The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact

by Raymond Dean White

  Viper’s reptilian eyes stopped Marcus dead.

  “Time?” Viper asked. His tone belayed the anger in his eyes. “They have a sniper at the choke point up Ute Pass who just killed two men with one shot. I’ve lost more than 300 men there and three-quarters of my tanks. My officers up there are reporting that no one will leave cover to advance, and if they would the terrain is too rough for any motorized vehicle larger than a dirt bike.

  “My infantry scouts on Rampart Range Road were ambushed and wiped out. These damned Freeholders are dropping trees and triggering rock slides everywhere, so my armored column can only go as fast as the road can be repaired. The end result is my enemy has time to mount a defense. So what should I do, Marcus? What brilliant suggestion can you offer to overcome physics?”

  Viper’s sarcasm churned Marcus’ stomach like rancid milk. Still, those dead eyes suggested extreme caution. “I wasn’t suggesting criticism, Sir. I was suggesting we cut our losses and pull back.”

  “Are you insane?” Viper asked. “Pulling back is a defeat. A defeat makes us look vulnerable and if we look vulnerable we are.”

  “There is a difference between a defeat and a strategic retreat.” Marcus said.

  Their command Bradley lurched to a halt almost throwing them from their seats. Marcus swiveled to face the command plot and pointed.

  “If we pull back to the Springs we can scout a new way to hit them. Send flanking attacks through Canyon City, Deckers and Jefferson. Hit them from all sides at once.”

  “Yes, yes, Marcus, let’s implement a plan that requires six months to enact so we can fight in winter, or better yet next spring.” Viper slammed his hand down onto the map.

  “You missed the point, Marcus. Any retreat makes me look fallible.” Viper shook his head. “It seems I’ve taught you nothing. You are still just a lawyer.” He opened the door and stepped out the rear of the Bradley where runners were waiting to deliver his orders. Marcus followed.

  “Tell Captain Silva to commit all the reserves to the Rampart Range attack. And have Ranger report to me. Time for us to see if their sniper is better than ours.”

  Marcus relayed the orders to runners, who started off.

  Viper laid a hand on Marcus’ shoulder. “When we reach the crest the terrain opens up and our armor will crush them,” he said, and now his eyes glowed. This was how it should be, risking all on one throw of the dice, like Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Alexander at Gaugamela. Didn’t his men realize Satan was with them? They could not fail.

  *

  The slug caught Emil low in his left side and spun him around as another bullet ruined his metal leg. A wounded cadet wearing a bloody bandage around his head looped Emil’s arm over his shoulders and half-carried the Gunny to better cover.

  “What’s your name, son?” Emil asked. His eyes weren’t working well.

  The boy tore Emil’s shirt open and said, “It’s me Sir, Lieutenant Dan Osaka.” He found a sulfa packet and started to tear it open when Emil’s hand stopped him.

  “Save it for someone it can help, Lieutenant. I’m done for. My insides are a mess.” He stiffened as pain shot through him. “Listen up. You’re in charge now and I’m telling you to run, you got that? No, orderly retreat--that requires ammo we don’t have--just plain cut and run like hell.”

  “But what about our wounded?”

  “Get me and the ones who can’t run up in those rocks,” he said, pointing to the site. “Then give us what ammo you have left. We’ll delay them while you get clear.”

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  “You can’t do anything else, son. It’s an order. You understand? You follow orders whether you like’em or not.”

  “Yes, sir. But--”

  “No buts. This is about living to fight another day.” He laid a hand on Dan Osaka’s forearm, gave it a squeeze, and said, “Now, get going.”

  *

  Emil Smolensky lay among the rocks with eight wounded, frightened cadets, none of whom wanted to die and all of whom realized they were. Faint sounds from downrange told them the enemy was moving into assault positions. Wide eyes, jerky breaths and too much fidgeting told Emil he needed to say something to calm them down but he’d never been in this position before.

  “Well men,” there were no wounded women in this group, “this is where I’m supposed to say something inspiring or sentimental like, it’s been an honor to serve with you. And it has.”

