The day after: An apocalyptic morning (119 page)

              "That would be a good figure," Skip said. "Of course, as they get used to the attacks they'll learn to react faster to them when they occur. After the first two days or so I'd be surprised if we could hit more than five or six per attack."

              "Okay," Paul said, "so we knock off a hundred or so before they get here. That'll still leave three hundred people to battle when they arrive, won't it?"

              "No," Skip said. "You're missing the real value of this tactic. It is not so much the dwindling numbers that it will create through casualties that will help us, it is the morale problem that we will create by doing this."

              "Morale problem?" Paul asked incredulously. "You want to try to win a war by making them mad?"

              "Not mad," Skip said. "Scared. Terrified even. I think that you're maybe underestimating the power that demoralization has in a combat situation. We will be raining random death down upon these people constantly. They will never know where it is going to come from or whom it is going to strike. They'll get antsy and nervous as they come closer to us. If we can hit them at night as well - and I have a pretty good idea of how we can do that - than that will rob them of sleep. Do you remember when Anna told us about how some of the men are starting to question the wisdom of constantly attacking everyone?"

              "Yes," Paul said, sparing a glance at her. She was listening intently to the conversation.

              "These militia people are mostly conscript types. They are a part of this army because of conquest, fear, and intimidation. Right there is the beginnings of the morale problem. Things have not come to a head however because they've never really lost a battle or even been significantly challenged on the battlefield. They think they're invincible. We need to show them that they are not, that they will have to pay a steep price for taking us. Once they start to see their friends blown away on the trail, once they have to contend with being hit when they least expect it, even while they're trying to sleep, that morale will break. They won't feel safe anywhere. They'll start to have desertions and maybe even the fragging of officers. It's what the Vietcong did to us in Vietnam, it's what the Afghans and the Chechens did to the Russians, it's what we did to the British in the Revolutionary War. It is a sound military tactic and I intend to employ it to the best of my abilities here."

              "And you think it'll help?" Paul asked.

              "It'll help," Skip assured him. "And with some upgraded defense plans at the town itself, I think it just might be enough."

              "I hope you're right," Paul said. "Because it's damn sure going to have to be."

              The community meeting was called early that day, with Paul passing the word that everyone except the guards on station drop whatever task they were engaged in and report to the community center. The guards on station, as was becoming routine, had the meeting broadcast to them on the radio waves. The mood of the town, which had been frightened and almost panicked, quickly turned to optimism as Skip explained to them just what he had in mind.

              "We can beat these fuckers, people," he told them. "And not only that, we can beat them so hard that they'll never show their faces around here again. We have the motivation to fight where they do not. We now have the weapons and the ammunition to fight them with. I'm not going to go so far as to say that we have God himself on our side, but I will tell you that our spirit for success and our survival instinct is sure to prevail."

              This speech was met with a round of spontaneous applause from the crowd and even a few tears of emotion.

              "But in order to do this," Skip said, "we're going to have to pull together like we've never pulled together before. We need to abandon just about every other project that we have underway and start digging bunkers in those hills outside of town. We need to put up obstacles and make some sort of landmines. And most of all, I need some volunteers to undergo some additional training and be part of the harassment force. I need..."

              He was forced to wait while hundreds of cries of "I volunteer!" were shouted out.

              "I'll pick the volunteers later," Skip said once they quieted down. "For ease of training, I'll only accept those that have been on the guard force and undergone more than the basic firearms course."

              There was a collective groan from those that had not gone through that.

              "But the rest of you need not worry I think," Skip responded. "You'll have your chance to get in the battle. Trust me on this. Some other things that we'll need to do are form up into squads and platoons so that we can establish a firm chain of command for this battle. We'll have to develop radio procedures and codes to employ once the Auburn group gets close enough to monitor our radio traffic. We also have the obligation to start delivering the promised grain and canned food to El Dorado Hills. This is going to be a very intense and busy two weeks or so, have no doubt about that. But if we do this right, and I have no reason to think that we won't, this battle will be something that our distant descendants will read about in their history books. We will prevail!"

              The applause this time lasted nearly five minutes.

              It was an hour before dinner. Jack and Hector were standing on ladders next to the helicopter. The engine compartment and the rotor housing were both opened and they were changing fluids and checking the status of the major components. They were performing a complete maintenance regime on the chopper even though it was not scheduled for one for another twenty flight hours. The helicopter was about to get a serious workout over the next few days and Skip wanted it to be in tip-top operating condition. Jack, who had assisted in all of the previous maintenance of the machine was doing it solo for the first time and training Hector, who had aspirations of one day piloting the machine, in the routine.

              Skip was very close by, though not watching what Jack was doing. Though Jack was only fourteen, actually fifteen now, he had every confidence in his abilities. Instead, Skip was underneath the nose of the helicopter with Steve Kensington pointing out some features to him. He had an unloaded M-16 rifle from one of the guard posts in his hands.

              "So what do you think?" Skip asked once they'd crawled back out and stood up. "Can it be done?"

              Steve pulled a cigarette from his pack and sparked up, taking a thoughtful drag. "I can do it," he said confidently. "It's just a Micker of cutting a hole in the bottom between the frame supports and welding a mount of some sort into place."

              "Can you make a mount though?" Skip wanted to know. "That struck me as the hard part."

