Cheryl’s plan was going awry and she wasn’t sure why. She’d planned the attack, chosen the soldiers and knew she would succeed. She hadn’t expected resistance of this magnitude. She knew the farm would put up a fight, but she hadn’t expected the heavy weapons.
She was about to order her driver to the front of the shelter when another shot blew out their left front tire. The truck’s already injured driver lost control, careening hard left, hitting the big blue motorhome that was the last in a line of more than half a dozen. The HUMVEE came to an abrupt halt when it fell into a ditch, landing on its nose with all four tires off the ground.
The shattered glass that had left her slightly bleeding had really made a mess of her driver’s face. He hadn’t been wearing his seat belt either and the impact had knocked him out cold. She looked behind her to check on the vigilante from whom she’d wrung so much “intelligence” on the farm. There were five holes in the door in a vertical line and hole in the rear passenger window, head high. The hole in the window told the story of where the man’s head had gone.
Cheryl clambered out of the wrecked HUMVEE and into the ditch. She recognized it for what it was: a trench for escaping from the shelter. It hadn’t been here when she had been a prisoner here. She’d been all over the farm, supposedly helping Randy while he helped install the security system.
Randy thought she was trying to prove she could be trusted. When Cheryl had been first captured on the farm, only Randy had anything to do with her. He brought her food and listened to her story of how she’d been captured and raped and tortured. He believed every word of her lies. She used his inexperience with women to tease him with her body. She flirted with him; let him believe she was attracted to him. As the days passed, Randy began to trust her more and allowed her more freedom.
Eventually, she talked him into coming to her cell for a “date.” He brought a TV and a DVD player for a movie they were to watch together. She’d teased him into believing she was willing to go all the way with him.
When his back was turned, she clubbed him on the head with a piece of pipe she’d stashed. When he was unconscious or dead on the floor, she escaped the farm after shooting Kellie in the gut and Danny in the head. As she was running, she was chased by a big dog and she shot that too.
This entire mission was her way of getting revenge on the simple farmer and his friends. Now she was after Jerry, who she knew they were protecting in the shelter.
Outside the vehicle, she had just her side arm, so she stayed in the trench. She kept her head down as she followed it back toward the shelter.
The farmer had built a fortress, heavily defended with armored vehicles. She’d underestimated the hick. The electric fences had been new too, but they had not slowed the attackers.
She passed behind the Stryker that was keeping the first two HUMVEEs in her element pinned down and heard another one coming fast. “Where in hell would they get Strykers?” she asked herself.
Someone was also shooting a mini-gun farther away and the bullets were impacting above the trench she was in. She knew it wasn’t her group. “Where’d they get a mini-gun?” she asked herself as she moved through the trench.
Cheryl saw the Stryker and thought if she had been in that kind of vehicle instead of the HUMVEEs the colonel had allowed her, she could have taken this place by herself. As it was, her entire professional military force was being wiped out by a bunch of old people and farmers. It wasn’t fair.
Then she heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter on the far side of the hill. “Where in hell did they get a bloody helicopter?”
* * *
Amanda finally met the 14 men and women in the Salvage Platoon with whom she’d be working when she pulled her HUMVEE into Sgt. DeBusk’s training area. There were three other new people in the platoon. They were replacements for the three men who had died in the attack by mutants the day Amanda met their convoy on the highway.
Sgt. DeBusk, a former infantry squad leader, was an excellent trainer and team builder. He introduced Amanda as his assistant platoon leader and Chopper as the team’s supernumerary.
For two days, DeBusk put the platoon through basic scenarios they might encounter while on salvage runs. He dismissed one of the new privates on his team at lunch and replaced him with a Marine lance corporal.
He had them on the rifle range the third day. Everyone had to qualify with a variety of hand guns, shotguns, rifles and automatic weapons. Another one of the solders was dismissed for repeated poor weapon discipline, leaving the platoon with 15 members.
