Chapter 40: Mercenary Mayhem

Monday morning Kyle is in the office checking over the events of the last week. What is surprising is a number of hot issues he’d expected to handle this week are no longer on the list since some sorted themselves out and some of the recently promoted staff sorted others. Much of the day is spent going over the different proposals for the new corporate structure.

Some of the division heads had the sense to involve Personnel staff in the review of job descriptions and duty lists while they did their review. There are many areas where the desktop review by Personnel is the same as that of the operational area. In the afternoon he has a meeting with the Head of Personnel and the operational staff heads who have a variation to the Personnel recommendations. He listens to all of their input and discusses the differences with all involved before making a few decisions on how they’ll go with the restructure of those areas. In two cases he sends the operations head off with a Personnel adviser to do a joint review. The final result should make the shareholders and the board happy: the changes should give the company a fifteen percent increase in the productivity while decreasing the administration payroll by ten percent and add twenty more staff at the lower levels. A third of the middle and upper management aren’t needed and their jobs are cut. The fact many are now vacant due to people leaving makes the restructuring easy, as so many managers have left they have to promote two people to fill the now lower number of management positions. A bonus to the review is the lower level staff are happy to see management being cut while more people are employed at the work face.

Monday night Kyle gets an email with some banking codes and reads, ’El Paso and Austin - $15,000. Dallas too risky after the first two and Houston a total no go.’ He transfers the money because he sees two out of four as a good result and the El Paso one is his biggest worry.

Tuesday morning sees Kyle off to Austin to sort out an issue with the state bureaucrats, the meeting goes well and they soon agree on what’s to be done. A large part of the problem had been created by the previous CEO and Kyle’s different approach makes things a lot easier.

Wednesday morning Kyle interviews a person for a new job to work out of the CEO’s office. This person is an occupational health and safety expert. Kyle looks across at the small woman sitting in the other easy chair in the discussion nook of his office, after several minutes talk he asks, “Warrant Officer Bell, have you had an opportunity to go over all of the paperwork about the job we want you to do and will you do it?”

The recently retired Marine CWO4 nods yes while she says, “Yes, Sir. I have and I can see I need to do a number of courses before I can do the job. Why do you want someone who needs so much training before they can start to do this job?”

“That’s simple, the specialist training can be provided, the attitude and approach to the use of that training can’t. In the past the people doing this work have all come through the same training system and I find their approach leaves a bit to be desired. Your past training and the experience you have gives you a very different attitude and approach to this work and that’s what I need. We’ll still keep the traditional people on in their roles, but your job will be to review all they do and have in place then to apply the other knowledge and skills you have to the situation. I can’t put my finger on why; but I feel there are faults in the present system and someone of your skills will find them and fix them for me. In short, we want the way you see things and think. OK?”

“I understand that, now, Sir. Who will I report to?”

“In general you’ll report to the Office Manager of the CEO’s admin staff. But you may be tasked by the CEO or the two EAs as well.”

“Right! Well, I best be getting on the official books then.” With that she stands and Stel takes her to Personnel to process her employment paperwork. Unlike most head-office staff Denise ’Ringer’ Bell will need to go through all of the paperwork needed to work in all the areas the company has employees, because her job is to review and check all the OH & S procedures and policies to ensure they’re the best they can be.

Texas State Energy already complies with the best of the industry OH & S policies and practices, but Kyle has seen a few things at sites to make him wonder if they’re the best they can be. The on-site staff tell him they are, although something about some of them has him thinking they can be better, but he can’t put a finger on why. This woman will fix that for him as her job was to do just that for the entire Marine Corps. She did really well checking and changing the OH & S practices in the many dangerous situations the Marines have, so she should be able to do the same here, once she knows the gear and how the systems work.

The rest of the day is spent reviewing and approving, or amending, various corporate policies and directives. Most of the hard work has been done by his staff and he just has to confirm the work then give it the official stamp of approval because it still needs his signature before it can go into effect.

