“Babe, you’re good at history, and you’re British. What was the first thing the UK did when the threat of a German invasion was imminent in 1940?”
“Aye, I remember. They took down all the road signs,” she said, then added indignantly, “and I’m Scottish, ya’ Mick bastard!”
Ignoring the slight to his heritage, Tim replied, “Right, they took down the road signs. That’s what we’ll do. You can’t see it from the highway, in fact, the only thing you can see from the highway there is a Harley Davidson dealership. If there’s no signage, there’s no Army depot.”
Izzy chuckled. “What else have you got up your sleeve, Tim?”
“I’m going to have Ian on the 81mm mortar here, about three thousand meters away from the east side of the span we’ll drop here, well within its maximum range. They won’t be expecting a rain of high explosive rounds falling on them.”
“What if they come this way?” Jimenez asked, pointing to the road coming south from Tusayan.
Tim nodded somberly. “You’re turning into an infantryman, Taco. That’s where I’m worried too. It’s sort of an Achilles heel. They could come up from Flagstaff, up Route 180 into Valle, and then take Route 68 south, right into the middle of town. There’s absolutely nothing to block them that way, no bridges to blow. That’s why I want the mortar here, so if needed, Ian can shift fire over to this junction north of town at Elk Ridge. That’s about it for now. I’ll figure out a few firing positions once I can look over the area a little better when we blow the bridges. I meant what I said before, I want all the women and kids gone out of here, the sooner the better.”
“Anything else you’d like, Tim?” Izzy asked.
“Yeah, a battery of 105mm howitzers and the whole 1st Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment.”
“We’ll beat ‘em, Sar’ Major,” Jimenez said gleefully.
“Tim, you can’t really think you can beat them, not with what little we have?” Holly asked, fear in her eyes.
“No, I don’t think we can beat them. I don’t plan on it either.”
“Then why, for God’s sake?”
“Holly, I said I didn’t plan on beating them. I do plan on stopping them in their tracks.”
“How, Tim?” she gasped. “There’s so few of us, and from what you’ve said, there’s over a hundred of them!”
“I’ll make them pay dearly for every meter of ground they want to take. That’s about it,” he said, folding up his maps.
“We don’t plan on taking them on in a head to head fight, Holly,” Izzy said, trying to reassure her. “This is going to be guerilla warfare at its finest. Tim and the rest of us will fight from hiding, just like the Viet Cong did so many years ago.”
“Are you going to fight too, Izzy?”
“I fought in a war a long time ago, and I have no qualms about fighting again, if the cause is just. And this, I think, is a just fight. I don’t like it at all, but I know we have to, for our very survival.”
“Aye, I agree it is, but you all have to promise me one thing,” Holly said. “Promise me you’ll stop if it looks like you’re going to be killed, okay? Give me that, please. If it looks bad, please just give up so you can live another day.”
Tears were welling up in her eyes again, and before she could get an answer, she spun on her heels and bolted inside the house.
“Dad, do want me to go and talk to her?” Robyn asked.
“No, leave her be. I’ll go up in a few minutes, check on Walt and I’ll talk to her.”
“If that’s it, then, Taco and I want to get to bed,” she told him, and Tim winced.
He knew it was happening, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. In his mind, Robyn was still that disheveled waif he’d come across in southern West Virginia so many years ago. She would always be his little girl.
Robyn took Jimenez by the hand and led him into the house, leaving Tim and Izzy alone on the porch.
Tim walked over to the railing again and looked out over the moonlit meadow. There were several dozen elk that had come down from the tree line unnoticed by them as they sat on the porch, and Tim watched them silently grazing over the tall grass. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard a few coyotes yelping.
“Izzy, tell me I’m doing the right thing,” he said.
“I don’t think we have a choice, Timothy. We could run away, but I know that running is not in your nature, and never will be. Besides, they’d find us no matter where we went anyway. Like you said, this is our home.”
“You’re right, I won’t run, and this is our home. Why can’t everyone just leave us alone?” “I don’t know, Tim. I don’t know,” he said, then handed Tim another beer.
“Thanks. I think I’ll have one more then call it a night.”
“Me too. Strange world, eh?” Izzy said, twisting off the top of the now tepid beer and sitting back down in a chair next to the table. Tim sat down opposite and held up his bottle in salute.
“To a strange world,” he said, and took a swig. “You know something, Iz, right before the Event, I was going to pull the plug. I had made up my mind on the way home from Afghanistan. I was going to put my retirement papers in to both the Army and the Police Department. I thought I had it all planned out. I was going to retire, sell the house, and Connie and I were going to move down to Florida, to the Keys. I was going to do nothing but fish and drink beer.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“I thought so. I got home to Philly, and found my house was in foreclosure, and Connie had split to points unknown with some cowboy from Montana.”
“It happens a lot in wartime, I saw it a few times when I was still in the Navy.”
“I saw it with my men a few times too, but it’s one of those things you never think would happen to you.”
“Yes, it always happens to the other guy. We’re always shocked when it happens to us, and we shouldn’t be.”
“I’m getting too old for this shit, Iz,” Tim told his friend.
