Prepper's Crucible - Volume Six: The End

by Andrews, Bobby

  “Why don’t we ask for their surrender?”

  Cory thought for a minute and said, “get on the radio and tell everyone to hold fast while I talk to the general.”

  “On it.”

  Cory got up, leaned out the window, and yelled, “General Sanchez. I want to meet you at the gate under a white flag.” A long moment passed and Cory heard the reply, “yes, but come unarmed and without your men.” Cory was surprised that the man’s English was unaccented, but shrugged it off as unimportant.

  “Agreed,” he yelled back.

  Cory turned to Eric and said, “do we have a Barrett on the front of the compound?”

  “We have two: one on each corner on the roof at the Palace Saloon. They both have line of sight on the front gate.”

  “Tell them to zero in on the general and take him out if I raise my right hand and run it through my hair.”

  “Done.”

  Cory removed his holster and placed it on the floor of the building, walked to the back entrance, and told Eric, “if I go down, you take them out. We need to end this now.”

  “I don’t think this is smart.”

  “It’s probably not, but this is going to be a real bloodbath if we can’t get surrender. We don’t have the air support we thought we would have when we planned this. There has been enough death and sadness in this fight to last me a lifetime. I have to go and see if we can work this out without further loss of life.”

  Cory walked to the back door and exited the building, walked down the side until he came to the sidewalk on the plaza, and proceeded to the front gate of the compound that now surrounded the court house. He stopped in front of the gate, held his hands out to his sides with the palms facing toward the building, and waited for the other side to appear. The massive entrance to the building opened and a man in a dress uniform walked out. He approached Cory and stopped on the other side of the gate.

  “You want our surrender?” he said as he approached, stopping short of the gate that surrounded the compound. He was a large man, burly, and his black eyes seemed to glow with a fierceness born in anger.

  “Yes.”

  “Not going to happen,” the man replied. Cory studied him for a moment before replying, “no reason to get all these men killed when your Army is already on the run back to the border.”

  “This will be our Alamo.” His tone was mild, but his eyes continued to glow.

  “That didn’t end too well for us.”

  “It created something good. It’s a story of bravery unsurpassed until now.”

  “Why don’t you take a few minutes to think it over?”

  “I already have. You better go now.” He turned on his heels and walked back into the building.

  “No luck,” Cory told Eric when he stepped through the door.

  “We need to use the Barretts to take out as many of the crew-served weapons as we can. Get the spotters to identify those targets and tell them to call us and let us know when they’re ready.” Cory stood silently, desperately attempting to think of some way to keep his casualty rate down, while Eric went to the radio and whispered quietly into the microphone. After a minute, he returned and waited for further orders. Cory’s face suddenly lit up.

  “What is it?” Eric asked.

  “Come with me.” They went to the last window of the building they occupied, where Cory pointed toward the northeast corner of the courthouse. “Tell the sappers to make their approach directly at the corners of the buildings before tossing the grenades into the windows. That will leave the Mexicans only the two corner sets of windows to engage from. All the other windows won’t have an angle of fire.”

  “Of course. That makes sense.”

  “Okay. Now check out the heavy machine gun on the second floor on the windows to the right as we face the corner. You see how he has the barrel pointed as far to the right as it goes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow a path from the barrel to the building across the street.”

  “It can’t reach our sappers,” Eric said excitedly. “It’s about 15 degrees short.”

  “Yes. From now on we call that the weak corner and the ones that have line of fire that will reach our guys – the one on the left side in this case – the strong corner.”

  “If we can keep the gunners in the strong corners down with the .50s, our guys get a pretty clean approach. If we head for the corner of the building, the Mexicans on the weak corner windows either have to shoot left-handed or lean out the windows to get a shot. Get our snipers to keep those weak corners under constant fire. I need the Barretts and .308s on the weak corner windows, one each for each window on that side. The fire has to be constant once it starts, so we need the .308s. On the strong corner, I want either a Ma Deuce or a pair of SAWs for each window. Again, constant fire. If the SAWS have to take turns while reloading, that’s fine. But we can’t stop firing until the sappers are hugging the walls of the courthouse. Get lots of ammo for the weapons and keep all our shooters as close to that corner as possible. That’s makes 90 percent of the Mexican fighting positions on the long side of the building useless. Their machine guns can’t traverse to fire at that angle.”

  “Got it,” Eric replied, leaving Cory to review the plan in his head and worry about what he may have overlooked.

  The sappers and assault teams stood in two stacks in the entryway of the former shoe store that sat at a perfect angle from the corner. Cory came down from the roof and asked the fighters to huddle before he spoke. He looked at the group and realized that almost half of them were women. Cory sighed at the idea that females were combatants, but pushed the thought away. He looked up again and said, “we have .50s and SAWs on every window. But you guys need to get through the razor wire and get on the building in less than two minutes. At that point, we might lose fire superiority and that would get you all killed.”

  “Got it,” Lloyd replied. “Just keep them down for those two minutes and we’ll get the first floor corner cleared.”

