by Ryder Stacy
These Americans were a ragged bunch. Why should he feel afraid? The Russian forces were so overwhelming in comparison to the feeble resistance. It was a joke. A pitiful joke on the Americans. Nonetheless, he felt his heart beat faster and couldn’t help but think of his wife and children back in Vladivostok. He tried to create their images in his mind. The pictures quickly faded as a cloud of dust shot up into his face. Damn, it was hard to wear these face masks and be able to use binoculars, Antonovich thought, opting for the mask. He pulled the visor down over his face and began breathing the pure oxygen that filled the mask, from a small pack on his back. I’ve got to use this thing more, he berated himself. The dust out here was still radioactive. He wasn’t going to die in this Godforsaken land. Not him! That was for foot soldiers not officers.
Two of their columns had been attacked in this area in the past month. Though the damage had been minimal, the rebels had to be shown who was the power, the strength. This well-equipped force had twenty tanks, nearly five hundred infantry, and a surprise package of three heavily armed helicopters which flew several miles south waiting for any attack, at which they would swoop in for the kill and wipe out whatever ragged forces these Americans had been able to assemble this time. The secondary attack force was Antonovich’s idea. If it succeeded it would be a promotion for him. “We’ll see who will be surprised by who,” the colonel thought to himself, wondering just when and where the attack would occur. His tank ground onto the gravel embankment to the bridge, and then began the three hundred-foot crossing. The steel-webbed roadway groaned beneath the weight of the tank as Antonovich looked at the dark, rushing water some eighty feet below.
From his rocky perch, Ted Rockson watched as the colonel’s tank rumbled onto the girder bridge. “Ready, Berger. Get ready,” he barked down, his eyes glued to the column below. Soon, the entire span was filled with tanks, over half the force. The first K-55 was just feet away from the end. “After I fire, blow it!” Rock yelled, jumping free of the boulder and landing on his feet, next to the explosives man. He swung the .9mm Liberator rapid fire on its web shoulder harness and made first-target acquisition through the scope—the officer, the one with the braiding. Rock squeezed the trigger. The muzzle jerked up as the officer’s head blossomed red and slumped.
Berger smiled, his thick lips curling back into his thick black beard. He leaned forward, putting his full weight on the plunger which slid down into the innards of the generating box, sending out a surge of current. In less than a second, the bridge erupted in fire and smoke. The charges placed at ten-foot intervals along the underside of the metal grid roadway detonated in unison. Instantly Rockson and the twenty Freefighters opened fire from their positions, shooting at the screaming, burning Russian troops some eight hundred feet below.
The explosion literally ripped away the whole central support system for the bridge and as the Freefighters poured down a hail of lead rain, the bridge slowly, as if in a dream, crumbled in pieces and headed for the water below. All the tanks and troops on the North Colorado River Bridge tumbled end over end, a bloody haze of shrapnel and flesh, into the rushing whitecap of the river. Within seconds, every Russian who had been crossing the structure was dead, sucked down into the dark waters, as if the Colorado River were helping its citizens to fight back against the invaders. Pieces of flesh, legs pouring out blood, helmets, leather cushions to pad hard metal tank seats, all bobbed and twisted, a grisly dance of death in the cold, brown water.
“Perfect!” Berger yelled out in glee, looking over at Rockson who had slid between two elephant-sized rock formations and was firing down at the frantic Red troops trying to regroup on the opposite bank. The remaining tanks pulled alongside each other in a small clearing just before the bridge and began opening up with their 50mms though they didn’t have the range yet. The American Freefighters could only stay a few more minutes, inflict what damage they could and leave. They fired down, lining up the scampering Russian troops on the far bank, through crosshair sights on the Liberators and squeezed off three-round bursts at heads and chests that ballooned into red sprays of flesh.
The mortarmen, Hoffman and Jones, began their work, aiming dead center at the line of remaining Russian tanks. The first shell whistled through the air and fell about thirty feet to the left of the end tank. The second shot made contact, blowing the turret right off the K-55. Only two Reds emerged, their clothes on fire. They leaped to the parched ground, screaming, and ran madly in circles, blazing torches of sizzling flesh.
