The Peacekeepers. Books 7 - 9 (The Peacekeepers Boxset Book 3)

by Ricky Sides

  “No, he wouldn’t need to do that, Maggie. The snipers would move to higher ground, and the ground outside the fence is lower,” Jim explained.

  “What is he hoping to accomplish?” asked Maggie curiously? “I mean, there must be thousands of men on all those ships, so snipers can’t have that big an impact, can they?”

  Grinning, Jim replied, “The snipers will be targeting leaders. Anyone who appears to be giving instructions will be a target. It’s meant to cause dissension in their ranks. Once the news spreads that snipers are killing the captains, many will want to leave. Some will be hesitant to obey orders to have their crews go ashore. Some will try to leave, despite orders from their leader that they are to stay. It could potentially lead to fighting within their ranks. It also deprives the enemy troops of leadership, so they will become disorganized.”

  “You make it sound as if the snipers could have a huge impact on the outcome of this war, Jim,” Maggie responded.

  “Under the right leadership, utilizing the correct tactics, they can and will,” Jim responded. Then he smiled and said, “If Pete’s leading them, I’d bet on the team. There’s none better at the tactics needed than your husband.”

  Chapter 21

  It was all Captain Lynch could do to hold the other captains to his will. Many were openly calling for the fleet to leave now, while they still could. By now, every ship in the fleet had been damaged to some degree in the week old war with the peacekeepers. In the past hour, unseen marksmen had murdered several captains and first mates. To make matters worse, some of the little drones that had so plagued the ships had been seen flying about again.

  Bran had threatened and cajoled the captains into yielding to his will. However, it had been the peacekeepers themselves, who had ultimately forced the fleet to stick together. When one of the dissenting captains made a run for the eastern exit with the intentions of leaving the fleet, the peacekeepers had sunk the ship. Bran hadn’t seen it himself, but he had been told that it was the peacekeeper vessel able to fight on the surface that had engaged the freighter as it attempted to flee. That vessel presently blocked the exit to the bay.

  “We have no choice now,” Bran stated reasonably to the other captains. “We have to defeat the peacekeepers to enable safely clearing the exit to the bay.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked one of the captains.

  “I’ll tell you, but not on this radio. The enemy may be able to hear everything we’re saying. We’ll use our traditional means of relaying information when there’s an enemy present who can overhear our radio communications,” Bran explained.

  For ten minutes, flashing lights on the decks of the ships relayed the information throughout the fleet. When those lights stopped flashing, every captain in the fleet knew what was coming and what their role (and that of their crews) would be in the coming efforts to defeat the enemy. Soon, men and materials began to move throughout the fleet.

  A short time later, a group of smaller boats departed from the fleet and headed upriver. The peacekeepers noted the movement and sent a drone to see what the boats were doing, as the pirate vessels continued upriver. The drone followed for a while, and the operator soon saw the boats stop along the banks of the river. The operator noted that each boat had guards begin examining the riverbank through powerful night vision devices. It was a bright night, and night vision gear would be able to gather the light sufficiently to permit them to see the enemy as if it were daylight.

  The drone operator aboard the Constitution reported that the boats were just sitting there, apparently on watch. Captain Young thought this behavior was probably a reaction to the recent peacekeeper attack on the fleet from the opposite bank. He dutifully reported the incident to Jim and Pete. Young was told to permit the drone to remain on station and watch the detail of apparent sentry vessels until it was needed elsewhere. Under normal conditions, the peacekeepers would have maintained a strict watch on any such detachments of enemy forces, but these were not ordinary times. The peacekeepers were spread thin, and assets were at a premium.

  Once more, the pirates began to surge across the makeshift ship bridges. They reinforced the survivors of the initial landing party. As they assembled on the bank of the river, the peacekeepers on the ground prepared to repel their attack. The APCs and the Valiant both attacked, but the enemy rapidly dispersed along a wide front and began their advance. Using even the shallowest of depressions for cover, the pirates advanced toward the peacekeeper wall despite the desperate attempts of the peacekeeper air assets to hold them at bay. The drones, including the one watching the small detachment of boats, were then pressed into service against the surging ground forces.

