GWOT - First Convoy
Aug. 8th, 2018 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT - First Convoy
The Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) tasted like ashes in my mouth. The Skittles and the sundries pack went into a pocket of my BDUs. But I had to eat, I had to keep my strength up. Especially on three hours of sleep every other day.
I braced Arturo. He was, like me, dressed in black BDU fatigues. He carried, like me, an AR platform rifle. He wore, like me, captain's bars that had no particular meaning.
"You hold until we get back. I don't care who you have to kill, what you have to do, when you have to do it, where you do it, or how you do it. I especially don't care why. You hold."
"Sir," he acknowledged.
He would do it. Or I would find his body when we returned.
Two vehicles - a pickup truck stolen from the Facilities group and a campus shuttle bus. Me, in the first seat at the front of the shuttle bus with several printed pages ("A...F") in my lap. A stranded tow truck driver with a mouth, "Buddy," driving same. An angry lesbian Marine - Brooke - riding shotgun in the pickup truck and an even angrier security supervisor - Sharon - driving. Both were widows. Only one was happy about it.
Bare fucking minimum. Four crew, two vehicles.
But we had a mission and we were going to go do it. We had gasoline and a map. We had no food except the Skittles. We did have water, four five gallon buckets of it, carefully lidded.
A guard and an employee pushed the car parked across the South Gate out of our way so that we could leave. They pushed it right back afterwards, and chocked the wheels.
We were going into South San Jose, on purpose and in broad daylight. Neither fires nor looters were our problem.
Rescuing our employees _was_.
The first address we checked, the house was empty, but already had broken windows and scattered debris. We left a generic note from the pile of generic notes at site. "[CLIENT] Security, contact us at [EXTENSION]." If they couldn't figure it out from that - to go to work or die - that was totally on them.
The second address we found two bodies. Buddy and Sharon stayed with the vehicles. Brooke and I got the treat of sweeping and clearing.
Man and wife. They'd died hard. I found his badge among the fluttering scraps of papers and plastic cards where someone had ripped up his wallet in front of him. They'd taken the money, but not the plastic.
I took two photos for updating the Red Cross Web site, and our own.
Two men lounged nearby when we left the house. One had a crowbar with matted black stuff and hair on it. Likely a match for the brains we'd stepped in. The other had a pistol tucked into his belt. Both eyed us.
If I used ammo on everyone who deserved it ... BLAM BLAM.
Like a tracking automatic turret, Brooke had neatly headjobbed each with a single shot.
I carefully did not sigh, but collected the crowbar and pistol and an extra magazine. Waste not, want not.
Others, scattered up and down the street, disappeared among the houses. This made it easier to check the third address, only a block down.
"Stay away!" ordered the man inside.
I identified ourselves, "[Echo 18], [Client] Security!"
"What's _my_ employee number?" he demanded through the plywood reinforced posterboard door.
I'd left the binder in the truck. But the eight digits stuck in my mind. My memory is funny like that. I chanted them.
"What's your name?" I demanded in turn. He gave it. Correct.
Brooke covered us as we went back and forth between his house and the shuttle bus, carrying a few bags of possessions and food ... the former worthless, the latter priceless.
He insisted on carrying his laptop himself. Some things don't change.
The fourth address was empty and looted.
The fifth address required me to go back and get both the first rescued employee and the heavy blanket we would have to use as a stretcher.
Thirty percent second and third degree burns, moaning in agony. His daughter had done the best she could for the burns with butter and water. Not bad for an eight year old.
We loaded both, and what food we could easily reach. I took an extra thirty seconds to whip out a bag and loot the bathrooms, especially the medicine cabinets.
So it went, until we had a shuttle bus full of shocked and traumatized survivors. We were not out of addresses but we were out of room.
Two survivors had turned us down - they would hold out. We would be back, once we checked everyone else. They would get wiser and come in on their own. Or they would try, and fail. Or they wouldn't try, and die.
That was when an opportunist stepped in front of the pickup truck waving a shotgun.
Sharon smoothly accelerated and hit him with the bumper.
Amazingly enough, he got up. But he now had a broken leg and no shotgun. He was still hobbling and cursing when Sharon finished backing up, then hit him again.
I sent an employee to retrieve the shotgun.
