by David Nees
Both were dripping with sweat when they arrived. Catherine panted, “They’ll either figure they knocked us out or scared us off after we don’t return fire.”
“We got nothin’ to shoot at with ‘em back in the woods. Gotta wait till they come out in the open.”
“Here, let me tie something around your head,” Catherine said. “You don’t want blood getting in your eyes.” She took out her knife and cut off some of Bird’s sleeve and wrapped it around his head. Then she straightened her scarf on her forehead. Bird watched her.
“That’s a mean gun they got,” he said at last.
“It sounds like an M2. A .50 caliber machine gun. We have one we captured from the bridge battle.”
“Sure tears things up. We need to take it out.”
“If we can.”
Bird looked across to the switchback. “So we wait. We closer now.”
“Yeah,” Catherine replied. She picked up the M110 and checked her sights.
After seven rounds, Leo called for a halt. The mortar had scored three hits to the shoulder of exposed granite across the ravine. The spotter reported no sign of activity. If the shooters had stayed in the shelter of the rocks, they had probably been killed. They wouldn’t have moved forward, with the steep slope leading down to the ravine, so either they were dead or they had run off back into the forest.
Still, he wanted to be careful. The other switchbacks along the road below would probably be just as exposed. But now he was even more late, and frustrated. He needed to get down off this old road and onto the paved section.
He went to his captain. “When we get to the next switchback we’ll stop before we get out of the tree cover. I want the machine guns out, the M2 and the two M60s. You and three others go forward to the switchback. Set up those machine guns. Then we’ll move. You see any firing, you pin them down and we’ll get the trucks around the bend. You can hike down through the woods to meet us.”
Catherine and Bird saw the militia moving up, two on each side of the road. The men were carefully stepping from trunk to trunk, never quite exposed enough for a sure shot. After a moment of watching for more, Catherine decided that there were only three or four coming on foot. They stopped short of the open corner and dropped out of view.
“Trucks be coming,” Bird said.
“They’ll try to pin us down. We’ll have to make our shots count.”
“We can move around more here,” Bird said. He pointed to the trees above and below their position. “Maybe we spread out. They can’t get at us so easy.”
The two separated. Catherine crawled uphill for ten yards and found a good tree to lie behind. Bird headed down the slope and lay down behind some mountain laurel that would screen him from view.
Nothing moved for perhaps a minute and a half. Keeping very low, Catherine slowly adjusted the position of her M110.
Then there was a sudden roar, engines accelerating hard. As the trucks reached the exposed switchback, Catherine opened fire. She put five quick rounds into the cab of the lead truck, hitting the driver in the chest and head. The passenger jumped out and dove for some rocks at the side of the roadbed. Bird fired below her, and Catherine saw the second truck’s windshield shatter and its passenger get flung against the door by the bullet. As the second truck slewed around the corner, Bird’s .30-06 boomed again and one of the men crouched in the bed of the truck fell on his side into a splash of brains and blood from his own head. The militia around him were peering wildly over the side of the truck bed, looking for the shooters. They were thrown sideways as the truck jerked to a stop, blocked by the immobilized lead truck. Behind it the third truck could do nothing but stop as well. But now the gunners in the trees had had time to find Catherine and Bird.
“There, further down the slope!” someone shouted.
“Shoot, shoot!” came a panicked reply.
The thunder of the M2 began, and dirt and rocks sprayed in a line up toward Catherine. Two other machine guns joined it. She threw herself back behind the tree trunk.
The machine guns swept the area. It seemed that Catherine and Bird hadn’t been pinpointed exactly, but the gunners were sweeping back and forth, giving them only an instant now and then to snap off return shots before they had to duck and cover. There wasn’t time to aim. Catherine had to rely on a quick look for each shot.
Then she heard the thump of the mortar firing. Oh no! She couldn’t see the mortar. The shell exploded down the slope between her and the trucks, well short. Ten seconds later came another thump, and the explosion was back behind her. Catherine realized that they were bracketed. The next round would land very close.
“Bird, watch out,” she yelled over the din of the firing and flattened herself on the ground behind the tree.
The next explosion came, loud, behind them, closer to Bird. Catherine heard a cry of pain. She crawled quickly backward, away from the edge, and scrambled down the slope to find Bird. He was lying behind the laurel bushes clutching his side. A red stain was spreading across the bottom of his shirt, and blood was squeezing out between his fingers.
“You’re hurt,” she exclaimed.
Bird looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t get low enough.”
They heard the mortar fire again. Catherine spread herself over Bird as they waited for the impact. It hit uphill from them. Shrapnel screamed over their heads.
“We have to get out of here,” Catherine shouted. “Away from the ridge.”
“Not sure I can move.”
“I’ll help you. We have to get back.” She remembered Jason’s admonition. No fight to the death. Move back when you’re pinned down.
She pulled off her jacket and then took off her shirt. Bird looked away as she knelt over him wearing only her bra. She tied her shirt tight around his waist in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Then she pulled her jacket back on.