  He wiped a blood stained sleeve across his face collecting the worst of the sweat and said, “This isn’t the Alamo or Thermopylae but we’re in the same situation and whatever happens here, we will not be forgotten. So let’s take as many of these bastards with us as we can and let the fact that we did our duty with pride and courage be our epitaph.”

  He got a few nods and clinched jaws in return for his words and one boy gave him a salute which he returned since he was now technically a Colonel.

  The upside of all this, he thought, as enemy fire poured at them and he and his boys shot back, was that he’d soon be with Heather and Darla again.

  “Aim for the officers,” he yelled as he dropped a man giving orders with a headshot. Several others fell as the line of skirmishers advanced, but they kept coming.

  A round punched into his right shoulder and spun him away from his vantage point. He was too weak to reach his rifle so he pulled the pin on his last grenade and rolled onto it.

  A few minutes later all the shooting from his boys stopped and he heard enemy boots scraping against the rocks as they clambered over the surrounding boulders and slid down to his position. A black hand grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over, eyes growing big as they saw the spoon flip off the grenade.

  “Surprise,” Emil whispered with his last breath.

  *

  Jim Cantrell knew he was too late when he heard screams instead of gunfire. He’d ran as hard as he could with more than one hundred pounds of munitions on his back but the screams stopped him cold and sent a shiver down his spine. He advanced cautiously to the cover of a blue spruce and peeked though the boughs. A glance revealed a cadet spread-eagled on the ground, with more than a dozen of Viper’s men standing around, laughing. He couldn’t see what they were doing to the blood soaked boy but from his time as Viper’s slave he had a good idea.

  He clenched his teeth until his jaws ached. He’d lost so much--Jill and his infant son, Jack Quist and dozens of close friends, his dignity when living as a slave, and now Emil and several other cadets lay dead because he hadn’t arrived in time.

  Jim checked the magazine on his M16, then pulled a pin from one grenade and laid his pack on it. He figured after he opened up they’d find his pack and the surprise under it. He stuffed his jacket pockets with ammo and flinched as a screech from the cadet reached an impossibly high note. Show time, he thought, as he lobbed a grenade into their midst.

  The boy’s screams stopped with the blast.

  *

  Lieutenant Dan Osaka looked back over his shoulder as he followed the surviving troops down the forested canyon into the ruins of Woodland Park. He kept looking long after he heard the last of the gunshots echo down the pass and knew Viper’s hounds were after them again.

  Strange, he thought, just as he slid down a crumbling granite slope and darted for the trees on the far side of the washed out road. For a second there he was sure he’d heard a couple of explosions...and more gunfire.

  *

  Ellen Whitebear, mounted on her Palomino, led the Freeholder Militia down Bluebird Hill into Woodland Park and started preparing defensive positions. The base of the long, steep hill, where Highway 24 entered the city limits, was a natural choke point--the last good place to make a stand between the town and the Freeholds.

  “Greek,” she yelled to Iskos Theodoratus. “When the Caterpillar gets here I want breastworks there and over there.” She pointed the places out and added, “We need to channel them all into the gap so make sure you close off West Road and South Foley. Get Aaron
and Terrell to help.”

  “Ellen!”

  She turned and saw Mariko McKinley pull her lathered mount to a halt. “Got someone here with a report,” she said, as a tall, thin boy in air force blues slid off from behind her. He had a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his head and more blood on his uniform. “Lieutenant Dan Osaka, meet Ellen Whitebear, President of the Freeholds.”

  The boy drew himself to attention, saluted, and held it until Ellen figured out he needed a response.

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” she said and raised her brows at Mariko.

  “I picked him up on Baldwin Street, where it turns into Rampart Range Road,”

  Mariko said. “He and a dozen like him are all that’s left of Emil’s delaying action.”

  “Emil?” Ellen asked, though she already knew.

