2024

by H. Berkeley Rourke

  The three of them were as arrogant as usual. One was smoking a cigarette. One was talking loudly on the radio to a woman. One was playing music through something like an iPod, and wearing an ear bug. They were spread out quite a bit. I took the one with the ear bud first because he was closest to me. He went down with a knife to the kidney and then his throat was cut and he bled out. The second one heard some of the movement of the first one's body I guess. He came weapons ready and I pinned him to a tree with the crossbow, shot him through the temple. He never moved. The third one didn't know I was following him until I sapped him. I needed a little information if he would cooperate.

  When the guy awakened I had him trussed up in twist ties. And I had him gagged. I showed him the K-Bar up close and personal. I asked him if he intended to try and yell to some of his buddies. He shook his head no. I removed some of the gag. I asked him if there was anyone else out tonight except for the roadblock people. He was looking at that knife like it was a lie detector. He said no. I believed him. I asked him if he knew how many people were left in the militia. He said he didn't know for sure but he thought it was about fifty. I asked him if any of them had deserted and gone to other towns. He laughed at that and said “Hell yeah.” I cut his throat. In a matter of minutes he was dead.

  Jim wretched several times as I cut this one's throat. Finally he said, “How can you be so cold blooded?”

  “This man probably raped at least twenty women, killed at least twenty of our citizens for no reason other than they made the mistake of getting on Hwy. 93. He did not deserve to live.”

  “It's that simple to you. These guys are rapists and murderers and they deserve what they get,” Jim asked.

  “It's that simple,” I responded. Then I said “Are you all done for the evening or do you want to go with me to the roadblock and blood yourself?”

  “No, I don't think I can do that tonight. Can we go back to the house now?” We did just that. When we got there, dad and I left, went to the roadblock and did our usual number there. This time we brought back another SAW and another light machine gun. We also brought back some photos we took of the cars that evening. There were only four but all four had at least two and one had three kids in it. The kids were all girls. They had all been raped, mutilated and murdered along with their parents. When we unloaded the weapons in the spider holes we showed Jim the pictures. He ran for the bathroom again.

  “I have a feeling,” I said to dad, “that Jim is not going to be of much use to us, dad. The guy I interrogated tonight told me there were about fifty left in the militiamen's group. It might not hurt to do some sniping from good vantage points from which we can get into a hidey hole immediately in order to avoid the helicopters. That might further encourage some more of them to desert as some have already done according to that guy I talked to tonight.”

  “I will work with Jim,” my father told me. “There is a fifty caliber down in the cave. You might want to try shooting it a few times before we think about using it to do some sniping. Of course there is always the old standby Remington 700 down there as well. Try both and see what you think you want to do. In the meantime I will see if I can get Jim to quiet down in the woods a little.”

  We decided that evening we would go down to an area on a small hillside overlooking the town and I would set up a sniping position. We did that and I picked off several of them going in and out of the police station before I heard a helicopter coming my direction. I buried up in a small rocky area that gave me the option of shooting as well. I had brought an RPG with me. As the helicopter flew slowly over the area I was hiding in I fired the RPG at the helo and ran like hell away from that spot. Luckily I hit the helo pretty hard apparently and it limped off toward the city airport.

  About the same time Jim and dad were broadcasting to the militia, asking them to consider a negotiation, an end to the hostilities rather than continue with the war. The resultant response of the other helicopter firing its machine guns at the spot from which they seemed to be sending their radio messages told us everything we needed to know about that issue. A few stupid ones tried to come into the forest to look for Jim and dad. They were dispatched to their own Valhalla in various ways by dad. Jim did not assist once again.

  The next night was a meeting night for the State Police set up and when they left from the meeting Jim left with them but one of the State Police boys, also a former Recon Marine, came back with us. His name was Allan Coxey. Allan is a man of about five feet eight inches in height and probably weighs close to one hundred ninety pounds. I could see that there was no fat on this man though. I thought he would do just fine.

  Allan volunteered to take up rear end charlie in our walk back to the house. As usual we were using ear buds and radios but only squelch transmissions. One transmission meant enemy in the area. Two meant imminent danger. Three meant duck and cover and hope like hell. Allan gave us a two squelch transmission. We went to ground. We heard some grunting. Soon Allan came along with two more M-16 rifles, two more silenced pistols, a crossbow with arrows and a pack full of money. When we saw him and saw that it was clear, we exposed ourselves.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when dad stepped out of the trees right next to him. “Shit,” he said, “You scared me half to death. There are no more back there.” He took his knife out and cleaned it in the dirt for a moment. Now, both dad and I knew that Allan Coxey was a man to be reckoned with, and that he would not have the same personal outlook as that of Jim Martinez. Then we continued toward the house.

  After we were home, cleaned up and sat down to eat something, after all the greetings and introductions Allan said to my dad, “Major, I am sorry about sending you that army guy. He turned out to be worthless I guess. I am in charge of the few of us that there are. That is a grand total of three now that Ken is dead. Jim Martinez is one of them and the other is Marty Jimson.”

