A Private War Read Online Free PDF Page A

the town and much of the surrounding area were currently safe to travel in with the paramilitary providing protection to any farmer that asked for it. They only had to feed and house the men needed.
    As they walked the many miles, he told Kate of the plans that he and Captain Samuels, the Paramilitary Commander, has discussed about destroying the pirates for good. But, Samuels just didn't have the men or supplies needed to mount the size of the operation required. As they passed the scene of their first battle with the pirates, they noticed that the armored car was gone and so were the bodies. Near the edge of the road stood a one mass grave and single grave with a homemade wooden cross with two names and a date. 'Here lies Ken and Mary Johnson, may they have the peace in the hereafter that they could not find here.'
    "The Paramilitary must have found the bodies, we'll have to thank them for the cross and all when we get to town," Gaylon stated," I wish we could have done something more at the time."
    "Yes," Kate said with bitter tears, "I'll have to thank them."    He could add nothing more as they continued down the road in silence.
     

Early in the afternoon they reached the outskirts of Redway itself and they made their way to the Paramilitary Headquarters in the old elementary school building. The building now had steel shutters and sandbagged entrances with a lookout on the roof that scoped them out while two men manned an M2 fifty caliber heavy machine gun. As they approached the men milling around the front of the building they all stopped and stared, they had heard of the raid on the campground, and as they got nearer the men broke out in a ragged cheer and rushed towards them.
"Great going!"
"Yeah, you sure caught those bastards!"
"You could have saved us some!"
    "Hey guys, back up, we didn't do anything special and besides we had a personal score to settle with those assholes," he explained, "there are still a lot of them out there, believe me!"
    He broke off as Captain Samuels made his way through the crowd and reached for his hand. Gaylon thought he was a fairly big man, but Samuels towered over him by nearly a head. Weighing in at three hundred and twenty pounds and over six foot six tall, he was truly a giant of a man. As he reached them a big smile lit up his face and he grabbed Gaylon's hand and started pumping it for all it was worth.
    "Hey, you old bastard, I always said that you were too hard to kill and I think the pirates found that out. As near as we could tell you must have killed nearly twenty of the suckers." he stated "Bet you were lucky to come out of that alive!"
    "Twenty-two actually. Sometimes, we get Lady Luck to smile on us. Captain Samuels, this is Kate Johnson, it was her family that was killed some time back. She also saved my ass when they were rushing me at the campsite. Helped patch up the bullet hole in my leg too, so don't mess with her, believe me!"
    "It's a pleasure to meet you."
    "Well it's nice to meet you, call me Kate."
    "Ok, Kate, come on into headquarters and tells me more about the raid," Samuels asked. Inside the school, many of the walls were covered with maps and charts of the local area and in the back were tables with radios and field telephones. One huge map covered one complete wall and different color pins were used to denote paramilitary units and known pirate locations, black pins were used to show which farms had been hit and destroyed, and there were a lot of these. Samuels rested one hip on the big desk at the front of the room and started to question both of them about the raid on the pirate camp. What type of automatic weapons, vehicles, number of men, and fuel supplies?
    As Gaylon answered the questions Captain Samuels frowned often, he had never seen the pirates so well equipped and wished that they had been able to question some of them. As the afternoon wore on he went back and questioned them in greater detail on clothing and food supplies, knowing that