by Nathan Jones
As Lewis made his final checks and mentally prepared himself the growing predawn glow became a piercing ray of golden light as the sun crested the horizon. Almost at the same time he heard the rumble of an approaching truck from the south.
That got the attention of the raiders, since their own trucks were secured safely in the center of camp. The weary sentries shouted out warnings Lewis could only faintly hear from this distance, and the camp quickly boiled into activity as everyone burst out of their dug in tents and threw themselves behind the cover of the sandbag fortifications they'd thrown up all over the camp.
Lewis panned his scope over the kicked anthill of activity, searching for the telltale tube of a TOW missile launcher being carried by any of the raiders. With him so intent on his search he barely had time to glance over at the approaching truck every now and again to make sure it was still on course.
The truck was coming fast in a straight line, jouncing over bushes and other obstacles with no sign of even the slightest effort to steer the vehicle. It seemed to be on course every time he spared it a glance, so he kept his focus on the camp as his plan continued.
Only he saw no sign of raiders rushing to bring their missile launchers to ideal firing positions and blow up the approaching truck.
Lewis stared in disbelief, panning over the camp again to be sure, but he was definitely seeing things right. The raiders remained hunkered down behind their sandbag fortifications as the truck approached, and he saw no sign of even a single launcher being readied to blow it to kingdom come.
Turner had called their bluff. Had he rightly assumed that no Aspen Hill resident would be suicidal enough to drive towards a camp with missile launchers, and the truck was being driven by a brick taped to the accelerator and a rod jammed through the steering wheel to keep it going straight?
Even if that was the case, that should've made the raider leader even more worried. Sure, the townspeople hadn't shown signs of having any explosives bigger than the Molotov cocktails, but was he really so confident they didn't have any and couldn't make them that he was willing to stake his life on it?
Or maybe he was greedy enough to accept whatever risk the truck represented for the chance to get it back intact and not have to waste a missile. Maybe he really did think Aspen Hill had no tricks to play other than a flimsy decoy.
Whatever his reasoning it was a stupid decision, and he was about to be punished for it.
Lewis focused on the back of the truck jouncing at moderately high speed towards camp, engine roaring away at the highest limits of its second gear as it came closer and closer. At this distance he couldn't see the cord of clothesline protruding from the back of the truck and trailing back towards where the truck had first started its reckless journey to the raider camp, where Scott or one of his people was holding the end. But he saw when the clothesline's spool jerked into view from beneath the canvas tarp, trailing half a dozen lines ending with tiny metallic glints barely visible in first glimmers of sunlight.
Those were the pins of 6 grenades, attached to the spool which had been lightly fastened to the back of the truck with bands meant to snap when the clothesline reached the end of the spool and pulled taut.
There had been some heated back and forth between Lewis and Scott about whether to have someone at the truck's origin point unspooling the line or have it unspool from inside the truck itself. The advantage of the first method was that since an actual person was unspooling the line they'd have better control of exactly when to pull the line taut, yanking the pins free to start the short fuses inside the grenades burning. That would let them time the explosion better.
That was Lewis's position, at least. But Scott had argued that if the line was being unspooled from the source it would be dragged behind the truck every inch of the way to the raider camp, with more being dragged the farther the truck went. That made it almost certain the line would snag on something and pull the pins early.
Good timing wouldn't really matter much if the boom came while the truck was only halfway to its target, which meant the only option was to try to cut the clothesline to the correct length and have it unspool from inside the truck. That way there was no chance of snagging unless something went wrong with the spool itself, and as long as they could accurately estimate the distance to the camp, the speed of the truck when the pins were pulled, and the burn time for the grenades' fuses, they could still get the result they wanted.
Lewis hadn't been sure they could accurately predict those variables, although they'd done their best with a few trial runs in town the day before, but he accepted Scott's point that a snag would ruin everything. Better to risk being slightly off target than guarantee they'd be completely off target.
Which just left the boom itself.
Grenades, even half a dozen of them, would do exactly nothing detonating in the reinforced bed of a military vehicle. But they were just the catalyst for the explosives that completely filled the back of the truck which would, fingers crossed, create a far bigger bomb.
The nice thing about having a combined hardware and sporting goods store in town was that it stocked a lot of useful things, including bulk quantities of substances from the home and gardening section famous for being used to create explosives. In a way it was a shame to see things they needed for better purposes being used for this, but then again most of their canning jars had gone to make Molotov cocktails so it wouldn't be the first time. Probably not the last, either.
In any case the long and short of it was that with the help of Scott and a few others, as well as referencing some of the chemistry and other texts from among the hundreds of thousands of books Lewis had on his hard drives, they'd managed to turn that truck into a nasty surprise for Turner.
Lewis had expressed concern that even with a bigger bomb, the fact that it was in the back of a truck with a reinforced bed and walls would mean the blast would be directed out the back and straight up, neither of which was a useful direction. To solve the problem they'd scrounged metal plates to bolt down over the top and back of the truck, leaving the bomb completely enclosed aside from the small hole they'd drilled in back for the lines leading from the pins to the clothesline spool.
