The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time (48 page)

General Carswell was having a few uncharitable thoughts about Prince John as well. Why in the hell had John put him in charge of this clusterfuck operation, if not to discredit him with the King? Nothing was going right! First, his lead element marches blindly into an artillery barrage, when the enemy wasn’t supposed to have artillery up north. Then the Focke-Wulfe couldn’t find the howitzer that was pounding his men. Though... He poked his head up out of the hole he had taken shelter in. The shelling had stopped.

With sudden insight that came from being an ex-supply sergeant, he realized they were short on shells. Excellent! At last something was going his way. The thought occurred to him that Prince John intended to use him for a fall guy if this attack didn’t go as planned. He had to bottle up that damn canyon. He hurried towards the troops massing below. One last charge should do it.

The Prince was determined to make him a goat, but he decided to grasp the opportunity to be, instead, a hero. He normally wasn’t an impulsive man, but the thought of the fame and glory that would be his when his attack succeeded went to his head. Like many men, the way he saw himself had little to do with reality. In particular, he had always envisioned himself a master of tactics. Now he had the chance to prove it. The enemy was showing weakness. Now was the time to take advantage. Now was the time to strike with everything he had in an all-or-nothing, do-or-die, balls-to-the-wall, CHARGE!

He promised himself it would be an epic charge, the kind about which poems and songs were written, the kind future generations of officers would study with awe. And he would lead it himself. He could see it now: Carswell’s Charge. He got goose bumps just thinking about it.

*

Captain Parsons could hear the roaring of massed voices from the enemy lines. Somebody over there was getting them all worked up. The Captain’s men were dug in. Lieutenant Osaka commanded his right flank and Sergeant Buell, who refused on principle to become an officer, was in command on his left. He had just finished loading the first of the special projectiles into his howitzer. The gun was depressed to its horizontal, fire at point-blank range, position. But this time, the M102 rested on a firing turntable so that it could be traversed easily. A pair of machinists had cobbled the thing together for him from his description of what he wanted. It looked sort of like a giant lazy-Susan with the main part of the cannon parked on top of it. A roller attached to the tail enabled his gun crew to pivot the 4,000 pound gun in a fraction of the time it would normally take. At close ranges, the ability to turn and aim quickly was vital. Soon the enemy would pour over the banks of the Provo Reservoir Canal. Soon he would know if he could hold the north flank.

A droning sound reached his ears. His eyes searched the sky until they found what his ears had told him was there. Oh, joy. The Focke-Wulfe was back, refueled, re-armed and looking for his cannon. As soon as he pulled the lanyard it would know where to find him. No camouflage netting ever designed could hide that muzzle flash.

The roaring of the enemy troops rose to a crescendo and suddenly, a mottled green and brown wave, the color of the King’s uniforms, flowed over the canal levee and headed for his men. They were slightly over three hundred yards away. A mass of horses galloped to the van, led by a dumpy-looking guy, obviously not a horseman, who was swinging a cavalry saber over his head as he urged his troops on. Christ! There were thousands of them. They swarmed over the ground like army ants.

With a resigned glance at the plane and the knowledge he was signing his own death warrant, Parsons pulled the lanyard and the first of three Beehive rounds wreaked indescribable carnage on the massed men and horses. Each Beehive shell contained eight thousand flechettes, finned needles a couple of inches long, that made a frightening buzzing sound as they tear through the air. That sound gave the XM546, as it was officially known, its nickname. At a range of up to one-hundred-and-fifty yards, the Beehive could kill absolutely everything in a path fifty yards wide. At three hundred yards, the destruction wasn’t as complete, but horrible nonetheless.

Parsons and his men ignored the carnage and scrambled to reload.

Above the battle, the pilot of the Focke-Wulfe saw the flash of the gun and put his plane into a screaming dive. The gun emplacement grew in his sights. His finger poised on the bomb release.

