by J. L. Salter
The truck bed had twelve wooden stakes with three one-by-six rails running horizontally. No hinge on the rear gate — it lifted up and out.
Mitch rubbed the back of his neck as he studied its trailer, an eighteen-foot low-bed with double axle and gleaming black paint. It was also obviously new and almost certainly also stolen. “Interesting… I don’t see any tarps, tie-downs, or boxes.”
Later, just outside the condo’s front porch, Mitch noticed Pete the NCO was on the prowl again.
“I need a man at the south end outpost, down by Whiskey Road,” announced Pete.
Nobody spoke up and several people ducked their faces slightly. The troops were beginning to catch on.
“I guess I can guard an intersection for a few minutes.” Mitch was leery of getting stuck driving a dozer if he lingered near the barricade too long. But he’d broken the cardinal rule about never volunteering for a detail.
Pete’s look was partly blank. They’d already conversed and he likely recognized the face, but they hadn’t been introduced yet.
“Bill Mitchell. I’m here with Kelly.”
“Right. Right.” The name had clicked. Pete clutched Mitch’s shoulder. “Bill, somebody told me you had R-O-T-C.”
“Yeah, Army Rot-Cee.” Mitch was surprised the host knew anything about him. “But I didn’t finish.”
“Weren’t commissioned?”
“I quit after three years.” Mitch shrugged.
“Why’d you drop out?”
Mitch paused and looked into Pete’s face. “I’ve given a lot of bull crap reasons to other folks, but to you I’m just saying it straight — I realized I didn’t want the responsibility of leading men in combat.”
Pete frowned and shook his head. “I can appreciate your honesty, but that’s no good. We don’t have time right now for any leadership lectures… but you’re called to active duty now.”
“What?” Mitch spluttered a bit.
Pete pointed to his palm like it was a small book. “You probably studied beginning tactics, at least enough to know what to do.”
“Huh?” More splutter from Mitch.
“From here on, you’re Task Force Mitchell and you’re in charge of those Legion Post men when they show up.”
“Me? In charge?” He was incredulous.
“We need somebody who already knows the enemy deployment and weaponry. You take the new arrivals along those woods on the north flank and come up behind those three trucks.”
Partly dazed, Mitch stared as Pete pointed the direction of the route. “How many men are coming?”
“Probably won’t even be a full squad.” Pete shook his head. “Just figure Force Mitchell might be more of a small flanking patrol.”
Irene returned and whispered to Pete.
“That’s good news.” He touched her face lightly. “Thanks, honey.” Pete turned again to Mitch. “Still don’t know how many are coming, but Irene says Gary and Steve are still at the Post.”
That news didn’t lessen Mitch’s shock. “Don’t know them.”
“Gary was Special Forces in Vietnam. Injured several times and left for dead once. Steve was a Marine who fought the Republican Guard outside Baghdad in the first Gulf War. Both of them know what they’re doing. And both are still young enough to maneuver.”
“That’s a relief.” Mitch exhaled. “So which one’s going to lead this patrol?”
“No, you still got to lead it.” Pete sighed heavily. “Look, just think of yourself as a Pathfinder in World War II. You got dropped early to get the lay of the place, assess enemy strength and position. The men from Post 38 come along later, not knowing anything. You take them where they need to be and turn them loose. Gary and Steve will know what to do once they’re behind enemy lines.”
“Pathfinder. Okay, I feel slightly better about that. Maybe about two per cent better.” Mitch had tried for sarcasm, but it likely came across as whiny.
“Something else bothering you?”
“Yeah. Those veterans aren’t going to listen to me. How am I going to give orders or instructions to men who’ve already been in combat?”
Pete shook his head slowly. “That’s a question every wet-behind-the-ears ninety-day wonder has had to face, since the history of American armed forces.”
“So what’s the big answer to youth and inexperience taking command of seasoned veterans?” Mitch’s question was sincere, but probably sounded sarcastic.
