“Overwatch to teams,” said Jed again. “Looks like more ‘n a few of ‘em are drinking’.”
“This is liable to get sloppy, Rob,” warned Lance. Drunken combatants didn’t always take the best of aim, but were just as likely to hit someone by accident as on purpose.
Rob picked up his radio, breaking his own self-imposed silence. “Everyone listen up,” he said. “No one fires until I give the command, and everyone stays concealed. If there’s a few drunks down there, they could hit you by accident, so don’t get yerself exposed.”
“They’re at the border,” called out Jed. “Looks like they’re stopping.”
The vehicles rolled to a slow, dusty stop at the approximate location of the U.S. border. The men on foot gathered around the lead car while a group of five men, obviously drunk, staggered forward into U.S. territory. One of them screamed something in slurred Spanish that echoed off the ridgeline, making the Regulators tense. Then three of the drunks unzipped their pants and relieved themselves, to the quiet hooting of their comrades.
“Son…of…a…bitch…” said Lance through gritted teeth. He sighted in on one of the men still urinating on U.S. soil as he was illuminated by one of the vehicles’ headlights and waited for Rob’s command. “That fucker’s mine, Rob.”
As the drunks continued their pissing contest, the rest of the group, all the vehicles included, crossed the border and moved towards the ridgeline, perhaps 30 yards out. Rob waited until it was clear they were all on U.S. soil before unleashing the Regulators.
“Take ‘em down, boys!”
Lance fired as soon as Rob spoke, the first shot hitting his target just above the eyes, blowing most of the Mexican’s brain cavity onto the windshield of the dirty car behind him. A split second later, muzzle flashes lit up the night all along the ridge as the Regulators attacked. The sound of single shot rifles and three round bursts rolled across the landscape like a hellish thunderstorm. Every now and then a tracer burst out of the darkness, streaking to the south, towards the Mexicans. The men with the battle rifles had loaded those.
“Teams ten through thirteen, take the cars!” Rob said, pausing to take another shot with his Winchester. He wasn’t sure in the darkness if he hit the man he aimed for, the Mexican dove to the right and out of the beam of the headlights just as Rob pulled the trigger. “Teams two and three, take the trucks! Fifteen, get that bastard on the bike!” Rob worked the lever action and chambered another round.
The Mexicans, taken completely by surprise, stood for a few seconds as rounds tore through their ranks. A half dozen men dropped to the ground writhing in pain as the fire from the Regulators peppered the ground around them. Only then did the startled would-be-invaders return fire, and haphazardly at that.
“Six, you got three illegals making a run for your position, they’re coming right at you!” Jed’s voice cut through the staccato of gunfire on everyone’s radio.
Ed and George, team six, both focused on their immediate vicinity—they could see movement in front of them. Like wraiths appearing out of the shadows, three Mexicans armed with pistols and shooting at random came clambering their way up the slope. The two brothers, using controlled bursts, one from an AR-15, the other an SKS, riddled the Mexicans with holes. Before the bodies had finished rolling and sliding down to the base of the ridge, the brothers had switched targets according to Jed’s instructions.
An explosion momentarily caught everyone’s attention to the west. The flash lit up the night in all directions. Bits of flaming wreckage tumbled down the ridge. “Take that, you sonofabitch!” hooted someone over the radio as the Mexican motorcycle disappeared in a ball of fire after a rifle round pierced its gas tank.
“Cut the chatter!” barked Rob.
Almost as soon as Rob finished speaking, Jed cut in, “Two and Three, watch it, those trucks are moving around to your west!”
“They’re trying to flank us!” hissed Lance, ejecting a spent casing and inserting a new round. He slammed the bolt home and took aim.
Rob grabbed his radio and said, “Right flank, fall back! Two through nine, fall back to your next position! Go! Go! Go!”
The fire pouring down on the Mexicans from the western line of Regulators stopped eventually as the individual teams crested the ridge and began moving north, towards their next position, ready to cover the rest of their comrades.
Despite Jed’s constant instructions on directing fire, the Mexicans were gaining ground. There were just too many of them, especially considering the fire teams were concentrating on stopping the faster moving vehicles, loaded to the gills with combatants.
