by T J Reeder
We were passing thru country that had been swept clean either by the Russians or by people just saying screw this and bailing out and running.
With the information garnered from the prisoners Ralph and Sandy were able to locate the main base of operations for the Russians and using their same system were able to go unnoticed or so we hoped.
They returned to the highway and landed rather then use the radio just in case. And another bit of information the prisoners gave us was that they didn’t hold captives there but instead took them to a big holding area to the East just across the state line into Iowa. This meant the main base was wide open for us with no worries about killing prisoners or so I hoped.
The base was North of the 80 and we didn’t want to go thru Lincoln because we believed we were an unknown entity and I liked that. We cut off the highway and headed north on smaller roads making slower time but that was fine. We had things to plan for.
The big base of operations set up by the Russians was in a smaller town where they had housing and with power plants had electricity and all that meant. And they had been chasing civilians for so long they had developed some very bad habits, one of which was lack of roving patrols and they kept the lights on all night all over the town meaning they could stand there and look right at us and not see us.
It looked to me like this bunch numbered around a thousand and had no armor and very little in the way of weapons besides the rifles and light machine guns. I would assume they also had RPG’s and I didn’t want to lose any of our armor or the crews so I held them back when we infiltrated to within a hundred yards of their outer ring.
One thing I did do was have everybody who had played with the FAL’s to carry one of them, since we were fighting in a town being able to shoot thru walls made killing the bastards easier.
Before we attacked one of the Russians asked the translator if he could talk to me. So he was brought to me and said that all the conscripts like himself were quartered in a school on the edge of town and he wanted to slip in and tell them what was going to happen and to stay down and don’t get involved. I had to think it over for a bit and asked the translator what he thought , he said he believed the man and would go along and would shoot him if he blinked wrong.
I bought it but sent two of Charlie’s scouts along with a radio and orders to make sure this bird did nothing to warn the camp. We gave them an hour to make their way around to the school. The scouts radioed back that all went well and to start the dance.
The Head Quarters building was a large house where the main command staff lived and worked and it was lit up like a Christmas tree on the outside but all were sleeping it seemed as the inside was dark.
My plan was my usual one, stay back and hit them with everything including the kitchen sink and risk none of our people. It seemed to work very well and I was hoping.
I nodded to my commo man ( woman) and she whispered the short message and behind us I heard the Bradley’s spool up as they rolled up on top of the small hills that bordered the West side of the town and as soon as they were on line they lit up the HQ and then any target of opportunity.
Laying under that wall of steel was one of the scariest five minutes of my life, it sounded like the gates of hell banging in a storm and I guess it was. We watched the HQ building simply come apart. One second it was there and the next it was rubble with fire sweeping thru it.
After that the Bradley’s worked as teams where one fired and one did over watch and took over on the next target. People were running all thru the area and the screaming was heard even above the guns. The Bradley’s were using their main guns the 25 MM and their machine guns and from their elevated position they were doing the devils work for sure.
Just watching it was enough to make any sane person just want to go off to a quiet place and hide from the world. I was ready and when Sandy scooted over against where I lay I knew she was too. Right then I think we both just wanted to say enough and head to the high country.
In time the guns stopped as nothing was moving but we still had to go in and roust them out of their holes. But we had one thing I hoped would help, we had a lot of body armor and only the folks who had it on were going into the town and even then they would be inside the Brads.
After the fires were burned out we rolled into town, I had promised to remain in the Brad due to a lack of armor for us “normal” sized folks. The runt of course fit perfectly in hers and I couldn’t make her stay and send somebody else.
So there I stood in the turret behind a gun watching my lady love bounding along like a kid in search of fun. Except I had assigned two very tough men to watch over her and if it came to it to tackle her and hogtie her. They seemed to think it was a suicide job. Cowards….. Smart cowards but still cowards.
We spent several hours cleaning up and I won’t go into it because I would assume you would know what it was like. When the town was clear we went over to the school to vet the ones held there and they were a scared bunch, The translator spoke to them and while they seemed to relax I could see the fear in their eyes, I would have been crapping my pants if I was in their ranks.
And I was faced with the job of trying to figure out what to do with over 150 Russians who were brought here against their will. I had several long talks with the ones who spoke English which was surprisingly a lot. Most never wanted to return to Russia for any reason because the results from the EMP were worse there then here, much worse.
All I could do was try to integrate them into our ranks in some job where they might prove useful and a lot of them had skills that were very useful. It seems when the Russians made their pact with the traitors in DC they just grabbed all the warm bodies they could find and said “You’re in the army now” Of course they were just a show of force since none had military skills and were just heads to be counted to show their bosses were providing the numbers they contracted to provide.
