Rescue: Book 3 in the After the Fall series

by David Nees

  “I think there’ll be little appetite for another attack.”

  “Maybe. It’ll be up to General McKenzie.”

  “What’s he like?” Catherine asked as they trotted off through the woods.

  “He’s a real general. A hard ass like many. He’s capable but, judging from the men who attacked us, he’s not working with a lot of well-trained soldiers.”

  “That will help Kevin and the others.”

  The two continued their jog through the woods. Jason finally called a halt when they had climbed a particularly steep hill. They turned to the highway and came out to a suitably steep slope down to the river and highway. There wasn’t a long sight line in either direction but for a quarter of a mile, they had clear shooting.

  “With the steep slopes, we’ll be relatively protected from an assault in the woods.” Jason said. “Now we wait.” He took a drink of water, draining his canteen.

  “You need some of mine?” Catherine asked.

  “No, I’ll fill up at the next stream we cross.”

  Sooner than they had expected, they heard the sound of the approaching convoy. Both of them got into position, lying behind protection and looking through their scopes where the convoy would appear.

  When it came out from the screen of hills, Jason saw that McKenzie had made some adjustments. While they were on a steep hill, it was not especially high. The result was that the armored vehicles were providing reasonable cover for the unarmored trucks. The tank had its turret turned towards the hills across the river, ready for firing as soon as their position was exposed. The others had their weapons aimed in the same direction.

  As soon as they were spotted, all hell was going to break loose.

  “Catherine,” Jason said while still looking through the scope. “They’ve got eyes on the hills. They’ll see our muzzle flashes. It won’t take a moment for them to pin point us. We get one round of shots as fast as you can and then we run away. The tank and the rest will open fire and our position will be wiped out.”

  Catherine looked over at him, her eyes wide, and nodded.

  “Wait for my first shot and then get off as many rounds as you can. When I shout ‘Go!’, run like hell.”

  Jason watched the emerging convoy. He had limited shots at the truck cabs, none at the grills and engines which were better hidden. Shooting the boxes behind the cabs would be useless. The trucks probably didn’t carry any more men and he would only hit supplies. He could see the men marching in the median swale. All they had to do when the firing started was drop to the ground and they would be protected.

  “Try for the truck cabs,” he called to Catherine.

  Jason’s first shot went through the top of a cab, his next, lower, smashed through the windshield. He didn’t know if he had hit anyone, he just kept firing. Catherine also targeted a truck cab with similar results but less damage. Jason turned a few shots to the first APC, trying to take out the gunner. After about four seconds in which he got off six rounds, he gave the shout.

  Both slid back from the hill’s edge, turned and ran back into the woods. The tank’s 105 gun fired and the hillside just below their position exploded.

  “Keep running!” Jason shouted. Four second later he shouted again, “Down!”

  They both hit the ground as the second round hit the hillside, right where they had been shooting. The blast ripped apart some trees and frag and branches flew over their heads. They could hear the thump of the grenade launchers. These could be more dangerous, exploding just over their heads or, worse, dropping down onto them.

  “South,” Jason shouted. They sprang up and raced through the brush, with limbs and brambles tearing at their faces and clothing. Behind them the grenades started landing and exploding.

  Catherine yelled out and fell to the ground. Jason stopped and ran back to her. Her jacket was torn on her right shoulder.

  “You’re hit,” Jason called. “Can you move? We have to get out of here.”

  Catherine started to her feet. Jason grabbed her under her left arm and yanked her upright.

  “Ow, that hurts.”

  He took a quick look at her shoulder. “We have to get further away. Come on.”

  He started pulling her along.

  “You’ll make me fall. Let go,” Catherine yelled at him. The exploding munitions behind them were deafeningly loud. “I can move.”

  A few minutes later Jason stopped behind a large boulder that had broken off from the higher slope ages ago.

  “We’re safe here. Let me look at your wound.” He dropped his pack and helped Catherine off with hers. Her jacket had a large rip in it. Below, her shirt was torn as well and a deep gash exposed across her shoulder blade.

  “Is it bad?” Catherine asked.

  “Probably painful, but not bad.” He took out some antiseptic powder and sprinkled it over the gash. Then he put a cauterizing patch on the wound and finished with some tape to hold it in place. Catherine grunted in pain as Jason worked on the injury.

  “There,” Jason said when he had finished. “Don’t try to move your arm much, you’ll pull the bandage loose. I want the patch to seal off the bleeding. It looks like you didn’t break a bone, but it’s going to be sore as hell for a while.”

  “Is it a bad cut?”

  “Honestly, more like a tear.”

  “Do you have to stitch it up?”

  “I don’t have the equipment. The best I can do is to keep it closed with tape. Don’t move the shoulder if you can help it.”

  “Easier said than done,” she replied after a moment. “I guess I’m going to have a big scar.”

  “It will be a conversation piece when you go swimming. People will see it when you’re in your bathing suit.”

  Catherine started to chuckle. “Ow, that hurts.”

  “I’ll carry your pack,” Jason said. “Can you carry your rifle?”

