Brad Zaxxon's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

For a week Brad hit the raiders where they were weakest. He struck their outposts at dawn and ambushed their patrols on the road. Now only the main camp remained. He spread the hand-drawn route map on the garage table. Two outposts crossed out. The main camp circled, twenty miles north. "We end it there," Brad said. "Or they rebuild and come back stronger." Donovan bent over his tactical tablet, the map glowing on its screen. He'd been Brad's ears through the whole campaign, tracking every raider burst. "Oh man, I've got current numbers," he said. He tapped a marker. "Twenty-three raiders. Three trucks in the yard. They pulled everything back to hold that base." He looked up, dry as ever. "Twenty-three guns behind brick walls. We charge in, we lose people. Simple math." Brad studied the walls on the tablet feed. Patched brick, boarded windows, timber braces. A fortress of scrap. A frontal assault would gut his team and kill his trading post before it opened. He needed those Rangers alive to build it. Sinclair Feldman leaned in from the doorway. He was the Red Hills recon man loaned to the vault operation, a trader who read maps and enemies the same way. Brad still measured him carefully. Sinclair chuckled low. "You're thinking like a soldier, friend. Think like a trader. You don't pay full price for a wall." He nodded toward the yard. "You've got that gun truck sitting out there doing nothing." Brad followed his look. The heavy transport carried a mounted howitzer, tan and olive under the dust. Salvaged, half-forgotten. "We hit the base with artillery," Sinclair said. "From the ridge. No charge, no bodies in the open. Let the wall do the dying." Donovan's ears came up. "You bet that works. I can range it off the tablet feed. I've got their exact position logged." He was already scrawling numbers. "Give me the truck and a clean line of sight." They moved before dawn. Conner drove the gun truck up the ridge. Donovan crouched over the tablet, calling corrections. "Left two. Drop range." Sinclair spotted through the thermal camera. The first shell fell short. The second struck the timber brace dead center. The old wall folded inward. Smoke rolled off the wreck. Brad watched through the scope. Raiders ran from the collapsed building into open ground. Conner walked the gun across the yard. Two trucks burned. When the smoke cleared, the base was rubble and the survivors scattered north on foot, weapons dropped. "Camp's gone," Donovan said flat. "Threat's done." Brad lowered the scope. He'd lost no one. But scattered raiders don't stay scattered forever, and Sinclair had seen how easily Brad's team turned salvage into a weapon. That knowledge would follow the trader back to Red Hills. Brad's route to the trading post was clear now. The question was who else was watching it open.