Free January Dawn by Cody Lennon Page B

shoulder high bushes.
    “Patrols are getting more frequent. I think we’re getting close.” Alex’s face was hidden in the shadows. Only a few puffs of frosty breath could be seen in the chilly night air.
    “There’s no way we can continue our pace without getting caught. We’re walking blind.” Pike said. “These patrols have night optics and radio communication, not to mention their weapons. We have nothing but our knives, and we can’t even use those.”
    Just then, several bursts of automatic fire clacked nearby. It couldn’t have been from more than half a mile out. The echoes of gunfire sent uneasy shivers down my spine. We were being hunted and we had nothing to fight back with. If this is what combat feels like I’m in for a long ride.
    “What if we got weapons?” I said.
    “Yeah, and how do you suppose we do that, white boy? If you haven’t noticed we’re out in the woods being hunted?” Pike asked, while rubbing his hands together for warmth.
    Pike was a cynical man, always quick to dispel anyone’s ideas, even more so if you were white. During my few weeks in boot camp I came to learn that racism was widespread in the military.
    There were several divisions even within First Platoon when it came to race. Some of the white recruits in our platoon refused to have anything to do with the black recruits, and vice versa.
    Pike, one of the handful of black recruits in the platoon, had a reputation for starting fist fights in the barracks. I couldn’t blame him. The comments one overhears in the barracks are not exactly flattering. I heard a lot of the same words that Mr. Stephens used to say to Mr. Jeffries. But Pike’s problem was his inability to determine that not all the white recruits in our platoon were racist. Alex and I harbored no ill will toward him, nor any of the other black recruits. In fact, Private Hayes was a good friend of ours. Pike should have known that.
    “Distraction. We get their attention on one of us, then the rest take’em from behind. They never said we couldn’t fight back.”
    “Colton, that’s genius. We can take their weapons and use them to fight our way back to base,” Alex said. He used my first name, which was odd. We had always referred to each other by our last names. I didn’t mind though, I never liked my last name to begin with. It’s just a name with no history. It didn’t mean a thing to me.
    “What about their radio and tactical communications tablet?” Shannon asked. His young face and small frame barely visible in the darkness.
    Shannon lied about his age when he enlisted at age sixteen, contrary to his father’s wishes. The platoon treated his youth as a liability. We saw it as an asset. Shannon had a ways to go to mature both physically and mentally, but the one thing he had going for him was his high intelligence.
    “What do you mean?” Alex asked.
    “If we get their radio, I can jam it. That’ll block their communications for a little while and make them go haywire, buying us some time. And every unit out here has to be outfitted with a GPS locator, per Army regulations. If we get the TC Tablet, then we will have direct observation of the locations of every patrol out here. If we get those, then we won’t be blind anymore. We could weave in and out of their patrols and be the first ones back to base.”
    Smart kid.
    Alex loved the idea. He immediately went to work framing a plan. He gave us all a role and we split up to take up our positions. Pike, Shannon and I scurried across the road and hid behind some pine trees a few feet off the curb. Alex stayed on the opposite side of the road. When I left him, he was on his hands and knees groping the ground in the dark.
    I waited with my back against the tree and massaged my ankle. I was wearing a compression brace that the doctor gave me. I could walk on my foot just fine, but every so often I’d do something to aggravate it and I’d feel a slight tinge of discomfort.
    Before long, a pair