As we jogged through the woods, there were several occasions when I thought I could hear the crackling of twigs breaking in the brush nearby. My imagination played games with me, gifting me with images of people following us. Once, I could have sworn I caught a flash of movement off to our left, deeper in the thicket. Convinced we were being followed, I dropped to one knee and sighted the carbine-dead center on an armadillo.
“Damn!” Sweating with nervousness as much as the warmth of the night, I cursed my panicked reactions and silently thanked Ken for putting me at the end of the line. No one else had seen my momentary agitation. Taking a deep breath, I hurried to catch up to the others while trying to ignore the myriad woodland noises.
We reached the edge of town, and Ken signaled a halt, gathering us together for a final talk. He paused, examining each and every face, much as I had done back at the house, memorizing, knowing better than any of the rest of us just how risky this was. “I can’t stress enough to you people just how important it is that you avoid the fights you can’t win. We estimate that there are probably close to four thousand of our people still in Rejas.”
Some shocked gasps and mutters erupted at the proclamation. Most hadn’t realized how many of us were still in there.
Sarah Graham asked what most were thinking at that point. “You don’t expect us to leave them in there, do you?”
“Yes!” Ken responded vehemently. “Some of them have probably made it out to the forest, and others are already dead.” I could see that his bluntness didn’t set well. “I would guess most of the others have been captured or are hiding. There’s no use getting yourselves captured or killed in a hopeless situation. We have to wait and plan how to get our people out the right way. Otherwise, we’ll just make things worse than they already are.”
Seeing he hadn’t convinced many of them, I offered an observation. “Listen.” When they turned toward me, I shook my head. “Not to me. Just listen. Listen to the town. Do you hear any gunfire? Any more yelling? Anything to indicate that anyone’s still fighting in there?”
It was true. The sounds of battle were gone. Rejas was uncannily silent, considering the sounds of just half an hour ago.
I pointed toward the outskirts of town. “It’s over in there. But, we have more than two thousand people that are safe, for the moment. I don’t like it any more than you do, but they have to be our first priority tonight. They’re depending on us.”
Ken shifted his weight, as if still uncertain of himself. “It’s our job to make sure they stay safe. Our job is to find some way of getting some of the supplies stashed in town out to the fertilizer plant, where they’ll do some good. Then, and only then, can we think about getting out anyone we find in Rejas.” He looked around, pleading with his eyes for everyone to understand. “I’m not saying we leave everyone no matter what. If the circumstances are right, and you can get some of them out without risking the rest of your group, then do it.” That seemed to appease some of them.
“In the meantime, keep your eyes open. If we know what they’ve done with our people, we can plan to get them out later on. Does everyone understand?”
I saw heads nodding as they reluctantly accepted the harshness of our situation.
Ken relaxed visibly. “Good.” He looked away from the group for a moment, staring into the town. Rejas was eerily silhouetted by a few burning buildings. “Leeland, you still have that radio?”
I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about it. “Got it right here.” I pulled the little transceiver off of my belt and started to hand it to him, but he stopped me with a shake of his head.
“Just turn it on and see if we can tell what’s going on in there.”
As I flipped the switch, an unfamiliar voice was speaking over the static. “… in. We should… ny more trouble…”
“All ri… if you mess th… I’ll hav… for it!” Troutman’s voice was barely recognizable over the static, but he sounded as if he’d had better days.
“… don’t, we can… ill… st ’em… tanks.”
Ken shook his head. “Too far away. This dinky radio isn’t much better than a kid’s walkie-talkie. Might as well save the batteries ’til we get closer.”
I clicked it off. The tiny bits of conversation had been more tantalizing than informative.
“All right, people. Divide into your groups and hit your targets. This has priority. Get as many of those supplies to the plant as quickly as you can.”
All hell broke loose.
The sudden sounds of gunfire had me scrambling frantically for cover. I dove for the shelter of the nearby tree line and saw most of the others scattering in all directions. Behind me, someone stood in the open like an idiot, shooting in the direction of the enemy fire. I couldn’t tell who it was, but he didn’t last long. A line of bloody holes stitched themselves across his chest within a matter of seconds, and he fell to the ground thrashing horribly. From my spot behind a huge Texas pine, I saw that two more had been caught in the attack. Dead. How had they found us?
Many of our group began to return fire, aiming in the general direction of our attackers. I looked, but couldn’t see a thing. The sounds of machine guns firing at us told me about where they were, but I wasn’t confident enough about their location to risk wasting bullets. I put my back to the tree and tried to calm down enough to think.
My heart hammering with instinctive fear, I assessed the situation. Hiding behind a tree at the edge of the forest a half-mile out of Rejas, enemy firing from somewhere between myself and the town, three of my companions down, presumably dead, and the rest of the group scattered, disorganized, wasting bullets on an opponent they couldn’t see-not a very reassuring predicament. Then I caught a glimpse of furtive movement in the trees off to my left. Ken.
Just as I recognized him, he began speeding through the forest, skirting the edge of the tree line; I realized he was attempting to flank our attackers.