  “I’m afraid he’s gone ma’am,” the Lieutenant said, adding, “I doubt we have more than half a day before Viper’s forward elements get here...and his armor won’t be far behind.”

  Ellen nodded and turned back to Mariko. “We have to warn Randy and Michael they’re about to be flanked. Tell them to pull out and meet us here and...” She paused and took a deep breath. She hadn’t wanted it to come to this. Michael had risked enough already bottling up Ute Pass. But she looked around and saw her people digging foxholes, checking weapons, passing out food, water and ammo, and knew she had no choice. “...and tell Michael I need him to cut the head off the snake.”

  *

  “Cut the head off the snake?” Michael asked, just to be sure he’d heard correctly.

  “That’s what she said.” Mariko gave her husband, Randy, a hug, swung back up into the saddle and started up the pass at a trot.

  Michael peered though his sniper scope at the choke point where he’d stopped Viper’s army. It had been thirty minutes since he’d taken a shot and still none of Viper’s troops showed so much as a pinkie.

  “I could come with you,” Randy offered.

  “No, thanks.” Michael leaned his rifle against the lightning scarred trunk of a ponderosa pine and shook Randy’s hand.

  “Then what do you need?” Randy asked.

  “Some .308’s for the Remington and a box of .357’s for my magnum.” Michael held out his canteen. “A refill if you can spare it.”

  “No radio?”

  Michael thought that one over. The Motorola GMRS models the cadets used had been a godsend, but... “No, if I take one Ellen might have second thoughts and try to call me off.”

  Jacques and Denise Lachelle appeared from up canyon and Jacques said, “The charges are laid and the cadets are ready to pull out.”

  “Get them started,” Randy said. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Denise stepped forward and thrust a fresh set of ‘tree bark’ cammies toward Michael. “You should take a dip in Fountain creek and change in to these. Otherwise they will smell you coming, mon amie.”

  Michael grinned and accepted the clothes. Trust a woman to see the obvious before a man could. “Thank you, Denise.”

  “You thank me best with a bullet through that Viper’s head,” Denise said, her eyes flashing. “He is evil.”

  A fresh scrubbed Michael sighed as Randy McKinley faded out of sight through the trees. He was in that strange zone he knew he operated best in--by himself, behind enemy lines. He remembered reading Louis L’Amour westerns and agreeing when the writer’s character said that the advantage to being on your own was that you could shoot anything that moved and be certain it was an enemy. Of course there were disadvantages to going solo. No one to keep watch while you slept. No one to set up a crossfire ambush with. But not having to worry about anyone else getting hurt more than made up for that in his book.

  He knew he’d have to start the hunt soon but he wanted to send one more greeting to those down the pass. So he scanned the gap and waited, and tensed as a man appeared. The soldier, obviously shoved from cover, wind-milled his arms violently and lurched back behind the rocks. Michael let him go. A small fish wouldn’t send the right message.

  Five minutes passed--then ten, and Michael wondered if he wasn’t pushing his luck. Enemy snipers were surely posted by now, waiting for him to take a shot. He put the thought out of his head. They were either there, and he’d looked for them without finding them, or they weren’t.

  A man’s head edged from behind a large boulder on the northern edge of the gap. Michael centered his scope and waited. The man’s eyes moved slowly as he scanned for danger and Michael knew he was an officer. He took a breath, let half out and focused on the image in the scope while his index finger squeezed.

  The top of the man’s head blew off and Michael, catching a hint of movement from the corner of his eye, swung his rifle to the upper slopes. There. A slight motion in a Douglas fir. He sent a slug that way and was rewarded by seeing a rifle fall from the tree.

  Time to move. He slung his Model 7 Remington over his shoulder and vanished up the slope. It was full dark before Viper’s forces worked up the courage to push into the gap.

  *

  “Goddamn!” Ranger hissed as he smeared Neosporin on the bullet burn along his right arm. He’d been so careful getting into position. How the hell had he been spotted? He placed gauze pads on the wound and wrapped it, trying to concentrate. But he just couldn’t get that sniper out of his mind. Whoever that son of a bitch was, he was good. Ranger had never seen two rounds fired so fast at such widely separated targets--and both of them hits. If that bullet hadn’t glanced off his rifle stock...well, he was just glad it creased his arm instead of his skull.

