Wisps of sickly green gas wafted up the hill toward the heights. The enemy front was visible now as dozens of men swarmed down the hillside, leaping from rock to rock and tree to tree, pausing only briefly to fire before continuing to advance. The gas was so dispersed that it was hard for Ellen to tell where it was. The wave of men met the first of the thin vapors. At first nothing happened, then with startling swiftness, men began to drop and retch.
“Gas!” That single piercing cry, ending as it did with a retching sound, galvanized the enemy soldiers, transforming them from battle-tested veterans, confidently advancing against light return fire, to a fleeing, panic-stricken mob.
Ellen smiled at Terrell, who gave her a thumbs-up. She knew the enemy would regroup and attack again, but she also knew they wouldn’t hit until after the breeze died down at sunset.
An hour later, the mule train from Provo arrived with fuel for the chopper and thirty minutes after that Terrell, Gypsy and Ellen were airborne looking for the enemy camp. It took them ten minutes to find and just three minutes to shred; Gypsy’s M60 and Ellen’s minigun raked enemy soldiers without mercy.
Now she could head for the main battle.
*
Back in Provo, the fighting was easily the most intense of the war. All morning, the Allies gave ground slowly, falling back one house, one block, at a time. Out of LAWS, their recoilless rifles smashed to scrap, their supply of anti-tank mines exhausted, Adam had no choice but to continue to wage a fighting retreat. And this was no orderly retirement from the field of battle. This was a grudge match, in which every inch was yielded only at the cost of blood. The Allies killed thousands of the King’s soldiers and thousands more replaced them. The enemy killed hundreds of the Allies and there were no replacements.
The King’s remaining four tanks had rolled toward Provo just before dawn. The single howitzer Adam had retained to defend the southern front killed two of them before being destroyed by the enemy Focke-Wulfe, which continued to bomb and strafe the Allies. A rifle squad purchased a third tank with their lives, decoying it into a deep, pit trap. The fourth tank, a Patton, stormed ahead, smashing everything in its path.
Major Cheryl Cummins died leading a daring cavalry attack that destroyed the last of the enemy’s artillery. The location of those guns and the timing of the enemy assault were the most useful pieces of information to come from the briefcase Michael Whitebear had stolen. Adam had used the information of the enemy’s troop and armor dispositions to minimize Allied casualties while maximizing those of the enemy, but even that did little to slow their advance. There were simply too many of them.
To the north, Captain Parsons and his troops held firm despite mounting pressure. His howitzer was camouflaged with overhead netting and the enemy Focke-Wulfe had been unable to locate and destroy it.
*
Michael Whitebear, Daniel Windwalker and Mitchell Stonehand raced through the wreckage of Provo toward the Big-Cat Construction Company. Word had come to them from Bob Young that one of the Allied mechanics had repaired a D-9H Caterpillar. The rest of the Allied bulldozers had already been destroyed. They weren’t much use against tanks, but were fearsome against infantry. Michael had come up with what Daniel was now beginning to regard as a typically Michael idea and the three were in a rush to try it out.
Daniel’s long legs had him in the lead as the three dodged their way around debris and leaped over fallen trees. Sure enough, it was up and running when they arrived. Daniel had no experience at all running a Cat. He pulled up and stood there looking at it, a puzzled expression on his face. Once upon a time, back before the world went to hell, Michael had run a little D-2 for a rancher. He took one look at this D-9H and knew he was in trouble. There were considerable differences. Kind of like the difference between flying an ultralight and a 727.
He was still standing there, looking helpless, when Mitchell Stonehand brushed by and climbed up into the cab. He raised and lowered the blade experimentally, then put the big Cat through its paces. He shut it off and climbed down.
“This don’t do it, nothin’ will,” he said, stoically.
Daniel just nodded, but Michael couldn’t resist asking, “Where’d you learn to operate one of these things?”
“Aw, I had a little construction company before, you know...” Mitchell said with a shrug. He was very sparing with words.
“Must have been some company for you to have one of these,” Michael said.
