Indivisible (Overlooked by Liberty) (30 page)

      
"We've got the same thing here," Chaos said, responding to Wolf with a returning laser message.  "Just sit tight.  The plan is working.  When this is over, expect some penetration bombing to go on for awhile; the Armdroids will follow with troops.  Then it's our turn.  The Army can't bomb their own positions when rebels moved in."

Colebrook Diner (The same day.)

      
With every blast that shook the earth, anxiety struck.  The penetration bombing had begun.  And for Harvey Madison, every jolt shook him to his core.  "Why aren't you up there in the medical bunker?" He asked Mrs. Larson.  She was all for the fighting.

      
Her tiny eyes stared back coldly, "I have my reasons and it ain't none of your business."

      
"I see," he said.

      
"You don't see.  There's six tanks rowed up outside my diner with just a handful of soldiers looking after them.  Look at those Army boys out there; they're ready to wet themselves.  They don't want to be here.  If you hang around long enough you'll see the shit hit the fan.  When the bombing stops," Vanessa winked, "if you get my drift."

       
"You mean, you're planning some kind of attack in Colebrook?" Harvey asked.

      
"You got it.  And if you open your big mouth, you'll find a blade in your back!" she spoke adamantly.

      
Harvey Madison turned his attention back to his bowl of corn chowder.  He hadn't touched it.  Just dipped up spoonfuls and ladled it back into the bowl.

      
Five Army Regulars entered the diner and seated themselves near the plate-glass window.  They looked up toward Mrs. Larson for service.  She stared back, her puffy eyes narrowed to slits.

      
Meanwhile, Butch and the boys of Colebrook's new Ghost Pack 220 squatted in a circle on the asphalt behind the Main Street drug store.  Butch held a 400-gram propane canister with a three-inch pipe connection on the top.  A drilled hole in the top housed a steel plunger used to detonate a shotgun shell inside.  Some of the boys backed off, worried about Butch's bomb going off.  Thad stayed, he knew better.  "No.  No," Butch explained, "there's no shell inside yet.  "It won't go off unless it has a shotgun shell in it."  The group moved back to the circle cautiously.

      
Twenty-four boys made up the huddle. They had all heard Butch's tale of Dixville and endured the thumb cut that sealed their loyalty to Ghost Pack 220.  They were a proud lot, armed with kitchen and hunting knives; Sam Larson had a beer bottle stuffed with rags and filled with gas as an inflammatory device.  They talked rugged as a group, but as individuals they were still boys.  Their mission: To take a tank and drive it through the Feds perimeter and deliver it to the Mountain Boys by dusk.  The cannon on the Abrams could be used by the rebels to fire on Army positions in the valley.

      
Butch spit in the middle.  The bubbly saliva jiggled as penetration bombing continued on Dixville Notch ten miles away.  "Denny's pack is going to throw a football up by them," instructed Butch, "as me, Sam, Thad, Charlie, and Billy come around on the street side."  Billy, the newest member of Pack 220 had a bur-haircut with singed eyebrows and scalp.  "They're going to tell you to 'get,' but ignore it.  They won't shoot kids.  While they're looking at you, we'll do our thing."

      
The children glanced at each other for weakness.  Stony-eyed, they rose slowly from their crouched positions and split up into groups to their respective locations.

      
Thad never looked up from the ground as he followed his older brother Butch.  It had been a year since the Dixville Massacre.  Gnawing anxiety tied his stomach in knots, but he felt he had to do this for his friends slaughtered at Dixville.  Though he had gone to the bathroom earlier, he felt he had to go again.  Thad's long, thick legs beneath his light-boned physique carried the weight of the Dixville Massacre--the guilt of surviving.  Thad wondered if he could follow through with his older brother's plan.

      
Vanessa Larson put the fifth burger on the bun; she spit on it before capping it with a sesame seed top.  Waddling out to their table, she tossed the plates on the surface.  Sarcastically she said, "Here.  Enjoy."  She stared down on the soldiers as they sheepishly lifted their burgers and bit into them.  Her attention turned to the window as a group of boys tossed a football in the village green inching toward the tanks.  She turned to Harvey to see if he saw; the children's presence might mess up her attack plan.  Then Vanessa looked back through the window.