  As the peacekeeper air force advanced against the pirate ground forces surging toward the fence, more pirates streamed out onto the riverbank. Captain Wilcox realized he had the enemy blockaded to the point that they could not easily escape. He opted to fly over the enemy fleet and attack them as they made their way across the last few ships.

  The Arizona hammered the enemy with everything in their arsenal. They decimated rank after rank of the enemy who pressed on despite the presence of the peacekeeper ship. Soon the Arizona had to break off their attack and permit their batteries to recharge a bit as they reloaded their conventional weaponry. After reloading was completed, his strike force leader informed Jack that there was insufficient ammunition aboard ship for another full reload.

  When the Arizona broke off her attack, the pirates cheered. They were now free of the peacekeeper air defenses because the rest of the fleet had already been forced to stop firing. They surged toward the peacekeeper wall. At Pete’s command, the peacekeepers manning the wall rose from concealment and opened fire at the onrushing horde of pirates. They cut down hundreds, but the enemy refused to halt their charge. Then along the wall, twenty men popped up from concealment with forty-millimeter grenade launchers. They fired a combination of high explosive, white phosphorus and incendiary rounds. That broke the back of the charge, and a general retreat ensued.

  However, the pirates didn’t retreat to the ships. Instead, they stopped about two hundred feet from the bank of the river and began to dig a shallow trench. They worked feverishly to pile the dirt between their position and the peacekeeper wall. Pete saw this action and shook his head in wonder. “Do they think that will protect them from our ships?” he asked Jim.

  Shaking his head, Jim responded, “I think they’ve figured out that our ships need daylight to charge the weapons. Right now, we can’t do a lot about them with the ships and drones. We’re low on power. They have to know that, otherwise we would still be attacking them. Only the Constitution has a decent energy supply available, and her weapons are still down.” Looking at his friend with a sober expression on his face, Jim added, “I’m betting they plan to occupy this position by the break of day.”

  “We’re in a bad way, Jim. It took the grenade launchers to stop the charge this time, and we only have one reload remaining,” Pete said soberly.

  “Then it’s likely that they’ll scale the wall. If not the next charge, then almost certainly the one after that,” Jim observed.

  ***

  During the main battle, the small detachment of pirate boats that had maneuvered upriver closed with the bank. The men aboard them swarmed ashore. With only a skeleton crew remaining aboard, the boats quickly backed out into the water again. If the enemy checked on them, it would appear as if they had never moved during the fighting along the main battlefront.

  The pirates moved northwest. They soon moved past the westernmost portion of the fence. They had taken advantage of the absence of the ships and APCs to make a flanking maneuver at the rear of the peacekeepers. These were men loyal to Captain Lynch. Their mission was to capture the giant flag, create as much confusion in the rear as possible, return to their boats, board and take the captured flag to Captain Lynch.

  ***

  Private Ann Bean was nervous. She wasn’t ready for this detail and she
knew it, but when the council member had called for volunteers, her hand had been the first to thrust skyward. Now she stood her guard position along the western flank, a tense bundle of nerves. The source of her anxiety wasn’t the potential of her own death; although that did contribute to her discomfort, her main concern was that she’d do something wrong and cost other peacekeepers their lives as a result.

  She could hear the sounds of the battle raging outside the fence. To her right, she could see the other guard who shared her watch. She frowned when noting that he was facing the battle and trying to see what he could see from his vantage point. She was considering telling the man to turn around and face their watch direction when one of the drill instructors stepped out of the darkness behind the man and poked him in the back with his rifle barrel. In a low whisper that Ann could barely hear from her position, the sergeant then proceeded to dress down the man for his dereliction of duty.