Amanda remembered Pinkston’ request and when she was alone with DeBusk, mentioned that she’d met him running PT the previous morning. She made sure to tell DeBusk it was because he had already shown he was in shape, and was a take-charge type of soldier, not because she thought he was cute. DeBusk radioed the private’s NCO and asked for Pinkston to report to the range. The private qualified with the weapons like everyone else and was reassigned the next morning.
Amanda, as DeBusk’s assistant platoon leader, was put in charge of six of the more experienced soldiers and the new guy Pinkston. Between missions, she was responsible for the preventive maintenance of the vehicles and weapons and training her soldiers on supporting her and Chopper as they inspected building exteriors. Chopper loved it. He got a lot of attention and snacks all day long.
DeBusk drilled his half on setting up perimeters, laying down suppressive fire and supporting Amanda’s team. They trained separately in the morning, but together as a platoon in the afternoon. They trained hard and at 1630, everyone was dismissed and Amanda and Sgt. DeBusk would finish their days with a review of their soldiers’ performance and adjusting the training schedule.
They entered their information into the computers for Lt. Nila and the general and called it a day.
They drilled every day for three weeks and every member of the platoon started showing up for PT, which was always led by Pinkston. Soon, other soldiers and civilians were joining, in hopes of getting on the elite platoon or just to feel like they were a part of something.
Amanda, after three reschedulings because the general had pressing business, enjoyed her evening with just herself, Chopper, the general and the charcoal grill. The general, firm, confident and decisive when around others, was a different person when alone with Amanda. She talked about her military career and what brought her to Fort Carson and Amanda told her about her upbringing in Alabama. She mentioned her dad’s wind-powered generators and the general made sure to note it on her tablet, telling her it would be a good idea to get something like that on the drawing board.
After eating burgers, tossing a ball for Chopper until he was tired, the two women sat on the patio and listened to music as the sun went down over the fence. “I want to confide in you, Amanda. Not with any state secrets or anything, just some thoughts that I can’t bounce off anyone else.”
“Ma’am, the conversations between you and me, stay between you and me. I’ve been keeping my brother’s secrets all our lives, and he kept mine. Our dad was a strict man, but fair and honest. He raised us to avoid gossip and if we were caught doing it, we’d be cleaning the barn by hand for a month,” Amanda told her, giving the woman more insight into the type of man Amanda had for a dad.
“He sounds like a good father.”
“He was ma’am. I miss him and my lazy-ass brother everyday.” The general smiled.
After that evening, every other week Amanda would have dinner at the general’s or vice versa. In the confines of their own homes, it was Amanda and Angela having girl talk. They never talked about other soldiers or missions, but the general often talked about issues with the civilian government and their demands.
“There are only 392 civilians now and already they have nine representatives and elected a mayor. They’re making demands on the military.”
Amanda listened to the general talk and made a few suggestions, most of which she’d probably already considered, but what the gener
al really needed was someone she could trust to voice her thoughts to. It helped her frame decisions.
During one of their evenings, Amanda made tacos and a ranch salad, the general offered to make Amanda a lieutenant so there wouldn’t be any talk about her living in “officer’s country.” Amanda thanked her but declined. She liked her current job as DeBusk’s assistant. “Maybe we could promote Chopper to lieutenant?”
The next day orders came through, signed by the general and Lt. Nila, confirming Chopper’s promotion to second lieutenant. It was the paperwork shuffle and excuse enough so if anyone complained, the quarters were in the dog’s names, and Amanda lived there as his attendant.
* * *
Randy, running across the open field to the wrecked HUMVEE had his walkie-talkie’s ear bud giving him an idea of the battle taking place.
He heard his dad tell Juan and Monica to hold their shooting while he ran through their fields of fire.
He had run about 100 feet when he heard a Stryker off to his right. It was Eddie with his big army truck coming up to support him.
Eddie had the 16-ton Stryker coming at full speed. Randy hoped his friend knew what he was doing. Eddie did because he slid to a halt five feet from Randy.
