by Ricky Sides
The sergeant glanced at his watch. He’d been on the ground in Alamo twenty minutes and the job wasn’t nearly finished. He wondered how much longer the Peacekeeper could keep the bikers out of the city. He contacted Patricia and asked for an updated ETA on the bikers, but was told that it was impossible to give ETA at the moment. It could be from twenty minutes, to hours. Much hinged on the plan they were currently executing.
Sergeant Wilcox looked down the road that would lead the citizens to within a few hundred yards of the small band of forestland. He saw the people spread out along that road and he hoped fervently that he could get them out of sight before the bikers got to town. If not, then these people would be sitting ducks. In the open, exposed to the fire of the Marauders with no cover, the death toll would be horrendous. The sergeant knew if it came to that, then he would stand his ground and kill the Marauders until he was cut down. He would not abandon these people. But he would keep his promise to Lisa. He would not permit himself to be taken captive.
***
Pete fired the forward laser again and another tree fell across the road. That made five impromptu barricades, and he was happy with the results. In two cases, the bikers would be able to circumnavigate the downed trees, though the going would be treacherous and many were apt to have accidents on the steep shoulders of the road making the attempt. However, in three places there was no way that the bikers could simply go around the trees. They would have to either pull them out of the way or find the means to form a bridge over the trees.
“I think that’s enough for now. We should get back to killing the Marauders,” Pete suggested.
Tim glanced at his brother who nodded in agreement that it was indeed time to resume the attack. He set a course for the Marauders and sped the ship toward their next encounter.
Looking to Patricia, Jim asked, “Any updated arrival times on the reinforcements?”
“They vary, Captain. Tennessee says one hour to an hour and a half. Arkansas says about an hour. Mississippi says approximately two hours and the home base contingent is saying if they push it they can get here in another hour and a half.”
Tell them to make their best time, but not to take unreasonable risks,” Jim said sighing. If he’d had the time, he could have arranged some really good roadblocks in the city, but there wasn’t time nor did he have the personnel to accomplish that mission. He had considered calling up the sergeant and having a couple of his men attempt that, but he knew that the sergeant was stretched thin as it was. He’d need his men to assist in the evacuation.
It suddenly occurred to Jim that he hadn’t clarified whether or not the sergeant was to take the five men not officially attached to his six man strike team, and he didn’t know if they had gone or not. Cursing himself, he stood up immediately and said, “I’m going to the cargo bay. I’ll be right back,” and without another word he left the control room.
“Potty break?” suggested Tim grinning.
“Knowing Jim, I’d say he just thought of something that might help us,” Pete quipped.
In the cargo bay, Jim found the three snipers and the two infantrymen checking their supplies of ammo and inspecting their weapons for the fifth time. They were a disgruntled lot, because it seemed they were not going to be allowed to participate in the biggest fight of the year.
Jim snapped orders at once saying, “Gentlemen, we are about to head back to Alamo. Once there, we’ll drop the cargo bay door and you are to exit at once. Secure vehicles to block the main road leading into town. Trap it with explosives, if you have time, but the main thing is to erect a barricade. We have several groups of reinforcements coming within two hours. Some will be here sooner. I need you to hold that barricade as long as possible. Get to sniper positions and shoot anyone who tries to clear the barricade. That should gain some time. You two infantrymen will act as support spotters unless the situation on hand dictates a wiser course of action. Understood gentlemen?”
“Yes, Captain!” the five men said in unison, happy that they were going to get to participate in the battle that peacekeepers from all over the southeast were converging to fight.
“Load up with all the ammo you think you’ll need. If it gets too bad, then withdraw and hold up somewhere safe. This is not a suicide mission. I am not asking you to give your lives to buy the time. Just do your best. Is that understood?” he asked gazing at the men sternly.
“Yes, Captain,” they said in unison again and they all saluted. Jim returned their salute and rushed back to the control room.
In the control room, he ordered Tim to come about and head back to Alamo at top speed. He then explained the plan and told Tim to execute his landing as soon as he found a suitable spot near the edge of town.
He apologized to the officers for the confusion and explained that he’d meant for the sergeant to take the extra men with him on his detail, but circumstances now seemed to indicate it would be best to have them go on this mission.
Pete spoke the thoughts of the rest of the officers when he said, “None of us are perfect, Jim, so stop beating yourself up because you didn’t think of everything in the heat of the moment. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we’re proud to have you as our captain.”
“That was splendidly worded friend, Pete,” Pol observed.
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Patricia with a smile.
“Well I can’t say I thought of it either. I just assumed the sergeant would take them,” Tim said grinning and then he said, “ETA to Alamo three minutes.
“Thank you. Thank you all. I see I have a lot to learn about commanding this ship and its fighting elements.”
Lacey walked up, kissed his cheek, and said, “I think you’re off to a very good start, dear.”
“You told the team to go full armor?” Pete asked and then he said, “Oh yes, you did at the beginning of this mission. But soldiers take off gear when it looks like they won’t need it anytime soon. That’s universal to all fighting men.”
