As Phillips and Olson bounded back, they were covered by Gibbs and McCarthy, who had pushed out left and right. The team ended up roughly on line, forming two buddy pairs to fight back together.
Olson took control of them and they began to buddy move back, firing as they went, having hit at least three of the enemy cut-off group. Celeb moved back and Bravo, the stretcher squad, also moved rapidly back ahead of him while the rear team from Alpha moved ahead of them as security and to establish a rally point.
The main kill group of the new Regime platoon was trying to move out of their ambush position in order to maneuver on the patrol, but before they could do so the lead team managed to break contact in the trees.
The patrol moved back several hundred meters in a north easterly direction to a rally point and the patrol leader got them into a wedge formation, each squad forming a side of the wedge in a hasty ambush position so that each of the squads faced the last known direction of one of the two enemy platoons: Alpha to the south west, Bravo to the north west. Some of the guys provided rear protection.
It was effectively a hasty triangular ambush with the third side missing, just covered to the rear by a couple of guys.
Doc was working on the casualty in the center. The team leaders got around and checked on the men, redistributing ammunition and ‘bombing up’ their empty magazines during the lull.
Caleb was running out of options. He was still pretty close to the enemy and with the confusion in the woods it would be hard for the enemy to bring in indirect fire. He was doing a map estimate, assessing the situation, and reckoned that their best bet would be to head off the high ground in an easterly direction, getting into one of the draws or ravines that ran down off the ridge, then exfiltrating from the current trap.
As Caleb was about to give the order to move out they were contacted again by the Regime platoon following up from the south. From their static ambush position the patrol were able to hit the enemy lead squad with accurate effective fire, forcing them to go to ground.
However, shortly after they were contacted by the original Regime platoon moving down from the north west. Then a worrying thing happened: having fixed their position, the enemy pulled back.
The helicopters must have dropped off an 81mm mortar squad and shortly after the mortar rounds came screaming in on their position with concussive detonations: ‘crump, crump, crump’.
Some of the rounds hit the trees, effectively air bursting and sending both shrapnel and wood splinters down onto the patrol. The fighters were hugging whatever cover they could find as the rounds impacted around them. Luckily, indirect fire is an area weapon and none of the patrol was hit in the first barrage. They were however, effectively suppressed.
It was either dig in and die in place, or get the hell out of there.
Caleb gave the preparatory order: on his order, rally three hundred meters east of their location. He waited for a lull in the fire and gave the order; the patrol ‘bomb burst’ out of their positions and ran like mad men out of the killing area, Bravo team sprinting with the stretcher.
As they ran, one of the fighters was hit with shrapnel in the upper back, puncturing his lung. He stumbled, caught himself and kept running, aided by a buddy. They made it the three hundred meters and were out of the impact area of the incoming mortars. Caleb called the rally point and the patrol got into yet another defensive position.
They got into an all-round defensive formation. Doc was working on the new casualty and he slapped an occlusive dressing on the sucking chest wound. The casualty was starting to suffer progressive respiratory distress, indicating a tension pneumothorax, so Doc put in a needle chest decompression in his upper chest slightly below the collar bone, which alleviated the symptoms. Given the exigent circumstances it allowed the fighter to keep moving.
The patrol got themselves back into formation and started to move rapidly away east towards where the ground fell away down the steep sided ridge into the valley.
As they moved, one of the fighters noticed the sound of a distant helicopter engine and passed it on up the line. They reached a place where at some point the trees had been felled and it was an area of thinner brush and tree growth extending about a hundred meters before the forest started again on the edge of the slope down. It was a linear danger area but they did not really have much choice but to keep going.
As they headed across out of the forest canopy in their patrol formation, the gunner in the Apache attack helicopter picked them up on his thermal imager. He had been tracking what he thought was the hunted patrol for a few minutes, but given the close combat in the woods he had been unable to clearly identify the patrol from his own forces. The pilot maneuvered on station in order to give the gunner the best shot.
The Hydra 70 rocket burst in the air before it hit the patrol, sending ninety six flechette darts into the center of the patrol where the stretcher party was jogging along. The casualty on the stretcher as well as four others surrounding him, including Doc and Chavez, disintegrated into a red mist under the impact of the darts.
As the patrol roiled from the shock Caleb screamed: ‘RUN!”
Meanwhile the Apache gunner switched to 30mm cannon. The cannon aimed where he looked, slaved to the sight in his helmet, and he decided to roll up the patrol from the rear.
The burst of 30mm M789 HEDP cannon rounds exploded around the rear security team as they were running for the tree line. The gunner chased them all the way with the cannon rounds exploding around the rear team. Three of them didn’t make the tree line.
Caleb had lost half his patrol, with just half of both squads left. They kept running into the trees. The Apache could still see and track them, but there was a little more cover from the FLIR thermal imager in the trees and some of the explosions from the 30mm rounds were absorbed.
There was no way they could go back to recover the downed members of the patrol. It was something they had learned since the civil war began: the old rule of ‘never leave a fallen comrade’ just never worked any more when you were on the run and didn’t have the overwhelming force and assets to get them back. Sometimes fighters went down and there was nothing you could do for them.
