(Lit) For Senses On

PARDIGAM SHIFT. copywrite Cleman Simpson, this material may not be reproduced or sold without consent of the author

CHAPTER ONE; THE QUICK AND THE DEAD


2 Timothy 4:1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.


March 6th , 200.....



In hindsight I guess we did get some warning, but it was not anything most of us recognized at the time. The only things unusual in the news that day were that the new Pope had given a speech from the Vatican saying the Catholic Church was reversing its stance on abortion and birth control due to world overpopulation, and that the first cloned baby of a human had been born. I had watched the Pope's address live on C-span and came away with the distinct impression he was homosexual. Not that it was unusual for homosexuals to be among the Catholic preisthood or that I had anything against them, but I had never thought they would name one as Pope. Cloning humans set my teeth on edge, the potential abuses were too horrible to even contemplate.

In other news China was raising cain about us selling advanced destroyers to Taiwan and was deploying yet more missiles along the coast. Nothing new there. Russia was threatening to sell ICBM's on the open market unless we bailed out their economy for the umpteenth time in the last fifteen or twenty years. It was nothing they hadn't said before. In the western states more herds of cattle were being slaughtered and burned in a doomed effort to stop mad cow disease. Opec was raising the price of oil again, that ought to put us over two bucks a gallon and summer was still months away. NASA's latest Mars mission had dissapeared into space. The Dow had hit 7000 and the Nasdaq was at 1200. Gold had hit 658 dollars an ounce and several of the larger banks were under chapter eleven protection with the rest promising to file by the end of the week. On the brighter side the weather man was forecasting a week of sunshine after two weeks of steady rain.

My wife Amy had turned in early after a hard day at the office, working up a bid on a contract I was submiting for. The economy had been slow for months and we were having to cut our cost and profit magins to the bone just to keep the company afloat. She was depressed over our financial situation after stopping at the grocery store on the way home and paying five dollars a pound for hamburger meat and fourteen dollars for a small fryer. Enough food to last the two of us three days had cost her nearly sixty dollars and we hadn't eaten a steak in months. She said ribeyes were going for upwards of forty dollars each. I wondered what exactly the government was using for reference points in their consumer price index. We had reached the point it was costing a thousand dollars a week to maintain a lifestyle considerably more barren than we had been accustomed to living for a third of that and still they insisted inflation was under control. I couldn't imagine how the people in Europe were surviving.

For the past thirty minutes I had been on the computer chatting with my oldest daughter. She was excited about a new job she had gotten at Dallas Regional Hospital. Her mother, my ex wife Jenny, was a nurse on staff there and had gotton her on as a nurses aid while she finished her college courses for LVN. She promised she would be down to meet with my other daughter Maggie here at Easter, and we would all go to my grandfathers old church to visit his grave. She had recieved the locket I sent her two days before and loved it, which is what I mainly wanted to hear.

After we got offline I called Maggie to tell her Nicole was coming for sure, and asked her if the necklace I had sent had arrived. "Yes dad, it's beautiful. But yall shouldn't have done it, I know this must have cost a fortune." she said.

"It was Amy's idea, when you were down Christmas and kept talking about paw paw after we got back from the cemetary, she got to thinking we should go ahead and pass his stuff along to you and Nicole. We went through it and found paw paw's old gold pocket watch and grandma Maggies wedding rings, but couldn't decide which of you should get what. Amy suggested we have them made into the lockets for you each, a matching set. Paw Paw had requested he be buried with his ring on, but he carried that old watch every day for decades. So I guess in a way they still symbolize the continuity of his marriage and the legacy of family he has passed along to you both."

"That was sweet of Amy dad, but this must have cost a fortune and I know your work is slow right now, everybody's is. Can I talk to Amy for a minute? I want to say thanks."

"I'm afraid she's already gone to bed honey, I'll have her call you tomorrow evening when you get home from college though if you'd like."

"Ok, that will be fine. I'll be so glad when I finish this up and get my teaching certificate this fall. I'm exhausted from working eight hours a day and going to classes for four more every afternoon." She said. I felt a flash of guilt, not having been able to send her enough money to live on while she was in school, but it simply wasn't there to send. We had already exhausted our IRA's and took a hard hit on our taxes for doing it, and I'd had to put a new undercarriage on the dozer last month which cost a small fortune.

"I know it's been hard Maggie. I'm sorry I haven't been able to help more. Maybe things will pick up once the dry weather sets in and I can send more money your way. I would lay off Tommy but he has a wife and son to feed and he's always been a good hand when I had the work to keep him busy. He'd also be hard to replace once things do pick back up, good help is hard to find."

"No dad, I'm not complaining about your not sending more money. God knows just making my car payments has been enough, more than I have any right to ask for. I don't want you feeling guilty on my account, I should have worked harder when I was in school and gotten a scholarship instead of running with the crowd and trying to be popular. We all have to pay for our mistakes in life, if you have taught me anything over the years it's that."

"Well if you get into a bind call me, I can still sell off some of my gun collection if we need to. They're just gathering dust in the safe anyway, Amy and I hardly ever go shooting anymore." I said.

Maggie laughed and replied. "Don't tell me after all these years you're going to quit on the survivalist movement, they may fold and go under without you."

I laughed with her and replied, "I said some, not all. I don't think I could bear to part with our AR-15's. But seriously Maggie, it's a dangerous world out there, even though the veneer of civilization here in this country mask it to most. I wish you would at least keep a couple of hundred pounds of rice and beans in reserve, they don't cost much and they last for years. It's durn cheap insurance, especially for a young single girl like you living so far out in the country."

She sighed and said, "We've been through all this before dad, I hate beans. But I did buy a few cases of water to set back, my well pump goes on the blink at least once a month and I got tired of having to drive fifteen miles for a drink while I am waiting for Mr. Simmons to get it fixed. He's pretty old and doesn't get in any hurry about anything."

"You ought to get some fifty gallon barrells and fill them up like we...." she cut me off. "DAD."

I laughed and said, "Ok, honey, I'll drop it. Have you found a new boyfriend yet?"

"I don't have time for a boyfriend dad. There's a guy at work who's pestering me for a date but I'm not interested in being some guys shack up or steady squeeze. When the right man comes along you'll be the first to know."

"Ok, Maggie, I'm glad you got your head on straight with this. You have plenty of time to make the right choice, just don't make the same mistake your mother and I did getting married too young and burying ourselves in debt before we even had a chance. I wish I'd had your level head when I was your age, but then again I don't guess we'd be having this conversation if I had. I guess every dark cloud really does have a silver lining."

She started to say something in reply but a sonic boom rattled the dishes in the china cabinet, followed instantly by the roar of jet engines at low altitude. As they diminshed Maggie said, "What was that?"

"Some hotdog out of Barksdale I guess. He'll probably get his butt fried for making that sonic boom over a populated area. Well I guess I better let you get to bed for the night. We'll give you a call tomorrow."

"Ok, Dad, tell Amy I said hi and give her my love. You take care of yourself and I love you."

"I love you too honey, goodnight." I waited till I heard the click of the phone then hung up, feeling better after talking to her.

I was sitting in front of the tube watching the late local news when a double flash of light like an arc welder striking illuminated the curtains and a thunderclap rattled the windows. The lights flared for a split second and some of the bulbs popped as the power failed. The smell of ozone and overheated electronics wafted through the house as I dug in the desk drawer for a flashlight. In the distance I could hear and feel the reverbations of explosions as lightning type flashes lit the night horizon. I stepped out onto the front porch, and noted the nearly full moon in the crystal clear sky, and the flaming wreckage of the transformer on the pole.

The explosions in the distance had subsided but I could plainly see the glow of fires burning and columns of smoke beginning to rise. As I turned to call the fire department a blindingly bright light filled the sky to the west, joined almost immediately by others to the east and southwest. It was brighter than high noon outside, so bright I had to shield my eyes even facing into the house. I knew what it was. My soul jerked spasmodically in my body, horrified at the deaths of millions, including Nicole, memorialized in the ashes.

Everything seemed to slow down. I had to get Amy up and under some kind of shelter. Racing to the bedroom I nearly mowed her down as she came through the darkened doorway, all I could see were red splotches. "Get in the closet!" I screamed at her, as another brilliant flash, this one close, turned the darkened room into the surface of the sun. Strobing electric blue stuttered through the hand I cast up to shield my eyes. The outlines of the bones clear as an x ray. Blind as a bat I pawed for the closet doorknob, thrusting Amy inside just as the shock wave disentigrated the bedroom windows. I felt my right eardrum rupture even as I was hurled into the closet by the force of the concussion on the open door. Luckily it shielded me from the flying glass daggers, but the door struck me a heavy blow on my left leg as it slammed shut. We were sprawled in the closet floor entangled in clothes which had torn loose from the hangers when the smell of smoke drifted in. The house was burning. "What in the world is happening?" Amy screamed.

"Somebody finally pushed the button," I shouted back, "It's a nuclear attack. Stay here while I see what's on fire." I flung open the door and fought my way across the debris littering the house to the kitchen, grabbing a fire extinguisher out of the cupboard by feel, still half blind. Broken glass crunched underfoot as I made a quick run through the house, seeking the fire. All the windows were gone, blinds hanging tattered, curtains shredded. The ones in the east facing bedroom were burning on the floor. I decided to save the extinguisher and using the curtain rod threw them out the shattered windows onto the ground, then ran around and dragged them away from the house. The paint on the east side of the house was scorched and what few shingles that remained were smoking a little, but nothing else appeared to be burning.

The view to the east was a look into hell. It looked exactly like the dreams I had been having for years. I could see the area five miles away where Tommy lived with the trees now gone, it was awash in flame. I prayed it had been quick and painless. It appeared the nuke had gone off roughly over the city of Longview, about ten miles to the east of us.

Fire raged as far as the horizon, underlighting a still growing mushroom cloud which was not dissapating in the still night sky. The moon had turned red, red as blood. I could see fire growing in the old vacant house down the road, part of its roof caved in by the concussion. A single jet fighter thundered over at low altitude, his afterburners glowing. He was headed southwest, towards Mexico. I limped back in the house and told Amy to start cleaning out the big double closet, but she was crying and unresponsive. I sat down beside her on the floor and held her to my chest, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. "Look baby, we have got to get sheltered, the radiation will cut through this house like it isn't even here. If we don't get started immediately we'll be dead in just a few days at the most. If you will just clean the stuff out of the closet I'll gather up some supplies and see if I can seal the windows. You've got to be strong now, we will mourn later."

Amy finally nodded and wiped her eyes. "Ok, Nick, I'm getting a handle on it now." I stood back up and she started throwing stuff out of the large double closet, centrally located in the house. I gathered up bedding, food, lights, radio, batteries, etc. to put in with us. I was glad I had kept the shortwave and the portable AM-FM packed in the steel trash can just in case this ever really did happen, protecting them from the electromagnetic pulse.

When she had the project well underway and had calmed down enough to work alone I went to the garage and got some sheets of panelling to nail over the windows, then taped sheets of plastic over that. By the time I had finished Amy had drug the mattress off the bed into the closet and had what we absolutely needed, lights and water inside. I kicked a panel out of the closet door and taped the hepa filter out of the bedroom window air conditioner over it, then took the one from the big airconditioner in the living room and taped it over the hatchway in the closet which led to the attic.

She had hung the battery powered coleman lantern from the back clothes rack and the closet shelves were full of snack food, colas, bottled water and medicines. Within an hour of the initial explosions we were sealed into the closet with two weeks worth of water and food, and several buckets for waste positioned in the next room. I thanked God we had been spared, and for the fact I always keep my emergency water topped off. And I prayed for the dead. As I lay in the dark holding Amy all I could see in my mind was Nicoles and Maggies beautiful faces. I was fairly confident Maggie was ok, considering where she lived, but that didn't stop me form worrying over her.

I don't know when I finally drifted off to sleep, but when I wakened Amy was in my arms shivering and crying softly. My shoulder was damp from her tears and muted daylight was showing under the door jamb. I lay still for another hour until Amy wakened, just holding her tight to me. I wondered how big the attack had been, pretty large I figured if they had bothered to hit the medium sized city of Longview nearby. The city had some wartime type industry but it had to have been pretty far down on any target list. It was almost a certainty the flashes to the West had been Dallas-Ft. Worth going up in smoke, along with my daughter Nicole. I was trembling in rage at the thought, somebody would pay for this, if it took me the rest of my life. But for now my main goal had to be keeping us alive long enough to reach Maggie.

My leg was bruised badly and dried blood was caked on the side of my face from leaking out of my ear. Every time I exhaled I could hear air rushing through my right eardrum, and that whole side of my head hurt. Amy poked a cotton ball in my ear and cleaned the blood off my face for me as I wondered how much radiation we were getting, but there was simply no way to know. A lot, I figured, we had to get better shielding. When we were remodeling I had used lead impregnated sheetrock on the closet walls and roof, along with the back side of the door, the kind they use in x-ray rooms, but I wasn't confident at all it would stop the kind of radiation we would be getting when the fallout from the west reached us. Thinking on it I realized the only way to go was down. Straight down.

The house is pier and beam, an old frame farmhouse built shortly after the turn of the century of native white oak with a high peaked roof. From the walls of the closet the exterior walls are about twenty-five feet away in three directions, forty in the fourth. Well nothing to do but dig, we best get at it. I explained to Amy what I was going to do and she started pulling the stuff back out of the closet floor as I got dressed to go outside.

I put on my rainsuit slicker and rubber boots, then donned an Israli gas mask. I had bought a pair of them from the army navy store to use when I sprayed for termites and pest, and truth be told as an emergency item in the event the terrorist biological attacks they were always talking about actually came to pass. I also had potassium iodide tablets which we had started on the night before. Supposedly they blocked the absorbtion of radiation by the thyroid gland and helped prevent radiation sickness. Maybe all the kidding I had taken over the years for being a survivalist was going to be redeemed. I also strapped on my .45 automatic before going out to the garage and fetching my chain saw, two shovels, more plastic sheeting, some rope, and a bucket. I listened for any traffic while I was outside but heard nothing. The smoke was still rising off towards Longview, but the house down the street had pretty much burned itself out.

I came in through the back porch door and shed my boots and raingear, then through the porch door into the house itself. Using the chainsaw I ripped a four by four hole in the floor towards the back of the closet, then jumped in and began to dig, throwing the dirt around three edges of the hole underneath the house to build a berm. After a couple of hours the berm was complete, I was about four feet down, and the ground was getting harder as I encountered a seam of clay.

After taking a break I began tunneling back under the remaining closet floor, putting the dirt into the bucket and passing it to Amy to dump on the closet floor above. With the four feet of hole depth and the space of the house piering, I was about six and a half feet deep and making slow progress digging eastward. Finally I was exhausted, and Amy jumped into the hole to spell me off. Working in tandem we managed to excavate another four or five feet back by dark, and the dirt in the closet floor was now several feet thick. Enough until tomorrow, we layed the plastic sheeting in the hole, lined the walls, and settled in for the night. Tired, filthy, bruised, and battered, but still fighting.

Day two: I woke before daylight, so sore I can barely move. Every piece of my body hurts, and I creak when I move. The cotton in my ear has helped my eardrum, at least it doesn't whistle dixie when I breathe. Amy hasn't spoken since last night unless I ask her a direct question. As we sit in the darkness I hear something bang in the yard, and it instantly gets my adrenaline off the scale. "Stay here, I'll be right back." I said to Amy. I handed her the .45 automatic and grabbing my AR-15 I rushed out the door, shouldering the rifle as I exited the house. A singed and crazy looking doberman was knocking over my trash cans. He turned and bared his fangs at me, growling deep in his chest. I shot him in the head.

The gunshot was extraordinarily loud in the silence, reinforcing the fact we hadn't heard a car or plane since the night before last, and nothing but static on the radio. I wished I hadn't had to shoot the dog. Now I had to get rid of it. I donned my improvised radiation suit again and dumped the trash out of the overturned can, inserted the dog, then taped the lid shut with duct tape. Maybe that will contain the smell and keep off the flies until I can stay out longer. Amy had watched the whole thing without uttering a sound from the doorway, the .45 hanging loosley in her hand. I know what she is thinking. Her entire family lived in Ft. Worth. She was slowly going into withdrawal and I was at a loss how to snap her out of it.

I went in the house and made coffee on the coleman stove, then resumed digging. I had to cut another hole in the floor by lunch, this one in the bedroom over the extended hole. It was slowing me down too much to have to carry the dirt back to Amy at the old hole and I wanted her down inside with me where the radiation would be less. I had drug the barbque pit into the back porch room, and the the meat from the fridge was slow smoking on it. I went in to check on it and put Amy's favorite tape in the portable cassette player. It was full of blank spots, I guess the EMP had partially erased it. Looking out the door I could see flakes of ash falling like grey snow. I guessed the fallout from Dallas had arrived, so I got back in the hole with Amy and left the meat to smoke.

I was worried sick over my family, as was Amy over hers. I wanted to take some of the radiation pills to our neighbors, but I kept hoping some of the family members would show up and we'd need them. The days drug by, still no sounds of traffic, no radio signals, just a hole in the dirt and a wife who I feared was slowly losing her mind. Two weeks spent in a plastic lined dirt hole under the double closet. Two weeks of static puntuated by flashes of intense white noise on all radio bands. We only went out long enough to relieve ourselves and to bring more bottled water and food back inside. Every couple of days I would pour water for Amy while she washed her hair and then she would do the same for me. I was afraid we would get lice sleeping in the hole.

The stench was unrelenting. All the cattle in the pasture had died and their ripening carcasses rotted uneaten even by buzzards in the field. I guess the buzzards had died too. I had only one case of filters for our Israeli gas mask, and couldn't squander them to quelch odor, so we used Vicks under our noses. No cars, no trains, no planes broke the silence, only occaisional gunshots in the distance. After the second week Amy started talking again. I was worried for several days she was going catatonic on me.

I had killed time in the hole by working on my CAR-15. Using a set of plans downloaded off the internet pre Y-2k I had built a simple device called a lightning link with my portable drill, hacksaw, and some needle files. Basically it was just an old bottle opener with a couple of holes in it and the ends cut off, then another small piece made from a piece of a saw blade which inserted through the rear hole. It just dropped into the action and converted it to full automatic.