Jumping up in concern, Pete said, “Now I can’t get that out of my mind. I’ll be right back.”
Jim’s light laughter followed Pete out of the control room. He arrived in the cargo bay as the men were completing their last moment preparations. “You boys in full armor?” he asked.
Looking chagrined one of the snipers admitted, “I took off most of mine when we didn’t get to go with Sergeant Wilcox, but the moment the Captain left I put it back on, sir.”
The rest of the men were equally guilty, as he’d feared, but they too had reequipped their armor in preparation for the mission. “Next time the Captain orders full armor, please check with the control room before removing it men. What if there’d been no time to reequip the protective gear?”
“Yes, sir!” the five men said in unison.
“Good hunting!” Pete said, and then he hurried back to the control room.
“Are they squared away back there?” Jim asked.
“As soon as you left they reequipped their armor. I read them the riot act and told them next time check with the control room before removing the armor when they’d been ordered to equip it,” Pete explained.
“Will this spot do?” Tim asked. He was referring to the landing spot near a bottleneck of buildings on either side of the road. Beyond the buildings were farm fields on one side of the road and a steep shoulder leading to a heavily overgrown field on the other.
“I think it will work. The fields would be too rough for the bikes. Looks like some industrious farmer plowed under the remnants of an old crop during early fall. The plant growth on the other side would create a formidable barrier and there was no way the enemy could see the ground beneath it. The snipers should be able to discourage anyone trying to flank the barricade. Yes. Let’s drop them here,” Jim said decisively.
Chapter 26
Sergeant Wilcox dispatched one of his men to find some volunteers with access to a truck. The strike force member was to organize the collection of jugs of water for the r
efugees. He was to concentrate his efforts on the east side of town where the volunteers were least likely to encounter bikers, should the Marauders arrive while they were working to secure the water. The sergeant gave orders that they were to secure as much water as they could in fifteen minutes and transport it to the turnoff to the woods. They were to unload the water beside the road. The refugees could then grab the jugs as they walked by, and thus they’d have some water to ease their thirst in the hours ahead. He knew that, one way or the other, this would all be over in less than four hours, so the people would be fine without food, but water could become an issue for the very old or the very young.
At least the weather was with them. It was sunny and warm, but the sergeant knew that in the woods, it wouldn’t be nearly as warm and he was pleased to note that most of the people walking to the woods were wearing good winter coats, or walking with them thrown over their shoulders.
***
At that precise moment, the team that’d just been deployed by the Peacekeeper was working feverishly to create a barricade that the bikers wouldn’t be able to easily breach. They sought out anything they could use that would adequately block the road. This task was made easier when several men, who were not evacuating, turned up to see what they were doing. They’d seen the arrival of the ship that deployed the team and had come to see what was happening on the outskirts of the city. They volunteered to get automobiles and park them there to block the road, despite being warned that the vehicles would probably sustain heavy damage. After delivering the vehicles, one of the men expressed regret that he’d not heeded the warning and left with the others. A representative for the team told him which road to take. If he hurried, he’d see them before they disappeared. The other men considered this a moment and then they followed the man. The peacekeepers had convinced them all that trouble was indeed about to come barreling into Alamo.
The sniper team placed loads of explosives in strategic locations. They would detonate those explosives if the need arose, but that would be a last resort because of the potential for the explosives to damage the barricade. The five men split up into three teams. The three snipers would be strategically located to the east, west, and south of the barricade. The two snipers going east and west would each take one of the infantrymen with them to act as spotters. The lone man to the south would detonate the charges and attempt to take out any Marauders who opted to try to enter the vehicles to move them aside.
The three teams settled down to wait. In this situation, the longer they had to wait the better off they were because reinforcements were converging on the city.
***
Patricia reported that the barricade was ready and that the snipers were in position. Jim thanked her and told her to wish the men luck. Up ahead he could see the last tree that they had dropped across the road and he had an unpleasant surprise. Staring down the road, he saw the approaching Marauder bikers.
“How did they get past the trees so fast?” Tim asked surprised as the ship hovered in place to do battle with the Marauders at the tree.
Pete fired his forward laser at the mob of approaching bikers. He had the satisfaction of seeing the bike explode in a fireball that knocked several others into other bikers. He fired again into the heart of the onrushing pack of riders. A moment later, one of the lead bikers stopped and dismounted. To Pete’s astonishment, the man was holding a small chainsaw, which he started and began to cut the tree.
“He is a brave man,” Pol stated.
“He’s a dead man,” Pete said, and then he shot him through the head with the laser.
“Yes, he is now dead, but his courage may inspire others,” Pol warned, and sure enough another biker took up the dead man’s chainsaw.
“Pete, to the left!” warned Tim who saw a man raising what appeared to be a rocket propelled grenade.
Pete quickly targeted the man and fired the laser, but the RPG fired.
