by David Craig
A single burst from one of the machine guns at the clustered cavalry could wipe out Molly's Marauders as Beacon dubbed them in his head as he heard her plan.
Molly realized the plan was unworkable as she outlined it and withdrew it herself much to Elaine's satisfaction.
Doc thanked her for trying and pointed to Beacon's upraised hand, "Molly has the right strategy we just need to twist the tactics a bit," he said, "The soldier's paychecks have been replaced by promises of plunder while the consequences of mutiny or desertion disappeared with the government that issued the paychecks," Beacon said, "Dragging the cannon and all its thirty plus pound shells up the mountainside is hard work. If Molly's Marauders can throw ambushes and night raids into the mix the tired sleepless men might just desert in numbers that will cripple or derail Colonel Darken's plans to the point where he'll have to abandon the attack."
"Molly's Marauders?" Dock looked confused then brightened, "I like it!"
Beacon continued, "If we can hit Colonel Darkin hard enough and often enough while his men are working his way up the valley the combination of hard physical labor without immediate reward and constant ambushes might start his men deserting and even if they don't all quit every man we kill, wound or drive off down there is one less you'll have to face if Darkin gets up here."
Without experienced military leadership Molly's Marauders would experience huge losses until the survivors learned the hard lessons of warfare. Beacon didn't intend to let that happen. He stood behind Molly offering suggestions and personally reconnoitered each ambush point.
The first ambush was simple. Beacon placed five of the most athletic among Molly's Marauders at the head of a small curved valley empting out into the large valley just ahead of Colonel Darkin's men. The three boys and two girls followed orders and fired five aimed shots before retreating up the smaller valley. They got three hits and were out of sight rounding the bend behind them while Col. Darkin's men were still hugging the ground. The rogue reservists didn't fire a single return shot. The five jumped on horses held for them by their friends and were long gone before Col. Darkin could organize a defense or pursuit.
Late in the afternoon, at another intersection of valleys, Beacon ran a dress rehearsal of his planned real ambush. Again from the head of a small curved valley empting out into the larger valley. And again the five fired five shots, getting only two hits this time because the Colonel's men were ready this time and hit the dirt at the sound of the first shot instead of looking around for its source as before.
Again the five sprinted up the hill behind the cover of the bend in the smaller valley. Reaching the five waiting horsemen they again slung their rifles and attempted to mount their horses, but this time one of them slipped and fell back off.
The extra seconds it took for him to get back up and position himself next to the spooked horse gave one of the Colonel's men time to run up the valley far enough to see their ambushers riding off and fire a few shots. Except for a grazed shoulder all of Molly's Marauders got away clean this time too, but Beacon worried; the Colonel was learning.
The third and real ambush took place late the next day. This ambush was also from the head of a small valley that curved as it emptied into the large valley. And again the five fired five shots, wounding one soldier in the column and killing a picket on the Colonel's flank nearest them, before retreating behind the cover of the hill to the waiting horses. But this time the colonel was ready for the attack. The ambusher's shots had hardly died away before a squad of ten riflemen led by an NCO sprinted towards the ambusher's position hoping to get around the hill's shoulder in time to put fire into the horses and ambushers.
When the squad was within twenty-five yards the real ambushers sprang up from hiding firing until all targets were down either wounded or killed. But this wasn't so much an ambush as it was combat. A firefight ensued. Molly lost two dead and two more wounded one seriously before it was over.
They retreated under the cover of the original ambushers who'd taken up their predestinated secondary positions designed to cover their retreat. They killed the one rogue reservist who dared peruse after the second ambush. One hundred percent of Colonel Darkin's anti-ambush squad became casualties that afternoon, but the cost had been too high.
Things weren't going well on the home front either. Elaine had been pushing to withdraw the children back into the castle where she imagined they'd be safe. Her words didn't fall on deaf ears. The parents of Molly's Marauders, worried for their children, prevailed upon Doc to recall them to the castle.
Through sheer force of will Doc got the edict amended to allow Beacon two additional days before he was ordered to send the children home.
Beacon had achieved his objective. Colonel Darkin posted his two M60 machine guns at the heads of valleys from then on. Each machine gun crew thus deployed was that many less men pulling and pushing the cannon. In addition Col. Darkin had a squad out in front of his column searching for ambushers thus depleting the labor force moving the cannon up the valley even more. Between the dead, dying and wounded the unit's morale was plummeting. The added hard work caused by the reduced labor force didn't help matters.
Beacon employed a few snipers on hillsides with backup squads to cover their escape just to keep the rogue reservists heads down, but switched tactics.