  “I know, Marty,” dad said, “how is that old reprobate?”

  “You know, Major, that is exactly what Marty said would be your response. He is fine and looking forward to coming out and spending some time with you. We think it best from our operational point of view that we alternate personnel in and out about once a week if that is okay with you.”

  “Allan,” Dad asked, “was your father a Captain in my Recon battalion headquarters?”

  “Yes sir, he was. And he sent his greetings as well. He has a broken leg unfortunately or he would be here now. But yes he was. He is chomping at the bit to get out here and 'git some.' ”

  “By God, it's good to have another marine here,” my dad said. I just mouthed the word Hooraw. We all laughed. But it was good to have another man that we didn't have to train, that probably knew as much about the woods and moving through them as we did. Damn it was good. We talked a lot about our inventory of weapons at that point.

  “Do you have any small shoulder mounted ground to air stuff that won't raise a dust cloud big enough for a man five miles away to see? I would like to shoot that other helicopter down if I could. If that could be done we can do some stand off shooting and reduce their numbers even further than they are now.”

  “When I go back I will see what I can scrounge up, sir,” Allan said. “Everything is in a little bit of a short supply right now as you can well understand. But progress is being made in Florida, the Cubans are getting their asses handed to them after insertion of the marines into the front lines. The Cubans don't like either the Cobras or the army war birds, the Apaches. And they are getting hit from every angle with those now. Supply must be hellatious for them. The fleet has shut off the island from Florida. The Cuban Air Force no longer exists, their missile defense systems were destroyed by weasels and HARM's in the last week or so I understand. There was a rumor going around Miami last week when I was doing recon there that Castro is making an attempt to communicate with us in hopes of achieving a cease fire before all his troops are slaughtered.”

  “Goddamn it,” Dad said, just as mom walked into the room,
“I was kind of hoping to get over there and get a taste of that one too!”

  “Like hell you will, Eugene de Young,” she said. “You have your own personal little war to fight and it's not done yet. When you finish this one you will be all done with war, mister. That much I can tell you, so get that damn Cuban thing out of your mind.”

  He looked a little sheepish but he damned sure didn't argue with his wife of so many years. She invited us all to have coffee and donuts and we agreed. Bed was beckoning to me. Ruthie and I went to bed, leaving the boys to mom, right after the donuts which were home made. Damn my mother can definitely cook. And damn my wife can definitely make love and knows when it is needed and appropriate for me even if not for her necessarily. I love her to the nth degree. And I try to make sure every day that she knows how much I love her in some small way. That day it was with a crashing moment of bliss for her as well as for me. But the best moment that day was that just before sleep in which we both started to kiss each other and say at the same time “Do you know much I love you?”

  Chapter 8

  War Comes to an End

  The practice of sleeping during the day and fighting at night was wearing on the women. I could not blame either one of them particularly for being a little testy from time to time. They were always with the kids, and always on the alert to any activity around the house. They were our guardians in the day while we were theirs in the night. It was difficult for them. Going outside was dangerous, maybe, but how to know when that was true? They were not marines after all!

  Sometimes they were outside with the kids playing various games in the light of day while they could. One day while they were not paying enough attention to the sounds around them a helicopter pulled up out of the trees and spotted them almost instantly.

  Of course they ran toward the house, but they were quite a distance away from the house when they started to run. They were pretty near to a spider hole though, and mom knew where it was located. Now what are you going to do if you are the pilot of a gunship and see a bunch of targets running away from you? What do you think he did? He fired on them as he should have.

  And he awakened dad, and I as he did so. The kids were first into the hole. The women barely made it before the machine guns chewed up dirt all around them. They closed the hole and ran for the house. Dad and I picked up two RPG's when we realized what was happening and went up one hole closer to the house.

  The helicopter was hovering in the area of the canyon, looking, trying to figure out what the hell it had seen and what to do next. He was probably talking on the radio at the same time. In either case he didn't see dad and I come out of the spider hole and go behind trees, preparing to fire at him. His view of us was partially blocked by the house itself. The two RPG's hit the front of the helicopter almost simultaneously. The explosion was huge and blew a hell of a hole in the aircraft. It did a kind of slow roll to the right and then went straight down into the bottom of the canyon where there was another huge explosion.

  “Well,” I said, “it looks like we won't be bothered with helicopters any longer unless they bring in another one from somewhere else.”

  We went back inside. Allan had barely awakened and come outside to see what happened when we were on the way back into the house. He said, “What happened?”

  “Nothing much,” Dad said, “we just shot down their other helicopter. It spotted the women and kids outside and fired at them so we shot it down. Two more of them have bitten the dust.” We had a tote board in the edge of the cave as you went in there from the house. Dad marked two more on it. There was well over a hundred marks there now. War is hell, what can I say? No regrets, that is for sure, and why would there be with that lot?