  “Okay, we are a go in two minutes.” Cory and Eric left the room and went back to the rooftop observatory where they intended to run the battle. Cory put on the NVGs again and Eric keyed the radio.

  “Status?” Eric asked.

  “We’re good,” Lloyd replied.

  “On my command.”

  “Roger.”

  “Commence assault.”

  Two sapper teams left the building and the first group of six reached the wire without incident, cut through the razor wire, and huddled around the opening they created. The second team moved up and ran through the wire.

  “Open fire,” Cory said to Eric.

  “Take them out,” Eric said after keying the microphone, and the air filled with the song of heavy caliber weapons discharging on full auto. Cory watched the fight dispassionately and saw that the Mexicans were deploying RPGs from almost every window in the building. He watched two of them leave their launchers and impact the front of two buildings to the north, and then two more impacted the building he was on. He also saw another one where the Mexican soldier trying to shoot the RPG was taken out by one of the snipers, fell back into the room he fired from, and the RPG detonated in the building. Fire burst out of the window, and the rate of gunfire slowed for a moment, then picked up again and became a wall of sound that zeroed out any other sensation.

  Cory turned his sight again to the sappers and saw they had breached the razor wire and the assault team was moving beyond them to the building. The second sapper team followed, carrying bags of grenades and C-4 charges, and fanned out around the north side of the building. After throwing grenades into the ground-floor windows, they moved to place charges in the side door of the building. Two were shot down by gunfire from the courthouse and another two died when grenades hailed down from the upper floors of the building. The assault team stacked up outside the door, waiting for the blast, and when the door blew off the building, they entered the opening, still in a stack, and fanned out to clear their side o
f the structure.

  “Send in the second assault team,” Cory said.

  “Second assault team, move,” Eric said into the radio. They both watched as another group of fighters ran across the square, through the wire, and into the building. The courthouse was now lighted with the fire from the RPG and the constant gunfire from within the building. The return fire from the building died down to the occasional rounds coming from the windows.

  “Move the .50s to the southeast corner and assemble the last two sapper and assault teams there. Leave the SAWs here. Get Kate up here to run the fight on this side of the building. Tell her to send in the last of our fighters when that corner is cleared and get them moving toward the center of the building.” Cory paused, then added, “we need to get over there now. They’re going to be moving soldiers and weapons to this side of the building, so we need to hit them on the soft side they’re going to create when they move in this direction.”

  “I’m on it.” Eric keyed the mic on his radio and issued Cory’s instructions to Kate.

  Cory ran down the steps to the alley behind the store. He moved down the alley toward the next fighting position. He fist-bumped Kate as they passed each other; Cory turned and started to say something to her, but her back disappeared before he could utter a word. Eric came out of the stairwell, M-16 in hand, and the two men moved quietly until they reached the corner of Montezuma Street and Main Street, and waited for a pause in the gunfire before crossing the corner and getting back into the alleyways behind the plaza. His men were now forced into pauses in the assault as they stopped to reload, and the exchange of gunfire became even between the two sides. RPGs continued to hail out of the courthouse, and the damage to the buildings in the square was now noticeable. Several of Cory’s fighters’ bodies littered the square in front of the Palace Saloon, and more died in an RPG attack on the building next to it. Several more lay on the street between the courthouse and surrounding buildings. Cory noted that the medics were attending to them, after first dragging them from the street and into the buildings that formed a box around the central plaza. He said a silent prayer as they moved through the alleys, and they finally arrived to the southeast corner of the square. The crew-served weapons teams followed behind, lugging the tripods, weapons, and ammo with them.

  “Same drill,” Cory said as they caught up with them. “One weapon on each window on this side of the building. I need suppressing fire to get our sappers in.”

  “We’re on it.” The group disappeared up the steps of the city management building and set up their weapons.

  “Are we guns up?” Cory asked.

  “Not yet,” Eric replied. Cory turned toward the courthouse and saw several unarmed Mexican soldiers drop to the ground from the second-story windows and begin running toward his position with hands held high. The men around him all raised their weapons and began firing at the soldiers.

  “Cease fire!” Cory bellowed. The firing stopped, but everyone remained wary and tracked the movement of the soldiers as they approached.

  “We surrender,” the lead man yelled, slowing as he approached the door where Cory stood with his weapon at the ready.

  “Approach slowly with your hands up,” Cory replied. As the group passed through the door, a Mexican in an officer’s uniform stopped.

  “You should tell your men to get down,” he said. When he saw Cory’s look of confusion, he added, “General Sanchez has the whole building rigged with explosives. He’s going to blow the whole thing when your fighters get to the third floor.” Cory examined the man carefully, looking for any sign of deceit. He found none.

  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you.”

  “I know. That’s how you know I’m not lying.”