“We’ve got to get back from the ridge. Hold tight,” Catherine said. She put her hands in his arm pits and began to drag him back further into the woods. When she had gotten ten yards from their shooting position she said, “Now grab my hand. I’ll help you up.” She got her legs under her, took hold of Bird’s left arm, and hauled him to his feet. A painful grunt forced its way through his teeth. They stumbled together through the forest, away from the edge of the ridge. When they heard another whump of a mortar round being fired, they dropped to the ground. After each detonation, they got up and staggered on.
Leo realized that no more shooting was coming from the opposite ridge. He had the men move the trucks around the bend and back into the cover of the trees. He wanted to press on instantly, but the lead truck had a flat tire, and he dove in to change it himself. He told two men to smash out the remains of the broken windshields with their rifle butts. With the tire changed and the windshields cleared, the trucks began to move forward again. Leo fumed. He had the firepower to shut down the snipers, but they seemed to come back at every switchback. At this rate he would be hours late and the element of surprise lost. Still, he had to go on. He had seen the machine guns and the mortars in action now, and he knew that he had the firepower to overwhelm the valley. Once he got down there.
Chapter 14
When the very first signs of dawn began to appear in the sky, Leo’s skirmishing party waded across the river and climbed up the slope beyond. They had stopped a cautious distance downstream from the bridge and had encountered no initial resistance. When they reached the top of the ridge, they began to move towards the road.
They were not used to the woods, and they stumbled along in the predawn gloom. The brightening of the sky in the east did little to relieve the darkness. Twigs snapped. Branches slapped at their faces. Fallen logs caught at their legs and tripped them. One of the men began to mutter about their bad luck to have been chosen to slog through the river and then these miserable woods.
The two lookouts from Clayton’s group heard them well before they saw them. The lookouts separated, moving about twenty yards a
part, far enough to give them separate firing positions but not so far that they would be out of visual contact with one another. Shortly, indistinct figures began to emerge in the dim light. Six of them. Clayton’s lookouts fired. Two men fell, both shot in the chest. The other four dropped to the ground and hastily snapped off blind shots into the dimness.
Lying in the brush, the machine gunner flipped the safety off on his M60 and began to fire, blindly spraying the area ahead. A round hit one of the lookouts and spun him to the ground. The other man crawled over to him and began to drag him back. The wounded man struck his hands away and motioned him to go. He had a hole in his chest that was going to kill him within the hour. His rasping breath left nothing for talking. The other understood, and, after a long look and pat on the shoulder, he faded back and took up a position thirty yards away.
The attackers, realizing they were no longer taking fire, got up and began to move forward. The wounded lookout managed to work himself back into a shooting position. He shouldered his rifle with much difficulty and fired off another round, and another attacker dropped. The others ducked for cover and again began firing blindly into the woods. After a moment, with no more shots fired back at them, they began to advance again. This time the retreating lookout took out another one. The attacking party was now down to two men. The captain had been the last to die.
The machine gunner sprayed the woods ahead of him with multiple bursts of automatic fire, and the two men slowly began to advance again. They sensed that it wasn’t a large group that had fired on them, but they went more slowly, wanting the protection of the woods they had been cursing moments before.
No more shots came. They passed the wounded lookout without seeing him. The other lookout was already on his way back to the main body of defenders. He had seen enough to be satisfied that this was only a scouting party or a decoy attack, and he was anxious to give his report and get help for his friend.
Back at the ridge near the bridge, the men heard shots coming from the woods to the east. Jason’s breath sucked in through his teeth. “There we go. It’s started,” he said to Clayton. He started towards the woods.
Clayton grabbed his arm. “Could be more comin’ up the other side. Give it a minute.”
Then they heard the staccato of a machine gun.
“We’ve got to redeploy towards the woods,” Jason said.
Clayton didn’t let go. The shooting stopped.
“Don’t sound like a full attack,” Clayton said. “One machine gun, maybe five or more rifles, two of ‘em my boys.”
There was another burst of gunfire, the rifles mixed with the machine gun, and then the woods went silent again.
Tom approached the two men with a confused look on his face. “What’s going on?”
“We trying to figure that out,” Clayton responded.
Just then they saw a figure running towards them through the woods. There were shouts along the ridgeline, but Clayton shouted, “Hold!” Jason saw that it was Enoch, one of the men Clayton had chosen to scout, more like a boy really. They watched him sprint toward them, and someone waved him toward where Clayton was standing. He ran up to Clayton, already talking. “It were six men, one with a machine gun. Henry got hit. ‘Fraid he won’t make it. They’s only two left, but they got the machine gun still with ‘em.”
“You’re sure there’s only two left?” Jason asked.
The boy nodded. “Saw ‘em drop. I came back to get help for Henry.”
“A decoy attack?” Tom asked.
Clayton told Enoch, “Grab Willy and Donny and go finish them off. Bring Henry back out.” The young man nodded and ran off.