Suddenly, a string of bullets cut across the nose of his plane, disrupting his concentration. Instinctively, he pulled back on the stick and pivoted his head around to locate the enemy plane, releasing the bomb to shed the weight and improve his maneuverability, even though he knew it would miss the howitzer below. There were no flies on him. Survival came first.

Ellen Whitebear swore at the air pocket that caused her to miss. The range had been extreme, but she had realized the FW-190 was bombing someone who was defending the entrance to Provo Canyon and had decided to sacrifice the element of surprise to spoil the strike. Swiftly, she tried to realign her minigun with the enemy plane but its pilot had seen them and was climbing above the angle she could fire without hitting the Huey’s rotors.

Terrell cried out, “Hang on, folks!”

The nose of the Huey rose as Terrell gained as much altitude as possible. In one sense, they could never gain enough. The operational ceiling of the Focke-Wulfe was almost 20,000 feet higher than the Huey’s. The enemy pilot would make his attacks from above, the blind spot of any helicopter. Terrell needed the altitude so he could bank the chopper steeply enough to put the enemy plane in either Ellen or Gypsy’s line of fire. Superior agility was the only thing his Huey had going for it.

“Eleven o’clock high!” screamed Gypsy.

Terrell banked right and Gypsy’s M60 rattled briefly. A line of slugs tore through the Huey, narrowly missing Ellen. Terrell swung the Huey the opposite direction and Ellen caught a glimpse of the Focke-Wulfe. She sprayed the sky as the wild gyrations of the Huey caused her to miss again.

“I’ll never hit him if you keep jinkin’ all over the sky, Terrell,” Ellen complained.

Below her, the Allied howitzer fired again.

“Well, I’ll just fly nice and level so he can blow us out of the sky, then,” Terrell shot back.

“Never mind,” Ellen retorted in her best Gilda Radner whine.

Gypsy chuckled, “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you two were married!” During the banter, their eyes had been searching the sky.

“Six o’clock high!” Ellen yelled.

Shells from the FW-190 ripped through the Huey. Gypsy staggered and fell, bright crimson blood gushing from a wound in his neck. Terrell ruddered the chopper to the right where it was flying sideways and banked it so Ellen’s door faced the plane. She only had the briefest of instants to react. Her minigun whined its metallic scream as she poured lead toward the Focke-Wulfe. Pieces of tail section shredded from the plane.

Feeling the mushiness in his rudder and elevators, the enemy pilot broke off his attack and headed for home.

The Huey’s engine chose that moment to cough and die. Its rotors began to autorotate, slowing their decent slightly.

“Brace yourselves, we’re gonna hit hard!” Terrell shouted as he fought to control the Huey’s drop.

Ellen looked over at Gypsy, whose dead body flopped half in and half out of the helicopter’s door, held in only by his safety strap. Her hand unconsciously brushed the pocket that held Michael’s note.

*

Down below the smoking Huey, Parsons shifted his aim point and fired again. The last of the six Beehives cut a cone of destruction through the oncoming men and the charge faltered and stalled. Battle cries stilled, replaced by the agonized screams of the wounded. A dazed hush fell over the battlefield. Parsons’ men stopped firing. Enemy survivors ran or stumbled in shock over the bodies of their fallen comrades as they fled, though a few stopped to pick up injured friends. Thousands of dead men littered the killing ground, bodies pin cushioned with flechettes. The stench was overwhelming.

Captain Parsons stared in horror and disbelief. Acres of bodies lay as they fell. I did this, he thought. I DID THIS! He looked at his right hand, the hand that pulled the lanyard, as if it couldn’t belong to him.

Sprinkled randomly throughout the piles of corpses, injured men writhed in agony. Some Allied soldiers dropped their weapons and covered their faces, some threw up, others simply stood and sobbed. Parsons himself was shaking. Wounded enemy soldiers found their voices again. Piteous moans and cries for help, mixed with mindless screams.

