by M. C. Allen
“I need some paper and pencil so I can draw up what I have set up down there. I need another day to get all of the spots dug in like I want, but they will be operational now if we really have to kill some people.”
I used the offered paper and pencil to diagram the ambush point. “We need to move the two 240s down there before dawn so they won’t be seen by anyone. The people we choose to man them need to be quiet and not move around too much. I’ll go with them and get them settled in. We are going to need just about everyone who can fire a weapon helping out in the next few days. While we are getting ready down the road, this property must be defended. You saw how easy it was to take it down with just a few people. We need to push people out there, looking for intruders.” I felt butterflies in my stomach. I hated the waiting.
“I know. We have guns and ammunition, but we need more people willing to fight,” Joseph answered.
“How did Lisa and Danielle do today?” I inquired. From the shadows where my family was getting ready for bedtime, I got an answer.
“Why don’t you ask us yourself, Mr. Metcalf?” Danielle’s voice had a distinctive sound to it. She didn’t have a country twang; it was smooth and she enunciated well. They survived the day. That was a bonus.
“Sorry, I would have, but I didn’t see you in here. It’s a little dark. I guess a campfire inside of a hay barn would be silly. Don’t we have some flashlights?”
“We are practicing light discipline in case we are being watched,” answered Dale.
“Well, look at us getting all tactical. That’s an excellent idea. I guess reading is out for the evening. I’m going to turn in. Can someone wake me at three to get ready for the day? Unless we are attacked—then just let me sleep.” I moved over near where Dale had spoken earlier. “Anyone know where my blanket ended up? I’m trying to avoid stepping on anyone.” Another unfamiliar voice responded. That must be Lisa.
“It’s over here by me. Just follow my voice.” I shuffled over to her, stepping on Regina and Kofi in the process. We had done this before, so they just laughed it off. A hand reached out and touched my lower leg below the knee and Lisa directed me to my blanket.
“Um, not to be rude, but I tend to thrash around in my sleep. Just so you know, I react when I’m awakened.” I wasn’t trying to be coy with her; it was just the truth.
“Why do you think they put us both over here away from everyone else? I do the same thing. At least then we can only hurt each other.” She chuckled darkly at that.
“Here, let me pack my knife away. I sometimes pull it and wave it around.” I found the familiar bag by my head and dumped my blade in an outer pocket. I had several other knives on me, but they were in pockets where I couldn’t just pull them out quickly.
I settled down and slept. At one point, I woke up to hear Lisa snoring loudly near my head. No wonder she was put over here by me. I was worried the kids were trying to set me up with Lisa. I was still mourning my wife, and Lisa was probably not going to be interested in that kind of relationship for a long time. Maybe sometime in the future I would find someone I could love again. Right now, all of my affections were on hold. The love for my children could sustain me. I wondered if I could get a shower in the morning. The washing in the creek was several days ago, and I liked being clean. With that thought, I fell back to sleep.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Someone was kicking the soles of my boots lightly. When I didn’t immediately respond, the kicks became more insistent. I sat up and looked at the shadow that jumped back and begged me for forgiveness. The voice was older and familiar.
“Please, Mr. Metcalf, it’s urgent. We heard talking over the radio. They must be getting close. We could hear the sound of truck engines in the background, but we haven’t heard them coming down the road yet.”
That was a lot to digest with a fuzzy mind. I let adrenaline force me fully awake. “Let’s go, everyone. The party is coming to us. Doris, what time is it?” I bet she was surprised I remembered her name, but her voice was definitely distinctive.
“It’s a little after two. I had just come on watch when I heard it. I woke up Barbara and she is there now, writing down what they’re saying.”
I told her to go back, and if they heard anything else important to come find me to let me know. The enemy was stealing a page from my book and attacking at my favorite time. Too bad for them they didn’t practice good radio discipline. I hoped they kept making these mistakes.
I started issuing orders immediately. “Angel and Ashley, you are going to run the 240s for this. You both showed skill with it when we practiced the other day. Go get them and a can of ammunition for each. Regina and Dale, you are going with them to carry two extra cans each. You will need the M4s and your personal ammunition too. We all should have vests by now. Lord knows we have killed enough bad guys to equip most of us.”
I continued after taking a quick breath.
“I’m taking both the Remington and my M14. Pamela and Jordan will bring their new M4s. Joseph, we need extra bodies along the firing line. Collect everyone who can shoot an M4 and get them up and with me. The extra hunting rifles will need to go to anyone staying back here. Joseph, your job is to hold this farm. If you see them coming up the road, you need to stop them from making it to the house. Get the children and every noncombatant out of here and stash them in the woods. If this all goes to crap, our rally point is the old campground.”
With that, I grabbed my rifle and my pack and jogged over to where my Remington was still being used to watch the road. The thermal sight was on the rifle already, so that saved me time. I got the radio from the guard and told her to grab her rifle and follow me. I didn’t recognize her, but she at least had a vest and a weapon.