When I had finished with that and tested it I started in prying the flares out of rounds for my 37 mm Bushmaster grenade launcher and refilling them with a little extra powder and bundles of flechettes wrapped in newspaper and sealed watertight with candle wax. The Bushmaster is a large shotgun barrell that mounts under the rifle barrel of the AR-15. It has a separate trigger which is right in front of the rifles magazine, which acts as the pistol grip when firing it. Both the lightning link and the flechette loads were illegal, but I didn't figure the ATF was going to be coming around checking after all this. But the Russian army might, and I wanted to be ready to give them a warm welcome. There was also the impending threat of starving looters. It wouldn't be long before people started to get desperate. Amy wasn't too interested in what I was doing, she was reading her Bible and crying a lot.

There was still not a flicker of electricity, nor any dial tone. Nor had anyone come around to check on us. The trucks and the car were all unstartable, but the generator and the four wheeler both ran. I guess the alminum storage building shielded them enough from the EMP to limit the damage to their electronics. I have a spare alternator and distributer ignition for the old truck packed in a steel trash can in the alminum shed, but have feared to spend enough time outdoors to install it. And we could be hit again at any time.

I rode the four wheeler down to the only neighbors we have on this rural cul de sac and gave them some potassium iodide and a jug of unscented bleach to purify water. I had finally given up on Nicole or any of Amy's family showing up, If they hadn't made it by now they weren't coming. It was a half minute drive, clad in knee high rubber boots, gas mask, rain slicker, and rubber gloves. I don't know them, just have spoken a few times when we met at the mail boxes at the end of the road. They live past us in rental property at the end of the road and this was the first time I had ever been to their place.

There were two houses, one a frame farmhouse similar to our own, the other a nearly demolished trailer knocked off its blocks. The father, 10 year old son, and now dead mother (Killed by flying glass in the attack) lived in the frame. I remember her name was Stacy, or something similar. The dead mother's little brother had lived in the trailer, he was now dying of internal injuries and gangrenous broken bones in his dead sisters wrecked house. The husband had put his wifes body in the deep freeze. The food in it had ruined anyway and he couldn't stay outside long enough to dig a grave. It was a better burial than untold millions of others were getting. I was getting ready to leave when the father asked me my name. "Nickoli Krushev, most people call me Nick." He spat on the floor and handed me my bottle of pills back. "Goddamn Russian" I just looked at him for a moment and turned away. My family had been in Texas since the revolution against the Czar. Back to the hole.

DAY 15:

My hair is falling out and my gums are bleeding a little. I can taste low grade salt in my mouth. At least I don't have any burns or sores on my body. Amy is fairing better, I have made her stay indoors throughout. I had to shoot the cats. They were dying horribly.

Day 17: I think.

Amy and I were eating lunch when we heard gunshots from the neighbors direction. I took my AR-15 and snuck down to his house in my bright yellow slicker suit. Everybody was dead. The Father had put little brother and son's bodies in the freezer on top of his wife, then climbed in and shot himself. I was glad I had worn my gas mask, it wasn't a pretty sight. I slammed the lid and ran outside, tearing off the mask as puke filled my mouth. When I had heaved all that was in me I went back home. Back in the hole.

Day 18:

The short wave was scanning stations and finally locked on something other than loud static. A frantic voice reporting columns of Russian and Chinese armor moving along I-20 outside Sweetwater, Tx. Headed East, towards us. No report of any U.S. forces opposing them. How in the hell did they get so far so fast? I wondered. I noted the frequency and locked the shortwave on it. If the Chinese were also involved, which I had suspected from the beginning, we were in really deep trouble. Amy was looking at me with fear in her eyes and asked, "What are we going to do Nick? They're coming straight at us."

I gave her a hug and said, "We'll just go ahead and leave now for Maggies place, then from there into the mountains to Jerry's cabin. I'll go get started fixing the truck right now if you will box up some clothes for us and start stacking them by the door."

She nodded and gave me a kiss, then came outside to help me push the truck into the garage. I dug my spare parts out of the alminum storage building and began changing the electronics out. It isn't much of a job. The alternator has only two bolts and the distributor has only one. On these older model Chevrolets the whole ignition system is contained inside the distributor, no computers at all. I'd had this old truck ever since before Amy and I had gotten married four years ago, and she had pestered me to buy a new one for a long time but finally gave up. I just put a new engine and transmission in it and kept on driving. My work truck was a late model Z-71 but the back half of it was full with a diesel tank, gas powered compressor, and tool boxes. Not that it mattered, it had a half dozen computers in the system and every one of them was fried to a crisp, as was Amy's LeSabre.

Day 19:

The truck is running again. I wish I had replaced the headers and glass packs with Midas mufflers. It seems abominably loud in the stillness. Both tanks are full and I rigged up an old electric fuel pump to drain other vehicles tanks.

Only one more transmission on the shortwave band. More armor, he estimates several hundred tanks with full support equipment and artillery. Dozens of heavily armed communist helicopters are flying through the area and jet fighters are patrolling the skies. The radio operator says he is going offline to try and stash his equipment for later reports as the Russians are searching houses in the area.

I resumed packing the truck with supplies and weapons. The sixteen foot trailer is also hooked up. I guess my neighbor won't be needing it any more. (the trailer that is). I debated taking the four wheeler but it just takes up too much room and is just something else I'd have to feed gas to. It breaks down just about every time I use it anyway. Tomorrow I am going to knock the windows out of the truck and fill the doors with sackcrete to bulletproof them. Then we leave, destination Arkansas. First to my daughters house, then on up into the buffalo river mountains to my probably now dead friends cabin. And all those supplies and weapons cached there.

The next day dawned with a fresh chill in the air, and a low overcast. It had rained heavily during the night for several hours, which I was thankful for. At least most of the ash would be washed off the roads. I think it has been twenty three days since the attack, but my watch doesn't work any more and I'm not positive of the exact date. The background static is starting to recede from the shortwave, as the ionization of the atmosphere fades. I can pick up garbled snatches of conversation scanning through the frequencies, mostly unintelligible due to weak signal or foreign language. One signal is clear and strong though. A Russian accented voice repeating over and over that the U.S. launched an unprovoked attack on the Russian people, that they counterattacked in self defense, and that the American government had since surrendered unconditionally. 3 bald faced lies. I wondered if that was what the history books would say.

Using a crowbar I knocked the door glasses and the rear winshield out of my 78 chevy half ton, then pried the window facings far enough apart to pour the sackcrete in. I was mixing it in a five gallon bucket so it took about an hour to fill them all the way up. Using a four pound hammer I knocked the door strikers off and used bunji cords looped through the window holes and rear window casing to secure them closed. Hopefully if anyone shot at us we could duck down below the level of the window jambs and the concrete would stop the bullets long enough for us to either exit the vehicle on the far side or just punch the gas and drive blindly out of their field of fire.

Next I used my air chisel powered off the generator and air compressor to cut a large hole in the passengers side roof going back completely into the rear window frame. This gave me room to stand up and fire from inside the truck or roll over into the bed where I had left a hollow in the piled supplies. Amy would be doing the driving.

I decided to leave the front windshield in, and draped chicken wire over the whole of the cab, winshield, and emty door glass holes. As an afterthought I ran a piece of rope through the release lever on the trailer hitch and payed it out to the passengers side of the truck, hoping I could dump the trailer on the run if violent maneuvers or more speed were needed. I disassembled my CAR-15 and Amy's Carbine AR-15 and put them in the two bug out packs lashed to the front hood with bunji cords, along with a dozen loaded magazines and two .357 mag revolvers. If we had to leave the whole rig on the run at least we would have a chance to grab our kits. I had lashed two spare tires to the front grill on top of the bumper, hopefully they would provide some protection for the radiator and engine without overheating the truck.

In the front seat I had my M-14, my H-BAR AR-15, and a Remington 870 riot gun loaded with 3 inch slugs. Also a half dozen pistols of various calibers and actions. Behind me in the bed rested my 7mm Weatherby magnum in case I had to make any long range shots to shake off pursuit.

By a little after 2 in the afternoon we were finally ready to roll, I could think of nothing else that would better our chances, and we were loaded with all we could haul that would concievably be of any use. The trailer was primarily loaded with sacks of beans, rice, corn, flour, and sugar which had been stored in the garage, along with a large amount of canned goods, spices, salt and three fifty gallon drums of fresh drinking water. In the back of the truck I had our clothes, the generator, weapons, and several thousand rounds of assorted ammunition along with our camping gear and the batteries from our other vehicles and my hand tools.

We encountered our first car stalled on the side of the road by the EMP a half mile from the house after tuning onto the main county road. They grew more numerous as we approached Gladewater, and soon people were coming out in their yards as they heard us approach. Not a lot of people, but still some. None of them looked anywhere near as healthy as us. I told Amy to slow as we passed anyone standing out, and I shouted to them that Russians and Chinese were coming this way from the West as we passed. Several bolted and ran for their doors at the news, others just gave a glazed stare.

In town we passed the local Brookshires, its plate glass windows blasted out, and I wasn't surprised to see people rolling near empty shopping carts down the sidewalks. Everyone had a gun, or so it seemed. Of course this is Texas. Leaving Highway 80 west we turned North on 271, next stop Gilmer. Pulling my 4 wheeling goggles down over my eyes I told Amy to keep her speed up as best she could while dodging stalled vehicles, and I climbed into the pickup bed with my M-14.

CHAPTER TWO, A FEW GOOD MEN

Gilmer hadn't been hit at all. A small East Texas City, and Upshur county seat, it's lack of population and industry had so far spared it. Not so from the fallout though. Many of the people we saw as we passed through town looked to be suffering from radiation sickness, and several looked desperate enough to try and take the truck until they noticed me standing in the back with that M-14 held at the ready. Amy stopped next to a congregation of several people in front of the local Baptist Church, and I passed on the news I had, such as it was. There were several old pickups in the parking lot, apparently the only vehicles in town which had survived the EMP. One of the men kept staring at my M-14 and finally said, "I carried one just like that back in Nam, it's a fine rifle." He asked where we were headed, and I told him the Arkansas mountains. "You planning on fighting them communist?" he asked. I replied "Damn right I am."

"Well I know you don't know me, but I am a Deacon in this church, which these men will vouch for, and if you'll have me I want to throw in with you. The country around here just isn't suitable for guerilla fighting. I'm Thomas Kendrick, this is my son Andy. It won't take us more'n an hour to load up our guns and gear and we'll be ready to roll. That 68 ford is ours, and it's already full of gas."

I looked him up and down, at six foot two and about 235 lbs he was in damn good shape for a 60 year old man. "You got any food?" I asked.

"Plenty." he replied.

I dropped back down into the cab and conferred quietly with Amy for a minute, then popped back up to speak. "Well don't just stand there flappin your gums Deacon, we got miles to go before dark." And so the convoy began to build. I'd had it in the back of my mind that we could probably take in quite a few refugees up at the mountain valley, but I hadn't anticipated we would be picking them up along the way. I guessed we would have to go to the valley first and from there to Maggies. Unless something unforseen happened it would only add a half day to the trip.

The Deacon lived only a couple of blocks from the Church, and they were nearly through loading their truck and trailer when a Hopped up 57 Chevy came roaring down the road and did a power slide into the yard. I was sitting in a lawn chair sipping on a hot coke with my rifle laid across my lap, studying a map of Texas. At the sound of the approach I flipped the safety off and moved to stand behind my truck, motioning Amy to join me. She grabbed her AR-15 and came on the run.

A gangling youth in his early twenties stepped out of the car, hands held wide of his body. I noted that he was dressed in military fatigues, down to the polished combat boots. "Hold your fire Mr., I aint armed, least not on me anyway."

Deacon stepped from the inside of the doorway, a 45-70 lever-action in hand. "It's allright, that's my nephew Ray, he's national guard." A brief pow-wow confirmed what I expected. We now had three vehicles in our convoy, and had gained an M-1 tank commander. He didn't have much in the way of food supplies, but Andy assured me he would feed him out of his stock. He did have a nice car and a very functional looking AK-47 though.

Rays daddy and mom had passed some years back in an auto wreck, and he was looking to stick with his kin and put some payback on the Russians. Weren't we all? I was less than thrilled by having all these unknown tagalongs, but Amy wisely said they looked like good people to her, and we needed all the force we could muster to make safe passage over the next two hundred miles. Jerry's place was durn near into Missouri, way up north in Arkansas. Gary North country. Unfortunately Jerry lived in Longview, and it had been obliterated in the initial attack. I seriously doubted he was still alive, but if he was I knew damn well where he was headed.

At about 4:30 we rolled our little caravan out of Gilmer, cutting across 155 to 259 North. Forty five minutes or so later we rolled into my brothers place outside Dangerfield. He had sheltered in his cellar and was in pretty good shape. I told him what little I knew and he enthusiastically agreed to come with us. Now I had a bed gunner to relieve me in my truck, and an excellent jack of all trades to boot. Rick had been divorced for several years, and at age 46 he wasn't looking to get married again anytime soon. The small cabin he occupied had been built by him from the ground up, along with the wooden bridges and cedar rail fences along his creek. Most of us would have to sleep outside, but we were going to have to get used to that sooner or later anyway. Tomorrow we would head for Arkansas.

Ray wasn't real happy about it but we put Ricks' fifteen chickens in the back seat of the 57 chevy and lashed a fifty gallon drum of hen scratch on the roof. By mid morning we had breakfasted, finished loading Ricks gear and were on the road again. All Rick had for a gun was an old Ruger 10-22, so I gave him my AR-15 H-Bar and a Colt single action .45 to stick in his belt. This group was getting big enough and heavily armed enough to lay down a wall of lead if the need arose.

The going was slow and it was noon by the time we reached Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Most of the cars had either pulled off into the grass when they stalled or at least into the slow lane, but there were a lot of semi's still in the highway. I was surprised to see them dead but I guess they had computers in their diesel fuel injection systems too. The people we saw in this area were a lot healthier looking as the main footprint of the Dallas-Ft. Worth fallout had gone south of them. I decided to top off all the fuel tanks and we spent the rest of the afternoon pumping and siphoning gas out of stalled vehicles. We also appropriated a half a dozen batteries out of new models we ran across, and found a Smith and Wesson .40 automatic pistol in the glove box of one. Rick took it and gave me my .45 back, so I gave the .45 to Ray.

I decided we didn't need to try to press on into the mountains in the dark, so we made camp in Beavers bend State park, siezing a group of cabins in a circle for the night. There didn't seem to be any park rangers on duty, I guess they had figured out there wouldn't be any more government paychecks in the mail. We built a campfire and were sitting around a picnic table getting aquainted when an engine rumbled to life somewhere not too far off. It looked like a Chinese fire drill as people and guns scattered into the brush and cabins around the circle, and in a minute or two an old Winebago rolled up to the drive. I eased out into the firelight, rifle held loosely down by my side and motioned for the occupants to step down. It was an elderly couple, the tags on the Winebago were from Illinois. It looked like they were headed our way too, at least for a while. The pain behind my temples was reaching new levels.

Once more gathered around the picnic table, we set about getting aquainted again and sharing what little information we had. Amy and Mrs. Cairns (Ida), the elderly lady from the Winebago, opened cans of beef stew and mixed vegetables to make a mulligan in a large pot over the campfire. Mr. Cairns (Tony) broke out a bottle of Canadian Mist, half gallon size, and despite the disaproving look of Deacon I poured myself a good strong drink and broke out the shortwave, setting it to scan while we talked.

Tony and Ida were from Joliet, Ill., and had been snowbirding down San Antonio way during the winter visiting their daughter and her family. They left San Antonio headed back to Illinois just two days before the attack. They were camped at Lake o' the Pines when the attack came, north of Longview Tx., and had made their way this far North before the ash fallout started. Apparently the alminum shell of the Winebago had provided sufficient protection to the points system 440 chrysler and on board Onan generator to keep them operable. But his fuel was running low, along with his food supplies. They had expected to find some stalled vehicles in the park when he rolled in on fumes to siphon gas out of, but it had been shut down for the winter and nary a vehicle was to be found. We were their answer to prayers, Bless Mary. And yes, they were both devout Roman Catholics.

Our musings were interrupted as the shortwave locked onto a good strong signal in mid sentence, "Chinese forces advancing towards Oklahoma City, Reports of Cuban special forces landing on the West Coast of Florida, and Russian combined armies advancing near Dallas. Chemical weapons have been used against small cities along with tactical nuclear warheads. Reports from the West coast indicate aerial spraying of biological agents with widespread outbreaks of anthrax. Remnants of the 7th calvary are regrouping after their mauling at Waco, withdrawing to the East to link up with elements which survived the Ft. Polk attack. Contact has been lost with the carrier Kennedy. It is not clear if they were destroyed or have gone silent to elude detection. As far as we know they and the Jimmy Carter were our last surviving carrier groups, let us pray for their continued safety.

Following is an updated list of major cities which were hit in the initial attack. It is far from complete, but many regions of the country remain silent and we have no idea of their status. Washington D.C., New York City, Los angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, St. Louis, Albany, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Shreveport, New Orleans, Tampa, Little Rock, Memphis, Montgomery, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pontiac, Kansas City, Cheyenne, Denver, Albequerqe, Phoenix, Tuscon, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Boise, El Paso, Dayton, Cleveland, Toledo, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Ft. Lauderdale, Baton Rouge, Tuscaloosa, Bangor, San Diego, Fargo, Baltimore, Richmond, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Corpus Christi, Buloxi, Great Falls, Duluth, Green Bay, Atlantic City, and Boston. We will continue to update and repeat this list as we can on this frequency.

Overseas the best we can discern is that the European Union surrendered en masse under threat of nuclear anihilation and thousands of Russian and Chinese tanks have rolled in unnopposed to occupy them. Israel continues to remian officially neautral and is promising to use massive nuclear force if attacked. Chinese forces have siezed both the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal and are overrunning Egypt out of the Sudan while staging invasion forces against the U.S. out of Mexico. The Pakistanis are fighting desperately to hold the Kashmir passes, but the situation is degrading by the hour as India continues to use nuclear weapons. Both North and South Korea have been blasted into oblivion. We must pause in our broadcast to relocate our transmitter, but will be back on the air as soon as possible. May God have mercy on us all, Death to the Communist. From somewhere in the Rockies this is Pete Williams, goodnight and goodluck."

