Mountain War: Defending Their Home (Mountain Man Book 4)

by Nathan Jones

  That was why the moment Brandon spotted a place for the ATVs to go off-road, he directed Hank to turn off and stop for a moment. The spot was close to ideal, allowing them to drive north into a valley. Even better, recent rain and a stream going up the valley had the ground soft and muddy practically right up to the road itself; Sangue would have to be blind to miss the vehicles' tracks heading up into the mountains.

  After a brief discussion with the others, all of whom agreed with his reasoning, they roared up the valley leaving a trail of muddy tire furrows behind them. Hank whooped a couple times as he was forced to do some crazy driving to avoid getting stuck, while even above the roar of engines, rush of wind, and crunch of tires Brandon could hear Pine cursing.

  Finally, they got as far as they could, or at least what everyone agreed was a plausible spot to abandon the mules, and hastily piled out. Brandon and the others who'd be luring Sangue northward took their weapons, camping gear, and enough food for a week, the limit for how long he thought it would take to get back to Camptown after they were done running around north of Highway 29.

  Everything else they packed up for the others to be cached, along with all the supplies and gear the vehicles had been carrying in their cargo spaces. Then they stripped the mules of batteries, lightbulbs, wiring, rearview mirrors, a few 5-gallon cans of diesel, and anything else they thought was worth taking.

  While they were doing that, Pine spent a few minutes scratching his head about how best to destroy the vehicles so they'd be useless to their enemies. None of them were sure the diesel would burn, or at least not like gasoline, which dashed the exciting idea of just lighting the fuel tanks and watching the ATVs explode.

  Eventually, they settled on using the sledgehammers and rock chisels they'd brought with them, in case they had a chance to possibly drop a cliff down on Highway 29, to destroy the rest. Those tools hadn't been all that useful for setting up the rockslide, but they certainly made up for that now; they also gave the volunteers a chance to work out some of their adrenaline, punching holes in all the engine parts and smashing them and the axles into mangled lumps of scrap metal.

  Finally, having done as much as Brandon could think to do, he shook hands with Stewart and the other two townspeople, leaving them to cache the significant pile of stuff they'd taken from the enemy and haul the most valuable of it home.

  Then he and the other four men got to work leaving an obvious but not suspicious trail north up into the mountains. “I figure we should keep this up until nightfall,” Andy suggested. “Then we can find some nice rocky slope or stream where we make the trail disappear, and we sneak back south and start for home.”

  Seemed like a good plan. Brandon nodded. “Let's do it.”

  Chapter Seven

  Even Odds

  The broad valley looked like the worst possible place for an ambush, which was why it was one of the most ideal the volunteers could find under the circumstances.

  Granted, in this case, appearances weren't deceiving: it was a terrible place for an ambush. There was almost no cover in the meadows that covered the valley's slopes, beyond the odd sagebrush and half-buried rock, most smaller than a man's head. The slopes were also gentle inclines, which didn't offer much of a high ground advantage for firing down on enemies. To top it all off, it was wide open for hundreds of yards, with no natural points to funnel enemies into tightly packed groups that could be easily gunned down.

  But the fact that it seemed like such an unlikely spot worked in their favor, or at least Tom desperately hoped it did. The broad valley was bracketed by tall cliffs to either side, which would effectively force the two approaching Sangue squads to travel through it. They would, too, because it looked impossible for any enemies to be concealed in that terrain.

  Although as it turned out, it wasn't impossible but simply prohibitively difficult; managing it had required days of searching and carefully expanding and improving what hiding spots were available.

  As an added bonus, the appearance of the valley also meant Sangue's focus and caution would be on the forested slope at the top of it, which seemed like a much more obvious place for enemies to be lurking. In fact, a person, specifically a bartender named Neal, might ask why they didn't just set up the ambush there.

  Tom's reply had been that not only was it too obvious, but there was a small but significant rise just before the treeline began that would cover the approach of the bloodies until they were practically on the forested slope, at which point any advantage would be lost.

  With their numbers fairly even with the enemy's, they needed every advantage they could get. And now their time had run out to plan or prepare any more.

  The two Sangue squads had finally arrived, approaching with the same caution they'd shown the entire time; slow and steady and sticking to any cover available, finding ways to make targeting them frustrating and risky even with the gently sloping, open terrain, by obscuring their visibility behind sagebrush and randomly dropping into dips and hollows in the ground. They were also watching each other's backs, weapons covering the empty slopes as if they expected an entire army to spring up out of nowhere and start attacking them.

  Which might've been considered paranoid if that wasn't exactly what was about to happen.

  The bloodies were technically in the ambush zone, but under the circumstances, it couldn't really be called that, since the best the volunteers could hope for was to catch at most six or so soldiers on their feet and in the open at any one time. Half a dozen people, covered by almost three dozen more.

  Tom grit his teeth. This situation wasn't ideal, was honestly closer to being flat out bad. But his people were in place, and if they tried to withdraw now they'd immediately get spotted and ripped apart by those squads creeping up the open valley. At least at the moment Tom still had the element of surprise, although for how much longer was anyone's guess.

