by Noah Mann
“You and Martin, and my people,” she said. “That’s it.”
I thought for a moment on what she had just said. It wasn’t that I’d expected the numbers she’d indicated to be different, but the reality of what we were about to attempt based upon our limited resources was, in the most generous terms, daunting.
“That’s twenty people,” I said. “Plus three Marines and this aircraft.”
“Against a thousand enemy with armor,” she said. “I know.”
Again, I thought of timing, and how that was, in many ways, the only part of her plan that really mattered. Without it, the Unified Government forces would eventually roll over us.
“Once I get Dave headed out to Camas Valley, what do you need me to do?”
“I need you to go to the library,” she said.
At first I thought, for some reason, she’d decided to insert some joke into the very sobering moment. But she hadn’t.
“The library?”
She nodded. Bandon’s library was small in comparison to what had existed in most towns and cities before the blight, but it had one advantage over those repositories of literature and knowledge—it still existed. Because of the town’s viability throughout the worldwide chaos, its library hadn’t been looted and vandalized. The computers once connected to the internet sat unused, but the shelves brimmed with books and magazines of all kinds. The reason why Schiavo wanted me to venture there, though, eluded me.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “I want you to find everything you can on the Johnstown Flood.”
The event was only vaguely familiar, a historical morsel from some junior high class where I’d learned about the deadly disaster. Quickly, though, I understood why she was sending me on this errand. And what she hoped to learn from it.
“Speed,” I said.
Schiavo nodded.
“Exactly.”
Thirty Six
Sergeant Lorenzen supervised the loading of the Marine aircraft. An 81 millimeter mortar with four dozen rounds. Light machine guns with thousands of rounds.
And explosives. Demolition charges, to be exact. Enough to blow a bridge, and triple that amount for the big show far up river.
“I know you’d rather be with us,” Schiavo told her husband. “But I need you with Dalton’s people at the first bridge.”
Martin might have resisted that order, but he didn’t. A job needed to be done, and, in her mind, he was physically compromised. Operating the mortar from a stationary position was something he could reasonably be expected to do. Dalton’s people would be tasked with blowing the bridge over the Rogue River at Gold Beach, all while presenting a defensive force meant to appear much larger than a baker’s dozen. That would involve movement of small units, two people at times, from firing position to firing position.
“You’ve got to keep that mortar in action,” she told him.
Martin had received a fifteen-minute crash course in use of the portable artillery piece from Corporal Enderson. Operation of the weapon was relatively simple, but targeting took both science and finesse.
“Manage your ammunition,” she reminded him. “Walk the rounds east when they move inland.”
“If they move inland,” Martin said.
“They’ll have no choice,” Schiavo told him. “They see this as the decisive battle as much as we do. They’re not pulling back. Just keep the pressure on them to move and kill as many as you can.”
Kill...
The first action of this final battle might kill some enemy, but not enough. Degrading their numbers was only a secondary goal to blocking their advance along the coastal route. They had to move inland to the next bridge across the Rogue River. That was the only logical course they could take, and it was a lynchpin of Schiavo’s plan.
“We’ll send them on the run,” Martin assured her.
He left Schiavo and me, joining Lorenzen and the rest of the garrison as they worked to finish loading the supplies as the clock ticked toward midnight.
“Dave will be there by now,” I said.
Schiavo nodded, confident in that part of the plan. Dalton had proven himself to be a reliable, if wary, ally. He’d saved my life and ended Olin’s. He would be among the dozen we’d requested to join us in battle, particularly if he grasped the finality of what we were about to attempt.
“Dalton will have his shooters ready,” she said. “He’ll—”
The Osprey’ rotors spun up, whirling fast above the hard-packed sand, kicking up the last bit of ash which the tide hadn’t yet washed out to sea. It was near impossible to hear anything now, but I didn’t need to to notice the surprise washing over Schiavo’s face. Surprise that had interrupted her.
“What’s wrong?”
She didn’t bother trying to answer my question, gesturing with a nod, instead. Motioning behind me. I turned and instantly understood what had given her pause.
Elaine was walking toward us, geared up, her MP5 strapped across the front of her vest and an M4 slung behind.
“What are you doing?” I challenged her.
She shook her head and pointed to her ear, half a smile added to the pantomime for effect. I put my hand on her back and guided her away from the waiting transport, far enough that some semblance of a conversation would be possible.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I pumped enough milk for two days,” my wife told me, sidestepping the direct question I’d posed. “There’s always formula if that’s not enough.”
“Elaine, what are you—”
“Grace is going to watch Hope for us,” she continued. “She has Krista to help, and every wannabe grandmother in town is itching to pitch in.”
While I’d been at the library, Schiavo had very clearly followed through on her promise to Elaine, and I’d known innately upon first sight of her walking across the sand what her intent was. Hearing it, though, laid out through all the planning she’d instituted to make it happen, made it terrifyingly real.
“You’re coming,” I said.
“I am.”