As I jogged down the road, Angel and Ashley caught up with me. They were winded but kept up. They used the slings to carry the heavy guns and extra cans of ammunition. Regina and Dale joined us soon enough. I picked up the pace. If we could hear their transmissions over the air, then they had to be closing in on us. They might stop the trucks and dismount two miles away and just walk in. I hoped they came in by trucks. That would concentrate their numbers into nice little targets for us to service.
We hit the ambush zone, and I started getting everyone settled in. In some cases, we had more people than we had holes in the ground. I made sure the kids were in the deepest and best positions. The extra bodies were set up further down the road to block anyone from escaping the kill zone or trying to flank our ambush lines. I warned everyone that they may all have vests, so try to hit them in the area above the vest or in the legs.
I would signal the ambush by killing the driver of the lead vehicle. If they came in on foot, I would shoot the point man or woman. I needed the shot to be loud, so I was going to use my regular ammunition and not the subsonic rounds. Now we just needed to wait for the festivities to begin. I pushed the transmit button three times. Joseph responded with three. Angel responded with three as well. He was loaded up with several belts linked together. Ashley had done the same. Our third 240 was going to set up where my rifle had been all day. It was ready to fire down the road if anyone got by us.
Further down the road, I heard the trucks coming. They were running with their headlights off, but they had the parking lights on. Come on, you morons. Keep making this easy for us. The trucks were moving at a decent pace, and as they closed with me, I could see that they were running with only about thirty feet between them. They were too tight. That was unfortunate for them.
I let them get into the curve and noted that the last truck was in the kill box before I shot the lead driver through the windshield. The truck drove into the ditch, turned over, and partially blocked the road. The second driver cut the wheel and tried to go around to the left. I shot him too. I cycled the bolt and shifted to observe how they would react.
The second truck stopped after rolling about twenty yards. The passenger tried to take over the wheel, so I shot him too. I cycled th
e bolt and started taking out anyone I could see. When my internal magazine was empty, I started dropping single rounds into the action with each shot. Between shots, I plucked the next round from the box under the rifle. I didn’t have time to reload the magazine. My heart was beating at a normal rate, and I was focused on taking down targets.
Angel and Ashley opened up at that point. They ripped off several long strings in the beginning but settled down to appropriate six- to nine-round bursts after they calmed their nerves. Inexperienced gunners usually only fired a few rounds at a time or would hold the trigger down and melt the barrel in a minute without hitting much. They were doing well, and through the thermal sight, I could see men getting mowed down.
My line of riflemen and women were inexperienced, but holding their own. They were forced to fire at shadows and muzzle flashes. This was not an ideal fight, but so far, we still had the advantage. When the raiders tried to rush their positions, Angel shredded their ranks and sent them back into the ditch.
An attempt to run down the other side to the empty pond had me busy. Only one glowing form made it to the bottom of the pond before I took out the back of its head. My thermal scope was cheating, but that was how you won fights. You cheat and make your opponent lose.
We took fire from the raiders. Angel stopped but was up and firing again after about a minute. I took cover several times as rounds dug into the earth around me. I knew they couldn’t see me, and they were just firing into the dark. Ashley took fire and stopped. Her gun was silent. The raiders took courage at this and tried to rush her position. I switched to the M-14 and started hammering away at the moving forms. From my vantage point, I was smashing away at their flank, and most of my shots that hit found flesh instead of armor.
I dropped down and fished out a fresh magazine. I started taking fire from my immediate front. I had been seen. They were getting desperate at that point, and they tried to break out by concentrating their fire. This was going to get ugly. Angel’s gun went silent again, and it stayed down. Along the firing line, people were slowing down their rate of fire, or they simply stopped shooting and hugged the bottoms of their fighting holes.
Even well-trained troops had difficulty sustaining fire during real combat. Some soldiers would lose their nerve even when they were perfectly safe, while others squeezed triggers on rifles that were empty.
I rolled to the right and away from the protection of my little fighting position. Tracers were lighting up the ground in front of it and showing the enemy where to concentrate their fire. I aimed at the first flash I saw and fired twice. I repeated the process ten more times. I changed magazines and repeated it again.
A round slapped into the right side of my vest, sending waves of pain across my chest. I immediately rolled back into my foxhole and emptied the entire magazine into the ditch in front of me. I reloaded and listened. My team to the rear was cutting down fleeing forms. I stayed in position and waited for targets.
I switched back to my thermal scope and used it to hit anything before me that glowed brighter than the ground. Over time, these glowing points started to fade as the bodies cooled. When dawn finally arrived, we were able to survey the carnage. Some of the enemy had made it to within ten yards of my spot.
I checked on Angel and Ashley. They had both taken hits to the vest, and Angel had a nice hole in his helmet. Fortunately, the round had been deflected enough so he survived; however, he had a nasty head wound and would suffer a horrible headache. The three of us would be sore for days afterward. The vests distributed the force of the impact over a large area, but the effect was still painful. The guns were fine, they had just run out of ammunition.
