I watched them all leave and I could feel General Alexander staring at me from behind. I turned to look at him, “Yes Sir?” I questioned.
“General Hornady, when this is over, what do you think about you and your men accompanying the Iowa militia down to Florida?” he asked. As I said the other day, we intend to take a supply ship down the east coast to the southernmost point in Florida. I have information that there’s a staging area there for redeployment. I believe you and your men would be quite the compliment to the fighting they have planned down there.
Looking at him for a few seconds, and with thoughts swirling through my head, I began speaking, “If we survive this battle tonight General, we would be honored to go with you to Florida. But, I have to get back to my wife first and then get my daughter married to Major Jones. Then we can leave for Florida. Can you give me a week?” I replied.
He stuck out his right hand and I accepted the obligatory handshake. “Deal!” he said.
As we exited the tent, we could see soldiers scurrying about. General Thomas and Davies stood on the left side of a hill and were assembling their battalion. I saw Adam to my far left assembling our third battalion. And, in the distance I could see a large group of men standing at attention, in formation, awaiting General Alexander. “You certainly have your men squared away General,” I said to him smiling.
“Well, we’ve been together for a long time Hornady. They know what I expect of them, and I know what they expect of me,” looking at me and smiling too. “And for us, it works well.”
“I’ll say it does. General Alexander, I’ll see you on the other side,” I said shaking his hand. I saluted, and started trudging off toward Adam.
“General, I’ve got eleven hundred men accounted for and waiting to move out,” Adam quickly stated as I approached.
“Everyone is armed with firearms, and the like?” I asked.
“Yes Sir they are. They are awaiting you,” he replied, handing me an old M1 Garand .30-06 rifle. I touched the Glock 19 on my right hip, “I’m okay Adam. I’ve got my old Glock,” I mentioned smiling.
“General, I’d feel better if you had a rifle also” Adam said.
“Take the damn gun Dad!” Lily exclaimed.
Looking at my daughter I grinned, “Why yes Ma’am. Thanks Adam,” I took the rifle from him and looked out at the soldiers assembled before me. I looked back at Adam, nodded my head toward Lily, “See what you’re in for?” I commented with a chuckle.
“I long for it General,” he said smiling at Lily. “The men are ready!” once again he spoke. Stepping up to the crowd, I began to speak as loud as my voice would allow me. “Men, it is my pleasure to go with you tonight into what will be a battle for the ages. Tonight, we embark on a mission that will change the course of our country for the better. Tonight, we deliver a decisive blow to the Russian and Socialists armies. Tonight, we signal to them that we are taking back our country. Tonight is our night, our time and our battle. Tonight we fight for the old red, white and blue flag that we all grew up with and loved. This battle is bigger than us. It is bigger than the armies we must fight. The battle tonight is an effort to stave off Armageddon. God has called upon us to defeat the faces of evil that lurks in our land. And tonight, for God, and for Country, we will do just that. For America!” I yelled. And they all began to chant, “For America!”
I began motioning with my arms for them to quiet down. Once they had stopped chanting, I grabbed Adam’s right arm, pulled him toward me and continued, “This is Major Adam Jones. Tonight he leads us into battle. I will fight alongside you taking orders from him,” I said as I stepped away and took a position within the crowd of soldiers I had just been addressing.
Adam looked at me incredulously and mouthed the words, “Why?” silently. I mouthed back, “Because you are ready, son.”
Adam surged forward with pride and determination and yelled, “Men, move out!” And with that, our battalion of eleven hundred men began marching toward our date with destiny.
The trip to the old school was a fairly quick one. Just over an hour and we were entrenched in our position. The night was extremely quiet. We didn’t see any drones and we did not hear any tanks. We didn’t see or hear any copters. I felt uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. To be sure they do not know we are coming, I thought to myself. The time was nineteen-forty hours. We still had twenty minutes until the attack. We hoped the others were in position and ready also. It would take all of us to win this battle. If one battalion was late to the party, defeat would be ours instead of victory. I could not believe how quiet eleven hundred men were. From the looks of the Russian and Socialist soldiers at the school, they did not have any idea we were there. I saw the sentry teams on the corners of the school and it appeared that they had not been alerted to our arrival. Off in the distance, to the North, I could see slight movement beyond the parking lot. Adam and Lily crouched beside me and I said, “I see movement to the North, second battalion is in place.”
Lily replied, “I saw movement to the east earlier, snipers must be in position.”
“That just leaves first battalion, I hope they are ready, because the witching hour is among us boys and girls,” Adam replied grinning.
I looked at my old Timex. “Nineteen fifty-six hours,” I said. “Contact is imminent.” I then performed my longstanding ritual of reciting the beginning of the prayer of St. Francis before taking a socialist soldier’s life. I had put my own twist on it long ago, I’m sorry St. Francis.
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is the socialist enemy; total destruction and despair.”
—Amen
Adam and Lily stared at me in amazement. “The first volley of battle should be coming any minute now,” looking at them intently. I gripped my old M1 Garand and I muttered to myself, “Emmet Forsyth, Alexei Vadim, may both of you be damned to hell.”