I was rapidly getting tired of this crap and just wanted to kill the DC traitors and go back where we belonged, In empty country.
We took several days to get ready for the push East and North while Ralph was being the air scout. Sandy was hanging with me because flying was boring if you weren’t spotting somebody who needed killing. And of course she was trying to get the mechanics to mount a machine gun on the chopper as well as one on the crop duster.
She was about to drive me up a wall, her latest idea was to fill the duster spray tanks with a mixture of diesel and gasoline to be sprayed over the enemy allowing their own gun fire to ignite the vapor. I said Hell NO!
But Ralph got a look in his eyes so I said it again louder. Sandy told me to not yell because it raised my blood pressure.
I quietly explained that her on going flirtations with death were going to bring it on. She smiled and patted my hand.
I went and got Charley and we took a drive. After about a quiet half hour he coughed quietly and said “ Maybe we can sell her”?
Well that broke the dam!! I started laughing so hard I had to stop and sit there trying to catch my breath!! I finally looked at him and said “ My brother your ability to make a joke in such a stoic manner is truly a gift.
After a few minutes he said “ What joke”? I stared at him for a few minutes with my mouth moving but he said “ Gottcha”! Which started me off again. Soon we were tooling along just enjoying the air. It had been a long while since we took a drive or anything else so we enjoyed it.
Charley placed his hand on my arm and said “Stop”! I did and bailed out with my rifle and went prone. Finally I looked under the rig and saw him walking away. I got up feeling stupid but alive and followed him up a long hill where he laid down and eased up to the crest where I joined him and there again, in all their beauty was a herd of Buffalo.
We lay there for over an hour just watching the calves running in and out of the surrounding herd as they slowly grazed past us. I guesstimated there was at least 300 of them. They were and are the most majestic creature in the wild in my op
inion.
At last we slid back and eased to our feet and turned to confront about 10 real honest to god plains Indians sitting on paint horsed with feathers blowing in the breeze. We stood looking at them and they returned the looks. Finally Charley made some hand signs which were returned.
The one in front looked at Charley and said “Navajo”? In perfect English of course and Charley said yes. The talker looked at me and said You’re Walker huh? I nodded and confessed I was he.
One of his people had eased up to where he could see and said Tatanka in a quiet voice and all but their leader quietly approached the crest. It wasn’t a perfect picture from 200 years ago since all were wearing levies and carried modern rifles but the long hair with feathers in it was still a sight.
The one who spoke to us dismounted and offered his name as “William Horse Walks, Charley gave his name and I noticed he never offered to shake hands so when my turn came I said “John Walker” and also didn’t offer to shake. Indians as a rule were never hand shakers and only did it when forced to by unknowing whites.
He said thanks for wiping out the Russians as they had caused some trouble for his people and because they machine gunned a small herd of buffalo and left them to rot. I was surprised at the pain I felt in my chest at that and it must have shown because he looked at me and said “ You do understand don’t you?” I said yes and if I could I would kill them again. He nodded and asked if we were lost, I said no we just needed to refresh our spirits. He smiled and said “ Yes the Buffalo will do that for you.
I asked him if his people needed anything in the way of supplies and he said ammo! We need ammo bad. I asked what they were shooting in the way of weapons? He said that was the problem , they were all using different weapons. I asked if he thought the AR 15 would work for them, he said no because this was a big wide land and shooting out here was usually long range.
I asked how many people he needed ammo or weapons for? He thought for a bit and said maybe 200 men with 200 different rifles. I asked him if he wanted to meet us tomorrow in the same spot but he said we could meet at a cross road a couple of miles from our camp. I said sun up we will be there. He nodded and turned his pony and rode to his men and they turned and single file rode away.
I looked at Charley who said your thinking of giving them some of the FAL’s aren’t you? I agreed and he said they would be much better out here then the 223 round the 16’s used.
We returned to our camp and found some excitement, Ralph had flown our back trail as a matter of good scouting and found a convoy of 10 Black Shiny Suburban’s just like in the movies shadowing us about 20 miles back they had circled around the People remaining at the Rest Stop we had planned as a back up if needed.
I Sent out a scout team to form an over watch on these people until we could reel them in to a trap to see who they were. In the mean time I had the armory troops drag out 300 FAL’s and 500 rounds of ammo and five extra magazines for each and load them in a truck for transport. I also had them toss in a huge bunch of the non military ammo we had gathered figuring it might fit the rifles they had which could be passed down to the younger ones.