It was time to piss or get off the pot, as Jim was fond of saying. “Oh, hell,” I muttered. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Ken.” I took off after him, bullets singing their terrifying song through the trees, accompanied by the distinctive scent of cordite wafting through the air.
Running through the trees, leaping over scrub that appeared out of nowhere in the darkness, I wrestled with my fear. I was probably more frightened at that moment than I had ever been in my life, and it took a major effort to get a grip on my emotions. Finally, I convinced my pounding heart that, though the trepidation was natural, I had no time for it. So I continued the insane race through the trees, chasing the elusive ghost that was Ken, and concentrated on clamping down on the cold knot of fear deep within my abdomen. Ultimately, I managed to fan it into a cold, resolute anger. By the time I left the trees, I was furious.
Ken was just ahead, thirty, maybe forty feet at most. With his black BDUs, I could barely make him out by the light of the crescent moon as he ran through waist-high grass, jumping over small scrub bushes, plowing through others, and then, abruptly, he was gone. He just wasn’t there. A moment later, the ground gave way beneath my feet, and I flailed wildly, involuntarily beginning a yell that was choked off as I hit the icy black surface of one of Rejas’s many springs.
“Damn, Leeland!” Ken hissed from the bank. “Shut up and quit all the splashing. You want to get us killed?” He reached forward. “Here, take my hand.”
“What happened?” I asked stupidly, as he helped me out of the water. We were in the bottom of a small ravine that had been carved out over the years by the flow of water from a nearby spring. “How’d they find us?”
“They must have night-scopes or starlight goggles.” He pulled me out of the water, through the slippery mud of the streambed, and over to hug the embankment as he listened to the sounds of the battle raging to our right. “I didn’t think of that, or I would have kept us back in the trees until we were ready to move out.” He cursed under his breath. “I’m the one that’s supposed to know this kind of thing. How many did the
y get?”
“Three that I saw. I think all the rest of us made it to the trees.”
Ken’s head sagged. “I only saw one before I hit the ground.” Sounds of the ongoing firefight punctuated the night as he sighed. “Jenna… she took one in the neck.” I saw his fist curl in the faint moonlight. “All because I didn’t think of a simple thing like night goggles.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head back to rest against the muddy drop-off. “I might as well have killed them myself.”
I grabbed his arm and shook it to get his attention. “It’s not your fault, Ken. We all made the same choice tonight.”
He didn’t reply, just sat there with his head leaned back against the dirt, eyes and ears closed to the battle above.
“Ken?” No answer. “Ken? Don’t you zone out on me!” I hissed. “I need you here. We all do!”
His eyes opened and locked with mine; for the first time, I could see the age in them. I saw the tired and haunted look of a man who had lived through this, and worse, and had managed to put it behind him to get on with his life. Now war had come calling on him again, and he was forced to answer. He nodded wearily, accepting the responsibility. “Yeah, I hear you.”
Ken turned away for a moment, and I was afraid that I had lost his attention again. Then he jerked his chin downstream. “This bank stays pretty high, and the gully curves around behind the clearing out there, about five hundred yards or more to the south. It ought to hide us well enough to let us get behind whoever is doing all the shooting up there.”
“Sounds good. Any idea how many of them there are?”
“I only hear eight or nine. That doesn’t mean there aren’t more, but there are only a few guns firing right now.”
“Just eight?” The gunfire had sounded like a small army to me. From our protected position in the streambed, though, I could tell that Ken was right. I could hear our people in the trees to the west firing like crazy, but the return fire from downstream was relatively small.
“You got an idea?” I asked “or were you just planning to run up and try to take them from behind?”
“Actually, I’m open to suggestions,” Ken said with a sheepish look. “’Cause that’s pretty much what I had in mind. What are you thinking of?”
I shook my head. “I was hoping that you had some brilliant plan in mind.”
He frowned. “Well, sometimes the best plans are the simplest ones.” He took one last deep breath. “Let’s go.”
Ken’s words didn’t inspire much confidence, but we began our run, splashing and sliding through the mud and water, slowly curving around and drawing constantly nearer to the sound of enemy gunfire. A few minutes later, Ken slowed and held up one hand, signaling me to a stop.
He pointed to his eyes, then to top of the bank. I nodded. He was going to peek over the edge. Picking his footing carefully, straining to keep from sliding, Ken climbed the dozen feet to the top. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his head over the grassy crest of the eroded stream embankment. Standing motionless, hanging precariously onto the top, he waved me up next to him. I tried to move as carefully as he had, fearing a misstep might send me sliding back down into the water and possibly give away our position.
When I finally peered over the top, I was stunned. By the dim light of the crescent moon I saw that our group, nearly thirty people strong, were being pinned by fewer than a dozen of Larry’s thugs. They were hidden behind three of the many Humvees that had paraded into Rejas. Was that really just a few hours ago? They were a little over fifty feet away, and I started to bring up the carbine, but Ken grabbed my arm to get my attention. He shook his head and drew me back down to the streambed.
“Wait ’til I can move a little further downstream,” Ken whispered. “The stream curves a little, and I’ll get another angle on them from around the bend.”
I nodded, and he continued, “When I start firing, I should be able to get a few of them before they change position to take cover from me. If things go the way I hope, that will put their backs to you. Then you can open up on them from behind. Between you, me, and the others shooting from the trees, these guys won’t have any place to hide.”