Thursday morning Kyle is in the middle of a report when he gets a phone call from Barbara Haywood just after ten in the morning. She’s laughing as she says, “I don’t want to know how you did it, but the people watching Carl’s enforcers in El Paso and Austin reported some very strange behavior this morning. Many of the men stormed out of the place early and gave the impression they’re leaving and not going back. The crew at Austin have an ear inside and they report a lot of shouting and swearing that started about six thirty today. Something about not wanting ghosts like Kyle Alexander coming after them again. From what they can put together you left a sign on their breakfast table warning them off. But since we know you were in Houston all night we know you couldn’t have done it and none of your people were near the places, either. Also, the people watching the places during the night saw nothing and swear no one went near either of the facilities concerned. And that last part worries the higher ups more than anything else.”

Kyle grins and he replies, “I did send some cards asking Carl’s people to leave my family and friends alone. I’d say they arrived in the early mail today. You know how early DHL and FedEx can deliver stuff.” They both laugh a lot more while they chat before hanging up.

In El Paso the reports of the morning’s events are relayed to both the leader of Carl’s mercenary force and Harry Bennett. Neither is happy about having so many men walk out on them, because they’re not used to seeing it. As well as the wholesale departures in those two locations the information of warnings being delivered inside high security areas without setting off any alarms causes some people to leave from their Dallas and Houston forces too. Only a few of the new people leave the Houston force, because most of those there lost friends in their last failed attempt to get Kyle; and they don’t like failing, or losing friends.

When Harry issues orders for them to take Kyle out anyway they can the bulk of the people in their Houston force are happy to set about complying with the request. Their intelligence knows Kyle has no plans to go anywhere until Friday afternoon when he’ll fly back to El Paso, so they start to develop plans to hit him then. The corporate planes operate out of William P Hobby Airport, so they know he has to go there, but he has a number of paths to get there from the corporate offices in the Houston Central Business District. Most people going to Hobby Airport go down the Gulf Highway to Reveille Street or Broadway Street, depending on where they wish to end up at the airport. However, Kyle needs to go to the western side of the airport to get to his jet, so he must end up on Telephone Road at the end. They don’t like having just the one chance to hit him at the end of his journey, as they know he often takes the general streets and will travel down the length of Telephone Road as well as traveling south before cutting back east, thus taking a longer than needed route; all aimed at making it harder to set up traps. From their surveillance of him they know past routes have used all of the highways and main roads between South Freeway and Gulf Freeway down to Airport Boulevard. All of this makes it very hard to work out which way he’ll go, or to set up an ambush.

It’s been a very productive week and they’ve finished the planned work early, as well as done some extra stuff, so Kyle decides to head home just after lunch. With just Peter, Kyle, and Stel in the car they head out. In a few minutes Peter is on South Freeway and says, “I think we’ll take it easy today, Boss. Straight down here and left at Airport.” Kyle just nods as he’s uneasy. He has that old feeling of being watched.

The traffic is a bit lighter than usual, but still enough for the cars out watching where he goes to stay hidden in the traffic if they don’t get too close. Several cars they pass call into control and fall in behind them, but well back. Based on what they have so far other cars out as scouts at the moment take up positions to watch where they go. Many cars passed by Peter and Kyle wait until they’re out of sight before they speed off along other roads to get ahead of them again. Also, many vehicles placed along the Gulf Freeway now make their way across the city to be in a position to quickly respond to orders to move in when they have a much more solid track on Kyle.

