Deadly Harvest (Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Series Book 5) Read online

  Deadly Harvest

  By JT Sawyer

  Copyright

  Copyright March 2017 by JT Sawyer

  No part of this book may be transmitted in any form whether electronic, recording, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, incidents, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Join JT Sawyer’s Facebook page to follow his book research and to get updates on future releases. You can also receive information on survival tips by signing up for my email notices at http://www.jtsawyer.com

  Foreword

  This novella takes place eight years prior to the previous books in the Dead in Their Tracks Series. It sheds some light on Mitch Kearns’ military background in the 1st Special Forces and some of his early years as a mantracker.

  The skills, setting, and survival course that are depicted are all based upon military training programs I have had the pleasure of conducting over the years along with 21-day survival courses I used to lead in remote regions of North America. I hope you enjoy the read ahead and find that it adds to the enjoyment of the series.

  Lastly, the character of Marco Rigby appeared in the second book, Counter-Strike, where he served as a guide for Mitch and Dev in the jungles of Sumatra.

  In Adventure,

  JT Sawyer

  Chapter 1

  Sawtooth Mountains, South-Central Idaho

  The yellow disk in the eastern horizon was just emerging along the forested ridgeline behind the small army encampment as Sergeant Major Thomas Waline paced before the lineup of his twelve men from the 1st Special Forces out of Fort Lewis, Washington.

  “You are experienced operators, and this five-day culmination exercise will put together all the survival training you have been learning during the past week,” said Waline. He spoke with a southern drawl and liked to pause between sentences to reposition the thick wad of chewing tobacco that made his lower lip seem beestung.

  “The first two days will find you alone and improvising with what’s in your pockets as you would if you found yourself separated from your unit or your gear or, God forbid, escaping from a POW situation. You will have ten miles to cover during these two days using your land nav skills and the coordinates you will be given.” He paused to glance at a single raven flying towards a thick cluster of yellow spruce trees. “This timeframe will simulate an evasion scenario where you are hoofing it while finding shelter, food, and water along the way.” He leaned over and spit out a stream of tobacco juice onto a jagged piece of sandstone. “On the morning of day three, you will link up with another unit member per the instruction packet I will give each of you before leaving today. You will then fashion a primitive encampment and have the remaining three days to practice your trapping and food procurement skills.”

  He gave a sideways glance to the group. “And remember, you will be on national forest land so when it comes to harvesting wild game, you will need to abide by any applicable laws.” He raised his fingers in air quotes at the last word, figuring that he had sufficiently covered the legal parameters governing his men’s actions afield. Since it was early May there wouldn’t be any berries or nuts to forage so they would be using primitive fishing methods or small-game deadfalls to feed themselves.

  As he walked by the two men at the end of the row, he paused and glanced at their rough, unshaven faces and gave each one a hard stare. They were Waline’s most senior operators. Sergeant Marco Rigby, the first man, was barrel-chested, with arms resembling oak branches. The second man stood six feet tall and just over two hundred pounds. His tan complexion came from a lifetime in the outdoors and his eyes were slit-like. Waline stopped walking and stood before the young sergeant. “Kearns, you will be the last one out of the helo this morning. I’ve got a nice spot just for you seeing as how you actually like all this Davy Crockett stuff.”

  Kearns nodded, then swallowed hard. “Sounds good, Sgt. Major. What are the limitations on the gear we can bring?”

  Waline looked down the row, trying to avoid playing favorites with Kearns, whom he silently acknowledged as the most seasoned outdoorsman of the bunch—maybe of any group he’d worked with—and whose cowboy mannerisms he found intriguing. Kearns had proven himself in combat countless times and had earned Waline’s respect but the older man still felt it necessary to keep a tight leash on Kearns, whose own impulsiveness reminded him too much of himself in younger days.

  Waline resumed pacing before his men, glancing at each one as he walked by. “Each of you will be allowed three pounds of survival-related gear of your choosing in addition to the clothing on your back, a small first-aid kit, a radio, and your Beretta.” He dragged out the last word. “Believe it or not, but I had to go through a lot of paperwork with our C.O. back at Lewis to enable you to bring your sidearms on a stateside training course, so they are not to be used for sniping deer or raccoons. It’s only for self-protection in the event you run into Murphy on the trail.”

  The Sergeant Major walked to the back of an open SUV and removed a cardboard box. He returned to the center of the row and put it on the ground. “Each of you will take one package of these compressed food rations. These require no cooking and have around two thousand calories. They taste like a baked elephant turd but will do the job of sustaining your energy during the first twenty-four hours of this exercise until you can start trappin’ critters.”

  As the men gathered around and studied the vacuum-sealed synthetic food, Waline looked down at his watch then up at the rising sun, which had fully crested the treetops, their bristly ends glimmering with frost.

  “You’ve got one hour to assemble your personal survival kit, grab some last-minute chow and meet back at the airfield. From there, we fly out to the drop zone twenty miles north of here.” He put his hands on his hips, letting out a big grin. “And then your government-sponsored vacation in the wilds begins.”

