The Farm: There Is No Law, But There Is Justice

By Dev Waldron

Lieutenant Kyle Dirk is a Recon Marine who has grown weary of the war in Afghanistan. When his wife finds the perfect small farm near their idyllic hometown, Kyle looks forward to living the rest of his life in rural peace. But soon their dreams are shattered by a web of corruption, land-grabbing, and violence. Although there is no law, Kyle is determined to bring justice. He realizes that sometimes, the war needs to be fought on the home front as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996314008

Book preview

57

Chapter 1

Guns up! Guns up!

The words were faint but they carried over the din of battle high on the Afghan mountainside. They came from down the slope. The cry for help was barely audible over booming gunfire that rolled across this desolate ridge high in the Pamir mountains.

Kyle Dirk felt a sense of dread, just like any Marine did when he heard those words. They were the age-old scream of Marines everywhere who were pinned down and begging for fire support. But his machine gunners were already fighting as hard as they could. Every man on the squad knew that the two gunners on their team were already fully committed to the battle. They managed their M240 machine gun with deadly efficiency, moving from target to target, saying little, pausing only long enough to slap a new chain of brass ammo into the heavy gun.

Kyle stole a look down the escarpment behind him. It was just as they had left it this morning- a rocky, slate grey face of gravel and shale pieces sharp enough to slice a man's hand. Only now it was littered with manmade objects as well. Spent ammo cases that had been cast haphazardly aside. The bright white spots of discarded bandages. And, most chillingly, a half a dozen bodies that lay strewn across the face in their death poses. Some were the enemy, and some were his.

They were in a bad place.

Guns up!

The gunner next to him hadn't paused when he heard those words. He had already begun sliding back down the mountain face. His boots caused mini-landslides of gravel as he went. Everybody on the team knew where the voices came from. Three of the Marines had taken refuge behind a small outcropping on the hillside a hundred meters below. They thought the ridge would offer cover, a place that would provide some protection against the murderous hail of Kalashnikov rounds that pocked and zinged across the desolate terrain. But instead, it had been a trap.

The escarpment led into a small box canyon. A U-shaped ensconcement where there was one way in and no way out. Now the three Marines were pinned in that crevasse- and the Taliban knew it. The tribesmen advanced steadily across the hillside below, moving from boulder to boulder, shouting gutturally in Pashto to each other as they closed in for the kill.

What the machine gunner was doing was incredibly brave. He had left the relative safety of his rocky outcropping to cross an open expanse of terrain in order to provide relief for his brothers trapped below. Kyle turned just long enough to unleash a blast of covering fire. Hopefully his M-4 burst would keep the Taliban's heads down just long enough to allow the gunner to reach his next rock to hide behind. To allow him another minute to plan his next move, another minute to live.

But it was too late.

A round had already slammed into the side of the machine gunner's helmet. It created a small puff of white material, like a pillow bursting open and losing its feathers. His head was knocked sideways at the impact. Kyle knew that the round wasn't enough to kill him- the Kevlar helmet would see to that. But it had stunned him, and that was enough. In the two seconds it took him to regain consciousness a line of RPK fire ripped across the hillside, crucifying him in its murderous crosshairs. The Marine's body continued its slide down the hillside, kept going by the ball-bearing like gravel rockslide beneath it. But now he was dead.

Kyle paused only a moment before turning back to join the battle. There would be time for mourning later. Time for grieving. Time for consoling the mother and father and children and the long chain of other relatives who would emerge at the funeral…

We're trapped! The faint voices from the box canyon floated up the hillside above the boom of gunfire. We're trapped!

Kyle swore.

This whole operation had been a trap.

They had not believed this mission would be an easy one. But it was not impossible, either. His 12-man Marine Recon team had been tasked to provide overwatch on a Taliban village beyond the ridge that they now cowered behind. A major meeting of enemy leadership was taking place there, they had been told. Exact time unknown. But it's big- big enough to be worth the risk.

His team had dropped 20 klicks away and had spent days sneaking through the treacherous network of small valleys that led up to this spot. They were supposed to sit here undetected, for weeks if necessary. Quietly observing, reporting back what they saw, looking for the small signs and larger movements that would indicate the Taliban meeting was underway.

But the only meeting the Taliban were having was right here. With Kyle's recon team.

Kyle swore again. He knew the mission was risky. Risky enough that he had looked the Agency woman in charge of the operation directly in the eye and asked her if she was sure. Oh, we're sure, she had said earnestly. We've been monitoring them for a long time. Several months.

Several months… As if that were a long time for the hardy Pashtos who had been fighting each other in these mountains for millennia.

Of course, it had all been a setup. The Taliban knew just what their invisible watchers wanted to hear, and they gave it to them. Not too much, and not too little. Like coaxing a kitten out of a hole, they had fed the little dribs and drabs of cellphone conversations and courier messages that would walk that fine line between creating excitement and creating alarm.

And it had worked.

The Taliban knew the tactical lay of this land better than anyone. They had known exactly which overwatch spot Kyle's team would choose- where they would end up. And how it would end up for the Marines, when they met the hardy band of irregulars that lay carefully in wait.

Kyle swore again. He squinted down the barrel of his M-4 carbine and squeezed off a carefully aimed round. It pinged off a boulder a hundred meters away, narrowly missing the baggy-trousered Taliban who had taken up behind it. The echo from his shot joined the gunfire of this battle: the falsetto cracks of the M-4, the throatier barks of Kalashnikovs, and the occasional skull-shaking drumroll of the M-240. But the staccato of battle was dying down. The sounds of gunfire were fewer and the sounds of panicked shouts between his men were rising.