But the Russian tanks were closing in. Their sightmen were finding the Freefighters’ position. A .150mm shell landed just below the ridge on which the Americans were dug in, sending out a cloud of pulverized rock dust. Then another, even closer. The Americans returned the message with their own greetings of red-hot slugs. The two machine gunmen, Pincer and Croy, opened up with their .50mms, spraying the opposite bank with a continuous curtain of fire. The Red soldiers dove off in all directions as the burning slugs bit into the clearing like teeth searching for human flesh to bite. Rock swung his Liberator around madly, working the selector by feel into auto-mode, holding the trigger. Red shells began falling every few seconds—closer, closer—ripping boulders apart as if they were made of sand. Rockson was in charge. It was his decision when to fight and when to leave. They had already decimated the Russian column, destroyed a good sixty percent of its force, and sent nine tanks to the bottom of the Colorado where fish were now doubtless peering through the machine-gun slits at the charred corpses within. Rock hated to leave a battle, but he was the commander of these men and he was more cautious when it came to other men’s lives than he was with his own. He slammed another clip into the Liberator.
He whistled twice, a shrill, piercing sound that snapped the men’s heads around. “Freefighters, we’re moving out!” he yelled above the battle din. “We’ve done our work, boys.” The attack force ripped off a few goodbye rounds and jumped back from their ambush sites, behind the shield of boulders, that continued to send up waves of dust and smoke as the Russian shells tore in closer. The guerrillas formed a semicircle around Rockson, loading their guns on their shoulders, folding up the machine guns and quickly loading their supplies into thick canvas packs.
Rock stood up to his full six foot, three inches of chiseled muscle and looked around at the assembled men. The streak of chalk white that ran down the middle of his head of jet-black hair burned like a flame as the blazing sun beat down. His deeply tanned, rough-hewn, weathered face turned slowly to check out every one of the fighters under his command. He knew their wives, their girlfriends, their children. He knew that he would be the one to bring back the dreaded news if . . .
The Freefighters looked at one another and then down at their own bodies. Everyone was whole! No flesh pierced, no blood pouring like a river, taking a man’s life down into the dirt.
“Rock, you’ve been hit,” Detroit Green, a powerfully built black man, and Rockson’s right-hand man, said, pointing to a large gash in Rockson’s flak vest. The Survivor looked down. Something had reached him, some spinning piece of shrapnel looking for flesh to slash. He pulled the dirt-brown vest open and looked at his chest and stomach, then grinned. Nothing!
“I’m the one always blasting all of you to wear these damn things. I’m glad I listen to my own orders.” A shell whistled overhead and slammed into the plateau behind the wall of boulders, some hundred feet away. “All right, let’s get the hell out of here!” Rockson said, swinging his own pack and rifle up over his shoulders. “Let the bastards blow up the whole mountain. Waste ten tons of ammo before they realize we’re not even here.” The mortarmen loaded up their prize howitzers in field packs and, sharing the weight with another Freefighter, hefted the packs into the air and onto their shoulders, carrying the heavy weapons between them, their taut muscles straining.
“McCaughlin, leave them a few surprises when they come to investigate up here,” Rockson said with a grin.
“With pleasure, Rock,”
the jowled Scotsman replied, smirking. He quickly pulled three Claymore Sprayers out of his pack and placed them carefully around the perimeter of the clearing, clicking the arming devices into place and sprinkling grass and twigs over them. “Should be a nice birthday present for another ten or twenty of our Russian guests,” the red-haired McCaughlin yelled out to Rockson as the Freefighters began leaving the plateau and heading down the opposite side of the mountain and its loose sliding rocks and pebbles. The thick green woods below beckoned them. Inside was safety, refuge.
“Move men! Move! Expedite!” Rock yelled out, taking up the rear. The Freefighters slid and half-ran down the steeply sloped ridge. It was a hell of a lot easier going down than coming up, although every few hundred feet someone would slip and go tumbling head over heels, slicing open arms and hands on the coal-sized, sharp-edged rocks. Behind them, the Reds had finally found their targets. The plateau erupted with a thunderous roar into thick, black smoke and flame as shell after shell sped in. “Most expensive rock demolition program in the history of the Soviet Empire,” Rock thought cynically to himself. They were nearly halfway down the mountain, the men yelling out playful insults to one another as first one, then another of the Freefighters slipped and slid ten or twenty feet. They were in a good mood. Things had gone well. The last Freefighting Attack Force, sent out only a week before, had met with disaster. Attempting to attack a small truck convoy, they had been ambushed from behind by a second army patrol. Twenty men wiped out. But this mission was an unqualified success. If they could destroy this much Russian armament every time they went out, it would only be a few more years before the bastards would run home with their Commie tails between their legs, and leave this land of thin air and violet, glowing skies.