Since the Allies didn’t have the medical resources to squander on their foes, standing orders were to kill or ignore enemy wounded; but along the line Allied soldiers broke ranks and walked out into the kill zone to give aid. No one tried to stop them. No one human could have.

Captain Parsons took control of himself with a mighty effort and reached for his radio. “Parsons to HQ.”

“Headquarters here. Report.” It was Adam Young, sounding harried.

Parsons wrenched his gaze away from the dead and said in a voice like a mausoleum, “Sir, the north flank is secure.”

Adam heard the oddness in the Captain’s voice, but didn’t press. He would understand the cause when he retreated past the site of Carswell’s Charge.

Captain Parsons lay the radio down and stumbled like a zombie into the grisly nightmare. Maybe he could save some of them. Maybe...

Sergeant Buell gathered the Allied soldiers and sent most of them south to rejoin the main effort. Then he led Captain Parsons, slippery with gore, from the battlefield, where isolated gunshots sounded: mercy killings beneath a sapphire blue sky.

Chapter 47: Painful Retreat

Dan Osaka and Lady Di were two of the few who didn’t go to help the enemy wounded, being more interested in the damaged helicopter that splashed down in a small lake half a mile away. Mounting their horses, they galloped toward the broken bird, but even as they neared, the chopper sank beneath the water.

*

Ellen Whitebear opened her eyes as water splashed her face. She gasped, choked, coughed water and grabbed a deep breath as awareness of her situation flooded through her and the water surged over her head. She tried to disconnect the safety belt that held her to the sinking Huey, but her arms wouldn’t move. Terror gripped her as she realized she couldn’t feel her arms or legs. The helicopter lurched under her as it sank farther beneath the surface. She slid partway out the door. Through the murky water, she could see Terrell struggling to free himself from his restraints.

Pressure built in her lungs. She tried desperately to move her arms or legs, imagining herself thrashing against her bonds, tearing free and heading for the surface. She couldn’t move. Tears of frustration formed in her eyes as she struggled to overcome her injury to no avail. She felt a bump as the chopper settled onto the bottom of the pond, stirring up a cloud of silt that further obscured her vision.

Her stomach convulsed, forcing precious air from her oxygen-starved lungs, but though her cheeks puffed out and tiny bubbles escaped from the corners of her mouth she managed to swallow most of it back down. She wouldn’t give up. She wasn’t the kind to go without a fight. Maybe Terrell would get free and think to take her up with him. Her consciousness faded. Her vision dimmed. The last thing she saw before she passed out and released the air from her lungs was a large, dark form nearing her.

*

Lady Di’s whip-thin body vaulted from the saddle and plunged beneath the water of the pond in a single fluid motion. Her deceptively powerful arms and legs propelled her like a fish toward the Huey ten feet below. A rising cloud of silt made seeing difficult. As she neared the chopper, she saw Gypsy dangling from the door nearest her. The gaping wound in his neck told Di he was dead.

She swam into the doorway. Terrell Johnson floated before her, his arms waving weakly. She thrust him out the door, where Dan Osaka grabbed him and started for the surface. Di lunged for the cloud of blond hair that waved in front of her, knowing it had to be Ellen. An explosion of bubbles startled her as she tugged Ellen toward her. Di pinched Ellen’s nose and clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her from sucking in water. Then, covering Ellen’s mouth with her own, she blew a light breath of life into Ellen’s convulsing lungs. She released Ellen’s nose long enough to slash the safety belt with her combat knife, then kicked both of them out of the chopper and headed topside.

As her head broke the surface, she saw Dan administering CPR to Terrell at the edge of the pond. Immediately she began mouth-to-mouth on Ellen as her lithe legs kicked toward shore.

