by Peter Nealen
“Where to, boss?”
Hank was thinking. They had to move fast; not only was he worried about those two bad guys in the wind, and whoever’s throats they might slit in the confusion, but the armored vehicles up north weren’t going to wait forever.
“If they did go south, then they’re probably going after the southern overwatch position.” It didn’t make that much sense if they were just supposed to sow chaos, unless the prisoner was full of shit and they did have a plan, in which case hitting the southern overwatch position might be an effective diversion. Except that their main thrust had already been sitting there for several hours…
Or maybe… oh, hell. “Get us to the Cooper place.” It wasn’t necessarily militarily sound, but then, they weren’t exactly dealing with disciplined soldiers, either.
There was enough urgency in his tone that Fernandez didn’t wait around, flooring the accelerator as soon as Evans jumped back in and slammed the door. Of course, the big Floridian knew the situation, too, and knew how little time they had to mess around. Just waiting for the insider attack had been a gamble that could well have backfired; if the column that had crossed up north had hit them beforehand, with the Triarii out of position—the militia might have held for a while, but they’d be at a serious disadvantage. Individually, many of them were veterans or otherwise gifted soldiers, but as a unit, they still had a long way to go.
They didn’t have far to move; Fernandez pulled the Humvee around as tightly as he could, and started bouncing down the dirt road that ran alongside the edge of the resort. From there, it was a short run up to Comanche Hill.
The three trucks rumbled up to the front of the Cooper house, a walled-in, multi-story adobe, topped by a pyramidal, tile roofed turret. Bishop was leaning into the gun, looking for targets, as Hank, Moffit, and Evans piled out and started toward the door.
They’d barely gotten to the gate when a trio of shotgun blasts thundered from inside. From his position at the gate, Hank saw a figure stagger away from the front door for a step and a half before crumpling and falling on its face.
“Bill?” Hank called. “You okay?”
Bill Cooper stuck his head out the door. “Are there more of ‘em?”
“As far as we know, there were two,” Hank replied, straightening up.
“Then they’re done for. What, you boys came all the way up here for two punks? I could handle that. I think I’m a little insulted.”
“Well, you’ve got the judge staying with you.” Hank turned back toward the F350. “We had to be sure.” Bill Cooper hadn’t always gotten along well with some of the other residents of Lajitas, either, and given who had been sheltering the infiltrators… “Glad you’re all right. Now, we’ve got to get ready for the other hammer to fall.”
He couldn’t say he was looking forward to that part.
As he clambered back into the Ford, he keyed the radio on the “All Call” again. “Mike Elements Echo, Fox, and Golf, report to Staging Area Two.”
Chapter 8
Hank jumped out of the F350 as the three gun trucks pulled up into the gravel parking lot of the little campground nestled between the hills, just north of the lodge. A knot of militiamen was already gathered there, geared up and ready.
The militia were all self-equipped; they weren’t nearly as uniform as the Triarii. A variety of hunting camouflage patterns predominated, along with a wide assortment of plate carriers—most without plates—chest rigs, old LBVs, bandoliers, and go bags. A couple of them had helmets, including one old, Desert-Storm-era PASGT helmet, though oddly enough, the ones who had night vision were mostly running the old skull-crusher mounts or newer skullcaps instead of helmets.
The collection of weapons was, if anything, even more eclectic. There were quite a few AR-15s, but they ranged from one “retro” A2 style with a 20-inch barrel to several “pistols” with 7-inch barrels. There were a surprising number of AKs, running from AKMs with full wood furniture to TAPCOed abominations and one very close approximation to an actual AK-12. A couple of FALs and PTR-91s stood out among the smaller intermediate-caliber weapons, though not quite as much as the two who had shown up with Marlin lever actions. Optics and sights ran the gamut from irons to red dots to high-end variable scopes.
Hank was out of the door almost before the F350 had stopped. He pointed. “Echo, you’re with us. Fox, you’re with Faris, Golf, go with LaForce.” He keyed his radio, glancing up at the hilltop above them. “Outpost West, can you still see the bad guys?”
