by Michael Priv
“Air Force,” a curt explanation from a Guard running by checked us in place. No sense running out now. The best place to sit out an air attack was inside the Guards’ base, protected by their air-defense system—impenetrable by any extant Earth weaponry, as per Stan.
The ground trembled from a multitude of distant, powerful explosions. What about the residents of Siletz? The sitting ducks. Damn you, Roberts! I had to talk to Stan.
“We should’ve evacuated the town,” Linda yelled, running after me through the Base’s concrete corridors. “We’re killing them all!” “We couldn’t e vacuate them, Linda, so stop it,” I snapped at her, snapping at myself, really. I too wished we had evacuated the Indians and tourists. But I knew we couldn’t afford to blow our cover. Now it was blown anyway. Honestly, we’d expected precisely that.
The base air defenses were silent under the bombardment. Every instant of unabated carnage meant more suffering and death for unsuspecting civilians, including the Tolowa people, the campers and whoever else happened to be around.
We found Stan at the Command Center, as expected, at a computer console, giving incomprehensible orders in a brisk and competent manner. He was cleanly shaven and wore a battle armor suit. A glance around confirmed that all meatheads had shaved and changed from their sloppy overalls into rather spiffy military uniforms.
“Stan, why aren’t the defenses deployed?” I asked with urgency. “Don’t you get it? You waiting things out here means everybody’s getting butchered out there.”
“Don’t you care?” Linda was on the verge of crying.
“Chill out, you two.” Stan took a moment from his computer to wave us off. “Our defenses cover only the base. We’re not set up to effectively defend the town.”
“Then defend it ineffectively!” Linda yelled, her fists jammed into her hips. “Do something!” “I will not blow our cover till I’m ready. We open fire only when allof the attacking crafts are within range and we can take them all out. Do you understand? We take them allout. That’s how we do things.”
“But…” I started. “Dismissed!” Stan barked and went right back to his work. About a dozen meatheads manned the workstations, exchanging curt reports and acknowledgements. Sure looked like a military. These were not just prison guards. I remembered that these Guards, outnumbered about seventy to one, wiped us all out five thousand years ago. Way too rich for the ordinary prison Guards.
A giant computer screen on the wall showed three B-52s pounding the reservation. Suddenly a group of other, smaller and faster, bombers joined in. As the camera rotated, I saw a whole lot more bombers out there. Such firepower. I felt mesmerized.
Linda also stared at the screen as if hypnotized, tears streaming down her face. I put my arm around her. She leaned in to me as always.
“B-1B Lancers,” Stan explained, pointing at the smaller planes without looking at me. A report from one of his men caused Stan to frown. “They’re all in. Okay, let’s do it,” he nodded to us. Stan yelled a command to his staff, which immediately set them into frantic action. Several smaller computer screens next to the large display on the wall immediately came to life, showing a whole lot of circles, ovals and a streaming line of text or numbers.
Loud whining and trembling of the floor under our feet that immediately followed spelled the end of the Air Force attack. Next instant, all the attack aircrafts on the screen in front of me began exploding in rapid succession. In a few seconds, the B-52s and B-1Bs were all gone. The battle was over. No chance for the pilots to turn back, fight or bail out. I hated that about the meatheads. Just like they took us out in the Andes. They left no chances.
“I hate you,” I told Stan and meant it. He didn’t answer. “What’s your rank?” I asked. “Equivalent to your Colonel,” Stan replied absentmindedly, pointing at three golden rhombs sewn on his chest and went back to work.
Figures. Never liked officers.
50 Choppers slinking in and hugging the ground seemed to have covered the entire video screen like an advancing swarm of weird, menacing bugs. CH-47 Chinook troop transport helicopters mainly, those big, double rotor ones, and some UH-60 Blackhawk choppers, made famous by the movie Blackhawk Down, too. The base air defenses were silent again.
“Coming in from the northwest, behind the hills, must be from Lincoln City,” Stan explained, staring at the battery of surveillance monitors. “Can’t take’em out.”
