by David Nees
“I’ll help you. We have to get back.” She remembered Jason’s admonition. No fighting to the death. Move back when you’re pinned down.
She pulled off her jacket and then took off her shirt. Bird looked away as she knelt over him wearing only her bra. She tied her shirt tight around his waist in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Then she pulled her jacket back on.
“We’ve got to get back from the ridge. Hold tight,” Catherine said. She put her hands in his armpits and began to drag him back further into the woods. When she had gotten ten yards from their shooting position she said, “Now grab my hand. I’ll help you up.” She got her legs under her, took hold of Bird’s left arm, and hauled him to his feet. A painful grunt forced its way through his teeth. They stumbled together through the forest, away from the edge of the ridge. When they heard another whomp of a mortar round being fired, they dropped to the ground. After each detonation, they got up and staggered on.
Leo realized that no more shooting was coming from the opposite ridge. He had the men move the trucks around the bend and back into the cover of the trees. He wanted to press on instantly, but the lead truck had a flat tire, and he dove in to change it himself. He told two men to smash out the remains of the broken windshields with their rifle butts.
With the tire changed and the windshields cleared, the trucks began to move forward again. Leo fumed. He could shut down the snipers, but they seemed to come back at every switchback. At this rate he would be hours late and the element of surprise lost. Still, he had to go on. He had seen the machine guns and the mortars in action now, and he knew that he had the firepower to overwhelm the valley. Once he got down there.
Chapter 47
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W hen the very first signs of dawn began to appear in the sky, Leo’s skirmishing party waded across the river and climbed up the slope beyond. They had stopped a cautious distance downstream from the bridge and had encountered no initial resistance. When they reached the top of the ridge, they began to move through the trees towards the road.
They were not used to the woods, and they stumbled along in the predawn gloom. The brightening of the sky in the east did little to relieve the darkness. Twigs snapped. Branches slapped at their faces. Fallen logs caught at their legs and tripped them. One of the men began to mutter about their bad luck to have been chosen to slog through the river and then these miserable woods.
The two lookouts from Clayton’s group heard them well before they saw them. The lookouts separated, moving about twenty yards apart, far enough to give them separate firing positions. Shortly, indistinct figures began to emerge in the dim light. Six of them. Clayton’s lookouts fired. Two men fell, both shot in the chest. The other four dropped to the ground and hastily snapped off blind shots into the dimness.
Lying in the brush, the machine gunner flipped the safety off on his M60 and began to fire, blindly spraying the area ahead. A round hit one of the lookouts and spun him to the ground. The other man crawled over to him and began to drag him back. The wounded man struck his hands away and motioned him to go. He had a hole in his chest that was going to kill him within the hour. His rasping breath left nothing for talking. The other understood, and, after a long look and pat on the shoulder, he faded back and took up a position thirty yards away.
The attackers, realizing they were no longer taking fire, got up and began to move forward. The wounded lookout managed to work himself back into a shooting position. He shouldered his rifle with much difficulty and fired off another round, and another attacker dropped. The others ducked for cover and again began firing blindly into the woods. After a moment, with no more shots fired back at them, they began to advance again. This time the retreating lookout took out another one. The attacking party was now down to two men. The captain had been the last to die.
The machine gunner sprayed the woods ahead of him with multiple bursts of automatic fire, and the two men slowly began to advance again. They sensed that it wasn’t a large group that had fired on them, but they went more slowly, wanting the protection of the woods they had been cursing moments before.
No more shots came. They passed the wounded lookout without seeing him. The other lookout was already on his way back to the main body of defenders. He had seen enough to be satisfied that this was only a scouting party or a decoy attack, and he was anxious to give his report and get help for his friend.
Back at the ridge near the bridge, the men heard shots coming from the woods to the east. Jason’s breath sucked in through his teeth. “Here we go,” he said to Clayton. He started towards the woods.
Clayton grabbed his arm. “Could be more comin’ up the other side. Give it a minute.”
Then they heard the staccato of a machine gun.
“We’ve got to redeploy towards the woods,” Jason said.
Clayton didn’t let go. The shooting stopped.
“Don’t sound like a full attack,” Clayton said. “One machine gun, maybe five or more rifles, two of ‘em my boys.”
There was another burst of gunfire, the rifles mixed with the machine gun, and then the woods went silent again.
Tom approached the two men with a confused look on his face. “What’s going on?”
“We trying to figure that out,” Clayton responded.
Just then they saw a figure running towards them through the woods. There were shouts along the ridgeline to hold fire. Jason saw that it was Enoch, one of the men Clayton had chosen to scout, more like a boy really. They watched him sprint toward them, and someone waved him toward where Clayton was standing. He ran up to Clayton, already talking. “It were six men, one with a machine gun. Henry got hit. ‘Fraid he won’t make it. They’s only two left, but they got the machine gun still with ‘em.”
“You’re sure there’s only two left?” Jason asked.
The boy nodded. “Saw ‘em drop. I came back to get help for Henry.”
“A decoy attack?” Tom asked.