As they pass over Holmes Road Kyle gets a strong feeling of danger, also he can see Stel and Peter feel the same. They don’t know why, but they just know there’s bandits about. Kyle says, “OK. We can’t all be wrong, let’s load up for bear and see what happens.” Stel gets out the combat body armor and helmets while Kyle pulls out three MP-5s, an MP4, and opens a case he thought he’d never need again. Stel’s eyes go wide as she watches him put together one of the car’s security upgrades, a short barreled Barrett M82A1A, and pulls out five ten shot magazines loaded with the Mk 211 multipurpose explosive and armor piercing rounds. This rifle is a bit different to normal as the usual front bi-pod is replaced with a low leather coated bar designed to do less damage to the roof of the car and make for easy downward shooting. It came with the car and they’d not previously used it, but something compels him to get it ready along with the rest. The gun is designated as a short barrel as its overall length is only 48 inches as against the 57 inches of the standard model, but it’s still a lot of gun to try and shift about within a car!

The mobile control center of Carl’s Commandos is now directing all their units west as there’s only three roads Kyle can now use to reach the airport: Bellfort Street, Reed Road, and Airport Boulevard. All units are moving into position to hit Kyle’s car regardless of which he uses, as they can now parallel his course along Scott Street. As Kyle passes over Bellfort Street some more cars move in behind while the rest move to cover the other two streets. Many cars are setting up at the turn off for Airport Boulevard while others set up for the intersection of Reed Road and Rosehaven Drive. When Peter passes the turn off for Reed Road the cars along it move south to set up ambushes on Airport Boulevard.

Peter is still a few hundred yards from the intersection with Airport Boulevard when he says, “Don’t look nice up ahead, Boss.”

The area is open with only one building set off to the south west by a few hundred feet, but there’s a large number of big black SUVs sitting around the intersection, many on the sides of the road, between the roads, and some in the road. Kyle reaches up to slide the sunroof back as he says, “Peter, we can’t avoid all of the gauntlet and they’ve set up to stop us undercutting them by a sharp left, so power straight across the road and then cut back to go under the overpass once past them, that’ll put them all on our left. Not the best way, but better than having them on both sides. Stel, crack the window the minimum to shoot out of once we’re through the initial gauntlet while I open up on them from up top. I’m sure they’ll have some, if not all, armored cars by now, so take that into account.” Both of them acknowledge the orders as Kyle stands and pulls the fifty up to lay it on the roof. He hopes if he can get it up while still so far away they may not yet realize exactly what he has up there.

When they near the intersection a group of cars sped up toward them from behind and some men exit the cars in front. Kyle takes a quick look around and he can see the enemy has a few cars stopping the traffic down the road a bit, so he figures all close by are enemy. As they get down to about thirty yards from the intersection several cars move forward to block it, so Peter speeds up. Some of the men to the side open fire on Kyle’s car, so he figures he can now shoot back. He lifts the Barrett and takes aim at the last of the cars seeking to block their path through the intersection. He fires into the main cabin then shifts target, just as he fires at the next car the first round explodes to kill all inside the car. It soon comes to a halt about the time the next round explodes killing those in the next car. Those at the other cars increase their fire while they look for better cover at the same time.

Stel opens up on the troops in the open by using aimed three round burst at their thighs, as she can see they’re all wearing armor. Those hit go down and she knows many will die, due to the amount of blood she can see spilling out. She ignores the cars since she has plenty of other targets without taking on what are very likely to be armored vehicles.

It takes several seconds for Peter to reach and drive through the trap before he can turn hard left to head for the airport. In that time Kyle empties his first magazine and he has time to load his second before he has to turn around to aim behind him at the chasing cars. He smiles at the ten destroyed cars and the smoke they put out since their fuel tanks were ripped open and the fuel set alight. No big Hollywood booms, just hot fuel fed fires; the booms of the explosive shells are big enough for these lightly armored cars! Their armor is good against small arms fire, but not against this portable light artillery Kyle is using on them. By the time Kyle’s crew are out of the double intersection there’s a lot of dead and dying men on the ground around the fifteen burning cars. Those still alive are in working cars and in very hot pursuit of Kyle because they’re extremely pissed off at being made to look like foolish idiots. They’re also on the radio telling the others about the hardware Kyle has. They figure enough numbers will see them swamp Kyle’s team, so they all move to the path of travel to hem him in.

