The Fall of America: Winter Ops (31 page)

I kept running and when I reached the trees, Silverwolf said, “Slow down, sir, they made one pass each and then left.  I'd estimate we lost half of our people.”

“I . . . I'm okay.”

“Where to now?”  he asked as he met my eyes.

“We'll head east about ten miles then call it a day. I want you and Corporal Morgan to track the two bastards that got away and kill them.”

“Morgan is dead, sir.  I do have Mary.  Those that aren't dead are scatter all over these woods right now.”

 I gave a loud yell, “Aces! I want you to form on my voice and now!”

Almost immediately people moved toward me and I looked at Silverwolf and said, “Take her, and good luck.”

“Don't wait for us, we'll find y'all tomorrow at some point, but if we're not with you by noon, we'll never be there.  Good luck to you too, sir.”  he said and then called out, “Mary, come with me!”

In less than twenty minutes, we were moving through the brush and trees, heading east.  While the weather was cold, it beat being dead, so no one complained. The snow continued, and by night we had a good six inches on the ground.  The winds were high, so I didn't expect any choppers out in this weather so fires were lit.  After meals of Russians rations, most went to sleep.  I sat by my small fire and stared into the dancing flames, wondering how Silverwolf and Mary were doing.

Mary was watching the Russians with her night vision scope and could have easily taken both men out, but the distance was great.  She stood and made her way back to camp and Silverwolf.

When she neared camp, Silverwolf said, “That's close enough.  Oh, it's you. I have a small fire under a large pine tree.  It's not hot, but you'll not freeze to death sitting beside it.  Eat if you want, because I ate shortly after you left.”

 “I'll do that.” she replied.

As she started removing items from her pack, he asked, “Did they move or still there?”

“Still there, so do we kill them in the morning?”

“No, I want to move in close and when they're being picked up, return a Strela-2M  missile to them. If we can down a chopper and kill both of them, this mission will have been successful.”

“It's a big risk, but a chopper is worth the gamble.” She opened the tins and placed them on the hot coals.

“We need to be in place an hour before dawn because this weather might clear, and if it does, they'll come for them.”

Stirring her food to keep it from burning, she said, “I'll be ready.”

They took turns guarding, not trusting the two Russians to not come looking for them, and while vigilant, the night was uneventful. Two hours before dawn, Mary woke him to make water and eat.  It was lung hurting cold, with the temperature in single digits and snow was still falling.  As he was peeing, Silverwolf noticed the winds were calm. He'd just started to turn, when he felt a hand go over his mouth, so he jerked his head violently and screamed.  He felt a knife blade move over this throat and panicked as blood began to spurt.  He was shoved to the ground and wanted to move to help Mary, but could not.  He felt so weak and his eyes blinked rapidly as he wondered where all the blood he saw on the snow was coming from.  Slowly, with his eyes still wide open, he entered a dark void and the world disappeared.

Mary heard the scream and knew something terrible had happened to Silverwolf.  She moved away from the tree and then ran for a good mile.  Finally stopping, she pulled herself up into a tree and climbed even higher.  Then, once in position, she glassed the area, seeing no movement at all.  An hour passed and she waited.  After two hours, she climbed from the tree and made her way back to camp.

She circled the camp and saw where the two men had walked into the camp and then left later.  She then looked for Silverwolf, hoping he was just wounded.  A few minutes later, she found his body, gasped at the terrible condition of his throat and shuddered. He'd been a good man and an excellent soldier in the resistance.  She thought,
Should I return now, or continue the mission?  I think if I'd been killed, Silverwolf would have continued on, so I'll do the same.

Mary stripped Silverwolf of all weapons, ammo, and knives he had, and then moved back to camp.  Her pack she wore, but his was gone, along with the missile, so she decided instead of shooting the chopper down, she'd kill the two Russians and be done with it.  She knew she could sit back a thousand yards, shoot both men, and each would be a head shot.  She knew she was good.

Due to the snow, tracking the two was easy and she wondered why they hadn't chased her farther.  
Must be close to time for a chopper to pick them up
, she thought as she moved over a slight hill.  Every hundred yards or so, she'd stop, pull out her binoculars and glass the area in front of her.  From what she remembered of their camp yesterday, it should be over the next hill.

I'll stop on the crest of this hill, camouflage my position well and wait for them, she thought.  Once the rescue starts, I'll start shooting.  Who knows, I may even be able to injure or kill some of the aircraft crew.

Nearing the crest, she crawled to the top, glassed the area and instantly spotted the two men.  
They are deep in a forest, so how can a chopper pick them up?  Maybe they'll use a hoist or rope to lift them through the trees, because they'll not be able to land here.

She sighted in one man, adjusted her cross-hairs, then felt for wind, but noticed none. She estimated the distance to be close to eight hundred yards, so she clicked the cross-hairs a bit more to allow for the drop of the bullet once fired.

Right then she heard the
wop-wop-wop
of an approaching helicopter, so she flipped the safety off her rifle.  Looking at the two men through her scope, they were preparing to leave, and she watched them placing objects in pockets, while casting other things to the snow.

The chopper was loud now and she saw it maneuvering over the two men as one Russian on the ground spoke in a small hand-held radio.  A man leaned from an open door on the aircraft and using a winch, lowered a strange looking contraption on a cable to the ground.  She watched as the two men extended what looked to her to be seats and then sat on the device and routed a strap under their arms.  She saw one man give a thumb up and then both lowered their heads.  A second later, the cable began to rise. She estimated the chopper was about 100 feet above the ground and maybe forty feet above the trees.  She wanted her victims above the trees, because even a small limb, if struck, could deflect a bullet from her rifle.

