Chapter 7

There it was, a large manila envelope addressed to Mr. James Brinkley. How prosaic can something get. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it was to have some pizazz to it. The post mark was even prosaic—New Ellington, VT. That was enough to make me wonder if New Ellington, VT, even existed. Oh, well, at least I was able to contain my curiosity until after I got back inside the house.

I opened the envelope, and what did I find? Nothing, at first. I shook the envelope and a small piece of paper fell out. On it was printed, "Meet me at 9:00 PM tonight." There was no signature, but there was an address. This was beginning to look like a sick joke, and I was starting to get pissed off. Okay, I would be at the address at the specified time, but if all I found was another one of these idiotic notes, I was going to pitch the whole thing and write off Ralph as not worth my time.

Of course, at that point I was ignoring the fact that Ralph's people had spent a lot of time and trouble in training the four of us, so there must be a reason behind all of this bullshit. Well, I guessed that I would wake up to the real world tonight at 9:00.

This was a trip across town, so I loaded myself into the old bullet-marked SUV at 8:15 and headed out to my "rendezvous with destiny." As you can see, I was still a bit pissed off with what I considered to be a shitpot full of foolishness.

As it turned out, I arrived at my destination only two minutes before the scheduled time, so I locked the SUV and headed for the front door of the building. For some reason, at the last moment, I got hold of myself and thought about what I was doing, and possibly what Ralph was doing. Shit, maybe this was a test!

I grabbed myself by the figurative scruff of the neck and jerked myself toward a rear door that was not so brightly lit. I was just about to step up to the concrete apron leading to the door when it was opened, and I saw Ralph standing in the doorway waiting for me. "Good evening, Jimmy. As I expected, you showed up on time and at the proper door. Welcome to the club. Come on in, and I will explain what is going on."

Ah, that was a hell of a lot better. My respect for Ralph and his people returned to the place where it should have been all along. If I had been spotted, the circuitous route would have protected Ralph from an unexpected visitor and it might have made it possible for me to shake loose from anybody trying to follow me.

Furthermore, had I been followed, a trip to the well lit front door could have put me in the way of a bullet. This way, an assassin would have had to be much closer to put a bullet into me with the darkness to contend with. This was a test, but it also was a way to protect us from an unpleasant surprise. All in all, I now had to approve of the precautions taken.

I went through the door and joined Ralph in a small room with only a nightlight to provide enough illumination to keep me from tripping over my own two feet. My mad was gone by now, except that I was a little disgusted with myself for not realizing that Ralph had a lot more experience than I did in working with the crazy people of the world. I breathed a sigh of relief that I had not done something stupid and followed Ralph into a room containing several comfortable chairs around a table. Two of the chairs were currently occupied.

"Jimmy, meet Chuck and Joe. Gentlemen, we are now ready to break in a new member of the team. Jimmy, since you are new to the way we operate, I thought it best if you joined a couple of veterans on a relatively simple job just to get an idea of our way of doing things.

"There is a delivery of weapons intended for an ISIL cell scheduled for about 4:00 AM tomorrow morning. Chuck and Joe had originally been scheduled to interrupt the delivery, and this seemed a good way to introduce you to our operations. I know that you have your own way of working, but you will occasionally need to work with us, so I thought this relatively simple operation would be a good introduction for you.

"Our way is not necessarily a better way, but we have been at this for a while, and our way has normally produced good results. Therefore, we see no need to make changes just to accommodate new blood, to coin a phrase. Jimmy, I hope that you can see my point."

"Yes, and it is a very good point. I will try to conform to your SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) whenever I am working with you. It would be stupid of me to expect you experienced guys to change just because I have joined the team. Lead on, and I will follow."

There followed an orientation lecture that I was sure Chuck and Joe had heard before, but a lot of it was new to me. This was a routine operation for the other two, but I had to be on my toes not to screw up and get somebody killed. I was instructed to stick close to Chuck, as he was the strike leader. Our object was simple: to kill as many ISIL thugs as possible and to destroy the arms and ammunition that we could find.

Before we left, I was issued a uniform of the type worn by Chuck and Joe. Actually, it was just some very comfortable pants in a dark gray and a long-sleeved shirt in the same color. Both the pants and shirt were loaded with cargo-style pockets. I was told that I could have a backpack if I wanted one, but the other two were not going to use one. If they weren't, then I wasn't.

I was also issued combat boots that had a hard sole and a canvas top. The whole outfit was very comfortable and easy to move around in, so I thought that I might switch my family to the same style. I would know more by the end of the operation.

I had my own pistol, but it was just like what the others normally used. It was a Glock G21 GEN4 ( .45 caliber). I did pick up some extra 13-round magazines. I also was issued a combat shotgun of the AA-12 style in 12-gauge with stick magazines of 12 rounds each. Two magazines were taped together with duck tape so that it would be easy to swap them. I dropped four extras in my left thigh-pocket. Joe had four hand grenades, but I was advised not to bother, so I didn't.

We left in a nondescript dark gray pickup with crew cab. Joe drove, and Chuck gave me a running lecture on what they knew of the ISIL SOP for this sort of operation. There was virtually no street traffic by the time we set out, so the trip took only 20 minutes. We were early, and that gave Joe plenty of time to find a good parking place in the shadows.

We sat in the truck and talked while we waited for the ISIL gang to show up. I paid close attention because most of the talk was about previous operations, and I learned a lot in the process. Of course, this was better than a dry lecture, and I am sure that was at least a part of the plan.

Two trucks showed up at 4:08, and one truck pulled up to the small loading dock. This was a small warehouse that had been converted from another use, so the loading dock was not as extensive as one might normally expect. Two men exited the cab and four men left the closed box of the truck. One man opened the large door and went inside. A few minutes later he showed up driving a forklift.

We wanted to get both trucks under fire, so we waited until the first one was unloaded and the two trucks swapped positions. At that point, we dropped from our pickup and ran toward the loading dock. We opened fire as soon as we were close enough. The first magazine was loaded with buckshot, and we did a good job of dropping the men on the loading dock.

Chuck switched magazines and fired a FRAG (Fragmentation) round at the unloaded truck. The explosive part of the FRAG warhead set that truck on fire and destroyed it completely. That included the driver.

What we had not expected was that suddenly three more trucks showed up, and they were loaded with combat troops. These guys, 28 of them, were all armed with AK-47s, and they knew how to use them. These were not the usual half-trained thugs we normally saw, but were well trained and experienced troops. They seemed to know what to do, and they took cover out of accurate range of our buckshot loads. We all had a magazine loaded with FRAG rounds, but it quickly looked like a single magazine was not going to be enough.