Some evenings he had been sneaking to the edge of the Colonel's camp and sniping just at dusk. The Colonel's men had gone from joking and talking during evening meals around campfires after a hard day's work to eating their MRE's hunkered down behind fallen trees with no campfires to warm their bodies or their sprits.
Colonel Darkin had tried sending out counter sniping teams just before they camped each evening, but they were incompetent and Beacon easily spotted and avoided them. Still, for the teams it was one more duty piled on top of a hard days work.
But his objective was to survive so Beacon switched tactics again. Late every other night or so he'd been sneaking to the edge of Darkin's camp around midnight and shooting at a sentry from the edge of the forest. It didn't matter if he hit his target or not, the sound of the shot (or the stress of waiting for a shot) unnerved the men and cost them sleep. On moonlit nights he seldom missed.
During daylight hours Colonel Darkin began sending out ambushers and counter snipers but by this time Beacon had convinced Molly to withdraw her troops for training and drills at a point further up the valley which he hoped would keep them occupied and out of danger while preparing for their next attack.
Besides, Beacon judged it was time to add psychological warfare to the mix. The morning of the deadline to withdraw Molly's Marauders the advancing troops found small pieces of paper stuck to tree trunks in their path.
The notes each bore one of two handwritten messages: "Anyone going UP HILL will be killed." And "Anyone going DOWN HILL may pass in peace."
Colonel Darkin had halted the column while he confiscated the notes, but it was too late. Scuttlebutt had carried Beacon's messages to the troops at the rear of the column before the noon meal. Colonel Darkin wasn't the only one upset by Beacon's ploy.
Elaine had objected to Beacon's use of castle resources. Paper was one of those things so ubiquitous before The Blowup no one had thought much about it. Now, like gasoline and ammo, "they" weren't making it any more. Whatever supplies were on hand or could be scrounged from buildings would be all there was until someone could get a paper factory started again.
But Doc overruled her saying PSYOPS could save the lives of their children. In a rare slip of the tongue Elaine admitted to not knowing the meaning of the word PSYOPS. Doc explained in stood for Psychological Operations and was a way to demoralize the enemy without putting Molly's Marauders at risk.
Beacon emphasized his point to Colonel Darkin's troops with a "V" shaped ambush where two smaller valleys joined the large one late that afternoon. The point of the wide "V" was the uphill end of an open area the cannon would have to pass through. Molly's Marauders were positioned a
long both arms of the "V" with assigned fields of fire to prevent them from firing at their friends on the other side of the tiny valley.
Because of the training and drills they'd been doing here Molly's Marauders were able to slip silently into familiar positions shortly after Colonel Darkin's advance scouts had passed.
The troops at the head of column didn't have a chance. By the time Molly's Marauders made their pre-planned withdrawal along carefully selected hidden routes the accumulated casualties from all the harassment inflicted by Beacon and the Marauders amounted to almost two thirds of Colonel Darkin's men.
Overall the delaying action had cost Molly two dead and three wounded. Now Beacon was forced by Elaine's edict to send Molly and her marauders back to the castle to help prepare the defense in case his backup plan didn't work out.
The Colonel's walking wounded could carry little often requiring help from the non-wounded to trudge up the hills and were more of a drag on his progress than a help to his endeavor so Colonel Darkin cut his losses. Those who could no longer shoulder a rifle or walk unaided were left behind to "guard" the badly wounded and the howitzer shells that had to be abandoned because there were no longer enough men to carry all of them.
Making vague promises, like those he'd made to Private Howlard, to come back with "slave letter bearers" to pick them up Colonel Darkin abandoned his wounded and continued the advance with slightly more than a third of his original unit.
The men were on the edge of desertion or mutiny. Sentries were posted in pairs so as to discourage desertion.
Beacon could have ended the threat instantly if he'd been able to kill Darkin, but the Colonel wasn't wearing his rank, didn't point, wave or yell out orders and apparently saluting was forbidden in the unit.
After wasting days watching for a pattern of men coming to a single man before the unit moved or stopped Beacon had noted that one man seemed to circulate around in the unit before movements, Beacon realized the Colonel was going to the sergeants and quietly giving orders rather than have them come to him.
A well placed shot from the tree line from Beacon's 10/22 might end the whole affair. Or it might not. A wounded Colonel Darkin would increase security which would foil Beacons other, more certain, plan.
Now that the unit was small enough for Beacon to have an ice cube's chance in Hell of sneaking in and out their encampments unchallenged Beacon was willing to try a Hail Mary pass to end the game. Beacon watched where the man bedded down that night.
Beacon snuck into the position after the moon went down. His pistol was holstered but his Randall was in his hand. If things went to Hell he planned to draw the pistol and stab/shoot his way back out of the camp.