Mitchell mumbled something as he climbed back onto the Cat but Michael missed it. He looked over at Daniel, who’d been closer.
“Says he had thirty of ’em,” Daniel explained with a smile.
The Cat roared to life and headed for the open gate. Daniel and Michael scrambled to get aboard before they got left behind.
*
Captain Parsons had his hands full at the moment. Enemy soldiers were massing to charge his position. The strafing and bombing runs from the enemy plane had forced him to relocate his howitzer so many times it was almost at Olmstead, practically in the mouth of Provo Canyon.
Sergeant Buell continued to call in firing coordinates, as did Dan Osaka and Lady Di, not that it mattered much with only four rounds of high explosive left. He glanced again at the ammo boxes containing his surprise and wondered if they would do the trick.
Parsons looked around, examining his latest position for flaws. He couldn’t pull back any farther. It would have to do.
*
Prince John sighted carefully through the scope of his sniper rifle. The stock of the 7 mm Mashburn Magnum lay across the back of a concrete bench weary commuters had once rested on while waiting to catch a bus. A faded Pepsi ad still graced the bench, proclaiming itself the drink of the next generation. John took in half a breath, held it for the merest instant while his index finger caressed the rifle’s trigger and smiled as he watched his target, six hundred yards away, spin lifelessly to the ground. He pulled his eye away from the 4X Redfield ranging scope, cocked the bolt and fed another round into the single shot rifle.
The smile on his face was genuine as he truly enjoyed shooting a finely made gun. Though of course, killing at such distances took some of the fun out of it. The Prince was one of those rare men who took almost orgasmic pleasure in looking into the eyes of those he killed, watching the life flow from them, the sparkle turning flat and dull. The Royal Inquisitor shared this quirk. It was one of the reasons they got along so well.
John was smiling a thin-lipped smile, careful not to show his bad teeth. This morning’s attack was going well in spite of the fact that Carswell, up north, was dragging his ass. The man should have occupied Provo Canyon by now and cut off the Allied retreat, but he claimed to have encountered fierce resistance. Oh well, Carswell can be dealt with later, the Prince decided, as he lined up on another target.
*
General Carswell was having a few uncharitable thoughts about Prince John as well. Why in the hell had John put him in charge of this clusterfuck operation, if not to discredit him with the King? Nothing was going right! First, his lead element marches blindly into an artillery barrage, when the enemy wasn’t supposed to have artillery up north. Then the Focke-Wulfe couldn’t find the howitzer that was pounding his men. Though... He poked his head up out of the hole he had taken shelter in. The shelling had stopped.
With sudden insight that came from being an ex-supply sergeant, he realized they were short on shells. Excellent! At last something was going his way. The thought occurred to him that Prince John intended to use him for a fall guy if this attack didn’t go as planned. He had to bottle up that damn canyon. He hurried towards the troops massing below. One last charge should do it.
The Prince was determined to make him a goat, but he decided to grasp the opportunity to be, instead, a hero. He normally wasn’t an impulsive man, but the thought of the fame and glory that would be his when his attack succeeded went to his head. Like many men, the way he saw himself had little to do with reality. In particular, he had a
lways envisioned himself a master of tactics. Now he had the chance to prove it. The enemy was showing weakness. Now was the time to take advantage. Now was the time to strike with everything he had in an all-or-nothing, do-or-die, balls-to-the-wall, CHARGE!
He promised himself it would be an epic charge, the kind about which poems and songs were written, the kind future generations of officers would study with awe. And he would lead it himself. He could see it now: Carswell’s Charge. He got goose bumps just thinking about it.
