away from those RPGs!”

  Several men attempted to retrieve the fallen rocket-propelled grenades. The SAW gunner soon had a growing pile of bodies around the dead woman. Jack searched the other Rangers until he found one with a 203 grenade launcher.

  “Destroy those RPGs!”

  The Ranger was just a kid, maybe nineteen at the most, but he shook off his fear and jumped at Jack’s order. Switching his hand from the grip of his rifle to the forward trigger of the grenade launcher he sent a round spiraling down the street to land in the pile of bodies. Arms and legs blew into the air. Jack fired into the dust until it cleared and he was sure that the launchers in the street were no longer a threat. Only when it was over did he notice the sounds of the battle behind him. He fumbled for his mic.

  “How’s it looking, Tim?”

  “Busy. We’re taking RPGs from the east. I got two wounded.”

  “Need a medic?”

  “They’re both still in the fight. We need to shrink this perimeter.”

  “I agree. We’re falling back to the intersection. If you come in we can mark all four corners and let the birds work on these crowds.”

  “Call me back.”

  Jack pounded the gunner on the shoulder and yelled loud enough to be heard. They were all half deaf from the noise.

  “We’re pulling back to the corner buildings. You stay here and cover for them.”

  “Got it!”

  Jack waved until he had the attention of the sergeant across the street. After a brief hand signal conversation he got a nod. The soldier tapped the man in front of him and they both made a dash up the street. The private following the sergeant jerked to the left and rolled into the dirt. Blood stained the leg of his BDU pants and soaked them. The sergeant ran on unaware.

  “Cover!” Jack yelled before sprinting across the street. He grabbed the screaming man by his arm, dragging him toward an open doorway. Angry rounds sounding like high speed bumblebees zipped past his head. He was halfway there when his arm was jerked away.

  “Goddamnit!” Jack’s arm went numb. He dropped his rifle and switched hands. It swung on its strap and whacked him in his wounded arm, putting a coat of fresh blood on the black metal. He dragged the wounded man into the doorway and fell on his ass.

  He gazed at the man’s leg. The blood continued to pump. He squeezed as hard as he could while he examined his own wound. The Ranger’s blood was bright red while the blood from his own wounded arm was dark. The numbness was wearing off quickly. The Ranger was screaming in pain and fear.

  “Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You’re okay! I need you to shut up!”

  The Ranger bit off his scream and stared wide-eyed at Jack. Jack gave him a nod and pressed his throat mic tight against his shoulder to call Tim.

  “I got two wounded here, Tim. One’s an arterial bleed. Send me a medic.”

  “You all right?”

  “Some fucker shot me in the elbow. I’m okay.”

  “Will is on his way.”

  Will? When did he get here? Jack wondered but shook it off. The Ranger’s leg was still bleeding and so was Jack’s arm. He couldn’t properly attend either wound by himself. If he let go of the man’s leg he would quickly bleed out. Jack gritted his teeth and held on.

  An RPG whooshed past his position and exploded against the building next door. Jack threw himself over the Ranger. Rocks and dirt rained. The Rangers poured return fire down the street. The dust hadn’t even cleared when Will came flying through the door, tripping over Jack and sending himself sprawling. He quickly got to his knees and slipped off his medic pack.

  “Hey, Jack,” he said.

  “About time,” he told the Delta medic.

  “Fuck you very much.”

  He eyeballed the Ranger’s leg and nodded at Jack’s position. “Keep that pressure on.” He positioned himself over the soldier and pulled a length of rubber hose from his shoulder and tied it tightly around the man’s leg. With a knife he slashed Jack’s sleeve, exposing his wound.

  “Took a nice chuck of meat out but looks like it missed the bone. Hold still.” He packed the wound full of Kerlex and tied a pressure dressing around it. Jack clenched his teeth.