The smiling Eddie popped his head up through the driver’s hatch. “Going my way, sailor?” he asked.
Randy jumped on the Stryker and told Eddie to head to where the last HUMVEE in line had gone into the escape trench. Randy had thought he saw someone get out of the truck, someone he recognized. He wasn’t sure and he wasn’t going to say anything to anyone, but somehow he knew.
Eddie dropped back into his Stryker and headed to where Randy directed. Randy had to hold tightly to the side of the vehicle to keep from being bounced off.
From what Randy heard on the radio, the battle in the front of the property was taking a turn for the worse. They got to the HUMVEE he’d indicated and Randy jumped off Eddie’s vehicle.
Eddie, Randy heard in his ear bud, was called by Jerry to support Tia in front of the property and he threw dirt in a wave as he took off at full speed. Monica and her Stryker were being repositioned by Jerry to cover Jamal and the deJesuses.
Randy saw two men inside the wrecked HUMVEE. One was obviously dead because he had no head left. The other was unconscious, bleeding from the face and his right hand was broken in at least two places by the way it hung through the steering wheel. The man’s rifle was broken and unusable, so Randy was certain this man would do no more fighting.
What he also noticed was the passenger door was open. Someone had gotten out of the truck.
Randy didn’t see anyone while riding on Eddie’s Stryker. The only place someone could have gone was into the trench. It was guarded at one end, but not guarded on the other. He jumped down into the trench.
Over the radio Randy could hear Jerry directing Eddie to a position so the two HUMVEEs being covered by the helicopter had no chance of escaping. The two had been able to slip in behind the barn, out of direct visual sight of the Apache and both bunkers, and where Tia’s Stryker couldn’t ram them. It was a stalemate for a few minutes and would allow the soldiers in the HUMVEEs to pop out and shoot down the chopper if given enough time to pull their machine guns off the their trucks.
Kayla, who had been working to get a shot at the two HUMVEEs, had been vexed with her ability to maneuver the helicopter into a position where she could get the nose down far enough to bring her nail polish target onto them. She wished she had more time and chances to practice with the helicopter, but they’d only found a small amount of AVGAS and didn’t want to waste what they did have.
There had been a hope that just the sight of the mean looking bird would give the invaders second thoughts. Kayla suggested that she take the helicopter up and reconnoiter and when she found the convoy, she’d shoot it up miles from the farm. Jerry mulled it over and thought it was a good idea, but Buff, the former Marine, suggested it might escalate the attack to a new level. A level at which the farm could not compete.
“Say our Sky Dragon Kayla shoots up the convoy, wipes them out to the last man. The major from Ft. Knox would send tanks the next time. We wouldn’t stand a chance no matter how much time we had to prepare.
“If Kayla just fired warning shots at the convoy, and they turned back, we lose the element of surprise on them. They’ll know we have a helicopter and the next time they come, they’ll have rocket launchers and know we have improved our defenses.
“No,” the former Marine said, “we need to defeat them here, capture as many as we can so the next time we speak with the major, he’ll have to listen to us.”
Flying above the invaders now, Kayla felt the helicopter was less effective than she’d hoped. It was fast and maneuverable out in the open, but for close quarters it was more of a flying tank than mosquito. She was sure if she had a helmet, it would have been easy aiming the 30mm under the nose.
As it was, she had to aim the entire bird. If she tipped the craft too far forward, she would overshoot the HUMVEEs and they’d have a shot at her tail rotor. She settled for harassing the two with the low fly-bys and hard turns just 20-feet over their heads.
They had finally maneuvered their HUMVEEs behind the barn which limited her from getting at them. It wasn’t ideal, but it kept them from shooting at Tia or the bunkers for a few seconds. Tia’s Stryker was already beginning to smoke from the damage. She’d have to bail out and right now, there was no safe place to do that.