*
Captain Parsons could hear the roaring of massed voices from the enemy lines. Somebody over there was getting them all worked up. The Captain’s men were dug in. Lieutenant Osaka commanded his right flank and Sergeant Buell, who refused on principle to become an officer, was in command on his left. He had just finished loading the first of the special projectiles into his howitzer. The gun was depressed to its horizontal, fire at point-blank range, position. But this time, the M102 rested on a firing turntable so that it could be traversed easily. A pair of machinists had cobbled the thing together for him from his description of what he wanted. It looked sort of like a giant lazy-Susan with the main part of the cannon parked on top of it. A roller attached to the tail enabled his gun crew to pivot the 4,000 pound gun in a fraction of the time it would normally take. At close ranges, the ability to turn and aim quickly was vital. Soon the enemy would pour over the banks of the Provo Reservoir Canal. Soon he would know if he could hold the north flank.
A droning sound reached his ears. His eyes searched the sky until they found what his ears had told him was there. Oh, joy. The Focke-Wulfe was back, refueled, re-armed and looking for his cannon. As soon as he pulled the lanyard it would know where to find him. No camouflage netting ever designed could hide that muzzle flash.
The roaring of the enemy troops rose to a crescendo and suddenly, a mottled green and brown wave, the color of the King’s uniforms, flowed over the canal levee and headed for his men. They were slightly over three hundred yards away. A mass of horses galloped to the van, led by a dumpy-looking guy, obviously not a horseman, who was swinging a cavalry saber over his head as he urged his troops on. Christ! There were thousands of them. They swarmed over the ground like army ants.
With a resigned glance at the plane and the knowledge he was signing his own death warrant, Parsons pulled the lanyard and the first of three Beehive rounds wreaked indescribable carnage on the massed men and horses. Each Beehive shell contained eight thousand flechettes, finned needles a couple of inches long, that made a frightening buzzing sound as they tear through the air. That sound gave the XM546, as it was officially known, its nickname. At a range of up to one-hundred-and-fifty yards, the Beehive could kill absolutely everything in a path fifty yards wide. At three hundred yards, the destruction wasn’t as complete, but horrible nonetheless.
Parsons and his men ignored the carnage and scrambled to reload.
Above the battle, the pilot of the Focke-Wulfe saw the flash of the gun and put his plane into a screaming dive. The gun emplacement grew in his sights. His finger poised on the bomb release.
Suddenly, a string of bullets cut across the nose of his plane, disrupting his concentration. Instinctively, he pulled back on the stick and pivoted his head around to locate the enemy plane, releasing the bomb to shed the weight and improve his maneuverability, even though he knew it would miss the howitzer below. There were no flies on him. Survival came first.
Ellen Whitebear swore at the air pocket that caused her to miss. The range had been extreme, but she had realized the FW-190 was bombing someone who was defending the entrance to Provo Canyon and had decided to sacrifice the element of surprise to spoil the strike. Swiftly, she tried to realign her minigun with the enemy plane but its pilot had seen them and was climbing above the angle she could fire without hitting the Huey’s rotors.
Terrell cried out, “Hang on, folks!”
The nose of the Huey rose as Terrell gained as much altitude as possible. In one sense, they could never gain enough. The operational ceiling of the Focke-Wulfe was almost 20,000 feet higher than the Huey’s. The enemy pilot would make his attacks from above, the blind spot of any helicopter. Terrell needed the altitude so he could bank the chopper steeply enough to put the enemy plane in either Ellen or Gypsy’s line of fire. Superior agility was the only thing his Huey had going for it.
“Eleven o’clock high!” screamed Gypsy.
Terrell banked right and Gypsy’s M60 rattled briefly. A line of slugs tore through the Huey, narrowly missing Ellen. Terrell swung the Huey the opposite direction and Ellen caught a glimpse of the Focke-Wulfe. She sprayed the sky as the wild gyrations of the Huey caused her to miss again.
“I’ll never hit him if you keep jinkin’ all over the sky, Terrell,” Ellen complained.
Below her, the Allied howitzer fired again.
“Well, I’ll just fly nice and level so he can blow us out of the sky, then,” Terrell shot back.
“Never mind,” Ellen retorted in her best Gilda Radner whine.
Gypsy chuckled, “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you two were married!” During the banter, their eyes had been searching the sky.
“Six o’clock high!” Ellen yelled.