      
"Hey, get out of here."  The soldier's voice carried across the park and was faintly heard by everyone inside.  The soldiers seated in the diner turned to see.  "This is a restricted area.  Get out!" repeated the voice from outside.  The boy with the ball deliberately tossed it over his partner's head to bounce near the guards.

      
From behind, Butch and Sam raced up from the alley and threw their explosives at the unsuspecting soldiers guarding the tanks.  Sam's gasoline bomb splattered at the feet of one soldier and caught the man's pants on fire.  The propane canister Butch had tossed shook downtown Colebrook and sent the other two sentries flying through the air.

      
Immediately following the blast, Butch climbed the back of a tank with Sam Larson following.  The burning soldier saw Butch scrambling to the top of the tank; he lifted in M-30 Strafer and streamed six rounds at the boys.  A bullet caught Butch on the thigh.  A stray hit Sam in the stomach as he crawled over the top of the tank.  Sam fell to the ground in a fetal position; Butch hugged the top of the tank moaning.

      
Billy and Charlie raced from the alley toward an M-30 Strafer a soldier had dropped in the blast.  Charlie ran between the tanks and snatched the weapon up in a dead run.

      
Thad wasn't among them.  He stood on the side street paralyzed with fear, and watched his brother's blood trickle down the side of the tank.  The flaming guard caught sight of the boys running among the tanks with a rifle in-hand.  He popped off several more rounds.  One hit Charlie in the back.  Billy continued without the weapon, glancing back only once in his dire race for cover on the other side of the green.  Thad at last broke loose, streaking at top speed between the tanks.  Adrenaline drove him, leaping over both dead soldiers and sprinting ten more meters, where he snatched the rifle Charlie had carried.  Two soldiers in a nearby jeep lifted their weapons and took aim at the boy darting across the green.  The rounds chased Thad and struck in the wet sod behind him.  Thad caught up with Billy, and ran through the rest of the boys on the opposite end of the village green.

      
Soldiers in the diner sat stunned on viewing the scene through the window.  One soldier remarked incredulously, "Why--they're shooting the boys!"

      
The fat lady's beady eyes widened from slits to golf ball size.  "That's my boy!"  She reached under her apron and pulled out a knife, wielding it into the back of the first soldier.  As another trooper looked around, she caught him in the chest with the second strike.  The third private, she paralyzed by a blade between the shoulders as he reached for his rifle.  By then, the older Colebrook residents in the diner, overpowered the remaining two.  Harvey Madison blocked the arm of Mrs. Larson as she tried to impale a fourth soldier.  "Stop it Vanessa!  For godsakes, stop it!"  Harvey lowered his hand but stayed between her and the captives.  He was no longer sure what she was capable of.

      
"They're murdering the rest of our boys."  Vanessa was crying now.  She stood hunched and in shock.  Dark red blood dripped from the blade of her knife.

      
"What we have to do," stated Harvey, "is round up the boys and make sure they stay out of this."

      
Harvey had not realized Mrs. Larson's son was involved.  She ran out the door and across the green, pushing a soldier to the ground en route to her child.  Other Colebrook residents ran out to the wounded children.  The village people scurried through the streets in confusion; boys were running through side streets every which-way as troops chased them to recover the stolen rifle.

      
Thad stashed the weapon under an outbuilding behind Sam Larson's place and darted back to the center of town to check on Butch.