Suddenly more shots were heard, much more distant, from up the valley. Then Jason heard a boom, deeper, louder. The hair on the back of his neck bristled.
“They’re coming in from the west,” he shouted.
“We need to go!” Tom yelled.
Clayton shouted to Enoch, “Go, do what I told you. Then stay here in case any try the bridge.” He turned and snatched up his rifle. The hill people and the farmers were already a scattered tide of motion from their places along the ridge. Clayton waved furiously at the peering figures that had risen from cover on the ridge across the gap, and after a moment they began running too.
Jason left Clayton behind. He pelted along the trail that traced the top of the ridge, trying not to run too fast and render himself useless to Catherine by breaking his neck. It might be more than ten or fifteen minutes before all the fighters made their way down to the pickup trucks that were parked around a bend in the road, out of sight of the bridge. And every minute they were not arriving at the real fight might be a minute too late.
Remember what I told you, he thought to Catherine. Remember.
The mortar rounds stopped. Catherine and Bird were nestled together on the open forest floor, perhaps a hundred yards away from the ridgeline. She felt they were far enough back to be safe from the mortars, and Bird could go no further. The militia could not come looking for them, they were on the other side of the ravine. The militia would head down into the valley and attack the farms. It was up to Jason now. She held Bird in her arms. His breathing had become labored.
“Didn’t mean to get hit,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Sorry I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down. You did good. I hope the others are on their way. They must have heard the shooting.”
“Bettin’ they heard. Them mortars are loud. Nasty when they hit.” He stopped. She could see that he had to gather his strength to speak again. “You think we did enough?”
“Yes,” she told him. “We did what we set out to do. They’ll be coming soon.”
He didn’t answer.
Catherine sat up, careful not to jostle him, and set about trying to tighten Bird’s bandage. She could see that blood was still seeping out of him.
She told him, “We’ll rest here now, but we’ll have to move down the slope to get help.”
“Not sure I can move.”
“Just lie still for now. Rest. I’ll help you when it’s time.”
The defenders’ convoy raced up the valley road. Jason felt a growing fury inside. He glanced over at Tom whose face was set hard. The same thoughts circled round and round in Jason’s mind, over and over. The enemy had invaded, come down from the west, just as Catherine had predicted. Were Catherine and Bird alive? Glancing in the mirror, he could sense a blood lust growing among the clan. They were ready for battle, ready for killing. He could feel it.
The tree line neared. They reached the end of the pavement. The road here had been widened to make a turnaround area. There seemed to be nowhere to go. Jason pulled to a stop. The other pickups stopped behind him.
He looked over at Clayton sitting by the window. “Where’s the road?” he asked.
Clayton didn’t say anything. He got out of the truck and looked around at the bushes and trees that faced them.
“Where the hell is the road?” Jason said again, leaning out of the window.
The heavily treed slope climbed upward ahead and to the right of them with no sign of a road. To the left was flatter ground covered with tall willow bushes creating a thick screen.
“Off to the left, through the willows,” Clayton said, pointing.
Jason looked at him. “That doesn’t look like a road. Are you sure?”
“I be right.”
“How’ll we get the trucks through there?” Tom asked.
“I go ahead, lead the way on foot. You follow. The trucks be able to drive over the willows and we got plenty of men to push if they get bogged down. It’s low only for a while and then climbs and turns to the right.” He swung his arm in an arc. “It climbs around this knob in front of us.”
“Man, I don’t see that,” Tom said.
“Can’t from here. We too close. Trees cover too much.” Without another word, Clayton set off into the willows.
Jason cranked the wheel to the left and started forward. “If we star
t spinning, jump out and push. We can’t get stuck,” he shouted back to the men in the bed of the truck.
They pushed their way through the willows. The ground was flatter and softer and the men had to get out to push the trucks forward. Soon the ground rose, and, sure enough, as Clayton led them forward, the remains of the old road began to emerge on the forest floor.
Clayton got back in the truck. Jason could now follow the path with no guide. The going was slow, the men had to jump out at times to push, but as they climbed the road became more clear with less vegetation growing over it.
“Now I understand why I never noticed the road,” Jason muttered. He worked the steering wheel back and forth, guiding the truck over the rocks, trying to avoid the larger ones and not get the undercarriage hung up. “We need to find a place to stop them. Up here where there’s no options but the road.”
They drove up the dirt trail. Ahead was a sharp left turn with a dense line of trees blocking the sight line around it. Jason eyed the corner carefully and then stopped well short of it and angled the pickup across the road. The other pickups did likewise without having to be told. If you were coming down the road you wouldn’t see the blockade until you rounded the corner.
Then everyone piled out and the men began to fan out into the trees on both sides of the road. Jason chose the upslope side. He found a place behind a large oak that had fallen some time ago. From this spot he’d be able to get a partial view of the enemy coming.
Suddenly he noticed that there was no sound of gunfire. He closed his mind to what that might mean.
“You think we’ll have long to wait?” Tom asked next to him.