*

Miles to the south, Michael Whitebear watched the helicopter fall with a sinking heart. If he knew his wife, she’d be on it. He’d heard from Mitch Stonehand that Ellen had been in on the end of the Bloody Lake Massacre and that the chopper had taken damage. He hadn’t figured they could get the thing running again in just two days, but Ellen was full of surprises. He didn’t know what the survival rate was for anyone riding a helicopter down, but from that altitude, it couldn’t be good. His mind shied away from that unbidden thought. And returned to it against his will. If she was dead... His eyes narrowed and went flat and hard. His jaws clenched. Somewhere down deep inside he realized if she died he’d lose many of the restraints that bound his behavior and...

Spaaang!

A bullet ricochetted off the dozer next to Michael’s head. Enemy! A ravening wolf was loose inside him and he charged among them like they were sheep, emptying his Uzi, then swinging it like a club. Slashing with his bowie--killing--killing. His eyes were golden flames and those facing him could see the demon within. They broke and ran, but the demon was faster.

A hand touched his shoulder and he spun, knife slicing toward--he froze--“Daniel?”

“It’s over, Yellow-Eyes. They are all dead.”

The tawny glow faded from his eyes as bloodlust died and his head cleared. He stood there, feral, crimson splattered and cried out her name, “Ellen!”

The sound opened a flood of memories.

He was wild with rage, grief and bitterness when he came home from the war and the strength of her love had opened his heart to joy. During The Dying Time, his talent for killing enabled the Freeholds to survive. Ellen’s wisdom made it grow and prosper. The knowledge that she was there for him helped him return from those forays into death dealing to the norms of more civilized behavior. Without her stabilizing influence, he feared he would become a rabid killer, unable to stop.

In all the years since the war, the only time he’d truly let the genie out of the bottle was when he killed No-Ears. He looked south toward the battle line, his face set in stone. If Ellen was dead...

“She could be all right, my friend,” Daniel said. “You Whitebears are hard to kill. Ask Ma-hay-oh.”

Michael closed his eyes, reached deep within himself and tried to ask his spirit whether his love lived or died. The pain was too raw! He shut out the roar and stench of the diesel-powered Cat, the clanking of its treads, the sounds of battle. He went to the center of his calm and beyond, where he took a breath and held it without knowing why. He felt...something...something he couldn’t explain. He gasped for air and smelled stagnant water. He opened his eyes and looked at Daniel, then at the death around him and chose to believe.

“She is alive.” He wasn’t aware of the tears running down his cheeks.

Mitch Stonehand swung the dozer into an alleyway and stopped. “Okay you two,” he said cheerfully. “Do your stuff.”

Michael and Daniel jumped to the ground and headed off in different directions, hunting the enemy tank.

*

Didn’t take long to find it, Michael thought, as he jerked his head back around the corner.

Tatatatat!

Fifty-caliber slugs from the tank’s machine gun deflected off the wall, scattering stone chips. The turret began cranking around in his direction.

He poked his Uzi around the corner and loosed a burst in its direction. Susan Redfeather and a few other volunteers opened up, then everyone dashed to a new hiding place at the same time. The Patton turned and began grinding its way ponderously up the street toward their new positions.

Michael clicked the mike on his radio, the signal that the tank was on its way. He looked up at the buildings lining the street, so weakened by shellfire he wondered how they still stood. In fact, there were times he was more concerned about being crushed by falling buildings than being killed by the enemy.

Michael leaned out and fired before bolting for different cover. The place he’d just abandoned erupted under the impact of a high explosive tank round; a piece of concrete from the blast pinged off the helmet he’d lifted from a fallen soldier only moments before. He rolled behind the overturned hulk of a rusting Buick Skylark, cursing as his shirt caught and tore on a loose piece of tarnished chrome. He risked a quick peek and was rewarded by a barrage of fifty-caliber rounds. No doubt about it, he’d got the tanker’s attention.

“I need help down here!” The voice came from an open manhole in the middle of the street.

Michael yelled back, “On my way!”

Redfeather and a couple of others opened up from across the street and distracted the machine gunner. Michael took a running leap and dove through the manhole. Daniel Windwalker broke his fall.