“Move! Don’t slow down!” Rock continued to push the men faster, taking up the rear. He suddenly felt apprehensive. Why, he wasn’t sure. Years of fighting the invader had sharpened his senses to a razor-honed edge of perception. Then he heard it! The sound that every American dreaded, the Russian MS-18 helicopters, armed to the teeth with machine guns, missiles and napalm. More than one—he could sense that by the thick whine of the rotors. A trap! They had kept the air support in hiding, waiting until the Freefighters had been flushed out into the open.
“Move, goddamn it!” Rock screamed at the scrambling men below him. The forward men of the Attack Force had already reached the line of trees that marked the beginning of the two hundred-mile pine forest. But six men, the mortarmen and McCaughlin, were still scrambling down the bottom of the hill. There was hundreds of feet of open, rocky slope in front of them with no place to hide.
Suddenly three of the Red helicopters flew around the side of the mountain, swooping down like hawks, firing their 7.62mm machine guns and .20mm mini-cannons. The shells tore into the rock covering of the slope, sending out a mist of dust and lethal rock fragments. Rockson leaped through the air, hit the slope and rolled beneath a low rock overhang.
“Down! Down!” he screamed out to the five Freefighters trapped out in the open. They didn’t have a chance. Unless . . . Rock pulled out his walkie-talkie and flipped the send switch.
“Detroit! Detroit, this is Rockson. Everyone all right down there?” A squawking, crackling static filled his ear for a moment, then Detroit’s Husky voice filled the air.
“Yeah, Rock, we’re in the woods. Everyone down here is OK.” There was a brief crackle, then, “Are you hurt, Rock?”
“Damn it, I’m all right. It’s McCaughlin and Carter and some of the other guys—they’re like sitting ducks. I want you to stay at the edge of the woods, but set up some fire. Make them think we’ve got a whole damn army down there. We’ve got to get those men out.”
“Will do, Rock,” Detroit’s gruff voice squeaked back over the walkie-talkie as Russian helicopter communications interfered with their signal. Guttural Red commands were screamed back and forth from chopper to chopper. Rockson knew what they were saying. He wasn’t exactly a linguist but he’d been around enough to pick up the basic ideas of the Russian language. “Kill them!” they were saying. “They’re on the lower ridge.”
Christ, they had them spotted and pinpointed. There was hardly a chance. Rockson pulled back the automatic firing lever on his Liberator and rolled out from under the overhang, blasting up at the sky as he twisted and ran along the hard terrain. The three choppers were hovering about two hundred feet away, closing in on the trapped men. Rock heard the other Freefighters open up from the woods. Bullets of every caliber ripped through the air, their sharp, burning hot lead noses screaming shrilly as they flew, seeking out Red bull’s-eyes.
Rockson took aim at the closest chopper as it poured down a curtain of bullets at the trapped men. Its huge rotors twisted like a single piece of shimmering steel in the hundred degree air. He could see the Russian pilot and machine gunner peering down. They were sighting in on McCaughlin. Rockson aimed round after round into the engine. He was a marksman, one of the best of Century City, but targets were one thing, moving—helicopters another. The chopper’s bullet path weaved in closer on the prone McCaughlin who tried to hide behind a boulder no larger than he was. And he was as big as a barn door. Desperately Rockson fired at the MS-18. Not the Scotsman! He loved that overgrown whale of a man.
Suddenly, one of Rock’s slugs hit paydirt, ripping through the tail rotor control. The back gyro blade sputtered hesitantly to a stop and the chopper began wobbling wildly, out of control. It swerved quickly to the right and flipped over 180 degrees, the pilot’s screams lost in the drone of the still-whipping blade. The helicopter dropped like a stone, about a hundred yards up the hill from Rock, and exploded in a ball of oily fire.
