by gerald hall
Jeff decided that he just couldn’t risk it. He needed the munitions a lot more than the tank, no matter how much the extra firepower would have helped.
“We just can’t afford to try, guys. Someone get inside and see if it has any high explosive rounds in the ammo racks. We can certainly use those back at the factory, I’m sure. Check the other abandoned tanks that didn’t burn for any salvageable munitions as well. After that, we will just boobytrap all of the salvageable tanks just in case the jihadists attempt to recover them later. Otherwise, let’s continue picking up everything that we can before daybreak.” The militia commander told his people.
A steady parade of heavily laden militiamen walked back and forth carrying as much weaponry and ammunition as possible. About a dozen armed female members of the militia remained back in overwatch to protect the salvage teams during the night while the latter worked.
A little after four in the morning, Jeff was startled to hear the sound of a diesel engine attempting to start.
“What the hell is going on out there? I don’t know who is screwing around with one of those vehicles. But we need to stay quiet if we are going to avoid the jihadists dropping all kinds of hell on our heads.” Jeff growled as he rapidly moved towards the source of the sound.
Then, Jeff heard something else that also surprised him. It was the sound of a turbocharged diesel engine roaring to life and the clang of pivoting tracks from a moving armored combat vehicle.
Jeff then saw the source of the noise. It was one of the jihadist M-113A3 armored personnel carriers turning towards the town before coming to a stop. A man’s head popped out of the driver’s hatch. It was only the familiar sound of Marion Taylor’s voice that kept that head from being shot off by half a dozen militiamen.
“Hey, Jeff. This APC was hit by one of our RPG’s, but it wasn’t all that badly damaged inside. The jihadists abandoned it just because of a little fire that apparently burned itself out.”
“MT, get this damned thing out of here before it draws attention to our people out here from the bad guys. We’ll sort out the circumstances of how you got it running later after we all get the hell out of here and back to town.” Jeff growled up at the militiaman.
“Roger that, Sir!” Marion quickly replied before popping back down inside of the driver’s hatch. Jeff had another militiaman activate a couple of chemlights for Marion to see. Then the militiaman served as a ground guide as he led the captured APC slowly back towards town.
Along the way, they would periodically stop and allow some of the salvage teams to toss captured weapons and munitions into the back of the APC. By the time that Marion got back to town, the back of the M-113A3 was practically full of rifles, grenades and ammunition.
An hour before sunrise, Jeff passed the word around to the salvage teams to begin wrapping up operations. We needed to get back to the safety of town before morning. The last of the militiamen got back to their defensive positions just before five in the morning.
“Now, everyone needs to get some sleep first who went out with me tonight. That means everyone. I don’t care if you found some awesome toy or not, I need you well-rested in case the jihadists decide to come back again later.” Jeff told everyone.
The smiling militiamen all agreed even though Jeff was sure that many of them would spend at least half the time playing with their new ‘toys’ that they had found and perhaps do a little trading with others in the militia. He decided to go home to the farm to get some rest though.
Melanie was already in bed waiting on him when he got there.
“I see that you finally decided to take your own advice for once, Sweetheart.” Melanie said with a smile on her own tired face. She had stayed up most of the night herself, watching over the salvage teams with a set of night vision optics attached to her sniper rifle.
Jeff quickly stripped off the dirty camouflage uniform that he had been wearing and climbed into bed next to her without saying a single word. Only a few moments later, they were curled up together, both sound asleep in each other’s arms.
It was the middle of the afternoon when Jeff finally woke up. Melanie had apparently been awake for a while already since Jeff could smell the odor of freshly cooked venison and vegetables in the air. He got up out of bed and walked into the kitchen to see a freshly scrubbed and clearly happy Melanie standing there.
“Hello, Sleepyhead. I’m glad to see that you finally got the rest that you needed. Now, come on over to the dinner table and get something to eat. I’m not about to let all of this food go to waste.” Melanie said just before giving Jeff a quick kiss.
After eating a good meal for the first time in days and taking a quick shower, Jeff got dressed in a fresh uniform, gave Melanie a quick kiss and immediately headed out the door. His first destination after checking in with the militia’s command post was the large garage where all of the battlefield salvage was taken after the previous night.
Half of the militia was already there looking over the spoils of the battle when Jeff arrived.
“Alright, everyone. Let’s get all of this gear organized and see what we can use right away and what needs to go back to the Barnes factory for use in making something that we can use.”
Marilyn Barnes was working closely with many of the militiamen, using her skills as a gunsmith and her general knowledge of small arms. Jeff came to her after a few minutes to learn what her assessment of the captured equipment was.
“What all do we have here, Marilyn?” Jeff asked as Marilyn stood next to a rack of several score rifles.
“From the looks of things, most of these guys who attacked us had a mix of old M-16’s and M-4’s that probably came from one or more of the Western Republic’s National Guard armories. The rest actually had civilian AR-15’s that came from all over the place. They probably had been seized from their civilian owners after the Western Republic confiscated everyone’s personal firearms a few years ago.