The patrol ran into a ravine and followed it as it steepened down towards the valley. In an area of the ravine with steep overhanging sides and good tree cover they went static. The Apache had struggled to continue to follow their move and despite continued circling was unable to find the patrol while they were both in the ravine and under the tree cover.
After a time of searching, the Apache had to return to base to refuel, and luckily the exigencies and scarcities of the collapse situation meant there was no back-up to replace it on station.
In the Fusion Center RTOC, Tyrone Woods was sitting in his command chair. He had been watching the live feed ‘kill cam’ footage from the Apache, and following the action from the footage provided by an overhead drone. He was raging inside, while concurrently turned on by his power to reach out and kill the ‘redneck terrorists’ as they scuttled on the ground below his cameras.
“Track them. Get me that Apache back on station. I want them all dead,” he announced to the RTOC.
A young Ranger liaison officer from the hunter-killer company, a Lieutenant Jefferson, approached him. Jefferson was a West Point Graduate, a college football star quarterback. He was an ambitious and rising young officer.
“Sir, if we capture rather than kill, we could exploit the intelligence…” He was cut off in mid-sentence as Director Woods came out of his chair, grasping him by the collar of his ACU uniform jacket.
“Listen to me,” he shouted, “I said kill them, every last one!” The spittle flew into Lieutenant Jefferson’s face as he tried to recoil, shock plain in his expression. Director Woods let go his grip and pushed him away.
“Listen you fuckers,” he announced to the RTOC, “No one ambushes and kills my guys in my area, you hear me! Those blue shirts are the vanguard of the revolution! If you are not killing the
se insurgent vermin, you are terrorists just like them. If I hear another word of complaint from any of you terrorist sympathizers, I will send the offender to the camps for reeducation!”
With that, he stormed out.
After a while of listening watch, the patrol determined that the Apache had gone. There was still the problem of the dismounted hunter-killer company.
The patrol packed up their gear and started to head down into the valley to the west. They followed the steep ravine down, jog-walking as best they could, occasionally slipping in the steeper areas.
Then they heard the baying of the tracker dogs from up on the ridge.
Caleb called a halt and gathered the team around, “Ok, we are gonna split. First into two teams, then split again into pairs. Head away from each other and keep altering your course. We will RV at the pickup point as per the orders. Ok?
They nodded, the stress was apparent on their faces.
“Ok,” said Caleb, “I’ll call the first split. We are gonna move fast. Let’s go.”
They took off back down the ravine again, in formation and spread out. They heard the beat of a CH-47 pass over top of them, headed east towards the valley. The patrol emerged on the lower slopes of the ridge, still in the trees, and kept jogging downhill.
“Watch for hasty ambushes, they will try and get ahead of us,” called Caleb, breathing heavily, “Split now.”
“Roger that,” called Olson. “Alpha with me!” He led them off to the right as Caleb continued on with the remainder of Bravo.
A couple of kilometers later, the teams spit again into two man buddy teams, preparing to exfiltrate back to the pickup point. As Olson sent Phillips and Gibbs in one direction, he paused with McCarthy and removed a pre-prepared improvised claymore from the top of his daypack. He rapidly emplaced it, sited covering their back trail and armed to be triggered by a tripwire.
As the hunter-killer dog teams emerged from the ravine they soon found the place where the patrol had split. They also split, following the two directions. Once they had the line of travel, they called it in to the RTOC, located at the Fusion Center in Richmond, which responded by directing the CH-47s to drop troops ahead of the line into hasty ambush positions.
The helicopters made multiple dummy landings to confuse the pursued and make it harder for them to predict the location of the hasty ambushes.
Once in the valley bottom, the fighters found that the trees thinned out and there were more fields, areas of farmland for grazing. The pairs tried their best to make changes to their direction to make pursuit more difficult.
Around twenty minutes after Olson had split his team, he and McCarthy were jogging through some trees when they heard the distant sound of the claymore detonating. Olson grinned.
That’ll give ‘em pause for thought.
One of the pairs from Bravo team got complacent and started to try and head due south along a creek in the valley bottom. It was a predictable route and a hasty ambush had been placed in a tree line overlooking the line of the creek.
The pair was walking in the shallow creek, hoping to throw off the dogs, when the squad ambush opened fire on them from seventy five meters. They were not initially hit in the fire, which was heavy on quantity and not so much on accuracy.
The pair dove for cover in the creek bed and tried to use it for cover to crawl back out to the north.
The hunter-killer squad was static in the tree line, shooting the area of the creek to pieces, but not hitting the two men low crawling along below the creek bank.
Suddenly a CH-47 roared into the air above the pair, directed by the contact report from the Regime squad. The Chinook went into a right hand circuit above the two fighters and the door gunner in the front right window opened fire with his chain gun.
The creek around the two men erupted in gouts of flying water as the rounds struck home into the rocks and mud of the creek bed.
One of the men was hit and lay still. The other scrambled for the creek bank and tried to return fire. He stood, leaning against the bank as he fired rapidly into the huge body of the looming helicopter. As he did so, he was hit by a burst of fire from a SAW gunner laying in the tree line, killed instantly.
