by Jessy Cruise
"You're ready to rock," he said, slapping the side of the helicopter.
"Let's get back up there then," Skip told his crew. "Time's a wasting."
Sherrie climbed back into her spot, giving a little shudder as she passed through the doorway that she had sworn a little more than an hour ago that she would never pass through again as long as she lived. She took her accustomed spot and grabbed tightly onto the bungee cords that held the rope coil in place. She made the sign of the cross once more and then put on her headset.
Jack climbed back in the pilot's seat, strapping himself into place and putting on his own headset. He seemed a little more confident in himself as he made a check outside to make sure everyone had cleared the area. He turned to Skip who gave him a nod and a moment later he throttled up and took off. He found the handling of the machine to be noticeably different now that the doors had been removed and with the extra weight and drag of the napalm tank, but he was able to adjust to it very quickly.
Following Skip's previous examples, he turned towards the canyon and climbed up to altitude over there, rising up to 6000 feet once again. He then turned back to the north, towards the battle area. Skip leaned forward as far as he could as they approached at 50 knots and finally slowed up to a hover. He saw that the militia was now formed up behind their hills and apparently ready to make their advance at any time. He turned the knob on the radio set in front of him to the citizen's band frequency and tuned in channel 24, which was the command frequency of the militia.
Stu was giving some last minute instructions on the coming attack to his squad leaders when the radio on his belt suddenly began to squawk with an unfamiliar voice. The squad leaders, who all had their radios set to the same frequency, heard it as well. Stu and everyone else listened in disbelief as they processed just what was being said.
"This is the commander of the Garden Hill forces," said a male voice, "calling the commander of the Placer County Militia. Do you copy me? Please reply on this channel."
Stu took his radio from his belt and looked at it for a moment, making no move to reply. Around him his men became silent, watching and listening to this new development, wondering just what it meant. The message came again, in the exact same words, and then once more.
"Are you going to answer them?" Stinson asked, looking at Stu.
"It's got to be some sort of trick," Stu said, feeling fearful for no good reason.
"Hello down there," the voice said from the radio. "Anybody home? I know you can hear me. We've been monitoring your channel ever since the second day of your march. Why don't we talk? Maybe we can come to some arrangement that will prevent needless deaths. It's worth a shot, isn't it?"
The voice sounded very calm, very reasonable, but unmistakably sure of itself. Stu did not want to answer it.
"Maybe they want to surrender," someone suggested. He wasn't taken very seriously.
"Come on," the voice chided now, as Stu continued to stand there, not doing anything. "You're all down there gathering up to attack us again. Obviously you're not cowards. Surely you're not afraid to talk to me, are you?"
It was this ancient, schoolyard challenge that forced Stu's hand. Nobody called him a coward. He keyed up his radio. "This is the commander of the Placer County Militia forces," he said into it. "Who am I talking to? Is this the one they call Skip?" Stu figured that using the man's name would instill an advantage. He shortly found out that the name-dropping worked in both directions.
"I'm glad you decided to talk," the voice said. "Yes, this is Skip Adams, commander of the Garden Hill forces. It would seem that you've been talking to Jessica Blakely. We heard that she made it to your town. And who am I addressing? Is this Bracken? I was told that Bracken was in charge of the group that would be making the march."
Stu started a little at these words. How the hell had Adams known about Bracken? He fought to keep his voice calm and keyed the microphone again. "This is Lieutenant Covington," he said, "acting commander. Captain Bracken was killed during one of your night runs on us during the march. Who have you been talking to?"
"We have our sources," Adams said mysteriously. "Covington huh? Would your first name be Stu? I've heard a few tales about you myself, particularly the group that you were part of prior to being absorbed into the militia."
"Bracken's bitches," Stinson said upon hearing this. "Jean and Anna must've made it here. That's how they knew we were coming!"
"Don't be fucking stupid," Stu barked. "There's no way those two bitches made it all the way here. They must have a spy or something in the town. Maybe that Jessica bitch has a radio transmitter or something."
Stinson looked at him as if he were an idiot, not bothering to shield the expression. A radio transmitter? Did he really believe that? Was it that hard for him to accept the obvious, that Jean and Anna had successfully escaped the town and made it here intact?
Stu, somewhat shaken by the exchange, decided to change the subject, to try to regain the advantage in the conversation. He keyed up the microphone again. "I believe," he said, "that you made the acquaintance of some of my men back in the woods a few days after the comet. That you killed them and took their weapons."
"I prevented them from raping a young girl and killing her brother," Adams replied. "But that's neither here nor there. The past is the past and the future is now. Why don't we talk about your future, Mr. Covington?"
"Why don't we?" Stu agreed. "As you can see, we're preparing to launch another attack. Are you offering to surrender? If so, it will have to be unconditional before we accept it."