“We all are. Another thing I’ve been meaning to ask you… I’ve noticed your gait has changed a little. How are your knees?”
“Always the doc, eh?” Tim smiled. “My knees are fucked, Iz. They sound like Rice Krispies. I know it’s arthritis, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.”
“You’re correct. It’s not like you can go down to the VA hospital, put in a claim and get knee replacements. I want you to start taking glucosamine. It’ll help rebuild the cartilage in your knees. You can get it at the drug store in town, in the vitamin section.”
“If it’ll help, I’ll do it,” Tim said, and downed the last of his beer. “And with that, sir, I will say goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Tim. I think I’m going to sit out here and watch the elk graze and listen to the coyotes yelp for a while.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Tim said, stood, and made his way into the house. All the lights were off, but there was enough moonlight coming through the windows to light the way through the living room and up the stairs to the bedroom. He opened the door as quietly as he could, and when he entered, he could see Holly lying on her side.
He tiptoed across and around to the crib, where Walter was clutching a tiny blue blanket, sleeping soundly. Tim knew it wouldn’t last long; he was waking every few hours, crying for his mother’s milk.
He went to his side of the bed and undressed, pulled back the sheets, and climbed into bed. When he was getting settled, he felt Holly stir.
“Sorry, babe. I didn’t want to wake you,” he whispered.
“That’s okay, love. I wasn’t asleep,” she replied in her soft voice, her lilting accent singing in his ears. She rolled over and put her arm over his chest, laying her head in the crook of his arm.
“I’m sorry I kept anything from you.”
“It’s okay now, but please, don’t ever keep anything like that from me again.” He lay there holding her, looking up at the ceiling for a time, wishing it all could go back to the time before they left and
went to that island. But no, they wouldn’t have Walter now, and that little life over in the crib was the main reason, the only reason he was taking a stand now.
“Do you think you can stop them?” she finally asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“How? It just seems so impossible.”
“Have you ever heard of Carlos Hathcock?”
“No?”
“I guess you wouldn’t have gotten too much Vietnam War history in Scotland,” he said, still whispering as to not to wake the baby. “He was a Marine sniper, the best of the best, ballsy fucker. Anyway, one day he and his spotter, also a Scout-sniper, were in the jungle staking out a long ditch next to a rice paddy. Not another friendly around for a long ways. They’re set up inside the tree line, not making a sound. Along comes this whole company of North Vietnamese soldiers. Not Viet Cong guerillas, these were trained soldiers. They weren’t two hundred yards away from them.”
“What did they do?” she asked, and Tim knew he’d set the hook. It was time to reel his catch in.
“They began to snipe at them, him from one end of the formation, his spotter from the other, and for over twenty-four hours, had that whole entire company, over a hundred and thirty men, pinned down in a ditch. By the time they bugged out a day later, they had killed over a hundred of the bastards, and had the rest running for their lives.”
“You made that up!”
“No, it’s the truth. I have the book downstairs on the bookshelf. The whole story was independently verified by another Marine unit that came through after they radioed in the location.”
“So that’s what you plan on doing?”
“In a way. I’ll have a mortar for support, they didn’t have one of those,” he said, only telling a half-truth. Carlos actually had a few batteries of howitzers at his beck and call on the other end of a radio, and had used illumination rounds fired by those batteries all night to light up the whole area, and also to lob in some HE rounds once in a while to keep them pinned, but he wasn’t about to tell Holly that.
“And you promise me you’ll leave like they did when it gets to a point you can’t do any more?”
“Yes, as long as you stay down in Phoenix until I say it’s alright to come back,” he said. “Besides, I have even more reason now to stay alive. And all the more reason to do what’s right. I just want Walter to be able to grow up in a world that he doesn’t have to be afraid of anything, babe.”
“Aye, that’s why I love you so much,” she said, leaning up to kiss him. She lingered on his lips, and then the kiss grew more urgent. The broke the kiss for some air, and she smiled at him in the darkness.
“Would you care to fraternize with me in an unlawful manner, Sergeant Major?”
“I would love to, Leftenant, but isn’t it too soon after the baby?”
“Not at all, Sergeant Major. The doctor informed me today I was able to return to my wifely duties in the bedroom.”
“Oh did he now? That is good news, considering you’re not my wife!”
“Be that as it may, I would still like to fool around with you,” she said, leaning down to his chest and biting his nipple lightly.
Tim rolled his head back and moaned, running his hands through her long, thick hair. She reached down with her hand, found what she was searching for, and discovered he was more than ready. She rolled on top of him and guided him into her, and sat up, hands on his chest.
She began to move him inside of her, and then she came back down, keeping the rhythm, and kissed him passionately.
Just before she came, Walter let out a loud wail, breaking the moment.
Holly rolled off of Tim and sighed, and then they both laughed.
“Someone’s hungry,” she said.
Tim turned on the bedside lamp and propped himself up on an elbow, his head resting in his hand watching Holly pick up his son lovingly, bring him up to her breast where he immediately found the extended nipple with his mouth and began to suck greedily.
“That’s a lucky kid,” Tim said playfully.
It was an image he wanted to keep in his mind forever, this beautiful woman, holding an equally beautiful baby, breastfeeding, and not a care in the world.