“Affirm, Tango Actual,” came the reply. “They’re still just sitting there, as if they’re waiting for something.”
They probably had a signal worked out with the mareros they sent in ahead. “You still got Grant’s big toy up there?”
“Affirm. Same engagement criteria?” Grant was something of a collector, and had brought out a McMillan TAC 50 when the militia had first been formed. He’d pouted a little about not being able to personally use it, but when Hank had explained that it made a better overwatch weapon than a personal one, he’d acquiesced to permanently stationing it on Outpost West.
“Same. Don’t waste rounds on that ERC-90; you won’t scratch it. Hit the other vics. Don’t stick around too long once you engage, either; that 90mm will turn you to paste.”
Releasing the PTT, he looked around at the militia, seeing that his foot-mobile Triarii were off the trucks. The drivers and gunners were staying with the vehicles; given everything that had happened already, he wasn’t willing to leave the gun trucks unattended, and the more overt security positions could probably use the firepower.
“Let’s move. We’ve got some territory to cover, and we’ve got to do it with a quickness.”
Moffit was already stepping it out, heading down into the dry creekbed that ran down to the road and the Rio Grande beyond it. He wasn’t moving slowly, but Hank had already worked the militia roster out with Grant—he’d made it clear that they needed to cover a lot of rough ground, fast, so he couldn’t afford to have any of the fat or slow along.
Without any sound but the faint scuff of the desert under their boots, they headed into the hills.
***
“Tango Actual, Outpost West.”
Hank waited for a second, then sighed and keyed the radio. “Send your traffic, Outpost West.” He was pretty sure that Michael Oleson was up there, and he’d tried to break Oleson of the habit of calling and waiting for a response before sending the message. It hadn’t taken, though; Oleson had been a firefighter, and that was apparently standard operating procedure for most fire departments. Hank just thought that it made passing vital information in a combat situation slower.
“They’re moving. The ERC-90 is in the lead, with the two VCR-TTs at center and rear. They’re slow rolling. I think they’re still not sure what’s going on, or why they haven’t heard from their infiltrators yet.” Oleson’s voice was hushed, but he could still hear the tension, and could almost see the young man’s finger close to the TAC 50’s trigger.
“Roger.” Hank was currently about halfway up a fairly steep, rocky slope, studded with cactus and sagebrush, and didn’t have the wind for much more than that. “In position in ten mikes.”
That’s probably going to be too long. They’ll be at the EFPs by then. Just have to count on Oleson to trigger the ambush when it’s time, and then we’ll hit them while they’re focused on their front. At least, I hope it’ll work out that way.
He dug in, placing each step deliberately, planting his boot and making sure that sand and scree wasn’t about to slip out from under his foot. The reason for that was suddenly graphically demonstrated behind him and to his left, as a rock rolled out from under Havens’ foot, and he dropped to all fours, skidding about ten feet down the hill with a small avalanche of rocks and grit, swearing under his breath, before he caught himself. A cloud of dust rose into the air around him.
Hank wasn’t that worried about the noise. They still had to expect that the enemy might have flanke
rs out, but it wasn’t likely, based on what they’d seen. Even their advance scouts/saboteurs had been riding trucks. They were a mechanized column, focused on the road, and their hearing would be compromised by engine noise.
Hank didn’t stop or look back for more than a second. He hated rushing like this, but there was too much ground to cover, too many of the bad guys, too few defenders, and the locals had simply been too reluctant to take the measures he’d initially suggested. If he’d managed to dig in as deep as he’d wanted to—not to mention emplace some of the traps that he’d had in mind to begin with—they might have more time to work.