That evening I told Sandy about the buffalo and the Indians so she was all excited about going along on the gun thing and I promised I’d try to locate the herd again because as she said “her spirit needed cleaning too”
I asked her how the flame spraying experiment was coming and I swear she blushed but would admit nothing so I dropped it but deep inside I wondered if it would work.
What a nasty surprise!! I love this evil woman!
At daybreak we headed out to meet up with William Horse Walks and his people, He was there with several pickups and a lot of his people. He also had some elders with him and I asked Charley to take over the whole affair.
Charley met with Billy and was taken to the elders and they all sat down on the ground and what followed was a long plains Indian pipe ceremony. Hell I never even knew if Charley’s people did the pipe thing, goes to show how much I don’t know.
Billy came to sit with Sandy and I and we talked quietly with him explaining what was happening to us. It was mostly just the polite way the people used to start everything from a hunting trip to a war. I think maybe it was a good thing because nobody was rushing into anything and war is not something to be jumped into lightly.
After a bit Billy said we could head to the trucks and see what we had brought. I opened one of the crates and took out one of the
FN / FAL’s and heard a sharp intake from Billy, I looked at him and asked if he was familiar with them and got a smile and a nod and a OH Hell yes!
He knew a man in his tribe but not his band that had one, built by an American company named DSA and a very pricy pre EMP weapon it was.
I showed him the selector lever and when it clicked over one more notch then usual he looked at me with raised eye brows, I said yea but you best teach your people that these things eat ammo so fast they will be out if not careful.
We talked about that for a bit and I showed him all the extra ammo that was non military and all useful to his people and that made him decide to keep the FAL’s as a back up if needed and supply ammo for the weapons they already had. It was a win win situation for his people.
The elders were still talking with Charley so we got the men together and loaded the goods into Billy’s transport. I looked around for Sandy and saw her sitting close to Charley and behind him a bit listening to every word since they had to be speaking English.
I often wondered where she stored all the stuff she took in, her brain must be like a giant computer hard drive. But I knew when they were done she would remember just about everything said. Smart and good looking is a combo that’s damn hard to beat.
My commo guy had been keeping in touch with Ralph and the scout keeping an eye on the mysterious black suburban convoy and they were stopped and had pulled off the road into some rolling hills where they could be out of sight, or so they thought. The scouts were about 300 yards away from them and Ralph was a Couple of miles off to the side where they couldn’t see him. The scout team said there was four people in each rig so that meant forty shooters if it came to that. Fine for dealing with some local biker zombies bad guys but they were a bit out of their league with us.
The scouts said it looked like they were planning to set up camp and wait for something or for us to move out. Well I never cared for nosey neighbors so I decided tonight we would just ease in on them and have a come to Jesus meeting come day light. I had our scouts pull back as far as possible while still being able to keep eye contact.
After Charley was done with the elders we made our manners and headed out for our “homes” which in our case was wherever our butts hit the ground.
William took a radio with him and was now a member of the outpost group.
We got it back to our camp and charley picked the people who would be going in tonight to surround the strangers camp. It would be his entire scout group and me and of course herself. That gave us about an equal number of shooters but we had the surprise advantage as well as the knowledge of what they were doing and where they were doing it, and according to our eyes on the ground these folks didn’t know jack shit about how to set up a camp and seemed to think that out of sight was safe enough since they had no sentries out and were sitting around a fire that smoked worse then the Marlboro man.
I was beginning to think maybe they were waiting for us to find them because nobody could be this stupid and still be alive this long after the event. We had eased into position by 0400 and were settled in for the wait. I still felt this wasn’t what it seemed and in fact I hoped it wasn’t simply because there had been enough killing since day one of this event and I for one just wanted to spend some saddle time in the high country and come hell or high water that’s where we were heading as soon as I could make it happen.
Daylight came and these folks were stirring around, some were building their fire up while some had camp stoves going making c
offee which I must admit was smelling damn good.
I watched this for a good help hour before I noticed something so out of place that when I realized it I was stunned. Not one of these people was openly armed! Not even a pistol strapped on. I saw a few belt knives but not one gun.
I whispered that into the mike I was holding and the word passed altho I’m sure others had noticed it.
After a bit the biggest tent there opened up and a Woman stepped out. She was dressed like the men, levies, boots and a jacket against the chill. She stood there a moment and then got a cup of coffee and sat down in a folding chair then looked up the hill and said out loud that if we wanted coffee we would have to come get it ourselves.
I actually laughed out loud and got to my feet and started down the hill followed by Shorty who was quietly calling me ten kinds of a stupid bastard. I reminded her she was following me so that didn’t reflect well on her thinking abilities.