Kyle figures this is going to be a protracted fight and orders, “Stel, load some more magazines for me. Peter, contact the Texas Rangers and see if they can help us.” As they’re using their radios all the rest of his security staff in Houston know what’s happening and are rushing to the scene in one of the other armored Suburbans as fast as they can.

It doesn’t take Peter long to travel a bit over a quarter mile down the road and see the SUVs packing into the intersection at Rosehaven Drive with houses all around them. He calls out, “Boss, trouble ahead.”

Kyle spins around, taking the Barrett with him. As he targets the cars he orders, “At the last possible point take a left into the large field and we’ll head back to try to get behind the lot chasing us.” He opens in rapid fire on the barricade vehicles, causing pandemonium by hitting ten cars, but two others trapped between burning cars are also disabled and set alight. It leaves a large blockage in the road, but there’s still a number of vehicles that get clear and chase them when they hook left into the open field. The chase cars all turn left too, with many of them cutting the corner on them with the men in the cars fire at Kyle and company.

Stel is very busy loading magazines and passing them up to Kyle while he now slows down his fire since he has to take aim at vehicles moving at an angle. Not all are clean hits and there’s a few misses, but he does destroy several more vehicles as they’re chased around the field.

Unknown to Kyle the enemy command is still sending vehicles to the attack area, despite having lost over forty vehicles and about two hundred men.

Kyle is stunned at how many cars and people they’re throwing at his small force. If it wasn’t for the high quality of their armor they’d be long dead. This isn’t a simple engagement, it’s a wide open melee with heavy duty firearms.

“Peter, take whatever evasive maneuvers and course you want,” Kyle orders. “I’m too busy trying to keep them away.” Peter acknowledges the order while he looks to find a way out of this cross between a dangerous demolition derby and shooting gallery they’re in the middle of.

The enemy cars are moving in and encircling them as more and more keep arriving faster than Kyle can destroy them. When the circle shrinks a bit Peter sees an opportunity to burst out of the danger area by ramming a car and heading back west. As he gets back on Airport Boulevard the enemy are back in the chase situation and the shots are now easier for Kyle because they’re coming straight at him so his rate of fire increases, as does his number of good solid hits.

In next to no time they’re back at the original intersection and Peter cuts north into the huge open land opposite the Houston Community College. With all the bullets flying around he wants to keep out of the residential areas, but he still wants to give himself room to move about and Kyle space to kill the enemy. With the bigger field to race around it’s harder for the enemy vehicles to hedge them into a corner.

While shooting at the enemy vehicles Kyle notices some movement in the sky, so he takes a quick glance up to see two police and five news helicopters circling in the air above them. He groans and Stel is quick to ask, “Are you all right, Kyle?”

His voice shows his anger when he replies, “Physically, yes, for now. But there’s a whole bunch of news helicopters above us. Want to bet they’re sending this live all over the country and KK is watching this while thinking about what harsh words she’ll have to say to me for letting myself get caught like this.”

Both Peter and Stel laugh and she says, “That’s one problem I can’t help you with, sorry.”

The field soon develops into a very large demolition derby while the vehicles race around shooting at Kyle’s Suburban are trying to cause it damage as Peter works hard to avoid contact and Kyle works hard to destroy any that get near. After a few minutes in this field Peter asks, “Boss, where are you shooting at the moment?”

“Since you’re doing mostly left hand turns I’m shooting to the right because that gives me the best field of fire, why?”

“Then who just blew the hell out of an SUV directly in front of me?”

This causes Kyle to stop to look around a bit. As he does he notices a car off to their left explode, but he can’t see why. He does note the explosion is a bit more violent than what his fifty does. He knows it’s not a helicopter or jet fighter, as he’d hear them as they fly in. He takes a look around the sky and grins while he watches two UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) turn to move over the field. He smiles and says, “I think the Air Force is giving some of their Predator operators some live fire exercises as there’s two of them up there over the field and the news choppers aren’t in sight.” He goes back to shooting up the enemy cars.