I took a breath. Behind us, Schiavo and every member of her garrison were readying themselves to board the Osprey. After a short hop to Camas Valley, Dalton and another eleven fighters would join us, if Dave Arndt’s midnight race to inform them of the coming threat had been successful. With Martin and me, we’d planned this last chance defense to work with a force of twenty.
Now it would be twenty-one.
“Elaine, just for a minute, consider what you’re doing.”
“I have. Just like you have. If you fail, we’re finished. Any chance for our daughter is finished. So my place is with you, trying to prevent that.”
“And if something happens to both of us?” I challenged her.
“Then it will happen because we were doing what had to be done,” she answered.
I could have fought her on her decision, but not on her reasoning, just as Schiavo might have tried to dissuade Martin, but had chosen not to.
“You’re a hell of a woman, Elaine,” I said.
“Good thing I married a hell of a man,” she replied.
Behind us, Schiavo shouted that it was time to mount up.
“There may not be time for this later,” I said, then pulled Elaine close, kissing her, too briefly for either of us.
She eased back from me, smiling.
“Let’s go.”
Elaine stepped past me and headed for the Osprey. I looked to the beach road, no throngs of residents there to send us off in the dead of night. Most were sleeping, or making preparations for another siege, one that would end far differently than the previous one when we’d driven off the Unified Government forces. I suspected that was why Schiavo hadn’t called for a larger defensive force to be mustered from the civilian populace. She knew that if those of us about to set out on a mission to stop our enemy couldn’t succeed, throwing a few hundred more armed civilians into the fray would not make a difference. Not against what they would face.
Those were the rough odds. A handful more than twenty against a thousand troops and armor. I didn’t know if there was any historical equivalence to match our situation, one where a force as outnumbered as we were had prevailed over their enemy.
Fifty to one...
I thought on that, without giving it voice again, as I followed my wife and boarded the Marine aircraft.
Thirty Seven
The flight to Camas Valley took fifteen minutes from takeoff to touchdown. Dave Arndt was waiting in a clearing just outside town, waving a road flare to guide us in. Loading Dalton, and Lo, and ten other fighters was accomplished in under two minutes before we lifted off once again and headed almost due south, the Osprey’s rotors tilting forward once we were at altitude and speeding us toward our first destination.
Speed...
That was the key now. The speed with which we could reach our objectives and secure them. The speed with which the Unified Government forces would move. And, most importantly, the speed of raging waters.
“What’s wrong?”
Elaine asked me directly, slipping out of the headset which tied us into the Osprey’s intercom. She’d noticed the pad of paper on my lap. I’d removed it from my pocket, where I’d tucked it after poring over descriptions and numbers at the library, condensing the scant information there’d been about the Johnstown Flood to a scribble of calculations.
“Any one of these could be wrong,” I said, removing my headset and pointing to the mix of equations I’d used to figure what Schiavo needed. “These aren’t lengths of pipe or yards of concrete. I’m out of my element with this kind of math.”
“You’ve done your best,” she said.
I nodded, knowing that to be true. But there was no way to know the most important thing right now—whether my best was good enough.
* * *
“First drop off coming up,” Captain Hogan reported from the cockpit.
The Osprey slowed, and the whine of its engine nacelles beginning to rotate rose, the large rotors at each end of the wings gently shifting from the mode that allowed swift forward flight to that which made a vertical landing and takeoff possible.
“Lieutenant, once we’re down make your way aft to help me mount the minigun,” Major James instructed through his headset.
“Yes sir,” Lieutenant Grendel, the Osprey’s copilot, acknowledged.
The oddly magnificent aircraft slowed further, settling toward the dark earth, just a hint of light from the half-moon filtering through scattered clouds and wisps of dark ash still dissipating in the atmosphere. But it was enough light to reveal what lay just aft of the Osprey as it touched down and its ramp lowered.
Water. A vast swath of it spreading out toward hills that contained it naturally, and what man had constructed to tame it on one side.
The William L. Jess Dam. A forty plus year old structure that formed Lost Creek Lake, capturing the waters of the Rogue River and releasing its bounty into the same, which flowed toward the coast and spilled into the Pacific at Gold Beach some ninety miles distant as the crow flies, and much more than that when accounting for the circuitous route followed by the river.
“It’s topping the dam,” Lorenzen said, scanning the lake as he slung demolition charges over his shoulder.
He was right. The lake was brimming, its excess spilling over the top of the structure which had created it. Excess snowmelt brought on by the ashfall to the north, or simple lack of maintenance, could account for it exceeding its designed capacity. What that meant to our plans, to my part of it in particular, I didn’t know. Would more volume increase the speed of the outflow once the damn was breached? Would it have the opposite effect, creating some turbulence as the waters raced downstream, choking itself in narrow canyons?
“It might not be very stable, Paul,” I told the sergeant.
He continued grabbing demo charges, as did Carter Laws. This would be their part of the plan, laying explosives which would destroy the dam, freeing the waters of Lost Creek Lake to race down the Rogue River and wipe out the Unified Government forces as they tried to cross upstream after having found the span at Gold Beach demolished.
