Escape The 1st Omnibus: WTF Books 1-3 Read Free Page A

like maybe one or two are missing. There are no people. Nothing appears to be alive down there.”
    “Stay in position, Méndez. I’m moving to your location,” Brad responded.
    The MRAP moved forward and pulled up alongside the Humvee. Brad used his scout binos to look at the scene ahead of him.
    “Looks like the lieutenant circled the wagons,” he muttered. The convoy was still in its defensive perimeter. Brad didn’t see anyone in the turrets and the razor wire barrier looked like it had been dragged inside their safe zone.
    Brad continued to scan but he didn’t see a single living person. Most of the vehicles had their doors open and the turrets still had mounted weapons on top. Brad knew his people wouldn’t leave their vehicles and weapons like that. He did a vehicle count and compared it with the convoy order he had received early that morning. Two MRAPs were missing from the convoy.
    Brad had an idea of what might have happened by the way things were strewn about. The perimeter had been overrun and the lighter vehicles had easily been overtaken in the same way they had lost Truck Three. The heavier MRAPs were able to take the initial blow and remain secured. Brad guessed that the MRAPs had fled the mob and were pursued by the attackers in the same way the Bremmel mob had chased his team.
    With his two vehicles on line, they approached the perimeter. As they got closer, he could tell that it wasn’t going to be pretty. The soldiers hadn’t abandoned their positions. Parts of them were scattered everywhere, as well as several bodies of the crazies that had attacked the convoy. They pulled to within one hundred meters of the perimeter. He had Cole and Eric mount the guns and provide cover while he and Méndez went in on foot. Not only did he want to protect his men from any physical danger, he wanted to save them from the experience of finding their friends slaughtered.
    As he walked through the wreckage, it was clear the soldiers had put up a tremendous fight. There was blood everywhere; pieces of body armor and protective equipment had been torn apart and were strewn around. Brad saw a fighting position with a pile of brass and dead bodies. Many of the dead were slashed and cut apart. Located near the pile was a dead soldier Brad recognized, still with a fighting knife in his hand.
    They found the lieutenant’s Humvee with the doors open and bent. The inside of the truck was smeared with blood and its contents were tossed everywhere. One MRAP had dead bodies draped all over it and surrounding it; all shredded by the MRAP’s fifty caliber machine gun.
    ‘Whoever manned that gun must have gone down hard,’ Brad thought.
    “Over here!” Méndez called.
    Off to the side of the perimeter, they could see where sets of big tire tracks led away from the fight; it appeared that the vehicles had dragged the defensive razor wire with them. There was a trail of bodies marking where the vehicle tracks veered away into the distance. From the tracks and drag marks, it was obvious that the mob had followed them into the desert.
    They found nothing else. They took a trailer off one of the MRAPs and loaded it with anything they could find in the convoy that they might need later: cases of MREs, bottled water, five-gallon cans of fuel, batteries, and as many ammo cans as they could carry. They grabbed a spare gun for each truck and called for Henry to bring down their vehicles so they could connect the trailer and top them off with fuel. Méndez located a sniper rifle and a couple of light 240B machine guns that he loaded in the rear of the MRAP.
    After they were sure that everything useful had been recovered, they mounted back up. Brad decided it was best to stay the night near the convoy in hopes the two MRAPs would circle back. He directed the vehicles to move off road and drive to a small ridgeline that overlooked the convoy’s final resting place. They pulled into a nice hide where the vehicles could be concealed by