Invasion (6 page)

CHAPTER 14

Bob ran as fast as he could, crossing the field and past the oil pipe terminal without looking.  Bob had seen more gunshot wounds than he ever wanted to remember as a Marine, but nothing quite prepared him to see his own son with one of those wounds.

“Adam!  Adam!” he said, sliding down next to his son.

“It looks like it went right through the right shoulder,” Ian said, holding two strips of cloth to the boy’s wounds.  “I think he’ll be okay if we can stop the bleeding.”

Adam was unconscious and bleeding profusely from the gunshot wound.   The next two oldest Boy Scouts were in the process of tearing more strips of cloth.  Mary held the boy’s head in her lap, stroking his hair gently.

“Adam,” Bob said, leaning close to his son.

Adam opened his eyes at the sound of his father’s voice.

“Dad,” his voice came out soft and raspy.

“I’m right here, son,” Bob said, holding his son’s left hand.

“Is everybody okay?”

Bob looked up at the people around him.  He recognized the Scouts as Troop mates of Adams’, but he had never actually seen Ian or Mary.  Mary nodded to him that everyone else was okay.

“Yes, they are, son.”

“You save my life,” Mary said gently, as she stroked his hair.

He rolled his eyes back to see her.

“I did?”

She nodded.

“Bob,” Ian put a hand on his shoulder, and Bob stood up.  “Thank you,” he said, extending his hand.

Bob shook it and nodded.  “We need to get him home now,” he said, referring to Adam.  “We’ll need to build a stretcher, it’s a couple of miles up and over the pass.”

“I might have a better idea,” Ian said, and then turned to run back across the road towards the terminal.

Two minutes later, he returned with a full medical kit that he had taken from the helo.  He gave it to the Scouts to use.

“Your farm is over that ridge, right?” Ian asked.

“Right, why?”

“I can fly that thing,” he said to Bob, and pointed to the helicopter.

“You can?” Bob asked, not believing the turn of events.

“Three months at Rucker between tours,” Ian answered in reference to the Army base where helicopter pilots are trained.

“Let’s do it then,” Bob agreed.

Ten minutes later, Adam was strapped into the back, with Mary next to him, holding the compressions on his wounds.

“As soon as you get to the other side of the ridge, you will see the red stable,” Bob said, as Ian looked over the controls of the aircraft.  “I’m going to radio Violet and tell them it’s you and that you have Adam, and to be ready for a gunshot wound.  Set down in the field between the stable and the house, she will meet you there.”

“Roger that,” Ian said.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Bob nodded more than he should, trying to keep the emotions down.  “Yeah, Adam’s a strong boy, he’ll be fine.  We’re going to open these valves, collect their weapons and get rid of the bodies.”

“I’ll get back here as soon as I can, just let me help get Adam stable first.”

“Yes sir,” Bob said and closed Ian’s door.

Ian flipped a few switches and nothing happened.

“I know you can do a lot of things, are you sure about this one?” Mary asked from the back.

Ian flipped two more and then held one up for a few seconds.  He was rewarded with the turbine igniting and the blades turning.  “Yeah, I think I got this one, too.”

“Smart ass!” she said with a smile and a smack of his shoulder.

Ian smiled as the rotor blades spun up to full speed.  He also put the two-way radio earpiece back in his ear.  He heard the voice of Bob making the call to Violet, and her shocked response.   “Hold on!” he said to his passengers. 

The helicopter lifted off smoothly and Ian applied forward movement to gain speed.  Bob and the rest of the boys watched from the relative safety of the other side of the street.

Ian could only speak Chinese, he couldn’t read it; all of the gauges were in Chinese.  He really didn’t think it mattered, the day was clear and he was flying so low to the ground that he didn’t think he could get into any trouble.  The helicopter slowly popped over the ridge and Ian could instantly see the red stables about two miles away. He nosed the bird down, skimming the trees.
That was a lot more convenient!

“Ian, what’s that?” Mary yelled from the back.  She pointed out the left side towards a ridge with a water tower on it.