And, with that, it all began.
Chapter 20
The Battle in Brattleboro
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“...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
—Herman Melville
Pop! Pop, Pop! Crack! Pop! The undeniable sounds of a Remington 700 LTR chambered in, .308 were going off all around us. I heard the shots to my left, I heard the shots to my right, and as I surveyed the landscape at the school in front of me, I saw enemy soldiers falling like flies to the ground beneath them. The sentries were the first to fall.
I heard yelling as soldiers ran from inside the school toward the tanks, and battle copters. I saw a drone begin to lift off and immediately began to fall back to the ground in a fiery heap.
The snipers were doing their job. Now it was time for the rest of us to do ours. Adam and I charged the field in front of us that housed the howitzers. Eleven hundred men stampeding into enemy territory to disable equipment; man, what an adrenaline rush. As we gained steam and came ever closer to the line of howitzers, I saw a large plume of smoke as one of the howitzers rocked backward and I heard an explosion near the front of the school.
“Damn it!” I yelled. “They got a shot off. Let’s stop those howitzers,” I yelled as the men behind me began attacking Russian soldiers. I looked through the corridor toward the front of the school and saw some of our soldiers scrambling to gather up injured men. To say that I wasn’t also looking for Alexei Vadim and Emmet Forsyth would be a lie. But I did not see them.
I looked to my left and I saw Lily engaged with a Socialist soldier. I began running toward her to help but was accosted by a Russian soldier. And by accosted, I mean a swift blow to the right side of my jaw that sent me backward into a heap on the field. I looked up and could see him coming toward me with an old AK-47 with an affixed bayonet. I rolled to the left three times to get away an
d then yanked my Glock 19 out of the holster on my right side and shot him as he went past me on the right. He dropped to his knees and looked over at me and tried to gather strength to get up for another run. I stood up and took the Glock trench knife that hung in a sheath on my left side and stabbed him in his neck. Then, I yanked the knife out and put it back into the sheath. The Russian grabbed at his neck, looked at me and fell onto the ground gasping for air, while blood spurted out of his neck.
I looked back to Lily and she was in another battle, firing her Springfield 1911 one round after the other. And to watch her reload was pure unadulterated excitement. “That girl has turned into a fighting machine,” I said to myself, scanning the scenery in front of me looking for Alexei and Emmet.
I found myself drifting toward the left of the back of the school building toward the parking lot and saw General Thomas and General Davies’ battalions engaged in what can only be described as an extreme battle for control of the battle copters. I saw several copters disabled and one trying to get into the air. I continued to hear the pop, pop, pop, of the Remington’s. I saw the copter begin a slow descent as it erupted into flames and hit the parking lot. Soldiers cheered briefly as they began engaging in hand to hand combat with Socialist and Russian soldiers.
I looked back to my right and could see that all of the howitzers were disabled except for one on the south end. Three soldiers were attempting to load the howitzer with a shell and five of my soldiers were attempting to stop them. One of which was Adam. I began running toward them in an effort to assist.
As I approached the group, running through scores of enemy and friendly soldiers fighting, I heard it. From out of nowhere, like angels singing in a heavenly chorus, I heard it. “Why Gen’ral Hornady! We meets’ again!”
I looked at Adam, fighting two soldiers alone at this point, and looked back at Mr. Emmet Forsyth who stood not twenty-five feet from me. As our eyes met, Emmet continued, “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Decisions, decisions Gen’ral. What are you going to do now?” he said as he raised his Sig Sauer P220 toward me. “I wanted to kill you in Tenn’ssee, sad excuse of a soldier that you are, but I gots you now you sombitch.”
I immediately dropped to my knee as his first shot zinged past my head and I quickly withdrew my gun from the drop holster on my right thigh and returned fire from that old trusty Glock 19. I unloaded the magazine into that poor bastard. I watched bullet after bullet hit him in the chest, and splatters of blood pop through his OD green shirt as crimson stains began to run into one another. His shirt began to soak through with blood. He was able to pull the trigger on the Sig one more time in an effort to shoot me, but his shot was grossly off the mark. As my slide locked to the rear, and a swirl of smoke wafted from the end of the barrel, I saw him drop to his knees. I dropped the magazine on the Glock, loaded another, and began firing at him again. His tongue hung out of his mouth, his eyes bulged wide, and his arms were now hanging lifeless by his side as round after round penetrated into his chest. I fired one last shot into his head and he fell face first onto the ground as my slide locked to the rear once again. “Damn, I wanted to make that man suffer more,” I said, throwing another magazine into my Glock and sent the slide forward. I retrieved the two empty magazines and stuffed them into my belt pouch.
I turned my attention to Adam once again and saw that the last howitzer was now disabled and Adam and Lily were running toward me. As they arrived in front of me, Adam looked at me with extreme surprise, “Who the hell was that? I’ve never seen you empty a magazine into somebody before, let alone two magazines.”