You could have heard a pin drop at fifty paces for about five minutes after the static set in. "Jesus Christ" I finally said. "I had no idea it was that bad." The radio continued to scan, but all we heard were Russian and Chinese voices.

We turned in early and Rick took first watch until about midnight then woke me up and I replaced him. I picked a spot in a shallow drainage ditch behind a large oak tree which looked down the driveway leading to the cabins but also had a good view back into the circle of cabins themselves. I had Deacons wind up alarm clock and I would wake him to spell me off at three.

It set in a thunderstorm sometime during the night. I pulled my slicker tighter around me and hunched my shoulders against the wet and the cold. Damn rain, I silently cursed. Reaching into my pocket I pulled out a small set of pliers and dropped the night vision scope off the CAR-15 and replaced it into its waterproof bag. Piece of crap was useless in a wet environment. As I stuck the bag in my belt pouch I caught movement out of my peripheal vision down the side of the entrance road. Slow and easy I cocked the underslung 37mm grenade launcher, readying a bundle of flechettes to blast out of the mammoth tube.

I eased my binoculars up to my eyes, waiting for another lightning flash to reveal what had spooked me. Adrenaline had my hands shaking a little, and my breath came in short ragged gasp. Brightness stuttered through the rain spotted lenses, and my blood ran colder still. There were three of them, and they were loaded for bear from what I could see in the brief time the lightning lasted. I thumbed the safety off on the CAR-15, then double checked to make sure the safety was off on the launcher mounted under its barrel. They were on the opposite side of the drive from me, about thirty yards away moving forward slowly. Too scattered to get them all in one blast, this was going to get ugly.

Slow and easy I snuggled the rifle into my shoulder, grateful I had sprayed my yellow slicker suit down with olive drab and flat black paint after my last inept attempt at stealth. Twenty yards now to the point man, plainly visible as a darker shadow among shadows. Lightning flashed again and the pump shotgun was staring staight at me, held at hip level. My finger tightened on the launchers trigger. Ten more yards. This was gonna be a point blank winner take all knife fight. At least as far as the four of us were concerned. Fifteen yards, and I stopped breathing. Step, listen, step. This guy knew what he was doing. I hoped these home-brewed flechette rounds worked.

Ten yards behind the point man the other two cautiously advanced, one with a shotgun, the other with an assault rifle of some type. Step. Listen. Step. WHAM!!!!! A huge cloud of flame and smoke blasted out of the launcher, and I instantly slid my left hand forward on the tube while pulling the CAR's trigger and sweeping the gun to the right. The gun roared like a chain saw as 63 grain soft point slugs exited the barrel too fast to count, too fast to hear. Pausing my swing as the muzzle covered the second guy I hosed him for a half a second then shifted a little farther to the right as flame erupted from the third guys weapon. Another second of hosing and I was empty. Two seconds, thirty rounds. Red dots flashed before my closed eyes as I rolled back behind the tree ejecting the empty magazine with my right hand and grabbing a fresh one off the pouch laying on the ground beside me. I slammed it home with my left hand then rammed the butt of the rifle into the dirt to unlatch the bolt, chambering a round.

Completing my roll I was now on the other side of the tree with the CAR to my shoulder, eyes open and night vison partially restored as rain sizzled on the overheated barrel. I was looking at three bodies cooling in the road as the lightning flashed again. I slid the launcher tube forward ejecting the spent 37mm round and fished a new one out of my pocket. The tube made a very satisfying click, when I snapped it shut.

Sometime in the morning darkness faded away, but the rain remained. We stood silent, surveying the carnage I had wrought the night before. It wasn't a pretty sight. The flechette round had decimated the point man, most of the charge taking him in the face. The other two looked even worse. Soft point bullets don't make pretty exit wounds.

We salvaged one shotgun ( a model 500 Mossberg defender), a Browning Hi Power 9mm, an HK-91 .308, and a model 10 Smith and Wesson .38. The shotgun the second guy had been toting was hit by two rounds and the action shattered. It was Winchester model 1200, I never liked them anyway. We didn't bury the bodies, and we didn't cook breakfast. After dumping fifteen gallons of gas in the Winebago from my jerry cans we hit the road. Everybody was tired, as no one had gotten any sleep after my little firefight. But sticking around here was clearly not an option, those guys undoutably had kinfolks around who weren't going to be happy with us at all.

We did stop at the boat ramp near the dam just long enough to top off the fifty five gallon water barrel we had been using, adding some bleach to purify the very clear water. Beavers Bend is a very deep lake built in a mountain valley and there hadn't been any nearby nuke detonations so I wasn't too concerned about radiation in the water. Once we reached Jerry's place water wouldn't be a problem, as we had both a well and live springs feeding out of the cliff face.

We exited the park and headed back to the main highway, looking for another vehicle to get fuel out of for the Winebago. That monster was going to be a constant chore to keep fed. Rounding the last curve before the main highway intersection Ray's brake lights suddenly flashed on and he skidded to a stop, Amy barely able to avoid ramming him in the rear. And thereby knocking him into the Armored personel carier parked astride of the road. I guess the park rangers had decided to come back to work.

They had us cold. Two soldiers with M-16's stood at each end of the apc, while a fifth stood behind a coupula mounted heavy machinegun atop the vehicle. Once again I was looking straight down the gate of hell at point blank range. This was getting just a little too frequent for my taste. Only I wasn't looking down the tube. Something was mounted on the end of the machinegun's barrel, something blocking the bore. I cut my eyes to the M-16's and a slow grin began to spread across my face. "What the hell are you grinning at?" Amy demanded.

"We just captured an APC." I replied. It only took a one second burst over their heads to convince them of that fact. Bullets trump blanks anyday. It was a sad story. Out on night maneuvers at Ft. Leonardwood Kansas, they had been on the outer fringe of the nuke burst. No warning they said, just a high pitched squeal on the radio and ten minutes later hell erupted. They had been in a hide position in a ravine, slepping inside the APC because it had been a cold night, and when the dust settled they pulled out to find the rest of their recon squad had been slaughtered in the blast. After salvaging some MRE's from the wrecked vehicles they moved outside the blast area and waited for someone to tell them what to do. It was a long wait.

After two weeks they finally started picking up garbled transmissions on their military frequencies, and eventually pieced together that the seventh calvary, or what little remained of it, was in full retreat moving towards Fort Polk. Five of the guys decided to try and intercept the 7th, three others had just walked away. They had no ammunition for their guns, only blanks and blank adapters and laser designators. After making a wrong turn onto this road they had stalled the engine trying to get turned around and the batteries were too weak to restart it. Apparently the alternator had stopped working. It looked like those extra batteries we appropriated were going to come in handy sooner than I expected. I turned to the machinegunner and asked, "Will live 7.62 nato rounds work in those blank belts?"

"Yeah, but it's a real pain in the ass to unlink them and reload." He replied.

"Well it'll give you guys something to do while we change out the batteries anyway. There's a thousand rounds of .308 in those ammo cans right inside the tailgate. See if yall can't get a couple of hundred belted up anyway." "Yes Sir!" he replied, and snapped me a smart salute. I looked at him in bemused contemplation for a moment, then said, "and get those damned blank firing devices off your rifles. This child labor is killing me."

It took us a couple of hours to jury rig our car batteries into the APC. Luckily I had some extra terminal ends in my tool box or it wouldn't have worked at all. The big 24 volt batts in the APC just didn't have a cable arrangement which could be crossbread to 12 volt side post. We ended up hacksawing the cables and stripping them back, and even splicing in some heavy duty 220 volt extension cord pieces to make up for missing sections. But make it work we did, we were up and running. There was nothing wrong with the alternator, the belt was just too loose.

In the course of the repair work it came out they only had about twenty miles of fuel onboard, and if they didn't get somewhere to service the tracks they weren't going much farther than that anyway. One sharp turn and this puppy was going to be shoeless. With those thoughts in mind we headed down the main highway with me in the lead. The APC would only run about forty five MPH without over revving the engine, so it wasn't like we were burning up the highway. Ten miles down the road we came to a roadside garage and gas station. Right out in the middle of nowhere. The sign on the door said closed.

I shot the lock off the door and we started looking for the circuit breaker panel, while the soldiers broke into the garage to scavenge some grease guns and hand tools. It only took a few minutes to find the panel, and the breakers for the pumps were clearly marked, thank God. Rick and I toted my 5000 watt Coleman generator inside and wired it into the pump breakers. Within fifteen minutes we were filling up the Winebago, and we dumped five gallon cans of diesel into the APC while the crew worked on it. It took several hours more to load all the potato chips, cokes, candy bars, and assorted junk food into the Winebago and APC. We even took the coke machine and strapped it to the top of the APC. A cold drink would be nice this summer, and with a little work we could recycle the same two quarters forever.

I was munching on a stick of summer sausage and crackers when Corporal Sanders walked up and said they were finished with the maintainence on the tracks and had blown their air filters and changed the oil in the engine. They were ready to roll. "Well Corporal, gather up your men, it's decision time."

I put it to them straight. "The 7th cav is shot to Hell. This APC aint no match for communist main battle tanks and Hind helicopters. That popgun yall are toting is worse than useless against armor, which yall full well know. Hell that ammo I give you aint even armor piercing. Now me and these folks are heading Northwest into the Buffalo River area of Arkansas, back in the mountains. I got a place where we can hide, lick our wounds, and gather up a fighting size outfit while we size up the situation. Running down to Shreveport and getting shot to hell aint going to accomplish a damn thing, we need to study on the deployment of the commies and find the exact points where we can hit them and do the most damage.

I can't make you go with us. If yall are in a hurry to die, well that's your business. If you do decide to go I'll even give you some ammo for those M-16's to go along with the machinegun ammo, and wish you the best of luck. But I'm asking you man to man to throw in with us. That APC and you men are a hell of a recruiting tool. We got grub, and are more than willing to share it. There's more cached where we're headed. Not a lot, but plenty to get us into fall harvest. Yall talk it over, and whatever you decide, there's no hard feelings. But if you do come with us, I want to make this perfectly clear right now. I am in command until I reliquish that authority to someone more able or I am killed. We will not debate strategy past the point where I make a decision. There will be no half baked rouge operations which endanger the safety of the group or the location of our retreat. This is a paramilitary unit, and it will funtion as such. Take your time, we're staying here for the night." I walked away and left them to hash it out.

About two hours later they came in a group. The rain had quit and I was lounging under the pump island canopy while my wet clothes steamed on the price signs drying in the sun. It felt good to be in bermuda shorts and sipping on a cold beer. Tony had thrown a couple of cases in his Winebago's icebox and the Onan was chugging away. Rick and Ray were on guard, positioned a hundred yards down the highway in each direction. Deacon and Andy were putting new spark plugs in his truck. Amy and Ida were cooking supper. Not like old times, but similar. And that was good enough for now.

I twisted the top off a fresh brew and waited to hear them out. Corporal Sanders looked like the kid he was. Close cropped red hair, freckles on his nose, probably not a day over twenty-one. I still didn't know his first name and I wasn't at all sure I wanted too either. There was a good chance I would be burying him somewhere down the line. He stood kicking in the dirt, hands in pockets while the others slouched nervously behind him. I took a long pull off my beer, then dropped the bolt carrier and bolt back into the open action of my CAR. It was clean enough. He waited in silence while I put the magazine back in, chambered a round, checked the safety, and closed the ejection port cover. I was starting to reload the grenade launcher when he asked, "That a 37mm?" "yep" I replied.

"Will it handle a six inch round?"

"Yep, if it's high low."

"We got willy pete and smoke in the APC for our outboard launchers. Couple of cases. Might be you could use a few rounds?"

"Thanks, they may come in handy."

"What time you want to leave in the morning?" He asked.

"Early, maybe eight oclock." I said.

He paused a moment and said, "What do we call you? Captain, commander?"

"Just call me Nick."

Highway 259. The next day around three or four in the evening near the Oklahoma-Arkansas State line.

We rounded a slow bend in the highway, far below the panoramic view of a winding mountain river unfolded, along with something else. I grabbed the walkie talkie and ordered the column to halt, fishing for my binoculars in the bed of the truck. I turned the power down to 10 and focused on the four helicopters moving lazily along the river below us. "Everybody out of the vehicles and into the woods." I ordered over the walkie talkie. Sanders men came boiling out the back hatch of the APC and sprinted down the line passing the word. The red stars on the Hinds were plainly visible through my binocs, if they saw us we were toast.

There was probably five hundred feet of difference between our elevations, but the glaring white paint on the Winebago was going to stick out like a sore thumb if they looked up this way. Not to mention Ray's candy apple red 57 chicken coop. Taking my M-14 I hunkered down behind the steel guard rail and fished a winchester cigar out of my breast pocket. Rick sipped quietly on a beer at my side, the HK-91 resting like an old friend in his hands. "Wonder what they're doing way off up here?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.

I just shrugged, watching tensely as they drew abreast of us then began to move away in the direction we had come from. "I don't know, but they wouldn't be down in that valley unless they were trying to stay below radar. Somebody with some punch must still be operating around here somewhere." The sound of the rotors had a hollow sound as it echoed at us from every direction off the mountain sides. Rounding a bend they dissapeared from view, and I thanked God we hadn't been seen.

We all gathered at the rear of the APC, and I modified our deployment. Better late than never, but my mistake could have cost us dearly. "Ray, you got the fastest rig, I want you to take one of the walkie talkies and move out about a mile ahead of us. Check in every minute or two, just a click on the mike will do unless you got something to report. Take private Wilks with you as a gunner. Everybody else maintain a hundred yards spacing between your vehicle and the one in front of you. Wilks, you ride with your head out the window and keep an eye on the sky. I don't want any more surprises like the last one. If those Hinds had spotted us we would have been slaughtered right here on this mountain. Even a fifty caliber will just bounce off of them. If we do have to engage one lead him like a duck and try to hit his rotor control assembly. That is the only place they are vulnerable. Ok, let's move out."

"What do you want us to do if we run into something?" Ray asked.

"Let me know what you are facing and stay disengaged if possible. Hightail it back here to the main force even if you have to do it in reverse." I paused and made sure he was looking me straight in the eye. "If it's overwhelming force I want you to delay them as long as possible while the rest of the group reinforces, shelters, or retreats depending on the situation. Do you understand?"

Ray and Wilks exchanged a glance, looking a little queasy. "Got it boss." he replied. Knowing full well I had just ordered him to commit suicide for the sake of the rest of the group if nessescary.

They walked away while I studied on where to aquire some stinger missiles and anti-aircraft weaponry. If those Hinds were going to be operating in these mountains we simply had to have it. Looked like we would be paying Ft. Knox a visit after we got settled in at the sanctuary, unless something closer came to mind. Surely some of the weaponry had survived the nuclear blast. Or maybe we could ambush a Russian or Chinese unit and get what we needed. Somehow I figured we'd be doing both before all was said and done.

We descended out of the Quachita mountains into Arkansas, then turned north for Ft. Smith. I was surprised to find groups of refugees moving North on the highway, walking and riding bicycles mostly. An occaisional old pickup or car, and even some older diesel trucks. With some reluctance I was forced to order Ray to come back to within visual range of the rest of the column. He was just too exposed with all this movement going on. I didn't figure anybody was going to molest him if the APC was in sight behind him though.

An hour before dark I halted the column for the night at another remote gas station, and we set about the routine of refueling the column and making camp for the night. This time the owner of the station was living in a residence behind the business, and he wasn't too thrilled about us commandeering his fuel, but really there was not a thing he could do about it.

We had picked up a following of a dozen more vehicles, seeking the protection of our column. This time it took till after dark to get everything fueled up, but we didn't take any of the foodstuffs in the store. The owner had been feeding refugees and his limited stock wouldn't last long at the rate he was handing it out. We did take some new dry 12 volt batteries off his shelves, and the acid to fill them with, along with a good stock of batteries for our portable radios and flashlights. I gave the owner the Browning Hi Power and a hundred rounds of 9mm as payment. It wasn't enough, but more than he expected.

Word from the refugees we had picked up was that Russian lead elements were siezing truck stops along I-20 and I-30 to the South, apparently using them to refuel their armored columns as they advanced. One reported seeing some A-10 Warthogs attack an advance unit, pretty much decimating it just outside Hope. I reflected on the irony of our decimated forces fighting Russians in the home town of Bill Clinton. Karma, I guess. I sincerly hoped he was at his office in Harlem when the nukes hit New York. It was his reversal of our nuclear response policy shich has led to this massive attack. Under the new guidelines we no longr launched when our satelites indicated incoming missiles, but instead waited for actual nuclear detonations on our soil before taking counter action. Of course this encouraged the Russians and Chinese to launch a massive first strike in an attempt to destroy our land based missiles and bombers before they could counterattack. In addition his propoganda about the soviet disarmament had lulled the American people into a false sense of security. While they kept quoting figures which showed the Russians had destroyed thousands of their missiles, they neglected to mention that the warheads had not been destroyed but were being mounted on newer more accurate boosters, and the American people were paying for it.

Our Trident submarines had half their missiles removed and the silos filled with concrete, and the remaining missiles were cut down to one warhead each instead of the ten they had carried in the past. The net effect of this was that our entire fleet of nuclear subs now carried less firepower than a single trident had carried before his administration took office, and he had removed the launch codes from the subs as well as removing all nuclear weapons from our surface fleet and European bases. Overall it was a recipe for disaster which smelled strongly of outright treason to me, especially when coupled to the Chinese campaign contributions, the loss of our nuclear warhead designs to them, the downsizing of our military, and the easing of restrictions on selling supercomputer technology to the communist superpowers. It made my blood boil just thinking about it.

We hit Ft. Smith just before dark the next day, our column now up to thirty vehicles. A hodgepodge of mostly junk that would have looked more at home in a wrecking yard. Which is exactly what Ft. Smith was. No neutron bombs here, just plain old hydrogen by the megaton.

Working our way around the loop was tedious, having to shove blasted cars and trucks out of our path several times with the APC. By the time we reached Van Buren it was well into the night and we camped in a shopping center parking lot which contained the remains of a Wal Mart Supercenter. There was a Ramada Inn across the road where everryone could at least sleep in a bed for the night. I ordered everyone to wear bandanas or pieces of cloth over their faces to limit breathing of residual radiation, and the looting ensued. Sam Walton had never seen such an eager crowd. Amy and I did some shopping ourselves, I even got a new watch.