Ian slowed his decent briefly to look at what she was pointing at.  He could see another black helicopter, like the one he was flying, circling around the water tower.  There was also a truck…that was moving…trucks didn’t move anymore.

“I don’t know,” Ian yelled back, “but they have a working truck.  Something’s pretty important up there I guess.  We’ll stay out of their sight to be safe,” he said, and then nosed the helicopter down rapidly.  Since he had not had his earpiece in for a while, he was unaware that what he was looking at was an assault on his family.

Violet and Anna stood at the door of the house.  They each had surgical exam gloves on and aprons.

Ian set the helicopter down roughly between the house and the red stable as Bob had instructed; his landing causing Adam to grimace in pain.

“It’s okay, were down,” Mary said, undoing his buckles.

Ian cut the switch to the engines and got out to help with Adam.

“Hey Mr. Burrows,” Anna said, squeezing past him to help with Adam.

“Anna, is that you?”

“I came with Grace, excuse me,” she said, putting her shoulder under Adam’s good shoulder and helping him to walk to the door.

Violet was already accessing the dressing around her son’s wound.  She had over twenty years experience as an ER nurse, and things like emotions could wait.

Ian and Mary followed them into the house.  Violet and Anna moved Adam quickly to a front room that had a high table, a bright articulating light and several medical supplies neatly arranged in bins on the wall.

“If you two can wait out there,” Violet directed nicely.  “Help yourself to whatever you want.”

Ian and Mary looked at each other.

“I’m going to find a real toilet,” Mary said, moving down the hall.

“I’m going to call Leah, I’ll be outside.”

Ian walked to the helicopter.  He would need a place to hide the bird, but first he wanted to see what he could hear with the radios.  He hopped back in, put on the dead pilot’s headset and turned up the volume on the radio.  Ian heard several different people speaking…correction…ordering other people in Chinese.  Ian traveled to China several times a year for ‘work,’ he spoke the language well, and could hold conversations, so it didn’t take him long to figure out what all of the fuss was about up on the ridge.

Ian keyed his microphone on the two-way; he had not heard Grace, Joshua or Leah since the earpiece fell out of his ear during his own firefight at the pipeline terminal.

“Momma B, this is Bulls-eye, over.”

“Oh thank God,” Leah said, she fired two more rounds at the helicopter.  “Bulls-eyes, this is Momma B, we’re in a jam and need help.  Over,” she called back into her microphone.

The sentence was like an electric bolt to Ian.

“Momma B, what’s your location?  Over.”

“Water Tower Ridge.  We’re under the water tower.  There are two hostiles below on the road, one bird with a gunner and a personnel carrier coming up the road.  Over.”

Ian flipped the sequencing switches of the helicopter and was rewarded with the whining sound of the turbine coming to life.  “Roger that, I’m on the way.  Over.”

“Dad, the truck’s here, it looks like they have a lot of soldiers.  Over,” Grace said, further filling her father in on the situation.  She then looked over at her mother.  “How’s he on the way?” she asked.

“I don’t know…you know your father,” she chided nervously.  Leah looked down the hill, and saw the troops spilling out of the back of the truck. 
Damn!
  “Daisy, back,” she said to the dog; who circled around her feet.

“You don’t have any dynamite do you?” Joshua asked Leah, as he reloaded one of his clips.

Leah shook her head.  “No, why?  I don’t think that would work from here…that’s sixty plus yards away,” she said in reference to the road.

“I wasn’t thinking about throwing it,” he said and then pointed at the rusty third leg of the water tower.  “I was thinking about blowing something up with it!”

Ian impatiently watched the blades spin faster and faster, and then there was a pounding on his door.  It was Mary; he opened the door.

“Where are you going?” she yelled over the noise of the engine. 

“Leah and Grace need me!” he yelled back.

“Then I’m coming with you,” she said, opening the rear door and climbing in.  “Haven’t you learned that yet?”  She closed the door.  “If you go somewhere, I go somewhere, too,” she said in jest.