Of course, the AR-15’s were still not set up for selective-fire. I would imagine that they were issued to some of these people because they used the same 5.56mm ammunition and magazines that the National Guard weapons fired from. These weapons were all chambered in 5.56mm so we cannot use their ammunition in our regular weapons. But these rifles can all be used if we run short of 6.5mm ammunition though. There is close to fifty thousand rounds of ammunition for these captured weapons that we have recovered.
We also retrieved four M240 machine guns and maybe two thousand rounds of ammunition for them. I can probably reload the brass for those and the cartridges for the captured rifles with my store’s reloading gear for a little while.
I didn’t see where anyone had been issued a sniper rifle here. I suppose that the people that the Caliphate sent up weren’t particularly well trained, certainly not well enough to make decent use of a precision weapon like a M40 or a Barrett M82.” She explained before walking over to another stack of weapons.
“Now, here is the real prize for us. We were able to recover another seven RPG-7 launchers or variants of that design. Our guys brought in over one hundred rounds of various types for these launchers last night. We have nearly eighty anti-tank HEAT rounds, including several tandem warheads. The remainder are a variety of high explosive fragmentation rounds from a variety of countries.
These weapons, along with a handful of M203 and M32 40mm grenade launchers, significantly make up for a serious shortfall in support and anti-armor weapons that we have had.” Marilyn concluded.
“How about explosives?”
“Oh, we got lots of those, Jeff. We now have more than two hundred hand grenades of various types. Also, a couple of our guys had to be absolutely insane when they were pulling things out of the wrecks. They brought back over half a dozen suicide vests out of a couple of those trucks. We probably will be able to get a couple of hundred kilograms of C-4 and Semtex plastic explosives from those vests alone. We will obviously use the explosives for our own purposes other than committing suicide though.�
�� Marilyn explained. It was obvious that she was very pleased with the materiel that the militia had obtained that previous night.
Jeff then looked across the inside of the garage to where several men were working on welding a metal plug into a hole in the side of the captured M-113A3 armored personnel carrier. Jeff also saw several other features about that vehicle that he had not noticed during the night. Jeff walked up to the vehicle and saw Marion pulling some equipment out from inside of the captured vehicle.
“Hello, MT. You have been busy today already, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Sir. I really couldn’t sleep much more than a couple of hours since we got back.”
“My wife made sure that I got some sleep. Now, let’s see about this APC that you brought in here last night, MT.”
“Well, Sir. I think that we lucked into quite a find here. Did you happen to see all of the antenna’s mounted on top of this vehicle?”
“Yes, I just did. I have to admit that I didn’t see them when we were working last night though.” Jeff replied.
“We found five different radio sets inside of here. Most of these radios were either ex-US Army Joint Tactical Radio Systems or SINCGARS radios. Those were some pretty sophisticated communications systems. They’ve all sorts of encryption gear too. One of our other militia guys used to be a communications specialist in the Guard. He told me all about this equipment. All of this communications equipment inside this vehicle means that we got the command center for the entire attack right here.
But we found something else too. When we got this vehicle back, we found that there was still a body inside of a jihadi soldier that had been directly hit by the RPG’s penetration of the APC’s hull. But he not only wore a completely different uniform than the rest of the men who attacked us, he was clearly not from around East LA either.
This guy was an officer from the Pacific Caliphate, not one of the local recruits like the rest of the guys we were fighting. The shot that punched through the side of this vehicle also had to have killed the commander for the entire attack, maybe even the entire Caliphate battalion that we have been facing.”
Jeff stopped and thought for a moment. This had to be the reason why the attack finally failed. Without their commander, the jihadists completely lost their motivation to continue the attack.
“You’re probably right, MT. What else can you tell me about this vehicle?”
“Sure thing, Sir. This was probably one of the last M-113’s to come off the production line. Instead of steering tillers, it uses a T-bar to steer. It also has an upgraded engine in addition to having the two external fuel tanks on either side of the ramp. In spite of the internal spall liner, the RPG hit that killed that officer also did some damage to the radios. We think that we might be able to get some of the damaged radios running though.”
“Very good, MT. Now, is that a CROWS mount on top of the vehicle?”
“Yes, Sir. It sure is. This remote control weapons mount has a ‘Ma-Duce’ fifty-cal. mounted along with over five hundred rounds of ammunition aboard. Fortunately, the mount was not damaged. It’s got all the night vision gear and electro-optic sensors including a thermal scope too.”
“Well, that explains why the jihadist commander wanted to use that particular vehicle as his command track. Do any of the other vehicles out there have a CROWS mount on it?”
“I don’t think so, Sir.” Heck, very few of those vehicles even had a machine gun on them. I guess that the jihadist commander was counting on those tanks to provide the needed firepower for the assault.”
“They did not count on us having any sort of anti-armor weapons at all, I suppose. They will not be so complacent the next time that they attack, I’m sure.”