The two pickups disappeared from view behind a small hill. Rob cursed. “Left flank, fall back! Get to your next—” Rob flinched as a stray bullet ricocheted off a rock in front of him. He dropped to the ground as more rounds passed nearby. “Shit!”
The Regulators on the left flank of the U began crawling and sliding their way backwards to the north, continuing to lay down fire in the direction of the Mexicans. Rob, Lance, the Franks Brothers and one other team remained in the center of the U.
“Get out of there, Rob!” said Jed’s insistent voice. “They’re closing in!”
“Left and right flanks, cover us, center is moving back!” said Rob. He got to his knees and fired another shot from his Winchester.
The gunfire, heavily in favor of the Regulators now seemed to be equally coming from the Mexicans. Both sides were relatively blind, except for Jed’s instructions, the Mexicans would have been at an advantage through sheer numbers. As it was, roughly half the Mexicans on foot were down, killed or wounded. Those who remained, realizing that their enemy was on the run, surged forward. The vehicles picked up speed, racing up the sides of the ridge to get around behind the Americans. In less than five minutes, Jed was surrounded then passed over by the Mexicans, unseen. He climbed over his perch and faced north, giving his comrades a view from behind enemy lines.
The Regulator vehicles, parked behind the ridge, came to life and were thrown into reverse, team members hanging on for the ride and shooting at the Mexicans cresting the ridge. The Regulator line fell back, leaving Mexican bodies in their wake. In the confusion of the ordered retreat, three Regulators went down, two wounded, one dead.
From Jed’s position, the muzzle flashes from rifles and pistols—and if his ears could discern correctly through the din of battle, someone was using a shotgun—sparkled like firecrackers on the 4th of July through the night vision goggles. He could see the more numerous flashes coming now from the reformed Regulator line to the north up the dirt road. The flanks had already been called on to retreat to the ravine. Jed could still see the glow of the headlights from the Mexican vehicles as they moved along the sides of the fighting, heading straight for the ravine.
“Rob, the two trucks are coming up on the crest of the hill just south and east of the ravine.”
Jed could see the firing from Rob’s direction stop, then start again faster than ever when the first of the pickups breached the ridge and started down. Someone must have hit the driver, Jed figured. The truck swerved erratically, then lost its traction and tumbled sideways down the hill, throwing debris and wreckage in all directions. Jed could see men jumping from the back of the truck when the Regulators began pouring in fire.
“You got guys jumping off that truck! Heads up!”
“Everyone to the ravine!” called out Rob over the radio, his voice straining against the noise of the running battle. “Fall back!”
Lance scrambled from his truck and dropped down into the ravine, bringing up his rifle on the southern lip. Standing, he could just rest his weapon on the southern face of the ravine, using it like a fox hole. Around him, the other Regulators, many wounded and limping jumped, climbed and simply rolled into the ravine. Approximately two-thirds of the Mexicans were down, and roughly one half the Regulators were wounded in some way or another.
A man crashed into the ravine to his right, panting with his injury. It
was Ed Franks. He grunted and tore open a bandage pack from his gear. A curse was muttered when he tied it around his bleeding left arm.
“Took one in the shoulder,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain. His brother George tumbled into the ravine shortly after Ed. All along the new line, Regulators were scrambling over the edge and dropping down into the ravine for cover.
“I’m running low!” someone further down the ravine called out.
“Here!” came the terse reply of his teammate handing over another magazine for his AR-15.
“Overwatch, talk to me!” said Rob as he peered over the southern edge of the ravine, standing next to Lance and just to the left of the rocky bridge.
“They’re being funneled right to you guys…” Jed spoke into his radio as he scanned the battlefield, saw the last Mexicans on foot heading towards the ravine with the cars just behind. The ridgeline made a small canyon with the ravine cutting directly across. The only way up and out was on the other side of the American position.
