Black Autumn

by Jeff Kirkham

  “Goddamnit! Goddamnit!” Chad yelled in the small cockpit, pounding on the armrest of his seat. “Get us on the ground!”

  The plane peeled away from its banking turn and headed toward Davis County Airport.

  • • •

  Francisco rode into battle on the armored platform of a front-end loader, shouting orders and shooting his AK periodically at nothing in particular. Having led gangs his entire adult life, he knew to keep things simple and brutal.

  His plan was Stalinesque. Each of his Los Latigos men lead a troop of twenty Latino laborers. He had given his trusted gangbangers strict instructions to herd their men out in front of them, shooting any man who faltered or ran.

  With time, perhaps he could have developed loyalty and discipline among the new recruits, but with time they would also lose the initiative, allowing the whites to organize. Francisco knew the lethal efficiency of whites who organized. He had no intention of subjecting himself to it ever again.

  As planned, his army rolled up the frontage road along the freeway and slammed directly into the defenses Gabriel had described. The Latino army didn’t regroup, didn’t reset their order of battle. His lieutenants ran directly into the barricades. They crushed the few defenders at the bottom barricade and quickly brought forward their tanks.

  From his position in the center of his army, Francisco heard the low roar of a machine gun. The thundering rumble drowned out the staccato pops of rifle and handgun fire, heralding death of a more voracious kind. Francisco grabbed a megaphone he had brought and screamed for anyone and everyone to assault the machine gun.

  Several of his lieutenants massed their men behind the scant cover around the machine gun position. Men piled behind dirt berms, trees, trash cans, fences and an electrical junction box. By horrifying trial and error, the Latinos learned which cover would stop the heavy rounds of the machine gun and which wouldn’t. Men behind trash cans, cars, fences or even medium-sized trees died, cut in half by the machine gun, the rounds punching through almost anything. Others, behind thick dirt berms or lying pancaked on the ground behind the rise of the earth, survived. The terrified men stacked up deep behind the little cover they could find.

  The roar of the gun paused occasionally, changing the belt of ammunition or swapping out a red-hot barrel. In those lapses, the Latino men sprinted forward, coming closer to the gun position. With every bound, the men not only got closer, but they spread out further around the machine gun, forcing it to traverse back and forth at an ever-greater arc, giving brief windows where the men could shoot back at the machine gun operators. Eventually, Latinos occupied an almost three-hundred-sixty-degree circle around the gun emplacement. The last hundred yards to the machine gun were taken in a single, mad rush.

  The belt-fed swung madly, scything men down like an invisible blade. Eventually, the hundred fifty-round belt ran dry, and the pause allowed men to overrun the gun emplacement. The machine gun operators died, fighting hand to hand against fear-crazed Mexican gardeners, short-order cooks, and factory workers.

  Bodies lay in a gruesome fan about the machine gun, piled behind bits of cover. Well over a hundred men had died, but only a few of Francisco’s Latigos gangbangers had been lost. Francisco sent in one of his lieutenants to figure out the gun’s operation and press it into service for the next assault.

  In Francisco’s mind, the initial assault had gone off without a hitch. He had mostly lost only laborers—none of whom meant anything to him—and he had proven his battle strategy. They had taken the whites’ most powerful weapon, and he had only lost two or three Latigos soldiers in the process. He could keep this up all day and, by his best guess, he had already destroyed the bulk of the defense force.

  While Francisco didn’t hesitate to spend men’s lives on his private campaign of thievery and power, he had been unwilling to place Gabriel anywhere near the battle. So he invented a safer mission for Gabriel. Francisco sent his brother and six men to recon the flank of the enemy. His mother would be inconsolable if anything happened to Gabriel.

  As soon as the heavy equipment cleared the lowest barricade, Francisco got on the megaphone and ordered his men to march up the boulevard, heading toward the string of little mansions.

  After a couple of hundred yards, his army slowed. A massive barrage of gunfire descended on them from the homes above. Even from a quarter mile below, Francisco could see his men dropping at an alarming rate. Francisco’s irritation rose. In his mind, he had already defeated the whites. Why did they insist on making this more difficult than necessary? Okay, then, he fumed, we’ll make them pay. And, if they keep this up, we’ll make them watch their women and children pay.