He struggled to the crest of the finger and got low, looking down as he fought to get his breathing under control. He had a clear view of the ambush site and the column of about a dozen vehicles coming down the highway along the river. It was only a little short of four hundred yards—an easy enough shot with the 7.62 battle rifles, but their position still wasn’t ideal. There wasn’t a lot of cover on that slope. If it hadn’t still been broad daylight, he would have stayed low, creeping along the low washes and arroyos alongside the road. They’d had to do some extra climbing to keep their distance and keep the terrain between them and their quarry for as long as possible.
A glance down the hill confirmed the spots he wanted; another finger had been partially cut across by erosion, which would give him a good sort of V-shaped position facing the road and the ambush site. But the vehicles were already within sight of the berms that had all but blocked the highway and were starting to slow, the ERC-90 leveling its main gun toward the berms.
Should have thought of that. He started to hustle across the open crest, aiming for the next ridgeline that might provide some slight cover. If they blow the berms away with that 90mm, at least blast a big enough hole to get a vehicle through, then the timing’s going to get even trickier.
The rest were following him, bent almost double, moving fast without running. Their generally tan or khaki camouflage blended reasonably well with their surroundings, so he hoped that they’d go unnoticed, especially as the bad guys’ attention should be on the barrier plan.
The column hadn’t stopped, not yet. They were still advancing, if more slowly. They’d be within the ambush in a few more seconds.
But not all of them. If they stop short, we might get that ERC-90 and the two or three pickups behind it, but the rest will be outside the killzone.
He was momentarily proud of the militia. With the enemy that close, none of them had succumbed to the temptation to engage early. Even Oleson, up in Outpost West with… Beaudreau? …hadn’t opened fire yet.
Hank had seen more than one ambush get blown by buck fever in his day.
He only had to cross about seventy-five yards before he was back in cover, the rise of the ground eclipsing the highway below him. It still felt like ten times that distance as he hustled across, trying to move quickly without stirring up too much dust or otherwise drawing the enemy’s eye. Moffit was just ahead of him, Havens a bit too close behind.
They’d just started down the back side of the slope when Oleson, or whoever was on the IED trigger, decided that the enemy wasn’t going to penetrate much farther.
The rippling thunder of explosions roared out across the river valley, reverberating off the hills and cliffsides, and even without having direct line of sight, Hank could see the ugly black clouds of smoke and dust belching out from the side of the road. A moment later, the TAC 50 spoke from Outpost West, the heavy booms sounding almost quiet after the concussions that had shaken the ground a moment before.
With the ball opened, and the majority of his maneuver element behind cover, Hank picked up the pace. “Move! Move!”
They pelted over the ridgeline and down the back side, turning toward the highway and following the military crest toward their positions. Most of the militia weren’t all that sure where they were going, but Moffit was, and he and Hank led the way. He hoped that he’d trained the militia well enough that they could adapt and fill in where they fit in once they got to the lower hill.
It took only a couple of minutes to reach the hill. Black smoke was billowing into the sky from the front of the column, the TAC 50 was still booming, and the bad guys were trying to return fire, bursts of full automatic fire spraying wildly into the sky and against the hills. They must not have figured out just where the .50 caliber fire was coming from yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Hank skidded to a halt at the base of a low slope, turned, and forged uphill toward the crest. He was off the shoulder of the hill; if he’d figured the geometry of the battlefield right, he’d have eyes on about the front half of the column.
He eased over the crest, down on his belly in the dust, his eye finding his scope as he leveled his rifle beside a creosote bush. Right on target.
The ERC-90 was burning fiercely, a jagged hole blasted in its flank. It had made it about halfway up the daisy chain before the ambush had been triggered, and anyone inside that vehicle was dead or dying.
Two of the three technicals behind it had been similarly stricken, though the damage done to the thin-skinned vehicles was far more catastrophic. The cabs and front ends were utterly mangled, orange flames licking at the wreckage of the one that was farthest forward. The other wasn’t burning, but it still looked like a gigantic hammer had smacked it in the side.