Adams was laughing as he came back on the air - actually laughing. "You are very amusing, Mr. Covington," he said, still chuckling a little. "It's been a while since I've had a good laugh. I thank you for that. Now, let's get serious, shall we? What I am offering you is the chance to back out of this attack and return to your town with your lives intact. Here are the terms we are offering. You drop your rifles and head back to the interstate. You may take your pistols for self-protection on the march back home. If you do this right now and start heading back to Auburn, we will not harass you in any way on your return. We will even leave a supply of canned food along the highway to sustain you if you are short of that staple. If you persist in this attack, you will fail miserably and, when you finally give up, we will hound the survivors as you try to make your way home. We will do this night and day, from the ground and from the air until every last one of you is dead. That's the offer. Give up now and leave in peace, or try to push forward and be slaughtered."
The men all tittered nervously as they heard this. More than one of them expressed the idea that it sounded quite reasonable to them. Stu barked at them to shut the fuck up. They did so only reluctantly. Once he had quiet again, he keyed up. "Nice try, Adams," he said. "I understand that you're a military man and a former pig. You've probably bluffed a thousand dumb thugs with your little speeches in the past. I, however, do not bluff so easily. Your trenches were a very effective defense of your town and I must commend you. They were well constructed and they almost did the job that they were meant to do. Almost. But, as you can see, we have pushed your bitches out of them. I know and you know that there is nothing stopping us from marching to your wall and inside your town now. You might be able to put your bitches in front of us to snipe at us from time to time, but they will not be able to stand up in the face of my highly trained troops."
The men, despite their cynicism, their fatigue, and their defeatist attitude, actually responded to this speech. There were several cheers at Stu's words, several hands raised in clenched fists. Apparently there was a little pride left in there somewhere.
"I hate to tell you this, Covington," Adams' voice replied, "but you are wrong. I won't tell you that I don't bluff, because I do, but in this circumstance, I am not. I'm going to break a little rule of military logic now in the interests of wrapping up this war between us up. Ordinarily, you never let your enemy know what your defenses are like, but in this ca
se, I'm going to make an exception. As you may have guessed by now, two of your women made their way from Auburn to our town. Jean and Anna are their names."
"Goddammit, I told you!" Stinson said angrily. "Those fucking bitches made it here!"
"He's bluffing," Stu said, although not as self-assuredly as before.
"Bluffing?" Stinson asked, taking a step forward. "How the fuck could he be bluffing? He knows their names!"
"We probably said them on the radio at some point," Stu replied. "They've been monitoring us."
"Oh for Christ's sake," Stinson said, shaking his head in disgust.
"These two women," Adams' voice continued, "have told us very much about your town. You were dumb enough to discuss your attack plans in front of them and they provided us with considerable intelligence. We knew you were planning to come at us with four hundred men divided into three companies of one hundred twenty apiece and a reserve platoon of forty. We knew this long before you even left the town. The moment we found out that an attack of that size was imminent, we began to prepare for it. Since that day we have had work crews out in the hills around town digging trenches and fortifying them with sandbags. We have over a hundred of them total, on all sides of the town, layered all the way from the first line you encountered to the wall. Inside of the wall we have more trenches as well as mine fields surrounding our community center. You see Stu, we were prepared to fight off all four hundred of you, perhaps minus a few from our hit and run attacks. You have what? Maybe sixty men there that are capable of fighting? Your army is now a sad joke. We have air superiority, napalm, and the ability to shift our forces into prepared positions in your path no Micker what path you decide to take. You cannot defeat us. Further advances will only lead to more death, mostly on your side."
The men began to titter again as they listened to him. Could it be true? Could what this man was saying possibly be the truth? Did they really have more trenches in front of them, enough so that no Micker where they decided to attack from, they would have to fight through prepared positions?
"He's bluffing!" Stu yelled, hearing the doubtful mutters, seeing the doubtful faces. "Don't you see what he's doing? He's trying to psych you out! He knows they don't have a chance against us so he's trying to get us to give up."
"What if he's not bluffing?" someone asked. Choruses of agreement met this question.
"There is no way in hell that they have more than one set of trenches!" Stu assured them. "It's impossible! There's no way those bitches could have dug that many! No fucking way!"
"Are you still there, Stu?" Adams asked. "Do the smart thing and put down your arms. There's no reason for anyone else to die. If you head back today and follow the highway, you can be back home in a little more than a week. You can sleep tonight knowing that no one is going to attack you. Wouldn't that feel nice? To get a full night's sleep?"
"Thanks, but no thanks," Stu said toughly into the radio. "But I'll counter your offer with my original one. If you unconditionally surrender, we won't kill anyone else. Take it or leave it."
"I guess we'll have to leave it then," Adams told him, a tinge of regret in his tone. "Apparently you are not able to see reality. For those of you in the militia that are listening in to this conversation, please keep in mind that you have a choice as well. If you choose to follow the man you're following and go forth with this attack, you will die. Once you move forward from that line, the offer is off the table. We will throw you back and then pursue you until you are all dead. We've already killed more than three hundred of you. Don't think for a moment that we will hesitate to kill the rest. After all, you came here with the intent of doing harm to us, of stealing from us. It's not too late to live. If you move forward, it will be."
