by gerald hall
“We will be ready, I promise.” George replied.
“OK. You have thirty five minutes. Otherwise, everything’s off.” Jeff insisted before turning and leaving.
Forty minutes later, Jeff was getting the entire militia ready to provide cover fire after getting word from the garage that the trucks were ready to go.
“Everyone ready to roll?” Jeff asked his many friends and family who were all in their defensive positions, before waving towards George. A few seconds later, the two tow trucks drove out from behind a building and raced towards the machinegun-armed trucks that had been determined to be the first targets for retrieval.
The two tow trucks screeched to a halt directly in front of the two disabled commercial pickups with machine guns mounted on pintle mounts. The drivers of the trucks had placed their vehicles in such a way as to provide cover for the men who would be hooking up heavy tow cables.
Almost as soon as George began to hook up the first of the ‘technicals’ to the big tow truck, someone in the nearby woods started taking shots at him and the three other militiamen. As soon as Marilyn and Melanie saw the muzzle flashes coming from the treeline, the militia snipers called out the locations back to the militia’s mortar squad.
A few seconds later, the tell-tale thump of mortars firing was heard. But instead of firing from their limited stock of high explosive shells, the mortar crews were firing smoke rounds that Marilyn’s kids had managed to rig up. The shells began landing directly in between the militia tow trucks and the jihadists shooting at them. The militia’s 7cm mortar smoke shells weren’t nearly as effective as a commercially produced munition. But these shells produced just enough smoke to screen the recovery teams. There were still a few stray shot being fired from the tree line, but it was nowhere nearly as accurate as before.
“The front tires on this truck are all shot to hell, George. We need to lift the whole front end if we are going to tow this vehicle back.” A slender black militiaman named Ethan Stowe reported as he examined the front end of one of the jihadi trucks.
“Alright, I’ll back the big truck back some so that we can get the axle lift up under the front end of that truck. Then we’ll just lift it up and haul it out of here. Easy-peasy, man.”
“I sure hope so. It’s our asses out on the line out here right now.”
The militia mortars dropped a few more smoke rounds to cover the recovery team. But the mortar crews could not spare many more shots from their sparse inventory. George was busy hooking up the other truck when he saw one of his men rummaging through another wrecked jihadi vehicle.
“MT, what the hell are you doing out there?” George quickly asked.
“I’m trying to snatch up some of these jihadi weapons and ammunition. We need everything that we can get our hands onto, man.” Marion Taylor lifted his head outside of a jihadi vehicle and yelled.
“Hurry up then! I don’t know how much longer that smoke screen is going to last.” George yelled out.
Less than a minute later, Marion was seen running back with half a dozen Kalashnikov’s and a couple of bandoliers of ammunitions. As soon as he could dump his load in the back of one of the tow trucks, the militiaman ran immediately back to pick up another load. After Marion returned with the third load, George had waited long enough.
“MT, that’s the last load. We need to get going right now! If you want to get more, you will have to go do it on your own. We cannot wait any longer. Can’t you see what has happened to our smoke screen?”
“Got it, Boss.” A chastened Marion said as he finally hopped into the passenger seat of the smaller of the two militia tow trucks.
The crackle of gunfire began again from the far tree line as the two large tow trucks and their cargo began to move back towards Ashley as quickly as they could with such heavy loads.
“Go…Go….Go!” Jeff yelled as his men struggled to return back to the safety of the town with a growing volume of fire coming from just beyond the crossroads at Windsor Corners.
An RPG round flew with the fading smoke screen and hit one of the wrecked jihadi vehicles even as it was being towed back towards Ashley and its defenders. The large black cloud of smoke and flash of orange flame momentarily enveloped the targeted vehicle. There was a collective gasp among Jeff’s militiamen when they saw the explosion of the RPG’s warhead.
But then the two militia vehicles and their prizes cleared the smoke and continued their race to safety, the militiamen all cheered. Smoke still trailed from where the RPG’s PG-7 anti-tank round had hit the truck being towed. But the vehicle was still basically intact. About thirty seconds later, the militia vehicles passed the militia’s forward defensive lines and finally reached safety.
George and his men finally stopped after turning the corner and pulling in behind a building. A couple of minutes later, Jeff arrived to talk with them. But first, he looked at the jihadi vehicles that had been towed in and the equipment still inside of them.
“You’re all damned lucky that RPG hit you were it did. Just another foot to the right and it would have set off that whole big box full of RPG rounds.” Jeff scowled.
“But we now have some more guns that we can use plus a couple of those RPG launchers that we can use in case the jihadists show up here with some tanks, Sir. That has to account for something.” Marion replied.
“Yes, it does. But I don’t want to lose any of my people, especially because they took risks that far outweighed the benefits of what they did. You are all too important to me as my friends, neighbors and fellow patriotic Americans. Do you understand, MT?”
“Sorry, Sir. I know that you are trying to take care of us.”
Jeff stepped up and put his arm around the militiaman.
“This is going to be a rough fight. Most of these people have no idea what it will be like to watch one of their friends die in front of them. I want to protect them from that particular pain for as long as I can. Please try to be careful and don’t take any more unnecessary risks. OK?”