  The gunfire from above proved too vicious even for his lieutenants and their hundreds of men. Panicked for cover, his men flung themselves over the downhill embankment, tumbling away from the fight. Some stopped their fall and climbed back into shooting positions; others rolled away from the fight, picking up speed. With few exceptions, when they came to rest at the bottom of the escarpment, the Latino conscripts gathered their wits and ran away.

  “Shoot those cowards!” Francisco screamed into his megaphone, pointing at the handfuls of Latinos running back toward the city. Nobody could hear him except for the men hiding around the armored bulldozer where he stood. They turned their guns on the men running away, over six hundred yards down the hill, shooting half-heartedly in their direction.

  Francisco watched as one of his gangbangers, wearing a red hoodie, walked fearlessly up and down on the sidewalk beside the road, executing Latino men too scared to fight. Then his man’s head blew apart in a red mist, dropping him to the pavement.

  “Bring up the tanks!” Francisco screamed. “Bring up the tanks now!”

  • • •

  Not for a second did Jeff consider surrendering. In this world, surrender meant certain death for his family and friends. This enemy would strip the Homestead bare, and they might even massacre everyone still standing. Without food, water and wood, agonizing starvation would be a certainty. For the Homestead, this battle would be fought to the last man.

  The vast number of enemy wasn’t something Jeff had anticipated, but he and his men had planned for this battle. The road leading up to the neighborhood gave them every tactical advantage so long as they executed with precision.

  The lessons of the Roman battle of Cannae cut both ways. This enemy came to battle with elephant-like battle armor. But the lie of the land heavily favored Jeff Kirkham. With a steep slope on the downward side of the road, and an even steeper slope towering above, Jeff’s QRFs could rain death upon the advancing army with precision shots and the advantage of high ground.

  The Battle of Cannae was considered one of the greatest defeats in Roman history. A large Roman army came against the army of Carthage, led by Hannibal at the Aufidus River. The Romans numbered ninety thousand, and Hannibal’s army numbered half that many. Hannibal carefully deployed specialized troops, such as his Numidian and Spanish cavalry and his expert rock slingers, to maximize their advantage. Then Hannibal blocked his flank with the river, concentrating the Romans in a tactical pocket where he could attack them on three sides.

  The hillsides above and below Vista View Boulevard would block out most attempts to flank his forces, plus Jeff’s shooters would fire from the homes above, hopefully stalling the enemy’s advance and winnowing their numbers, forcing them to linger in front of each roadblock. Like Hannibal, Jeff bet everything on sucking the enemy into a pickle barrel where his small army could shoot at them from three sides.

  Jeff ran forward to join his defenders at the second barricade. The approaching army couldn’t see the second, third or fourth barricades from their position. They would be wading into a fight they didn’t understand. Jeff prayed they hadn’t reconnoitered beforehand.

  The Homestead only had one belt-fed machine gun, and it had already been lost. But Jeff had arranged firing positions in the homes and backyards that towered over the boulevard. Ever
y time the enemy slowed to clear a barricade, they would die by the scores. Then Jeff’s troops could retreat farther up the road, harrowing the enemy yet again.

  Each retreat of Jeff’s defenders would force the enemy to pass through a gauntlet of highly accurate rifle fire. Every one of Jeff’s men carried an assault rifle, battle rifle or scoped hunting rifle, and they had trained extensively for two weeks and, in some cases, they had trained for years.

  The gangbanger army appeared to employ a random assortment of weapons—rifles, shotguns, .22-caliber rabbit guns, and even some assault rifles. Jeff didn’t know it, but he faced the guns stolen from the Avenues, mostly handguns and hunting rifles.

  As Jeff watched the Latino army surge up the road, he could see no coordination other than a general push forward. No apparent effort was made to expand the fighting front of the enemy. The entire front line seemed to be confined to the width of the boulevard and the park strip on the downhill side. Jeff hoped against hope that the enemy would continue as currently disposed, in a massive frontal assault.