With any luck the plates would at least compress the blast and force it to spread evenly in all directions. It might even cause the explosion to shred the body of the truck and fling it in all directions as shrapnel, turning the vehicle into a massive fragmentation grenade.
Whatever the result Lewis would be able to see for himself in just a few seconds, as the large vehicle smashed through the side of an outer fortification wall and sent sand billowing in all directions. Barely slowed, it continued barreling on towards the heart of the camp.
At that point many of the raiders seemed to lose faith in their leader's judgment that the truck was harmless. They'd been hiding so their sandbags were between them and any potential enemies outside the camp, but at the last possible second half a dozen or more vaulted over the fortifications to put them between the panicked raiders and the approaching truck.
Just in time, as the vehicle disappeared in the middle of an expanding fireball large enough to consume a good portion of the middle of the camp, obliterating tents and fortifications and sending raiders flying like rag dolls. The raider truck nearest the blast was flipped entirely over, slamming into another truck and combining with the blast to knock it onto its side. The third tipped so far it looked as if it would flip onto its side too, teetered, then gradually fell back into place.
Even from 450 yards away Lewis flinched and ducked low to the ground, half afraid he was going to be peppered with shrapnel.
Almost immediately he shook himself and got back behind his scope, searching for targets to shoot. The destruction of the truck signaled the end of Phase Two and began the final phase of the attack.
The truck had one other purpose besides baiting out the missile launchers and potentially blowing up in camp. It also served to cover the noise and distract attention a
way from the five other trucks, not military vehicles but normal 4x4s, that roared towards camp from the north in the opposite direction of the decoy truck.
Turner had probably assumed that his stolen truck was the only vehicle Aspen Hill would have access to. Lewis certainly knew that while they'd been planning this attack that was the assumption his friends had made, talking about what to do with the truck like it was their only means of transportation.
But although it was certainly nice that the truck was reinforced, as Lewis had pointed out it was disposable. What mattered was the diesel it carried.
With that fuel the defenders had their pick from among the modest number of diesel vehicles parked in town, mostly still in driveways or as part of roadblocks defending the borders. And there was the added bonus that if Turner's thinking was as narrow as theirs had been then he would assume that the decoy truck was the only threat of its kind, so he would be expecting any other attacks to come on foot.
Even as the explosion died down and the surviving raiders began to recover from the shock of it the five trucks screeched to a halt facing sideways to the camp. Almost immediately the half dozen townspeople laying flat in each truck bed, led by Matt in the lead truck, rose up in a crouched line and opened fire.
Lewis opened fire as well, taking shots at targets of opportunity, but most of his attention was focused on panning over every raider he could see that was still up, worriedly searching for any sign of the missile launchers. It looked as if the fight was pretty much over and they'd won decisively, but a single missile could turn this attack from a complete victory to a costly victory at best and a complete disaster at worst.
It helped that he was in an elevated position. Sandbag fortifications were a good start for any defense, but unfortunately for the raiders Lewis could shoot over them. And if his team had managed to get into position they'd be situated all around the camp, meaning that no matter where the raiders hid behind cover at least one Aspen Hill sniper was in position to hit them in the back. Even the sandbag fortifications that formed a complete circle weren't perfect, because the wall behind wasn't high enough to cover the raiders while they were kneeling in firing position over the wall in front.
To add to that the Aspen Hill defenders in the trucks were laying down a heavy cover fire that kept the raiders pinned, which meant at best most had a choice between cowering out of sight and getting sniped, or risking a shot at the townspeople in the trucks and getting mown down. And since it was nearly impossible to remain a moving target behind sandbags that meant plenty of stationary targets, many of which were exposed to one or more snipers even if they stayed flat on the ground.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and although Lewis never managed to find one of the dreaded missile launchers the fight didn't last long.
Less than a minute after the explosion one of the raiders abruptly flung his weapon over the sandbags and stood with his hands over his head. He was nearly shot anyway in the heat of the moment, but at the last second Lewis heard Matt over the radio ordering them to cease fire. Moments later the shooting stopped, and other raiders began flinging their weapons away and standing with their hands raised.
Lewis inspected the first raider who'd surrendered through his scope, unsurprised to see that it was Turner. The man's face was hard to make out at this range but his posture looked defeated, shoulders slumped and head bowed.
At the sight of the dreaded enemy so obviously cowed Lewis felt the knot of tension between his shoulder blades abruptly vanish, and he let out a slow, ragged breath.
They'd won. After almost two weeks of death, suffering, exhaustion and fear it was finally over.
Chapter Fourteen
Moving Forward
Matt had to hand it to his people for the restraint they showed while lining up the surviving raiders, all six of them with two injured and barely able to stand. He saw righteous anger on many of his friends' faces, but there was no rough treatment or bitter words.
