Hellfire (The Bugging Out Series Book 7)

by Noah Mann

  Schiavo gave us a nod. I looked past her, and past Major James and his minigun, catching a glimpse of the river just to the south. The waters, even without the catastrophic flow from Lost Creek Lake, were raging. Whatever beach the pilots hoped to put us in at was going to be inundated.

  “You’re gonna get wet,” Captain Hogan warned us, as if on cue. “Beach is swamped.”

  “And the bridge?” Schiavo asked.

  “Intact,” he told her. “But it’s taking a beating.”

  “Flashes to the west,” Major James reported. “Big ones.”

  We all knew what that meant—the battle at Gold Beach was underway.

  “It’s too soon,” Elaine said. “They couldn’t have blown the bridge yet.”

  “Major,” Schiavo said into her headset, and James turned from his position on the ramp to face her. “Once we’re dropped off, get this bird back to the beach and assist there if necessary.”

  “Your men at the dam are going to get awful lonely,” he said.

  “They can wait,” Schiavo said. “Destroying that bridge can’t.”

  “Will do,” James assured her.

  Lorenzen and Carter, who by now had performed their task and, hopefully, destroyed the dam, would be in the dark as to why their ride would be absent. They might assume the worst, that it, and all of us, had gone down due to enemy fire, or that we’d simply crashed. A complete radio blackout was being enforced to prevent the Unified Government forces from gleaning any clue as to our actions, leaving them further in the dark.

  “Twenty seconds,” Captain Hogan said.

  The six of us stood and took handholds as the Osprey slowed and settled into a hover just above the sloshing waters near the shore. We grabbed our gear, two squad automatic weapons and a pair of anti-tank rockets, then hustled down the ramp. It was a two-foot leap to the water from the hovering Osprey, and I was the first to make it, the water swallowing me to the waist by the time my boots hit the sandy bottom. Looking past the nose of the Osprey I could see the bridge and started to move ashore at an angle, closing the distance to the span with the current threatening to topple me. I heard multiple splashes behind, the rest of our team clearing the ramp, the rotors above and behind me now as the engines accelerated, lifting the grey aircraft higher between the hills. It banked left and soared over the rocky terrain to the north, disappearing behind it as it made its way back to the beach.

  “Let’s get across that thing before it collapses,” Schiavo said.

  The span, under assault by the unusually high flow, was holding, but there was no guarantee that it would. If it failed before the Unified Government forces reached it, they would likely move further upstream to the next bridge. Crossing that before the floodwaters came would render our entire operation pointless. Bandon would be lost.

  But we had no control over this bridge at Lobster Creek. All we could do was execute the plan as it existed now. And hope.

  We climbed the soggy bank of the river and found the road, its surface rutted by years of weathering and lack of maintenance. But it was easily passable. The enemy forces we expected would have no trouble traversing it to reach the bridge. Nor would their armor.

  “Fletch,” Schiavo said as we moved quickly along the road. “Look.”

  She pointed across the river, to the spot just east of the bridge where she, Private Westin, and I would take up positions.

  “There’s not as much cover as I expected,” she said.

  “We may need to shift more to the east,” I said.

  “I agree,” Schiavo said, then looked to the garrison’s medic. “Hart, Westin is going to take your assignment on the west side. You’re going to be our scout.”

  “Scout, ma’am?”

  The bridge was just ahead now, water thundering beneath it, kicking a spray up off the supports. Schiavo pointed past it, to a spot on the far side at the crest of the lowest hill downstream.

  “You find cover there,” she directed. “First sign of the enemy, you fire a warning. Two shots if infantry is in the lead, three if their armor is up front. You fall back then and join up with the western element.”

  I saw Hart react to that visibly, with uncertainty.

  “Ma’am, that will leave just you and Fletch on the east,” he reminded her.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said. “I don’t want you crossing the road if they’re already at the bridge. I want you in action from cover. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hart said, then jogged up ahead of us, making it to the far side of the bridge just as we reached it.

  “Fletch, we’re taking both anti-tank weapons,” Schiavo said.

  She already had one of the AT-4 disposable launchers on her shoulder. I took the other from Elaine as we ran. The western element that she was assigned to would now be four strong, and would have both light machine guns, leaving Schiavo and me to deal with any armor that reached the bridge.

  “If we—”

  I never got the chance to offer my suggestion as to placement of the rockets we both carried. As we reached the mid-point of the bridge, a deep, concussive THUD rolled up the gorge, louder for a few seconds than the thundering torrents below us. We slowed, but didn’t stop.

  “That came from downstream,” Enderson said.

  “They blew the bridge,” I said.

  The sound could only have come from a massive detonation. Something large enough to echo this far up river.

  “How long do we have?” I asked.

  Schiavo had already considered most of the timing questions. But she took a moment now as we reached the northern end of the bridge and paused, stopping our progress.

  “They won’t all be together,” she said. “The first units to reach the bridge at Gold Beach would be scouting elements.”