  Then again, he'd seen how well the element of surprise worked in the last fight, and that had been against one squad, outnumbered two to one by his best volunteers.

  No help for it now. They were in place, they'd spent days preparing for this, and if they failed now the enemy had a pretty much open path to Camptown, which was far too close for comfort at this point. All Tom could do was try to take out as many bloodies as he could and hope it was enough.

  So he sighted through his scope, timing for when a team of enemy soldiers rose from the ground to rush to their next position, and gave the signal to begin by firing the first shot. Then he kept firing.

  For a chilling second, the sharp retorts of his AK-47 were the only noise in the valley. Then dozens of other volunteers and recruits joined him, turning the broad meadows between the cliffs into a hellish confusion of deafening blasts and echoes.

  The first soldier he aimed for went down and stopped moving. The second stumbled with a cry, clutching his leg, but while he dropped his gun he managed to scramble to the safety of the cover he'd been headed for behind a sagebrush. Tom missed his third target entirely as the man dove behind a rock barely big enough to hide him, and peppered the dismal cover with a few more shots to keep the enemy pinned while he searched for new targets through his scope.

  Unfortunately, that beginning was as good as it got, because then things went downhill fast.

  Almost as soon as the first shots rang out, the bloodies hit the dirt or scrambled for any cover in the less than ideal terrain. But those who couldn't find any dropped to one knee or even prone and returned fire with surprising accuracy, trusting their helmets and body armor. Which worked just well enough for them to get most of the volunteers ducking from their return fire, while suffering disappointingly few casualties themselves.

  Then the enemy grenades started flying, flung behind the volunteers' sources of cover with unerring aim. Tom had a grenade land in his own trench, which he shared with Neal, Reina, and Ray Mickelson. He had to scramble to throw it away, not managing to point it towards any bloodies in his haste. He barely had time to duck back b
eneath the ground as the explosion tore the air around him.

  In other trenches and foxholes, he saw that while some of the volunteers did the same, many either didn't have time to do so or didn't think of it in their panic. Instead, they leapt away from their cover, exposing themselves to enemy fire and some getting hit by the grenades anyway, their screams horrible in the deafening chaos.

  That was when the entire squad of recruits on the opposite slope broke from cover and ran.

  Tom supposed he couldn't blame them for panicking . . . they were untrained and undisciplined, tossed into their first fight long before they were ready. And the fight seemed to be going very, very poorly for them.

  Unfortunately, them breaking position and trying to flee only guaranteed that the situation was about to get much worse a whole lot quicker. With a heavy heart, he watched the green squad begin to scatter across the hillside, only a few making for the designated escape route behind a low rise ten or so yards upslope and higher up the valley. Even among those, too many fell to enemy fire before they'd gotten far, and it was even odds whether half made it to safety.

  Tom fought a surge of numb despair. This was it. The best ambush they could manage in the time they had, and Sangue had torn right through it with barely a pause. At this rate, there was no option but to break away, since trying to stay would just lead to more needless deaths.

  Resolved, he threw the single grenade he'd kept for himself, one of a handful of flashbangs they'd managed to capture from their previous fights. There weren't many good targets out there, since the bloodies were well scattered, although the stun grenade should hit a wider area. He hoped so, since he was really counting on it buying them a few seconds.

  After making the throw he got back behind his rifle, spending a few seconds struggling to find a target and snapping off some uncertain shots at exposed limbs and helmeted heads poking into view. Then, just before reaching the end of his silent countdown to when the grenade would go off, he lifted his fingers to his lips and gave his most piercing whistle, one that reverberated over even the racket of dozens of guns, many of them automatic, firing.

  Almost as soon as he finished he crouched low in the trench, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. He was almost too slow, catching a hint of deafening noise before his palms clapped into place.

  After waiting another second he whistled twice more, then once, signaling for his people to retreat up to the top of the valley and then west; that was the agreed-upon action if this fight turned against them and he judged escape was still possible.

  Around him, almost half the gunfire petered away, as nearly all the recruits and volunteers but those providing cover bolted or at best scrambled away on the protected trails they'd prepared. Tom snapped off a few final shots at the enemy below, not feeling much satisfaction at an agonized cry of pain as one of his shots found a target in an enemy's armpit.

  Then he ducked along his own covered path with the rest of his team, as Sangue redoubled their own rate of fire to try to gun down the fleeing ambushers. Which they were free to do, since almost nobody was shooting back.

  * * * * *

  Skyler blinked to clear his blurry vision, focusing through his scope on the enemy below as they chased the volunteers up the valley onto the forested slope.

  How many friends had he just lost, while he sat uselessly up here “scouting” out the movements of bloodies who were clearly visible to everyone? He could've opened fire the moment Trapper did, and from this angle the soldiers below had no real cover. If nothing else he could've kept the enemy pinned down while the defeated volunteers fled.

  But he hadn't.

  He'd promised his mom, and still felt guilty enough about the other promises he'd broken to really want to keep this one. Besides, he wouldn't have done much good anyway, since up on the western cliff he was near the extreme end of the range where he could hit anything with his AK-47.