I nodded understanding once more. He was setting up a three-way crossfire. “I’ll wait for you.” He squeezed my arm once and quickly slipped away into the humid Texas night.
It must have taken only a few minutes for him to find his place, for the sounds from above changed abruptly. There was more of the automatic gunfire than there had been, accompanied by a cacophony of screams of agony and outrage. That was my cue. Scrambling to the top of the embankment, I planted my feet and fired at the first target I could see. Ken had gotten two with his first burst, and he had called their response exactly. They had all shifted to take cover from his attack, completely ignoring their backs.
The sound of my carbine was almost totally masked by the clamor of the hundreds of rounds fired by the others. That suited me just fine as I let off one shot after another, getting three of them from behind before they even knew I was there.
One of the guys saw the man next to him go down with my bullet in his back. Realizing what was happening, he spun to face me. It was an eerie sight. His face appeared insectile, eyes covered by an outlandish contraption extending into a monocular three inches past his nose. I realized that those night vision goggles made me so visible that it might as well have been broad daylight, while I could barely make out that he was looking at me. Luckily, I was the one that already had my weapon on target, and he died without getting off a shot.
They were down to four, but they were desperate animals with their backs to the wall. Another of them realized that someone was shooting at them from behind and dove to the other side of a Humvee, only to be cut down by our people in the trees. Three left.
The last three saw number four jump over the hood and turned to find me gunning at them. As one, they spun to fire at me; one raised up to one knee to steady his aim. Just before I dropped below the ridge, I saw the top of his head removed by a quick burst from Ken’s direction.
The last two disintegrated the crest of the bank above me as I slid back to the bottom. If I had stayed there… well, I didn’t care to dwell on that thought. As it was, dirt, rocks, and chunks of grass rained down on me from above. Time to move.
Fearing that the small amount of dirt at the top wouldn’t be enough to stop the bullets, I scrambled along on hands and knees, ignoring the gouging rocks, until I reached my new position about twenty yards back upstream. From the new location, I risked another climb to the top for a quick peek and got off one shot. Missed. Once more, I was forced to drop for cover as the stream bank showered me with debris.
I headed downstream again. I popped up about halfway back to my original position, just in time to see Ken fire a burst from his new site. He missed, too. They were too well protected from his direction and were simply waiting for me to pop my head up again. When I did, they were expecting it, swinging to fire as soon as they saw where I was. Kicking back with my feet, I let gravity drop me down the eroded embankment.
I continued to pop up from various places along the bank four more times, never in the same place, always in about fifteen to twenty second intervals, establishing a pattern. Then on the fifth time, I dug my feet into the ledge before I popped up. They swung their guns toward me and I dropped again as I had before. This time though, I maintained my footing on the crumbling embankment, and as soon as the return fire had stopped I jumped back up in the same place.
The one on the left appeared confused for a moment, aiming first at me, then shifting further upstream, as if he couldn’t believe I was really in the same place. It was a fatal mistake, as he momentarily crossed into his buddy’s line of fire. The other soldier, rather than shoot his only remaining ally, raised his rifle for the second that it took me to take advantage of the confusion. I got off several shots, hitting the confused thug in the chest and head and clipping the other in the shoulder. I dropped again before the wounded man cou
ld recover and return fire.
Further upstream, further from Ken than I had yet shifted, I once more jumped up to try for the last soldier, but found only scattered bodies. I couldn’t very well hope the fight had gone out of him and just let him lay there, but neither could I afford to go over the top and search the bodies. That would expose me to those damned night vision goggles. Sticking my head and rifle back up where I could scan the slaughter, I examined the bodies carefully. The gunfire died out as our people slowly realized that they were the only ones doing any shooting, and the smoke from the enemy guns began to thin in the light breeze. There was no sign of movement.
Keeping my eyes and gunsight on the still bodies, I yelled, “Ken? You okay?”
“Yeah, you?” His voice came from exactly where I had expected it. He was still positioned to catch any movement from that side of the bend.
“So far, but there’s one left…”
I could hear movement from downstream in his direction, then more movement from upstream, the rapid clattering of light-soled shoes running through water, gravel, and mud. The noise came toward me quickly and was accompanied by a shouted, “Noooo!” I spun to face the scream, losing my footing as I did so. It was only about five feet back down to the streambed, but I was completely out of control as I slid directly toward this new attacker and landed in a sprawl, the carbine six feet away. Fearing that it was in vain, I struggled to my feet, hoping there might be a chance that I could reach my rifle in time. Looking up, I faced my attacker and knew it was too late. A man dressed in black, face smeared with mud and dirt, ran screaming toward me, pistol already drawn and aimed.
There was no way I would be able to get to my weapon before he got off a shot. In that slow-motion moment before he fired, I scanned wildly for someplace to go, to get out of the way. But there was only the dirt ledge of the bank on one side, and the slick footing of the muddy streambed on the other. I had inadvertently trapped myself. I dropped back to the ground, intent upon getting out of the path of the bullet that had to be coming.
Half Past Midnight Page 21