Adams said no more. The men, having heard his final message, forgot all about the brief flash of patriotism that they'd shown. It was clear that most of them believed what they had heard. Stu knew that he was edging into a very precarious position. "Listen, you guys," he said to them, projecting his voice so that everyone could hear him. "He's bluffing us. How many times do I have to tell you that? Think about what he's saying for a minute. If he really had the trenches and the firepower that he's boasting about, why would he have told us about them? Why? Why wouldn't he just let us come on and then slaughter us? That is what makes the most sense militarily. If he's telling the truth, he has absolutely nothing to gain by letting us off the hook. Nothing! The only thing that makes sense is that he's trying to convince us to surrender at the last moment to avoid the capture that he knows is otherwise imminent!"
The men looked at each other, turning these words over in their heads. They did not want to be convinced to go forward, that was obvious. But at the same time, the logic that Stu was laying down was very compelling. When they thought about it, it was hard to come up with a logical reason for Adams to reveal their true defenses to them. It really didn't make sense on any level that they could see. The thought that Adams might be trying to save a few of his own troops lives simply didn't cross their minds.
Stu sensed a turning of opinion and pushed his meager advantage to the hilt. "He's trying to get us to turn away at the last minute," he told his troops. "He's trying to trick us into giving up our victory now that it's finally in our grasp! We've been through hell, all of us, getting to this point! We've lost friends every step of the way, including our leaders. Are we really going to give up now? If we push forward, we'll have that town in our possession in less than an hour! Less than an hour! Think about that. We could be drinking their booze and fucking those bitches in less than an hour. Instead of marching back in defeat, we could be sinking into some warm pussy! We could be eating warm food! Most important of all, we could be slicing the dicks off of the men who did this to us and sticking them up their asses!"
It was this last, the promise of rape and murder, that finally convinced them. Though opinion was far from unanimous, favor turned just enough in favor of Stu's plan to hold the cohesion of the group together for a little while longer. When Stu yelled for them to form up a minute later, they obeyed him.
Skip saw them forming up into attack groups below. He shook his head slowly at their stupidity. He had really thought that his plan was going to work.
"What now?" Jack asked, sparing a glance down below. He was really starting to get comfortable behind the controls.
"I guess we fight again," Skip sighed. He keyed up the CB channel one more time. "You're making a big mistake, Stu," he warned.
Stu's reply was arrogant. "I'll be seeing you soon, Adams," he told him. "You'll have to land some time."
Skip changed the frequency back to the VHF channel and called up Mick and the others. "It didn't work," he told them. "They'll be moving in any minute now. Get ready."
First Mick, then Paula, and finally Christine advised that they were more than ready.
"All right, everyone," Stu said over the command frequency. "Let's move out. Keep yourselves spread and we'll advance to contact. You know the drill."
They knew the drill all right. One by one the men moved forward, hands gripping rifles, boots slogging through mud, eyes peering outward, alert for the first sign of gunfire. Stu and Stinson lingered near the rear, waiting for all of the men to form a wall between themselves and the enemy positions. Then they too moved out.
Stinson gripped his rifle nervously, his finger playing around the trigger guard. He didn't like this. He didn't like this one bit.
"They're moving in," Skip's voice said over the VHF channel. "Same formation as before. They're in a line stretching out about 150 yards laterally. They plan to advance to contact and then probably try another flanking maneuver with the shoot and cover tactic."
Mick was looking over the sight of his own weapon, peering outward into the landscape in search of the enemy. As of yet, he saw nothing. He took his hand off the rifle long enough to key up his radio. "I copy, Skip," he said. "How's their orientation?"
"The center of the group is heading right f
or Paula's position," Skip answered. "Mick, your group and Christine's will be close enough to give them a hell of a crossfire once they're in range. Paula, did you copy you'll have first contact."
"I copy," she said. She was near the center of her troops, looking through the opening in the sandbags. She couldn't see them yet either. "We'll open up at three hundred yards, just like before."
"How about we change that order just a little bit," Skip said. "Don't open up at three hundred this time. Let them come in to two hundred first."
Paula wasn't sure if she had heard him right. "What did you say?" she asked. "Confirming you want us to let them close to two hundred yards before we fire?"
"You got it," he said. "That way, you'll be able to hit them with all of your guns at once. They'll also be in range of Mick and Christine that way. The effect upon them should be quite overwhelming."
"Skip," Mick cut in, not liking the sound of that at all, "are you sure that's a good idea? Two hundred yards is awfully close."
"I know," Skip said. "But don't worry. They have no reserve left to send in in front of them. Trust me on this. You'll be safe."
It was another five minutes before Paula's group spotted the first of them moving in. Within a minute, they had all of them. Within another minute, all three platoons in their trenches had the enemy in sight. The initial range was close to 400 yards. They were moving a little slower than they had on their previous attacks, seeming to step carefully now instead of jogging. The command to hold fire was passed up and down the ranks one more time for clarity.
Paula chewed a large wad of gum nervously as she sighted in on the closer of the men. She breathed deeply and slowly, feeling the familiar sensation of calm that overtook her whenever combat was imminent. Around her, many of her troops were doing the same.
The group of militia passed over the 300-yard mark and kept coming. No one fired but everyone tensed up. They came closer and closer, passing 250 yards, and still they held their fire.
