by Nathan Jones
He suddenly realized he was glad Skyler hadn't killed those Sangue at Joes Valley Reservoir, and even more glad his son didn't have to be with him to do this grim task, and not just because of the danger. He never wanted the young man to have to live with something like this, even if that was selfish and probably hypocritical after asking his volunteers to do it.
Heck, in the moment he was having more problems with this himself than he'd expected he would.
But the other volunteers were all in the barn with him, ready to proceed. This would be just as hard for them, and they would be looking to him to lead by example. To be the first to do this, so they could bring themselves to do it as well.
Besides, Emery was waiting beyond this ranch with the supplies they so desperately needed. If they couldn't even take out a small group of sentries then what hope did they have of attacking the sleeping town? They couldn't afford to turn back now, not after staging such a major operation by bringing over a hundred volunteers here, leaving Camptown vulnerable.
Tom took a deep breath. This was no different from shooting an unwary enemy from hiding. There was a part of him that was capable of that if the situation demanded it, however he might feel afterwards. He was capable of this, too.
Making sure his volunteers were moving into position towards their own targets, he started through the barn towards the farthest and most difficult to reach of the stalls containing sleeping bloodies, knife ready.
Ten minutes later, Tom led the volunteers back out of the barn, toting the gear and supplies they'd taken from the enemy soldiers. It, and they, were more bloodstained than they would've liked, but they'd managed to do the job without raising the alarm or suffering any injuries.
Physical ones, at least; Brandon made it ten feet from the building before abruptly dropping what he was carrying, then whirling and collapsing onto his hands and knees to empty his stomach.
Tom moved up beside him, unsure what sort of moral support or encouragement he could give in this grim situation. After half a minute or so his friend looked up. “Sorry,” he mumbled, voice ragged. “Guess I've still got to get used to this part of skirmishing, huh?”
This didn't really seem like the sort of thing a person got used to. Although Tom felt a bit better about the idea of burning the barn now, considering the grisly scene inside that he'd never be able to forget. He rested a comforting hand on the young man's shoulder for a few seconds, then helped him to his feet. They gathered the things Brandon had dropped in silence, then Tom sent one of his team back to where the rest of their attack force waited for news of how the raid on the ranch had gone.
It wasn't too long after that before the embarrassingly loud crashing of people unused to the terrain, especially in the dark, heralded the approach of Mitchells and Gray with their remaining fighters.
Tom and the leaders quickly reassessed their situation, then split their forces into the three strike teams and the groups that would follow behind, making sure everyone knew their role and had the timing down.
As ready as they could be, they set off for the mouth of the valley and Emery beyond.
* * * * *
The plan was simple and straightforward, not many moving parts. That was important when they were trying to coordinate a sneak attack with over a hundred fighters, without the use of radios.
At its most basic level, it involved the displaced residents of Emery using their familiarity with the terrain around their town to sneak up on the fortifications. Not the eastern one, since the approaches were way too open in that direction, but to the north, west, and south. They'd hit the fortifications and take out the night sentries as quickly and quietly as possible, but with the main priority being speed.
Then, hopefully while they still had the element of surprise, a few of Gray's people would capture the .50 caliber machine gun mounted near the middle of each stretch of fortifications.
While the bloodies were still scrambling to react, they'd turn those guns on the town and on the sentries in the eastern fortifications and wipe them all out. As a last step Gray's militia, who had at least some experience in urban combat, would go in and begin clearing Emery house by house, with the captured mounted machine guns backing them up.
The biggest obstacle to the plan was getting everyone in place while it was still dark. It was a half day's walk between the ranch and the occupied town, but in the dark that could stretch to double that time. And even as smoothly as the attack on the ranch had gone, it'd already eaten precious time they needed for the next phase of the attack.
