Dark Coup by David C. Waldron Page A

me about you two and I don’t want to have to lie.”
    “Fair enough,” Eric said, “any word on the sandbags?”
    “I already have them set aside and can get them ready for you to pick up whenever you are ready,” Joel said.  “Will fifteen hundred be enough?”
    “For the size we’re looking at, it should.  We’re going to need to make multiple trips though,” Eric said.  “We do have a bit of intel, but now might not be the best time.”
    “Better now than never,” Joel said, “just in case there’s a problem in the future.”
    “Point,” Eric said.  “Our old friend Clint seems to be growing his group and it looks like he’s settled permanently enough to be doing some farming.”
    “Ok,” Joel said.
    “The problem is,” Eric continued, “we’ve observed a number of fields, and the majority of the work is being done by women, and the supervising is being handled by abusive men.  While I have a problem with that…Kyle has a real problem with that.  We haven’t decided how we’re going to handle it yet.”
    “Wait; come again, how you’re going to handle it?”  Joel said.
    …
    “So now we’re going to take care of…what?”  Kyle asked.
    “A problem,” Eric said.
    “No,” Kyle said.  “Pete was a problem.  A blister is a problem.  Clint and his entire band of hoodlums is a collection of problems, a gang of thugs…with guns…who already attacked an entire Army base.  On that first hill I was thinking one shot, one kill.  What are you thinking?”
    …
    Kyle had spent four hours getting into position near the end of the first field he’d been watching a couple of days before.  His face was camouflaged with grease paint and he was almost certain he was hidden from view from both the front and back.  The low crawl from over the hill had taken so long because Kyle had tried to follow the land and crush as few plants as possible during his passage.  The grass, weeds, and bushes that surrounded the field were at least two feet tall and had allowed him to get within a couple of feet of the field.
    The young woman was working her way towards him, and was maybe fifteen feet away when Kyle decided to try to get her attention.
    “Don’t look up,” Kyle said softly, “but try not to freak out or yell.”
    “I won’t,” she said under her breath.  “I saw you a couple of minutes ago when you moved your left foot.”
    “And this is why I could never be a sniper,” Kyle thought.
    “And you didn’t call out,” Kyle said, as she continued to work closer to him.  “Why?”
    “Because you’re in what looks like Army camouflage,” she said.  “We had a run-in with the Army a while back because of …something stupid.  I heard that the people at that base, even after getting attacked, treated everyone pretty well.  If you’re with the Army then you’re probably one of the ‘good guys’.”
    Her eyes darted left and right while she continued to hoe the ground, and then she bent down as though to pick up a weed or a rock and Kyle could see the bruise on her face where she’d been hit.  “Because someone made some stupid decisions,” she said.  “They’re still making stupid decisions.”  She picked up a rock and threw it into the woods behind Kyle.
    “What’s your name,” Kyle asked.
    She pursed her lips while she kept hoeing for several seconds without saying anything.
    “My name is Kyle,” Kyle said.  “Kyle Ramirez.”
    She was less than ten feet away from Kyle now and had slowed down so she wouldn’t have to turn around too soon.  “Amanda,” she said.  “Amanda Saint James.”
    “Do you have any family back with Clint’s group,” Kyle asked.
    Amanda shook her head but then said, “I’ve kind of adopted someone.  He was an orphan and nobody else was going to look out for him.”  Amanda had to turn around and start the other direction.
     “I saw what happened a few days ago,” Kyle said, “when he hit you.”
    “Let’s just