  Catherine nodded. “Can you pull my canteen out of my pack?”

  Jason retrieved her canteen and noticed her hand shaking as she grabbed it. She took a long drink and then handed it back.

  “Are we going to try that again?”

  Jason shook his head. “No. We’ve done all we can. We bought a half day of time and took some men and vehicles out of the picture. It’s time to head back.”

  “We’re going to join the larger group then?”

  “You’re not. You can’t fight with that wound. It’ll open up. We’ll try to join with Kevin’s men and get you further checked out. Then we have to get you back to Hillsboro.”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  “You can’t fight in your condition. That’s your shooting shoulder, so you won’t be able to do any sniping.”

  “I’m staying with the fighters.” Her voice was firm.

  “We’ll talk about it later. First, we have to find the men. Can you walk?”

  Catherine nodded. Jason helped her up and they started out through the woods.

  Chapter 46

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  W hen the shooting started, McKenzie’s men were prepared. The shooters were quickly located and both the tank’s 105 and the APC’s grenade launchers returned fire. Within moments the ridge was lit up with the impact of multiple rounds.

  “Keep the convoy moving,” McKenzie shouted over the radio.

  After the initial rounds and the response from his convoy, no more shooting came from the ridge. As they passed the area, the tank pulled over, its gun trained on the hillside. The APCs kept up their firing as they went past. The fuel truck, at the end of the column, drove past and the M60 followed.

  “We made it past the ambush,” McKenzie’s lieutenant called out.

  “Keep everyone going. We’ll soon be too far ahead for them to catch us,” McKenzie said.

  The lieutenant smiled. “We beat them, sir.”

  “Let’s hope there’s not more to come,” McKenzie answered.

  General McKenzie began to feel more confident. The convoy m
oved on with no further attacks through the rest of the day. He decided they should continue during the night. If the snipers were still in action, he didn’t want them to catch up and strike again. Better to keep moving, even if it tired everyone out. By tomorrow they would be far enough ahead. He’d be able to stop that night. Another day after that and he might be at Hillsboro and teach them a lesson.

  The next morning, Kevin heard the diesel engines.

  “Convoy’s coming,” he shouted. Everyone ran to take up their positions. He picked up his radio and called Rodney. “You hear them?”

  “Roger that,” Rodney said.

  Kevin directed the riflemen to move down the slope, closer to the road. They were directed to concentrate on the unarmored vehicles and personnel. At the top of the hill he positioned his mortar crews and part of the way down the slope, behind the rifle team he had six rocket launchers. Rodney Gibbs, across the highway, was setting up similar positioning.

  The clank of heavy track treads on the pavement presaged the sight of the M60 tank leading the convoy. Kevin held the radio in his hand, ready to give the fire order for both teams. The machines slowed as they approached the bottleneck. Marching in a ragged column, the troops had spread themselves through the vehicles. Kevin noticed that all the armored machines were positioned to the right of the trucks as if worried about an attack from that side. Had Jason attacked from the west? That left the eastern flank, where Kevin’s team lay in wait, uncovered.

  When most of the convoy was in view, Kevin gave the command to fire. The rifle teams from both sides of the road opened up, aiming at the trucks, shooting the cabs and the tires. The men in the trucks jumped for cover. Many didn’t survive the first rounds of fire which tore through the cabs.

  The men who were marching took cover between the trucks and the armored vehicles. Kevin could see the confusion in their ranks. With shots coming from both directions, they didn’t know where to find cover.

  After the rifle fire began the APC gunners started shooting towards the ridges, first to the west where their guns had been trained. The tank fired two rounds in the area of the rifle team. The shots had a devastating effect, almost shutting down the shooting.

  Kevin called for the mortars to begin their barrage. The first rounds were directed poorly and landed outside the convoy. He growled in frustration, hoping the teams would quickly zero in on their targets. The return fire from the convoy now seemed more directed and his rifle teams had to be more careful to not expose themselves on the ridge.

  Some of the mortar teams directed their rounds towards the tank and the APCs.

  Kevin shouted at the teams. “Go after the trucks and personnel. You won’t do a thing to the armored machines.”

  General McKenzie knew he had to work fast. His men were sitting ducks. This was a larger group and the ambushers had the high ground.

  “Get teams into the woods on both sides,” he ordered. “We need to engage them there, on equal ground.”

  The slope to the west was lower and less severe. It would be an easier assault, but the men had to ford the river. They took a half dozen casualties in the crossing, but more than forty men got to the cover of the trees and began to advance.

  To the east the men had to retreat a quarter mile before entering the woods. There was a steep slope, nearly a cliff, where the convoy had been stopped. After entering the woods, they could advance on the shooter’s flank after climbing the ridge. The remaining men, over a hundred and twenty, had found cover between the trucks, the APCs and the abandoned cars and trucks on the interstate. They set up mortars and began lobbing rounds into the hillside, closing in on the riflemen. The mortars began to crash through the trees and spread their deadly blasts. The grenade launchers on the APCs were steadily firing at both hillsides, also sending their deadly explosives into the trees.