It would be one of the last happy images Tim would have, for a long, long time.
Chapter 14: Charlie Mike
The convoy stopped for the evening by the on ramp to E470 off of I-70 outside of Aurora, Colorado, and the city of Denver could be seen just a little further west.
The sun had crept below the distant Rocky Mountains, but there was still enough light to see a lone soldier walking from the rear of the line of parked vehicles on the side of the road.
The man, who had ridden in the trail vehicle, was checking with the driver of each vehicle, and from time to time spoke with the men dismounting and stretching sore muscles from the cramped, uncomfortable, and long journey.
When he made his way up the formation to the lead vehicle, a dirty and well-worn Hum-Vee, he stopped at the front of it. The driver, a young black kid, had his head on the steering wheel and was snoring loudly. He could see another form seated on the front bumper, a cloud of putrid cigar smoke wafting around his head.
He cleared his throat to get the other man’s attention. “All set, sir, nothing to report.”
“That’s good, Sergeant. Are the men preparing to bivouac?”
“Yes, Major. They’re breaking for chow and some are scrounging for firewood.”
“Alright then, we’ll set out again first thing in the morning,” the major said, cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Sir…” the sergeant said tentatively.
“What is it, man?”
“Sir, we’ve been at it for several weeks. I was thinking we could stay here for a few days, maybe scrounge around over in Denver for some better supplies. We’re completely out of the MREs we brought with us from DC, and we’ve been subsisting on what we find in these truck stops and convenience stores. Not only that, sir, the vehicles are in need of some maintenance. Losing the Hum-Vee the other day set us back yet again. The men are really cramped now.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, Sergeant,” the major said with a curt nod.
“Sir, the men need the rest. The roads are in a lot worse shape than we expected, and it didn’t help us any having almost all of the major bridges over the Mississippi impassable,” the sergeant said, pleading.
They had come across I-40, but when they reached the Mississippi River in Memphis, found that bridge had collapsed into the river, and was a twisted heap of metal and concrete surrounded by several wrecks of barges and ships that had been washed downstream, half submerged in the muddy brown water. Not only had that, the several years’ worth of heavy rains and spring thaw snowmelt had apparently sent the mighty Mississippi over its flood levels several times, washing away whole towns and roads in its wake on both banks, to the point the entire river basin was completely unrecognizable, and impassable in most places. Nature had surely taken that area back with a vengeance.
They had had to travel north, all the way into Wisconsin, before they found a usable bridge, where they crossed into Minnesota at Minneapolis. That little detour had cost them several weeks’ travelling, taking them hundreds of miles out of their way.
“Well, Sergeant, I’ll make out a Disposition Form to complain to the Department of Transportation.”
The sergeant sighed at the sarcasm. He’d known several ‘high-speed, low drag’ majors like this in the past. Before the Event, the sergeant had been in the Maryland National Guard, and was also a State Trooper from there also. But he had to watch himself; he was one of the truly rare lucky ones, both he and his wife had survived that horrible night, and if he wanted to keep the nice house he’d been allowed to live in, he had to toe the line.
George Orwell was right, he remembered. Some pigs are more equal than the others and he wanted to stay ‘more equal’, so he bit his tongue, which was a wise thing to do. The major had the power to take
it away, and he didn’t want to be thrown in with all the rest of the population of Washington, scraping and begging for food, living in hovels. He didn’t reply, just stood there at parade rest, and waited for the major to speak again. “Sergeant, I think you know how important our mission is, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I’m well away of the importance of the mission. I’m just suggesting two days to rest, and take care of the vehicles and the men.”
The major produced a bottle of Jack Daniels from one of his pockets, un-capped it, and took a healthy pull, right from the bottle. He handed the bottle to the sergeant.
“Take a drink and relax, Sergeant.”
“I’ll take a pass, sir,” he replied, looking back down the line of trucks parked along the guardrail. He could already see the lights from several fires lighting up the sides of the vehicles, and he inwardly cringed.
Nothing like light and sound discipline, he thought angrily. Right now they could be spotted for miles away, and then the men just wouldn’t be quiet either, so they could also be heard for miles away also. Any enemy that might want to could surely target them without much trouble.
But there wasn’t an enemy out there in the darkness, was there? No, there couldn’t be, he remembered, but then that odd nagging feeling he started to get a few days ago returned. When they were still in Kansas, he was almost convinced several times that they were being watched, but he kept shrugging it off as paranoia.
Thankfully, the rowdy, drunken fights had stopped. The major had ended that once and for all with the help of his Beretta M9 and two 9mm rounds to the offending person. Crude, but effective.
The major still wouldn’t put a stop to the nightly campfires, and that angered him. He added it to the increasing list of things the major did that he didn’t like, but couldn’t change. He just hoped the major would listen to him and let them do some maintenance on the vehicles and forage for some better supplies.
“Sergeant, let’s get some chow, shall we?” the major said, walking to the rear of the Hum-Vee, where he rummaged around the cluttered mess of gear and produced a one burner camp stove. He set that up on the tailgate, opened a can of beef stew, and poured the contents into a pot.
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