Read A Private War for Free Online

love again. Later, passion spent, Kate began to laugh and soon Gaylon joined in until they were both rolling back and forth across the bed. They had been alone together for weeks and only now had they let their true feeling come out. It was good to be alive! Suddenly they heard shouting in the hallway and Samuels burst into the room, took one look, and laughed.
    "Well, all right!" He shouted.
    "Don't you ever knock," Gaylon chuckled.
    "Sorry, something has come up. We caught a pirate last night! One of the patrols is bringing him in now. He could be one of the survivors from your raid on their camp; he could even know where they are headed now."
    "Let me find my pants and I'll be right there."
    Samuels had given orders for the prisoner to be taken to the local police station and thrown into one of the holding cells. As they entered the cells, they all noticed the smell that was coming from the prisoner. Open sores covered a good part of his arms and face and his clothes were torn and very dirty. A look of fear also covered his face, as he knew it was death to be a pirate.
    Sid had always had a hard time of it, never getting a decent break, and when the bombs had lit up the sky he knew that the cards had dealt him another bad hand. He hid in the cellar of an empty building and cried as the world shook around him. When the pirates found him, he had been half mad with fear and hunger and he begged for his life. They saw him as one of their own and let him stay with them. As the months passed Sid would pick through the bodies of the dead, looking for watches, rings, and weapons that he could use to barter for food and shelter. When Gaylon and Kate had attacked the pirate camp by the river, Sid had hidden in the back of one of the pirate trucks that finally made a breakout passed Gaylon's position. He helped to care for many of the pirates that were wounded and two died the next day. All the pirates vowed to return for some serious payback. Weeks later, Sid wore out his welcome when it was found out that he had killed a wounded pirate to steal his watch. Acting like the coward he was, Sid escaped with what he could carry. Hoping he could make his way south, he had tried to get through a Paramilitary Checkpoint only to be caught with stolen goods on his person.
    Gaylon looked at Sid and shook his head, never had he seen anyone that disgusted him more. The tale that Sid told was more then enough to confirm what Gaylon and Samuels had thought and they didn't think there was anything else that Sid could tell them. Plus some of the things that he had said he had done had left little question as to his sentence. Samuels had him taken out of the jail and into the public square and Sid was hanged until he was dead. He had played his last hand and lost everything. Afterwards, Gaylon and Kate stopped at the Mess Hall for something to warm them. But after staring for some time at the plate in front of him, he slowly pushed it away. Talking to Sid had taken away his appetite and he thought long on all that Sid had told him about the pirates. To Gaylon it seemed as if the pirates were like the wolf packs that used to roam the timberlines of old. They lived off the weak and alone and were very dangerous if cornered. Captain Samuels currently didn't have the heavy resources to engage the pirates in a protracted running battle, but he did have the heavy firepower that could be brought to bear to destroy the pirates completely in a heavy firefight. The only way that could be done was to give the pirates a nice juicy target that was certain to draw them in and then trap them. But, Gaylon could not think of what that target had to be or how to spring the trap.
    Kate later found herself alone walking along the empty streets of the town and remembered how it used to be like before the war. The park used to be filled with people and the town band would play on the bandstand every Saturday night as the sun was setting. Kate and her family always came