“Well, this time, you’ve got to earn it,” Ian said, turning around to talk to her.  “See that gun on the post?”  He pointed to the opposite door in the back.

Mary looked over to the other side of the helicopter.  Outside of the door was a large machine gun mounted to a post.  “Yeah.”

“Buckle in, put on the headset and then slide open that door.  Unhitch the gun and pull the lever back that’s on the side.  You’re now my gunner!”

“Bulls-eye, this is Bob.  Over,” Bob broke in on the two-way.

Ian rotated back to the helicopter controls and lifted the bird off the ground.  Once airborne, he keyed his microphone.  “Bob, this is Bulls-eye, go ahead.  Over.”

“Ian, we’re under attack!  One of the Scouts has been shot and we’re pinned down at the pipe terminal.  We need your help now!  Over.”

CHAPTER 15

Leah looked at the number of men jumping out of the back of the truck, the communications equipment and then at Grace.  She watched her daughter fire several shots, dropping one of the soldiers as they jumped from the truck.

This place is really important to them,
Leah realized.

“Would three grenades do the trick?” she asked Joshua, holding up the three Vietnam era, fist sized bombs.

Grace stopped firing and looked back at her mother.  “Where did you get those?”

“Mr. Rivers.”

“Mr. Rivers?” Grace questioned.  “Like old man down the street, Mr. Rivers?”

“I would trust that man with my life anytime,” Leah said with a grin. “Be careful,” she said, handing the grenades to Joshua.

Joshua took the grenades as if he were moving a nest of bluebird eggs.  “Thanks, Mrs. Burrows.”

“What can we do to help?” Grace asked.  She then fired a shot towards the troops at the bottom of the hill.

“Mrs. Burrows, I need that parachute cord that you have clipped on your pack.  Is that all you have?”

“Yes,” she answered, while unclipping the cord.  She started unraveling the 25 feet of black nylon.

“Okay, that’ll have to do. I’ll need about two minutes to tie these together.  We just need some time before they make it to us.”

“Guys,” Grace said in a warning.  “They’re pulling out a mortar launch tube.  I don’t think we have two minutes.”

<  >

Ian rotated the throttle and manipulated the collective and the cyclic so the bird lifted away from the farm with aggression.  Within a minute, he could see the ridge where his wife and daughter were pinned down.

The wind and the rotor noise washed through the open door in the back.  Mary had her feet mounted to the rungs at the bottom of the opening and death grips on the machine guns grips; her finger flexed on the trigger. She suppressed a scream as the earth passed under her feet.

The ridge she had seen earlier appeared in the distance.  Mary settled her nerves and tried to focus on where they were going.  The helicopter was still there, buzzing around the water tower, but this time she could see the flash of rifle fire on the ground. 

“Is that where they are?” she asked through the headset.

“Yes,” Ian said, as he banked the helicopter away, and towards the ridge they had flown over earlier.  “Get ready to shoot.”

<  >

Despite Bob’s efforts to save him, Bob watched the life leave the young boy.  The remaining three Boy Scouts looked shocked, at the death of their friend, but Bob couldn’t deal with their shock the now.  He needed them to focus if they were going to live.

“Zack, you need to shoot there,” he said, pointing towards the trees across the street.  Muzzle fire was consistently coming from the shade of the trees.

“Why are they shooting at us, Mr. Tiller?” the youngest one asked, his voice barely audible above the firefight.

“They want this terminal,” Bob answered loudly. “I guess it’s important to them,” he said.  He fired one round at the truck, chipping the glass.  “It’s bulletproof glass,” he said to no one.  “Damn!”

Thankfully Bob had heard the truck approaching seconds before it arrived.  In those seconds he was able to get the boys in a defensive position behind the pipes.  When the truck stopped outside of the gates, Bob dropped the first two soldiers that jumped out of the back.  He counted at least ten more after that. 

Bob looked at the body of the dead boy on the ground.  He didn’t like the odds.

Get focused Tiller
, he mentally told himself.