Clayton told Enoch, “Grab Willy and Donny and go finish them off. Bring Henry back out.” The young man nodded and ran off.
Suddenly more shots were heard, much more distant, from up the valley. Then Jason heard a boom, deeper, louder. The hair on the back of his neck bristled.
“They’re coming in from the west,” he shouted.
“We need to go!” Tom yelled.
Clayton shouted to Enoch, “Go, do what I told you. Then stay here in case any try the bridge.” He turned and snatched up his rifle. The hill people and the farmers were already a scattered tide of motion from their places along the ridge. Clayton waved furiously at the peering figures that had risen from cover on the ridge across the gap, and after a moment they began running too.
Jason left Clayton behind. He pelted along the trail that traced the top of the ridge. It might be more than ten or fifteen minutes before all the fighters made their way down to the pickup trucks that were parked around a bend in the road, out of sight of the bridge. And every minute meant they might be too late to the real fight.
Remember what I told you, he thought to Catherine. Remember.
The mortar rounds stopped. Catherine and Bird were nestled together on the open forest floor, perhaps a hundred yards away from the ridgeline. Bird could go no further. The militia could not come looking for them; they were on the other side of the ravine. They would head down into the valley and attack the farms. It was up to Jason now. She held Bird in her arms. His breathing had become labored.
“Didn’t mean to get hit,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Sorry I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down. You did good. I hope the others are on their way. They must have heard the shooting.”
“Bettin’ they heard. Them mortars are loud. Nasty when they hit.” He stopped. She could see that he had to gather his strength to speak again. “You think we did enough?”
“Yes,” she told him. “We did what we set out to do. Help will be coming soon.”
He didn’t answer.
Catherine sat up, careful not to jostle him, and set about trying to tighten Bird’s bandage. She could see that blood was still seeping out of him.
She told him, “We’ll rest here now, but we’ll have to move down the slope to get help.”
“Not sure I can move.”
“Just lie still for now. Rest. I’ll help you when it’s time.”
The defenders’ convoy raced up the valley road. Jason felt a growing fury inside. He glanced over at Tom whose face was set hard. The same thoughts circled round and round in Jason’s mind, over and over. The enemy had invaded, come down from the west, just as Catherine had predicted. Were Catherine and Bird alive? Glancing in the mirror, he could sense a blood lust growing among the clan. They were ready for battle, ready for killing. He could feel it.
The tree line neared. They reached the end of the pavement. The road here had been widened to make a turnaround area. There seemed to be nowhere to go. Jason pulled to a stop. The other pickups stopped behind him.
He looked over at Clayton sitting by the window. “Where’s the road?” he asked.
Clayton didn’t say anything. He got out of the truck and looked around at the bushes and trees that faced them.
“Where the hell is the road?” Jason said again, leaning out of the window.
The heavily treed slope climbed upward ahead and to the right of them with no sign of a road. To the left was flatter ground covered with tall willow bushes creating a thick screen.
“Off to the left, through the willows,” Clayton said, pointing.
Jason looked at him. “That doesn’t look like a road. Are you sure?”
“I be right.”
“How’ll we get the trucks through there?” Tom asked.
“I go ahead, lead the way on foot. You follow. The trucks be able to drive over the willows and we got plenty of men to push if they get bogged down. It’s low only for a while and then climbs and turns to the right.” He swung his arm in an arc. “It climbs around this knob in front of us.”
“Man, I don’t see that,” Tom said.
“Can’t from here. We too close. Trees cover too much.” Without another word, Clayton set off into the willows.
Jason cranked the wheel to the left and started forward. “If we start spinning, jump out and push. We can’t get stuck,” he shouted back to the men in the bed of the truck.
They forced their way through the willows. The ground was flatter and softer and the men had to get out to push the trucks forward. Soon the ground rose, and, sure enough, as Clayton led them forward the remains of the old road began to emerge on the forest floor.
Clayton got back in the truck. Jason could now follow the path with no guide. The going was slow, the men had to jump out at times to push, but as they climbed the road became clearer with less vegetation growing over it.
“Now I understand why I never noticed the road,” Jason muttered. He worked the steering wheel back and forth, guiding the truck over the rocks, trying to avoid the larger ones and not get the undercarriage hung up. “We need to find a place to stop them. Up here where there’s no options but the road.”
They drove up the dirt two-track. Ahead was a sharp left turn with a dense line of trees blocking the sight line around it. Jason eyed the corner carefully and then stopped well short of it and angled the pickup across the road. The other pickups did likewise without having to be told. If you were coming down the road you wouldn’t see the blockade until you rounded the corner.
Everyone got out of the vehicles and the men began to fan out into the trees on both sides of the road. Jason chose the upslope side. He found a place behind a large oak that had fallen some time ago. From this spot he’d be able to get a partial view of the enemy coming.
Suddenly he noticed that there was no sound of gunfire. He closed his mind to what that might mean.
“You think we’ll have long to wait?” Tom asked next to him.
As he spoke, they heard the engines of the vehicles coming down from the ridge.