  A furtive movement caught Ann’s attention. She faced the direction of the movement, but everything appeared much as it had all night long. Still, she picked up a pebble and tossed it in the sergeant’s direction.

  The sergeant heard the pebble land near his feet. Turning in Ann’s direction, he saw her point to her eyes and then to the west. She then held up one finger. At least he thought he could make out a single finger in the moonlight. It didn’t matter. He understood the message. She had thought she had seen something, and there had been at least one incident, possibly more.

  The sergeant motioned for the two recruits to get down in the prone position. From there, any movement by an approaching enemy would be easier to spot. He signaled down the line to the rest of the recruits on the western flank for them to get down as well.

  Five minutes passed without incident. Those were a tense five minutes for Ann who lay there thinking the sergeant was going to chew her out if nothing more dangerous than a rabbit showed itself. Compounding her discomfort was the pressure of her bladder. She needed to go to the bathroom, but then she saw movement again. This time she was certain she saw people out there carefully moving with great stealth toward her position.

  Glancing to her right, she saw the drill instructor on the ground in the prone position. His rifle was held at the ready. Ann relaxed then. She had done the right thing and warned her fellow peacekeepers of the impending danger. Cradling the stock of her rifle against her cheek and shoulder, she sighted on the mass of dark shapes and waited for the order to fire, or for someone else to fire the first shot. She had no idea how close the drill instructor wanted to let the enemy get before he opened fire, but she was guessing that he would want them close so his green recruits wouldn’t foul up and miss the enemy.

  A moment later, someone in the peacekeeper line fired. This caused a chain reaction all across the line. The enemy fired back, but the front ranks of their group had been decimated in the opening peacekeeper fusillade.

  Then, from out of the darkness, more than a hundred men charged the thin line of peacekeepers. Ann fired her rifle as fast as she could. When her magazine ran dry, she smoothly ejected it and slapped a fresh one into the magazine well. Releasing the bolt, she fired the weapon at a man who had stopped to aim at the sergeant while he was reloading his rifle.

  The fighting shifted to Ann’s right. The sergeant got to his feet and moved to the right to help the peacekeepers there who were fighting the bulk of the attackers. Ann followed the sergeant’s lead, as did the man who had fought beside the sergeant during the battle. Soon they saw enemy muzzle flashes. They spread out, went to the prone position and opened fire at the enemy. When the fighting in that area stopped, Ann saw the sergeant check on the man beside him. He had taken a shot to the head and he was dead.

  Ann saw the sergeant shake his head and get to his feet as he slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle. She replaced her own partially spent magazine with a fresh one, stowing the one she was replacing in her ammunition carrier on her side. Together, the two peacekeepers moved still further to the north. As they went, they noted that many of the recruits who had been assigned sentry duty had been killed, but several had survived and as they moved north, those troops joined them. They soon came to a sad sight. The enemy had overrun the last six peacekeepers at the northernmost section of the picket line. They had been shot to pieces.

  The sergeant took a quick headcount. He had sixteen peacekeepers with him. That meant they had lost thirty-six men and women on the western line. “The enemy went inside our perimeter. Our radio was shot all to hell,” the sergeant said, without adding that the radio operator had been wearing it at the time and had shared a similar fate. “I need a volunteer to run to the command position to inform the council of this development. The rest of us will pursue the enemy. Check your weapons and ammo. In twenty seconds, we move out,” the sergeant said.

  Everyone wanted to stay with the hunt for the men who had killed their fellow recruits. When no one volunteered for the assignment, the sergeant said, “Private Bean. You first spotted the enemy approaching. That tells me you have good senses. I don’t like sending you alone, but we’ll need the all the firepower we can muster to take down these guys. You’re it. Get to the council, no matter what. Be careful, but be fast!”

  “I’m on it, Sergeant,” Ann responded. She was disappointed, because she wanted to remain with the team and punish the enemy, but she knew the message was critically important.