Waste not, want not.
The Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) tasted like ashes in my mouth. The Skittles and the sundries pack went into a pocket of my BDUs. But I had to eat, I had to keep my strength up. Especially on three hours of sleep every other day.
I braced Arturo. He was, like me, dressed in black BDU fatigues. He carried, like me, an AR platform rifle. He wore, like me, captain's bars that had no particular meaning.
"You hold until we get back. I don't care who you have to kill, what you have to do, when you have to do it, where you do it, or how you do it. I especially don't care why. You hold."
"Sir," he acknowledged.
He would do it. Or I would find his body when we returned.
Two vehicles - a pickup truck stolen from the Facilities group and a campus shuttle bus. Me, in the first seat at the front of the shuttle bus with several printed pages ("A...F") in my lap. A stranded tow truck driver with a mouth, "Buddy," driving same. An angry lesbian Marine - Brooke - riding shotgun in the pickup truck and an even angrier security supervisor - Sharon - driving. Both were widows. Only one was happy about it.
Bare fucking minimum. Four crew, two vehicles.
But we had a mission and we were going to go do it. We had gasoline and a map. We had no food except the Skittles. We did have water, four five gallon buckets of it, carefully lidded.
A guard and an employee pushed the car parked across the South Gate out of our way so that we could leave. They pushed it right back afterwards, and chocked the wheels.
We were going into South San Jose, on purpose and in broad daylight. Neither fires nor looters were our problem.
Rescuing our employees _was_.
The first address we checked, the house was empty, but already had broken windows and scattered debris. We left a generic note from the pile of generic notes at site. "[CLIENT] Security, contact us at [EXTENSION]." If they couldn't figure it out from that - to go to work or die - that was totally on them.
The second address we found two bodies. Buddy and Sharon stayed with the vehicles. Brooke and I got the treat of sweeping and clearing.
Man and wife. They'd died hard. I found his badge among the fluttering scraps of papers and plastic cards where someone had ripped up his wallet in front of him. They'd taken the money, but not the plastic.
I took two photos for updating the Red Cross Web site, and our own.
Two men lounged nearby when we left the house. One had a crowbar with matted black stuff and hair on it. Likely a match for the brains we'd stepped in. The other had a pistol tucked into his belt. Both eyed us.
If I used ammo on everyone who deserved it ... BLAM BLAM.
Like a tracking automatic turret, Brooke had neatly headjobbed each with a single shot.
I carefully did not sigh, but collected the crowbar and pistol and an extra magazine. Waste not, want not.
Others, scattered up and down the street, disappeared among the houses. This made it easier to check the third address, only a block down.
"Stay away!" ordered the man inside.
I identified ourselves, "[Echo 18], [Client] Security!"
"What's _my_ employee number?" he demanded through the plywood reinforced posterboard door.
I'd left the binder in the truck. But the eight digits stuck in my mind. My memory is funny like that. I chanted them.
"What's your name?" I demanded in turn. He gave it. Correct.
Brooke covered us as we went back and forth between his house and the shuttle bus, carrying a few bags of possessions and food ... the former worthless, the latter priceless.
He insisted on carrying his laptop himself. Some things don't change.
The fourth address was empty and looted.
The fifth address required me to go back and get both the first rescued employee and the heavy blanket we would have to use as a stretcher.
Thirty percent second and third degree burns, moaning in agony. His daughter had done the best she could for the burns with butter and water. Not bad for an eight year old.
We loaded both, and what food we could easily reach. I took an extra thirty seconds to whip out a bag and loot the bathrooms, especially the medicine cabinets.
So it went, until we had a shuttle bus full of shocked and traumatized survivors. We were not out of addresses but we were out of room.
Two survivors had turned us down - they would hold out. We would be back, once we checked everyone else. They would get wiser and come in on their own. Or they would try, and fail. Or they wouldn't try, and die.
That was when an opportunist stepped in front of the pickup truck waving a shotgun.
Sharon smoothly accelerated and hit him with the bumper.
Amazingly enough, he got up. But he now had a broken leg and no shotgun. He was still hobbling and cursing when Sharon finished backing up, then hit him again.
I sent an employee to retrieve the shotgun.
Waste not, want not.