“Well most of the lieutenants I ever served with had one thing in common.” Pete held up a single finger.
“What’s that?”
“They frowned a lot.”
“Frowned? That’s it?” Mitch really wished he’d eaten lunch somewhere else. “That’s your great advice? Scowl at them?”
“You asked. Shave-tail lieutenants with gold bars frowned a lot. They probably thought it made them look mean.”
“Did it?”
“Some looked mean anyhow.” Pete thought back. “But lots of them were just scared skinny kids themselves. Mostly their frowns just made them look uncomfortable, like they had hemorrhoids or something.”
Mitch was already quite sorry he’d initiated this question series.
Pete put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder again and looked him in the eyes. “Don’t let it get so complicated that you do something stupid. Just stay low, keep in those woods, or both. Lead the Legion men around the north side and get behind that third truck. Then turn Gary and Steve loose.”
“Okay. Simple. Straightforward.” Mitch nodded. “Anything else I need to know?”
“Yeah. The enemy’s not supposed to know you’re there ‘til after your attack starts.”
“Element of surprise.” Mitch intoned.
“There.” Pete pointed. “That’s a good one.”
“Good what?”
“Frown.” He pointed again to Mitch’s face. “That’s a good scowl to use with Gary and Steve.”
But Mitch had not been practicing frowns, at least not consciously. He was simply worried and scared.
Pete looked like he wanted to say something else but didn’t. He patted Mitch’s shoulder, hard; then he paused and patted it again, not as roughly. “Try not to let any of my friends get killed.” He left to tend to somebody else.
Mitch felt no comfort in Pete’s parting words.
****
Like an experienced NCO, Pete kept the larger picture in mind at all times and matched that image against the smaller details of his resources. He pulled aside his tall neighbor. “Art, you were with an engineer outfit in Korea.” It was not a question.
“Thirteenth Engineer Battalion. Inchon, Yalu River, Pusan, Heartbreak Ridge, Pork Chop Hill.” Art nodded proudly. “I wasn’t in all those, but my unit was. Lucky Thirteenth.”
“Engineers fought along with everybody else,” Pete acknowledged, needing to hurry to the point.
But Art continued. “We contained floods, built installations, and improved roads. In defensive actions we blew bridges, cratered roads, and mined all the other access routes. Mines were the best.”
Melvin, who’d heard Art’s entire litany, couldn’t resist adding his own commentary. “We got no bridges here and if you dig a crater in that lane, the Association will throw your skinny carcass in the jailhouse.”
“Give me the low-down on mines.” Pete ignored Melvin.
“If I laid one mine, I laid a million.”
“Well, we got no mines neither.” Melvin turned to Pete. “Do we?”
With an irritated wave of his hand, Pete dismissed Melvin’s objection and question.
“We sometimes had twelve hundred square yards to cover with only a dozen mines.” Art had not forgotten very much of his three year hitch.
“So what? You ain’t going to blow up these yards neither.”
Pete poked Melvin’s upper chest with a stern, stiff forefinger. “Let him finish.”
“Sometimes our mine fields had very few actual mines, and the few we had were spaced way too far
apart to really be effective.”
Pete nodded. “But, initially at least, they were a pretty good deterrent because the enemy didn’t know how many or exactly where that small number was buried.”
“Yep. And sometimes all we had was a sign which said it was a mine field, like the markers we’d leave for our own troops. But we’d long since run out of mines because supplies hadn’t caught up with us.” Art’s thin smile seemed wistful. “Sometimes we even planted dummy mines, the kind we’d used for training. It’s metal so your detector picks it up, but no charge inside.”
“Just a few stinking signs and some duds? No real mines at all?” Melvin often restated the obvious.
“Melvin, right now you’re part of our problem! I need you to start being part of the solution.” Pete’s tone was as harsh as his words.