  The convoy, even in such a tactically inferior position, was beginning to give as good as it got. Kevin and Rodney got some rockets off, hitting two trucks and setting them on fire. Then the mortars and rockets from the convoy closed in on the attackers and they had to pull back.

  On the west side of the highway, as Rodney’s men were moving back from the ridge, they were engaged by the advancing militia. The result was a moving firefight in the woods with Rodney’s men retreating in a controlled fashion.

  As the assault from the west side died down, Kevin knew he would soon have to retreat. The plan was that he and Rodney would each determine when to move back. They would call the other when they had decided to disengage and, when clear of any counter-attack, would plan where to regroup and strike again. He knew this would be a battle of attrition and not a quick victory. He just had to make sure it wasn’t a quick defeat for his forces by losing too many men in the first engagement.

  Then he saw the artillery guns, near the end of the convoy, away from the main assault that was taking place, swing towards both hillsides. The gun crews were setting them up for firing.

  “Get back!” He shouted to his men. He radioed the rifle team which was farther down the slope to get the hell out of there. They had moved back from the edge of the cliff and now had to scramble up the slope to make their way farther into the woods. The mortar and rocket teams stopped firing and raced back through the woods. Kevin saw the long barrel lowered and dove behind a boulder. The High Explosive round hit the slope fifty yards below him. The explosion was deafening; frag and shards of trees flew past the boulder that sheltered him. Kevin got up to run with his troops back further into the woods, trying to keep the boulder between him and the big gun.

  The artillery rounds, directed at each hillside effectively shut down the attack. When McKenzie’s men arrived at the ambush sites, they found bodies torn apart. The gun fight on the western slope was over. The ambushing party had successfully disengaged and disappeared through the forest. McKenzie’s men did not pursue.

  The general received the news with relief. His convoy had defeated the attack, but he had suffered much damage. They were down to only two trucks now and three Humvees. The tank and the APCs were undamaged. The mortar and rocket fire had not seriously touched them. All of his men, though, would be on foot from now on. The supplies he managed to save had to be loaded into the remaining trucks. Much had been lost when two of the trucks were set on fire. A head count revealed that he had lost thirty-six men with another thirty wounded. He now had a fighting force of only one hundred, and seventy men.

  Still enough to bring Hillsboro to its knees. He knew with the M60 tank and his 105 howitzers he didn’t need to rely on an armed assault which would now be with diminished numbers.

  “We beat them again,” his enthusiastic lieutenant said after they had inspected the damage to the convoy. McKenzie looked at the man. He had been in the Quartermaster Corp in the Army and did not have an understanding of the battlefield.

  “The main force got away. They can regroup and strike again.” McKenzie waved his hand around the convoy. “Look around. In addition to the loss of men, we suffered a lot of damage. We can’t go through too many rounds of this.” The general stomped off. He was frustrated with trying to make a fighting force out of the mix of soldiers and civilian militia.

  The attackers had a good plan to go with their lighter weapons. And they knew when to retreat. He didn’t have a body count but hoped his men had taken enough of them out to seriously degrade their ability to strike again. He hoped, but didn’t think that would be the case.

  When the wounded had been attended to and the remaining supplies reloaded into the working trucks, McKenzie call his officers together.

  “We can’t sustain another attack like this. If the attackers still have enough men, they can regroup and strike again farther down the road. Our route is obvious. I want two teams of ten men each, with rifles and grenades, to scout ahead in the hills on both sides of the interstate. Equip them with radios. If they encounter enemy forces they are to not engage, but to call in the location. The tank’s gun and the APC’s grenade launche
rs may be able to knock out any ambush before it can hit the convoy. If there is any question, we now know the howitzers can take them out.”

  “That’ll be slow going,” one officer said.

  “Slow indeed. But safer. The point now is not speed, but to get to our objective with operational capability.”

  “Will we be traveling at night?” one of the officers asked.

  “No. We’ll park up in a defensive position. The scout teams will come back and we’ll post sentries through the night. We’re in hostile territory now and we have to operate in accordance with that fact. Each morning the scout teams will head back out. We’ll give them two hours head start before we move the convoy. If the teams see we’re gaining on them, they need to call out for us to slow down.”

  He looked around at his officers. They were a mixed group. Some combat veterans, some trained reservists, and some from non-fighting units.

  “The scouts need to be far enough ahead that when they encounter the enemy, the convoy is not within range of attack. Otherwise it does no good.”

  Two hours later, they were on the move. This time they took time to clear their path since they did not want to catch up with the advance scouting teams.

  Chapter 47

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  A fter five miles of retreating through the woods, first away from the interstate, then heading south, Kevin called Rodney. They agreed to move ten more miles and then set up again. Kevin had lost eight of his thirty-six men with another five wounded. Rodney’s team was down to twenty-two fighting men.

  “We’ve got to try to hit them one more time at least,” Kevin said when he and Rodney were talking on the radio.

  “If we take casualties like before, that’ll be all we’ve got. We won’t have enough fire power to slow them down.”