High Value Target (Forgotten Ruin Book 8), page 1
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Epilogue
Technical Advisors and Creative Destruction Specilaists
Ranger Vic
Ranger David
Ranger Chris
Green Beret John "Doc" Spears
Rangers lead the way!
Chapter One
Two things before we get going on what happened next.
I love coffee, and I love being a Ranger.
PFC Kennedy has once again taken to reading select pages of my account of our time in the Ruin. He says I go on and on about coffee, still. Way too much.
Naturally. Who wouldn’t. Amirite, Ranger Fam?
And that I use the word Ranger a lot. Even for a Ranger.
I disagree.
Hence the opening statement of this account of the strike on the high-value target that Captain Knife Hand and the command team had tagged as HVT Mummy.
Sût the Undying himself.
Anyway…
I love coffee, which I was drinking a cup of, recently exchanged for a few coppers off a local street brewer, of which there were many more than I’d thought in the city of Sûstagul. Fantastic stuff spiced with cinnamon and a little cardamom and fantastic orange floral honey instead of the usual valuable sugars of various colors ranging from molasses to cream that came along the spice routes and arrived in Sûstagul during the fall.
And definitely not the syrups. No, not ever those. I had learned my lesson there. Those syrups were courtesy of the witches of Caspia and little more than narcotic spells. More often than not they had some minor mind-control sorcery fused into them. If just to get you tipping too much and feeling giddy and not on your game such that you get mugged just down the alley by a waiting gang of thieves who’d insisted the street brewer spike certain targets with their Caspian syrup they’d paid dearly for in order to mug their victims the more effortlessly.
Work smarter not harder, they must have been thinking.
So, Talker’s policy, that’s me, nice to meet you: no syrups to sweeten my dark addiction. I’d fallen in for it once out by the Gates of Mystery in the eastern wall and ended up in a gaudy brothel on the verge of getting fleeced of everything and becoming the personal plaything of the six-armed beauty that acted as the house madame, as it was rumored she wanted a Ranger for her very own now that they were the latest power bloc in town.
Sergeants Thor and Monroe QRF’d right in there, beat the hulking bare-chested guards in ornate sultans’ hats senseless, and pulled a babbling me out of there just in time.
She had me clutched in all six of her cobalt arms and was intent on smothering me with her… charms.
And that was on Day Three of my R&R.
That was the last day.
Next day, after my head cleared up from the syrup… and her charms… I reported to the smaj and he put me right to work.
There was a lot to do, as most of the detachment was on leave. Prep for the war. Gather intel. And hall-monitor for the Rangers running amok across the desert port city.
How the Rangers got R&R and ran amok in the desert port city of Sûstagul before getting into a serious tangle with the last of the forces of Sût the Undying came about like this. I was there in the TOC when it went down.
“Sar’nt Major,” said Captain Knife Hand. “In my experience in combat, a Ranger company needs rest after stand down of battle, and this company needs at least two, if not three or more, months of such before they’re ready for the follow-on missions we need to execute to throw grave dirt on the HVT. The North African campaign has been nothing but bang-bang-bang sea and land battles one after the other, culminating with the taking and subsequent defense of Sûstagul. I know the boys are burnt out and need rest. I know that…” He seemed to say this last part to himself and then faded off for a moment, which he’d been doing more and more of lately. Whether this was due to the weight of a seemingly endless command, or his past intruding on the present, I, the nosy linguist, and collector of all things Ranger… did not know. But I saw it nonetheless.
He continued after the briefest of pauses.
“The whole unit needs to stand down and refit. Broken equipment needs replacing, ammo needs to be stockpiled, giant holes in the MTOE from casualties need to be filled. And my Rangers need time to decompress, get drunk, chase women, and get their heads back on straight. They need that. But I can only give them two weeks, Sar’nt Major, before the Accadion legions are staged and ready to push onto the final objective in the south.”
Our captain didn’t say, “Sorry about that, Sergeant Major.” But the look was there on his rugged and tight face. Right there next to that perpetual look of indigestion and fatigue paid for on credit and promises that would never be fulfilled.
Other partners, assets, and even intrigue and politics among the Accadion court, our allies, were forcing the schedule.
And the Saur were massing their own allies from all across the northern deserts of the Land of Black Sleep. Tribes of monsters and hordes of enemies were responding to the offer of open Saurian caskets filled with gleaming gold and priceless gems. In time, they’d have enough to move from defense… to offense.
But you could tell the captain was sorry all the same.