Bob searched for targets through his scope.  Finding one, he shot, and watched the target drop in a spray of blood.  Three down.

Zack was the only other boy old enough to handle a gun.  He was shooting an assault rifle that had belonged to one of the dead Chinese soldiers.  Bob saw that the boy dropped one target, before they were sprayed with a hail of bullets.  The bullets bounced off the giant pipe, pinging and ricocheting in all directions.

Bob analyzed the enemy’s tactical position against his own.  The only way they were going to reach him and the Scouts was to lob something over the pipe, which was unlikely as it might cause an enormous explosion.  They could mount a full on assault, but that would end with many of them dying.  Or, they could circle around them and try to out flank their position…and the last option is exactly what they were doing.

“Do you think you can handle this?” Bob asked one of the smaller Scouts. He held out another one of the Chinese rifles; he couldn’t remember the boy’s name, but knew he was no more than eleven years old.  The rifle was over half the boy’s height.

“Yes sir!” the boy said, taking the rifle. 

Bob positioned him next to Zack.  “Help him out.  Keep shooting towards the truck and the rocks, I’ve got our six,” he told Zack.

“Yes sir,” Zack responded. 

Bob flipped around and scoped from the truck to woods on the other side of the long field.  If the Chinese were going to get across the field without him seeing, they would need to crawl.  Bob found two targets in his scope almost immediately. They were trying to cross the field at about fifty yards away.  He fired and dropped one of them.  The second pulled back into cover.

“Bob, this is Bulls-eye, we’re coming over the ridge now.  What do you need?  Over.” Ian said, pointing the nose of the helicopter down as soon as they crested the tree line on the ridge separating Bob’s farm from the pipeline terminal.

Bob keyed his microphone.  “Suppression fire along the tree line in front of the truck.  Over.”  He heard the high-pitched thumping noise of the helicopter.  But, so did the Chinese soldiers.

“Guys, don’t shoot at the helicopter; that’s Ian.  Okay?” Bob yelled at his Boy Scout gunners.

Ian looked back at Mary.  “Are you ready to shoot?”

“No, but I will,” she said through the headset of the helicopter.

“Fair enough,” Ian responded.  “I’m going to drop us between the pipe and the street.  I need you to start firing at the tree line as I fly.  We’re going to be exposed for a second, but if I’m right, they’ll think this is their bird, and they wont shoot.”

“What if you’re wrong?” she asked.

“Let’s hope I’m not,” he said, getting a visual on the truck.  “Get ready, 30 seconds.”

Bob watched the bird descend along the treetops of the ridge.  The Chinese stopped firing, thinking that support had arrived.  He pulled his rifle up to look through the scope and saw the second soldier attempt to cross the field.  Bob fired, but didn’t think he had a clean shot.  The target went down anyway, but Bob couldn’t confirm the kill.

The helicopter buzzed down over where the two soldiers lay in the field as Ian manipulated the controls of the bird to allow it to fly just above the ground at a slow speed.

“Fire now!” Ian yelled into the helicopter headset.

Mary had already said a dozen prayers since she shot the soldier earlier.  She figured that those prayers would cover her actions now.  She pulled the trigger on the machine gun and fired hundreds of rounds along the tree line and into the truck.

<  >

Joshua threaded the nylon cord around the three grenades, binding them together to create one charge.  He then cut the string, leaving enough to wrap and tie the grenades around the rusty third leg of the water tower.  Finally, he took the remaining nylon and tied them gently around the pins of the grenades so that one tug would pull all three at once.

“Okay, I need about twenty to thirty seconds of suppression fire so I can tie this to the front leg,” Joshua said, looking at the women.

“You’ve only got fifteen feet of cord left, that’s not a lot of room for error,” Leah said, looking at the contraption.  “Especially with three grenades.”

Joshua looked at her.  “Yes ma’am, that’s why I’d like to use the dog,” he said, looking down at Daisy.

<  >

Violet looked worried, her son had lost a lot of blood. 

“Anna, can you please go into the bunker and get me a bag of plasma from the refrigerator at the end of the hall,” Violet asked calmly.

