Art rode forward to where Lucas was following the point riders and leaned into him. “Makes you wonder why the Chinese would even want to try to take this over. It’s only going to get worse from here.”
“Maybe nobody told them that it’s going to be a toxic wasteland in a few years.”
“Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
Lucas smiled. “Didn’t fancy you for a Milton reader.”
“They forced me to read Paradise Lost in high school. The brain remembers the strangest things.”
They rode together in silence for several minutes. Lucas frowned and looked to the older man. “Got a bad feeling about where we’re headed. Ruby’s in Salem. If anything happened to her…”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get there. All we know is they weren’t answering our calls. Nothing more. No point in making it more than it is.”
“I know that. But I’m still worried. Can’t think of too many things that would make four radios all go dark at the same time. Those I can…none of them are good.”
“We’ll know soon enough. Let’s just get through this part, and then we can tackle the rest.”
When the column left Seattle, it had been almost six thousand strong, with many of the local men deciding that a life on the road in the Freedom Army, as they’d taken to calling it, was preferable to waiting for the water to grow toxic at home. The troops were in good spirits, with the exception of the Salem contingent, among whom word of the lack of communication from home had spread like wildfire.
“Good advice,” Lucas acknowledged. “No reason to make this more difficult than it is.”
“Ruby’s a tough one. If anyone can make it through rough weather, it’s her.”
“Eventually every cat runs out of lives.”
“Let’s hope this one’s got a few more in her.”
“Amen.”
Chapter 28
South of Wilsonville, Oregon
A rider raced along the road to where two thousand Blood Dogs were waiting north of Salem, watching the highways leading from Portland for Lucas’s force. The rider slowed when he neared the spot they’d chosen for the ambush and leapt from his horse. He ran to where Danny, the group’s commander, stood.
“They’re coming. Maybe three miles out.”
“How many?”
“A lot. At least five thousand. Maybe more.”
“Shit.” Danny considered the odds of his two thousand men being able to take on five successfully. While the new weapons were a considerable edge, sheer numbers couldn’t always be trumped by technology, and the odds didn’t favor him. He figured the locomotive must have failed after the second trip or somewhere on the third, because the next thousand men had never shown, leaving the Dogs seriously shorthanded for the ambush. Less than half the full attack force facing a seasoned fighting contingent didn’t appeal to Danny, but Scott had made it clear that he didn’t want Lucas reaching Salem, so he didn’t have much choice. Then again, he had the element of surprise, and if he could attack when Lucas’s men were vulnerable, he might be able to halve their number before they knew what hit them.
“Breakdown?”
“A lot on horseback. I’d guess at least…a thousand, maybe more. The rest on foot.”
“All armed?”
“Of course. The usual stuff, but they’ve got a bunch of wagons and carts, so there’s no telling what they’re hauling.”
“Could be supplies.”
“Or weapons.”
Danny nodded slowly. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
“Maybe we should let them pass us by, and I can ride ahead and warn Salem? Bracket them from the front and back?”
Danny considered the idea and shook his head. “That isn’t what they sent us here to do. And we’d lose our advantage. No, we need to get into position and take them on here.”
“Not too much light left.”
“That’ll work in our favor.”
The scout left Danny to his planning. He’d been instrumental in beating the Stockton gang, but aside from that, his combat experience had been as a sergeant in the army stationed in the Middle East before a dishonorable discharge and a long prison sentence for killing a man in a bar fight. He’d only seen active duty three times as part of patrol duty, and all had been skirmishes with terrorist factions that had been over almost before they’d started due to the army’s superior firepower.
He knew he was ill-equipped to take on an army over twice his size, but he had no choice – a bad situation by any measure.
“Damn,” he muttered, but the curse did little to curb the anxiety that was creeping up his throat. They had an hour, maybe less, and then they’d be in the swamp whether they were ready or not.
Lucas held up a hand to stop the march, and cocked his head while he studied the surroundings. After several long beats, he called over his shoulder, “Take a break. Fifteen minutes.”
Sam and Art rode up to him with puzzled expressions. “What’s going on? We just took one an hour or so ago.”
“Something’s off. I want some time to figure out what.”
“What does that mean, off?” Art asked.
“I don’t know. But I plan to find out.”
Lucas drove Tango forward and disappeared into the trees, leaving Sam and Art to watch his departure in confusion. He picked his way through the conifers until he came to a game trail that roughly paralleled the road, and Tango obligingly followed it as though reading Lucas’s mind.
Lucas couldn’t be sure what had triggered the faint sense of unease that had descended over him as they’d approached the pass with hills running along both sides of the road, but he’d learned to trust his instinct, and it was clamoring a warning. Tango slowed as they pushed deeper into the forest, and Lucas leaned forward and patted the big stallion’s neck.
“What is it?” he whispered in Tango’s ear.
Tango stopped, and Lucas dropped from the saddle with his M4 and continued along the track on foot until he arrived at a gap in the trees. He lay flat in the tall grass and eased his rifle into position and eyed the far side of the valley through the scope.