Suddenly, the radio operator screamed. But it wasn't the shout of a man who had been hit by a bullet. It was an exultation of joy.

Without even asking, Kyle knew what that yell meant. Every man on the team did. The same words that the radio operator had just heard were clearly audible within their own minds, because they had all heard the same words before. And at a time like this they were the best words a man could hear:

Air Rage, rolling in hot.

The radioman had been begging for air support for hours. But in a mountainous country the size of Texas, there simply wasn't enough of it to go around. The team had been on their own, alone in this desolate place, fending for themselves. Until now. Finally air support was on its way.

And from the joy in the radioman's yell, Kyle knew that it wasn't just any air support. It was the fabled A-10 Warthog flying gunship. And not just any pilot, either. They were about to receive a special delivery by probably the most feared Warthog pilot in the Air Force. Captain Randall Air Rage Dixon.

Captain Dixon was a legend among the troops on the ground. He had many nicknames among them. The Pamir Vampire. The Ghost of Khost. But he was best known simply by his official Air Force call sign:

Air Rage.

Fall back! Kyle shouted above the dying noise of the battle. Into the canyon!

Ordinarily the canyon was the last place anyone would want to be. It was a death trap. But when Air Rage arrived on the scene, everywhere outside the small canyon would become an open-air death trap instead.

Kyle pivoted on the rocky shale and began to slither head-first down the mountain side. He paused only long enough to flip on his back, pop the two M67 fragmentation grenades from his chest harness, and hurl them at the boulders that lay below him. On this unspoken command, his surviving men did the same. Hand grenades were precious right now. To be used only in a last-ditch situation. And this was it.

The grenade blasts were followed by shouts and screams of the Taliban hiding among the rocks. Kyle hated to exhaust the last of the valuable grenades. But they had given his men enough time to regroup. To move from their scattered hiding positions and join their three brothers trapped in the small canyon. And if this last-ditch effort didn't work, it wouldn't matter anyway.

The explosions of the grenades had been followed by an eerie silence. And that, in turn, was replaced by something even eerier. The ghostly sound of the A-10's turbofan engines floated across the valley. They preceded the plane itself like a strange banshee moan.

It was out there. And it was hunting.

Just before he ducked into the canyon, Kyle saw the plane. Amazingly, it was actually flying down below them.

Air Rage had popped over a far ridge twenty kilometers away and was now following the floor of the valley as he approached. The sight reminded Kyle of a shark that he had seen once when scuba diving, its grey body sweeping menacingly across the bottom of the ocean as it searched for its prey. The A-10 was grey like a shark. But unlike the sleek lines of a shark, the Warthog was an ugly animal. All stubby wings and overgrown engines and gun turret.

As it approached them, Kyle knew for sure that it was Air Rage himself because he could see the roundels. Captain Dixon had painted them there: three bands of interlocking black and white stripes across each wing, just like the ones painted on the invasion planes on D-Day at Normandy. Those black and white stripes were a gross violation of protocol. Any lesser pilot would have been reprimanded, or maybe even relieved of duty. But Captain Dixon's commanding officer had simply smiled, and shrugged. He knew why they were painted there:

Air Rage wanted the enemy to know who he was. He wanted them to fear him.

Of course, such boldness came at a price. It was possible that someday he could be shot down by the shoulder-fired SAM's that the Taliban possessed in abundance. Or he could suffer a simple engine flameout, an all too real possibility on the 50 year old aircraft that he flew. And if Captain Dixon did ever end up on the ground, in the hands of the Taliban, his fate would be far worse than death. He knew that. But like the Red Baron's signature color, those roundels were his calling card. They told the enemy that when he appeared, they had two choices: they could run, or they could die.

The men huddled inside the canyon. Their faces were dirty and sweaty and some of them were covered in blood. But with the news of Air Rage, they were grinning. The Marines kept firing out of the narrow canyon entrance. The Taliban kept up their fire, too, but it was the fire of retreat. They were trying to move away, to seek cover, as the faint moan of the A-10's engines grew into a thunderous roar.

And then he was upon them.

The first burst of cannon fire sounded like a piece of sheetmetal being ripped in half. It came from the massive Gatling gun of the A-10. It fired 4,000 rounds per minute of armor-piercing ammunition. But Air Rage had not fired for a full minute. In fact, he had barely tapped the trigger. He worked like a surgeon.

For a brief moment the canyon was darkened by the shadow of the A-10 shrieking overhead. The sheer power of the warplane vibrated dust from the canyon walls. Those same walls impeded radio communication between the trapped team and the pilot above them. But that didn't matter. It wasn't really necessary to communicate with Air Rage. He knew what to do. He seemed to understand the needs of the troops on the ground in an almost telepathic fashion, and he seemed to know the lay of the land in these Pamir Mountains almost as well as the Taliban themselves.

The canyon grew silent as the jet whine of the A-10's engines drifted away, and then slowly returned. He made several passes, pirouetting across the sky, briefly emitting precise bursts from the massive cannon. Finally, he faded away into the distance like a wraith.

The newfound silence of the canyon was eerie. It was punctuated by the radio crackling briefly to life.

Air Rage, signing out.

And then he was gone.

Chapter 2

For the first time in a long time, Lieutenant Kyle Dirk was a happy man.

The last two weeks had been days of ugliness. The endless grey of the Afghan winter and the terrifying sights of battle had been bad enough. But the worst was when the team returned to base. For most of the men, exfiltration was a relief: a time to have a hot meal and shower, a time to connect with loved ones on skype, a time to get drunk and laugh. But aside from the hot meal and shower, Kyle could do none of those things.

Three of his men had been killed on that patrol. Even by the brutal standards of this war, it was a staggering toll. And, as their direct commanding officer, there was much that he