Corporal Sanders men had the refueling operation well underway at a gas station located in the shopping center parking lot when we came back out. I sought him out and pulled him off to the side. "Corporal, somewhere in Ft. Smith is a National Guard Armory. I want you to see if you can find a phone book and a city map in that gas station, then plot me some compass coordinates off of existing landmarks so we can find it in all that rubble. We aint leaving here till I we either salvage what weapons survived, or satisfy ourselves that none did. Tomorrow morning we're going to take the APC and find out one way or the other. And make those people kill those lanterns. They will either practice light discipline or leave the group. I want four listening post set up on a mile out perimeter. North and south on the loop and east-west on the Interstate. Give the Walkie talkies to the West and South outpost and keep someone monitoring in the APC at all times.

Sanders saluted and said "Yes sir."

I turned to walk away and Sanders stopped me with a tentative "Sir?"

"Yes?" I replied

"One of my men lives about fifteen miles East of here. He should know the exact location of that Armory." He paused. "His daddy runs a cropdusting outfit. He says they got two dusters hangered in a metal building with a dirt runway and a 1500 gallon fuel tank trailer full of avgas. They also have aviation radios in the planes and a base station in the house. The base station probably got fried by the EMP, but we can communicate with the planes via our APC radios. He says he can land those dusters nearbouts anywhere and they got four hundred miles of range."

I blinked, trying to assimilate this information. Thank you God for sending me this group of men. Grinning like a possum I extended my hand to Sanders, which he accepted a little sheepishly. "Thank you very much, Corporal. That's the best news I've heard since my first daughter was born. By the way, what is your first name?"

He looked me in the eye and replied , " Phillip, most folk just call me Phil."

"Well Phil, maybe we can find some Lietenants bars in that armory. I think you just earned a promotion."

Phil grinned and said, "Well, I'll take it, but I don't know if the Army would approve."

"Screw the Army, you're in the Air force now. We can't have enlisted men piloting aircraft now, can we?"

He was still laughing as I walked away.

We netted a lot of useful stuff out of the Wal-Mart. Tons of food, ammunition, fuel pumps, 24 and 12 volt batteries, some generators, fuel cans, lanterns, blankets and sleeping bags, and most importantly of all a huge stock of medicines and medical supplies from the pharmacy. Which was well and good since one of our refugees was an MD. He had taken up residence with Tony and Ida in the Winebago, which was now our rolling clinic and ambulance.

Rick had taken some of the refugees and looted a large liquor store a couple of miles back down the road. They completely filled a semi trailer with cases of liquor and beer. When I found out I put a lock on the door of the trailer and assigned a guard to it, I didn't want to be leading a rolling beer bust.

The national guard Armory was mostly intact. It had been far enough outside the blast radius that it sustained only light structural damage. The two M1-A1 tanks , A Bradley fighting Vehicle, and three Humvees parked in front of it weren't damaged at all. Neither were the 100 M-16's, twenty M-14's, ten Berreta 9mm's, twelve grenade launchers, a half a dozen M-60's, five SAW's, fifteen LAW's, 150 flak jackets, web harnesses, thousands of rounds of ammunition, tents, or the two fifty caliber and four 30 caliber machineguns that went to the tanks.

We also scored four big troop trucks, two tank transporters, four truckloads of MRE's, a bunch of large field tents, and hundreds of camoflage uniforms, jackets, gas mask, filters, and Kevlar helmets. Along with fifteen local rural National Guard troops who had walked in and been hanging around the Armory waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Well I was more than willing to do that, and I did.

They readily threw in with us after being given the big picture. At least half of them had their wives and kids with them, and they were sick of eating MRE's and watching their kids hair fall out. Our doctor and medical supplies were definitely the deciding factor in their case. I didn't know how much good he could do them, but any care at all was better than nothing. I noticed Phil had indeed secured a new uniform and kevlar helmet with lietenants insignia on it. He was looking a lot older today than yesterday for some reason.

We were greeted with a resounding cheer from the refugee column when we returned, a column which had continued to grow while we were absent. There were probably at least forty more people milling around than when we left. I noticed we had picked up a school bus and a couple more semi trucks with reefer trailers also. What I really needed now was a couple of fuel tankers. Rick, Deacon, and Private Wilks set out to find some. I dispatched three of Sanders men and five of the local Guardsmen with the semis and their drivers to load whatever else they could from the Armory, and from a wrecked Super 1 grocery store on the way.

I got Ray off to the side, as my most experienced tank man, and told him, "Ray, I want you to put together some crews for those tanks. Grab whatever guardsmen and refugees that know anything at all about tanks and start training them. Make sure they are fully fueled and get the machineguns mounted and load the tanks out with ammo. You are the Armor commander from here on out."

"Gotcha" he replied with a grin and sloppy salute.

Getting Amy off to the side I asked her if she was willing to take over a job for me. "What is it?" she asked

"I need you to get some spiral notebooks out of the Wal-Mart and start taking the names and job skills down from all these refugees. I want to know how many in each party or family, what kind of vehicle if any, what weapons and ammunition they have, and their general health condition. Any with military experience I want you to give a copy of their skills to Ray. There are just too many for me to keep up with, I really need some help."

She smiled and replied. "Oh, I think I can handle that, but you're gonna owe me."

I grinned and slapped her on the butt. "Just hold that thought in mind." I said with a laugh. "Maybe we'll splurge on a room in that Ramada Inn tonight."

I changed into a military uniform and Sanders, myself, and Private Jennings struck out for Jennings fathers' private airfield in one of the troop trucks. In the back were four of the New Guardsmen we had picked up at the Armory. I had talked to Sanders privately before we left, and made it clear that whether Mr. Jennings agreed or not, we would be leaving with at least one of those planes and the fuel trailer. If things went badly I didn't want Jennings buddies from the APC to have to be the ones deciding loyalties in a situation that might get ugly fast.

Mr. Jennings airfield was exactly as advertised. The negotiations didn't go exactly as I envisioned, but we got what we wanted. One biplane cropduster and one monowing single seater, spare parts, fuel, trailer, and pilot training. In exchange we gave him his boy back. The last survivng son of the Jennings line was now discharged from the army. I even signed a piece of paper to make it official. Deacon brought the rest of the column up in the late evening and we camped in the field beside the runway.

The crop dusters were a lot different than the Cessnas I had flown with Jerry on the weekends before the attack. Pulling back on the stick as I banked to the right and increased throttle was an amazing experience. The responsiveness of the plane made it feel like an airborne Indy Car more than a plane. I ruddered out of the turn and rolled inverted, adding forward pressure to the stick to keep the nose from dropping. 100 feet below treetops whizzed past the canopy as Jennings instructions crackled in my headphones. Rolling back upright I firewalled the throttle, dove a little and then jerked the plane into a vertical climb. The big radial engine changed notes as I reached 1000 feet and the stall alarm began to sound. I ruddered over spinning the plane on its axis as the forward momentum played out, and let the plane fall as it gained airspeed, a huge grin plastered on my face. At 140 knots indicated and 600 feet I jerked back full on the stick and g force piled on top of me. The plane levelled at 50 feet and was screaming along at nearly 225 knots, well over the red line.

Ground effect and speed shuddered the wings as I throttled back and rode a little left pressure on the rudder to keep lined up on the runway in the sligh crosswind. The flaps dropped smoothly and I glided in for a two bounce touchdown at 70 knots. It was disconcerting to have to look around the engine cowling to see where I was going, and I soon learned to fishtail the plane for a better view. Jennings howled by over my open canopy, giving me the thumbs up from his cockpit. All this plane needs, I thought, is a good 20 mm gatling gun. But 50 cals' would have to do for now. We spent three days playing and learning with the planes, all six of us taking turns circling the field and doing maneuvers.

Mr. Jennings and his son trained the others in the biplane for two days before letting them solo in the mono. We could have used a month, but time was marching on and I had to get to Maggie. It had been a month at least since the attack and I figured her food was probably running low by now.

The morning we left I was surprised to find Phil had stayed up all night painting tiger stripes, a snarling mouth, and blood red eyes on the monowing. It looked particularly viscious over the canary yellow base coat. We stood grinning admiring his handiwork in the morning sun. "Phil, I don't know if that paint job is mil spec or not." I laughed.

"You said it flew like a tiger, might as well look the part." he replied.

We had mounted the two fifties off of the M-1 tanks under the wings of the monoplane after removing the spray bars. After some experimentation we had gotten them zeroed to more or less to converge their fire at four hundred yards. Our home made brackets weren't rigid enough and they rattled around pretty bad when firing. They were triggered by a steel cable pulley arangement attached to a lever in the cockpit. The gunsight was simply a red dot painted inside the front windscreen. Ammo fed to them from ammo boxes set into holes we had cut in the wing skin just outboard of the fuel tanks and held in place by bunji straps.

For now the biplane carried only an M-60 machinegun to be fired from the copilots seat. We would upgrade as the armament became available. To conserve fuel we flew the planes only in twenty mile hops, leapfrogging each other in advance of the column. When they had gotten fifteen miles or so out in front of us they would find a remote section of highway to set down on and wait for us to overtake them. Using this method we always knew what was in front of us for at least ten miles. In the afternoon one of the planes would refuel and perform maintanence while the other sat ready to scramble. It only took two more days to reach the retreat, and we began to dig in.

CHAPTER THREE SCAVENGERS
The buffalo river valley

The land was located on the steppe of a mountian. With a near cliff to its back and a steep slope falling away to the Buffalo river valley below. 175 unfenced acres with an ancient farmhouse, a barn, and a dilapidated travel trailer equipped with solar power. Heavy old growth timber covered nearly the entire acreage, with only about ten acres in pasture. The base of the cliff was a jumbled mass of huge stone blocks and boulders which formed all manner of caves and culdesacs. Live springs of crystal clear pure water tumbed out of cracks in the cliff, converging their flows to form a fast flowing rock creek. Beside the farmhouse an ancient well with rope and pulley on a classic rock wellshed still furnished reliable water. The electric pump had been added only 6 months ago on Jerry and myselfs last trip up. In the barn were hundreds of lbs of rice, beans, wheat, sugar, salt. flour, and corn all packed in 55 gallon drums. Hidden amongst the boulders was a case of SKS rifles and 3000 rounds of ammunition. But we only had a one hole outhouse for 135 people.

We held our first community meeting in front of the old farmhouse. 135 souls whose fate had led them to this mountain valley, 91 adults and the rest children and teenagers. I had spent the night looking over Amy's notebooks and trying to prioritize what had to be done first. I was bleary eyed the next morning when we assembled for the meeting, but at least I felt like I had the beginnings of a workable plan.

The Deacon opened the meeting with a prayer from the front porch, and while he spoke I surveyed our hodgepodge of vehicles and weaponry crammed haphazard into the clearing and front yard. I suddenly noticed there wasn't a foreign made vehicle in the entire collection. It was a rusting history of the u.s. auto industry from 1957 to 1978. The Glory years.

Deacon finished and I stepped up to the makeshift podium with my notes. For a long moment I looked out at the crowd gathered before me, gathering my thoughts and courage. Public speaking wasn't something I had ever attempted before. (other than swapping lies at deer camp) I decided to scrap the notes and just tell it from the heart.

"Howdy folks, and welcome. Well we all got here in one piece, Praise God, but the hard part is just now beginning. Setting up the tents and digging some latrines will be the first order of business. We can't afford to have an outbreak of dysentary from the outset, so we have to head that off right now. We've only got twenty shovels, so we'll just have to spell each other off. There's a town called Jasper about twenty miles from here and we'll send a party down to swap for more tools and building supplies, but for the moment we'll just have to make do with what we got. One way or another we will have at least one backhoe before the week is out, and will set into digging some bomb shelters and bunkers. For now I suggest you use some logs to cover the open spaces in the boulder pile, or shelter in some of the caves in the event we are attacked."

"Using the information yall were kind enough to give my wife Amy, I have made a list of projects and assigned people to them according to their physical abilities and skills. The list will be posted here on the porch and on the barn wall for yall to read at your liesure. My combat team ," I nodded towards my troops, "and I will be pulling out in a couple of days to secure some anti-aircraft weaponry and whatever else we can get. Deacon will be the acting mayor of the camp until such time as we are established well enough to hold an election. All adults will be expected to be armed at all times and I highly recomend you get a gas mask from the supply stock and keep that handy too. If you have never used a gun get ahold of someone who has and get some training. Anyone caught sleeping on guard duty will be horsewhipped. You may feel free to apeal your case to me, but I warn you now it'll be a waste of breath and time. I was already ambushed once on the way up here and I won't have people slaughtered in their beds because someone is slacking off. There's 40 gallons of flat olive paint in the trucks, I want every vehicle and this house painted by the end of the week. That ought to keep the younguns busy. Well I see the pancakes and eggs are ready, yall dig in and then we'll get to work."

I left on my own personal mission right after breakfast.. Taking the biplane I flew to the giant crater that used to be Little Rock and followed I-30 south until I spotted a Russian column encamped next to the highway. Keeping my distance I watched them for a few moments and then turned back North. They were about 75 miles from Little Rock and appeared to be performing maintainence on their machines. About thirty or forty minutes later I found what I was looking for, a Flying J truck stop surrounded by hills. I marked it on my charts and swung to the northwest, headed for my daughters house.

I was down below half a tank of fuel so I landed on a rural highway and siphoned another fifteen gallons out of a stalled car, then took off again. A half hour later I found the small town near Maggies home and followed the highway to her house. I made a low pass watching for movement, and seeing nothing I dropped down over the highway and made another low pass looking for crossing power lines before I finally landed and taxied up to her driveway.

Maggie had come out and was standing in the front yard with my old Winchester 30-30 held at port arms. I really can't describe the feeling of joy and relief I felt at finding her alive. I was crying openly as I climbed out of the plane. She didn't recognize me at first, 30 lbs lighter and hairless. I noted she had also lost fifteen or twenty lbs, just a beautiful shadow of her former self. I stopped at the end of the driveway and just spread my arms wide, the way I used to do when she was a pony tailed little girl who had skint her knee. Recognition rose in her face, as a sob exited her throat. Casting the rifle aside she charged at me in a dead run. I swept her into my arms and whirled her around, her feet flying off the ground. She was light as a feather and I could feel her bones through the thin dress she was wearing.

Finally I set her down and kissed her full on the mouth and said, "I'm sorry it took so long Maggie, things just didn't go like I had planned. Thank God you're all right."

She hugged me again and said, "Got anything to eat in that plane dad?"

I laughed and pulled a snickers bar out of my jacket pocket for her to chew on while I got some canned stew and a liter bottle of coke out of the back seat of the plane. We went inside and I warmed it up on the old propane stove while she gathered up some of her clothes and personal items to take back with us. Maggie insisted on flying the plane on the way back and like to have scared me to death several times.

Amy and Ray were waiting on us at the dirt road when we landed, sitting on the tailgate of my pickup and talking. Maggie and Amy hugged for a while as I wached her casting sidelong glances at Ray, which he was enthusiastically returning.


The ambush: 15 miles South of Little Rock. The radio crackled and clicked twice. That meant the Russian tank crew had finally decided the truck stop was secure and were getting out to stretch their legs. I peered through the binoculars, then keyed my mike in return. I set down my binoculars and eased the 7 mag to my shoulder, front resting on the sand bags, and drew a bead on the Russian commander standing 300 yards away. He was taking a leak against the tire of an abandoned Kenworth when his head exploded. The rest of the tank crew was dead before his body hit the ground. The crew of the Zeus mobile anti-aircraft gun faired no better. M-60's roared all aound me and from the tops of two other hills as 30 caliber slugs hailed into the enemy troops. Bolting in another round I picked another target and dispatched him. Before I could fire again there was no one left to shoot at. Success breeds contempt. These guys had siezed so many truck stops on their march to this point that they had become sloppy and careless. Picking up my radio I called Foxtrot two. "Get those tank transports down there pronto."

Rising from my position I motioned for Ray to follow with his men. "I hope you can figure out how that thing works quick. We aint got a lot of time to play with here." "No problem boss, if its got tracks I can drive it." Back on the radio I called Tango. "Get your men in the trucks and get rolling. If we get caught here by a Hind I don't want everybody dead. We'll meet you at the Rendevous point in two hours."

Rick paced among the fallen Russians, quickly shooting each one in the head with a .22 pistol just to make sure we didn't get any nasty surprises. I had already told him that if any of the survivors did any begging in English to keep him for later. From the looks of things the M-60's had taken care of that detail in advance.

With the T-80 loaded on one transport and the Zeus on the other we hightailed it the hell out of there. Not down the Interstate but West towards the retreat down the backroads. The two Russian rubber tired APC's followed us under their own power with Ray's men at the controls. Ray and I rode in the Zeus with the engine running, working on figuring out how to operate the quad radar controlled full auto cannons. After about twenty minutes I figured we could get off some rounds anyway, and I climbed out the top hatch to keep an eye on the sky while Ray continued his studies.

I was happy. We scored some serious hardware without taking any casualties, and gave the commies something to think about. After an hour I ducked back inside to find Ray placing strips of masking tape with english words magic markered on them over the Cryllic lettering on the controls and buttons. It looked like he had most of them already done. We made it back to the retreat the next morning at ten after having camped in another valley for the night. Work had proceeded well while I was gone. The two rubbertired backhoes had dug ten or twelve bunkers, which were covered with logs and then dirt. Slit trenches and foxholes were all through the woods surounding the perimeter. The women and kids were busily completing painting every vehicle we had flat olive drab and covering them with limbs and brush.

The farm detail had broken up several three and four acre plots and were planting them, none closer than five miles to us and not ringing our location. There were now ten semi trailers full of food backed up against the cliff, and the search parties were out getting more. They just took the rigs without a trailer and picked them up as they went. Lots of them were already loaded with canned goods and such, they just hooked up to them and brought em home. Most of them were coming from I-40. There were four tankers full of gas and diesel camoflaged in the woods, also from I-40, and another two thirty miles to the North in case we had to bug out. I wandered down to the CP and popped a cold Budweiser out of the soda machine. Doc Ives was lounging in a swivel chair with his feet up on my desk, sipping what appeared to be a margarita. He raised his glass in salute, " How goes the war effort?" he asked. "Not bad doc. Not bad at all."