  Chapter 2

  After the briefing, Mitch walked past the outdoor classroom, which consisted of a large green parachute strung up in the shape of a tipi, then past a tan canvas wall-tent that served as the kitchen. Adjacent to the edge of the clearing were several field latrines made of green tarp walls. A water tanker on a flatbed trailer was situated near the airfield, where two Blackhawks sat idly, their crews busy performing routine pre-flight inspections. The entire mobile encampment was designed to provide enough infrastructure for teaching while being able to be broken down within an hour’s notice. A private contracting firm operated by one of Waline’s former Special Forces colleagues ran the outfit and handled all of the teaching, cooking, and logistics. With the exception of Fairchild Air Force Base, which still provided survival training for its combat pilots, the military had phased out most of their survival schools over the past fifteen years given the urban nature of most campaigns around the world. Waline and his cadre had identified a need for wilderness fieldcraft skills due to recent operations in remote regions of Africa and Afghanistan, where they were often unsupported for days, if not weeks, at a time. Training in this forested environment would be followed up in a few months with a desert survival course in the Baja Peninsula.

  Walking into the nearby treeline of conifers, Mitch retreated back to his small lean-to shelter in the forest. This had been the area where he and his fellow classmates had slept in primitive structures during the first part of the week. Each night they were encouraged to test out a new shelter design, either one they c
onstructed themselves from branches and pine needles or by trading out an existing abode with another student.

  Their days were spent on formal classroom instruction coupled with hands-on skills covering the topics of primitive and modern firemaking, improvised evasion shelters, water purification, signaling for rescue, primitive trapping, ditch medicine, ropecraft, and edible plants. Everyone in his unit had already been through formal SERE training but the survival component there had been cursory and more of a shotgun approach to the subject. With this nine-day course that Waline had arranged, the emphasis was on how to stay alive in the wilds long-term while in an evasion scenario.

  For Mitch and his fellow classmates, survival school was an excuse to play in the woods and learn cool skills that they might have to use one day in a crisis while deployed or in the event their plane went down in the wilds of a war-torn region. Having grown up on a ranch in southern Arizona, he also relished the opportunity to learn about how to be at home in a forested region, which demanded another set of survival priorities besides coping with the intense heat and lack of water he’d grown accustomed to back home.

  A faint shaft of sunlight was piercing through the thick canopy of pine trees as Mitch knelt down beside the opening of his lean-to and rummaged through his Alice pack. He opened his multi-cam poncho and spread it on the ground. Then he began placing the critical items on it that he would use throughout the upcoming culmination exercise. From years of ranching around older cowboys and time spent on hunting trips, he knew that there were only a handful of key items that one needed for survival—but how crucial those items were. As he tossed each piece on the poncho, he silently scrutinized whether it was in the essential or luxury category.

  When he had finished sorting everything, he had a small pile to his right that would accompany him and a knee-high stack of non-essentials to his left. His chosen kit would consist of: pocket-sized space blanket, spark rod, Ziploc bag full of cottonballs smeared with Vaseline, 48-ounce collapsible water flask, aluminum canteen cup, bottle of 50 iodine water purification tablets, Swedish Mora knife, 30’ of paracord, candle nub, waterproof matches, small spool of six-pound fishing line, eight small fishing hooks, lip balm, wool hat, and spare wool socks. He was certain the crotchety sergeant major would weigh each man’s kit prior to boarding the helo but Mitch figured this would come in at around two pounds or so. He placed all of the gear in a small shoulder bag, knowing he would disperse much of it into his pants and jacket pockets after boarding the helicopter. On top of the bag, he added a heavy fleece jacket, nylon rain jacket, camo ball cap, leather gloves, and sunglasses. Mitch usually had less with him when he rode on his horse back at his uncle’s ranch in the desert but knew much of this was to cope with the ever-present threat of hypothermia.

  He would allow himself one piece of snivel gear—something that would help with his mental attitude and wasn’t necessary to his physical wellbeing. Out of the discarded pile of items to the left, he grabbed a cigar in a rigid aluminum tube and a small laminated photo of his wife, Becky. He mulled over the benefit of bringing either item but kept dwelling upon the photograph, noticing her high cheekbones and strawberry blond hair. They had married when Mitch was twenty-three, a few months after returning from a long deployment and just two years after he entered the Special Forces. It had been a whirlwind romance but he was smitten with her even though they often had a prickly relationship as work abroad reared its head. She was growing weary of his endless deployments. Even leaving for this training course had put another wedge between them that he tried to smooth over with the promise of an extended vacation in a few months when he had some time off.

  Unlike most of his colleagues who were on their third marriage, Mitch and Becky had navigated through the tempestuous seas that consumed many an operator’s life upon returning home. They had planned to build a life outside of Washington, where she was born, and the idea of returning to the Southwest was high on their list. She worked as a pediatric nurse near Fort Lewis and Mitch knew that she wasn’t going to wait too much longer to start a family. While he was interested in having kids, Mitch wanted to be settled in another line of work and in a region where they could establish some roots. The subject of children had come up again during dinner the night before he left and he’d found the topic grating on him, as she knew that he wasn’t in any position to change his career yet. One more year until his enlistment was up and he could strike out into the civilian world. Mitch had some friends with the DEA along the Arizona border and another with the FBI in Phoenix who had both assured him that his skillset would be put to good use in a higher-paying job that saw him home each night.