The guard had fallen asleep so Beacon didn't have to kill him and take a chance on making noise that would wake others.
The Colonel was fast asleep, so Beacon just placed his hand over the sleeping man's mouth and knelt on his waist as he inserted his Randall's seven and a half inch blade up under the man's sternum through his heart and twisted the blade a bit before pulling out in a long sideways slashing motion that sliced the man's lungs in half.
Dying, unable to get his hands out of the sleeping bag Colonel Darkin ceased all movement in moments and died in less than a minute.
As a new or fingernail moon lighted the camp Beacon pinned a note on Darkin's bloody chest with a bayonet he'd liberated from one of the Colonel's abandoned dead soldiers and snuck out of the camp as silently as he'd snuck in. He could have killed a few more men, but if he'd judged the unit's morale correctly that wasn't necessary and more killing would just have put his own life further at risk.
Once back in the brush he retrieved his rifle from its hiding place and retreated to a spot well up on a hillside overlooking the camp but behind a bush under a pine tree with branches reaching almost to the ground. He pulled out his binoculars, and waited.
As dawn lightened the sky the sentry snorted and came awake. Walking over to wake the Colonel he stopped dead a few paces away from the corpse and stood stock still for a few seconds. Then he screamed.
The camp came alive. Someone, probably an NCO, came over and pushed his way through the circle of men. After checking the body for signs of life he picked up and read the note out loud.
"Leave the machine guns, cannon and all ammo cans behind.
Travel downhill and you will not be harmed.
Take the weapons or go uphill and you will be killed."
Beacon didn't have to hear the words to know what was being said. The effect was immediate. One man turned and walked over to his backpack. He dumped a howitzer shell out and shoved his sleeping bag into it. By the time he started walking down the hill several others were following his example.
A knot of arguing men formed around the NCO who seemed to be the only one still wanting to carry out the dead Colonel's orders. One by one men peeled from the group to begin unpacking ammo and rolling up their sleeping bags. When he realized there wasn't enough manpower left to move the cannon the sergeant joined them.
Beacon was torn between two emotions; joy at saving the castle and the settlement from domination by the aspiring king Darkin and remorse over what he might be unleashing on the surviving people in the lowlands.
But it couldn't be helped. Beacon was only one man; he'd dodged death a dozen times in the last month and couldn't realistically expect to win every gunfight forever.
Also there was the little matter of playing God. For him to presume to know that all of these former citizen soldiers who'd been mechanics, salesmen and electricians before the Blowup would become bandits again now that Darkin was dead was the height of presumption. He had no way of knowing what the remnants of the rogue reserve unit would do and thus no justification for taking deadly action against them.
Sure the sergeant could form them into a band of brigands and ravage the countryside or they might lease themselves out as guards to some democratic survival community. More likely they'd break into small groups. Beacon just hopped some of them would return to the wounded men Colonel Darkin had abandoned.
Beacon waited until full dark before venturing from his hide in case there was a hidden sniper watching the vary valuable hoard of weapons in the glen.
Then he moved first the machine guns and then their ammo cans to the safety of the shadows under the trees before the moon rose. The cannon and its shells he left for the DDL&BSG LLC.
Beacon was well aware of the military doctrine preaching that the danger of all potential adversaries should judged not by their intentions which could change overnight but rather by their capabilities. A man on the other side of a river who hated Beacon but was armed only with a knife was not an immediate danger. A friendly guy with a rifle on the other side of that river could change his mind.
The Settlement had little if anything the castle dwellers would want and so would be safe from the castle even if they had a sudden change of heart; Colonel Darkin had proved the artillery piece was too heavy to move long distances cross-country without motorized transport.
It was a daunting task. First Beacon would move a M60 a hundred yards or so up the hill and hide it. Then back to pick up the tripod with its traverse and elevation mechanism so he could carry it to the gun. Then he did the whole thing again with the other machine gun and tripod.
Then he'd make a dozen trips carrying two ammo cans at a time. It was exhausting work and he "lost" one or another of the guns in the dark several times which added to the time and work.
Then he'd do the whole thing all over again to gain another hundred yards. By dawn he had both the M60's and all their ammo over the ridgeline and well hidden in a thicket on the other side.
Beacon spent the day under a tree on the ridge top alternately dozing and watching his hidden hoard as well as the not so hidden cannon. At dusk he worked his way down to the cannon erasing, as well as he could, all traces of his many trips up the hill with the guns and ammo. Any trained tracker would have spotted the trail he'd made up the
hill from the cannon, but most people wouldn't know anyone had gone that way.
Then he got a good night's sleep in the thicket with the two machineguns on the opposite hillside in preparation for a speed march back to the castle the next day.