by David Nees
The guard who was clearly more intelligent said, “Listen, we won’t say anything. You don’t have to kill us. That ain’t right and you know it.”
“Funny, you talking about what’s right,” Tommy said. He looked at the two hapless men. They stared back. Killing them would be the simplest solution. He could imagine Sergeant Gibbs making that call. He couldn’t imagine Lieutenant Cameron making it. Cameron would say they were called to a higher standard. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to just shoot them or slit their throats.”
Hank looked at the guards. “You’re right. I guess it’s your lucky day,” he said to them.
Tommy cut the shirts off the men and tore them in half. He stuffed wads of fabric into the guards’ mouths and tied the other strips around their heads to hold the gags in place. “That’ll keep them quiet ‘till someone comes in the morning. Gives us a little more time.”
With that, they left. Tommy locked the door behind them and then dropped the warehouse keys down a storm grating. Hammond started the van and they drove away through the dark city.
Chapter 45
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E arly the next morning, before the sun came over the eastern ridges, Catherine and Bird woke up to the sound of gunfire. It was far off, fading in and out in the slight morning breeze. They were instantly awake.
“The bridge,” Bird said. “They attacking there. Maybe we should go help.”
“That would take too long,” Catherine said. “By the time we got there it would be all over.” She paused. “And I don’t think we should abandon our post. They could be attacking from both directions.”
As she was speaking, they both heard the sound of engines above them. About a minute later, the dark, rectangular shape of a pickup appeared against the sky.
“There, at the top of the ridge,” she called out.
Bird grunted. Two other silhouettes came into view, one after the other. Catherine and Bird took up prone positions on the ground. They put their blankets under their rifles to give them a firm support.
After a moment, they were able to see the three pickup trucks quite clearly. They moved downward from the pass for twenty yards, angling to the left, and disappeared into the trees. Now the two teenagers would have to wait for them to appear at the next switchback where it showed like an exposed elbow.
The first shot would be a long one, about three hundred and fifty yards. The switchback after that would bring the road back closer to them, within two hundred yards. Their fallback shooting positions below maintained a range of one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards.
“This is a long shot. Are you good with that?” Catherine asked.
“I’ll figure it out. Make sure you get some good first rounds in,” Bird said, “With that fancy rifle and all.”
Catherine smiled to herself. Just shooting targets, that’s what it is. Somehow this seemed easier than the desperate fight at the bridge.
It had taken some time, but Leo had finally found the old road. They lost a couple of hours dismantling a barrier blocking the entrance. Steel posts had been planted in the ground to block vehicular access to the old track and large boulders prevented going around the obstruction.
The road beyond had been left alone to return to nature, but here in the mountains growth was slow. Very little vegetation had grown on the rocky bed of the road. It was passable, but the journey up was slow. On two occasions they had to use the four-wheel-drive truck to pull the other pickups up over some boulders that had pushed up through the bed of the road.
Leo started fuming. He had wanted to be down in the valley by dawn. Now the day would find him at the top, just starting down. He would be late to join up with the fake assault going on at the bridge. He had to get down there before the defenders figured out the main attack wasn’t coming at the bridge. When they did, they would know where to look next. They knew the valley, and his element of surprise would be gone.
Finally he saw the top of the pass ahead. There was enough visibility that Leo stopped the group just short of the ridge and ordered all the headlights turned off. In the dim predawn light the trucks finally crested the ridge and started down the valley side.
Leo noted with satisfaction that they would be under tree cover for most of the way. And the road seemed more passable on this side of the slope, maybe because they were now going downhill. Things were looking up.
Catherine and Bird waited for the trucks to emerge at the second switchback. They had their rifles trained on that spot. Catherine had estimated the distance yesterday when they had set up their position. Now her scope was dialed in. There was barely any breeze. She was ready.
“You take the first shot,” Bird said. “You probably more accurate than me at this distance.”
Shoot the lead driver to stop the truck. It was what Jason had told her. In their fights with the gangs she had seen it in action twice. She repeated it to herself as she emptied her mind of everything but the switchback she saw in her scope.
There was motion, and then the lead truck was squared to her, in the middle of the corner, the windshield in her sights. Catherine squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s loud crack was accompanied by a sharp kick against her shoulder. A huge hole appeared in the windshield. She heard someone cry out, but she didn’t think that she had hit any of the three dim shapes behind the glass squarely. Bird now fired, smashing in the top left corner of the windshield. The sound startled Catherine. She quickly refocused and fired again, and this time the glass blew in immediately in front of the driver. She saw his torso flung backward and then falling forward over the steering wheel. The truck straightened out in the middle of the turn and rolled downslope to bang into a boulder on the edge of the road. A man was already out, dashing for the cover of some boulders. He must have jumped out of the passenger side with the first shots.
Bird had switched his aim to the trucks that followed. His initial shots were off target, but he quickly zeroed them in with deadly effect. Another man was scrambling out of the lead truck where it had come to rest. Catherine shot him. The first man had already made it to the rocks and cover. The other trucks had stopped. Men were scattering to the sides of the road or getting behind the pickups.