              "Oh no," Steve said, shaking his head. "The mount will be the easy part. I won't even have to make it. All I have to do is use the mount from a telescope tripod. I think that'll work nicely. I'll install a receiving port on the stock of the weapon and it'll screw in tighter than a nun's cunt. Of course, the weapon will be upside-down. That won't Micker, will it?"

              "Actually," Skip said, considering this, "that'll be better than having it right side up. The trigger will be inside the cockpit that way and the shells will eject outside. It'll also make reloading easier."

              "Good enough," Steve said. "I'll get right on it."

              "I have to make the check of Auburn tonight at 9:00. Will you have it done by then? If not, just wait until tomorrow morning to do it."

              "I'll have it done in less than an hour," Steve promised. "I'll go dig out to the cutting torch and the welder right now."

              "You the man," Skip said, patting him on the back.

              Pleased by the praise, Steve headed off towards the maintenance shed with a smile on his face.

              Once he was gone Skip walked over to the ladder that Jack was standing on. Currently he was pouring fresh lubricating oil into the rotor housing. "You okay here?" he asked. "I need to go talk to Paul for a few minutes."

              "We're on top of it," Jack assured him.

              "Cool," Skip said.

              He found Paul in the community center office dictating some notes into a battery operated tape recorder. He shut the machine off when Skip came in.

              "Everything going okay?" he asked.

              "Perfect," Skip said. "Jack and Hector are almost done with the maintenance of the bird and Steve says it'll take him about an hour to install a 16 on a mount beneath it."

              "An hour?" Paul said. "Really?"

              "He's a fuckin' mechanical genius, I'm telling you. Anyway, I wanted to talk about a few special missions that I'd like to make and another work crew that I'd like to raise when we have the time."

              "Shoot," Paul said.

              "When we're done making our deliveries to El Dorado, I think we should make a few trips to recover some of the laundry soap in that truck trailer."

              Paul looked at him as if he were mad. "Tide?" he asked. "What the hell do you want to do that for? Don't you think we can let our laundry concerns ride for the time being?"

              "I don't want it for laundry," Skip said. "It can serve another purpose for us."

              "Oh?"

              Skip explained what he meant.

              "Remarkable," Paul replied, obviously impressed. "And how will you do this?"

              "That's where the work crew comes in," Skip said. "We need to get some people to start pulling the gas tanks out of some of the vehicles that we're not using. I think a fifteen-gallon tank would work just perfectly. It's big enough to create the effect that we're after but small enough so that dropping it from the helicopter won't spin me out of control."

              "Wow," Paul said. "I'll get a work crew together in the morning." He paused for a moment. "Did I ever tell you, Skip, that I'm really glad that you're on our side?"

              "You never did, but I'm kinda glad to be here."

              Part 15             

              Skip was finding that he was having a major time-management problem as the frantic, pre-battle preparations were being undertaken in and around the town. There were many things that required his attention and his attention alone and only twenty-four hours in each day to do them all. The bulk of his daytime hours were being spent behind the controls of the helicopter. In the three days since the deal had been struck with El Dorado Hills he had logged more than thirty flight hours. In a marathon two-day operation, all of the promised grain and canned food (except the chili, the peanut butter, and the baby food) had been delivered to El Dorado Hills either in water heaters or upon pallets. And El Dorado Hills, keeping with their end of the bargain, had supplied Garden Hill with more than eighteen thousand rounds of ammunition, six automatic weapons, and, as a gesture of good faith, four hundred pounds of dried fish. When not flying recovery missions for El Dorado Hills, Skip was flying them for his own town. Just this day he and his crew of four had recovered four hundred boxes of Tide laundry detergent and five hundred gallons of gasoline from the tanker car on the railroad tracks. Skip had special plans for these two substances.

              The bulk of his early evening hours was being taken up by basic infantry tactic lectures that he gave to the entire town. He had had Christine and Paula - both of whom were considerably more artistic than he - make a large, scale model map of the surrounding terrain. This map was very detailed, showing the location and name of every hill large enough to hide a squad of troops on. Skip would stand with a pointer and explain to his audience the best way to go about defending their town while hopefully keeping casualties to a bare minimum.

              "We'll be fighting a purely defensive battle here," he would tell them, "and, once the enemy gets into our playing field, we're going to be using a fighting retreat tactic. These outer layers of hills to the north and the west, the ones out beyond our main guard positions, that is where we're going to meet them first. Now many of you know exactly what I'm talking about since you've been out all day digging foxholes in those hills. What we're going to do is move our forces to whatever hills are between the town and their avenue of advance. More than likely, they'll have more than one such avenue and they might have as many as three. You'll engage them with your weapons as soon as they come into range. We're not going to be doing any of that until-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes shit. Our goal is to keep these fuckers as far away from us as we can. We have plenty of ammo now so don't fret too much about wasting it. We're going to make them pay heavily for each advance they make and then we're going to pull back as soon as they start to get close. Remember that you'll be in well-protected positions while they will be forced to move across open ground. The advantage goes to the defender.

              "Once they close with our first positions, we'll retreat to our next set of prepared defenses. Once again, we should have foxholes already dug there and the whole process will start over. We'll bloody them some more and then we'll retreat again when they start to get close. Layer by layer that's how we're going to fight them. Eventually, if necessary, we'll fall back inside the wall itself and make our final stand in the park outside of this community center. We're already in the process of setting up bunkers in the grass and we're working on setting up some minefields to channel them into killing boxes."