Four days later, two vans arrived back at Victor Foxtrot containing the survivors of the patrol; Caleb, Olson and six others. They were cold, wet, exhausted and starving after escape and evading back to the pick-up point.
Jack was waiting with Jim and Megan as the driver opened the side door of one of the vans and Caleb got out. The exhaustion was plain in his face.
“Hey,” said Caleb.
“Hey,” said Jack, “this is all of you?”
Caleb looked haunted, “Yea.”
“Oh no.” said Jack, before turning to Jim and Megan. “Let’s get them warm, dry and fed pronto. Megan, give them a medical checkup. Ok?”
“Roger that, Boss,” said Jim as Megan nodded, concern filling her face.
Jack turned to Caleb, “As soon as you are able, I need a report on this.”
Jack strode through the door of Major Cassidy’s office, the door flying open before banging back off the wall. The Major looked up, startled. Jack’s jaw was clenched.
“What the hell, Captain?” said Cassidy.
Jack stood in front of the desk, looking at him, scorn written over his face.
Ok, much as I want to rip his head off, don’t do it. Watch the temper, Jack, get a grip.
“Ok Cassidy, the ambush was a success. But we lost ten good men. I warned you, wrong time, wrong place. Was it worth it?”
Realizing Jack wasn’t going to come over the desk at him, Major Cassidy recovered some of his cunning. “It was unfortunate, Captain, but it was collateral damage. The mission was a success.”
“Collateral damage!” Jack roared, about to forget his attempt to hold his temper back. He realized in a flash that this is why he had left the army: He could only tolerate authority if he respected the senior officer. And too many were not deserving of that respect.
“Those were good men, the cream of our experience,” Jack said, “That was not collateral damage. That was negligence. I am giving you a week to get your crap and get reassigned, or I will beat your sorry ass you useless pile of shit.”
Jack turned on his heel and strode out, leaving Major Cassidy ashen faced at his desk.
Dealt with that well then - so much for keeping the temper in check.
Jim was outside. He raised an eyebrow at Jack. “Hey Rocky, let’s get a brew,” he said with a grin, before leading Jack away.
They found a spot to drink some coffee. Jack was still hopping mad but starting to calm down, feeling a little ashamed of his outburst.
“Look Boss,” said Jim, “don’t worry about it. The guy is a prick and he had it coming, it was only a matter of time. It wouldn’t do for him to remain in charge of this circus.” Jim fixed Jack with a look, “Thing is, they need a combat leader.”
Jack looked at him. Jim fixed his gaze, a wry smile at the corner of his mouth.
Caitlin was going to kill him.
Four days later, Bill arrived at Victor Foxtrot. He had received a message from Major Cassidy and with the backwards communication and transport systems it had taken a few days to turn around and make the trip.
He took Jack aside and questioned him on the situation: the ambush, Major Cassidy, Jack’s role, all in detail. After that, he took some time to run his investigation.
Later that day, Bill pulled Jack aside, looking serious. “Ok, it’s a royal mess. It seems plain that my faith in Major Cassidy was misplaced. He’s more of an administrative officer than a combat leader, I think. But the situation is not helped by you kicking doors in.”
“Hey Bill, I’m sorry, but the man is an ass and I warned him about the mission. We lost some good people.”
“I know, I know. I get it.” Bill playfully punched Jack on the arm, “I just forgot what you are like!” he said with a grin. “Look,” Bill continued, “I’m taking Cassidy with
me. I have another role for him. But that leaves me short here.”
Jack looked at him.
Bill continued “I know we had a deal, and it still stands. However, if you’ll do it I want to make you the operational commander here, responsible for this Company.”
Jack thought for a moment.
“Look, I’ll do it. It was a hard enough training these guys and knowing I would not be going on operations with them. But I have to speak to Caitlin.”
That’s gonna be the hard part.
“Ok, head down and see her tonight. I will wait around here for a couple of days for your answer.”
Later, Bill got Jack together with Jim and briefed them about what he had heard on the network so far. Apparently Texas was leading a group of southern States in a move to secede. There was also talk of an attempt to create an independent ‘free zone’ in the area of the ‘American Redoubt’ around Idaho and Wyoming.
Bill had heard that the group of southern States, led by Texas, was becoming known as the ‘Southern Federation’. He didn’t have clear details, but apparently as the Federation had emerged there had been a lot of internecine fighting, betrayal, defections and just plain murder as allegiances were sorted out.
The National Guard units in the region remained under their respective State control, but the active duty army units in the area had been obliged by the circumstances to figure out their loyalties, with massive defections of active duty troops based in Texas and the south to the Federation forces, not without bloodshed.
Jim commented that for any sort of insurgency to work against the Regime, it had to have the right ground. It had to be in some combination of forests, mountains, hills, swamps or similar slow going back country. If you tried to operate in the deserts or the great plains, that was tank country, mobile warfare country, and you would be cut down by the more conventional and armored Regime forces.
Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises Page 11