  “Tell everyone to clear the building immediately,” Cory said after turning to Eric. As Eric keyed the mic and began to issue the order, a massive roaring sound cracked the night air. The men instinctively ducked down as a rolling echo passed through the plaza, and stood in time to watch the debris from the roof of the courthouse rain down on the streets surrounding the building. A vast silence ensured. Cory gaped in disbelief, shook his head twice, and looked away. After a moment he turned to Eric and said, “have the prisoners taken to the county jail. Lock them up there until we can figure out what do with them.” Cory exited the building in time to see his fighters begin to stream into the plaza. Eric stood beside him for a moment. “We lost forty men and women in there, including Ed and Ann. I lost all those people because of one crazy bastard with a death wish.” He looked away for a moment, shook his head, and watched as two of the fighters approached the flagpole, yanked the lanyard loose, and brought the Mexican flag down. The cheering started when one of the men contemptuously tossed the flag into the garbage can by the flagpole. It continued as the second man attached the American flag and slowly began to raise it, almost as though expressing reverence by the slowness of the ascent.

  Someone started singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the melody filled the plaza with close to a thousand voices participating. The sound filled the early morning air as the sunrise painted the plaza with light. By the last stanza, Cory stood with his hand over his heart, tears streaming down his face.

  CHAPTER TEN

  EMP PLUS 39 YEARS, 22 DAYS

  PRESCOTT, ARIZONA, TERRITORIAL CAPITAL

  “Well, this is the day,” Horace said cheerfully. “They’re counting the votes.”

  “Elections aren’t that predictable,” Cory replied. He was propped up in his bed watching the election results as they came in, and wore an expression of concern.

  “We polled at over 58 percent. There is no doubt in my mind that this is going to pass and we will join the United States again as a state.”

  “It’s going to take at least another hour to get the final results.”

  Eric entered the room carrying a thermos and three cups. After pouring the coffee, he handed each man a cup and they all sat quietly watching the television set. As the tabulation continued, Horace finally broke the silence.

  “Eric once told me that you ran for governor because you felt you had no choice.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  Cory thought for a second before responding, “it’s a long story, but I guess we have time. I generally don’t talk about it because it makes me seem preachy. So, understand that I’ll answer the question, but in a way you may not like.” Horace pulled his notebook out and poised a pen over it, waiting patiently. After a moment, Cory turned to him and said, “it had to do with the EMP more than anything else. We all knew about them for decades before it actually happened. But we all walked around with our blinders on because the unthinkable was impossible. I was just as bad as everyone else. I just couldn’t imagine anything like that could happen to us. We were the greatest country in the world. Or so we thought.” He paused, again thinking, and added, “when I was growing up, we behaved like Spartans. We worked hard, were honest and rational for the most part, and treated each other with respect. Now, granted, I’ve spent my whole life here, so it’s all I really know. I know it may have been different in the cities, but not here. Then, as time went on our society became more like Rome. Even here. We had dramatic increases in the welfare rolls and disability benefits for people who were completely healthy, but found it easier to take the handout.”

  “That does sound a little preachy,” Horace commented.

  “Yeah it does,” Eric agreed. “But it also happens to be true.”

  “Again, we all knew that every great civilization before us eventually crumbled: Rome, the British Empire, the Aztecs. There was no shortage of examples that should have made it clear to us that we were about to fail as a nation. Our politics became mean-spirited and more concerned about maintaining power than doing what was right. We lost two wars we should have won because the American public didn’t have the stomach to commit to winning.”

  “You’re referring to Afghanistan and Ir
aq?”

  “You could throw Viet Nam in as well, I guess.” Cory paused, took a deep breath and continued, “people didn’t talk about the best thing to do for the country. They just yelled slogans at each other and committed to having everything their way or nothing. The notion of compromise, the fundamental building block of any political system, went out the window. The right took to preying on people’s fears and hatred, and the left stuck their head in a hole and pretended nothing was wrong. Each side was as responsible for the mess as the other. Nobody was about to let the facts get in the way of whatever they believed. We cut military spending to pay for social welfare programs. Many of the people didn’t need those programs. But it was better than working, and they felt entitled to it because they were raised in a society that tolerated non-productive members. So, our military never really had the money to prepare for the EMP the way we should have.”

  “That’s why you banned welfare after you were elected?” Horace asked.

  “I didn’t ban anything. The legislature voted the law into effect, and it still stands. I did introduce the bill.”

  “You also introduced legislation to ban political parties and campaign contributions.”

  “Didn’t have much luck with that,” Cory replied sheepishly. “Asking politicians to not band together in groups is like asking an antelope to behave like a puma. I should have known better.” He appeared lost in thought for a moment, then added, “Don used to refer to people who weren’t completely self-sufficient as ‘sheeple.’ I thought it was a little harsh at the time, and maybe it still is; but I do see a grain of truth in the term. The fact is that humans are herd animals, and going along with the group, even if it’s wrong, is most often a lot easier than going your own way.”

  “They’re going to announce the election results,” Eric interrupted. The three men fell silent as the announcer came on the air and reported that the tally was final, with 61 percent of the voters casting their ballots to rejoin the Union.