Both startled Melvin, who shut down for a moment, stunned. Then his entire expression changed, as though a light bulb came to life inside his head. For all of Melvin’s adult life, he’d gotten away with being the negative skeptic — he got plenty of attention and sometimes even a few laughs. Suddenly he’d been called to task. It likely felt strange to be chastised like a buck private. But he seemed to know immediately he finally had to drop the smart-aleck persona that fit him like a comfortable flannel shirt. His friends and neighbors required a different Melvin that afternoon. They couldn’t handle a ridiculing critic; they needed a constructive helper. Possibly, Melvin was also weary of being the argumentative spectator. Right there, in the middle of Placid Lane at ten minutes past one o’clock, Melvin suddenly became a member of the team.
Pete had asked the former engineer another question about live mines versus duds and Art was concentrated on his response. “Maybe we had a couple live ones we’d sprinkle in there just to keep the North Koreans and Chinese honest but sometimes it was dummies, or no mines at all, or even just a sign or two.”
“At least you slowed them down.” Pete paused. That’s what we need. “Art, we got that long stretch of grass on the north end of our barricade line, right beside Leo’s driveway.” Pete pointed and then stuck out his chin slightly. “You know what I’m thinking?”
Art’s grin made his goatee widen into an odd shape. “You want me to make those city boys think we’ve got Leo’s yard mined.”
“Can you do it?” Pete clasped his shoulder.
Melvin began nodding before Art could answer. The dramatically new Melvin evidently decided this team could do just about anything that was needed.
Art noticed his neighbor’s affirmation and it was contagious; he nodded too. “I used to plant mines in the right spots and still make a peach-fuzz second looie think I’d laid them where he told me. I guess I can fool some city punks who don’t know a mine from a clay brick.”
“What’ll you need?” Pete motioned for his nearby wife to listen in and Irene moved even closer.
“Find me a digger. Two dozen shallow holes, about yea deep.” Art held his hands horizontally, one roughly four inches above the other. “Then bring me a dozen metal pie plates or those pans you make layer cakes from. Anything round, metal, and about eight or nine inches diameter.”
“Honey, can you find some pans or plates like that?”
“I can get you so many metal pans that you’ll think we’re having scrap drives again.” Irene hustled away, grabbing Ellie as she went.
Art thought of something else. “Oh, I’ll need some wire, too.”
“Regular land mines were touch or pressure activated… no wire.” Pete frowned. “What are you thinking?”
“I figure city boys would expect wires to go with explosives. Maybe they’ve never even seen a real mine.”
“Good point.” Pete stroked his cheek with thoughtful fingertips. “What kind of wire you need?”
“Thin, but visible. Doesn’t have to carry current since it’s just for show.”
Melvin’s face brightened and he spoke for the first time in several moments. “I’ve got some speaker wire from when my granddaughter’s ex-husband installed that home theater speaker system I didn’t want.”
Art turned to his shorter neighbor. “That’ll do just fine, Melvin. Got about fifty feet left?”
“Fifty or real close to it.” Melvin hurried off toward his condo.
“Okay. Okay. Get to work.” Pete smiled quietly at Melvin’s evident change but wondered how long it would last. “I’ll send over a digger with a shovel.” He looked around quickly, saw Roger, and grabbed his shoulder. When a sergeant needs a digger, you never want to be the first person he sees.
Roger grumbled and sputtered, but he went to Pete’s garage for a shovel.
Pete watched with pride as his ad hoc detail quickly got their project underway.
Art paced off his faux minefield to neutralize an area approximately six-by-eighteen feet. He kicked his heel into the turf to indicate the spots for each of the two dozen holes.
Reluctantly returning with his implement, Roger began digging shallow holes beside Leo’s driveway.
Melvin came back out of breath and handed over the coils of speaker wire.
As Pete left to go back inside, Art was already feeding out the wire to be sure he had enough to connect each bogus mine.