At first there was nothing out of sync, but then movement drew his attention to the hillside. He studied the terrain and spotted what had drawn his eye – a pair of men in a poorly camouflaged machine-gun nest with what looked like a big-bore machine gun. He continued to scan the area and picked out another three with grenade launchers and a mortar.
Five minutes of careful perusal and he’d counted several hundred nests, many with serious weaponry. He switched to the other hill and found much the same.
Whoever was lying in wait had taken great pains to conceal their positions and were equipped like a strike force.
The men lying in wait were obviously expecting Lucas’s force, which meant that they’d had advance spotters who’d notified them of their approach. Who it was didn’t matter to Lucas; right now the question was what to do.
Lucas retreated to where he’d left Tango and made his way back to where Art and the men were resting. He swung down from his horse and motioned to Art and Sam to join him, and quickly explained the situation.
“They didn’t see you?” Art asked.
“No.”
“And you think there’s over a thousand of them?”
“Looks that way.”
“Then we have two choices,” Art said. “We can circle around and find a different route, or we can ambush them while they’re waiting to ambush us.”
“How many hours of light you figure we have?” Lucas asked. “Three? Four?”
“About that,” said Sam.
“Seems to me that if we could sneak up on them, we could hit them hard before they were sure what was happening and take out their positions.” Lucas inhaled deeply. “The portable solar’s got our NV gear charged. That could be a major advantage if they don’t have access to night vision equipment.”
“Even if they do, if we hit them sim
ultaneously after dark, we might be able to neutralize most of their heavy artillery before they can put it to use,” Art said. “They’re expecting us to approach the valley using the highway, so they’re not expecting an attack from the hills. Want to bet everything’s ranged for the valley floor? They couldn’t retarget their mortars in a matter of seconds. That might be their Achilles’ heel.”
“Let’s say we did that,” Sam said. “If they’re expecting us, won’t they get suspicious if we don’t show up within an hour?”
“Fair point,” Art said. “But nobody said we have to stick to some schedule. Maybe we like it here and decided to break camp early. In which case they’ll let down their guard some, figuring we’ll be moving again at dawn.” He paused and looked back at the thousands of fighters who were lounging where they could. “Way I see it, we can either send a few thousand marching toward the valley while we sneak into position, or we pretend we’re doing repairs on the carts here and make them wait – and hit them right before dawn, when they’ll have gotten back into their nests. Better would be if they were forced to stay in them all night. Either way, that sounds like the win to me. And it would give us time to get our own machine guns and grenade launchers into the field, and range our mortars on their hillside positions.”
Lucas nodded. “Then that’s the plan.”
Danny checked and rechecked his mechanical watch every ten minutes and, when Lucas’s force failed to appear, called his scouts to the area he was using as his command post and instructed them to reconnoiter the valley and figure out what had gone wrong. They took off and, when they returned an hour later, reported that they’d spotted tents being pitched, and that it appeared that the army was staying put for the night. Danny did his best to control his irritation, fueled by sustained adrenaline in anticipation of battle, and instructed the scouts to return to their vantage points to watch until nightfall.
When the sky darkened with nothing having changed, he sent runners to the hills to instruct his men to stay in position. They ran too much risk if they tried to leave their nests and return to them in the dark before dawn, so it would mean a seriously uncomfortable night in the rough. He knew the decision wouldn’t be popular, but he didn’t see any way around it. They couldn’t afford to make an error now, with the enemy only a couple of miles away around a single bend.
Chapter 29
Lucas crept through the brush on foot, NV goggles in place. He’d left Tango safely back at the encampment along with the rest of the animals. Six of Art’s best fighters accompanied Lucas, all with night vision goggles enabled, to search for advance scouts any sane tactician would have put into place to alert the enemy of his force’s approach.
Lucas stopped, made a hand signal, and pointed through the trees to his right. One of the fighters, all of whom were equipped with crossbows, inched past Lucas and made his way forward until he was within twenty yards of an unsuspecting enemy scout, who was watching the camp and not his back.
The bowstring discharged with an audible thwack, but before the scout could react, he was skewered through the small of his back with a razor-tipped hunting arrow. He dropped his gun and pawed unbelievingly at the bolt, slashing his hands to ribbons in the process, and was attempting to stand when Lucas’s man reached him and slit his throat with a single swipe.
Blood spurted from his carotid artery and he crumpled to the ground, and the fighter made is way back to where Lucas and the squad were waiting in silence.
“How loud was that?” the fighter whispered.
“Pretty quiet,” Lucas murmured. “But there’ll be more.”
They continued their search and dispatched three other watchers over the course of an hour. When they were sure there were no more heat signatures on the infrared screens of their NV goggles, they returned to where Sam, Art, Henry, and Terry were stationed with their most seasoned men – all veterans of the Seattle battle, with many having participated in Newport as well.
“We got them all. At least I’m pretty sure we did,” Lucas said.
“Good news,” Art said. “How many?”
“Four.”
“Weapons?”
“All military-issued M16s,” Lucas said, gesturing to his squad, who were carrying the retrieved rifles.