Rob could hear bullets striking the handful of trucks behind them, their escape vehicles should their position get overrun. Realistically, he knew this was a last stand—by the time it took them to get out of the ravine, into their trucks, start them and…
A few rocks and pebbles were kicked up by a bullet striking the lip of the ravine two feet in front of him. Rob flinched and scanned for targets, thoughts of escape gone from his mind. He saw a man slinking his way towards the ravine, cautiously peering to his right and left, about fifteen yards out. One moment there as only a dark shape, then it was obvious the shape was a man. Rob took aim and squeezed off a shot, clipping the Mexican in the leg. The man went down and screamed, causing a hail of fire from his comrades. Two of the others went to pick up the fallen Mexican, only to have all three shot by a Regulator with a rifle set on full auto, further up the ravine.
“Save your ammo! Controlled bursts!” warned Rob. Every man was responsible for their own ammo needs, but he didn’t want people running out because they thought they had enough. As it was, he checked, he was nearly half out. He paused, ducking down into the ravine to reload the Winchester. He took a quick look up and down the line, seeing here and there a few men reloading magazines, or tending to the wounded. He guesstimated they were down to half strength, what with the wounded and those helping them. The driver’s side window of his truck shattered with a direct hit. He frowned.
“There’s the other truck!” someone called out, further to the east.
Rob stood and spotted the headlights. The truck was gaining speed, tearing down the ridge and driving past and through the debris from its companion. “Take ‘em out!” said Rob, aiming his rifle at the windshield.
A renewed volley of fire swept the truck as it ran down the American lines heading for the rock bridge in the center of the Regulators. All four tires were shot out, tires exploding. The passenger side windows imploded, all five men in the bed of the truck were flung out, impaled by rounds fired from the ravine. Finally someone hit the driver, just as the truck began the run for the bridge. It sped up, the flat tires and rims spewing pebbles and dirt as the driver’s body slumped forward.
“MOVE!” hollered Jed for all he was worth over the radio. He could see the truck and the sparks of bullets hitting its metal sides as it careened for the ravine and just missed the bridge, soared over the ravine and crashing head-first into the north wall, dropping with a horrendous crunch and cloud of dust. Half the truck was in the ravine, the hood buried to the windshield in dirt and rocks, the bed resting on the southern lip and sticking up into the air.
“Christ!” screamed Ed Franks, picking himself up off the ground and helping his brother to move back from the wrecked truck.
“Tom’s under there!” shouted George, pointing to the booted foot that stuck out under the driver’s side door of the truck.
Rob grimaced. “There’s nothing we can do for him now, just keep shooting and move away from that thing before it goes up!”
A beat up old Volkswagen Beatle, shot full of holes and smoking, tried to turn and head back to the south. Two Regulators poured fire into it with abandon, causing it to catch fire and crash into the side of a boulder. Seconds later, like the motorcycle destroyed in the first minutes of the battle, the Beatle exploded in a fireball, momentarily illuminating the battlefield.
Rob could see in the flash that there were only ten or so Mexicans standing and shooting, and they were beginning to halt their advance. He and a few other Regulators who saw the scene put down a suppressive fire in the Mexican’s direction, dropping three more.
The two remaining cars, full of bullet holes and one of them with four flat tires, had had enough. They swerved back to the south and sped up, aiming for safety in Mexico, both missing a taillight. The car with four good wheels slowed to pick up the last surviving Mexicans on foot who simply latched on to the car’s frame and held on as the driver gunned the engine and roared for the original ridge.
After confirmation from Jed, the Regulators sent up a cheer. The ‘long shots’ continued popping rounds at the retreating cars, causing a few more Mexicans to drop off the back and roll to a stop in the dirt and rocks. In a few minutes, the two cars had crested the original ridgeline and disappeared from view, heading for the border like scalded cats.
The men continued to cheer and others began to help the wounded. Rob slumped down against the southern wall of the ravine, exhausted.
“We did it, man!” said Lance, clapping his friend on the back and grinning like a ‘possum eating a sweet potato. “God damn if we didn’t pull it off!”
Rob looked up and down the ravine in the waning moonlight, from the wounded men screaming on his left to the crashed Mexican truck with Tom Early’s boot sticking out from the bottom. He had no idea the number of injured and killed the Regulators suffered from the battle. He checked his watch…it had taken all of thirty minutes. The darkness was marred only by the burning wreckage of the Beatle.
