Eden's Hammer - By Lloyd Tackitt Page 0,56
or that he may have missed, Matt didn’t miss. No one from the raider group was coming in pursuit. With slow movements, he eased back into cover and walked off.
Perry watched a group of the raiders eating breakfast. Scurvy bunch of assholes, he thought while he waited. He had chosen his spot carefully, based primarily on advantageous terrain. Once again, he was using a dry creek bed. The bottom of the bed was sand. Without getting down into the creek bed, he had walked alongside it, looking for two easy places to enter or exit the steep banks. He needed one close to the raiders and one much farther back, and both had to be on the opposite side of the creek from the raiders.
When he had the two spots identified, he entered the creek bed at the location closest to the raiders. Then, facing away from them, he ran up the creek bed to the second exit location he had chosen, and up and out of the creek. Then he went back to the first spot and re-entered the creek, being careful to walk along the edges where he wouldn’t leave footprints. Perry took up his sniping spot. He was in a standing position with the creek bank at just the right height to support his rifle. He had a good field of fire, and a quick exit point on the far side of the creek from the raiders with extensive tree and brush cover. He could fire, disappear over the creek bank into heavy trees, and then head for his next ambush spot.
It was only a matter of seconds before he acquired his targets and began shooting. Perry rapidly fired two times, dropping two men before the rest of the men could scramble for cover. Perry then ran in the middle of the creek to his exit point, the one closest to the raiders. He carefully made his footprints in the sand line up with the footprints he had left earlier, the ones that led to the other exit point. Unless they had a skilled tracker with them, they would follow his tracks all the way up the creek. When he had accomplished that, he exited the creek bank and disappeared into the woods.
When the raiders pursued, they would keep going past where he had actually exited and then well up the creek. Let’s see if they come out of the creek bed with a paddle. I’ll have a new name to put on the map for this creek if they don’t. He mused as he jogged toward his second ambush point. The false exit spot would be another prime ambush spot. He knew exactly where they would come out of the creek and he had just enough time to set up. After two or three came over the bank, he would cut them down, then he would disappear again. Perry smiled as he moved through the woods.
Roman had been watching the way the different groups set up their camps, each separated from the other by several hundred yards. This gave him an idea, a somewhat high-risk idea, but one that had an undeniable appeal to him. Using their campfires to spot them, he slowly and carefully eased his way between two campsites in the dark. He watched for sentries, but doubted they would be alert this time of night—if there even were any. By dawn, he was behind the raiders’ line.
His idea was to confuse the raiders by attacking from a completely different direction to make them start watching their back trail instead of assuming no one was behind them. If anything would slow them down, it would be having to watch behind them as well as in front. It only took him a half hour to locate a good ambush spot. A heavy cove of trees that extended along an ancient fence line led back into a boggy area. It gave him cover to retreat, then circle back and find his way through their lines to get in front of them again. That was the dangerous part, moving through them in daylight.
He decided that if he couldn’t get back through he would simply stay behind them and skip the nightly rendezvous, operating on his own until the big battle. The others might worry when he didn’t show up, but worrying that others were worried wasn’t something to be taken into account during a war. He liked the plan—he liked it a lot.
Just as the men he