As his people picked over the camp salvaging what they could, and checking the bodies to make sure they were all actually dead, Matt stepped aside for a moment and radioed Gutierrez to ask him how things had gone at the east hill emplacement.
There was no longer any need to avoid using the radios for fear of being overheard or bringing a rain of verbal abuse down on them, and the former soldier's voice came loud and confident. “We took them all out near the beginning of the fight, Matt. We got to watch you guys tear the raider camp apart from atop the hill.”
Matt had assumed as much, mostly going on the fact that no missiles or hail of large caliber bullets had hit them from the hill during their attack. “Good job, Raul,” he said. Then he raised his voice and relayed the good news, trying to sound triumphant and nearly succeeding.
Around him his people broke into a startlingly forceful cheer, many practically bellowing as if to relieve all the pent up tension and emotion they'd carried around for weeks. Matt let himself smile as he looked around at his friends, but it was hard to feel what they were feeling. He mostly felt numb and exhausted, more full of grief at the friends he'd lost than happy that it was finally over.
At least they hadn't lost anyone in this attack, although in an odd way that wasn't entirely comforting. It almost felt too easy, which Matt was surprised to realize made him a little angry. It almost felt as if they could've tried this at the beginning and saved a lot of good people.
That was foolishness, though. They hadn't been ready for something like this at the beginning, and even if they had been the raiders would've had the numbers and equipment to destroy them if they tried. It was hard to remember that the raiders had lost a lot of their own people in the attacks, and the enemy survivors had been nearly as ragged and weary as the town's defenders were.
Turner and his people had killed themselves trying to swallow the tough nut that was Aspen Hill. And while they'd hurt a lot of innocent people in the attempt they'd ultimately weakened themselves to the point where the defenders could finally deliver the killing blow.
Still, Matt could hardly believe that Turner had let the truck drive right into his camp. As if the man didn't think his enemies were capable of anything. That arrogance and greed had been the end of him.
Almost. Matt made his way over to where the prisoners were being searched. As he arrived Pete finished searching Turner and shoved him to his knees. The raider leader looked a lot leaner and meaner than he had last fall when he'd abandoned Aspen Hill and gone with Ferris. Or for that matter than he had that first day the raiders arrived when he'd menaced and then actually shot at Roadblock 1 with the machine gun mounted on the lead truck.
Part of that was the wicked, puckered scar along his right temple that tore a furrow right through the hair along the side of his head, which had gone prematurely white around edges of the healing wound. More of it was the look of sheer venom in the man's eyes, which had been boring into Matt ever since the attack ended.
As Matt approached Turner cleared his throat and spoke in a painful rasp. “So what happens now, Larson?”
Matt ignored the question and took over from Pete, pulling out some zip ties to bind the man's hands behind his back. He wondered if the hoarseness he was hearing came from strained vocal cords after swearing into a radio day after day.
“Cat got your tongue?” the raider leader demanded. “What are you going to do to me?”
Matt finished and stepped back, half surprised the man hadn't tried anything. “Depends on whether we want to waste any more bullets on you. It'll either be the firing squad or you'll hang from a tree.”
Turner's eyes widened. “Just like that? No due process, no humane treatment, no right to legal counsel and a fair trial? I thought you were proud of being the good guys.”
Matt smiled humorlessly. “Hoping to spend a decade waiting for execution while we work through an appeals process? You'll get a trial, but don't get your hopes up after everything you've done. And we're certainly not wasting resources on you;
we've got people starving, and far more than we should thanks to you and your raiders keeping us from the work of staying alive. Don't count on a last meal.”
The raider leader met his gaze, face twisted in an odd mixture of emotions. “I underestimated your town. I thought you just wanted to defend yourselves, but you really went out of your way to see me and my boys dead.”
Matt supposed that was Turner's way of saying that this full scale, committed attack had caught him completely by surprise. And why wouldn't it, when all he'd seen from the town for weeks was hiding and defensive fighting, aside from two raids on his camps that had been more hit and run and had turned out as badly for the defenders as for the raiders.
He clenched his teeth around a harsh response and did his best to moderate his tone. “You didn't leave us much of a choice, Turner. You'll get your humane treatment, which you should be grateful for after you spent all that time on the radio describing in detail exactly what you'd do to us when you won. But you'll also be dead within a day and nobody will call it an injustice.”
The man's conflicted expression turned venomous. “You think it was just threats?” He jerked his head to the east. “Check a few hundred yards that way. It's where we buried all your people we caught, the ones we didn't just shoot and leave to die. If you dig up the graves you can see for yourself what we did to them. Some of them even died from it before we could mercifully end their suffering.”
Pete Childress, who'd been tying up the raider beside Turner, abruptly snatched his rifle off his shoulder and slammed the butt down into the raider leader's face, expression twisted in a snarl of pure rage. Matt shouted in protest as the raider leader folded to the ground, hastily shoving Pete back as the young man raised his foot to stomp down on Turner's stomach.