“You have plasma?”

“Yes.  Can you please go get me one bag,” Violet asked again.

“Is he going to die?” she asked.  Fear had just started to break down the barrier of her earlier defenses.

“No, he’s not, but you need to hurry,” she said.

Anna turned around to go into the bunker.

“Anna,” Violet said, stopping the girl in her tracks.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Go ahead and get three bags, I think we’re going to need more before today’s over.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

< >

Mary focused her aggression at everything that had happened to her over the last several days into firing the gun from the helicopter.  These were the people that had knocked her airplane out of the sky.  These were the people that set off an EMP over the U.S.  These were the people that nuked Atlanta.  These were the people that killed her parents and…
This is for Elizabeth,
she kept repeating in her head.

The truck exploded, sending a fireball into the sky.  The light brush and small trees along the side of the road did nothing to protect the soldiers.  They were cut down with the violence of the high caliber rifle, and the person that fired it.

“I think that’s good!” Ian yelled into his microphone.

Mary stopped shooting.  Her breathing was rapid and her hands were sweating.  She released the handles of the gun and let it hang on the post.  Ian set the helicopter down in the field and jumped out with his pistol drawn. Mary slid open the door on the other side of the helicopter.

Bob was ready; he had the boys running towards Ian before Ian could make it to them. 

“Zack, take the front, the rest of you in the back,” Bob yelled over the sound of the helicopter.  He was carrying the body of the slain Boy Scout.

Ian kept an alert eye on the woods around the truck, looking for movement, but there wasn’t any. 

“I think I dropped two in the field,” Bob yelled as he ran past Ian and dove in the back. “I’m not a hundred percent about the second one, though.”

Ian scanned the field and the pipes one more time; he didn’t see anything.  He then jumped into the helo and rotated the throttle.  Once he was off the ground, he aggressively nosed the helicopter forward.  They were heavier, and it took longer for them to build up speed, but after a few hundred feet of gaining speed, Ian pitched the bird up towards the top of the ridge.  Mary re-engaged the gun and kept it pointed towards anything that might be moving.  She squeezed off a few more rounds at the general area, whether it was helpful or not.

“Violet, we’re all in the bird and coming in hot.  I’ll need you once I land.  Over.”

Ian looked back, but couldn’t see Bob directly behind him. “You okay?” he yelled.

“I will be,” Bob tried to yell back.

Mary pivoted around to look at Bob.  Between them were the two living Scouts and the one that Bob was cradling.  “He’s been shot, Ian,” she said.

Bob looked pale.

Mary slid the gunner door shut.  “Let me hold him,” she demanded, holding her arms out to take the lifeless Boy Scout. 

“No, I’ve got him,” Bob countered; he wasn’t putting the boy down until he could let him rest in peace.

“Violet, this is Ian, Bob has a gunshot wound…where?” he asked, tilting his head back.

“Left abdomen,” Bob said.

“Left abdomen,” Ian relayed.  “As soon as we land, I’ve got to go help the others.  Meet us when I touch down in 60 seconds.  Over”

“Ian, this Violet.  Roger that, over.”

“Bulls-eye to Momma B, what’s your status?  Over”

Leah and Grace were laying down suppression fire at as many soldiers as they could. The truck was parked directly in front of the communications equipment providing it as much protection as possible. Most of the soldiers had stayed behind the guardrail, or the truck, waiting for the mortar tube to be deployed.  Obviously, charging a hill, when their enemy had the high ground advantage was not something they wanted to do.

Leah heard the call from her husband and looked over at Joshua.  He was wrapping the cord around the tower’s leg, and then around the grenades.

“Give me a minute.  Over,” she said, and then firing a few more round.

“Joshua, are you ready?” Grace asked.  “I only have one more clip left,” she admitted.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” he said.  He threaded the last piece of cord and then started walking back towards the back of the tank with the cord running through his hand. 

“You can’t pull that from ten feet away,” Leah said, she wasn’t about to let him put himself in danger like that.