The day after: An apocalyptic morning (124 page)

              The next five minutes passed slowly, almost agonizingly so. Four hands shook on four weapons as four minds contemplated what they were about to do. Would this work? Would they all die? Could Skip really get them out of there in time? Nobody talked. The only sound was the ebb and flow of rapid, adrenaline accelerated respiration and the incessant patter of raindrops. The lead squad of the Auburnites came closer and closer, step-by-step, seeming almost to shuffle along. Finally, at long last, the front men passed into the two hundred yard range.

              "Everyone on target?" Christine asked softly, her M-16 in her hands. She was sighting out over the men behind the front three.

              "I'm on," said Mike, who was centering his crosshairs on the chest of the man in front.

              "I'm on," said Maggie, who had her own crosshairs perfectly aligned.

              "Me too," said Maria. "I don't think I could miss him from here."

              "Okay," Christine breathed, her finger tightening on the trigger. "Let's do it. On the count of three. One... two... three."

              Three fingers depressed three triggers. The noise of the gunshots sounded as one, a shocking blast in the stillness of the surroundings. Even before the bullets hit their targets, Christine was firing lengthy bursts down after them.

              For Stinson, it was like something out of a nightmare. Since he was not looking in the direction from which the shots had come and since sound travels slower than the bullets that were fired, his first indication that something was wrong came when his point man stopped in his tracks and fell forward. At nearly the same instant the two men immediately behind him both jerked in spasm. They too fell forward, landing facedown on the ground.

              "What the..." was all he had time for before two more men in the formation screamed and fell to the mud. One of them had a visible wound on his hip that was pouring blood down onto his pants. Things were suddenly whizzing through the air all around him, passing over his head, chipping wood off of the trees, plunking into the ground, and striking other men. Two more of them fell. Just as the sounds of the gunshots began to reach him, a hole in the back of Private James' head opened up as a bullet exited out of it. A fair amount of blood and brain Micker splattered on Stinson's face and neck. James dropped lifelessly, joining the rest of the dead and wounded on the ground.

              "We're under fire!" someone, he knew not who, screamed in a panic.

              Stinson then saw the flashes of an automatic weapon firing at them from the hill in front of and to the right of them. "Fuck!" he screamed, the fact that they were under attack finally clearing his circuits. He threw himself to the ground, desperately trying to bring his weapon up into a firing position. "Get down! Get down!" he yelled.

              Corporal Feathers wasn't fast enough. Instead of getting down, he was trying to shoulder his rifle to shoot back. A burst of fire struck him solidly in the stomach and he crashed face-first into the mud.

              "Return fire!" Stinson yelled at the remaining members of his squad. "On the hillside at two o'clock! Return fire!"

              But by the time the first man was able to aim up there and unleash a round, the firing had stopped, almost as fast as it had started.

              "Go, go, go!" Christine barked, crawling on her stomach to the downside of the hill. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

              Her troops didn't need any encouragement. They crawled along with her, their weapons on their back, just as the whizzing of bullets passing overhead reached them. It was only a few at first, but soon there were many. Chips of bark exploded upward as the logs they had been hiding behind were riddled. The sound of the shots reached them a moment later, again, only a few at first but quickly swelling up until it sounded like a shooting range in the midst of a tournament.

              "Mother bird," Christine yelled into the radio as she rolled over and began sliding down the hill on her butt, "this is hatchling one, the wolves have been fed and they're fucking-aye pissed off!"

              "Copy, hatchling," Jack's voice said. "We'll be at the nest when you get there!"

              The noise was deafening as the survivors of Stinson's squad and the two squads behind it all fired up into the hillside at the point where the flashes had been seen.

              "Point, this is Bracken," screamed Stinson's radio. "What the fuck is going on up there?"

              As a squad leader, he had one of the automatic weapons. He fired another burst up into the hillside and then fished the radio out of his belt. "We're under fire!" he yelled. "We got hit from the hillside in front of us!"

              "Who the hell is firing at you?" Bracken's voice asked.

              "How the fuck should I know?" Stinson yelled back. "My whole fucking squad is down from it though!"

              "How many enemy?" Bracken asked.

              "I don't know, four or five of them. It was a fucking ambush! They fucking ambushed us!"

              "Are they still firing?"

              "No!" he yelled.

              "Then cease fire!" Bracken ordered. "Don't waste your ammo. We need to flank them!"

              Stinson looked up and yelled at his remaining men. "Cease fire, cease fire!"

              It took a lot longer than it should have. He had to scream it several more times before the sound of the gunshots finally echoed away. "Jesus fucking Christ," Stinson said, trying to calm himself. What the hell had happened? Less than a minute ago they were walking along, grumbling and bitching without a care in the world, and now he had at least six of his men shot up.

              They ran. Once at the bottom of the hill they moved as fast as they humanly could over the muddy ground, their weapons slung over their backs, their breath dragging in and out of their lungs. From behind and to their right, the sound of gunshots seemed to reach a crescendo and then slowly, almost gradually, it tapered off. There were a few more isolated pops and then it was once again silent.

              Christine was in the lead. She ran across a small stretch of open ground and then rounded the base of another of the hills. On the backside of it, about a hundred yards away, was the most welcome sight she had ever seen: the idling helicopter. The doors had been thrown open and she could see Skip in the pilot's seat, behind the controls.

