The New Madrid Run (34 page)

He hardly had a moment to relax before Eric and Derrick, the two huge twins, arrived with a dozen reinforcements. Travis intercepted them before they got into the driveway, had them park their two vehicles on an old logging road that ran across the western end of the property, then escorted them to the house. The men gathered together and discussed their defense strategy, then Travis had the teams lug bales of hay and equipment boxes to be stacked around the house and the trailer for cover. After that, everyone took his position. Travis returned to his viewpoint in the woods.

It took Cody much longer than he had expected to refuel the big plane and rearm the machine guns—so long that even the cool, nearly unshakeable Cody was in a panic by the time he climbed onto the wing and reached for the cockpit bubble. He slid back the canopy, paused for a moment, and turned to one of his maintenance people on the ground. “Get me my gun. You never know when you might need a Thompson.” The weapon was tossed up to him and he casually snatched it out of the air, then jumped into the airplane. Moments later he was off the runway and headed for Rockford’s convoy.

When Cody reached the area near Travis’ home, he saw the line of military and civilian vehicles only minutes from their destination. He also spotted, to his dismay, another small column of two convoy trucks and a Jeep coming from Alpha Camp. After a final check of the instruments and a quick burst of the guns to ensure working order, he threw the wing over and roared down on Colonel Rockford and his column.

Cody caught them in a long stretch of road about a mile before Travis’ homestead. “Welcome to hell, Colonel,” he whispered as he fell on the column, his machine guns chattering a staccato melody once again. As he streaked by, pieces of pavement disintegrated, vehicles exploded, and men scattered under the bombardment of the huge four-inch bullets. On the second pass, the men fired back from the protection of the woods and granite outcroppings along the road.

Halfway through the second pass, Cody took a machine gun burst through the front underside of the aircraft. The bullets tore into his radiator, taking out all but one segment of his cooling system. They also split a fuel line and, as the high-powered jets squirted the fuel, it splashed across the hot engine and ignited.

Cody had chewed them up badly. At least fifty men were dead or wounded and almost half their vehicles had been taken out, but Cody Joe and his magnificent flying machine were going down. The engine was overheating rapidly and flames were already working their way out of the engine cowling. If he didn’t get down quickly, it would explode and kill him for sure.

Cody kicked the left rudder hard and, with equally heavy stick, threw the plane over the mountain and into the valley as he headed for the flat, straight road below. Unfortunately, the best piece of flat road was occupied by the small column of reinforcements coming from Alpha Camp. Cody backed off and dropped some flaps. It was already getting smoky and hot in the cockpit—he only had seconds.

The officer in the foremost truck of the convoy couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the WWII fighter plane, with smoke and flames belching out of it, coming right down at him. As Cody made his emergency approach five hundred yards in front of the column and fifty feet off the ground, he opened up with his machine guns. Few pilots in the world would have had the composure to initiate a coordinated attack while in the process of making a crash landing in a smoke-filled, burning airplane. Cody, however, was one of those pilots.

The driver of the lead truck slammed on his brakes and gaped in disbelief as twin lines of .50-caliber bullets ripped up the road in front of him and worked their way into the front of his vehicle. The huge bullets tore through the engine, the cab, and into the gas tank, which exploded in a fiery roar, throwing the destroyed vehicle on its side. Cody hit the road, bounced ten feet into the air, and came down hard a second time as he drew the stick back to lessen the impact. That time he stayed on the road, but he was still moving too fast toward the burning truck and the vehicles behind it. Unable to stop the plane before reaching the immobilized truck, and unable to get far enough off the road to avoid contact, he lost the tip of his right wing to the overturned cab. It slowed him considerably, spinning the nose of the plane away from the oncoming vehicles.

The men in the second truck, a hundred yards back, stared in shock as the smoking Mustang finally careened to a halt. The shock turned to terror as Cody jammed the left rudder and hit the throttle, slowly spinning the airplane around at them while simultaneously firing those devastating machine guns. Bullets danced across the field and onto the road, then into the truck, as the burning aircraft turned. When the stream of bullets reached the truck, Cody stood on the brakes and held the trigger down. The second truck was ripped apart, and exploded like the first, torching the occupants.