  The flashes Major James had seen from the back of the Osprey had been those reconnaissance troops probing ahead of the enemy’s main force. This was Schiavo’s working theory, and, even to a person lacking her tactical knowledge, it made perfect sense. Assuming that General Weatherly was still in command of the Unified Government forces, we could expect that he would carry out this operation as expertly as he had executed the siege of Bandon. An operation that had almost seen us defeated.

  “It will take a while to maneuver everyone through town and to the river road,” Schiavo continued.

  “If Dalton is keeping the fire up, that will slow them down,” Enderson said, shifting the weight of the SAW from one shoulder to the other.

  “That mortar could really bottle them up if it hits them before they can regroup,” Westin added.

  Martin’s part in the operation at Gold Beach was vital, but his ammunition was limited, as was his skill at operating the weapon and the indirect fire it delivered. If he could put even a half dozen rounds ahead of the main body as it turned to follow the river inland, that could slow them significantly, and reduce the time we would have to hold them off.

  Schiavo, though, knew things were moving more quickly than she’d anticipated.

  “We could have a four-hour fight on our hands,” she said.

  “Four hours?” Elaine asked, not sure how to imagine that.

  Schiavo nodded and looked to the hills above the bridge, a road splitting off from it to follow the norther shore both west and east, and a smaller, narrower lane winding into what had once been lush forest directly north.

  “We’ll have decent cover against the infantry,” Schiavo said. “Good fields of fire. But the armor...”

  “If that even gets close to the bridge,” Westin said.

  “If the tanks get close,” Schiavo said. “We stop them.”

  She looked to me. That was our task, each of us armed with an AT-4. One for each Abrams that might reach the bridge.

  “We stop them,” I agreed.

  Schiavo nodded. Not at my words, nor at any confidence that she perceived, but at my commitment to the mission. In a very real sense, it was do or die.

  “All right,” she said
. “Let’s get in position.”

  Thirty Nine

  The fate of the battle had yet to be determined. For the moment, we were just spectators waiting for it to unfold. To play our part and take up arms, which would be necessary. On our own we could not defeat the enemy surely to come our way, but we could, with some luck, hold them off until the weapon our absent friends had already unleashed at Lost Creek Lake roared down the gorge.

  And if all went as planned, we would end the lives of a thousand people. A thousand human beings. A thousand of our enemies. That should have troubled me, if only a little.

  But it didn’t.

  “People did hang on,” I said, offering the observation without context.

  Schiavo, crouched to the side of the boulder opposite me, shifted her attention my way.

  “What do you mean, Fletch?”

  “I know it worries you that so many of the survivors out there are military, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they hung on. And they’re from all over. Distant places.”

  She thought on that for a moment, maybe reaching back to the concern she’d expressed to me on the flight home to Bandon. Or, maybe not.

  “Harker and Nguyen,” she said. “Pell and Matheson.”

  “And Hammer,” I said, joining in her recitation of those we’d crossed paths with on our travels over the past week.

  “Borenstein,” she continued.

  “Robertson,” I added.

  “Who was the lieutenant in Colby?” she asked.

  “Mason,” I answered.

  “Pedigrew, Handley,” she said, recalling the two Air Force One pilots who’d saved us, but not themselves.

  “Does MacDowell count?” I jokingly asked.

  “Maybe,” Schiavo said, allowing a smile. “Heckerford does.”

  She stopped the recollection there, as did I. We’d missed some, and were unable to give names to many who we had encountered. And that was a shame. In the old world, I would meet a half dozen new people a day, and they would flit in and out of my life anonymously, the ‘who’ that they were gone soon after the last time we met.

  These people, these fellow human beings, they were not like those forgotten souls I’d had pass through my life. They could not be.

  “They all have names,” I told Schiavo. “And they lived. The same as you and me. Some are still fighting to stay alive, the same as you and me. The same as all of us, in uniform or out of it.”

  The words I offered, for reasons even I didn’t fully understand, seemed to strike a chord with her. One not entirely happy.

  “Do you think we’ll remember those names, Fletch? In a month, or a year?”

  “I will,” I assured her. “I’ll remember every last one of them, and what they did for us.”

  She quieted for a moment, then shook her head, almost to herself.

  “How did we get here, Fletch? How did I get here? I was an Army musician, and now I’m a colonel with the codes to launch nuclear weapons. What makes me...special?”

  “Everyone who’s still alive is special, Angela. You, me, Martin. Everyone. As to why the president chose you...I’d say you know exactly why.”

  She challenged me with a look.

  “He picked you because of this,” I said, nodding my head to the rocky landscape surrounding us. “You didn’t choose to use the power he gave you. You chose another way. You left that arrow in your quiver.”

  “This could still fail,” she told me. “How pleased do you think the president will be with me then?”

  “It could fail,” I said. “You’re right. But I don’t think it will.”

  Schiavo accepted that with a slight nod and said no more, looking back to the bridge and the road beyond, both nearly a hundred feet below our location. I shifted my position slightly and looked across the shallow valley between our hill and the one just west of us, focusing in on the trio of figures hidden among the rocky outcroppings just below its crest. Two wore camouflage and manned the squad automatic weapons, each SAW propped on its bipod atop a low mound of earth, ready for action. The third figure wore grey, her form almost lost in the like-colored terrain.