              "Safe your weapons," she panted to her squad, her words broken and out of breath. Nevertheless, they obeyed, all three of them activating their safeties.

              Christine dove in first, quickly scrambling to the far rear corner. She left streaks of mud and pine needles on the floor. Maggie followed her, scrambling to a position directly opposite. Mike and Maria, after one last check behind them, forced themselves in as well. Having to strain in the crowded confines, Mike shut the door, pulling on it until it latched.

              "Go!" Christine yelled to Skip.

              He took off as rapidly as his weight-load and his engine would allow, rising fifty feet off the ground and turning the nose to the southwest. He added forward speed and less than a minute after Christine's squad had climbed aboard, they were passing between the hills to the south and making their way out over the canyon.

              "Covington, take your platoon around to the north side of that hill and secure it," Bracken ordered over his radio. He was behind a fallen log three hundred yards to the rear of the area where the fighting had taken place and was watching everything through a pair of binoculars.

              "On the way," Stu replied, his voice actually sounding excited, like he was having a good time.

              "Colby, you there?" he then asked the leader of the platoon that had been hit.

              "Right here, sir," Colby's rather shaky voice replied.

              "What are your casualties? Give me a report!"

              "My first squad is all shot up," he reported. "I have six dead and two wounded. The other three squads have moved forward to protective positions."

              "I understand," Bracken replied, feeling a little numb. Six dead? What had happened? Who had done this? "Hold in place," he told Colby. "I'm gonna move second platoon behind you and off to the left flank of that hill so we can get the fuckers who did this. Give them covering fire when they move in."

              "Ten-four," Colby said.

              It took nearly ten minutes to accomplish but it was a well-planned, well-executed attack on an enemy-held piece of high ground. Stu's platoon moved in from the right flank while second platoon moved in from the left flank. Colby's platoon fired up into the position to cover the initial advance. Soon Stu and two of his squads were standing atop the hill reporting back down to Bracken that it had been all for nothing.

              "They're gone, whoever they were," Stu told him over the radio. "I have nothing but some shell casings up here. Looks like 5.56 millimeter rounds. Thirty of them or so. There are also a few .30 caliber casings that look like they came from hunting rifles. They were hidden behind a bunch of fallen logs and probably fired from between them."

              "No bodies, no blood?" asked Bracken, still covered behind his own log.

              "Nope," Stu reported. "I have some fresh tracks heading down the hill to the southwest. I could try to follow them but I'm pretty sure I'll lose the trail at the bottom of the hill where it's not so muddy."

              "Go ahead and take your platoon down for a look anyway," Bracken reported. "Whoever did this has to be out there somewhere."

              "On the way," Stu reported.

              While Stu and his group of forty went tromping off into the woods, Bracken extricated himself from his place of cover and jogged up to where the action had taken place. Had Colby really said six dead? It didn't seem possible. The Placer County Militia had never had a soldier killed. There had been a few minor wounds at the Battle for Colfax and at the Battle for Meadow Vista, but no deaths. And now six at once? While they were still over thirty miles from the target?

              As soon as he reached the scene however, he saw that no exaggeration or miscommunication had taken place. Six of his men were lying dead on the ground in various places, some lying on their backs, some on their stomachs. Two of them had been hit in the head and brain Micker was leaking onto the ground but the rest seemed to have succumbed to body shots. It was a shocking sight to Bracken and it was even more shocking to the other soldiers that were standing around looking as well. Most of them couldn't seem to take their eyes off of the bodies.

              Lieutenant Colby walked over and offered a salute. His face was drawn and scared. "They hit us without warning, sir," he said. "The first three men were down before we even heard the shots."

              "An ambush," Bracken said, looking up at the spot from which it had come. "Somebody decided to ambush us. God knows who or why but Covington's platoon is out after them right now. They'll pick them up."

              "Yeah," Colby said, although it was plain to see that he had his doubts about that.

              "What about the wounded?" Bracken asked next. "How bad are they?"

              Colby took a deep breath. "Colton is pretty bad," he said. "He took two in the chest. It looks like his lung is gone. I don't think he'll make it much longer."

              Bracken nodded sympathetically. "And what about the other one?"

              "It's Jankowski," Colby told him. "He took one in the stomach. It went in just below his belly button and out just above his butt. We got the bleeding under control."

              Bracken sighed. "Do you?"

              "Yes sir," Colby assured him. "We're gonna have to get him back to Auburn somehow. Maybe a litter? It might take a few days but..."

              "We can't do that," Bracken said softly.

              Colby looked over at him. "Sir?"

              "We're too far out," Bracken said. "He might make the trip back... maybe... but he'll just die of infection within a week. As you know our medical facilities are pretty primitive. I'm afraid that we're going to have to put him out of his misery."

              "But sir..." Colby said, appalled by what Bracken was suggesting. "He was wounded in battle. We can't just..."

              "We can and we will," Bracken told him. "Be discrete about it though. Don't..."

              "You want me to do it?" Colby asked, actually feeling ill now.

              "You're his commanding officer," Bracken said. "Have him roll over like you're checking the exit wound and then shoot him in the back of the head with your pistol. It's quick and painless and he'll never know what hit him."

              "Sir, I..."

              "Do it," Bracken said firmly. "It needs to be done."

              "But the men..."

              "I'll take care of the men once it's done. Now get over there and do it."