There was so much smoke in the cockpit that Cody couldn’t see anymore, and his shoes and the bottoms of his pants were catching fire. He ripped open the canopy and jumped out onto the wing just in time to see a Jeep carrying two officers come bounding around the burning truck and screech to a halt fifty feet in front of him. Without pausing, he reached into the cockpit and grabbed his Thompson. The two men had just begun to stand, drawing their side arms, when Cody opened up from the hip, blasting out the windshield and knocking both men from the vehicle with the heavy .45 slugs. Cody jumped off the wing, ran over to the far side of the Jeep, and threw himself to the ground behind it just as the gas tank on the plane blew.

Flaming pieces of aircraft flew across the road and into the fields on both sides. When the thunder and debris from the explosion settled, Cody Joe stood up and brushed himself off. With a sad smile and a salute to the burning remains of the ’51, he picked up his weapon and looked at the two men on the ground next to the Jeep.

“Never know when you might need a Thompson,” he said as he climbed in, started it up, and headed for his buddy Travis.

CHAPTER 22

After being mauled for the second time by Cody and his airplane, the colonel was blind with fury. The bodies of his soldiers were strewn across the roadway, hanging in and out of broken and burning vehicles. The wounded cried out and shouts for medics echoed up and down the convoy. Rockford swung around, shouting to his subordinates. “Reynolds, Hawkins! Get your men back in the trucks, now!”

“But the wounded, sir,” said the younger officer.

“Leave the a couple of the medics with them. Move out!”

Rockford marched down the line himself, whipping his soldiers back into the remaining vehicles. Moments later they headed out, leaving the wounded and dead where they lay.

Travis watched from his hiding place as the reorganized convoy came to a halt at the entrance of his property. He could see the two officers in the lead Jeep. Travis had watched from the window as the taller of the two bellowed orders to his soldiers. He heard one of them call him colonel—finally, his enemy had a face. He felt his fingers clench so tightly that his nails bit into his palms.

Reynolds and the colonel were familiar with the layout and the grounds. The plan was simple—move the convoy up the drive and deploy the men into the woods prior to reaching the clearing in front of the house, then surround the place, and burn them out.

Rockford was no fool, however, and he knew he was dealing with professionals. He also knew from experience that the first people into the fray were often the first casualties, so he sent the trucks and his men in ahead. He followed in his Jeep with Reynolds and the driver. The first truck had barely entered the road when it hit the almost invisible monofilament line, pulling the pins from the grenades tied to the base of the two large trees. The explosion was deafening; both trees snapped in half at the base, falling across the road and the truck. Shrapnel from the grenades blew the windows out of the cab and shredded the canvas covering on the back of the truck, killing the front passengers and wounding several of the soldiers in the rear of the vehicle. The tires of the truck were cut to shreds, rendering it useless and further blocking the passageway.

Travis smiled as the explosion and pandemonium sent the officers into a rage. The road was completely blocked; the men would have to go in on foot.

Reynolds ordered everyone out and formed up in front of the ruined truck. After the first booby trap, no one was overly anxious to walk down the road, so the colonel ordered his men into the woods on both sides of the dirt track. They would work their way through to the clearing, then attack on signal, the same way they had the first time. Almost two hundred men moved into the forest, headed for the fifteen men in and around the homestead.

The odds weren’t good, but the deadly grenade ambush lay waiting in over thirty of the trees in front of them.

As the men moved forward, Travis melted silently into the woods and worked his way back to the compound. On returning, he had four men spread out and take positions approximately twenty-five feet into the woods on the clearing side. They held quietly until the majority of Rockford’s men were almost on them, then opened up with their guns. The object was not to kill that many soldiers, but rather to bunch the enemy in the killing zone set up by the grenades. The four men cut loose with a fusillade, causing the colonel and his soldiers to stop and take cover under the trees bearing the fatal fruit. Then the four men retreated to the safety of the buildings in the clearing.