  He examined his rifle closely. The scope was broken from the fall and the stock was gouged. Other than that, it looked okay. Good.

  He’d had a field day earlier on those cadets at the airstrip and he’d just framed this sniper is his scope when--wham!--he’d been hit.

  He climbed to his feet and stared up the valley. Two of the remaining tanks and at least a hundred men poured into the gap. In the darkness it was hard to tell how many, but to him it was a flood that would wipe those irritating Freeholders away.

  He took a step and the ground rose up and slapped him. Roaring filled his ears and pain flooded his mouth as the ground jolted so hard he bit his tongue. Choking dust filled the air and he couldn’t see through watery eyes, so he lay still.

  As the air cleared, the light of a quarter moon revealed broken trees and bloodstained rock. The gap was closed.

  Ranger spit blood as he pulled himself up and glared at the enemy hills. He’d get another chance at the bastard. That’s all he wanted.

  *

  Michael stowed the detonator in his pack, satisfied he’d closed Ute pass, at least for now. He only had a few sticks of dynamite left, but then, how much would it take to kill a snake?

  Chapter 35: The Fight at Woodland Park

  “What the hell are we doing?” Dikeme whispered. “We should not be here.” She and Otha were hidden in a midden heap of pine needle and cone debris left by generations of squirrels. The firefight they were hiding from was no more than a quarter mile away.

  “This is the largest organized group of black people we’ve seen since leaving New York,” Otha said. “I was hoping we could meet with them and find out what’s going on?”

  “You didn’t trust the mountain man?”

  “Earl? He seemed okay, but I don’t trust anyone but you. And that crapola he spouted about cannibal blacks enslaving everyone was a bit hard to swallow. I mean, how could a gang of blacks have taken over Denver? What happened to all the whites and Hispanics?”

  “I would not presume to guess, Otha, but what we have seen so far indicates Earl was being truthful.” Dikeme’s British accent became more pronounced in moments of stress.

  “So you think those work gangs we saw clearing obstructions and doing road work were slaves?” Otha had a hard time believing his fellow blacks were slavers. His education hadn’t included the history of the slave trade in Africa.

  “Again, I d
o not know, but they certainly were not well fed and what I saw tells me this lot is divided along racial lines. Everyone who had a gun was black and almost everyone on the work details was white or Hispanic.” She held up her hand, forestalling his objection. “The black population here is clearly in control and judging from the fighting they did not attain that power peacefully.”

  “That doesn’t make them the bad guys, here...or prove that they’re cannibals,” Otha said, more forcefully than he intended.

  Dikeme cocked her head at him and said, “You are, of course, correct.” In a tone that said, you are, of course, wrong.

  Otha chose wisdom over valor and said nothing. He raised his binoculars and watched the army across the canyon. The fighting faded away over a ridge out of earshot and the men he was spying on began moving the logistics train up the road--distant curses mingled with roaring engines and at least one idiot grinding a clutch.

  When the last of the rear guard disappeared among the charred tree trunks and scorched boulders they climbed out of the pine needles and Otha said, “I think we should follow them.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  They jerked with surprise then spun toward him, their hands reaching for their guns.

  “Relax,” the stranger said. He held out empty hands as proof he meant no harm.

  Otha eyed him, warily. On the short side, maybe five feet ten, brown hair and beard, the guy looked fit and he’d already shown he was woods wise.

  “Who are you?” Otha asked.

  “And where do you get off scaring the life out of us like that,” Dikeme added.

  “My name is Michael Whitebear and I’m sorry I startled you, but it’s not every day I hear a pile of pine needles whispering. I heard you mention Earl, so I assume you’ve met Earl Baker and his family. And I could tell by what you said you weren’t with Viper’s army, so I decided to say howdy.”