We didn’t make it through the night without losing people. The team covering the rear didn’t have dug-in positions; they suffered two dead and three injured. The three injured were not in bad shape. Their wounds were minor. We didn’t have any medical gear so something like a chest wound would lead to death within a few hours.
We did have Danielle. She had volunteered to be with that team, and she was probably suicidal since she didn’t have any type of protection and had rushed into the fight with a rifle she had never zeroed. The fact that she was unhurt was a miracle in itself. I hoped we could keep her alive long enough for her to start healing.
Based on the number of bodies littering the road and nearby ditch, I figured we would be able to equip everyone with both a weapon and body armor. We also had several trucks that survived the firefight. The flipped truck was pushed back over with some rocking, and after replacing the battery and battery connectors, it ran. The passenger door would not open until we kicked it a few times, and the passenger mirror was toast. It didn’t have to pass state inspection, so screw it.
The dead trucks were pulled up to the barn, and one of Joseph’s crew started turning wrenches to see if we could salvage any of them. If nothing else, we could strip them for parts. We searched all of the dead bodies and the vehicles for information and found that some of the raiders had identification. Some were from small towns in the immediate area, but most were from the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. How they ended up running with a group of murdering thugs would become apparent when we interrogated the survivors. They were all wounded in some manner. The job of getting them to talk was left to me. I guess since I’d already tainted my soul, nobody else should carry that burden. Personally, I didn’t have a problem with it. I knew in the end I would be giving them peace.
I called Joseph and told him I would be busy for the next few hours and asked him to take care of getting the road cleaned up and the bodies underground. I did apologize for not dropping them where we would be digging the holes. He chuckled at that and added, “You always have something else to do when we have to bury the bodies. Maybe you can get that tractor running so we can use it to dig instead?”
“I’ll look at it again now that I can see what I’m doing. Can you drag it out of the barn so I can work on it without burning the barn down?”
“Sure thing. Maybe by the time you finish talking to our new “guests” we will have the bodies all stripped and ready for internment.”
“I’ll try to hurry, but you know how these things go. It can be like pulling teeth.”
He howled over the radio. “I knew you would use that punchline eventually! You are so very wrong.”
“Yup. Let me load these guys up and move them closer to where we intend to bury them, before I start.”
I found the four wounded bad guys being guarded by Kofi. I needed to get my kids together and talk about this morning and what we needed to do in the following days. For now, I needed to have a chat with these four.
Kofi watched the group as I helped each one get into the bed of the closest running truck. I wanted them to think that I was working under the guidelines of the Geneva Convention. Nope, I was working on my own plan. Tell me everything you know, and I will not cause too much pain.
I used the same wire trick on their wrists as I had done before. It crossed my mind to start carrying a roll of it. William had some of mine still wrapped around his neck and wrists. Darn, I thought, I’ll have to go get that once things settle down here. Focus. Keep up the calm act until it’s time to flip the switch.
I drove the flatbed truck up the road toward the farmhouse with Kofi riding in the back and keeping watch. I kept going until I reached an area with freshly turned soil. I helped each member off of the truck one at a time and placed them under shade trees far enough away from each other so they could not talk without me hearing them. I didn’t want Kofi to see this, but I needed someone to stand watch, so I asked him to go a little farther away while I got some information.
The three I selected first all had various leg wounds. One guy had a thigh with an extra joint. Ouch, shattered femur. He wasn’t running anywhere. The other two had less severe wounds, but they were not going to be running away. I didn’t bother to secure them to the trees.
Contestant number four had a nasty shoulder wound. He may
never be able to lift that arm above his head again. Even before the pulse, that amount of damage would require extensive surgeries and rehab. My health care system was a lot cheaper. Now, where were those pliers?
Clarence—at least that was the name he gave me—started off slowly, but he warmed up when I dug my index finger into his open wound. I took my time and made sure I had covered everything before moving on to the next. I made a mental checklist of things I needed before I started, and I got most of the answers I wanted. I made sure Clarence screamed nice and loud for the other three to hear. I wasn’t in a charitable mood after our “conversation.” I gagged him and tied him to the front bumper of the truck so the others could see I had let him live. For now.
“When I come back, be ready to start telling me the absolute truth, you piece of filth.” Clarence’s eyes went wide when he realized that we were not done yet. He struggled and squirmed a little at the wire like a turtle I had once snagged with a fishing line. I had let the turtle get away.
I casually walked over to the guy with the messed up femur and repeated the process right there in front of the other guys. When he said something that didn’t agree with Clarence, I hurt him. I made sure to tell him that he had a possibility at life if he was truthful with me. I did catch Clarence in several lies. He said he didn’t rape little boys, but my new buddy clarified that for me. Clarence didn’t consider teenagers to be little boys.
“Don’t worry, Clarence, I’m coming back over there to see you when I’m done here.” I called out to the bastard tied to my truck.