  But what frustrated and shamed him most was that he was secretly glad for an excuse not to. The Sangue squads hadn't taken long at all to figure out where their ambushers were firing from, and to return fire well enough to have the volunteers keeping their heads down. It seemed impossible that any of them could shoot up at him at this distance with that same sort of accuracy, especially since most of the bloodies didn't have scopes for their AK-47s.

  But still, what if they could? They seemed so impossibly good at fighting, not just individually but together, that Gerry's Ravine was starting to feel like some sort of fluke. Even catching them by surprise didn't seem to, well, catch them by surprise.

  So he waited until he was sure the volunteers had escaped the valley and were making their way west, or at least as many as had survived the disastrous ambush. Then he slung his rifle back over his shoulder and scrambled down from his perch, trotting along a ridge westwards so he could continue covering the retreat of his friends. Not to fight, maybe, but at least to see how Sangue was moving and give warning where he could.

  Trapper had planned for the squads of volunteers to move along different paths if things went south. Part of that was because all their positions in the valley had been far enough apart that when they fled, they'd emerge at the top in different places anyway: the recruit squad on the eastern side, Trapper's squad on the west, and the mixed squad in the middle.

  That last one had been positioned just on the other side of the rise below the forested slope, and was best situated to cover the others. Which meant they would be last to leave, likely with the bloodies hot on their heels. They'd be the ones who'd need Skyler's help the most.

  With that in mind, he ran northwest along the ridgeline a ways to a short, steep slope and scrambled down it into a narrow gulch. He crossed it and started to climb an even shorter and steeper slope on the other side, which would put him on yet another ridge, this one overlooking the ravine his friends would be fleeing down.

  Halfway up to that ridge, he heard harsh shouts from farther down the gulch, where it opened up to the ambush valley. He immediately scrambled around an outcropping, certain he'd been spotted and expecting bullets to start flying around him at any second. But in spite of his doom and gloom prediction, he was able to follow the cover of the outcropping all the way up to the ridge, then over it to the forested slope beyond, without hearing the sound of gunshots.

  Or at least not from behind and to his right; he heard plenty from somewhere northeast of him, although he tried not to think about what might be happening there.

  Needing to know what the situation was in the gulch, he scrambled around to a bush he could peek through without being seen and peered down, struggling to quiet his breathing. Below, two Sangue fireteams were sprinting for all they were worth up the gulch, with what he guessed was a sergeant or other noncommissioned officer bringing up the rear, swinging the butt of his rifle at the backs of any who moved too slow.

  Skyler watched the eight soldiers sprinting past, heart in his throat.

  Well, looked as if Sangue had dropped the slow and cautious approach now that they'd made contact; they definitely knew how to seize the initiative. And in this case, the initiative they were seizing was moving to cut off the combined squad of recruits, volunteers, and townspeople that should be moving down the ravine on the opposite side of the ridge Skyler was sitting on.

  A group that included Logan, Jenny, and Mer.

  He hurriedly shimmied back around, looking down into the ravine. And, to his disappointment, he saw the mixed squad hurrying along it on the opposite slope, keeping to the cover of the trees there and not even caught up to his position yet. Skyler had held out the hope that in their desperation to escape the disastrous ambush, his friends would be sprinting headlong just like the bloodies. If so, then with their head start they could've managed to stay ahead of them and avoid being caught.

  But where the bloodies knew when to abandon caution in favor of bold aggression, the volunteers were still trying to maintain some semblance of stealth as they ran to safety. Not enough f
or Skyler to miss spotting them almost immediately, unfortunately, but certainly enough to slow them down and waste time and energy they didn't have to spare.

  The Sangue fireteams would be well west of here by now, moving into position near the head of the ravine to spring their trap. With that in mind, Skyler decided it was worth the risk to rush as far down the slope as he could get before the volunteer squad caught up to him. Then he gave a low whistle that, he hoped, would only carry as far as his friends' ears. Although just to be safe, he ducked into a hiding place in case any of them were panicked and trigger happy, or Sangue heard the whistle after all.

  “Hey!” he called in an equally low voice.

  To his relief, through his peephole in the branches, he saw the volunteers slow, looking his way. “Sky?” Logan called back, voice thick with relief. “You're okay!”

  “I'm fine!” he called back, then continued urgently. “Listen! The bloodies sent two fireteams at a dead sprint through the gulch south of here to cut you guys off in the direction you're headed. You need to cut north up the slope you're on, then go northwest for a bit and try to catch up to Trapper's squad. Or at least keep on in that direction until it's safe to turn west again and make for the meeting spot.”

  After his disastrous failure leading the recruits, Skyler was half afraid that his friends would ignore his warning. Although that was probably a silly fear; Logan, Jenny, and Mer all trusted him, if no one else did, and Logan was a fireteam leader.

  Besides, what kind of idiot ignored someone telling them enemies were waiting to kill them?

  So the volunteers barely hesitated before taking his advice, veering away from the end of the ravine to head straight up the slope. Skyler was about to head down to join them, but first, he decided to try to get one more look at the enemies on the far side of the ridge. Make sure they were still moving the way they were when he'd last seen them.