Kayla heard the call for a second Stryker to the front and was relieved to see it tearing along the path along side Buff’s bunker. She could tell it was Eddie by the way he drove with reckless abandon. She didn’t care, as long as he joined the fray.
Eddie’s Stryker, directed by Jerry from his vantage point, drove around the bunker and through the shrubbery behind the barn. The two HUMVEEs in hiding didn’t see him coming until he rammed them both from behind, shoving them into the sights of the Apache.
Kayla put three rounds from the 30mm through the engine block of the first truck. She lost some altitude with the pitching forward, but with deft hands on the cyclic and collective, Kayla was able to circle the trucks and get back into a position where she then made it clear the next three rounds would go into the driver’s compartment if their surrender wasn’t forthcoming.
Jerry called for a cease fire again over the PA system. The HUMVEEs were clearly out gunned and out maneuvered by the Apache and the Strykers.
The soldiers stopped resisting with the second call for cease fire. Soldiers started holding their arms out the windows once they got the trucks stopped.
Tia, still feeling the fury of battle, drove her 16-ton Stryker through the cattle pen and up to the passenger door of the lead HUMVEE and revved the motor. She inched closer in little jumps until the winch of her Stryker was pressing against the passenger’s window. She pushed a little harder and the window shattered as the HUMVEE rocked.
The passenger, a 22-year-old with a loud mouth, who five minutes earlier had showed such bravado by hanging out his door and shooting his M16A4 combat rifle pissed himself and started crying in fear.
The two trucks the deJesuses and Monica had surrounded shut their vehicles off too. The soldiers were scared, but they surrendered.
* * *
Amanda’s first mission as part of the salvage platoon came the fourth week she was on base. They were going to the Air Force Academy, primarily to retrieve computer servers and books, but also because one of the radio operators said they heard what they thought was an S.O.S. and they were able to trace it in that direction. They’d stayed away from the Air Force Academy because that was where an entire squad had already been lost, including the captain who had been in charge of the Salvage Platoon.
The six-truck convoy had three HUMVEEs in front of Amanda’s and two behind. Amanda had Chopper in her passenger seat. They’d practiced the scenario the previous two days on a mock up built by the engineers.
Amanda was proud of the w
ay the plan worked, just as they had practiced. The convoy circled the building they would be entering. The straight truck that would haul the computers remained behind her truck while the other four set up a perimeter.
When she was given the signal, Amanda and the straight truck pulled up in front of the building housing the computers and disembarked. Each HUMVEE at the corner of the building had its machine gun pointed outward, while the second man in the trucks had their rifles scanning the windows and doorways of the building. When Amanda was satisfied, she allowed Chopper out of the truck.
He bounded out and immediately began sniffing around. Amanda, her M-4 locked and loaded, flicked the safety off because Chopper immediately began growling. The dog everyone had come to think of as a kind and gentle companion, changed into a dog that was ready and willing to kill.
He bared his teeth and stalked to the northwest corner of the building, moving slowly and purposefully. Amanda was beside the dog. When he started barking Amanda stopped him. She saw movement in a second story window. Maybe it was a curtain moved by the wind, but she didn’t think so.
She backed away from the building, keeping her eyes up and a hand on Chopper’s back, reassuring the dog she was fine. She filled Sgt. DeBusk in on what she had seen and how Chopper reacted and let him make the decision.
“Three rounds, H.E, second story, northwest corner on my mark. You under cover Saunders?” he asked.
“Give me 10 more seconds to get us behind this van and cover his ears. My squad is pulling up and deploying now.” Her squad was three privates in a HUMVEE and they were her protection. Pinkston was the driver for her team.
DeBusk waited and made sure everyone was ready. “Mark!” Amanda had knelt down 75 feet from the building, behind a van’s front tire. She sat Chopper down and covered his ears from the noise that was about to happen. He was licking her face when the first of three rounds blew out the northwest corner of the building. Amanda stayed under cover.
Hell happened (Book 2): Hell Revisited Page 25