The Rangers deployed out of sight and immediately advanced toward the city, hundreds of them. Since the base air defenses had proven to be impenetrable, as expected, we were up for a ground assault.
“What the...?” I started but stopped, as I noticed a crowd of locals getting ready to ambush the advancing Rangers with shotguns, handguns, pitchforks, baseball bats and shovels.
‘Help them!” Linda yelled to Stan.
“Not much I can do. Let’s see if Radovan…” Stan discussed something on his radio.
“Wait…” Linda pointed at one of the screens. An entire pissed-off-looking sports team, over a dozen men, uniformly dressed in dark-blue Adidas suits, joined the locals out of nowhere, brandishing automatic weapons. Each member of the team also had a sniper rifle slung behind his back. Eugene looked like a chubby, middle aged coach next to his team.
“Look!” I yelled to Stan, pointing at Eugene. “The Russians!” “I can’t believe it,” Linda slapped her knee.
“Friends of yours?” Stan asked.
“Oh, yes, we’re like this,” I crossed my fingers. “Although they did try to kill us several times recently.” “Doesn’t surprise me,” Stan shrugged. “ You two are trouble, especially her,” he pointed at Linda, scratching his butt. Linda covered her mouth, stiffening an involuntary giggle. “Look here, you two. Radovan is pulling in here and here to support the militia attack. We should use the momentum to our advantage.” He pointed to locations west-northwest of the base at the map on the wall.
“Thank you,” Linda replied, glued to the screen. The locals made contact. Rangers, expecting no serious opposition from the poorly equipped militia, had been disappointed. Assisted by the Russians and by a small contingent of meatheads, the locals hit the Rangers hard.
Unfortunately, the fierce battle that ensued did not last long. Even reinforced by as many as maybe a hundred professional soldiers, the militia was still no match for maybe six hundred Rangers. I saw the Guards disengage and retreat early, the Russians lingered, then moved back and disappeared into the woods.
A goddamn tragedy. Having thrown back and dispersed the opposition, the Rangers attempted to continue their advance, when they were met with intense and skillful sniper fire. I understood where the Russians had disappeared. They simply took sniping positions in the woods. The Rangers stopped—which was probably the right thing to do to get their bearings and regroup after the fight anyway.
The Rangers’ mortars opened up briefly from behind the hill, pummeling the snipers’ position. Then things went quiet again. Linda gasped in horror, pointing at the aftermath of the bombardment of Siletz and the reservation on the monitors. Almost despite myself, my attention was riveted to the snippets of carnage picked up by the cameras. Streets littered with dead bodies, both human and livestock, construction debris, destroyed household furniture and kitchen appliances—everything strewn everywhere. An old woman was pulling a body from under a collapsed house wall. I noticed a small boy with a bloody mess where his arm used to be, cradling the head of a dead German shepherd with his remaining arm. Then he collapsed on top of his dog. Immortal or not, one can never get used to this. I didn’t see any houses still standing on any of the screens, except for the Tribal Community Center, a concrete structure. Some of the bomb craters seemed to be at least fifty feet deep—the bunker busters. They were trying to locate and destroy the base. The Siletz destruction was complete.
“What’s this?” Linda asked. A long line of tough-looking Army trucks and Humvees lumbered north on Siletz Highway, entering the city from the other side.
“When will the spaceship be ready to leave?” Linda asked. “In about four hours or so,” Stan said, seemingly unperturbed as ever. Sometimes I really wanted to strangle the bastard. “You know, we can’t hold them off for four hours, right?” I asked. “Oh, relax.” Stan shrugged me off, smirking. “Go fix yourself a sandwich or something.” O uch.“A what?”
“A sandwich, Picky,” Linda helped.
“I heard him!” I snapped. She must have told him about the origins of my nickname. Great. “A little humor in the face of mortal danger? A little bravado, maybe?”
Linda grinned bravely, although I did detect fear in her eyes. “Keep watching.” Stan nodded at the screen. “Our resources are what they are. Cavalry is not coming. But we know how to do this. We only have to hold them off long enough for the ship to take off.”