Rockson took advantage of the few seconds of confusion as the two other choppers pulled back momentarily to survey the damage. He raced down the hill to McCaughlin, hooking him beneath the arms and lifting the three hundred-pound man to his feet in a single motion.
“Run, man, run!” Rockson yelled at the pale Scot, turning him around with a spin and then pushing him down the hill. McCaughlin stumbled, half falling again, but barely kept his balance by waving his thick arms wildly over his head. He gained his equilibrium and began running, building speed every second. Several hundred feet away, firing up at the choppers from the dark cover of the forest, the other men of the Attack Force urged him on.
Rock now turned his attention to the other men still trapped on the hill. He glanced up and saw the choppers hovering low over their fallen comrade. But even as he looked they began rising and heading back to the slope. Rockson could see two figures lying prone about 150 feet away. He ran, leaping and twisting, changing direction every three steps. He wouldn’t make himself a target. If they wanted to take him down they’d have to work hard, real hard. From the trees below he suddenly heard the roaring sound of heavy fire. They must have unwrapped the machine gun. Good! He liked it when the men could think for themselves. Sometimes they relied on him too much. But he wouldn’t be here forever. That was for sure.
He ran forward to the two fallen Freefighters, diving through the dusty, smoke-filled air, almost landing on what had been two of his best men just minutes before. He looked them over quickly. They were out of it now. No more battles for two more Free Americans. Carter’s head had been nearly severed from his body, the neck still pulsing out a gusher of thick, red blood every few seconds from a heart that didn’t even know it was dead. Sanford had caught a stream of .9mm rounds in the chest and stomach. His guts hung out of him like the stuffing of a slashed pillow, covering his legs and face. A puddle of blood gurgled bubbles of CO2 in the center of what had been his abdomen.
“Damn!” Rockson spat through his teeth. It had been going so good. He felt the line of bullets coming a second before it arrived. As he rolled again down the hill as quick as he could move, oblivious to the sharp-edged rocks gashing his flesh, the ground where he had just been was ripped apart by the claws of a hundred slivers of metal. He flew down the hill with animal speed, sliding
, dodging, a bundle of pure energy, the whirlwind that was Ted Rockson. The three other Freefighters still caught in the open were scrambling for their lives a hundred yards over and down the mountain. Two choppers came soaring in from the sky, swimming through the smoke of their fallen comrade. They peppered the slope with a blizzard of slugs, digging trenches in straight, deadly lines. Rockson tore to the side as he heard an air-to-ground missile whistle above him. He hit another, steeper slope and let himself spin somersaults down it, tucking into a tight ball. He knew that whistle, had heard it a hundred times since childhood—napalm.
Behind him, the ground exploded into a ball of blue-orange fire. The burning, sticky jelly splattered off wildly in every direction, searching for anything solid to stick to and burn. Rockson felt a sharp sting on his shoulder and ripped a piece of the flaming napalm off with his knife, flinging it to the field of rocks. He heard a scream. Oh Christ, now Nord, the Swede, had been hit. Rockson stood for a split second and scanned the hill. Nord ran madly, his hair and back burning with that hideous blue flame. Two of the Freefighters ran from cover and threw the burning man to the ground, slapping out the flaming jelly with their jackets. They quickly carried him off, behind the trees at the very foot of the mountain.
From the cover of thick Aspens, Detroit Green saw Rockson was in big trouble. Rock still had a good two hundred feet to go and the choppers were coming in for the kill. He ripped two grenades from the bandolier he always wore and ran from the trees, screaming, “Dodge them. Rock! Dodge ’em! I’m coming up from the left with some hardballs, lead them to the right.” The short, black bulldog of a man, muscles bulging through his old, army-issue blue sweatshirt, ran like a man possessed. His piston legs pumped up and down like a railroad train. He jumped rocks and dodged dark, spiny cactuses that dotted the lower side of the hill. Without being spotted, he pulled to within a hundred feet of the MS-18s. The choppers slowed to a crawl, aiming with every weapon on board, getting a bead on Ted Rockson who fired up at them from the hip as he continued to sprint down, the trees and safety so tantalizingly close.