“Yeah…” he sighed, closing his eyes in a prayer of thanks. “We did it.”
SARASOTA
Roma Victa
THIS, SAID ERIK with obvious pride,“Is one of my favorites. The Imperial Roman Spatha. Sword of the Roman cavalry.”
Ted whistled softly as Erik opened the display case and gently removed the gleaming spatha. The sword was just about 36” in length, a polished blade that flashed reflected sunlight. The blade was nearly two inches at its widest. The long straight blade tapered gracefully to a shallow point.
“This sword is razor sharp, I’ve honed it myself little by little. Might not stop someone as fast as one of your guns, but…”
Ted could see that the blade was indeed sharp enough to easily slice through just about anything short of steel. “And they require licenses for guns. May I?”
Erik grinned and handed over the sword carefully. Ted held the ancient weapon in his right hand. “How much does it weigh?” he asked, trying a few slashes in the air—the blade practically sang in his hand. It was well balanced.
“It’s right around three pounds, just a little under, actually. Not bad, eh? That design was created to allow the Roman cavalry to reach enemies from horseback easier than with the usual infantryman’s sword, the shorter gladius. It was popular with Roman legions in the last couple hundred years of the Empire.”
Ted handed the sword back, stubby rounded hilt first. He looked up on the wall and grinned. “I’ve seen that one before. In that Mel Gibson movie, right? The one about Scotland?”
Erik looked up, noticed Ted’s gaze on the wall and smiled. “That’s the William Wallace claymore; yeah, they used one similar to it in Braveheart. But the movie prop is shorter because Mel Gibson’s not the tallest actor. The real sword is damn near five feet long and weighs close six pounds. Legend has it that William Wallace used that monster,” Erik said nodded his head towards the wall mounted weapon. “As a one handed sword.”
“That thing’s almost as tall as I am…h
ow the hell…?”
“Wallace was 6’7” tall…” Erik said, straightening his back. At 6’4”, he was still 3 inches shorter than the famous medieval warrior. “’Course, the average height back then was about only 5’5”. Even Julius Caesar, at 5’5” was considered tall for his time period.”
“Where’d you learn all that stuff? I thought you were studying Japanese history?”
Erik laughed. Eric enjoyed the weight of the spatha in his hand few seconds before continuing. “I got a minor in history, though I took more Japanese history classes than European. I spent most of my history credits on Japan, the Vikings and Medieval Europe. Then after we moved down here, I decided to get my Masters in Japanese history.”
Ted tapped the spatha’s velvet lined maple wood display case. “What about this? Study Roman history in college, too?”
“No,” said Erik, “I took four years of Latin in High School. Lots of people have told me I was born in the wrong time period.” The two men laughed.
“This though, is the pride of my collection,” said Erik as he moved to a corner of the room that had a simple vertical stand holding an elegant looking katana. Sword of the samurai. Above the sword hung a simple bamboo-framed piece of parchment in a bamboo frame. Seven Japanese symbols written in broad brush strokes created a work of simplistic art.
“What does that mean?”
“That’s the seven virtues of the Samurai. The code of the warrior. Bushido.” He gently lifted the curved sword in its black lacquered wooden scabbard and balanced it in both outstretched hands. “This sword I received as a gift from my wife’s grandfather. We went with her family to Japan to visit relatives when we were engaged. It was one of the best times of my life.
Obu-san showed me his ancestral homelands and we sat around the fire at night and talked about his ancestors who served the samurai of the area, hundreds of years ago. His family were the….I guess a modern term might be hereditary blademaster.” He could see Ted’s confusion. “Okay, more of a hereditary squire for a medieval knight, I guess. They’re sole responsibility was to ensure the protection and safety of the samurai’s swords and armor. It was amazing.” He gestured at the sword. “This sword belonged to one of his ancestors who fought and died during one of the wars of the Tokugowa Shoguns. Generations ago. Obu-san has a dozen or so old swords like this. He gave it to me in order to protect his granddaughter.” Erik laughed. “It’s a museum piece. I suppose if we came on hard times I could sell it to the Smithsonian…probably worth a lot of money.”
Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) Page 20