Our raid on the Russians had netted us more than just the vehicles, in addition to the twenty-four AK-74 assault rifles we had also discovered five stinger type heat seeking antiaircraft missiles in the personell carriers. We put the Zeus down towards the River inside the treeline. Anything attacking us from the air was gonna have to come from that direction as the camp was hard up against the cliff. The Russian tank was deployed half a mile downriver, literally buried in brush. Upstream was one M1-A1, the other sat at a bend in the camp drive. It was almost a mile down a forest service trail to the camp from the county gravel road. We had set up a string of machinegun bunkers along the top of the ridge and also equipped them with the stingers. I had listening post about a mile out in four directions. All three of the APC's were kept in camp under cover, ready to respond in whichever direction they were needed.

The scavenging team had come up with a nearly new D-10 caterpillar dozer from somewhere, and I spent two days on it rearranging boulders and blocks of stone into a fighting perimeter wall along the cliff face. I left about 100 yards of space between the wall and the cliff, in which the tents and buildings were going up under the trees.

We had established a working relationship with the owner of a combination lumber yard and hardware store in Jasper, and utilizing materials from there were constructing the basic infrastructure of the camp. The hospital building was nearly complete, a tin shed 100 ft long by thirty feet wide, and the latrine buildings were already finished. The hardware store owner had driven a hard bargain for the materials, 10 M-16's and an M-60. But the ammo cost him dearly. A half dozen chain saws, ten wheelbarrels, 100 sacks of concrete, forty lbs of nails, fifteen claw hammers, and two more pallets of 1/2 inch plywood. It was kind of a pointless exercise anyway, after he found out what was going on he moved his family in with us and donated his entire stock to the camp. The Russians were not far south of Jasper and could move in that direction at any time. It was just a matter of getting it all hauled out here before locals carted it off or the commies burned it.

Ray and Maggie had fallen head over heels in love. I guess it was love at first sight. Ray was following her around like a hound dog and showing her all he knew about the armored vehicles to impress her. She was beautiful, I thought she really looked a lot like that girl on Ally McBeal since she had lost so much weight. She told me she hadn't had anything to eat for almost two weeks when I finally got there except for some blackbirds she had shot with my old rifle, and had been rationing her food before that. Her stomach had shrunk and now she ate like a bird so the weight wasn't coming back. Not that she had been fat before by any means, but she looked downright anorexic to me now. Ray was a good kid and I wished them the best, but I couldn't help but rag on him a little every now and then, playing the overprotective father. He gave as good as he got though, and it was developing into a game between us.

Using a topographical map we had mapped out a patrol route for the planes which kept them below radar in the mountain valleys, yet covered all possible approaches to the camp. I was using a forest service road a couple of miles away by road as our airstrip, the pasture in front of the camp was too unlevel for use as a runway. We had blocked off access to the road so there wasn't much danger of the planes being discovered by people on the ground. Actually it was only about four hundred yards from the camp as the crow flew, but we had to circle back along the ridge to the point the road climbed it then back to the strip located directly above the camp on top of the ridge. The pilots rotated every day, camping in a tent near the aircraft.

Today was my turn on duty. I would make a sweep of the patrol route in the Tiger, while the biplane waited on the runway to scramble if I needed help. We had stripped the 20mm automatic cannons off of the Russian APC's and mounted them on the biplane, so he was really better armed than I was, though not nearly as fast. I figured in a diving attack he had a real chance at blowing through the top of a tank though, where the armor was thin.

I took off at about ten in the morning, heading East down the river. After ten minutes I turned South into a mountain valley paralelling the main highway which led to Jasper, holding my altitude at 500 feet. Following a creek back into the mountains I was slowly climbing to clear an abutment when a Hind helicopter came over the ridge straight at me. I triggered my guns as a missile flashed off his rails and came screaming straight at me. I dove under it and did a barrel roll coming back in behind where the Hind had been, inverted, but he had peeled hard to the right and now was 45 degrees off my port side and turning back into me hard. I airloined up on one wingtip and firewalled the throttle, jerking back on the stick to bring my guns to bear. The Tiger proved to turn much faster than the helicopter at the speed he was moving and within a second or two I was blasting away at his rotor assembly. He rolled back to the right and dove, clearing his door gunner for a shot. I saw the tracers coming but was too close to avoid them, several rounds striking my right wing near the fuselage and ripping sheet metal away. I dove out of his fire as the Hind continued its turn, eventually running straight away from me and back towards the ridge he had come from. Smoke was coming out of his right side engine cowling.

I picked up my mike and radioed Bandit two. "Sanders, got a copy?"

After a moment he came back 'Yo boss, what's up?"

"I'm chasing a crippled Hind up devils gorge, see if you can cut him off up top. I don't know if this rig is fast enough to catch him."

"Rollin now, be with ya in ten."

"click"

"click click"


The tiger growled a little louder as I began to climb to clear the next mountain ridge. The damned Russian was still out of range. I watched as his tail rotor dissapeared over the crest, diving into the valley beyond. The smoke trail was a good indicator some of my bullets at least had struck home, but his speed hadn't slackened at all that I could tell. The rattling alminum shredded from my right wing kept yawing me to that side, I had to maintain constant rudder pressure to keep flying straight ahead. His door gunner was pretty good. I glanced down at the fuel indicator, trying to calculate how fast the ruptured wing tank was draining. Too fast, another ten minutes and I'd have to break off the pursuit and head for home.

Topping the ridge I could see that the smoke trail was growing thicker by the second. I didn't really grin, but I sure thought about it. I took one last drag off my cigar and ground it out on the altimeter. The Hind slewed to the right, crabwalking as the pilot lost hydraulic pressure. He nosed up a little and bled airspeed like a stuck hog as I came screaming in. Flipping the safety loop back off the firing control I struggled to stabilize the targeting pip just over the top of his rotors. Not too much lead, there, just right. I jerked the lever back and the fifties began to buck and roar. The first of the tracers passed over him, but within a second he had flown directly into the stream. For a long moment he hung suspened in the barrage, rotors flailing at the wind, then disentigrating as the slugs found his main shaft. The Hind fell like a stone, spinning as it went. I watched in fascination as one of the door gunners leapt from the stricken craft still two hundred feet above the ground. He didn't even clear the fireball from the impact.

I did a slow victory roll over the bonfire and turned for base. Suddenly I caught a flash of sunlight off my starboard wing and I instintively banked ito it. An A-10 Warthog screamed by me at a closing speed of about 700 knots, his jet wash nearly knocking me out of the sky. I banked back to the left and continued on my homeward course, knowing full well he'd be back in a minute.

Sure enough he fell in behind me, throttleing back and retrimming his angle of attack for the slower speed. He probably watched the whole show, I thought to myself. Slowly he pulled up thirty feet off my right wing, pacing me. I studied his grinning face through my sunglasses, noting the battle damage his own plane had sustained and had repaired. I wagged my wings in a universal follow me, then smiled at his thumbs up. I got back on the radio and called Sanders, telling him what had happened and to meet me back at the base.

Twenty minutes later we were on the ground at my airstrip. I taxied off the road and parked near the tent where two of the camp mechanics were waitng to work on the plane. My guest left his ride sitting in the middle of the road. Having a lot less gear to unbuckle I made it to his plane before he was fully dismounted, my mechanics in tow. Dropping to the ground he pitched his helmet to the side and extended his hand. "Major Roger Evers, RAF." I shook his hand and replied, "Nikoli Krushev, commander of the Arkansas Irregulars." Grinning at the narrowing of his eyes at my name. "It's a long story." I said.

We both turned at the sound of an engine, watching as Sanders dropped the biplane onto the highway. The Russian 20mm cannons under his wings looked a little out of place. Evers shook his head and turned back to me. "Let me guess, Confederate Air Force?"

"Somebody's gotta do it." I replied. I wasn't giving this guy any more info than I had to, not being the least bit interested at being absorbed by his unit for cannon fodder. A little mutual support wouldn't bother me a bit though. "Care for a cold beer?" I asked, turning back towards our hanger as Sanders parked his biplane.

Pilots Tent: Evers was a gold mine of information. After getting the mechanics working on my planes' battle damage we retreated to the pilots tent and grabbed some longnecks out of the cooler. "Where you operating out of?" I asked

" Right now we're using the Interstate as a runway, about 50 miles East of Little Rock. There are a couple of truck stops there and a small town. Origionally we were out of Barksdale Air Force Base but had to abandon the base due to radiation, Russians, and refugees. The first nuke missed us by about six or seven miles, a ground burst. The next one hit right in the middle of Shreveport. We were scrambling our B-52's when it went off, and lost five of them in the blast. The rest are somewhere in Canada, they found an airport up there big enough to support them that the Russians overlooked. From what I hear they've been pounding bloody hell out of Moscow and Leningrad. Taking a lot of losses though."

"What have you heard about the army? They got anything left to fight with?"

"The 7th cav out of Hood got mangled by nukes in the opening attack. They regrouped and intercepted the Russians at Waco two weeks or so after the initial attack. They were holding their own until two Chinese armored divisions reinforced with infantry coming up out of Mexico flanked them to the south and put them into a fighting retreat. All this was taking place at the limit of our flying range and while we were trying to stage munitions. We had a hard time giving them any air cover at all until they reached the East side of what used to be Dallas." I grimaced at this, thinking of Nicole.

"They finally withdrew across the Sabine River and formed a defensive line North and South of Toledo Bend reservoir, where they are still holding in conjunction with the Ft. Polk forces. The Chinese have sent another two divisions North to I-40 and are trying to get across the Oklahoma wastelands to flank them again, but the Tenth armored out of Ft. Knox and some National Guard Airborne units are making them pay by the gallon in blood for every inch. We have been holding I-30 with our A-10's and some F-15E Strike Eagles out of Whitman and the Branson Missouri airport. Bragg is sending us a company of M-1 Abrahms Tanks, but they won't be here for a few more days."

"Sounds to me like a lot of the military bases survived, I thought they were wiped out in the first attack." I said

"The Same thing that happened at Barksdale happened all up and down the inner U.S. The old ICBM's they were using just weren't as accurate as we or they thought they would be. They held their new Topal-M mobile missles in reserve, trying to use up all the silo based stuff before it was destroyed in the counterattack. Knox didn't get a scratch, Wright Patman was barely damaged, Ft. Bragg was missed, Ft. Polk took a near miss but is still in the fight. California is another story though. The Russians had almost all their subs off the coast and they pulverized everything as far inland as Las Vegas. That's how they got across to Texas so fast. They just loaded their tanks on transports and railroad cars and cakewalked to El Paso. The rail lines from their east were destroyed so they had to offload and do it the hard way from there on. We're getting a handle on that now though, the aircraft carrier Kennedy and her group have been putting a severe dent in their lines of supply shipping, and it won't be long before their ammo starts to run low. The Chinese have got a zillion tons of stuff down in Panama and Mexico though, so it may take a while to wear them down. Both sides have sustained huge damage to their infrastructure, and other than occaisional tactical nukes everyone has now gone back to conventional weapons."

"What about the Cubans?" "From what I hear the situation in Florida is a mess."

" There really aren't any clear cut lines and the situation is still very fluid. There is a pretty ragtag force being cobbled together right now but it's going be touch and go for a while."

"Are we fighting on any other fronts?"

"I got a good laugh out of the invasion up at Seattle. The Russians landed a division of mechanized infantry and tried to advance across the Cascades into Idaho. I guess heading for Cheyenne mountain to make sure it was out of operation. Those Rocky Mountian boys kicked their butts for them. Last I heard they were holed up in Olympia waiting for reinforcements that aren't coming. There's another show up in Maine, but I haven't heard much lately about how that's going."

"Did the Canadians get hit as hard as us?"

"Yes. I don't think the Russians figured they would surrender along with Europe after the initial attack. Alaska is pretty much overrun. What forces we have left there are fighting a guerrilla war out of the mountains. There's just not much we can do for them right now. I imagine their final fate is going to be decided when the peace treaty is signed. Whoever wins this thing will own it. If there isn't anything else you need to know I need to get back and rearm. I sure appreciated the beer, and that was a pretty good show you put on against that Hind. You cheated me out of a kill, I was stalking him when he ran into you."

I just grinned and said, "One Last thing, how do I get ahold of you guys if I need some air support?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nigel Evers watched out the window of his South London flat as the first of the Russian tanks and apc's motored down the boulevard. Germany and France were already heavily occupied, but the communist forces were only just now landing armor in the English ports. Martial law had been declared after the surrender and a cufew was in effect as control of the country was handed off to the communist provisional government. Yesterday the electricity had been shut off to residential customers, and this morning the phones were dead. He turned and stared bleakly at his wife Martha, who was inventorying their meager food supply. Outside he heard a machinegun open up and both of them looked back out the third floor window to see protestors being mowed down by the tanks. A molotov cocktail sailed out the window of an aprtment building across the street, drawing a cannon round in response from one of the tanks. The entire second floor of the building disentigrated, blasting brick and rubble into the street below. The tanks rolled forward, crushing the bodies of the dead and wounded as they advanced. Martha turned to him and a tear was running down her cheek. "The Americans aren't coming this time, are they?" She said.

"No," Nigel replied. "I don't know whether to be grateful Roger was out of the country when this happened or if his fate in the States may have been even worse. I still can't believe the labour government just simply surrendered, surely there was something we could have done. Now we don't even have guns to fight back with and are completely at the mercy of the communist."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lietenant Abdul Rasheed set the timer on the explosive charge for two minutes and began to run north, back towards the steadily retreating lines of his company, or what was left of it. Artillery thundered nearby and an F-16 of the Saudi Air Force screamed over at two hundred feet towards the Chinese tanks. Incoming rockets started detonating off to his right a few hundred yards away as he reached his foxhole and picked up the mike to the field radio. "Scorched Earth to Division command, Over." he shouted.

"Division, go head scorched earth."

"That's the last of them in this sector, the communist won't be getting any free oil from here." He said.

"Good work scorched earth, take your team and fall back to the next field to get them ready to blow. Make it quick we can't hold them much longer."

"Ten four, on my way. Out." Rasheed glanced at his watch and ducked lower in the hole as the first of the fifty oilwells began to blow.

CHAPTER FOUR
A Rock And A Hard Spot

Three days after Evers visit I was in the cp when Ray came running through the door. "Evers is on the radio, he wants to talk to you like right now."

I bolted for the door, spurred by the urgency in Ray's voice. "What's up?" I asked him on the run

"Russian armored column has broke out, they're headed our way fast."

"Get the biplane in the air, have them hold the Tiger for me, I'll go airborn command as soon as we get off line with Evers." He was talking into his walkie talkie as we sprinted for the APC.

I banged my head on the rear door of the APC, cursing as I ducked into the radio operators seat. "Krushev, go ahead. " Off air, "Get this thing moving Ray" the starter ground as Evers came back. "Hey Nick, got some bandits headed up the river towards you, my wingman and I jumped them and did some damage but we're out of ammo, they'll be there in fifteen minutes or so."

"What are we looking at here Roger?" I demanded

I make it five T-80's, about seven or eight tracked APC's, and a couple of Hinds flying air cover, there could be more though, lot of tree cover down there."

I thought a moment as the engine finally started. "Get out Ray, get the tanks fired up, take the T-80 for yourself. Reposition the M1's down inside the trees along the river. Hold your T-80 in place until the Russians pass you by, then fall in behind them and start taking them out from the rear while the M-1's engage from the front. Be ready to abandon that tank when I give you the word.".

"Got it boss, just make damn sure them other boys with the rockets know where I am in that Russian column." He climbed out and Wilks jumped into the drivers seat in his place.

I shot a glance at the radio and said "command frequency will be 5100" Back in the mike "Still with me Evers?"

"Check"

"We got a Russian Tank of our own we captured a couple of weeks ago, I'm gonna try to Trojan Horse him into the rear of their column. Copy?"

"You're a very enterprising fellow Nick."

"Just don't hammer my man Roger, if it furballs too bad I'm gonna have him eject. What's your ETA to reload and give me come air cover?" I heard the Biplane roar over headed downriver. I switched frequencies and yelled into the mike' "Bandit Two,hold your distance till I get up there to support you, go to 5100 and acknowledge." I flipped back to 5100 and caught the tail end of Evers reply "Minutes" "Can't hold boss, they're too close, I'm gonna make a strafing run on them and see if I can buy some time."

The ramp came up as Wilks dropped the APC into gear and revved the engine. I flipped to our Walkie talkie frequency as we bounced down the forest sevice trail gaining speed. "Deacon, you got a copy"

Instant response, "standing by"

Full battle stations, get the LAW's rockets up on the ridge, have them rotate the 60's to face the river and heat up the stingers. Got a couple of Hinds coming in, take them before you engage infantry or tanks. It is imperative that you knock those choppers down. Get the Zeus up and ready to fire also. You got the base, I'm going airborn, be back in a little bit. 5100 will be tactical frequency, you can battle manage out of one of the Russian APC's.Over"

"OK, Nick. Let's kick some ass."

"I'm surprised at you Deacon. be careful."

click.

Back to 5100 "Bandit Two?"

A wait then "Can't talk, got my hands full with these damned Hinds." shit.

"Damnit Wilks is this as fast as this thing will go?"

"I'm on the floor boss, one more minute."

"Bandit one, you got that engine running?"

"She's hot."

"Deacon, you tactical yet?"

"I'm here."

"Get the women and the kids in the bunkers."

"Already got it covered."

"Evers?".... Nothing

"Evers you got a copy?" still nothing.

The back ramp started down as Wilks slowed the APC. "We're here."

Wilks wasn't very excitable. "Take the APC back down and give flanking fire from the West Treeline., Don't let their infantry circle our position."

"OK."

I sprinted for the plane as Wilks roared off into a wild U-turn. I hit the wing in a running jump and dropped into the cockpit, fumbling for the safety harness with one hand while firewalling the throttle with the other. I barely got the buckles fastened before the plane lifted itself into the air and began to torque to the right. Rolling 45 degrees up on the left wing I jerked back on the stick and nearly stalled as I cleared the pine trees on the ridge. Seconds later I saw the machinegun nest flash below me and the forms of running men registered as I dove into the valley, picking up speed. The guns of the Zeus whipped around, aiming just a little in front of my plane and I rolled to the right in a hard turn, expecting to be shredded in a millisecond or two. But no shells fired and I breathed a sigh of relief as I headed down the river, climbing now that I had some airspeed. Rounding a bend I caught sight of Bandit 2 doing a flaming cartwheel across the sky, closely followed by his starboard wings and a Hind. He was too low for a parachute, even if we had one. I set the pipper on the Hind and opened fire.