“Will do, Sir.”
“Thank you, MT. Now, let’s see what all you and the rest of you brought back for us to use against the bastards who what to take away our freedom and our land.” Jeff said, finally smiling after holding such a grim expression on his face while chastising the militiaman.
“Well, it looks like Larry is going to get his wish. Both of those technical’s have M-2 fifty-caliber heavy machine guns on them. They also appear to have at least a thousand rounds of ammunition on each other trucks.” George reported as he began to remove the machine guns from the tall pintle mounts that had been welded to each vehicle’s truck bed.
“We will have to make new tripod mounts for them so that we can fire the machine guns from some of our prepared bunkers.” Jeff noted.
“I think that Marilyn’s kids can probably manage that although they already have a lot on their plate. Maybe Terrance can weld a couple of mounts together from stock steel tubing over at his machine shop?”
“I’m sure that he can. So, why don’t you go ahead and show me what else you maniacs managed to bring back with you?” Jeff said with a more relaxed tone.
Several of the militiamen were already unloading the backs of the vehicles. A neat stack of various types of Kalashnikovs had already been assembled along several M-4 carbines. A pair of RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade launchers along with attached optical sights lay on the floor next to them. Eight large wooden crates were being stacked at the far side of the garage along a dozen ammunition vests, several large steel ammunition cases and a couple of crates of small arms ammunition.
Jeff started by having the large wooden crates opened up and looking inside.
“We can certainly make good use of these rounds for those two RPG’s. Most of these are the standard PG-7 shaped charge anti-tank rounds. We also have a few of the old OG-7 high-explosive frag rounds here along with what looks like a couple of the newer tandem-charge anti-tank rounds.
Those big metal cans that look li
ke oversized Spam cans and literally have an attached can opener contain Russian ammunition for the AK’s. Each of those cases holds over six hundred rounds inside it.”
Then Jeff saw the two M-2 heavy machine guns being placed on the floor after dismounting and the ammunition cans for them that had been loaded inside the captured trucks.”
“This is absolutely priceless, men. That’s got to be close to a thousand rounds of fifty-caliber ammo in those cases there.”
“I guess that our enemy might just end up being also our best supplier of equipment and ammunition.” George commented.
“Maybe, but we have to own the battlefield if we are going to be able to salvage any enemy equipment. If we go out raiding to steal it from the enemy camp, we could end up running right in an ambush. Then it will be the jihadists getting our weapons and ammunition off of our cold, dead bodies. That is something that I really want to avoid.” Jeff warned everyone.
Everyone nodded in agreement before continuing to strip everything useful off of the two captured jihadi trucks.
For the next two weeks, the Islamist invaders limited themselves to probing attacks that were fairly easily repulsed by the militia with few casualties. The attacks still worried Jeff because of the ammunition that the militia expended during each attack.
The Barnes facilities were able to replenish most of the ammunition expended because the militia recovered as much of the expended brass as possible for reloading. But certain reloading supplies like primers and bullets were quickly running low. The militia heard the sound of high-performance jets flying to the west of town almost every day now, though few flew close enough for visual identification.
The news that Jeff then received from one of the nearby Ohio National Guard units though was not encouraging. He shared that news with the rest of the militia in a general assembly shortly after receiving it.
“Some of you may have already heard about the action that our neighboring Guard unit had just to the northwest of us a couple of days ago. They were hit very hard during a battle with Islamist armored units and essentially destroyed. The Islamists also took heavy casualties but were able to win with the aid of air support from refurbished American warplanes from the desert boneyards.”
“Are you expecting us to be hit by tanks and bombers soon, Sir?” George Hampton asked.
“I don’t know, George. We could see them tomorrow show up on our doorstep or we may not see them for months. As I mentioned before, the Islamists took some heavy casualties themselves. Our guys definitely got their licks in good before they were overwhelmed. So, we need to be ready to hit the enemy as hard as possible so that perhaps we can finish the job that our friends in the Guard started.”
“Will do, Sir.” George immediately replied.
The Ashley militia nervously waited in their defensive positions for the next Caliphate troops to attempt to assault the town once again. Things stayed quiet on the front line for a few days. But eventually, the situation heated back up once again early one morning.
“You better let everyone know that there are some tanks that just came out of that forested area. I don’t think that they are friendlies either.”
A column of M-60A3 main battle tanks flying black Islamic flags were moving slowly east on Ohio 229 through Windsor Corners towards Ashley. These tanks that had belonged to the California National Guard several decades earlier had been brought out of mothballs after the loss of so many of the Caliphate’s modern tanks during the battles across the Great Plains and through Texas.
The tanks were accompanied by a mixed column of M-113 armored personnel carriers and thin-skinned trucks, though some of the newer trucks still had the armor kits from their service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We are so screwed. There is no way that we are going to be able to stop them now.” One of the younger militiamen who had never seen combat prior to the Caliphate invasion morosely said.
“Be patient, everyone. Remember, we have done a lot of work in preparation for exactly this situation.” Jeff told everyone as the enemy tanks slowly rumbled towards the town.