About ten minutes later the last four of the enemy vehicles cut and run and Kyle is happy to let them go, mainly because he’s used up most of his one hundred rounds and he has only one magazine left.

Seeing it’s over Peter pulls away from the main combat area and comes to a stop. A moment later a lone police car approaches them and a very worried looking cop gets out. Kyle smiles while he asks for the man’s ID and after he checks it he shows his own.

The cop smiles and says, “I was told it was probably you, but I wasn’t sure until I saw your ID. Man, you do have some hardcore enemies!”

Kyle gives a half grin when he replies, “Yep, but nowhere near as many as I had an hour ago!” The cop gives a short bark of laughter while he shakes his head.

A little later the Texas Rangers arrive and take over the scene. They take a few minutes to get statements then let Kyle and his people go. Their captain is very happy with how Peter and Kyle worked hard and took personal risks to keep the trouble away from the local civilians.

It doesn’t take them long to reach the airport and Kyle boards the plane to head home to El Paso. He has a hard time not laughing at the expressions on the ground and flight crews when they see the bullet scarred car he arrives in. The inside is littered with fired cartridge cases, the whole car is covered with scratches from enemy rounds with many stars in the windows. Due to the nature of the damage the crews know this is the car that was in the news a bit earlier. They now wonder a lot about their passenger and what else he does for a living.

Kyle has a hard time relaxing on the flight home. When he gets out at Las Cruces International he’s not surprised to see three cars of guards with a very anxious KK. They’re soon in a car and heading home. The planned night out in El Paso is called off because all there can see how exhausted Kyle is. They also understand why, due to the news reports.

A quick shower and an early night cuddled up to Kathleen is all Kyle can handle tonight. He’s soon fast asleep in the warm arms of his beloved wife.

In Houston Charlotte is very angry about what happened and is very thankful her son came out in one piece while she swears about Lucille.

A few hundred yards from where Kyle and KK are in bed Nina is on the phone to an old friend she recently met in Albuquerque when she asks, “Did you see today’s news?”

“Yeah! An interesting event over in Houston, wasn’t it?”

“Yep. They tried very hard to get the Boss. What will it take to finish that nest of vipers in Houston?”

“Consider it done, because we owe both you and him a few each.”

In El Paso a very angry Carl is listening to the list of loses in his elite strike unit in Houston. Even having seen most of it on the news he can’t understand how heavy the loses were: sixty-seven cars and just over three hundred men. That leaves him with about two hundred and fifty men of the seven hundred and fifty top mercenaries he started with in Houston. After the defection in the other units they now constitute about seventy percent of his troops.

The next morning it’s after nine before Kyle wakes up. The first thing he does after breakfast is to issue orders to up the arms list for the cars to carry four hundred Mk 211 rounds; two AA-12 shotguns with five 32 rounds magazines, plus some explosive rounds; a M203 grenade launcher, and fifty dual purpose rounds for the M4s. He’d like to have a lot more, but he thinks this is all he’ll be allowed to have, if it’s approved. The rest of Saturday is spent relaxing and studying, followed by a trip to CyberFun for the evening. Kyle enjoys the meal and the time spent with the other students, because it helps him to regain his balance after Friday. He really needs that before his next Chaos trip.

Sunday morning sees Kathleen and Kyle watching the sunrise over breakfast, followed by getting War Bonnet and themselves ready for today’s trip to Shiloh. The Haywoods, Larry, and Nadia arrive and get ready too. Then it’s into the portal and off to Shiloh.

The trip and arrival are normal and they’re all soon armed from the cupboard in Kyle’s office. It’s taking time, but he’s starting to regard this as his office now and not Jonas’ office.