My fire raked the Hind from end to end, tracers richocheting crazily off his Titanium armor. He rolled into a hard turn towards me as another Hind came screaming in from the left, spraying cannon fire all around me. I dove under the first chopper and banked hard to the left climbing in a max g turn, trying to force a friendly fire or midair between the Russians. A missile sceamed past me on the right, expolding with a viscious concussion 100 yards above me. Shrapnel ripped through my outer wingtip as I pulled an inverted barrel roll back into the Hinds, straining my neck trying to catch sight of them before the gunsight crossed their paths.

A third Hind came roaring up the river, firing a missile at point blank range. It missed me and locked onto one of the other choppers, blasting it into burning junk in mid turn. Damn Evers must have been a public school graduate, can't even count to three. The Tiger shuddered as cannon shells ripped through the fuselage and three feet of the left wing just fell off. I dove for the river and hollered into the radio "Deacon, I got two very pissed Russian chopper jocks on my tail, I'm bringing them to you." I didn't hear his reply as I pulled the howling Tiger out of it's dive just feet over the water and beat feet for the cliff. I pulled into a climbing left turn and flew over the oaks straight at the cliff face, aiming a hundred yards West of the Battle wall. Another fulisade of cannon fire ripped past my left wing, blasting huge chunks of rock and dust out of the cliff face. I jinked right then left as the Zeus flashed beneath me, it's guns swivelling to my rear. I hoped them Russians had a good dose of target fixation by now. I rolled the Tiger up vertical on it's right wing and hauled back hard on the stick, riding the rudder to keep the nose up in the turn. The cliff face flashed by at 180 knots just yards beneath my feet. A missile smammed into the cliff behind me as cannon shells whizzed all around. Over my head I saw the lead Hind come apart in midair as the Zeus chewed into it with it's four full auto radar sighted cannons.

My right wing tore through the upper branches of a cedar and I rolled back upright clawing for altitude. Another blast of cannon fire shredded the engine cowling and the prop, shrapnel starring the canopy windscreen. A burst of flame erupted out of the cowling and I rode the silent plane to the apex of it's climb on inertial speed, then dropped my flaps and banked back towards the river lowering the nose. To my right the Second Hind was Plowing up the field with its rotors as tracer fire tore into it from the top of the ridge and the defensive wall. Well at least we got all the choppers, I thought. My airspeed had dropped to about 70 knots and I was doing a steep glide down the slope into the river valley. I wished I had that 3 feet of wing back.

I picked up the mike and said "Deacon?"

"yeah"

"I'm shot to hell, gonna try and dump it in the river. it's all your show now."

"you hit?"

"Not me, the tiger. I'll be ok. gotta go now."

"Ok, happy landings Nick."

I clicked the mike once and hung it up.

I was scared shitless. Cold beads of sweat ran down my forehead as I struggled to squeeze every inch of glide slope out of the flaming Tiger. Smoke was filling the cockpit but I was afraid to open the canopy for fear of being burned alive. I cleared the last of the trees and began a slow rudder turn to the West, keeping the wings nearly level to retain their lift. The stall alarm was sounding but If I lowered the nose any farther I wasn't going to make the river. I knew full well this thing was going to go up like a torch unless I could drown the fire with water. My headphones crackled, and Ray's voice came through. "Got a minute boss?" I fumbled with the mike left handed, trying to hold the wreckage in the air. "Well sure Ray," I drawled "what's on your mind.?"

" I just wanted to ask your permission to marry your daughter if you don't make it."

"Well Ray, what makes you so sure you're gonna make it?

"Only the good die young."

"Well in that case we'll talk about it later."

Kinda glum sounding. "OK, out."

I wasn't going to have enough airspeed to line up straight down the river. Oh well, I lowered the nose a little and headed for the near bank at a fortyfive degree angle. Switching hands I jerked the harness assembly as tight as I could get it, then checked to make sure the quick release wasn't fouled in the straps. These cropdusters have a cockpit like a dirt track race car. The designers expect them to auger in sometime in their lifespan, and they try to design them so the pilot has a fighting chance to live. I tried to take comfort in that thought as I hit the water.

The plane went from 60 knots to zero in about thirty feet. I went in nose down, hoping the water pressure would blast the fire out of the cowling, but it ruined any chance at all for a skip and soft landing. Gritting my teeth I held my breath as the plane gouged the rock bottom and slowly lifted up on it's nose, flaming water spraying like a geyser out of the shattered engine compartment and covering the cockpit. For a second the Tiger stood balanced, then slowly fell back with a second huge splash. The second splash did the trick. The flames on the glass canopy were extinguished and only smoke and steam came from the cowling. I sat there and said a brief prayer of thanks before unlatching the canopy and sliding it back. Popping my harness I disentangled myself from the straps and radio cords. I stood up and started climbing out the left side of the cockpit, feeling pain from just about everywhere on my body. Boy this was gonna hurt tomorrow, I thought.

The water was cold as ice, about four feet deep. I nearly froze to death in the fifty yards to shore. I slumped down on a boulder, trying to rub some circulation back into my arms, when I noticed Tank tracks leading into the river just a few yards downstream from my wrecked plane. Looking at the far bank I could plainly see one of the M1-A1's positioned behind a rock outcrop, turret rotated 90 degrees and facing downstream. They had set up to catch the T-80's in a crossfire. Wish I had thought of that. The tank commander gave me a wave, then ducked down into the turret and slammed the hatch. I figgered maybe I had better get moving again.

Ray's T-80

Ray stood in the command copula of the captured Russian T-80, a heavy machinegun turret on top of the main turret. Toggling a switch on the joystick in his right hand he lit his mike and said, "Tank 1, did you see the splash?"

"Roger 3, the old man is ok, he's up on the riverbank trying to dry out. I think the plane is a goner though."

Ray smiled and raised the Russian made binoculars to his eyes, watching the advancing communist armor draw abreast of his hidden position. The five T-80's were deployed in wedge formation travelling at about twenty mph over the rocky river basin. In the center of the wedge ten track APC's with top mounted machineguns were randomly strung out about two hundred yards. The whole formation resembled an arrow sign. Thumbing the switch again he said, " They should be rounding the bend any second now, better button up."

"One, copy." "Two, copy."

"Don't fire till you see the yeller of their eyes boys."

Click, click.

The last of the APC's rounded the bend and Ray ordered the driver to move out. As the tank lurched forward he toggled another switch and rotated the turret a full 360 degrees with his joystick, sweeping tree limbs and branches clear of the vehicle. "I'm coming up behind them, for Christ sake don't shoot me."

Using his joystick and sighting screen he rotated the main turret to the third tank back on the left. "Gunner, target."

"Aquired."

"Load Sabot"

Machinery whirred below him for a second, then "up and tracking" Ray watched the main gun tube float up and down, the computer fire center following every movement of the target tank. He waited for the M-1's to engage. "forward gunner"

"Check"

"If the infantry bails when we open fire, I want you hosing them down with that .30"

"Gotcha."

Rays headphones clicked and the voice of number 1's commander came through. ON the count of three, two.

"Roger."

"One...Two...Three FIRE!!!"

"FIRE" Ray screamed. The crack of the T-80's main gun was deafening, even through his sound insulated radio headphones. His target erupted into a geyser of flame, the turret spinning through the air ten yards before it hit the ground. Ray grinned, this was gonna be like shooting fish in a barrel. The lead T-80 was also burning, but the other had just dropped a track and was swiveling his turret to target the M-1 on the far shore. Underneath him the automatic reloader ejected the spent case and chambered a fresh round. Ray swiveled the turret to lock on to him and yelled "Gunner, target, tank"

"Aquired"

"Fire"

The gun belched again, and the target exploded in a mighty fireworks show as the shell set off his ammunition.

The APC's began to lay smoke and zig zag, then broke in mass for the treeline and the slope leading up out of the valley. Ray lost sight of the remaining two T-80's and dropped down inside the copula, switching to thermal targeting. The gunner awaitied his command to reload, having by prior agreement made the first two rounds sabot.

"Gunner, Load H.E." (high explosive)while tracking an APC with the gun tube.

The machinery whirred and the gunner replied "up"

"Target, APC"

"Aquired"

"Fire" The APC Disentigrated.

Over the Radio "Two's dead"

"Copy" The Russians had gotten the camp side M-1.

"They're in the trees" crap. Ray "Floorboard it Sam, they're headed for the camp." "Gunner, load sabot" Through his scope Ray saw another APC explode as One fired again.

"up"

The tank lurched ahead as Ray tracked another APC. "Gunner, Target, APC."

"aquired"

"Fire." Karuuump, the forward machinegunner opened up, troops on the ground. Ray slammed the hatch as bullets began to richochet off the tank. A grenade exploded outside the turret, making a gonging noise. "Gunner, take control of the main gun, I'm going hot on the 50."

"Copy" the machinery whirred again as Ray swiveled his copula and opened fire.

Over the radio," Trapshooter." Deacons voice said.

"copy."

"Get that Zeus behind the Wall."

"Roger Wilco" Maggie replied. Ray's heart skipped a beat.

"One, where's those Tanks?" silence

"One?" silence.

I Pulled my colt .45 automatic from my mil issue shoulder holster and began to jog towards the treeline. Back in the shadows I could barely make out the sillohet of the other M-1, about fifty yards in. I angled to his right, hoping to put him between me and the oncoming Russians. As I jogged his turret swiveled a little to the left and the main gun tube depressed its elevation. I ran faster. I was inside the trees when the main gun fired, the concussion painful on my still healing eardrum. I ducked behind a tree and looked around it back down the valley. Two tanks were burning and a third had ground to a halt, his right track blasted off. Across the river the M-1 reversed farther back behind the rock outcrop as his gun tube raised into reload position. The turret of the wounded T-80 began to traverse towards him. He wasn't going to get reloaded in time. To my right the other M-1 revved it's engine and lurched forward, his tube also pointing at the sky. The two uncrippled T-80's wheeled towards him as the wounded one exploded. Both of the other T-80's fired nearly at the same instant, and the M-1 closest to me blew up.

The APC's were laying smoke and running for the trees. Across the river the tube was finally coming down on the surviving M-1, an Apc exploded, the M-1 fired and missed. Back up went his tube. The T-80's were almost to the trees, one swivelling his turret to the rear, towards the M-1. I got up and ran uphill towards the base, as an explosion sounded to my rear. I kept bearing to the right, making for Wilk's APC. after a couple of hundred yards I had to sink to my knees, trying to regain my breath from the uphill run. Man I needed a cigar, but they were soaking wet. Down the hill cannon fire interspersed constant machinegun fire. I could hear trees cracking off to my left. I got back up and staggered on, gasping for air. The volume of small arms fire was increasing. A tank gun fired again.

Another hundred yards and I made out the shape of Wilk's APC. He had deployed twenty yards inside the treeline flanking the West side of the clearing, a couple of hundred yards North of the farmhouse and the defensive wall. I could see his form standing in the copula, his .30 facing towards the open field. Once more I rested, then staggered on. I was about 75 yards from the APC When Wilk's spotted me and slewed the gun around towards me. I dove behind a tree as he opened fire. I could hear his engine rev as the driver repositioned to give him a clear shot. I snatched my battered stetson off my head and waved it desperately around the side of the tree. The engine revved down. I peered cautiously around the side of the tree with one eye. Wilks was now forty yards away looking straight down the tube of the .30 at me. "Sorry Boss." he yelled. I got up and lurched towards the APC as the back ramp came down, too winded to answer.

A tank gun fired again, and something blew up. From up on the ridge the M-60's opened up, Wilks was already out of the coupula when I entered the rear of the track. I didn't bother to speak, just climbed into his still warm seat. I pulled on the headset and swivelled the copula to the right, looking out over the hatch. Over the intercom I ordered the driver to move closer to the treeline so I would have a wider field of fire. I could see the Zeus making for the wall as the driver "Rogered". A chill ran down my spine at the recognition of his voice. It was the guardsman who was normally the Zeus commander, Porter. "Wilks who in the hell is in the Zeus?" I yelled. I already knew the answer. There was only one other person who Ray had trained to operate it. "Maggie." he replied.

One after another the two Russian T-80's broke into the field, the trailing one still turreted to his rear. LAW's Rockets began to flash off the ridge, fishtailing across the field at near supersonic speed. Two struck the lead tank, but he waded through their explosions appparently unscathed as the others geysered dirt around him. His main gun elvated and belched flame as atop the cliff a machinegun bunker exploded. Another wave of LAWS hit on and around him, he continued to advance. The .50 on his coupula began to fire, raking the defensive wall with tracers.

Maggie had reached the wall, but instead of going behind it she ran the Zeus up on a slab of rock, raising the nose into the air at a 30 degree angle. I realized what she was doing and toggled over to the Radio, "Maggie, get the hell out of there!!!" I screamed. "Too late for that dad." she replied. "Time for some payback." The quad cannons, finally able to depress their elevation to horizontal, opened fire on the lead T-80 as Ray's Tank broke from the trees. I watched in horror as the lead tank soaked up Maggie's cannon rounds, his reactive armor exploding and shedding the energy. Down came his tube as Ray and the trailing tank exchanged punches. "Porter, ram that bastard!!!" I screamed. Sqeezing the trigger on my machinegun as we charged forward. "Maggie!!" Ray screamed in my headset. "NO!"

Ray continued to sweep the .50 caliber, firing short burst as he spotted troops in the trees. Smoke from the APC's dispensers, and from the flaming wreckage all around had dropped visibility to nearly nothing along the river. Keying the intercom he instructed Sam to turn the tank into the trees towards the base. The main gun fired again and another APC went up in a massive explosion. Sam was forced to slow the tank to ten miles and hour as he threaded through the huge oaks, wary of getting hung up on their massive root systems if he ran one down.

Ray's earphones crackled, then the main gunner's voice came through. " Ray, the target aquisition computer won't work in these woods. The trees keep breaking the lock. You're gonna have to fire it by eyeball from up there."

"Ok Pete, Load Sabot."

A brief pause then "Up." Ray traversed his copula turret to line up parallel to the main gun, then toggled his controls over to lock it in place and assume control of the main turret. More rifle rounds spanged off the turret and an explosion shook the tank. Somebody had hit it with an RPG. Ray's thermal targeting went dead, leaving him effectively blind in the copula. "Damnit Sam get this thing moving, Another couple of those and we'll be dead in the water." Then "Pete, see if you can get the Thermal reset, I got no feed."

Sam gunned the engine and began running down smaller trees, up to two feet diameter. Ray held on as the tank bounced and bucked over the boulders and tree trunks, slewing the main gun back and forth to keep it from fouling in the trees. After a few minutes they had outdistanced the ground troops and bullets were no longer hitting the Armor. Cautiously Ray raised his copula hatch and stood to look outside. "Targeting computer is dead Ray. I can't get it to reset. That RPG must have took the whole sensor array out and the wreckage is blocking my optical sight. I'm blind as a bat down here."

Damn, Ray thought to hiimself, "Ok Pete, I'm taking fire control, just keep it loaded for me. Nothing but Sabot." Ray was going to be doing it the old fashioned way now, hipshooting.

"OK, We're down to four rounds sabot though. Still got five HE and a couple of beehives."

"Just keep em coming"

The trees began to thin and he could see the clearing in front of the defensive wall coming into view, along with the two Russian tanks which were just entering the field a hundred yards ahead of him. They had climbed above the smoke in the valley and visibility was much better. The Russians were about 75 yards off centerline to his right, but Ray couldn't swivel the gun yet due to the closeness of the trees. "Sam, bear to the Right about 20 degrees soon as you get an opening, I want that reactive armor looking straight at those T-80's."

"Copy that Ray." Sam replied from the drivers seat.

The lead Russian tank suddenly came under fire from anti-tank missiles and Ray's heart leapt in his chest. Maybe they could stop him before he reached the wall. The Russian tank continued forward, a little slower as he returned fire towards the top of the ridge. Sam swung the T-80 to the right between two large trees, finally heading directly at the trailing Russian tank but Ray held off firing as the gun tube pitched up and down from the rough terrain. As the last of the treeline fell away another wave of missiles pounded the lead Russian. "Stop Sam!!" Ray yelled into the intercom. The trailing Russian was still moving away, about 120 yards ahead and crossing to the left at an angle. Ray followed him with the turret, eyeballing the elevation as best he could. Over the Radio he heard the old man yell, "Maggie, get out of there!!" Ray swiveled his head wildly, looking for the Zeus. He finally spotted it canted up on the defensive wall directly beyond the lead Russian T-80. Closer to home the trailing Russian had finally seen him. The Russians' turret swung to lock on him as he fired the main gun.

Both guns blasted at the same time and Ray was thrown face first into the steel of the copula hatch ring from the violence of the explosion. His vison went dark for a second then cleared as his ears set into a high pitched ringing. He could tast blood and sulphur in his mouth as he screamed "Reload!!!" into the intercom. A tooth flew out of his mouth. There was no answer. Pete, the gunner, lay dead or unconscious on the tanks floor below him. Smoke was filling the tank and hydraulic oil was misting the air inside.. Looking outside he could see the trail tank was burning furiously, but the lead T-80 continued stalking the Zeus. He was getting ready to fire. The command APC came hurtling out of the forest to his right boring down on the T-80, machinegun blazing. Ray didn't realize he had toggled the radio as he said in agony ".....Maggie.... NOOooo"

Suddenly 75 yards to his right an M1-A1 burst from the trees and slewed his turret towards the T-80, running at least 50 miles an hour. The tank was covered in tree limbs and leaves and barely missed ramming the T80 Ray had just killed. His main gun fired on the run and the remaining T-80 ground to a halt as smoke began to pour from the engine hatches and ventilation shafts. He wasn't dead though, the turret began to crank around, seeking a target.