The rock, the granite tablet of all things NCO and Ranger, keeper of the flame, the smaj… merely nodded.
“They’ll be ready, sir. We don’t forget nothin’.”
And he didn’t need to add, You have my word, because the smaj’s word was… his word. It would be so. Come hell or high water. It would be so. We would be ready to Ranger.
Like it was some law carved in the stone of some ancient mountain that could not be moved.
We would be ready to fight… after two weeks of trying to kill ourselves with pleasure.
In our defense… we did our best.
So there I was, in the Pit Fighter’s Last Stand, a “bar” run by a one-eyed old gladiator named Marios who liked the Rangers very much. It was open air, a deep pit of seating, and covered by massive, salvaged canvas sails to ward off the beating sun even as the Ruin turned toward the harvest season.
Music and slender beauties were everywhere as the Rangers reveled.
“I like deez guys. I like dem very much,” crooned the ragged old one-eyed gladiator who ran the place. “Remind me of me when I fought da t’ree-headed dog for dat emperor and everyone but me died dat day on de sand in each other’s blood. Each one o’ deez Rangers is purest gladiator. I know my kind!” Then… and this was courtesy of me using the word Ranger way too much, Marios the old and many-crisscross-scarred owner and barkeep gustily proclaimed at the top of his lungs, “Ranger gonna Ranger!” And then fetched more drinks for those of the detachment currently destroying themselves in his vast sprawling tavern as best they could.
The Pit Fighter had become the place to be in the city of Sûstagul for the two weeks the Rangers were given leave by the captain and the smaj.
We had gold coin coming out of our assault packs after the many battles and subsequent plunder of many a dead monster out there in the Savage Lands’ forests, and along the ancient temples, lost caves, and rocky granite of the Atlantean Coast. Not to mention the plunder of the Saurian navy and armies we’d stacked here in the city. And the big bruisers we’d blown to pieces—or Carl G’d into the Shadow Realms—during our long hump across the Ruin to reach this final staging point for the mission we had set for ourselves.
Strike a blow for the Cities of Men against the Big Bad that plagued whatever chance civilization and mankind, and elven kind, and dwarven kind and a whole bunch of other kinds we’d barely met, had against the Nether Sorcerer who ruled from a dark tower in the shadowy land of Umnoth to the north.
Sût the Undying.
The Big Bad of the Ruin himself.
Smoking him here on his home ground before he had time to march his elite Saurian forces forward into battle, augmented by the southern orcs of the Desert of Despair, would definitely disadvantage said big bad Nether Sorcerer against the struggling legions of Accadios and the hearty dwarven tribes of the Stone Kings.
Or so Vandahar had assured us.
So, we were doing our part, slaughtering our way across the coast of North Africa, or what the Ruin called the Lost Coast, taking the only active port city on the southern edges of the Great Inner Sea, and destroying a Saur attack force that was due to set sail to the north and join the orcs marching forth from the slopes of Umnoth.
After taking the city, we’d held the desert port against a massive Saurian counterattack from the south and were saved at the last second when the main general of the Saur, a powerful medusa, suddenly switched sides and used her aberrant Medusa Power—she can sing and turn people to stone—against her own forces to decide the battle.
Then… we slaughtered her army and sent them running south, as Vandahar might say, muchly.
Very few of them made their escape, for the Rangers are pure predator when it comes to hide and seek.
And there are no second prizes in that game.
I played my part, too. But it was a small part. I was with the Accadions and Captain Tyrus, and we smashed right into the vanguard of the Saurian praetorians and fought a huge battle for about two hours that left every jacked Conan lizard dead and hacked to pieces.
I went forbidden popsicle on the SAW I was carrying. Don’t tell anyone. And… if you ever get the chance… ride the lightning and don’t look back. Seriously. I could be a support gunner forever.
It’s as close to as fun as it gets… as it gets.
So, I love coffee. Love being a Ranger. Those were my thoughts, standing there with Sar’nt Hardt watching the bacchanal and chaos underway inside the Pit, as it was being called.
I had arrived at my destination of what my life was.
The coffee because I’m Talker. You must know that by now.
The part about being a Ranger…
If you haven’t figured that part out after reading this far, I don’t know if I can explain it to you after this.
At first pass someone might think it’s because I started a fanboy, then became one of them. They might dismiss me as merely some booster for some college team I once played on, or that some address happenstance had me living near, and this is how I get my validation. Somehow. Cheering for the guys wearing my colors. Regardless if it’s warranted or not.