They go outside and each moves off to check their own work areas: KK to the stables with War Bonnet, Nadia to the troop training, Larry to the blacksmiths to go back to teaching them about the metallurgy of the bog iron, iron ore, nickel, and how the high carbon sand helps. The big part is his teaching them how mixing them gives the finished metal a different characteristic and how they can mix the metals for a purpose in mind. Kyle finds Nathan and takes him to the map room to compare the cloth maps with what they already know of the lands.

Both are surprised to find there are three valleys in the mountains of the original Shiloh lands they know nothing about. They’re not that large and have very narrow entrances, but there’s a fair bit of useful land in the valleys they can put to good use. The data on occupants Kyle got off the website while getting ready shows them to be empty or only have a few people. Nathan makes a note to organize for work parties to open up the way to the valley entrances by cutting down trees to make a road in while troops are inspecting them. The area between the old border and One Dog Creek has seven well hidden valleys, and the last area from there to the Gray River has five more. All of these have lots of people, but the three nearest Shiloh East are very heavily populated; as are the two near the last fort they dealt with. They discuss the situation for quite a while and decide they’ll organize work parties from the plains below each valley to create roads to them while Kyle and Dana lead forces to deal with any armed opposition. Dana will start checking all of the valleys starting north of Shiloh and work east from there. Kyle will go to the Gray River and work his way back after making contact with some of Sid’s forces on the other side of the Gray. Kyle keeps two of the seven cloth maps and gives the rest to Nathan to hand out as needed. Then they leave to get things started.

While they walk out Nathan says, “Lord Kyle, I’ve had a messenger arrive from the Rider Clan. They’ve a bit of a population problem and ask if we’ll accept more of their people to live here with us.”

They walk in silence for a moment while Kyle thinks on this, before he answers, saying, “Nathan, I’m prepared to accept them in three types of groups. The first are to stay Clan members and they’ll be going back to the Clan lands after being here three years. These will be volunteers to come and serve in the standing army we need to provide ongoing patrols and security services. They’ll come here to be trained in our ways of fighting and doing things. While here they’ll be obedient to our officers and under our command in all things. The second group will be families coming here as permanent residents after swearing allegiance to Shiloh. I know this will be hard for them, but we need them to commit to Shiloh, just like you have. You’ll find places for them in the existing operations, or farms, or the new ones, based on what they can do. The third group will be single men from about twenty to forty-five looking to settle down here. Like the families they’ll have to swear allegiance to Shiloh. Most of these will find their own places to settle down.” Nathan gives Kyle an odd look and goes to interrupt. Kyle grins and waves him to silence, “Nathan, in this war we’ve had to kill several thousand males of the Black Forest Clan and we’ll have to kill many thousands more before this is over. They refuse to surrender, so we have to kill them. I’m told there’s about fifteen thousand of them. Many of them have farms and families that are within our new borders. Those widows will be looking for farmhands and new husbands. We’ll have a few widows in that situation too. These single men can go about filling those roles, or just taking work as farmhands.” Nathan just nods once he sees what Kyle is getting at: known good men on the farms the Clan members came from will change the ways of the Clan people left. Kyle continues, “You’ll also have to plan which of our communities need to be expanded and made into secure centers like this compound so we can spread the resources and growth over the whole of Shiloh in a fair manner. They’ll be centers for the troops, the managers, and the production of quality goods. In a few cases we’ll need to create new ones to help with the border security and to sell to the neighbors, as well as set some up in the interior so all our people have easy access to the production centers for blacksmith work and the like. In all this I’ll leave it up to you to decide on locations and numbers, but remember you’ll have to set up a system for the people to be trained before they go out. Also for transporting raw material and finished products around.”

Nathan thinks for a while before replying, “I see there’s a lot more to do after we win this war than fighting it. I can also see how we’ll make life better for all those in our care. I think I’m going to need to find a lot of good people to help me do this work.”

Kyle laughs, “I’m sure you are, Nathan. I also know you will find them, even if you have to train them up yourself. I want you to think about training someone to take over your duties when you want to retire, as well. I mention this because I doubt you’ll get Dana to give up his role as the head of our armed forces.”