As shots and screams continued to ring out all around us, I walked over the crumpled mass on the ground, took my right foot, pressed it against Emmet Forsyth’s side and pushed him over so that he was now face up. I looked down at his still bulging eyes, and saw the dirt from the ground sticking to his face. I looked up at Adam, “Adam, Emmet Forsyth, Esquire” looking down at him. And with that, we ran off toward the courtyard looking for further action. I glanced to the left and saw General Thomas running towards us, “The west side is contained and the howitzers are out of commission,” I yelled at him. He reached us and we all stopped to catch our breath.
As General Thomas bent over and placed his hands on his knees to gasp for more air, I did the same and looked at him. He spoke through the gulps of air. “The south side is also contained and the tanks and copters are done for. Poor Davies is dead though. Damn Russian bastard got him with a shot to the neck. I watched him bleed out as he took a picture of Audra out of his pocket and looked at it as he died.”
I stood there as the shots, and screams suddenly became silent. I went into a sort of fog as I tried to sort through what General Thomas had just told me. “He’s dead?” I asked.
“Yes Paul, he’s dead, but we’ve got to move on,” he replied. He stood up and motioned toward the courtyard. “Let’s go find that damn Bear!”
Shots began popping in my ears again, and the screams returned. We began running through the thick smoke to find The Bear.
With Adam and Lily behind us, we made it to the courtyard. Some of our soldiers were already there, and had torn down tents. Enemy soldiers lay dead all around us. A Russian soldier came running toward us screaming “Mu’dak!” I knew the Russian word for asshole well. Another pop and he stopped running and collapsed on the ground. I looked in front of me toward the front of the school and saw Ben standing with his rifle. He lowered the rifle and smiled at me giving me a thumbs up. I gave a thumbs up back to him, and then saw a bullet go ripping through the left side of his head. He fell to the ground with a bewildered look in his eyes. “NNOOOO!” I yelled at the top of my lungs and began running through the courtyard toward Ben.
As I ran full speed through the front breezeway of the old school, the barrel of a rifle swung across in front of me and caught me in the forehead, knocking me backward to the ground. As I landed on my back on the hard concrete, air expelled from my lungs with a “UUmmph!” and I began gasping for air. While I tried to get air into my deflated lungs, I had an agonizing pain in my head and my ears were ringing so loud that I grabbed at my ears in an attempt to get it to stop. I rolled over and looked up and my eyes were having a hard time focusing as I began breathing again. Everything was blurry, but even through the awful pain in my head, the blurry eyes, and the desperate gasps for air, I could see him. There was no mistaking him, Alexei Vadim stood towering over me with a firmly ensconced eye patch over the right eye that I had recently taken from him. He held a Remington 700 LTR that he had struck me with. Taken from one of our dead snipers no doubt. As I sat on the ground, now on all fours looking up at him I said, “Why Alexei, how’s the eye doing?”
I waited for a response and kept thinking that Adam and General Thomas would be here soon to help me, I mean we had just been together back in the courtyard. I started looking around, trying to focus my eyes, trying to adjust to the pain. I was dazed and extremely confused. “General Hornady, remember me, asshole?” Alexei said. He reached down and grabbed me by my head. He had one hand on each side of my head at the ears and he picked me up like a rag doll. I could feel my feet dangling above the ground as he squeezed inward on my head. My head felt like it was going to explode, he was squeezing it so hard. Just when I thought I was going to pass out from the pain, he head- butted me so hard I could hear a loud crack. He let go of me and I fell back to the ground.
“Get up you filthy American bastard!” he yelled at me. I rolled over and got to my hands and knees and looked behind me and saw General Thomas lying on the ground, gasping for air. Blood ran out of his chest onto the ground. I reached out my right arm toward him as Alexei’s mammoth foot connected with my ribs. He kicked me so hard I came up off of the ground and landed in a heap two feet away. I rolled over, and looked at him. I looked back at Grant whose eyes were painfully frightened as he gasped for air.
I looked back at Alexei who was walking toward me and reaching out for me. Here it comes again I thought to myself. As
he reached down and grabbed me by my right arm, he put his other hand on my waist and picked me up over his head. He stood there holding me over his head some eight feet off of the ground and I could see Adam and Lily fighting some soldiers in the courtyard. At least they are still alive I thought. I was hearing shots and screams again as my senses started coming back to me. Just then, Alexei launched me back toward the courtyard. As I flew through the air, time seemed to stand still as wind whistled through my ears.
I saw Hannah. My love. The only woman that I have ever truly loved. Please God, I need to see her one more time. I need to tell her one more time that I love her. Please, give me the strength to at least do that. Things seemed to speed up again as I soared through the air and landed on the concrete and skidded to a stop. I could hear Alexei coming again. There was no mistaking the sound of his large feet coming toward me. I rolled over and looked and he was almost on me again. Damn he’s fast, I thought to myself. He reached down and grabbed me by the back of my neck.
The Conspiracy of American Democracy - A Father's Revenge Page 16
