Standing guard at one of the gates into the compound was not glamorous work. It was hot, dirty and boring. As the young contractor stood watch over the entrance to the forward base he took some solace that it was one of the larger ones in the Northeastern part of the county, which meant more activity at the gate. It wasn’t much consolation, however, since his desire was to fight. He had spent several years in the US Army and left barely avoiding a bad conduct discharge before joining up with a contracting firm. When all the problems erupted in the North he thought it might open the door to the action he had been looking for.

It had.

He had originally been stationed in what was once the far eastern part of the Southern District at the time. This was before the addition of more states to Donovan’s mini-empire. The contractor had taken special delight in bullying the townspeople in his area. His special brand of evil took immense joy in pushing people around, shaking them down for bribes and, his favorite pastime, humiliating men in front of their women. That game provided a special joy for him.

He and his fellow contractors held several counties hostage for a period of time. Riding roughshod over the populace, they stole, bullied and threatened their way through wine, women and song. The fun ended abruptly one night, however, when the young contractor and his partner roughed up a man. He had been checking out of a small store where his girlfriend worked as a cashier. The contractors began harassing the man, and the young contractor began his psychotic game of humiliation.

They had picked the wrong man to harass, however. He stood for none of the games and after a brief time simply turned and walked away. The contractors could not believe it. The young man reacted without thinking, a common practice, and tackled the man who dared insult him. In a freak confluence of circumstances, the shock of being slammed to the ground resulted in a heart attack and the innocent man died.

The aftermath of the event sparked mini-riots, deaths and a weeklong pitched battle between the townsfolk and the contractors. The end result was that the young contractor and his partner were whisked off to a work camp as part of Senator Donovan’s flashy response to calm the locals.

What the locals didn’t know, and never found out, was that the two contractors spent exactly two hours at the work camp. Most of that time was spent showering and eating in the chow hall. Soon the men were reassigned to a different contracting firm, ultimately leading them to the chain of outposts in the Northeastern part of the county.

As the six-wheeled truck shifted gears and accelerated away from the gate, the young contractor was enveloped in a blanket of heat, dust and exhaust that nearly choked him. The fumes caught in the back of his throat and he reflexively gagged.

“Damn I hate this place,” he yelled out to the several other men working the area with him.

“You just don’t understand its charm,” taunted back one of the other men.

The six-wheeled truck stopped at a small one-story cinderblock building seventy-five yards from the gate complex. Several men jumped down from the back of the truck and they, and the drivers, began filing into the structure.

A relative peace descended over the noisy and busy base.

That relative peace was not to last, however. An ear-shattering explosion rocked the back of the large truck, sending the rear end several meters into the air before slamming what remained of the vehicle back to the ground in a flaming heap. There would be little left of the twisted and burnt metal that would be recognizable as a six-wheeled truck by the time the flames were finally snuffed out.

Within milliseconds of the explosion the outside wall of the cinderblock building collapsed inward killing several contractors and reducing the structure to rubble. Several other buildings nearby were also damaged, as was a small jeep that was parked nearby. The force of the explosion was clearly caused by something more than a homebrewed device.

The shockwave of the explosion slammed into the men at the checkpoint gate, nearly toppling them to the ground. As is common, confusion reigned for several seconds as people tried to process why a perfectly serviceable truck would explode disrupting their hot, miserable guard duties. The guards near the gate all froze for what seemed like hours but in reality was mere seconds. That was before the senior man at the gate began barking orders and spurring his men into action.

It was already too late however.

The ground around the outpost was mostly open, grassy land. The contractors had been diligent to clear the land around the outpost and cut down trees and underbrush where needed to maintain a clear view of their surroundings. Several hundred yards from the gate, however, was a small stand of trees on a rise. While the outpost had been built around a cluster of existing buildings, for an inexplicable reason, nobody had recognized the danger of leaving that position wooded. The oversight would prove costly.

A several hundred yard shot is challenging to the uninitiated. Many factors can cause the bullet to land in a place other than where the shooter intended; shooters manipulation of the weapon, wind, gravity and even heat can all play a role in knocking a bullet off course. Amateur shooters are far worse shots than they believe they are and distance only magnifies the shortcomings. To an experienced shot, especially one trained by the military, a several hundred yard shot is comparatively easy.

Today would be no different. To the three men hidden in the wooded rise the guards scampering around the gate in the aftermath of the explosion were easy pickings. Using suppressed weapons the men were able to disguise their location long enough to make multiple clean shots before having to exfiltrate the area. While a silencer on a rifle doesn’t disguise the crack of the bullet exceeding the speed of sound, it masks the report of the rifle itself enough to make identifying where the shot originated from more difficult.

Before long three contractors at the gate lay dead or dying in addition to the several killed in the blast.

One of those three was the young contractor who so delighted in the humiliation of others and inflicted pain on so many. As he lay writhing in agony, life spilling out onto the hot dusty ground, the cosmic forces of karma conspired to exact justice for the evil he inflicted on the small town out east.