The M1's tube was up in reload as he continued to close on the Russian. There was no way he would be able to fire again before reaching him. Ray dropped into the smoking hell below and hit the reload button, then clambered back into the commanders seat. The M-1 had reached the Russian and was circling him at high speed, trying to stay ahead of his turret as he reloaded. An RPG from the forest sailed by, barely missing him and detonating in the field beyond near one of the downed Hinds. The Zeus had backed off the wall and was running for the far end of the bullwark. Ray lined up the main gun on the T-80 and fired as the command APC broke to the right heading for the wall. The T-80 detonated in a massive explosion, scrap metal and the turret hurled in all directions. The M-1 broke out of his turn and ran wide open for the forest service trail leading to the top of the ridge.

"Everybody out of the tank." Ray ordered, as he felt flames break out below. No one answered. Ray looked down to the gunner and finally realized Pete had been nearly decapitated. A wave of nausea washed over him as he clambered out of the turret and made his way to the ground.

Rifle bullets richocheted off the rear of the tank as he staggered to the front. A couple buzzed past his head like hornets on the warpath. The tank had been hit in the right front at the junction of the front track idler and the main body, blasting away the track and spewing shrapnel into the lower crew compartment. Mortars began to thump in the woods, and the rounds walked towards the defensive wall. Ray unholstered his Berreta 9mm and hunkered down, he wouldn't be going anywhere for a while.

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From atop the ridge the M-60's were sweeping the treeline seeking targets. Mortar rounds impacted sporadically between the wall and the cliff face, and atop the ridge. I keyed the mike again and said "Evers, I really could use some help here."

"Almost there buddy, Is that your AEROPLANE in the river?"

I cringed lower in the copula as machinegun tracers flew overhead. "Yeah, I thought maybe you could use a visual aid."

"Well all that bright yellow paint works very nicely, thank you. I have cannon, napalm, and cluster bombs, flight of two. What's your pleasure?"

"Give me Napalm along the treeline across from the cliff, hold the rest and we'll see what develops. I got a man pinned down at the tank nearest the trees, try not to scorch him. "

" Roger on the pin down, We're going to do a quick flyby and shed some altitude, attack run will be from West to East in two."

"M-1 tank, you copy?"........"M-1 tank, do you copy, over."........nothing

"Have you misplaced your little tank Nick?" from Evers.

"Just try to follow your wingman Evers, I'll worry about the tank."

"Just trying to be helpful, no need to get huffy. I could just take my bombs and go home."

"You try it and I'll put a stinger up your butt." A mortar round showered me with dirt. How in the hell did that Limey end up in an American A-10 Warthog anyway? I made a mental note to ask him that next time we had a beer together.

"Deacon, you on?"

"I'm here"

"Can you get a walkie talkie to the M-1 up on the ridge? I guess his radio is out, I can't get any response from him."

"Ok, I was getting a load of 30 cal ammo ready to go up there anyway for the M-60's. Be a few minutes."

"Hurry every chance you get" I replied.

Down the valley I heard the faint sound of chopper rotors whumping.

"UH, Evers, did you happen to bring a helicopter with you?" I asked into the mike.

"No Nick. Why, do you need one?"

"Well there's one headed this way from downriver, got no visual on him yet. Those Russians' must have radioed for backup."

"I do hope you're paying us by the hour. And we break for tea at two. Coming in hot."

The two A-10's came in at four hundred feet, the napalm bombs tumbling as they fell from the wings. A wall of liquid flame raced from West to East through the treeline, reaching a couple of hundred feet into the air. I had to shield my face from the heat 300 yards away. Both A-10's broke to the left and headed down the river vally.

"Fire's hot Nick, hope you brought your weeeners."

I watched a burning Russian APC drive out of the inferno.

"I say Nick, this heliocopter is a Commie medevac. You want me to let him land or kill him?"

"Escort him to the clearing." I replied, as a LAW's rocket screamed off the ridge and destroyed the burning APC.

The battle was over.

I switched to the Walkie Talkie frequency and keyed the mike, "Rick, got your ears on?" a pause.

"Rick took some shrapnel in the leg, This is Anderson, I'm running the rocket team for now."

I rubbed my temples hard, then, "OK Anderson, we got a Russian medevac chopper coming in. DO NOT engage him, let him land. You clear on that? Over."

"Got it. Do not Engage."

"Get one of your men to relay that info to the Tank ASAP."

"10-4"

"Out."

Click

I switched back to command net and called Deacon.

"Hey Deacon"

"Go"

"Have your boys stand down. I don't want anybody shooting at that chopper. I want it undamaged."

"Already on it Nick."

Over the intercom I asked Porter to move out and pick up Ray.

Evers voice came over the Radio, " Foxhunter two,"

"Copy" his wingman replied."

" Let's circle in behind him. You cover him with your gun from the rear and I'll move alongside and direct traffic."

"Copy fox one."

Evers pulled his A-10 into a right banking turn at 400 knots, backing off the throttles as the rear of the Russian chopper moved across to the front of his canopy. The Russian was diving for the river, towards the rising columns of smoke from the burning tanks and apc's. Evers lowered his flaps 10 degrees and raised the nose as his speed bled off, matching v with the Russian twenty yards off his right side. The Russian co-pilot was watching him from the cockpit, eyes big as teacups. The medics in the back looked like they were thinking of jumping out. Evers pointed towards the clearing and waggled his wings. The chopper continued towards the river battle scene still losing altitude. Evers triggered a burst from his chain gun and a moment later the chopper began to turn.

"I waaana be a cowwwwboy" He sang into the mike. "YEE haaa! Rollin Rollin rollin, RAWHIDE!!" finishing with bad John Wayne. "Howdy Pilgrim. Bah Ha."

I couldn't help but grin in the APC.

CHAPTER FIVE REDEMPTION


Norbert Korzenensky's life flashed before his eyes. It was a short ugly vision with a short ugly ending. The American warplanes were turning in for the kill. Below him wrecked Russian armor and downed helicopters littered the mountainside and river valley, columns of smoke rising to form a single huge dark cloud which trailed off to the East. A yellow tiger striped airplane sat in the river, looking dangerous even in death. A small forest fire was raging between the river and a clearing on an old slide slope. A stone cliff revealing where the side of the mountain had been undercut by the river millions of years ago and finally given way to gravity. The air smelled like burnt flesh and diesel. He wished he were home in bed with Katrina. Maybe he was and this was the worst nightmare he'd ever had. And the longest.

"Get your head out of your ass Norbert, what are they doing?" the pilot demanded through his headphones.

"They are circling behind us getting ready to kill us, Gregory." Norbert Replied.

The pilot threw the helicopter into a shallow dive, aiming for the smoking river valley below. That was allright with Norbert, it meant less time to fall when the cannon shells hit them. Pulling his crucifix from under his flight suit he cupped it to his forehead and began to pray to the Holy Virgin Mary for atonement.

"Cut that shit out, you're scaring the medics." Gregory ordered.

Norbert let the crucifix fall to his chest and craned his head around searching for the A-10's. To his astonishment one of them was slowing down and coming alongside. He watched as the pilot slid in 20 yards away and raised his visor. The only thing worse than being shot down was being shot down by a pilot who liked to meet his victims first. Norbert's testicles crawled a little further into his crotch. The American pointed towards the clearing and waggled his wings. "He wants us to land in the clearing" Norbert said to Gregory.

"Screw that, shoot him with your pistol."

Norbert pulled his Makarov from it's holster and chambered a cartridge. The American let lose a fullisade of tracers and cannon rounds to emphasize his point. Norbert pointed his pistol at Gregory's head and said, "Land in the field, NOW."

Gregory looked at him in contempt and lifted his hands from the controls. "You land it, coward."

Norbert layed the cocked pistol in his lap and assumed control of the chopper, banking it towards the clearing. The A-10 remained alongside through the turn and paced them in till he flared to land. Someone had popped a purple smoke grenade near a wall of boulders, so Norbert assumed that was where they wanted him. He settled the chopper smoothly on the grass and throttled down, letting the engines cool before flipping the switch to kill them. There were about a hundred M-16's pointing at them from over the wall, and a tank was atop the ridge with it's main gun staring him straight in the face. Overhead the A-10's had taken a holding pattern and were circling the area at low speed trailing black jet exhaust. From the direction of the three smashed Russian tanks an APC was approaching, a man wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses standing in the copula. Norbert thought he looked a lot like the crazy surfer colonel in "Apocolypse Now". Inside the helicopter no one said anything.


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Ray looked like hammered crap. His face was covered in blood and grime and hydraulic oil had soaked his fatigues. His upper lip was split and a gap showed in his grin as he climbed the ramp into the APC. I embraced him like a son and said "Thank You."

He looked a little taken aback, then replied, "Is she OK?"

"Yes, she's fine thanks to you and that M-1 crew. Christ I never been that scared in my life." We turned and watched the Russian medevac flare to land in the field as the A-10's peeled off and began to circle.

"Let's go look at our new chopper." I said. I climbed back into the copula for the short drive and listened to Evers gloating on the radio. You'd have thought he won the war singlehanded. " Nick, I'd test drive that thing before I bought it. At least kick the tires and look at the oil on the dipstick. She may look pretty but you never know who's been driving her."

"I'm not planning on keeping it for long Evers, we're gonna trade up soon as I can get it to the dealership."

"You are a cocky bastard, Nick. I like that about you."

"Meet me up at the pilots tent in half an hour and I'll buy you a beer, bring your wingman too."

"Make it Scotch on the rocks and you're on."

"Gotcha covered. Out."

We pulled up beside the chopper and exited through the rear door. Deacon, Maggie, Amy, and about fifteen riflemen were standing near the wall on the outside, waiting for us. Amy ran up and gave me a hug, tears on her face. I gave her a kiss and looked up to see Maggie kissing Ray. I tried to hide my smile and look properly grumpy. I don't think I fooled anybody though.

The Russians climbed out of the helicopter, a knock off of an American Huey. Deacon and I walked over to them and stopped as they lined up. "Any of you communist bastards speak english?" I asked. The one that looked like Kramer off the old Sienfeld show stepped forward. "I do, some." His accent was defintely Polish.

"Tell your medics to go with this fire team and look for survivors. If they try to escape they will be shot."

He nodded and rattled off a string of pig latin to his companions. The Riflemen moved off with the medics in tow, leaving just the two pilots standing before me. "Care for a beer?" I asked Kramer.

"I'd like that very much." He replied.

"Deacon, lock this other guy in one of the semi trailers and post a guard." I turned to see Maggie still clinging to Ray. "And practice up on your wedding ceremony."

"I am not an ordained minister." Deacon replied.

"You're the closest thing we got, and I don't think they're gonna wait." I motioned for Kramer to follow me into the APC, trying not to meet Maggie's grin. There was no way I could hold my smile back any longer if I did. Amy linked her arm through mine and we climbed into the APC with Kramer close on our heels.

We never made it to the pilots tent. I had the APC stop at the CP (the farmhouse)so I could grab a bottle of scotch for Evers, and while I was inside rummaging for an ice bucket Evers and his wingman pulled up in the mechanics' humveee. I stepped out on the porch to meet him, scotch in hand. Wilks, Amy, and Kramer had exited the APC when they drove up and were introducing themselves in the front yard as Wilks held a pistol on Kramer.

A crowd of men, women, and children had gathered near the bunkers and were headed our way also. Evers stepped up on the porch and nodded to his wingman. "Nick, this is Charlie Bowen, best wingman in the squadron. Charlie, meet Warlord Nick." I handed the half liter bottle of Chivas Regal to Evers and shook Charlies hand. Evers continued. " I hope you don't mind, but I just had to have a look at this little fortress of yours from the ground. I had no idea your group was so heavily armed."

"We're not any more." I pointed out. "I lost both my planes and two out of three of my tanks in this battle, and I doubt if the Zeus has enough ammunition left to shoot down a kite. I also lost a lot of my best people. They'll be harder to replace than the hardware."

Evers and Charlie exchanged glances, and Evers said. "Which brings us to the next point, I have a proposition for you."

I looked at him for a long moment, thinking about deals with the devil. "Let's step inside gentlemen, the ice is melting." We entered the CP and I closed the door behind us.

I had a sheet of plywood set up on sawhorses as my map table, and we seated ourselves around it as the generator cycled in behind the house. Evers poured us all a stiff drink and we downed them before beginning the negotiations. Looking out the window I could see some of the older kids were headed down towards the Russian tanks. I opened the door and called out to Wilks, "Keep everyone away from those tanks, we got enough radiation sickness around here without them getting a dose of depleted uranium." He nodded and set off at a trot towards the kids. Kramer was surrounded by the crowd, and they were peppering him with questions, I hoped no one shot him before I had a chance to use him.

Evers was pouring another drink when I turned back into the room, and offered me the bottle. I just shook my head and instead got a beer out of the soda machine. "Well, let's hear it." I said.

He took another sip of his scotch and launched into his sales pitch. "As you have probably dedeuced by now we are not regular airforce, but RAF. We were paticipating in NATO wargames at Ft. Polk and Ft. Hood when the balloon went up, based out of Barksdale as you already know. We are tasked with close air support over Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas, with raids into East Texas also. The Chinese are continuing to advance across Oklahoma and Kansas, and we are too far from the front to be combat effective in that area." He nodded towards the Russian tanks in the field. "This battle was the direct result of the Russians trying to open a corridor for the Chinese to move South and Link up. If they mange to combine forces we will not be able to contain them and Ft. Knox will fall, then Ft.s Polk and Bragg. The war will be won or lost in these mountains and the plains to the West. The armor promised to us by Ft. Bragg turned out to be ten M1-Abrahms tanks with crews to man only four of them and a few mechanics. So my proposition is this, You let me base half my squadron of A-10's out of your runway, and we give you half the tanks. We will also deploy surface to air missiles and provide logistical support for the tanks as best we can."

I mulled this over for a moment and replied. "Basing those A-10's here is going to put my base in harms way due to retaliatory strikes from the communist. It won't take them long to figure out you've moved operations to here, especially after the battle today. If I go along with this deal I want two aircraft assigned to base air cover at all times, and I want two of the trained crews to go with those tanks as well as a some full time on site mechanics. I also want some TOE missiles for that useless Bradley fighting vehicle along with at least one technician who knows how to operate them."

"Evers thought about this for a moment and replied," OK, you got the tank crews and the mechanics. I can't promise two full time dedicated aircraft, but will do my best on that score. The TOE missiles I just plain don't have, but I will put in a requisition for them and the technician. We'll just have to see how that plays out. Is that acceptable or do you need something else.?"

"Just one more thing," I replied. "I want you to teach me to fly an A-10."

We shook hands on the deal and I called Kramer in from the yard, rescuing him from the crowd. He was more than happy to accept the cold beer and some relief from his persecutors. I made sure the door was closed before I gave him the beer though, no sense in asking for a lynching. I set him down and started questioning him at the table, very interested in just how a Pole got to be a pilot in the Russian Army. He had married a Russian girl after the wall came down and then followed her back to Russia when she proved unable to live without her family nearby. There was no work in Russia, so he had joined their army during the Chechnya conflict, having previous experience as a helicopter pilot for the Polish army.

Evers and Bowen hung around for an hour listening to the interrogation, throwing back scotch, and asking an occaisional question themselves. Sometime during the process Deacon also joined in, making it clear from the outset he'd rather shoot the commie than talk to him. Deacon hated Communist with a passion. I liked that about him. His roots went way back to three tours of duty as a marine sergeant in Vietnam, some wounds never heal.

At length Evers and Bowen excused themselves to get some grub and a nap before heading back to their base, making me realize just how tired and sore I was. I turned Kramer over to Deacon and limped to my tent back in the trees, where Amy was already waiting. I stretched out on the old mattress we had on the floor and began pulling my filthy clothes off as Amy unlaced my boots for me. "I thought you were dead when that plane caught fire." she whispered.

"Me too baby, me too." I replied, pulling my T-shirt over my head. Vivid bruises criscrossed my chest and shoulders where the harness had dug in. Amy rummaged around in the med kit and produced a tube of Ben-Gay as I lay back and shucked my levis. She climbed across my lap and began to rub the salve into my bruised chest muscles and my shoulders. "You're going to be stiff as a board tomorrow." she said. I slid my hand up under her bra, cupping her full breast in my hand, and replied. "I already am."

She laughed and began to unbutton her blouse. "Well let's see if we can't work some of that stiffness out."


Afterwards I fell asleep with Amy's head on my shoulder, and slept the sleep of the dead. She woke me at 4:00 PM, an hour later than I had wanted to rest. " Wake up baby, Deacon and Ray are here with the casualty list." she said. I struggled off the mattress and pulled on some clean fatigues, every movement nearly making me groan in pain. I gave up on the boots and slipped on a pair of old sneakers.

Deacon had the list and was waiting outside at the picnic table. He didn't look happy. I took a sip of my hot coke and asked, "How bad was it?"

"Pretty bad, but could have been a whole heck of a lot worse." He handed me the paper and I scanned down the list of names. 12 dead, four wounded, none seriously. Five of the dead had been in the M-1 tank we lost, three more in Ray's T-80. Thank God we had decided only single men would man the tanks, as they were the most likely to bear the brunt of any attack. Phil had gone down in the biplane, he was also single. Two more men had died in the machinegun bunker on top of the ridge hit by the Russian tank, and one had been killed behind the wall by mortar fire. The one behind the wall had left two kids and a wife in her early 20's. "Well, let's go see her." I said.

Deacon nodded and we started walking towards the defensive wall, Ray falling in behind us. I stopped and turned to him, "Ray, this wasn't one of your men. You don't have to do this."

He looked me back in the eye and replied, "Sooner or later it will be one of my men, I'm hoping you'll be there to give me some support. So let me go ahead and repay that debt in advance." I just nodded and we continued on. The 200 yard walk loosened my muscles a little, but it didn't do a thing for my tounge. We left young Mrs. Childress a sobbing wreck surrounded by sobbing women and her very young children. At least her husbands body would get a decent burial. I had already decided I was going to bury the tanks with the bodies still in them, having read too many horror stories about the effects of depleted uranium ammunition before the war broke out. There was no sense whatsoever in sacraficing the health of the living to bury the dead. Especially since they had no loved ones present to mourn over them.