The third had managed to slip right between two of the EFPs. It was stationary, its tires shredded and fragmentation damage visible even at range along its entire flank. The gunner who’d been riding behind the HK21 in the bed was gone, and Hank thought he could make out slumped, bloodied forms behind the spiderwebbed auto glass in the cab.
He shifted his aim to the right. Those front vehicles were done, along with the bad guys who’d been riding them. His concern was with the living.
Most of the other technicals, those that hadn’t been shredded by EFP blasts, were scattered across the road, some already halfway turned around. Most of the machineguns were pointed at the sky; Oleson had done just what he should have, and had targeted the gunners with the .50. Clumps of shooters, most of them in typical gangbanger clothing, though some sported full desert cammies and military gear, were hunkered down behind the vehicles, trying to shoot around them at the hill where they thought the heavy fire was coming from.
As he swung his rifle to bear, several of the militia off to his right opened fire, a ragged fusillade cracking out from the dusty slope and tearing into several of the nearest enemy shooters. Not all of the militia were exactly sharpshooters; impacts kicked up dust and smacked off of trucks with sudden sprays of sparks. But a few hit what they were aiming at, and two of the black-clad gangbangers sprawled out into the road even as Hank brought his scope to bear on one of the camouflage-clad shooters packing an MG3.
His trigger broke as the reticle settled on the man’s upper torso. The bullet ripped through the sicario’s upper arm and plunged deep into his chest. He jerked, tried to swing his machinegun around, then collapsed.
The enemy shooters reacted quickly to the incoming fire, throwing rounds back up the hills at the militia, even though they couldn’t see exactly where the bullets were coming from, even as more rounds punched holes through glass, sheet metal, and fiberglass. Several of them ran off the road, diving for cover in the brush along the riverbank.
One of the VCR-TTs appeared around the shoulder of the hill, pushing up alongside the highway’s shoulder. The gunner—or whoever had replaced the gunner—was hunkered down behind the splinter shield, raking the hillside with .50 caliber machinegun fire.
Hank got as flat as he could, practically burying his face in the dirt as heavy, 647 grain slugs hammered into the hillside in front of him with bright flashes, the impacts rippling through the ground and spraying him and Moffit with grit. Both of them shimmied backward, putting more earth between them and the heavy machinegun fire. It was time to move.
But even as they slithered down the back side of the hill, Hank saw that H
avens hadn’t moved fast enough. The militiaman lay a few feet down from the crest, his rifle several inches from his limp hand. The top of the man’s skull was just gone, the remnant of his head a bloody, blasted ruin.
The machinegun fire kept up for a couple of minutes, as the Triarii and militia got far enough down the back side of the slope to get on their feet and start moving north, circling around to another angle. This kind of combat required constant movement. “Shoot and Scoot” was the rule of the day.
Even as they got around the shoulder of the hill, clambering up into the saddle that led to the other side, the heavy machinegun fire that had driven them from their first position ceased. Another long burst hammered the hillside off to the right as Hank found another covered position from which he could see the road.
The remnant of the column was reversing out, the two VCR-TTs having stationed themselves on the road to block the way for the lighter technicals, raking the hills with .50 caliber fire. Oleson was still returning fire, and even as Hank watched, another .50 caliber round slammed through a Chevy Silverado’s cab, shattering glass with a spray of blood against the windshield, and the pickup slewed out of control, colliding with another truck that couldn’t quite maneuver fast enough to avoid it.
He slid down deeper behind cover and keyed his radio. “All Mike and Tango elements, this is Actual. Cease fire and take cover. Let ‘em go.”
“But we’ve got them on the run!” He didn’t know who had protested, but it didn’t matter.
“And there are more coming. If we get pulled into a chase, we’ll get spread out too far, and then they’ll have the advantage. Do what I say and start falling back to town.
“We’ve broken one stroke, but we need to get ready for the next one.”
Chapter 9
Smoke drifted across the tiny community, still billowing from the burning ERC-90. Small explosions echoed down the Rio Grande as the munitions aboard the destroyed vehicle cooked off.