Gunfire was beginning to come from the caravan, but it was unfocused. The raiders didn’t know where she and Bird were.
Yet.
Leo looked out from behind the rocks. He had thrown himself out of the truck as soon as the first shot had torn through the cab. He tried to pinpoint where the shots were coming from but could only see woods.
He turned and shouted to the men to get the machine guns from the backs of the pickups. Lucky they weren’t in my truck, he thought. One of his men opened the tailgate of the second truck and crawled into the bed. Lying flat on his stomach to stay out of sight of the snipers, he pulled the M2 back to the tailgate. The gun crashed onto the dirt road, the man slipping down beside it. It was a heavy gun, Leo knew, weighing one hundred and twenty pounds with its tripod. The man stopped at the back of the truck, clearly not wanting to risk dragging the gun across the open ground to the cover of the rocks and trees. Leo approved. If they lost that gun in the open, they’d die one by one trying to get to it.
Others had retrieved the M60s, which were considerably lighter. The last of his men scrambled to cover along the side of the road.
“Look for the muzzle flash when they fire,” Leo yelled. “Don’t waste shots if you don’t know what you’re shooting at.”
They were on the edge of a steep, wooded ravine carved by runoff from the ridge. The ravine had forced the road to turn away, the builders snaking their way up the ridge, always seeking the easier path. Leo studied the slope across from the switchback. Somewhere on the other side of the ravine, a couple of hundred yards away, was the sniper…or snipers. He couldn’t tell how many there were. Suddenly he saw a flash, then a second, followed by the reports. The granite knob near the upper part of the opposite ridge, that’s whe
re they were. It looked like two separate shooters.
“There!” Leo shouted out to the others, pointing to the ridge. One of the men stood up to get a better look and was dropped by a bullet. Leo swore. He couldn’t afford to lose many men here. “Get that M2 going. Light up that rock,” he yelled.
“Cover me,” another man shouted back. His companions fired a fusillade of shots at the outcropping. The man grabbed the M2 and staggered across to some rocks near Leo, half carrying, half dragging the heavy machine gun.
Leo liked the M2. It fired a .50 caliber round, a massively lethal projectile, capable of penetrating an engine block. It could chew up trees, rocks, and concrete walls. Its rate of fire was slower than the M60, but the M60 only fired a 7.62 mm round, and the M2’s deeper sound evidenced the enormous firepower being sent downrange.
The man wrestled the heavy machine gun around. A bullet screamed off the boulder just above his head. He began to fire. The M2’s rounds peppered the outcropping, shattering the rocks, tearing though the brush. There were no more shots from the ridge. Whoever was up there had no choice but to keep their heads down. Leo jumped up and shouted, “Everyone back in the trucks! Get them round the bend and back in the trees!” He ran to the lead truck, threw open the driver’s door, and dragged the dead man out. Then he jumped in, reversed the truck, and sped around the corner. In his rearview mirror he made out the second truck in line jolting forward and stopping to pick up the man with the M2. Then he was away, with the other two trucks following.
Chapter 46
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T he stream of bullets blasted the granite, sending shards flying in all directions. Catherine and Bird were peppered by the fragments. They shrank back from the violence, putting their head down to protect their eyes.
When the firing stopped they looked at each other. Both had blood running down their faces and arms.
“Are you okay?” Catherine asked.
Bird nodded. “You?”
“Yeah.” She wiped her face with her sleeve, then she looked at the sleeve and took out a scarf and tied it across her forehead to keep any blood from running into her eyes. “They got around the corner. We’ll have to hit them at the next switchback.”
“Should we move position?” Bird asked.
“Not sure. They know where we are, but this is a good shooting spot. Maybe we try one more round here, then move. We’ve got two more positions.”
Before the next switchback Leo stopped the trucks, well back in the cover of the trees. He had his men set up a mortar and sent one to the edge of the trees to spot for them.
They didn’t know how to aim it. There hadn’t been a chance to train out of earshot of the city. Joe hadn’t wanted the army to learn what he had.
“Aim it the best you can and then adjust. The spotter will call out where you hit.”
“How we get over the trees?” one of the men asked.
Leo pointed. “Set up across the road to give you some clearance. Adjust the angle as you go.” They quickly moved the mortar.
After it was reset, one of the men manning the gun asked, “Okay, I got an angle. I just drop the thing in?”
“That’s it. Then get back from it,” Leo said.
The first round slid down the tube. There was an explosive whomp as it fired. Everyone flinched. A few men put their hands over their ears. A few seconds later the sound of an explosion shook the air.
“You’re too high, it’s hitting way down the slope,” shouted the spotter.
The subsequent rounds began to zero in on the rock outcropping.
“We got to go,” Bird yelled. They were pressed flat to the ground. They had heard the mortar firing and had watched the explosions, each one further up the slope, closing in on the outcropping. Catherine had thought at first that the mortar bombs were not well aimed and would not be a real danger, but now the rounds were getting close to their position.