When Travis saw his men fall back, he knew the trap was set. He uncased and armed the last two LAWS anti-tank guns, handing one to the preacher, who smiled grimly. “Let’s get some of them Philistines out of the woods, son,” said the big man. Travis nodded, lifted the first one, aimed into the thick of the forest on the left side of the road and fired. Next to him, the preacher drew the second onto his shoulder and fired into the right side. The blast of the rockets knocked several of the tenuously balanced rocks from their perches in the trees. When they fell, the pins were pulled from the grenades taped to the branches. As each grenade exploded, it kicked the rock from the tree branch closest to it and repeated the deadly performance, sending thousands of pieces of shrapnel toward the men beneath. It was like being caught in the maelstrom of an intense mortar barrage. There was nowhere safe to turn as bomb after bomb detonated and the men were torn to pieces. Wounded screamed and cried, and as the grenades burst around them, the survivors stumbled in blind panic toward the clearing.

It was Reynolds’ ferret-like quickness that saved him and the colonel. When the explosions began, they were about halfway through the woods, off to one side. Reynolds happened to glance up and see a grenade taped to the branch of the tree in front of him. “Run, Run!” he shouted. “They’ve wired grenades to the trees!” The blasts closed in as they dashed for the side of the clearing while cries of the wounded echoed in their ears.

Of the two hundred men in the forest around the homestead, over a hundred were killed or incapacitated in a matter of seconds. Another forty died as they ran from the woods into the clearing and the withering fire of the defenders. The remaining sixty or so rallied and began firing at the house and the outbuildings from the protection of the trees.

Rockford and Reynolds, along with a good portion of their best men, made it past the barrage, to the edge of the woods. They dug in across from the guest trailer, which sat about fifty yards from the main house.

Firing from the corner of his living room window, Travis saw the colonel separate his men and pour fire from two different directions into the small mobile home and the four men holding it. Within five minutes, three of the men had been killed and the fourth retreated to the safety of the ranch house. Rockford and his soldiers rushed in and took positions around and under the trailer. The soldiers on the other side of the clearing, taking heart when they watched the colonel’s accomplishment, charged the barn and overran it, killing another four defenders. It cost them fifteen men, but they forced Carlos and the others holding the outbuildings to fall back to positions in and around the house. Rockford had just rallied his men to rush the house when the sound of a vehicle roaring down on them from behind brought everyone around.

Cody slammed the Jeep in gear and was off like a shot, leaving the smoking remains of the airplane and the burning trucks behind. Twenty minutes later, as he neared Travis’ home, he could hear the exchange of gunfire. “Hold on,
amigo
, hold on,” he muttered as he >weaved around the ruined, smoking remains of the column he had just chewed up with the Mustang.

When he reached the entrance to Travis’ home, he saw the road was blocked by the wrecked troop transport, but he remembered that his friend had cut a fire lane on the eastern corner of the property that led to the house. He jammed the Jeep into reverse, spun it around, and headed for the lane. Seconds later he was flying down the bumpy path, dodging stumps and practically bouncing out of the Jeep as he hit exposed roots and potholes. The sound of the fight had grown and, as he neared the clearing, he could hear men shouting, wounded crying, and the constant crackle of small-arms fire.

As fate would have it, the fire lane broke into the clearing directly behind the trailer where the colonel and his men stood preparing to charge the house and overwhelm the last of the defenders. They would have, most probably, been successful, had it not been for one William J. Cody and a Thompson machine gun.

Cody burst into the clearing and saw the men gathered behind the trailer. Without even slowing down, he reached for his weapon, shouldered it, and opened up on the group, shooting out the remainder of the Jeep’s windshield in the process.

It was disconcerting enough for those men to see some long-haired madman in a leather aviator’s hat and goggles charging down on them, shouting and shooting from a roaring Jeep. It was considerably more disconcerting when one of the madman’s bullets struck the LP gas cylinder next to the trailer and it disintegrated into a fiery ball of red-hot shrapnel.