Shells from the FW-190 ripped through the Huey. Gypsy staggered and fell, bright crimson blood gushing from a wound in his neck. Terrell ruddered the chopper to the right where it was flying sideways and banked it so Ellen’s door faced the plane. She only had the briefest of instants to react. Her minigun whined its metallic scream as she poured lead toward the Focke-Wulfe. Pieces of tail section shredded from the plane.
Feeling the mushiness in his rudder and elevators, the enemy pilot broke off his attack and headed for home.
The Huey’s engine chose that moment to cough and die. Its rotors began to autorotate, slowing their decent slightly.
“Brace yourselves, we’re gonna hit hard!” Terrell shouted as he fought to control the Huey’s drop.
Ellen looked over at Gypsy, whose dead body flopped half in and half out of the helicopter’s door, held in only by his safety strap. Her hand unconsciously brushed the pocket that held Michael’s note.
*
Down below the smoking Huey, Parsons shifted his aim point and fired again. The last of the six Beehives cut a cone of destruction through the oncoming men and the charge faltered and stalled. Battle cries stilled, replaced by the agonized screams of the wounded. A dazed hush fell over the battlefield. Parsons’ men stopped firing. Enemy survivors ran or stumbled in shock over the bodies of their fallen comrades as they fled, though a few stopped to pick up injured friends. Thousands of dead men littered the killing ground, bodies pin cushioned with flechettes. The stench was overwhelming.
Captain Parsons stared in horror and disbelief. Acres of bodies lay as they fell. I did this, he thought. I DID THIS! He looked at his right hand, the hand that pulled the lanyard, as if it couldn’t belong to him.
Sprinkled randomly throughout the piles of corpses, injured men writhed in agony. Some Allied soldiers dropped their weapons and covered their faces, some threw up, others simply stood and sobbed. Parsons himself was shaking. Wounded enemy soldiers found their voices again. Piteous moans and cries for help, mixed with mindless screams.
Since the Allies didn’t have the medical resources to squander on their foes, standing orders were to kill or ignore enemy wounded; but along the line Allied soldiers broke ranks and walked out into the kill zone to give aid. No one tried to stop them. No one human could have.
Captain Parsons took control of himself with a mighty effort and reached for his radio. “Parsons to HQ.”
“Headquarters here. Report.” It was Adam Young, sounding harried.
Parsons wrenched his gaze away from the dead and said in a voice like a mausoleum, “Sir, the north flank is secure.”
Adam heard the oddness in the Captain’s voice, but didn’t press. He would understand the cause when he retreated past the site of Carswell’s C
harge.
Captain Parsons lay the radio down and stumbled like a zombie into the grisly nightmare. Maybe he could save some of them. Maybe...
Sergeant Buell gathered the Allied soldiers and sent most of them south to rejoin the main effort. Then he led Captain Parsons, slippery with gore, from the battlefield, where isolated gunshots sounded: mercy killings beneath a sapphire blue sky.
Chapter 47: Painful Retreat
Dan Osaka and Lady Di were two of the few who didn’t go to help the enemy wounded, being more interested in the damaged helicopter that splashed down in a small lake half a mile away. Mounting their horses, they galloped toward the broken bird, but even as they neared, the chopper sank beneath the water.
*
Ellen Whitebear opened her eyes as water splashed her face. She gasped, choked, coughed water and grabbed a deep breath as awareness of her situation flooded through her and the water surged over her head. She tried to disconnect the safety belt that held her to the sinking Huey, but her arms wouldn’t move. Terror gripped her as she realized she couldn’t feel her arms or legs. The helicopter lurched under her as it sank farther beneath the surface. She slid partway out the door. Through the murky water, she could see Terrell struggling to free himself from his restraints.
Pressure built in her lungs. She tried desperately to move her arms or legs, imagining herself thrashing against her bonds, tearing free and heading for the surface. She couldn’t move. Tears of frustration formed in her eyes as she struggled to overcome her injury to no avail. She felt a bump as the chopper settled onto the bottom of the pond, stirring up a cloud of silt that further obscured her vision.
The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time Page 47