For a while, slogging along in the dark struggling to stay quiet and unseen from any potential Sangue patrols wandering in the night, Tom was afraid they wouldn't make it in time. He was scouting ahead with Brandon, Logan, and the best scouts from the volunteers and militia, and so far hadn't seen any sign of enemies out there. He further consoled himself that the bloodies usually used flashlights on patrol, since they had them, and those lights made them easily visible from far away.
But no matter how clear their approach to the occupied town was, a hundred people who were already tired and on edge and stumbling in the dark didn't move fast. The hours seemed to speed by, to the point that when they finally reached the final rendezvous spot, where the three groups had planned to separate to make their different approaches to the fortifications, the eastern horizon had a visible glow.
“You know the saying 'it's always darkest before the dawn'?” Neal asked as they gathered to make their final plans and decide on whether the attack was still happening or not.
Around them, the people who knew the man best groaned quietly at him breaking the silence at a time like this for whatever he had to say. Tom set his jaw. “I hope you're making a point with this.”
“Just that the expression is complete BS.” The bartender motioned disgustedly at the lightening horizon. “We took too long. They'll see us coming before we get halfway there.”
There were more groans, although not everyone seemed to be in disagreement. Tom bit back a curse; he should've known better than to let the idiot open his mouth. The man never had anything helpful to say.
Well, time to think of an inspiring response, try to undo the damage. “Another thing they say about dawn is that it's the best time to stage an attack. Even though everyone knows it, and militaries try to train their soldiers to account for it, it's still true. Just human nature to be at your least alert this time of day.”
“The way the sky's lightening, they won't have to be very alert to spot us at this rate,” Ray Mickelson said, jumping in on Neal's side.
Tom glanced at Gray, bowing to his experience. “It's now or never,” the Grand Junction militia's leader said grimly.
“Is it, though?” Ray countered. “Why not dig in until tomorrow night, when conditions are better?”
“You need a list?” Gray snapped, clearly annoyed. “First off, we left Camptown practically defenseless to mount this attack. We can't afford to waste a day twiddling our thumbs. Secondly, we just took out the bloodies at Trapper's ranch. If anyone visits the place and sees them dead, this area will be swarming with enemies within the hour.”
Neal started to reply, but the sheriff held up a hand and spoke right over him. “And if you're thinking we can intercept any soldiers headed that way and take them out, too, that just adds a whole new layer of risk. Not to mention we can't do anything about Sangue trying to contact them by radio and not getting a response.”
“So maybe we call it good with the hit on the ranch and head home,” Ray said. “Better than hitting a fortified location when they might see us coming.”
Gray cursed in frustration. “We turn back now, we all starve within the month. Probably sooner. That's why this is now or never.” A few people started to speak, and he once again bulled ahead. “And every second we waste flapping our jaws is a second for the sky to get that much brighter.”
He fell silent, having said his piece, and all eyes turned to Tom. Crap . . . Mitchells was sta
ying out of it, so it looked as if the decision was on his shoulders. “We go,” he said quietly. “It's still dark enough if we move low and slow, as planned. Just don't let the lightening sky spook you into trying to move faster and making yourself more visible . . . stay calm, use the approaches we planned, and it'll all be fine.”
Mitchells nodded, sounding relieved with the decision. “Remember, folks, we know this town. We know the ins and outs of the terrain better than any invader scum. Let's take advantage of that and give our home a proper goodbye before leaving it behind forever.”
Grim nods met the decision, and the three groups split up and disappeared into the still-dark dawn, led by Tom to the west, Mitchells to the north, and Gray to the south.
Tom's angle of approach was a deceptively deep, narrow ditch that was barely noticeable unless you were right on top of it. It was possible Sangue were aware of it, but even so they wouldn't be able to see people approaching from inside it unless they had someone sitting right on top of it, which scouts hadn't seen any sign of up til now.
And maybe they didn't consider it a threat, since the ditch ended short of the fortifications. At least aside from a bare dip in the ground that a person would have to practically belly crawl through to remain unnoticed. Something which was easier to do in the dark.