When the two men on the cable broke through the trees, she took a deep breath, held it and lined the cross-hairs up on the side of the man on the left.  As she released the air slowly, she gently squeezed the trigger and was rewarded a second later by a loud shot.  The man in her scope suddenly jerked, blood and gore blew out his other side, and fell back limply.  Blood was falling freely from the man's now lifeless body.  Master Sergeant Marka never realized he'd been shot.

The second man, now with a radio in his hand, was speaking, his facial expressions animated and extreme. Obviously he knew they were taking fire from an unknown location.  A second man moved to the open door, swung a Gatling gun out, and began to fire blindly.

She smiled and thought,
Son, you don't even have a target, so all you're doing is wasting ammo.
 She wrote the gun off as no threat and lined the cross-hairs up on the second man.  She wondered if a head shot was possible, so she raised the rifle and moved the cross-hairs to the head of Captain Boris.  Taking another deep breath, she held it, unknowingly smiled, and then began to squeezed the trigger.  Her shot was loud again and the sudden noise surprised her.  

She saw the bullet strike the Captain a little low and to the right, which blew his teeth and chin away. Blood and bone flew through the air and when he turned his head, she saw pure terror in his eyes.  
This sonofabitch is the leader
, she thought as she recognized his rank.
He is responsible for the death of Silverwolf and the others.  He's likely the one who called in the airstrikes as we ran from
the
house, too.

Her heart turned cold as she then shot him in both legs and when she raised the rifle, she saw him screaming, or at least she thought he was screeching; his face was badly mangled.  She lined the cross-hairs up on his chest. She fired and saw him collapse on the seat.  Just to make sure both men were dead, she fired two more bullets into each body.

With both men now dead, the chopper began to turn slowly, allowing the man with the Gatling gun to sweep the ground below.  When the aircraft nose was pointed right at her, she was able to clearly see both pilots in her scope.  She lined her sights up on the man in the right seat and fired, smiling when the bullet struck him right where his neck meets his torso.  His eyes grew huge, a fountain of blood shot from his mouth, and he instantly slumped forward, with only his shoulder harness and seat-belt keeping him from falling to the floor.  

She quickly moved her scope to the second pilot, saw fear in his eyes and sent a bullet into his forehead.  He died at once, fright clearly seen in his lifeless eyes.  The aircraft wobbled and as it turned sideways, she sent a bullet into the belly of the gunner, who she clearly saw scream and fall to the floor kicking. She squeezed off a shot at the wench operator, but missed, sending aluminum splinters into his eyes.

All of this happened in less than a minute and now, with both pilots dead, the aircraft rolled over, fell from the overcast sky, struck the trees, and finally the snow covered ground below.  A huge explosion was heard, a ball of red-orange flames shot toward the sky, and oily smoke rose with the flames.  A few minutes later, three loud secondary explosions were heard, and then the ammunition began to cook off.

Mary stood, glanced at the flames burning over the trees and said, “That was for you, Silverwolf, my friend. Now may you rest in peace.” She placed the sling of her rifle over her shoulder, turned and moved toward the partisans.

The next morning she was still tracking the group, but had met no one. She'd known the general direction of travel and by pure luck discovered some tracks covered with a thin layer of snow.  Today was warm, above freezing, so she was following tracks in the mud.

Near noon, she came upon Charles Black, the drag man, and he'd stepped from the trees, about ready to blow her away.

“Oh, it's you, Mary.”  he said and then lowered his AK-47.

“You're good, Charles, and that's needed.  I need to move ahead of you, is that okay?”

“Sure, I see no reason you can't, but use some caution. Folks are trigger happy since the attack.”

“Uh-huh, I figured as much. Talk later, I have information the Colonel needs.”  She took to walking faster, feeling safer knowing the group was near.

Less than an hour later, she walked to the group as they took a short break.

“Colonel?”  

When she called out, I turned and asked, “Yes, how did it go?”

She told me and while I was deeply saddened to lose Silverwolf, I'd lost a lot of special people in my life. I sat scratching Dolly's ears for many long minutes. Finally, I said, “Mary, you're a Lieutenant as of right now and if I had a medal, I'd give you one, but I don't. Not many people can down a chopper with a rifle.”

She laughed and said, “It was mostly luck.  If the chopper hadn't turned, well, I would never have gotten a clean shot.”

“But you did and we wiped out a squad of expensive Spetsnaz, so the Russians will be pissed, as usual.  They'll stay on our asses until we mingle with each others footprints and then lose them in the tracks.  Colonel Bill Thomas is down this way and I want to spend some time with him and leave a nuke with him.  If they both stay with us and we're killed, we'll lose both weapons.”

“I understand your concern, sir.”

“Get some food in you and then we have to move.”

I didn't like it, but we needed to meet with the others. I don't think any single group needed both of any weapon, but especially nukes. One ambush, and they're both gone.

Ten minutes later we were up and moving again, and we'd continue to move until almost dark. The weather was warm, sun was shining and I kept thinking about the thousand people the Russians would soon execute.  Right now, I could no more help them than I could myself.

C
olonel Vasiliev was livid and his eyes bulged as he screamed, “Do you mean to tell me a squad of Spetsnaz and a helicopter were destroyed by that gang of criminals?  How in the hell did ten of the best trained men in the world all get killed by a bunch of washed up and retired soldiers?”

“One man was killed with a booby-trap, seven were burned to death, but we suspect they were already dead, when the MIG dropped the napalm on the farm house. The last word we had on the helicopter was they were picking the men up, then they started taking some light ground fire, and finally silence. The preliminary investigation shows all were shot and killed with a Russian sniper rifle.  The pilot and co-pilot both took head shots. Also, both men being rescued, Captain Boris and Master Sergeant Marka, were shot as well. Boris was shot a number of times, which may indicate the shooter hated him for some unknown reason.  In all cases, except Boris and Marka, only one bullet struck each man, but all were fatal.”