  The first phalanx of men marched up the road toward Jeff’s barricade like a hoard of rats intent on overtaking the farm.

  “Bring the fifties and the hunting rifles up right now.” Jeff spoke into his radio, careful not to shout. “We need to kill that armor.”

  Jeff grabbed two of the men closest to him and laid out a strange, desperate plan.

  • • •

  Jason geared up in time to jump in with QRF Two in the back of the Pinzgauer truck. Eight guys sat wedged in the back of the little personnel carrier, racing down the mountain toward battle. Jason had put in a little time to train with QRF Two, but he hadn’t been fully spun up with the team. Alec, the team commander, would be using him in a special unit with two other shooters.

  Before the collapse, Jason had trained with his SOF buddies, but that didn’t mean he knew the ropes in QRF Two. For one thing, he had missed too much training to be clear on their radio protocols, and he didn’t know their react-to-contact procedure. So Alec wouldn’t be using him in his main force.

  As he raced into combat, Jason didn’t feel prepared. His stomach was doing back-flips and he knew the only cure to those jitters was training, training and more training. The thing that bugged him most was his rifle. He had been busy managing the Homestead over the last two weeks, and he hadn’t had a chance to put together his .308 battle belt and chest rig.

  Jason was kitted out with his ultra-light AR-15 rifle, with the diminutive .223 round . The four-pound gun felt like a toy, legitimate killing power in a package that weighed the same as a plastic Nerf gun. He had built the gun before the collapse because he knew he could wear it on his back all day without setting it down. While it was incredibly convenient, it wasn’t the rifle he wanted for battle. Besides shooting the underwhelming .223, his custom ultra-light was even more unreliable than a standard AR-15. The titanium bolt was better suited to competition shooting. All Jason could do was pray the little rifle wouldn’t let him down.

  All his angst coalesced around the gun. He kept looking at it, cradled between his legs, and wished he were carrying one of his big SCAR Heavy .308 rifles. A rifle is a rifle is a rifle, he kept telling himself, but he couldn’t help but obsess over the insufficiency of the ultra-light AR-15. The gun was a convenient place for his angst to land, and it was fogging his brain.

  Jason shook his head like a dog trying to clear its anxiety. The Pinzgauer squeaked to a stop and everyone piled out the back.

  • • •

  The partial pincer strategy, borrowed from the Battle of Cannae, worked even better than Jeff anticipated. He watched through his ACOG scope as the enemy dropped like God himself smote them.

  A man in a red hoodie walked among the Latinos huddled on the pavement, and began shooting them, presumably for cowardice. Jeff let out half a breath and put a .308 bullet through the man’s skull. He fell to the ground as though his legs had turned to pudding.

  Still they came. For every dozen men felled by his overwatch shooters, a hundred more appeared from below. After the third wave, the Latino assault died in the no man’s land beneath the bluff. There, Jeff noticed a pattern.

  “QRF One. This is Jeff. Over.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Target anyone wearing red. They are command. Do you copy?”

  “Copy that. Kill the bastards in red. Over.”

  Jeff dropped the radio back into the pouch on his chest rig and looked around the concrete barricade with one eye. More men appeared over the slope in the road, as if rising from hell itself, cloaked in the shimmer of early morning mirage.

  As he worked back and forth with his .308, putting careful rounds into one head, then another, Jeff felt the deep rumble of something heavy, groaning through the pavement. The vibrations came up through his feet and reverberated in his gut: the sound of a machine coming to grind them under its wheels.

  A new volley of desperate fire rained down as his men on top of the bluff reacted in a panic.

  “Slow your fire, QRF One. Slow your fire,” Jeff called over the radio, knowing his teams above had to be running low on ammunition.

  “Jeff,” the QRF commander spoke over the radio. “We’re bingo ammo. I’ve called for resupply, but they’re five minutes out.”

  Jeff answered on the radio, “I’ll be dead in five minutes.”