Tim executed a complex maneuver in an attempt to protect them from the grenade. He shot the ship upward at the same time he spun it on its axis to present the side of the ship to the grenade instead of the windshield. He knew the windshield was tough, but he had no desire to test it against an RPG. He managed to evade that projectile, and then he said, “Captain, we can’t risk taking an RPG head on. I think we should make strafing runs. At least that way I’ll have our forward momentum to augment our evasive maneuvers.”
“All right, let’s get going then. I don’t like being a sitting duck up here. They may well have more ammunition for that grenade launcher,” Jim said.
Tim spun the ship away from the Marauders and applied forward thrust. Once he’d gained maneuvering space, he turned and started an attack run. Another RPG lanced toward them but Tim easily dodged the projectile as Pete fired the laser several times toward the position from which the RPG had seemed to originate. Another RPG fired toward them and this time Pete hit both the man and the launcher. “Got him!” Pete exclaimed as Tim narrowly avoided that projectile.
“That was too close,” said Tim breathing a sigh of relief just as he saw the telltale puff of another RPG launching. “Hang on!” Tim shouted and shot the Peacekeeper straight up. He almost managed to evade the projectile but the grenade slammed into the lower edge of the side of the ship. The Peacekeeper was buffeted violently, but she answered the helm and Tim was able to regain control.
“Take us a safe distance from the Marauders. I don’t want to risk another hit,” Jim said calmly, adding, “If they fire from that distance, then maybe Pete can pick them off and you can easily avoid them.”
As the Peacekeeper seemed to be retreating, the Marauders cheered and shouted curses after the departing ship. By now, many men had parked their bikes and were standing beside the tree that blocked the road. Some of the men lifted the man who’d fired the RPG onto their shoulders in celebration. He happily raised the weapon over his head in triumph, rejoicing at his victory over the seemingly invulnerable ship. Then in the distance, they saw the Peacekeeper coming about and a moment later, they saw the laser fire. At first, the men thought that Pete had missed and then the headless body of the man on their shoulders toppled down onto them along with the now severed weapon.
“Stupid amateurs,” Pete said grinning, but his smile turned to a frown as several men pushed sections of the tree out of the way. While the Peacekeeper had battled the men firing the rocket-propelled grenades, the bikers had cut the tree into wedges that they could manage to roll aside so that they could resume their journey.
“Patricia, you’d better warn the men at the barricade that the bikers are coming. Give them an ETA of ten minutes. And warn all the other peacekeeper elements that these bikers have some rocket-propelled grenades. We cannot confirm that all such weapons have been neutralized,” Jim said.
“Aye, Captain,” Patricia said, and then she began sending the messages.
A short time later, the Arkansas Peacekeepers announced that they were rapidly approaching the city and requested information as to where they were needed. When Patricia reported this, Jim asked for information regarding their strength. Patricia reported that this was a small group of six men. “Ask them to join the men at the barricade and let those men know help will soon be arriving,” he said without hesitation.
“They confirm your orders, sir, and send their regards to the flagship of the peacekeepers,” Patricia stated.
Nodding his acknowledgment, Jim said, “Please contact Sergeant Wilcox. Give him an update and ask for one on his progress,” Jim instructed.
A few moments later, Patricia said, “The Sergeant says that he has many of the people in the woods now but the road is lined with stragglers. He requests additional men to help guard the civilians when you have more available.”
“Inform the Sergeant that I’ll try to get him some more personnel when the next group arrives. In the meantime, stealth will be their best chance of survival. Tell him to forbid fires, smoking, and if the people are talking they should cease at the
sound of engines,” Jim said trying to think of everything. A bit shaken by the recent oversight, he was less confident than he ordinarily would have been.
***
Sergeant Wilcox stared down the road at the stragglers trying to get to the woods before the bikers got into town. They had sufficient time to make it to the forest, of that he was relatively certain. But something kept nagging at his mind. Attempting to locate the source of his discomfort, he thought back to the view of the area from two hundred feet and he remembered the small road, which came out to the road they were using for the evacuation on the other side of the woods. He also remembered that the road cut northwest from the other side of the woods and connected to the main road that the peacekeepers were barricading. If the bikers couldn’t breach the barricade, some or possibly even all of them might use that little road to bypass the barricade. If they did so then they would be funneled right past the forest where he had taken the civilians to hide. Looking out at the grass that the hundreds of people had trampled, the sergeant winced. The Marauders would have to be blind to miss the evidence of a large number of people recently entering the woods.
Sergeant Wilcox radioed the ship to present his concerns and was asked to stand by. Two minutes later Patricia said, “Sergeant, you are to take your people and form a perimeter facing the most likely danger zone. If Marauders approach, then you are to send a message to us regarding that approach and we will bring the ship to defend the people there. The Captain says he’s sending the next contingent your way now. There are twelve men from Mississippi and he has asked them to park their vehicles out of sight of the main road and double time it to your location. You are in charge. You are to put the men in good defensible positions so that you can hold out for a few minutes if it comes to an all out attack.”