They mined the damn road, Route 229. Duh. Of course. What would I have done? “Watch.” I turned to Linda, pointing at the monitor. “It’s gonna blow. Right, Stan?”
“Wrong,” Stan replied curtly and pointed at other monitors. “Look here,” he said, pointing at another screen. About a hundred Guards were lying in ambush a few blocks ahead of the National Guard, among the Swan and Gaither Street ruins and the surrounding forested areas, according to the map superimposed on the monitor. The Guards’ weapons did not look anything like machine guns. The funnel-shaped deflectors and massive coil chambers were a dead giveaway. Ray guns. They wore them like long motorcycle gloves, reaching to the elbow. “What happened to keeping your cover and using only weapons of the era?” I asked Stan.
“What, ARs and AKs and all that other chicken shit? No. I got a job to do here.”
Yes, I remembered. The Guards—always efficient to the hilt. That felt strangely comforting under the circumstances. “Look,” Linda exclaimed, pointing to the screen. A bloodied, banged up cop emerged from the smoke of the widespread fires and stepped in front of the leading National Guards’ Humvee, raising his right hand in the universal police “Halt” gesture. One cop trying to stop hundreds of troops on a mission. They’d just mow him down. They’d never stop.
The Humvees stopped. A small crowd of military personnel surrounded the bleeding, agitated police officer, who kept yelling at them, pointing at all the destruction around him. The soldiers were looking around, taking in the horror. An army medic ran up to the cop in an attempt to minister to his wounds, but the cop pushed him away, yelling and jabbing his finger in the direction of the dead bodies and destroyed houses and then north, toward the recent battle between the Rangers and the locals.
The Russian sports team emerged from the woods, carrying two wounded. They stopped near the Humvees. A medic immediately ran to them to attend to the wounded. The cop’s message was clear. He wanted to commandeer the army battalion to defend what was left of the reservation against the inbound Special Forces.
Would the National Guard fight off the Rangers so we didn’t have to? Linda threw a quick, hopeful glance at me. I threw a quick, hopeful glance at Stan. Stan made a skeptical face.
“ A National Guard contingent won’t stop a Rangers’ battalion almost double their size. It won’t happen.” Stan pointed at the screen showing hundreds of extremely efficient-looking commandos, who, having overrun the locals and cleared out the snipers, had resumed their advance toward the National Guard battalion, hugging any cover, relentlessly flowing forward. The intention was obviously to unite forces.
A panoramic sweep of the camera revealed another force rapidly deploying against the Rangers—men and women of all ages and body types and sizes, wearing ill-fitting Guards’ armor—all marked with composure and united in a common purpose. The Fifth Battalion, or rather what was left of it.
“Linda, I’m going out to help my guys. You stay here,” I said, getting up. Time to kick ass. “Wait up, I’m coming too,” Linda replied as I knew she would. I also knew that arguing was pointless. She wanted to be with me. She wanted to help. I tried to dissuade her anyway.
“It’s not your war, hon. Stay safe, would you? For my sake?” I begged. “Don’t be silly, of course it’s my war. It’s our war. C’mon,” Linda yelled on her way out, her hoop earrings swaying resolutely. She headed straight for the arsenal—the weapons station.
My heart squeezed with endless appreciation for her. “I love you,” I said. There should have been better words to describe my feelings toward this being, shouldn’t there? In the entire vastness of the English language, all I managed to find for her now was that trite “I love you,” but I did imbue it with a lot of feeling. At least I really tried.
“ Very good, hon.” She nodded absentmindedly, checking a Scorpion machine gun. “I’ll get some grenades, you get some of those directional mines, you know, good for ambush?”
“Claymores?”
“A-ha. Get a few.”
“How are you planning to ambush the Rangers?” I still couldn’t get used to her newly- found soldiering abilities. I’d imagine claymores were a bitch to drag around, and honestly, I doubted we’d manage to ambush the Rangers anyway.