  He ran his thumb over the image of Becky, knowing that her lovely features were already firmly rooted in his soul, then gently slid the photograph back in the pile while shoving the cigar in his shirt pocket. For that victory smoke at the end of this course.

  On his walk back down the sylvan path that led past the other shelters, he saw his fellow teammates securing their hastily assembled kits. Along the way, he habitually found himself staring at the other participants’ tracks to determine who they belonged to, their age, and any unusual features. These were all skills he’d learned recently at a combat tracker course and he relished any chance to practice his field interpretation.

  He stopped by Marco’s hooch, which consisted of a large wickiup covered with spruce boughs. “Damn, this palace is big enough to fit three people.”

  The lumbering figure turned and grinned. “I was plannin’ to sneak in a coupla ladies from town but never got around to it.”

  “You mean that gas station twenty miles away with the old lady working the counter? She’s just your type.”

  “Hell, I can get any woman I want, my friend,” Marco said, slapping his chest.

  “Yeah, but can you keep her for more than two nights?”

  “You mean like you?” he said, canting his head down at Mitch’s ankle. “With that ole ball and chain you got—no wonder you walk like you got a roll of nickels up your ass.”

  “At least I can walk instead of sauntering like an ape,” Mitch said while widening his stance and tottering to either side. “All I’m sayin’ is eventually you get tired of coming home to an empty condo after each deployment or wakin’ up next to some woman whose name escapes you.”

  “So when did you get your friggin’ Master’s degree in domestic tranquility? Shit, you probably got a picture of your old lady tacked up inside your shelter to help you sleep at night.”

  Mitch moved closer and sniffed the air around Marco. “Man, I pity the other dude stuck with you during phase two. He’s gonna think there’s a rotting deer carcass in the area.”

  Marco raised his eyebrows and laughed.

  The two men had served together for five years and had gone through SF qualification together. Marco’s specialty was as an armorer while Mitch had initially been trained as the team’s demolitions guy. Recently, Mitch had undergone combat tracker training at the prestigious army school at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, which had whetted his appetite, and he had the urge to pursue this line in the following months if he could wrangle funding from Waline. With his affinity for mantracking, which connected with a lifetime of tracking animals on the ranch, he wondered if he could even turn it into a vocation after the military like his instructor had done.

  While Mitch trusted Marco with his life and knew he was a force of nature in combat, he avoided hanging out with the man after hours back at Fort Lewis. Marco’s social skills were best described as caustic and he was a fight-magnet at any bar he frequented. Raised on the rough streets of L.A., it was clear to Mitch that the stocky bruiser felt out of his element in the wilderness, which had the pleasant effect of ratcheting down his usual gruff demeanor. Still, Mitch always enjoyed their friendly banter and, like most of the alpha males in Special Forces, they always tried to outdo each other in every undertaking, even with practical jokes and snide comments.

  Marco looked at Mitch’s stu
ffed shoulder bag. “You got all your kit ready, cowboy?”

  Mitch nodded as he turned to glance at the others trotting down the trail towards the airfield.

  “Whatcha got for your snivel gear?” Marco said.

  “Cigar—and you?”

  Marco flipped open his back pants pocket and grinned. He removed a centerfold of a sultry Asian woman clad only in black heels. “A smokin’ brunette is all I’d need if I were really stranded in the wilds, but this will do for now. Plus, the corners will double as toilet paper—no way am I draggin’ a clump of pine needles over my ass again after this week.”

  Mitch shook his head, letting a smirk creep out. “You’re a real class act, amigo.”

  Chapter 3

  A gray mist hung over the Boise skyline, reminding Tung Lau of the smog that perpetually enveloped his home city of Hong Kong. The air smelled different here though—instead of burning plastic from unregulated factory chimneys there was the pleasant aroma of lilacs. As he waited for his hunting partner to depart the baggage terminal inside the airport, Tung craned his head upward, trying to identify the source of his delight. He noticed a row of neatly manicured hedges and dwarf pine trees lining the walkway to his right, partially hidden by a waist-high retaining wall near the parking lot. Atop the nearest shrub was a black bird with a dappling of red on its wings.

  All of the trees, birds, and animals in his hometown on the outskirts of Hong Kong had been obliterated decades ago in the rush to modernity. Tung always marveled at such seemingly mundane sights to Western eyes when he made his monthly trip to the U.S. to handle business for his ailing uncle. As his nose traced the pleasing scent of the lilacs, he wondered if there was a way to bottle the aroma and sell it back in China to a pollution-weary populace. Nature was always something to exploit and any aesthetic appreciation on Tung’s part was always viewed through the prism of a shrewd businessman. His true expertise was in harvesting rare birds and mammals, which offered the most return on investment in his uncle’s black market smuggling ring.