  “Roger. Making it happen.” Tim’s anguish came through even over the tinny radio. Jeff pictured the battle from Tim’s point of view. They had cover and high ground. They had been killing enemy as fast as they could pull the trigger without any substantial risk to themselves, until they ran out of ammo.

  “Tim. This is Jeff. Consolidate ammo and wait for my command. Repeat. Hold fire. Consolidate ammo and wait for my command.”

  “Copy, Jeff. Awaiting your command.”

  Jeff did a quick inventory of his little team behind the barricade. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t lost anyone, and he believed he was full-force. The battle had lulled, everyone waiting for the slow-moving heavy equipment to make its way into position.

  The rumble down the road turned to thunder as two of the four armored vehicles appeared above the rise in the blacktop. Dozens of Latino men jumped up from the down-sloping side of the road and ran behind the pieces of heavy equipment, using them as cover to advance. Short on ammo and under orders to hold fire, Jeff’s QRF above held.

  Behind Jeff, the two men he’d sent away earlier crouched, cradling four bulging, thick-ply trash bags filled with lawnmower gas. Jeff waved two more men over, knowing he would shortly sentence them all to die.

  “Each of you take one of these trash bags. You’re going to sprint straight at those front-end loaders, and you’re going to hit them on top with these trash bags. Do not throw early. Make sure you’re right on them before you throw. This is the only way your families live. Do you understand?”

  A shadow passed over each man as realization dawned; he would die in the next five minutes. One by one, they nodded, saying nothing.

  “Wait for my order. Again: do not throw early. Do you understand?” Again, they nodded.

  Jeff had sent men to die before. The calculus of battle demanded it. No matter the rising flood that threatened to choke his throat and drown his eyes, Jeff knew he mustn’t feel—mustn’t hesitate. He shoved that part of him deep down and turned his gaze to the battlefield, mostly to avoid looking at the dead men kneeling by his side.

  As the trundling machines neared, Jeff made rough calculations. How close were the machines? When would his men have the greatest amount of cover?

  In a last-minute panic, Jeff shuffled through his chest rig, pulling out magazines one after another, dropping them on the ground. Eventually, he found one with red-tipped ammo—incendiary tracer rounds for night fighting. He dropped the mag out of his Robinson, slammed the tracer mag home and racked the slide.

  Almost too late, he looked up to see the armor bearing down on them. Jeff grabbed his radio.
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  “QRF One. Commence firing. Repeat. Commence firing.”

  “Roger.” Three seconds later, the QRF on the bluff opened up on the men stacked behind the front-end loaders.

  “Go.”

  The four men leapt up from behind Jeff’s barricade and ran full-out. Rifle fire from the armored boxes behind the drivers’ cages shifted toward the rushing men, dropping one of them within twenty paces.

  Jeff’s three remaining men ran directly in line with the cages where fire couldn’t reach. QRF One on the bluff tore into the enemy crouched behind the armor, dropping a dozen men and forcing the rest to shift around to the downhill side of the front-end loaders.

  Amazingly, three of Jeff’s men made it within five yards and tossed their bags full of gasoline. One of the bags hooked on a magazine stuffed in the man’s pocket, dousing the man with gas. He stood in the road with his hands furiously rubbing his eyes until he was gunned down.

  The other two bags slapped against the front-end loaders, one each, exploding gasoline out of the mouth of the bags, drenching the roof, sides and tires. Both men turned and ran for cover. One of them took several rounds in the chest.

  Jeff unleashed a hail of tracer rounds, shooting past and around his final man, who was running straight at Jeff and the barricade. The incendiary rounds touched off the gasoline and both armored vehicles burst into flames. The men hiding behind the armor leapt back from the burning machines, many more of them falling to the hail of bullets from the bluff. Others ran into the homes beside the road, seeking any cover they could find. Jeff’s man reached the barricade and slipped into a flesh-grinding slide behind cover.

  The tires of the armored vehicles began to burn briskly, licking up into the drivers’ cockpits, where wires, plastic and fluids began burning as well. Both drivers and gunners burst from their metal boxes, attempting to shoot their way out of the death trap. Jeff’s men riddled them with bullets and one man fell from the front-end loader directly on his head onto the pavement.