When another blast hit upslope and to their left, spewing dirt and chunks of rock over them, they jumped up and dashed back away from the ravine. They ran through the woods, slipping and sliding on the incline, to get some distance between themselves and the mortar explosions. Once they were back far enough from the edge, they worked their way down to the second shooting position.
Both were dripping with sweat when they arrived. Catherine panted, “They’ll either figure they knocked us out or scared us off after we don’t return fire.”
“We got nothin’ to shoot at with ‘em back in the woods. Gotta wait till they come out in the open.”
“Here, let me tie something around your head,” Catherine said. “You don’t want blood getting in your eyes.” She took out her knife and cut off some of Bird’s sleeve and wrapped it around his head. Then she straightened her scarf on her forehead. Bird watched her.
“That’s a mean gun they got,” he said at last.
“It sounds like an M2. A .50 caliber machine gun. We have one we captured from the bridge battle.”
“Sure tears things up. We need to take it out.”
“If we can.”
Bird looked across to the switchback. “So we wait. We closer now.”
“Yeah,” Catherine replied. She picked up the M110 and checked her sights.
After seven rounds, Leo called for a halt. The mortar had scored three hits to the shoulder of exposed granite across the ravine. The spotter reported no sign of activity. If the shooters had stayed in the shelter of the rocks, they had probably been killed or they had run off back into the forest.
Still, he wanted to be careful. The other switchbacks along the road below would probably be just as exposed. But now he was even more late, and frustrated. He needed to get down off this old road and onto the paved section.
He went to his captain. “When we get to the next switchback we’ll stop before we get out of the tree cover. I want the machine guns out, the M2 and the two M60s. You and three others go forward to the switchback. Set up those machine guns. Then we’ll move. You see any firing, you pin them down and we’ll get the trucks around the bend. You can hike down through the woods to meet us.”
Catherine and Bird saw the militia moving up, two on each side of the road. The men were carefully stepping from trunk to trunk, never quite exposed enough for a sure shot. After a moment of watching for more, Catherine decided that there were only three or four coming on foot. They stopped short of the open corner and dropped out of view.
“Trucks be coming,” Bird said.
“They’ll try to pin us down. We’ll have to make our shots count.”
“We can move around more here,” Bird said. He pointed to the trees above and below their position. “Maybe we spread out. They can’t get at us so easy.”
The two separated. Catherine crawled uphill for ten yards and found a good tree to lie behind. Bird headed down the slope and lay down behind some mountain laurel that would screen him from view.
Nothing moved for perhaps a minute and a half. Keeping very low, Catherine slowly adjusted the position of her M110.
Then there was a sudden roar, engines accelerating hard. As the trucks reached the exposed switchback, Catherine opened fire. She put five quick rounds into the cab of the lead truck, hitting the driver in the chest and head. The passenger jumped out and dove for some rocks at the side of the roadbed. Bird fired below her, and Catherine saw the second truck’s windshield shatter and its passenger get flung against the door by the bullet. As the second truck slewed around the corner, Bird’s .30-06 boomed again and one of the men crouched in the bed of the truck fell on his side into a splash of brains and blood from his own head. The militia around him were peering wildly over the side of the truck bed, looking for the shooters. They were thrown sideways as the truck jerked to a stop, blocked by the immobilized lead truck. Behind it the third truck could do nothing but stop as well. But now the gunners in the trees had had time to find Catherine and Bird.
“There, further down the slope!” someone shou
ted.
“Shoot, shoot!” came a panicked reply.
The thunder of the M2 began, and dirt and rocks sprayed in a line up toward Catherine. Two other machine guns joined it. She threw herself back behind the tree trunk.
The machine guns swept the area. It seemed that Catherine and Bird hadn’t been pinpointed exactly, but the gunners were sweeping back and forth, giving them only an instant now and then to snap off return shots before they had to duck and cover. There wasn’t time to aim. Catherine had to rely on a quick look for each shot.
Then she heard the thump of the mortar firing. Oh no! She couldn’t see the mortar. The shell exploded down the slope between her and the trucks, well short. Ten seconds later came another thump, and the explosion was back behind her. Catherine realized that they were bracketed. The next round would land very close.
“Bird, watch out,” she yelled over the din of the firing and flattened herself on the ground behind the tree.
The next explosion came, loud, behind them, closer to Bird. Catherine heard a cry of pain. She crawled quickly backward, away from the edge, and scrambled down the slope to find Bird. He was lying behind the laurel bushes clutching his side. A red stain was spreading across the bottom of his shirt, and blood was squeezing out between his fingers.
“You’re hurt,” she exclaimed.
Bird looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t get low enough.”
They heard the mortar fire again. Catherine spread herself over Bird as they waited for the impact. It hit uphill from them. Shrapnel screamed over their heads.
“We have to get out of here,” Catherine shouted, “Away from the ridge.”
“Not sure I can move.”