Improvised explosive devices had been put into place under every road traveling from west into Ashley during the past few months. But Jeff had insisted that the explosive devices not be used during the earlier attacks. He wanted to wait until the Caliphate had committed a truly heavy force before employing such devastating weapons.
Jeff looked over to a militiaman with a large electrical control panel attached to a large battery and dozens of pairs of electrical wires.
“Alan, go ahead and arm the charges. It looks like we are going to fire off number A-3 first.” The militia leader said.
Less than a minute later, the lead M-60 rolled over a part of OH 229 where a large concrete culvert ran underneath. Immediately, a three hundred pound explosive charge consisting of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with fuel oil was set off from Alan Freeze’s control panel. A massive column of soil flew up in the air. Within that column of soil and smoke also flew up the nine ton tank turret as the ammunition within the tank’s hull immediately exploded from the catastrophic breach of the M-60’s belly armor.
When the dust began to settle, a massive crater could be seen where the two lane paved road used to be. Broken tank track lay on both sides of the crater where the remnants of the tank’s hull rested.
The rest of the column immediately stopped in the wake of the massive explosion. For a few moments, the shocked jihadis were unwilling or unable to make another move. But at the same time, the militia waiting in their bunkers and other firing positions were also silent as they watched to see what the Caliphate force would do next.
Finally, the militia would hear one voice, then dozens more crying out “Allahu Akbar!” as the surviving tanks began to move off of the road in an attempt to bypass the destroyed road and continue the attack. As soon as Jeff was able to see a clear view of the approaching Caliphate force, he called out.
“Alright, everyone. Let’s make these bastards pay for invading our land and threatening our freedom. Open fire!”
Jeff had taken care to instruct everyone in the militia to exercise fire discipline when engaging the enemy. So everyone carefully aimed at their targets and fired single shots. But the majority of the militiamen did not fire yet since they did not have a weapon that could effectively deal with the enemy tanks. But, a pair of the most experienced militia members had been provided with the two captured RPG launchers. Each militia RPG gunner also had a second militiaman who served as an assistant gunner who carried additional RPG rounds in a backpack. The militia RPG teams took up positions to engage vehicles trying to go around the first destroyed M-60.
The two captured heavy machine guns were quickly put into action firing into the lightly armored M-113’s and forcing them to try to evade the machine gun fire. Melanie and Marilyn used precise fire to pick off any jihadists that attempted to dismount from their vehicles or man their externally-mounted machine guns. The combination of suppressive automatic fire from militia machine guns and sniper fire kept the jihadists buttoned up inside of their vehicles and unable to effectively see around them. This left the invaders vulnerable to other threats.
The militia had set up a variety of other improvised explosive charges along all of the likely avenues of approach from the west towards Ashley. Even as the jihadists were attempting to recover from the destruction of the lead M-60 by the huge AMFO mine that had exploded under the tank, Alan was preparing to fire other charges to hit the enemy force again.
Several of the older members of the militia had been veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. So they were very aware of the most effective tactics employed by the insurgents in both nations. Jeff was more than happy to take advantage of all that knowledge in preparing for the defense of their home.
A large explosion followed by a black cloud of smoke erupted against the side of one of the flanking M-60’s after it was hit by an RPG round. A few seconds later, white smoke
could be seen issuing from the tank’s hatches as they were suddenly flung upon by the surviving jihadist crew. As soon as the first jihadist tank crewman appeared, he was immediately cut down by rifle fire from the nearest militia position.
As the jihadi tanks attempted to maneuver away from the hidden RPG position, Alan saw that one of the heavily armored vehicles was next to a marked post in the ground. Immediately, the militia explosives expert selected and set off another explosive charge. Only this time, a trio of steel pipes aimed at different angles exploded. A cone of copper inserted in one end of each pipe was converted into a high velocity molten stream of metal by the explosive charge in the pipes. Two of these three explosively-formed projectiles hit the side and turret of the main battle tank, punching through and spraying molten metal throughout the interior of the vehicle.
The M-60 immediately skidded to a halt, smoke pouring out of all of its hatches. Then suddenly huge jets of flame erupted skyward from the tank commander and gunner hatches as the ammunition inside began to catch fire. This time, no one appeared from within the fiery inferno that was the interior of the jihadist tank.
A few of the militia members watching this became physically ill while others silently prayed for the souls of those unfortunate men who had burned alive within that doomed tank. But the town’s militiamen had very little time to mourn those lost souls with the jihadists continuing to advance towards the militia’s positions.
The sound of the first round fired by one of the jihadist tanks startled everyone in the militia. A nearby building immediately erupted in a shower of flame and splinters when the 105mm high explosive round hit it. There were no militiamen inside of the building, but several others nearby were wounded by flying shrapnel.
George and Marion carefully aimed the RPG that they had obtained from the earlier jihadist raid. They didn’t have any of the enemy tanks that they could engage, but a pair of the slab-sided M-113 APCs were visible through the smoke about one hundred and fifty meters away from their position. Marion had already loaded one of the PG-7 anti-tank rounds into the RPG launcher for George before calling out a target.