****
Opposing Force
Foss’s first glimmer of encouragement for the afternoon came when Herve’s lead truck finally turned the corner onto Placid Lane and stopped along the side of the duplex facing North Pleasant Drive. “About time. How many two-plexes we got so far?”
Herve turned and pointed as he counted to three. “Plus half of the next building.”
“That’s only seven different condos.” Foss looked at his watch. “We been working over thirty-five minutes already! We ought to be more’n half-way through, but Dante’s blitzin’ haulers have hardly started!”
Foss’s logistical arithmetic had gone horribly wrong. Over one hundred condos divided by three hauling teams meant each team must rob at least thirty-three units in a single hour. That allowed less than two minutes per condo to enter, locate valuables, and carry them out to the trucks. However, the real life algebra — way beyond Foss’s grasp — indicated that the average hauling team was taking almost sixteen minutes to steal valuables from each dwelling. Had he realized his calculations were wrong by at least eight-fold, Foss likely would’ve executed someone on the spot.
As it was, Foss frowned darkly. “No good. No good. No blitzin’ good. If that’s all the faster we go, it’ll take… several hours!” Foss was genuinely stunned that his new gang of eighteen assistants couldn’t easily wipe out more than a hundred condominiums in slightly over one hour. How could his elaborate logistical planning have such a dismal result? What went wrong? Somebody must have misplaced one of his decimals.
Herve shrugged. During last week’s reconnaissance, he had confirmed that many of these residents left their garage doors up slightly. Herve had been assigned only three planning responsibilities: total the duplex buildings… which he’d miscounted as fifty instead of the sixty-two actually occupied, sketch the neighborhood’s layout… which somehow became a misshapen northeastern state, and acquire the trucks and trailer from a distant cousin with connections to a vehicle impound yard.
While it was true the word “boxes” had never surfaced until about five minutes before, Foss figured Herve should have known they were essential. While it wasn’t actually Herve’s personal fault that access to two streets had been blocked since last week, Foss badly needed to blame somebody.
For his part, Herve clearly wanted to shift Foss’s attention. “I told Dante to stop his guys when they got to the first crossroad, man. I figured we ought to start them unloading these houses on this street here.” Herve pointed to Placid. “No new ditches across this road, man.”
Foss nodded absent-mindedly. Eight-plus hours was over eight times the duration he’d so carefully calculated. What went wrong? Did he need three men on each hauling team? More teams? More trucks? Uh… ninety boxes? He could
n’t think straight. All Foss knew for certain: he was catastrophically behind schedule and that was only because of his incompetent workers.
Herve stood in front of his lead truck and watched a gray-haired man digging in one of the yards on the north side of the street up ahead. He could barely see that digger around the curve and so much higher on the hill. “Hey, Foss. Look, man.” He pointed.
“Don’t mean nothing.” Foss looked anyway. “Probably just planting flowers. Old folks like flowers.”
“Do they plant flowers in October, man?”
Foss was never one to be absent an answer. “Sure, it’s them Fall-ennials. Plant before Halloween and they’re ready for Christmas.”
Herve, who was vertically challenged, jumped up a couple of times to try to get a better look. “What’s all them wires for, man?”
Foss stood on his toes and looked at a second man, older and taller than the digger. Wearing a windbreaker and sporting a goatee, that individual was unspooling wire into the holes. “I seen wires in flowers before.”
“Where, man?”
“Flower shop.”
“What was you doing in a flower shop, man?”
“Cleaning out the cash drawer, stupid.” Foss got easily irritated by too many questions.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wednesday at 1:15 p.m.
Barricade
Standing inside his doorway, Pete surveyed the varied assortment staffing his defensive outpost. It was amazing how many individuals had remained and how well they had cooperated, so far.
He saw Earl approaching with two walkie-talkie devices he’d probably bought from a television pitch man. No doubt those two-way radios were several years old, but they still remained in their original heavy plastic casing.
“Will these help any?” Earl handed them over.
Pete looked around, but didn’t move. “Irene, where’s those shears?”