Their approach went without incident at first. Tom paused to get his strike team together and make sure the supporting group remained concealed in the ditch. Then he crawled into the dip, rifle held in front of him as he slithered forward with sharp rocks scraping against his body armor, and dirt finding its way into his clothes. He had to be careful not to make too much noise, since even the early morning buzz of summer insects and occasional birdcalls was relatively muted.
His heart was in his throat for every foot of that final stretch, with the dip seemingly endless as the fortifications loomed ahead. They started with a steep hill of earthworks, topped with sandbags to make a solid firing position that stretched for hundreds of yards, with an especially fortified enclosure in the middle for the heavy machine gun emplacement.
The scouts had seen a dozen bloodies manning each of the four lengths of fortifications at nights, a third at a time on active duty while the rest caught as much rest as possible along the earthworks. Ready to respond quickly to threats that had probably never materialized.
Until now.
There were also infrequent patrols that went out to check the surrounding landscape with flashlights, usually around once an hour; the last had gone out and returned before the Camptown fighters even arrived at the rendezvous point. The last potential threat were the large swiveling floodlights near the machine guns that spotters could use in an emergency, although so far the scouts had never even seen them turned on.
Thankfully, Neal was wrong about the bloodies spotting them halfway there. Tom's force sneaking up on them was actually closer to nine-tenths of the way, only ten or so yards from the earthworks, when the rattle of distant gunfire to the north made him curse silently.
He was about to give the order for his people to charge when a shout of alarm from almost directly ahead shattered the morning stillness, quickly followed by the deafening blast of gunshots.
Most of those were from his volunteers, who'd had their weapons aimed at the enemy sentries, fingers hovering nervously near triggers, for every inch of the approach. Tom had left them to it, focused on guiding them forward unseen and unheard, and was glad they'd been ready. He also heard gunfire coming from the ditch behind, where the supporting group had been covering them.
Unfortunately, there were also a few star flashes from automatic weapons up ahead, soon joined by the chainsaw rumble of the heavy mounted machine gun, which was loud enough to make the ground tremble slightly beneath him.
Tom watched the spinning pattern of muzzle flashes from the terrifying weapon swivel towards him, the tracer rounds marking the line as it crept along the dip in the ground, impossibly fast and surreally slow at the same time. He fumbled to aim his rifle above the muzzle flashes, struggling to remember just where the gunner looked through the heavy armor plating protecting the weapon and operator in order to aim the weapon.
Taking his best guess, he relaxed his muscles, held his breath, and fired.
The line of bullets stuttered and focused on one spot on the ground for a few seconds, so close he huddled down expecting to get ripped apart by ricochets at any moment, then petered out as the gun wound down and stopped firing. He must've got the machine gunner with a shot to the face, the only exposed part of the man.
That meant the muzzle had been pointed almost directly at him.
For a few seconds he hyperventilated, entire body shaking at just how close he'd come to being ripped to pieces. Like the enemy soldiers on that mountainside under Jonas's aim with the militia's .50 caliber weapon.
Tom forced himself to take slower, deeper breaths and shakily gathered his wits, sweeping his rifle along the rest of the nearby fortifications to see if any enemies were still alive. No threats he could see. He scrambled up to a low crouch and bolted forward.
“Move, move, move!” he shouted. “Hit them now!”
Around him, other dark silhouettes popped up and sprinted the last few dozen feet to the fortifications. Probably not all of them, especially if the machine gun had taken its toll, but most. Behind them, the volunteers in the ditch abandoned their hiding place and spread out to rush the fortifications all along its length. A few dropped to enemy fire from the final survivors at the fortifications, but most looked as if they'd make it.
Tom hoped the other attacks were doing well. Especially Mitchells to the north, where the gunfire had first started. With all the gunfire from his own people, he wasn't sure if he'd heard much from the south.