“Sounds like somebody got into an armory,” Henry observed.
“They didn’t look like regular army. All tatted up,” Lucas said. “Looks like a gang.”
“Why would some gang want to bushwhack us with military-level gear?” Sam asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Art replied. “If we take some prisoners, we’ll find out. But the emphasis should be on eliminating their positions first. Survivors can be handled in the mop-up.”
Lucas squared his shoulders. “We should get underway. It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours.”
Art turned to the assembled squad leaders. “All right. We’ll be at the target in about forty-five minutes, maybe a little less. You’ve all been briefed on what we’re up against. If anyone has any questions, ask them now, because I want complete silence until we’re in position and ready to rock and roll.”
A few of the leaders asked for clarification on the layout, and Lucas took them through the paces again, aware of time slipping away. When he was finished, he looked over the faces of the men and cleared his throat. “Remember: hold your fire until I give the signal, which will be the first mortar round going off. Then rain hell down on them. I want all of the nests wiped out before they know what hit them. Don’t bother with conserving ammo. The priority is to eliminate the threats. Clear?”
The men nodded, and Lucas glanced at Art and Sam. “All right. How many mortars do we have?”
“Thirty, with enough shells to take on a small city.”
“Brownings?”
“A dozen. We need more?”
“Shouldn’t, but couldn’t hurt to round up another three or four. Grenade launchers?”
“Twenty. About half the Chinese ones we captured,” Sam said.
“They’re pretty accurate. Although I like ours better.”
“We can switch them out if you want.”
Lucas considered. “Probably won’t matter. We’re losing time. Grab three more Brownings and let’s do this. Safeties on until you’re ready to fire.”
The group set off five minutes later, taking care to avoid making any noise, Lucas and Sam on point. An hour later they were spread across the rise facing the ambush point, the nests lit large in their infrared NV goggles.
Lucas moved quietly through the brush to each of the mortar crews and pointed out which of their enemy counterparts to target. He understood it might take a few shells to zero in with any precision, but with an effective ten to twenty rounds per minute firing capability, it wouldn’t take long to blanket the target areas. When he had completed his task, he crept back to where Sam and Henry were in position with a mortar pointed at the sky and fifteen rounds laid out, ready for loading.
“I make them to be about four hundred yards,” Henry said. “More or less.”
Lucas glanced at his watch. “It’ll be light in under an hour. We need to do this.” He took a deep breath and flicked the firing selector of his M4 from safe to three-round burst. “Fire when ready.”
Sam steadied himself, and Henry dropped the first round into the mortar tube, where it exploded skyward with a whump. Several seconds later the projectile exploded thirty yards shy of the target, and Henry made a small adjustment to the mortar and nodded to Sam, who handed him another round.
This time the nest took a direct hit, and then the entire hillside was lit by scores of explosions as the rest of the mortars delivered their payloads. Lucas’s grenade launchers opened fire on their counterparts in the enemy positions, and in less than a minute the slopes were ablaze from hundreds of blasts.
If the enemy shooters had NV gear, they hadn’t put it to use, because there was no return fire, which made sense. As Lucas had hoped, the surviving gunners had no idea w
hat or where to shoot, and were probably scrambling to get to safety rather than sticking it out and being slaughtered by the relentless grenade and mortar salvos.
Ten minutes later, the enemy area had been turned into an inferno, the nests engulfed in thick smoke and flames. Lucas rose and crossed to the nearest Browning, where Terry was waiting patiently, his loader beside him.
“If you see anything move, shoot it,” he said.
“You got it, boss,” Terry said, and swept the area with the big barrel, seeking a target.
Lucas didn’t wait for him to find one but ran along their line to pass the word to the rest of the machine gunners, and by the time Terry’s weapon began to bark death at the hillside, he was on his way back to where Sam and Henry were waiting.
“What do you think?” Sam shouted over the roar of the nearby Browning.
Lucas spit to the side. “I think a whole lot of gangbangers just learned the hard way what a real fight’s all about.”
The shooting continued sporadically until dawn lit the valley, at which point Lucas and the infantry swept down and took the fight to the surviving attackers. In another half hour they’d taken nine prisoners, and the machine guns had cut down hundreds of ambushers once they showed themselves, their assault rifles no match against the .50-caliber onslaught.
When the fighting was finally over, Lucas and Art faced off against their captives and began questioning them. All were covered in prison ink and overtly hostile, with the jailhouse thousand-yard stare of hard timers who’d grown up on the street shooting each other, and who seemed surprised they’d made it this far. Several were wounded, and the medics bandaged their arms and legs while they were questioned.
After an hour, it became obvious none would talk when they were together. Lucas ordered them to be separated, and they tried again. The first three Lucas interrogated refused to do anything but curse him and tell him he was a dead man. But the fourth, a not particularly bright example of the street scum who invariably terrorized the civilian population post-collapse, offered up that they were from Sacramento and had come to fight Lucas’s army on behalf of their leader, Amos.
The Day After Never - Legion (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 8) Page 15