  Elaine lifted her hand and gave me a slight wave. She was watching me, too. Both our positions were above what the temporary water level should be as the billions of gallons surged down the gorge. Along the way to where we waited, the flood would slow as it passed through terrain that spread out, and speed up as the water was collected and funneled through valleys. These variables had made the calculations I’d performed approximate at best, but the time which the torrent arrived should be accurate within an hour, or two. And when that happened...

  Elaine and I would be separated, the flood filling the depression between our two hills until it receded and continued toward the ocean. Dalton, his people, and Martin would have retreated to higher ground by then. They would be the only ones to witness the once dammed waters be swallowed by the Pacific.

  I wished I could talk to my wife right then. Each element had a radio, but none were to be used until the battle was over. By that time we would be coordinating extractions by the Osprey to be transported back to Bandon and Camas Valley. Those of us who survived.

  There would be casualties. I knew that. Even with a river separating us, the fire from our enemy would be withering in places. Already downstream at Gold Beach, it was possible that some had already fallen. People we knew.

  Selfishly, I hoped it would not be the man I considered a friend. For a while after we’d taken our positions we’d heard distant thuds, each of the muffled explosions seeming a bit closer than the last. And then they’d stopped. It had seemed obvious to me, and to Schiavo, that what we’d heard was mortar fire, controlled by Martin, who was, as instructed, walking his rounds inland along the river road, harassing the enemy as it moved toward another crossing upstream. Our crossing.

  The end of that fire, presumably his fire, could be attributed to completing the rounds available. It could also mean something worse.

  “You comfortable with that?” Schiavo asked me, nodding toward the AT-4 leaning against the rocks next to me.

  “I am.”

  Enderson had schooled me on use of the anti-tank weapon, the same as he’d drilled the basics of using the mortar in Martin. I knew I could fire it. Hitting what I was aiming at was another question.

  Schiavo asked me no more. We waited in silence. For hours. And hours. Into the afternoon. Until the waiting itself spoke to something happening.

  “We may have a problem,” Schiavo said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The scouting elements should have been here by now,” she said. “If they’re not, I can only think of one rational reason why.”

  “Which is?”

  Before she could answer, three shots cracked to the west, Hart signaling confirmation of what she’d feared. She grabbed her AT-4 and positioned herself to see the road on the far side of the bridge.

  “They moved their armor into the lead,” she said.

  Forty

  The good news from the appearance of the Unified Government forces approaching our position was that the Wedderburn Bridge had been successfully demolished, redirecting their advance inland. That was the only good news.

  “Here they come,” Schiavo said.

  I already had my AT-4 in hand as I stayed low and peered around my side of our rocky cover. What I saw matched with what I hadn’t wanted to see—both Abrams tanks, painted all black in some macabrely pointless camouflage designed to intimidate, rolled along the road on the far side of the river, the bridge at Lobster Creek just a hundred yards ahead of them. Infantry followed close, with a few heavy trucks behind, and surely hundreds of additional troops beyond our view. The enemy had done just what Schiavo had suggested, slowed their move inland to reposition their most formidable weaponry at the front. The tanks were, effectively, the tip of their spear.

  Even with that realignment which had delayed their arrival, they were early.

  �
��How much longer, Fletch?”

  Schiavo didn’t have to specify what it was she was asking about. It was the timetable, my timetable, for the arrival of the floodwaters.

  “Two hours,” I said.

  I looked to the advancing tanks and troops and knew that holding them off for that amount of time would take a miracle. And we had none to pull out of our bag of tricks.

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment as a few soldiers dashed ahead of the tanks, scanning the bridge before them with binoculars, searching for demolition charges. They’d been made wary by what they’d experienced at Gold Beach, and didn’t want to do the same here. But the bridge was not wired for destruction. That had not been part of the plan. Getting them to this point where raging floodwaters would annihilate them was the goal, and that had happened. Just far too quickly.

  “We could concentrate on one tank,” Schiavo said, more possibility than suggestion in her words. “Try to disable the lead Abrams and block the other one.”

  Could the following tank maneuver around its disabled partner? Probably. Or could it simply push it out of the way? Maybe. In either case, as quickly as she’d voiced the scenario, Schiavo dismissed it.

  “No,” she said. “No.”

  We were going to have to make some decision quickly, as the advance that had paused resumed on the road across the river.

  “Infantry is moving up,” I said.

  It wasn’t just a few troops now. It was dozens. A full platoon, in old world military terms, raced toward the bridge, their boots just reaching the span when the fire began.

  Both SAWs opened up at once, with rifle fire from Elaine and Hart, who’d reached their position, adding substantially to the attempt to repel the rush of troops. Two dropped, then four, others taking cover at the southern end of the bridge and returning fire toward our friends’ position. Westin and Enderson managed their shooting, squeezing off long, aimed bursts. Quickly, though, they were faced with much more than bullets ricocheting off the rocks shielding them.

  The flash and crack of the 120 millimeter cannon firing came at the same time, as did the terrible sound of the impact, rock and earth erupting into the air, arcing fully across the divide between our hill and the one my wife was stationed upon.