“Less talkie, more doie. Chop-chop,” Linda replied unexpectedly, waving me off with an impatient glance. “Stop stalling, will you?” Now I knew who was in charge between the two of us. It sure wasn’t me. Made sense, actually.
51 The National Guard battalion, confronted with the carnage and swayed by the Siletz cop and the Russians, attempted to stop the Rangers first by talking, and then by force. The Rangers finally engaged the National Guard around the intersection of Routes 410 and 229. Amid heavy fire, the National Guard Humvees advanced, pushing the Rangers back toward the ruins of the college buildings where they held their ground, despite being semi-encircled and outgunned by the National Guard on the south, the Guards in the center or southeast and the contingent of the A5B fighters on the east. That was mainly true—theoretically. In reality, our coalition troops were somewhat intermingled and uncoordinated.
A sizeable crowd of the locals, mostly women as probably a lot of men had been lost in the first attack, loosely united under the leadership of their only surviving policeman, was assembling to the right of our position with the A5B, now augmented with more local survivors. I noticed that many of the locals now carried machine guns and even RPGs, which they must have scavenged on the battlefield.
We were directed to our position across the street from the Rangers. Linda and I opened fire, holed in behind charred remnants of cinder block wall. A couple of Native American women on my right were using their hunting rifles most skillfully. There was a lot of shooting. Generally, I’d say in our sector everybody was pinned down—us, the Rangers, everybody.
Explosions boomed to my left among the National Guard positions—mortar fire. Too bad the Rangers’ mortars were set up on the other side of the hill, where we could not reach them. They’d targeted the Humvees, no doubt. Mortar fire intensified. The bombardment hell on my left reached unbearable intensity and stopped abruptly.
Rangers attacked us on my right, advancing fast against the positions held mainly by the A5B and the locals. A quick look to my left confirmed my suspicion that army 50-cals, mounted on Humvees—or whatever was left of them after the mortar fire, didn’t have a clear shot to support my guys and the Indians. The Humvees would have to advance toward the college quite a bit to gain the position from which to cover the locals.
I always knew communications were importa
nt in combat. But I forgot just how important. Our alliance consisted of four completely independent contingents, intermingled and uncoordinated. Rangers, on the other hand, were perfectly coordinated.
We seemed to have lost momentum with the right flank giving way and National Guard on the left pommeled by mortar fire. Where was the R angers’ C2, Command and Control Center? In the warehouse ruins, across the street from the college, most likely. Worth checking into. The most viable option to push forward was the National Guard. I needed to get motorized. “Come on, Linda!” We ran to our left, staying behind the ruins, burning cars and other debris, dodging bullets.
The National Guard’s position was in shambles after the recent mortar attack—strewn with bodies, and vehicles on fire all around us. “Who’s in charge here?” I ran up to a medic, bandaging a soldier’s head. “Major Fioretti.” He nodded in the direction of a group of soldiers crowding around a pile of weapons and ammo being salvaged from the damaged Humvees.
“Major!” The soldier who turned his head, must have been Fioretti, was balding, short, and thick around the waist. The Major looked more like an Italian shopkeeper from Brooklyn than a battalion commander—except for his commanding composure and the relaxed familiarity with which he held his assault rifle.
“Who are you?” Fioretti asked.
“The spooks,” I replied evenly.
“ Spooks?” The Major stared at me and at Linda and back at me again. “What the fuck is going on here? What’s going on, I’m asking? And what are those fucking Star Wars flashes?”
He was obviously referring to the Guards’ energy weapons. “We’ll brief you on what we can,” I assured him.
“Who are you?” the Major asked again in a calmer voice. “Your names. Credentials.” “Why? You want to check us on Yelp?” Linda asked. The Major’s head snapped in her direction. His squinted, hard stare was ripe with hostility.
“ CIA, FBI? Yeah, whatever. Fucking idiots.” The Major shook his head. “Killing the civilians? Is that your doing? What’s with the Star Wars? Fucking CIA and their secret shit!”