299 Days: The Restoration

Chapter 303 A Missing Friendly

Everyone looked around. Wes wasn’t there.

“Hey! Wes!” Ryan yelled. “Let’s go.”

Silence.

Pow figured Wes was back with Bravo, so he said, “These Lima dickheads really suck. Did you see all that spray and pray machine gun fire? What a bunch of jackasses. These guys can’t fight worth a shit. We so outclass them.”

Ryan got out his flashlight and started looking around the truck. Wes wasn’t there.

Oh, God. Ryan remembered that Wes had been standing in the back of the truck and not bracing himself when Bobby hit the gas. He ran back to the point where the truck had accelerated. Everyone followed him, as they were now realizing the same thing.

Ryan looked around with this flashlight.

“Shit!” Ryan yelled out. “Come here, guys!”

The Team approached and saw Wes’ rifle on the ground. It had been dropped, but Wes was nowhere to be found.

They stood there stunned and silent. Finally, Scotty got on the radio and grimly announced, “We have a missing friendly.”

“We have to go find him!” Pow yelled as Edwards came up.

“What?” Edwards asked. The Team filled him in.

“We can’t go look for him,” Edwards exclaimed. “We can’t be walking around those woods at night! Not without NVGs.”

“How many do you have?” Ryan asked.

“I dunno,” Edwards said. “Seven, I guess.”

“We need them. Where are they?”

“Whoa, soldier,” Edwards said, using his captain’s voice. “We’re not going into those woods until sun up.”

“But we are,” Pow said pointing to the Team. “Captain, we’re volunteering. Give us the NVGs and we’ll go get Wes. We won’t ask for any support.”

“No way,” Edwards said. “Negative. Understand me?”

The Team was silent. They were going into those woods to go get Wes one way or another. He was a member of the Team. They had agreed long ago that they wouldn’t leave a teammate behind. It just wasn’t going to happen. They didn’t need some captain’s permission to do so.

“No, sir,” Ryan said. “We are going into those woods, NVGs or not. Your choice, Captain. We go in with NVGs or we go in without them. Your choice, sir.”

“You don’t talk to me that way,” Edwards yelled to Ryan. No one ever challenged his authority this way. No one, especially not these irregulars. What a pain in the ass it had been even letting them come out with a real unit.

“We’re irregulars, sir,” Scotty spoke up and said. “We consider ourselves under the command of Lt. Matson and he would let us do this.”

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Edwards yelled. “First Sergeant, get over here. We have a discipline problem.”

The First Sergeant and two others came over. “What’s up, sir?”

“These irregulars want to go off into the woods and find their friend,” Edwards said. “I told them no. They say they’ll disobey my direct order.”

“Do as the good Captain says,” said the tough-as-nails First Sergeant.

“We’re done,” Pow said. “We’re resigning our commissions or whatever.”

“You don’t have commissions and you couldn’t resign them on a battlefield anyway,” Edwards said. These irregulars had no idea what they were talking about. Who were these fucking goofballs? Edwards wondered, his frustration level rising.

“Let’s go, guys,” Pow said as he walked toward the woods. He walked right past the First Sergeant and the Team followed.

They got a few yards away and Edwards yelled, “Halt!” The Team thought they might get shot by Edwards and his men. What a way to die, shot by your own side for not obeying an order.

Wes. Wes was in those woods and time was wasting. That was all they could think about.

Edwards had been briefed in advance of this mission that regular military units could not expect irregular units to obey orders like professional soldiers did. If the choice came down to trying to arrest irregulars for insubordination, Edwards’ commanders told him to let the irregulars go ahead and do whatever it was they were going to do — as long as it didn’t get other Patriot forces hurt. The Team guys going out into the woods with no support wouldn’t get any other Patriot forces hurt, Edwards realized, and they were irregulars who were just volunteering. They could go get killed if they wanted.

Edwards turned to the First Sergeant and spoke loud enough for the Team to hear.

“Sergeant, you are my witness. “These men—irregulars who assert I have no command over them—are going into the woods against my orders. They have acknowledged that they’re on their own. I wash my hands of them.”

“Yes, sir,” the First Sergeant said.

Pow turned on his weapon light. It lit up an amazing swath with its 110 lumen Surefire. The rest of the Team did the same. It suddenly became easy to see.

And easy for the enemy to see them. The Team knew it.

“We made a pact,” Bobby said to the Team. “We don’t leave anyone behind and we take care of each other’s families.” The Team started to think about Kellie and the baby she and Wes were expecting.

“I couldn’t look Kellie in the eye,” Scotty said, “and tell her I didn’t go out to get Wes.”

The Team started to move out into the woods.

Not very well. It was pitch dark and their weapon light almost over-illuminated the woods. They were getting blinded by their lights. And their weapons lights couldn’t light up the foliage at their feet unless they constantly swept their rifles up and down. Their arms were going to get tired from all the sweeping of their rifles to see their way.

They had no idea where they were going or how to get back to the road. They knew that, in general, they needed to go downhill to find Wes, and they needed to go uphill to get back to the road.

Bobby thought about how he had punched the gas when they got ambushed. A heavy sense of remorse came over him. He shouldn’t have done that, or he at least should have realized Wes might not be braced back there. But when all those machine gun rounds came at them, Bobby just punched the gas. There was no time to think, only act. He knew it was crazy, but he felt like this was his fault.

Ryan was also feeling a sense of guilt. He should have been ready to catch Wes. If he’d caught him, Wes would be here right now. If something bad had happened to Wes, he’d have no one to blame but himself.

By now, it had been almost a half hour since the firefight and when Wes must have fallen out of the truck. They wanted to get into those woods and find him.

Bobby checked his dump pouch, the pouch on his kit where he put empty magazines. He had two in there which meant he was two mags down out of a total of seven.

“Could we grab a couple of mags from you?” Bobby yelled back to Edwards.

“Why the fuck not?” Edwards said, bitterly. “You disobey my orders and now you want stuff from me. First Sergeant, get them replacement magazines. Anything else you ladies want? A pedicure?”

Despite being pissed at these guys for disobeying his orders, Edwards understood why they were doing what they were doing. He had a moral obligation to provide them with the magazines. At the very least, he knew that the Team would be flushing out Limas and not interfering with Bravo’s mission of sealing off the two entry and exit points into Watershed Park. Edwards hated to admit it, but the Team had been useful getting Bravo Company to Watershed Park. He didn’t need them anymore. They could go do stupid shit on their own.

The First Sergeant came up to the Team and gave two magazines to each man. The Team changed their partially used magazines out and inserted new ones.

They finally started out into the woods. No one said anything as they got a few yards off the road into the woods. It was almost impossible to move because it was pitch black and the brush was so thick. They had a point man illuminate the woods with his weapon light while everyone else behind him used their weapons lights to light up the ground in front of them and navigate through the brush and trees. It was hard work to move a few yards.