  In an effort to save time, she elected to move diagonally, to the southeast across the terrain. She moved in a crouch, her every sense alert for possible sign of the enemy. Three minutes into her assignment, with her peripheral vision, Ann spotted movement. Turning her head to the northeast, she saw the illuminated Washington Monument and the giant flag. She could also see the heads of several men as they ran toward the flag. The men were not wearing helmets, so she knew they weren’t peacekeepers.

  Now Ann had a quandary. Her orders were to get to the council, but she was aware of the position of the enemy. She had counted ten heads before they disappeared into the darkness, but she had no way of knowing with certainty that she had seen all the enemy. Then she spotted the top of the medical aid tent and that caused her to set aside her orders. Ann knew that there were wounded peacekeepers inside that tent, who would be at the mercy of the enemy, and from what she’d seen, they had no mercy.

  Ann ran as fast as she could toward the medical tent. Once more, she saw the heads and shoulders of the men she was attempting to intercept, but she was reluctant to fire on them based solely on a lack of helmets. For all she knew, they could be a detachment being sent to guard the wounded. In which case, she had screwed up royally in not following her orders. However, if they weren’t, then she had to try to stop them from reaching the defenseless peacekeepers.

  A drone dropped out of the darkness to fly beside Ann. She stopped to address the drone operator. Tell command that we have been infiltrated. I think the enemy is heading for the medical tent. I’m trying to intercept them. They came in from the west and slaughtered most of our guards. The sergeant is on their trail with our survivors,” Ann reported breathlessly, and then she took off on the run once more.

  Inside the Constitution, Lisa shouted for the captain. When Bill approached her, she rapidly informed him of what she had learned. Captain Young redirected all drones to the defense of the medical tent. He then ordered Holly to inform the council, that their ground perimeter had been breached from the west, and that a team of the enemy was near the medical tent.

  On the ground, Ann saw that there was no way she could reach the tent before the enemy. She also had a good look at the men for the first time. They were dressed in a motley assortment of clothing. Private Bean opened fire methodically on their lead ranks, which were backlit by the spotlights being directed at the monument. She continued firing in a methodical manner, trying to make every shot count. The enemy quickly spotted the muzzle flashes of her weapon and began to return fire, but they rushed their first few shots and missed.

  A
drone flew down to fight beside her, and when Ann was hit in the chest and arm by multiple projectiles, it hovered over her protectively, firing at the enemy. Moments later, the rest of the drones arrived. In less than a minute, the battle was over.

  When the firing stopped, the done operator who had guarded the fallen peacekeeper activated the external speaker. Lisa’s voice shouted, “Mom, it’s clear now, but there’s a wounded peacekeeper out here beneath my drone!”

  A moment later, the door of the tent opened. Maggie emerged, accompanied by a peacekeeper with a wounded shoulder. The man was armed with a pistol, and he refused to let her go out alone.

  Lisa moved her drone out of the way when Maggie approached. She was in the process of turning her drone to observe her mother when she spotted movement from one of the downed enemy. She saw the man’s rifle rise, but then she heard the sound of multiple gunshots.

  “Got him,” a peacekeeper said as he arrived on the scene.

  “I thought you guys would never get here, Sarge,” Ann said gamely as Maggie examined her.

  “Sergeant, get her in my tent. I can’t see out here in the dark,” Maggie ordered.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” the sergeant responded.

  “I’m sorry, Sarge, I didn’t want to disobey your orders, but I saw the men heading this way and I was afraid of what they’d do to the wounded,” Ann explained.

  “You did the right thing, Private Bean. Now hush while we get you inside the tent,” the sergeant said. Several of the men grabbed the private and lifted her off the ground. As they walked toward the tent, he added, “I’m submitting your name to the council for consideration for a medal. That was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen a green recruit pull off.”

  “You saw the fight?” asked Ann curiously. Then a misstep by one of the men carrying her caused her arm to throb with pain and she winced.