We stood smoking cigarettes in the fading afternoon outside the wall. Deacon said the fire team had captured three unwounded Russian soldiers trying to make their way back down the river, and a couple of wounded were found in the unburned part of the woods. He had the wounded in the hospital building with their medics and a guard, everyone else except Kramer was locked in the semi trailer. After everybody found out Kramer was a Polish conscript they cut him some slack and he was wandering the camp pretty much at will. But Deacon had people keeping an eye on him, just in case.

I walked over to the captured chopper and climbed into the rear deck, surprised to find a multitude of bullet holes through the floor and the alminum siding. "Man this things been shot to pieces." I commented to Deacon.

"Snipers." he replied, " The pole said the hills around their base are infested with them and if they fly closer than half a mile to any mountain they take fire. That's why they only sent one medevac bird, the rest are too shot up to fly. Course it doesn't bother the Hinds, being bulletproof and all."

I was having second thoughts about using this bird in operations now. "You think they'll stop shooting at it if we repaint it and put on some white stars?"

"Don't know, these hillbilly's don't like the American government much more than they like the Russians. Guess it's worth a try though."

I looked back at him over my shoulder and said, "What American government?"

"Point taken." he replied.

The next morning brought a whole new set of problems, and opportunities. I hadn't finished my breakfast yet when the listening post out by the county road called in and said there was a lot of townspeople from Jasper at the gate wanting in. Deacon, Wilks, and I took the Humvee and went to see what the hell was going on. There were at least a hundred men and probably nearly that many women and children at the gate. Thompson and Ames were standing nervously with their M-16's slung on their shoulders clearly uncomfortable about what was developing into a nasty situation. The crowd quieted down at our appearance, and I began to piece together the situation.

Seemed the Russian armored column we had fought the day before had come right through the middle of Jasper before turning up the river valley. In the process a good bit of looting, raping, killing, and general mayhem had gone on. A dozen homes and businesses had been burned to the ground, and some of the better looking local women had been carted off in the Russian APC's. The people were demanding we turn over our prisoners, locate their missing women, provide protection for the town, and give them better armaments than what they had to defend themselves. Some food would be nice too. I told them to give us a few minutes to talk it over and we'd be right back. I turned to Thompson and said, "Get the names and military experience of every man in this crowd under 50."

We returned to the base and I had the Russian prisoners, excepting the medevac team, loaded into the school bus. Wounded included. We headed back to the gate with the bus following, along with fifty riflemen packed in it, and the APC's. I had Kramer along to act as interpreter. We held court right there at the gate and hung every last one of the Russians from the armored column. This pacified the crowd quite a bit, and I launched into my recruiting spiel.

I explained we didn't have the rescources to defend the town and the base, and we didn't want to put the good citizens in even worse peril by moving them en masse into our camp. We would however allow them to set up another camp a half mile down the ridge, where we could provide protection in exchange for the men pulling their share of the soldiering. We weren't giving any weapons to anybody not under our umbrella and pulling their own weight. As far as food went I suggested they get off their asses and start scavenging like the rest of us, and if they hadn't planted a garden yet they best get at it. We could only assume the Russians had either killed the women downriver or the bodies had burned beyond recognition in the APC's. It was a near unamimous decison to take my offer. I got Thompson's list, and we had picked up six tankers, a couple of cooks, a dozen riflemen, a radioman, a medic, and a helicopter pilot. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I reflected.

Evers showed up a little before noon, he wanted me to take the dozer and widen the runway so he could land a C-130 on it. We halted the burial of the tanks and got right on it. The convoy of Tank transports and Deuce and a halfs with our M-1 Abrahms, crews, mechanics, ammunition, and spare parts showed up just before dark. They were very impressed with the Russian soldiers swinging in the breeze at the front gate.

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Ray and Maggie were married three days later, Deacon performing the ceremony on the ridge overlooking the river valley. Amy gave her grandparents rings to them. Deacon had come around after I asked him whether it was more important this marriage be sanctioned by God, or by a piece of government paper.

Nearly the entire camp turned out for the wedding, and by the time it was finished there wasn't a dry eye on the hill. Evers had told Ray that Branson Missouri was still intact, and that the military had commandeered some of the motels to use as staging areas for troops. Refugees were flooding into the city and there was even talk of making it the new United States Capital. If we won the war and nobody nuked it in the meantime. He offered to fly them there on the C-130, as it was nearly right on the route to Patterson, where they were picking up supplies for Evers squadron. The flight crew said they could get them a honeymoon suite at the Holiday Inn where they had been laying over, and the deal was done

Ray and Maggie drove his 57 Chevy into the cargo hold of the aircraft, the doors closed, and they were gone. Amy, Deacon, Kramer, and I walked back down to the base, and Amy commented what a beautiful day it was. But for me some of the brightness had gone out of the sunshine and the trees seemed a little less green. I missed my little girl already.

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Dear Maggie,

Hope this letter finds you and Ray well and are looking forward to your return. Not much going on here, thank God. Rick is getting around a lot better and Amy says Hi. If you meet anybody famous in Branson get their autograph for me. Ha ha.

The last couple of weeks went by pretty uneventfully. A lot of the locals produced travel trailers to use in the second base, most of the rest had tents or brought plywood to knock together hasty buildings. We used our backhoes and the dozer to build them their own bunkers and defensive wall. We also cleared about fifteen acres and plowed it up for them to plant in front of their compound. We just shoved the timber and accumulated dirt up into their defensive wall. The layout is basically the same as the main base, just farther down the ridge. We bulldozed a good road through the woods to connect the two, and cut another road off the top of the ridge so the APC's and Tanks have another way to get to the top from the other end.

Seargeant McKenzie has been busy training the tank crews, composed of the experienced men that came with them, ex-service men from Jasper, and volunteers from among the refugees. There are a lot of tankers with families now though, which I don't care for but can't help. We have pretty much gotten used to hearing the tank cannons firing during the day as they use the Russian apc's in the valley for target practice. It's nice to have enough ammunition to waste a little. When they get through training we will bury them.

Kramer has run the ex chopper pilot through his paces in the Russian helicopter, but he refuses to fly combat missions with him against the Russians if we decide to use the helicopter. I am still up in the air on that, the thing is just too slow and vulnerable to enemy fire to risk lives in. At best we could hang some M-60 door guns on it which are worse than useless against an enemy Hind or fighter.

Evers has been hauling in combat engineers and heavy equipment with his C-130, and they have improved the runway as well as building revetments for the planes. I made him move his ammo dump because he had positioned it too close to the base, but other than that relations are going well. I soloed in one of the A-10's just a couple of days ago and am logging up as much flying time as possible. It really isn't much harder than flying the cropduster, except for remembering that the jet sheds airspeed quicker in turns and recovers it a lot slower. Takes a hell of a lot more takeoff roll too. Firing the chain gun is a dream as the aircraft is very stable. I think Evers pretty well understands I plan to keep this A-10 as my own for base defense, but we haven't broached the subject yet.

They are setting up the SAM sites in a ring four miles out from the airstrip, along with their fire control radars. Yesterday we watched a high altitude dogfight between supersonic fighters from both sides. The sky was filled with circling contrails and several flaming wrecks plummeted from the sky, landing several miles away. I have no idea who won as the radios were skipping frequencies and we couldn't follow the chatter.

Evers says the Chinese have moved south to the Ft. Smith area and are regrouping and resupplying for another offensive. He figures they'll come right up I-40 and I tend to agree with him.

Well I guess I'll let you go for now. Hope you and Ray are having a good honeymoon. Tell him he is missed around here, and Deacon and Andy say Hi. Evers says he will drop this letter off to you tomorrow, So I guess it will still be pretty much up to date. The C-130 will pick yall up on it's next flight back from Patterson, which should be the middle of next week. Take care and I love you, Dad.


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I gave the letter to Evers to deliver and wandered back down to the CP. It was getting on about three in the afternoon and the day had gotten pretty hot, so I figured a cold beer would be good since no pressing business required my attention.

I was surprised to find Deacon and Kramer sitting on the front porch talking. Deacon had his bible out and they were discussing Revalations. I had been seeing the two of them together quite a bit lately, come to think of it, but it just now clicked that they had formed a bond in their common belief in Christ. I went into the CP and got a couple of beers, coming back out and handing one to Kramer.

Deacon didn't like drinking, being a hard core Southern Baptist, but Kramer was a Catholic and it didn't phase him at all. I was raised Baptist but had come to the conclusion years ago that God wasn't going to damn me to hell for an occaisional beer. Nowadays I kinda leaned towards a more Old Testament style of religion though. After a few minutes Deacon got up and left, supposedly to take care of some duties, but I knew it was us drinking that drove him off.

Kramer and I sat rocking mostly in silence, sipping our beers and enjoying the cooling breeze coming out of the shade of the oaks. One beer led to another and before too long both of us had a buzz going and Kramer began to talk.

"You, Nick, you like this war, no?"

"Well no Kramer, I don't like this war. I didn't ask for it and I miss my old life. But we were invaded, and I will fight until I'm dead or the communist give up. I know no other way."

"That is because you are warrior. Some men are born to fight, some not. I was warrior also. No more."

"What happened Kramer? Why did you give it up?"

"A ,how you say, several years ago, in Chechnya. I was Hind pilot fighting separatist Moslems. We had surrounded city with rebel soldiers trapped inside. Many refugees, women and children, were fleeing the fighting. Some of rebels hid among them. We were ordered to strafe the refugees, many hundreds died." he paused and took another long pull of his beer, then continued. "My hind have bad engine, and I am forced to land." He looked directly at me. "Forced to look my death in eyes. Women, children, torn to pieces. Many hundreds, some still screaming. I hear them still. I know I go to hell. God cannot forgive such as this, you see? I refuse to fly Hind anymore, and am put in prison. Then this war start, and they need for pilots badly. I tell them I fly medical helicopter but not fight. So now I am here. But I fight no more."

I rocked in silence for a while, mulling it over in my mind. "That's a hell of a thing to have to live with, Kramer. I don't know if I could handle it."

"You keep fighting. Someday you live with it too." He stood and tossed his empty bottle in the trash can and walked away.

I noticed Deacon had left his bible on the porch rail, and I picked it up and began to read. But the alcohol had dulled my vison and I couldn't make the words out.

------------------------------------------------------------

Amy had insisted that we throw a big welcome home shindig for Maggie and Ray. We slaughtered several hogs and set up the barbeque pits up near the big hangar Evers had built on the ridge. It was open on the sides and the temperature under its canopy was quite a bit cooler than the air down below in the valley. Most of the folks had walked up, but Kramer had been giving kids rides in the helicopter around the perimeter of the base and airlifting beer, people, and miscelaneous up from below the ridge.

Just about everybody was up here, Several hundred at least. Everyone except the pilots from Evers squadron, who had been called in on a bombing run in Texas. They wouldn't be back for hours, and by then we would be moved back down to the base. Maggie's C-130 was due in any minute. I was sitting on the tailgate of my old pickup with Amy and Deacon when the huge aircraft came into view, lining up for final approach. I watched him settle onto the runway wondering if things would be different now between Maggie and I, since she was a married woman and no longer my little girl. It seemed like just a short time ago that her mother and I had divorced, even though it had been eighteen years.

That had been a bad time in my life, when the bottle took control and I tried to drown my misery in every Texas honkey tonk I could stagger into. The divorce had been brutal and Jenny had taken the kids and left the state as soon as it was final. I didn't even know where they were for six years.

By the time I finally located them the girls were eight and nine years old, and barely remembered me. I tried to re-establish ties with them, but Jenny had convinvced them I had abandoned them and they believed it, not remembering what had actually happened. I didn't dispute her story, there was no sense in destroying the only family relationship theyhad left. It was several more years before she finally relented to let them spend summers with me while they were out of school. I didn't kid myself, I knew I was just as much at fault as she was, but the bitterness had continued to build over the years. I hated her now with more passion than I did eighteen years ago when she stole my children.

It had taken time, years, to rebuild a relationship with my daughters, made no easier by the fact we lived in separate states. After they graduated high school their lives became more complicated and we saw even less of each other. Maggie had stayed on in Arkansas, where she graduated, but Nicole had followed her mother to Dallas. And ultimately died there. Now Maggie had taken that final step into adulthood, and I would be facing her as an equal for the first time. It was an intimidating feeling.

The C-130 taxied up in front of the crowd and his engines wound down. Eventually the rear cargo ramp dropped and I stood on the tailgate to catch a glimpse of Maggie and Ray, hoping they hadn't missed the plane. After a few minutes I saw them coming down the ramp and waving to the crowd. We had a huge banner up across the hanger that said "WELCOME HOME NEWLYWEDS". The crew of the C-130 had disembarked as well and were headed for the beer coolers when the air raid siren went off.

Looking all around I finally spotted a twin tailed fighter jet laden with bombs about a mile out and lining up for a low altitude run down the runway. He was flat on the deck and had come in under the radar, not being picked up till it was far too late. I watched in horror as he came screaming in, knowing we couldn't do a thing. Hundreds of people were about to die. He reached the end of the runway, about three quarters of a mile away and the first of the bombs dropped, then another. Behind him I saw the multiple explosions, realizing he was using cluster bombs. People were running in all directions, others being trampled in the rush. I just stood there, there was no point in running. Then I looked down and saw Amy looking up at me. "I love you." she said.

I opened my mouth to say me too as the helicopter came screaming up from below the ridge. The fighter never saw him coming. Kramer slammed the medevac chopper into the jet and a huge fireball erupted, wreckage sliding down the runway towards us until the bombs detonated and blew the whole mess to pieces. Five hundred feet away the fireball came to a stop as munitions continued to cook off. Shrapnel made a screaming noise in the air, but most of it kicked up dust well short of the crowd. The air raid siren wound down as the smoke column began to rise.

I jumped off the truck and hugged Amy to me, saying "Christ Kramer!!"

"Norbert." Deacon said. "His name was Norbert."


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"Forty people were wounded in the attack, six killed. Four of those were children less than fifteen years old. Doc says five more may die before the night is out. I'm through, Deacon. I should never have allowed that gathering to take place. This is your show now."

"Damnit Nick you couldn't have known that the radars had that blind spot. That was Ever's responibility. He should have flown his planes in here from every concievable route and found his weak points. You were the one who built this base, and you were the one who split the camps so we wouldn't lose everyone in one bombing run. Without your drive, leadership, and intuition it all comes apart. I can't run this thing without you. These people need you, and so do I.

I looked at him bitterly and took another pull from the Jack Daniels. " Yeah, and I'm the one who led them like sheep to the slaughter up on that hill. If it hadn't been for Norbert the blood would be running knee deep down the ridge right now. Some leadership and intuition that was. These people aren't going to follow me now, hell why should they. Damnit I don't want them to follow me. How am I supposed to look those parents in the eyes every day? What am I supposed to say to them?"

"You didn't drop those bombs Nick. That pilot knew full well what he was doing. There was no way he couldn't see that crowd on the runway. Just remember, all this too will pass. Don't fall apart on us now."

"How much blood Deacon. How much do I have to drown in before I am set free? Death follows me like a plauge. Hell can't be far behind."

"You may not realize it now, but someday you will. You have a gift, a blessing from God. He has sent you to lead these people, and lead them by God you will if I have to beat you into it!!!" Deacon slapped the bottle of Jack out of my hand and grabbed my collar, pulling me right up into his face. "Now get some sleep and sober up, we'll talk about this in the morning." He released my collar and I fell back into the chair, too stunned to speak. He slammed the door so hard on his way out it sounded like a gunshot.

I layed my head on my arms and closed my eyes. The hell with Deacon and the hell with this camp.

The door swung open again and I looked up bleary eyed to see Maggie standing in the doorway, a bloody bandage on her arm. I rubbed a hand across my eyes and said, "Not now honey. Let it wait till tomorrow."

"No, I need to talk to you right now dad. She walked over and set down across the table from me, forcing me to look her in the eye.

"Dad, you remember back when we first started staying the summers with you?

I nodded and she continued, "Remember how strained it was between us, how no matter what you did or what you bought us there was always that wall that we couldn't reach through?

"Yes, I remember." I whispered. Looking back down at the table.

"But you kept trying, you quit drinking for us, you stopped cussing, you even took us to church. The harder you tried to make us love you, the harder we fought back."


I looked back up into her eyes, a tear beginning to form to match her own. "I always loved you Maggie."

"And I always loved you dad, but if you hadn't stuck with it, gritted it out through our hatred all those years, I would have never realized it. It was your strength and determination that made it happen."

I nodded and wiped the tears from my eyes.

"I just want you to know that I forgive you, for what went before when we were children. And I need you. Just as all these people on this mountain need you. Please don't quit on us dad, not now."

I threw my arms around her and pulled her to me across the table in a tight embrace.. "I won't honey."

Bounced for returning lurkers.

Here is the first part of story i found looks very good will post new part ever few days if any budy is interested.




LATER

Nik wrote an excellent story. I used to have it on my hard drive but that was an older puter. I heartily recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it before. I may even recopy it for reading again.

I miss the old Nikoli.....I hope everything is ok with him.

THANKS FOR THE THOUGHT ABOUT HIM i TO REMBER HIM WHEN i WAS A LURKER WAS ONE FOR MANY MANY YEARS AM LOOK ING FOR HIS AND OTHERS THAT WROTE GOOD STUFF LIKE HIM WILL POST MORE WHEN I FIND ALSO HAV OTHER TWO PARTS OF THIS ONE WILL POST THEM OVER NEXT FEW DAYS .


DO YOU REMBER IF HE WROTE THE SECOND BOOK OF THIS SERIS CALLED TRIBES .




later

[QUOTE=dogmanan;3475924]Here is the first part of story i found looks very good will post new part ever few days if any budy is interested.



Thank you for posting this Dogmanan -
YES, looking forward to reading more.

I was looking for some of NK's works a while back. Now it's in the proper forum for searching.

wow... thanks for the bump and a chance for me to bookmark this.

I miss Nik. I miss Esso...

We could use both of them right now.

Mike

BUMP




LATER

thank you so much for posting this and yes many of us remember NIKI - I hope you find him and he is ok - had another time of off the computer so just now found this story - on to read the the other ones posted - thanks

Great Story!!!

Thanks for bumping it or else I'd probably have never read it!

I'd love to read more of this gent's works. he's definitely a talent and flare for writing a great story!

Urban Hillbilly