You would be wrong.
They were my brothers. Are. And we had… I’ll borrow a line from a cool movie I once saw. Saw it one rainy Saturday evening when studying Arabic was hurting even my brain. And I’m good at this language stuff.
Big Trouble in Little China.
A perfect adventure movie in which ordinary folk do extraordinary things, in the course of a strange rainy weekend.
And as one character in the movie put it, looking back and knowing, like some Henry the Fifth delivering his St. Crispin’s Day speech cut for an action movie flick on a Saturday afternoon, that what they had done, there in that adventure in the foggy streets of Chinatown, they would always remember having done. Having been there at that moment in time when few were. Even when they were someday old and the ungrateful young sat at their broken knees and wondered how this old grape of a vaguely human being had ever once been young, and brave and afraid at the same time, and done incredible deeds and fought in strange battles.
Fallen from the sky.
Rangered.
Soldiered.
Soldiers understand this. I bet the other services do too. Like when the Air Force DinFac served chateaubriand and orange sherbet on Tuesday after the polo match, or the Navy reached some port where they could drink themselves blind and participate in some new debauchery that would make even a Ranger shudder… and that’s saying something.
I jest.
I know they have their moments when, as Rudyard Kipling put it… and yes this is inherently Navy, but it captures what it’s like to serve in the collective human endeavor that is any form of military service, dying to yourself and serving that greater cause… so indulge me.
We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.
Will you never let us go?
We ate bread and onions when you took towns, or ran aboard quickly when you were beaten back by the foe.
The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs, but we were below.
We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were idle, for we still swung to and fro.
Will you never let us go?
The salt made the oar-handles like shark-skin; our knees were cut to the bone with salt-cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips were cut to the gums, and you whipped us because we could not row.
Will you never let us go?
But, in a little time, we shall run out of the port-holes as the water runs along the oar-blade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho!
Will you never let us go?
“Song of the Galley-Slaves,” by Rudyard Kipling.
That’s what it’s like to serve alongside your brothers no matter what service you’re in. It’s just like the poem I memorized, and then used as a test in every language I know to ensure my mastery, summed it up. But I never understood the words fully until I watched my brothers have the time of their lives, as I thought about everything we’d been through. Together. Knowing I would never ever… forget.
And remembering those who were not among us.
We shook the pillars of heaven.
That’s how the character in Big Trouble in Little China put it.
That was the line.
Shook the pillars of heaven.
And in that moment, watching Monroe charge into a suit of tattered patchwork armor of some beaten gladiator as merchants in fine livery and rich silks from all across the Ruin shouted in triumph and victory at the betting on the outcome of the Ranger smash, or sneered and cried fraud and bought the rounds of drinks anyway as payment for lost bets…
And Tanner, half his face less horror show now that it had gone bone-white and skeletal underneath on that side and the other half still the roguish perpetual Ranger PFC who’ll fight anyone anywhere no matter the odds, smiled that rake’s sneer, surrounded by three voluptuous and clutching whores who were fallen beauties, each marred in their own way. One missing an eye. One who had the scar of having once had her throat slit by a customer as payment for her gifts. And one who seemed sheltered in Tanner’s embrace not for lust or mere charm, but for the fact that his arms about her, even knowing that this man was half-undead dying… were some sort of safe harbor in a world that terrified her with the horror of each new terrible day.
She was young and haunted and pretty like a stray and beautiful dog that’s been abused and only needs shelter to come back to life, and love.
There was the Air Force TACP there among us who had come and joined us in our party, the young Rangers making him one of their own now, which is good. He would die at the Steps of Fate calling in an airstrike on himself to hold off the Eld guardians Sût would summon forth from his vast and haunted tomb that was the Grand Pyramid when all seemed lost for our task force.
But that was to come.
And this was now. This was leave.
Rangers drank, gambled, hit things hard, climbed stuff, then wandered out to find more trouble and women across the sprawling desert port city after so long at our crossings and warrings.
We were finally given some time off before we’d soon go south and join the Accadion legions already digging in against the swelling forces of Sût the Undying before the Grand Pyramid and the City of Death that lay at its feet. Or the sleeping horrors of the Valley of Kings and Priests. Or Priests and Kings. Or sometimes just Valley of Kings. Also Valley of Tombs, as long as I’m cataloguing.
In that moment there at the Pit…
Amid chaos and revelry…
Coffee in one hand.
Hardt’s right-hand man playing cop while everyone had their fun as best they could before it was time to form up and march…