Foolish to think about the other parts of the plan when his own wasn't done with yet, though. He scrambled up the earth embankment, awkwardly rolling over coils of barbed wire atop the sandbags and nearly getting caught, the razor barbs digging into the tough material of his body armor and tearing away a few chunks. Once over, he began searching for any Sangue sentries behind the sandbags who were lying low, and also checked the fallen to make sure they were really dead.
His first impulse was to go straight for the machine gun and turn it on the town. But he had no experience with a gun like that, and Gray had sent along members of his militia with the strike team who did.
Sure enough, not far behind him another dark shape tore free of the barbed wire and dashed over to the heavy gun. He shoved aside the corpse of the man Tom had killed, then awkwardly swiveled the mounted weapon in a direction it hadn't been intended to point; back towards the town it was supposed to be defending.
Gray's gunner opened fire soon after, and at that point the battle dissolved into pure chaos. Especially when the captured machine guns from the other two emplacements along the north and south perimeters joined in. Lines of heavy bullets interspersed with tracer rounds chased down soldiers stumbling out of barracks to see what was going on, or even shot at the barracks and tore through walls to chew up anyone still inside.
The machine guns also turned on the fortifications along the eastern perimeter where the Camptown fighters hadn't been able to sneak up, hitting the alarmed bloodies there as they scrambled to mount some sort of defense against an attack from all directions, except the one they'd been expecting to be attacked from.
After the machine guns had sown some chaos a few of the floodlights flickered on, blinding bright in the dim predawn glow, and began tracing through the occupied town looking for more targets. One of the volunteers from Tom's team grabbed the floodlight near him and swiveled it to begin spotting as well.
Tom joined in with his rifle, picking off the sentries patrolling the occupied town first, then turning his gun on the shapes darting out of what seemed like every building, many of them opening fire the moment they were outside. Which was a brave if somewhat stupid decision, since the only targets they immediately saw were their own
people, which led to almost sickening amounts of friendly fire even from the disciplined enemy soldiers.
On top of that, their muzzle flashes made them immediate targets, not just to Tom and the other volunteers but to their own fellow soldiers, who saw them shooting at other bloodies and assumed they were enemy attackers.
And this is why you attack at dawn, he thought with grim satisfaction as he picked off a man who'd actually chosen the right target, and had been shooting towards one of the captured machine guns. Between the enemy soldiers being awakened directly into needing to fend off an attack, half asleep and panicking, and the dim lighting allowing them to see the people around them, but not well enough to recognize friend from foe or what the blazes was going on, the bloodies were their own worst enemies.
And even better, the biggest danger in an attack like this would've been clearing the buildings one at a time, which would've led to stumbling into booby traps, being surprised by ambushers inside, fighting in small spaces where hidden enemies could fire through walls to hit them, and a bunch of other things that would've made taking the town a nightmare.
Thankfully, with three .50 caliber machine guns to begin with, which became four as Gray sent people to the cleared eastern fortifications and took control of the gun there, clearing buildings was a lot easier; they could just rake each one with bullets a few times. Especially when the militia leader stepped in to get his people organized, approaching with a couple squads to cautiously enter buildings one at a time starting with the outermost, while the gunners in the machine gun emplacements watched vigilantly.
The moment the searchers encountered the slightest sign of resistance, .50 caliber bullets chewed up the building in question and took out the enemies inside.
Although it wasn't completely one-sided, unfortunately. Sometimes the Sangue soldiers managed to snipe off a searcher from a hidden spot, and only then with his location revealed could he be dealt with. There was also the fact that Tom, Gray, and Mitchells had all agreed they should avoid, unless absolutely necessary, having the machine guns hit any of the buildings where they were expecting to find supplies. “Expect” being the operative word, going on what the scouts had reported, as well as Tom's memory of the place from when he'd scouted it weeks ago. Likewise, the gunners were strongly cautioned not to hit any of the vehicles or other obviously valuable equipment.