      
The men from the jeep recognized him.  "He's the one who had the weapon."  They revved the engine and pursued him.  Pulling up alongside of the boy, the soldier on the passenger side nabbed Thad's shirttail.  Thad stumbled and was dragged beside the jeep until it stopped.  In a flash, he slithered out of the shirt and ran barebacked through the center of town.  Now two vehicles chased him across the green.  The boy streaked into another side street and turned between houses.  Soldiers honked in pursuit while women dragged their children out of harm's way.  The jeeps crashed through fences to keep up.  Thad knew the village.  He cut through sections too cluttered for jeeps and doubled back the way he had come.  Three times he evaded capture, cutting back through the center of town time after time.  Infantry in the square tried to block his escape but found themselves outmaneuvered and nearly run over by the men in jeeps pursuing the boy.

      
The chase lasted nearly ten minutes, and ended when one of the drivers turned to circle back, but didn't; he backed up in front of the boy from a side street.  At a dead run, Thad was looking back to locate the other jeep when he collided into the vehicle that pulled in front of him.  His legs buckled under him; the boy slid off the door to the pavement.

      
On Dixville Notch, the Armdroid's wide tracks inched up the steeper slopes of the trail along Cascade Brook.  Gorrilla-like arms hung from the base of its barrel torso; they were used to dig into the steep embankment to pull itself up.  To rebels watching it through the glazed bunker ports, the thing looked surprisingly homemade.  Nothing fancy, just a fifty-five gallon drum on tracks, with arms.  Sensory ports for radar, heat, and motion, dotted the armored skin of the contraption.  A fiber-optic tether came off the back, its link to the infantry that followed.

       
Wolfenstein, and others in the bunker, pressed up against the small rectangular port to watch.  "See that thing on top?"  Wolf referred to the rounded receiver node at the very top of the machine.  "I bet you that's an infrared node to receive a signal in case the optic line is cut off.  If we could cut the line and shoot that node off the top, they couldn't control it either.  It would sit there and protect us, as long as
we
stayed in the bunker."

      
"Rrrright," responded one of the rebels."  It would also be tough getting behind it to cut the line.  If the Armdroid doesn't get you, the troops on the other side would.  They've tested this thing, you know." 

      
An old camcorder strapped to a motor-gun sat covered with brush thirty meters away from the rebel bunker.  Wolfenstein watched a digital monitor displaying an image of the Armdroid.  Wolf used a joystick to align the barrel to target.  "Here goes."  He pushed a black starter button and revved it with a rheostat knob.  The Armdroid rotated toward the heat of the engine.  On pressing the joystick button, glowing motor-gun balls shot out the barrel toward the Armdroid like a garden hose.  Wolfenstein held the stream of shot steady on one point.  The Armdroid fired back, taking out the camcorder and some of the stepping motors controlling the gun.  A second later, the potbellied machine began smoldering and stopped.  Wolf shut down the motor-gun and grabbed his Masada.  "Let's chase after their asses boys before they get a chance to call in artillery."

      
Three leg-men with all-frequency jammers raced out the mud-covered hatchways and sprinted in different directions to set up a series of mobile frequency jammers.  They synchronized each of the three units to turn on at different times for two minutes, every six minutes.  Every two minutes, a leg-man had to race the jammers to a different location before a missile honed in their frequency source.

      
Other rebels sprinted down-slope with only Glock autopistols to intercept Army Regulars.  They whistled location and numbers back to gunners and snipers who followed.  Leg-men baited the troops with pistol fire.  Once the Feds trailed them into the ambush, motor-guns rained shot into the thick of them.  Snipers with Masadas tediously peered through tree slits and popped enemy faces they viewed through their scopes.  The same leg-men who baited the Army units, returned to the bunker to reload their belts with ammo clips.  Then they did an end run around to waylay the Federal soldiers.  They ambushed anyone trying to retreat.

      
From satellite and low altitude drones, sensor readings showed what the Feds thought to be concentration centered around Dixville Notch; but those sensors actually read animal life and kerosene smudge-pots.  Rebels waited undetected in bunkers.  Commander Serrac had no idea they were concealed.  As Federal troops closed in on Dixville proper, attack packs came out of their hives--but to kill not to sting.  Like the ghosts of Pack 220 seeking revenge, they would appear at will to assassinate their target, only to vanish without a trace to their secluded bunkers.