  Then came the moment we had all dreaded. The radios we had confiscated from the militiamen we had killed all came on with an announcement at the same time. “This is Col. Wayne Powers of the New Montana Militia. I am Eileen Powers' nephew. You killed my Aunt you assholes. And now we know where you are, who you are, what you are. We are coming de Youngs, we are coming. And you will not be able to stop us. We will capture you, we will torture you and we will kill you with great pleasure. It won't be today, but maybe tomorrow, who knows. But we are coming assholes.” About that moment that he finished RPG rounds began to fall all around the compound, on top of the house, everywhere in the area.

  One of our spider hole openings was hit. It was the one the women and kids had gone down, nearly the most remote from the house. It was not a great loss if the tunnel was destroyed. We couldn't tell if that was true yet. The barrage of grenades ended after about twenty minutes.

  We went down the tunnels to see what if any damage existed. There was none. Only the one door to the outside world had been hit and it was hardly damaged, hardly moved from its original location by the explosion. We could see out the aperture. Powers had lied to us. They were coming. Some were coming through the forest, from the west almost directly, some from the northwest toward Arlee, and some directly down the animal trail.

  There were about twenty of them in the trees to the west that I could see. There were about twenty of them coming from the northwest and about twenty more coming on the animal trail. The center mass of men was just about in the middle of the trail area, not spread out very well and really vulnerable. Dad waited until they were within the kill zone of the claymores and then loosed hell on them. All were wounded or killed. All of them! It was an amazing moment. But the other forty or so did not know what had happened and they kept on coming.

  The twenty or so of them coming from the west had some automatic weapons. And they were spraying fire into the area of our home as fast as they could do so. Some of them were on ATV's and were firing SAW's at us. One of the groups of about ten of those men was near to the firing aperture of a spider hole containing one of the light machine guns we had captured. I killed them all with four bursts from that gun. The other ten went to ground because they could not tell where the firing was coming from that was killing their comrades.

  The twenty or so coming from the northeast were idiots. Most of them, as it turned out, were released prisoners from the Montana State Prison system. They had no idea what they were facing. Allan took them on single handedly with two SAW's that we had prepared and ready in that area. They started to lob grenades at the area of the house. None of them hit the house itself. None of them harmed anything.

  Every time some of them would try to move forward or stand up to lob grenades Allan would kill them. He wasted little ammunition firing in bursts of three to six rounds at a time, hitting every target he acquired. He was in an aperture on the Northeast side of the house they could not see. By the time they got close enough to the house to see what they were facing there were only three of those men left that were not wounded or dead.

  The ten that remained in the woods to the west were mine. I prepped for the job by putting on the standard forest outfit dad and I had been using from the outset of the contest with these wing nuts. It was beginning to get full dark when I slipped out of the spider hole closest to the ten that were left. They had remained in roughly the same position as when I was killing their comrades from the spider hole aperture. They had tried to form a little perimeter that they could maintain through the night. They were periodically shining lights in the direction of the house to see if anything was moving.

  But it was too late for that to do them any good because I was already behind them. I took the one furthest away from the rest for my first shot with the bow. He was hit in the back of the head. He never made a sound. Someone called to the guy and when he didn't answer came crawling over to see where the guy was. He died similarly.

  The next guy was a little closer in to the perimeter. I had to be careful with him because he was already nervous as hell and was yelling at his buddies all the time, “What's going on, I cannot see anything, what's going on?”

  In the midst of one of those sentences he died with another arrow from the crossbow. His words were ch
opped off and that alerted the group leader. He started yelling for the guy and then yelling for the other three. By that time I had moved away from being directly behind them, knowing they might spray that area with gunfire. They did. Three of them fired to the front, toward the house, and the other four fired toward the forest. None of their shots came close to me but my silenced pistol took out the leader in the middle of all that noise. I also got one other that I thought might be a leader as well. That left five more.

  That five broke and ran. I shot one within two feet of me. Another saw me and started to turn toward me when an arrow appeared through his head. I knew dad was out there then. The last guy to run saw dad apparently, and started shooting at him. I shot that guy about six times with the MP-5 I was carrying. The last one of them threw his weapon to the ground and fell down, screaming at the top of his lungs, 'don't shoot, don't shoot'." I trussed him up with twist ties and took him to the animal trail.

  Those who were badly wounded there we simply shot in the head. I let our prisoner watch me do that. I wanted him even more scared than he had been earlier. There was nowhere to take their wounded and dead and no one to take care of them outside the town. We didn't know if the hospital, hell it was just a small clinic, had any personnel left or not. We doubted that would be true. We were right in the end and we were not going there yet.

  After the twenty for which I had responsibility were thrown off the cliff's edge those who had died on the animal trail were put on the back of one of the ATV's and the same happened to them. Most of those on the northwest side of the house that Allan had killed were very close to the cliff. He threw them over the cliff as we were doing with the rest. The total of the attacking force was over sixty, all dead save for one.