“We also found something else interesting inside of the commander’s vehicle as well.” Marion said with a smile as he pointed to a large long crate. It was scorched on the outside from the hot debris of the RPG hit, but otherwise still intact.
Marion then opened up the crate to reveal a pair of Russian-pattern man-portable surface to air missiles.
“The missiles themselves look pretty old. But the sighting unit and batteries appear to be freshly refurbished, Sir.”
“I suppose that the jihadists were worried that they were going to be hit by one of those A-10’s or other fighters that are still operating off of I-77 and I-71. They are certainly a windfall for us. But we will use these first against any jihadist aircraft that try to attack us.” Jeff replied.
Before this discovery, Jeff was much more concerned about how he would deal with an air attack. He was now free to save that single Stinger missile for a high value target.
“Are we going to use this track to go after the enemy, Jeff?” Marilyn asked. She had walked up to see what had been discovered inside of the APC as well.
“We are going to be very hard pressed to come up with enough fuel to drive this thing around much, you know. It uses ten times as much fuel as any of our other vehicles.”
“So what do you want to do with it, Jeff?” Marilyn asked. While she knew firearms and sniping, Marilyn had never served in the military. Jeff had spent several years in the Air Force working in Security Forces.
“What we should do is dig this vehicle in and remote the antennas after we get the radios fixed. Then we can use it as our own command center so that we can talk to our allies, our air support and to our own people.”
“Seems to me that it would be an awful waste of that remote control gun mount on top of her, especially with all of that night vision gear.” Marion grumpily commented. He had hoped to be able to take the vehicle back into combat against the jihadists.
“Oh, that CROWS mount will be put to good use, sooner or later. Trust me on that.” Jeff quickly answered back.
“I still think that we should go back, fix the track on that one tank and bring it back here to back us up.”
“I don’t know, MT. We were damned lucky to be able to get away with that APC as it was.” Who knows if the jihadists have already gotten some people up close enough to pick off our people who come out to try to get that tank? Do you want to take that chance?”
Marion hesitated for a moment before responding.
“If we can’t get that tank, maybe we can pull some of their night vision equipment out and hot wire it. That way, we can see at night at our observation posts.”
“That, we might be able to do. But we will have to work very carefully and especially very quietly. No more trying to start up vehicles to drive them back without checking with me first. Got it, MT?”
“Got it, Sir.” Marion replied with a contrite smile.
Jeff looked around at the rest of the salvaged equipment for a few more minutes before beginning to walk back to the main part of town. Marilyn joined him as her home and store were also on the way there.
“Do you that with all of this that we might have a chance of stopping them, Jeff?” Marilyn quietly asked.
“By ourselves? No. There are a hundred ways that the jihadists can either overwhelm us with a mass attack, bypass us or simply bomb us out of existence. We are still just the militia from one small town in the middle of Ohio. But, the most important thing that can do is to buy time for the others out there. Maybe, the folks to the east of us can get themselves organized enough to launch a real counterattack to break the Caliphate invaders.”
“I kind of doubt that it going to happen, Jeff. There are still just too many sheep among us to create a large enough fighting force.”
“I know. But we might be able to get just one more shipload of our most deserving young people away from the nightmare to come. Mars may not have any of the comforts of home. But at least those people will continue to be free for the foreseeable future.”
“Jeff, what can we do if the jihadists decide to use chemical weapons, even if they are something as basic as tear gas?”
“Not a whole hell of a lot at this point that we can do. I think that a few of our people have some military-surplus gas
masks, including a few that they brought back from the jihadist wrecks. But a lot of our people in town have absolutely nothing at all to protect themselves from any sort of agent.
We have had some reports from our Guard partners about the use of tear gas and even chlorine gas elsewhere by the jihadists. The problem for the enemy is that they have to protect themselves from those agents also. That is going to be pretty hard since so many of them like to wear beards. There is also the problem for them of long term contamination of the land. It is going to be very difficult for our adversaries to use the land to grow food on if they have poisoned it and killed off all of the bees that pollenate the crops. Even so, we have to do something to protect our people, including the non-combatants that have refused to evacuate from their homes here.”
“There could be some possible solutions available, Jeff. The factory and a lot of our car repair shops have respirators that can act as filters for tear gas, but I don’t think that we have anything that can protect us from a real chemical attack from a military-grade lethal agent though.” Marilyn suggested.
“We will just have to do the best that we can with what we have or what we can put together to protect ourselves. I still wouldn’t put it past the ragheads to use gas on any place that proves too difficult of a nut to crack by conventional means.”
“Nor do I. But we have to do the best that we can with what we have. This includes that captured APC. If you are going to dig it in, that probably means that you are not going to be running its engine very much. The vehicle’s radios and other equipment are going to still require power. You know that you are going to have to run a power line down to wherever you are you going to put that vehicle. The overall power grid is down, now that the main transmissions line from the Mosquito Lake nuclear station has been cut by enemy fire. But with the wind turbine and solar panels for my kids’ factory still supplying power to most of the town, it would not be all that difficult to run a feed to this new command post of ours.”