Chapter 48
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L eo decided to charge around the next switchback. The snipers must have moved to new positions when he had hit them with the machine guns and mortars. This time he decided to risk not stopping. He had to get down off the dirt road.
He lowered his head and accelerated and tore around the exposed corner, gravel and dirt flying out from the tires. He wrestled with the steering wheel to keep the pickup from sliding off of the road and down the embankment. If the snipers were going to shoot, speed was his friend; he couldn’t go slowly. But this time no shots came. The other pickups were roaring right behind him. He heard a loud bang as one of the pickups careened off a boulder on the side of the turn. And then they were back into the cover of the trees. Maybe they had killed the shooters with the mortar rounds. Leo felt a rush of relief. They had to be getting near the bottom. Soon he would be starting his vicious run through the valley.
The three pickups were going at a furious clip, slewing back and forth on the rough dirt road. They dodged the rocks bulging out of the roadbed as best they could, bouncing over the others with the men in the back holding on for dear life.
No more stopping, he thought savagely. He kept the accelerator pressed down. The pickup careened around the next corner and Leo slammed on the brakes as he saw the trucks blocking the road ahead. The men in the back were thrown about in a tangle of tumbled legs and bodies. The pickup behind him rammed into the back of his own, slewing him to the left. The third truck just managing to stop without hitting the second one. Before his truck came to a stop, Leo dove out of the cab. He knew this was an ambush.
Suddenly furious rifle fire erupted from both sides of the road.
“Out!” Leo shouted as he ran in a crouch towards the rear truck. His men jumped down from the pickup beds but were exposed to the deadly crossfire. One dropped like a sack of laundry, and another fell and hung slumped over the bed wall, the back of his skull blown open. The screams from the other side told the same story. Leo heard the two M60s start up on the other side of the truck, the downhill side.
The worst place they could stay was in the middle. “Downhill!” Leo roared, dodging between the second and third pickups. He ran crouched low, bringing his rifle up and firing blind, hearing bullets slamming into the pickup behind him. He passed bodies, looked to his left and saw more. Maybe half of his remaining fifteen men were already killed. The two machine gunners were fanning the trees as they ran into them, suppressing the shooters there. His men followed, firing their M16s and screaming. They dove into the cover of trees on the downward slope. Leo saw a valley defender break from behind a tree trunk ahead and dash back into the brush. They were pushing the defenders back with their superior automatic rifle fire.
Inside the trees they had some cover from the shooters on the other side of the road. But they would follow in seconds. Leo kept running and firing. The men who had made it into the trees were doing the same. They paused under cover, fired, and moved forward as they continued to drive the defenders down the slope. They were keeping better order than Leo would ever have expected. The ambush was half reversed. As Leo moved downslope, adrenaline pounding through him, the image of the carnage back at the road rose up in his mind. Where had all those men come from? He had estimated that the valley had less than half a dozen men to defend it. Now there seemed to be twenty or more men, all armed and seemingly all good shots.
He heard a machine gun start up behind him, uphill. Leo almost stumbled in shock. The defenders had a machine gun.
It was firing in short bursts, spraying the woods in an orderly pattern. Bullets tore through the leaves. Leo dropped behind a huge log and knew the lightning charge was over. He saw his men vanishing from view ahead of him as they dove for cover. Anyone caught without the protection of a substantial tree at his back during one of the bursts was in danger of being taken out.
Leo risked a look back around the bottom of the d
ead tree. He could still see the trucks, his own and those blocking the way, and he watched as some of the defenders began to cross the road. They would attack his men from behind, his men could no longer run ahead, and the shooters downslope would just now be realizing that they could turn around. He and his men would be caught in a pincer with no way out.
The defenders only had to be careful to not shoot their own men. Leo could only hope that they would do that.
He opened his mouth to get his men to keep moving forward—it was their only chance to avoid being slaughtered until they found a place where they could somehow turn the whole battle around—and then he realized that he had no way to do that. The rush had been spontaneous, a result of panic. With fire coming at them from both sides, no words would get them to stand up and advance. With that realization, he knew the attack had gone all wrong. It was doomed.
He didn’t hesitate. He made a decision. He was not one to fall on his sword, to die for his commander when the fight was futile. His decision made, he turned around and began moving. He carefully worked his way to his left, angling back up the hill, until he thought he was to the rear of any of his men. The firing intensified. He began to circle back toward the pickup trucks. If he could get to the rearmost one, after the uphill defenders had crossed the road, he could escape back over the west ridge.
The shooting intensified even further. Men were screaming. He knelt behind a tree at the edge of the road. He heard a machine gun thundering away behind him.
They’ve all crossed over into the woods. Maybe he had a chance.
Leo got up and sprinted across the bark road to the last truck, leaping over the sprawled bodies. He jumped into the cab, twisted the key, the engine roared to life, and he reversed it with all four tires spitting dirt. He drove backward up to the blind turn as fast as he could go, spun the truck around at the corner, shifted gears, and was tearing up the two-track when the first defenders got back to the road.