“How long do we wait?” Lorenzen asked me.
That was my contribution to what Schiavo had conceived—timing the flow that would race down the river to intercept the Unified Government forces when they reached the secondary bridge in a narrow gorge. My uneducated calculations, based on historical flow rates of past disasters, said the torrent would reach that point in roughly fourteen hours.
Fourteen hours.
In that span of time, everything on our end had to go right. Everything.
“Do it as soon as you’re set,” I told Lorenzen.
He nodded and motioned for the young private he’d trained just weeks earlier.
“We’ll see you in a while, sergeant,” Schiavo said.
The demolition team exited down the ramp and jogged with their heavy load of explosives and personal gear onto the dam, their boots slapping through ankle high water pouring over. As soon as they were off, Major James and Lieutenant Grendel mounted the minigun to a hardpoint on the aft ramp, connecting it to power and a large magazine box which would feed deadly rounds into the weapon.
“We’re on the clock,” James said as he clipped his tether to a point on the metal floor and sat behind the minigun, straddling it. “Let’s move.”
Grendel raced forward, the Osprey lifting off again just seconds after the co-pilot returned to the cockpit. If all went as planned, the aircraft would return after two more stops to retrieve Sergeant Lorenzen and Private Laws. By that time, the dam should be blown, and much of the contents of Lost Creek Lake should be racing toward the coast.
Should...
There was a lot of ‘should’ in our plan. And a lot of ‘must’ required to make it all work.
“Who dreamed this up?” Dalton asked from across the cabin, his fighters from Camas Valley seated to either side of him.
“I did,” Schiavo told him.
Dalton thought on that for a moment.
“So far your ideas seem to work out,” he said. “Otherwise my people wouldn’t be here.”
He smiled at her in the dim cabin as we turned west and headed for the coast.
Thirty Eight
Dawn was breaking as we reached the coast and turned south, the Osprey descending to land on a low hill overlooking Wedderburn Bridge.
“Second drop,” the pilot announced as the Osprey settled to the earth atop the rise.
“Here we go,” Martin said.
He stood and shouldered his gear, Schiavo reaching out to take hold of his hand before he was too far from her.
“I’ll see you in a while,” she said.
He nodded and ignored any sense of impropriety, leaning close to kiss his wife. She didn’t resist, and, for the first time since I’d known her, willingly let her personal and professional selves come together in a public display. The embrace, though, did not last. It could not. Martin eased back and reached for a pair of packaged mortar rounds. Other hands seized the ammunition before he could.
“We’ve got it,” Dalton said.
His people, in addition to their own weapons, hauled the 81 mm mortar and its 48 rounds of ammo down the ramp and off the Osprey, along with a trio of vintage M60 machine guns that had come ashore from the Rushmore. We were, in essence, unloading an augmented squad of fighters to stop the advance of a thousand enemy and force them to turn inland.
Inland was the key. With the Wedderburn Bridge blown, and with fire raining down upon them from the north side of the Rogue River, the Unified Government forces, if they wished to continue their advance, would have to move away from the coast to the next usable bridge upstream. That span across the Rogue at Lobster Creek would be where Elaine and I would be, with Schiavo, Westin, Hart, and Enderson. The six of us would have to keep our enemy at bay until the floodwaters reached that crossing po
int.
“Remember the procedures,” Enderson told Martin. “Dalton has Lo calling out targets for you.”
“You’ll be behind the hill,” Schiavo told her husband. “Stay there.”
“You don’t need to see what you’re shooting at,” Enderson reminded his pupil.
Martin, though, knew that more than instructions were being given to him, particularly from his wife. His place, in their mind, was out of the line of fire. Safe behind the hill while others exposed themselves along the shore of the Rogue River.
“When my rounds are complete, I’m not hiding,” Martin said, fixing directly on his wife next. “You know that, right?”
She nodded. Martin Jay, savior of Bandon in many ways, was not going to let others bear all the risk to keep the town, his town, safe.
“Good luck,” I said.
Martin gave me a quick tap on the shoulder and followed the last of Dalton’s people off the Osprey. Within a minute we were airborne again, skimming the hilltops, heading northeast.
“We’re going to get you as close as we can,” Captain Hogan told us over the intercom. “If the mapping is still correct, that might be a beach on the south side of the river.”
“Not a problem,” Schiavo told him.
“You don’t do anything heroic, okay?” I said, looking to my wife.
“Because you won’t?”
It was a challenge neither of us could live down to. She would do whatever was necessary to see that our part of this mission was successful, just as I would. But we would be doing so apart.
“I don’t want to see either of you within fifty yards of each other until the shooting stops,” Schiavo admonished us. “Is that clear?”
We would be landing in just minutes. And once there, Elaine and I would be split up. That was by design, and insistence. Schiavo’s insistence. That was the only way she’d allowed my wife to join the mission. Should something happen, the woman who’d conceived this operation didn’t want it on her conscience that we’d be leaving an orphan behind.
“Opposite sides of valley,” I promised her.
“Opposite sides,” Elaine parroted, agreeing.