“Phew!” Michael exclaimed, as he and Daniel picked themselves up out of the stagnant water that lay a foot deep in the sewer drain. He took in the bemused expression on Daniel’s face and added, “Nice catch.”

“Couldn’t risk you striking a spark,” Daniel said.

Michael sniffed the air. Overlaying eau de sewer was a familiar smell.

“Gas?”

“A little, probably not enough to do any real harm.”

“I’m glad you didn’t take the chance.” Michael rubbed his sleeve against the wall, scraping off a piece of...he didn’t want to know. The smell was bad enough.

“Did he see you?” Daniel gestured in the general direction of the Patton.

Michael shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

The thunderous report of a nearby explosion slammed into their ears.

“Bet that was the Buick I was hiding behind,” Michael said.

“What’d you do to piss him off?” Daniel asked as he set the timer on a homemade C-4 bomb.

“Tried to bowl a grenade into his tracks,” Michael answered, grinning. He boosted Daniel back up toward the manhole opening. The ladder rungs set into the walls of the sewer were so badly corroded one of them crumbled in Michael’s hand as he tried to brace himself with it. Several others were broken from where someone had tried to climb them, explaining Daniel’s call for help.

Daniel climbed onto Michael’s broad shoulders and peeked out. Gunfire from Susan Redfeather and the rest of the decoys was drawing the Patton farther down the street.

“How much longer?” Michael strained from below. Daniel wasn’t exactly light.

“Twenty seconds,” Daniel said. “Why? Didn’t you have your Wheaties this morning?”

“Two bowls,” Michael shot back. “But you feel like you had ten.”

Daniel chuckled as he jumped down from Michael’s shoulders. He bent over and tripped the timer on the bomb. “Last one out’s a crispy critter.”

The two men raced down a storm drain Daniel had scouted earlier, mentally counting down the seconds till the explosion. At three seconds till “Boom”, they scrambled up a collapsed portion of the street that formed a ramp up from the sewer and threw themselves flat.

Two seconds.

One.

BOOM!

The force of the blast and the small secondary explosion from the gas in the sewer lifted the street, broke it into chunks and dropped it into the hole where the sewer had been. Dust and debris rained down all around them.

Michael peered through the cloud of dust, expecting to see one wrecked Patton. Instead he saw an intact tank sitting where it had stopped, five yards from the hole.

“Shit!” he yelled, as he and Daniel belly-crawled through the rubble to safety. “Shit! Shit! SHIT!”

“I take it we’re going to Plan B,” Daniel said dryly.

“Course we are. What’s the matter? You don’t understand plain English?”

A sudden increase in the volume of rifle and machine gun fire drew their attention back to the battle.

Poking their heads around the corner, they saw Mitchell Stonehand on “Plan B” roar out of the alley. The D-9H slammed into the side of the Patton, jolting it sideways and snapping the track on the impact-side.

The force of the unexpected impact momentarily stunned the tank crew, but they recovered quickly. The tank’s cannon began to rotate toward the dozer, stopping with a clang when it hit the broad blade on the front of the Cat. Bullets from the tank’s infantry support spanged off the metal shielding that armored the enclosed cab of the bulldozer.

The command hatch popped open and the tank commander tried to shoot Mitch through the view-slits in the front of the cab. Mitch killed him with a single shot from his .44 magnum pistol.

Michael and Daniel had their guns in action, popping shots at the enemy infantry, as were Susan and the rest of her team.

The tank’s driver was applying full power to the undamaged track in an attempt to pivot away from the D-9H, so his gunner could bring the tank’s cannon to bear, but the steady pressure maintained by Mitchell’s Cat defeated the move. The tank’s loader was trying to pull the tank commander’s body back inside so he could close the hatch.

Mitchell swung outside the door of the cab and lobbed a grenade toward the opening, missing. A shot from a King’s man caught him high in the chest and knocked him off the Cat into the street.

As one, Michael and Daniel darted around the corner and bolted toward the tank and their fallen friend, but Susan Redfeather was closer. As bullets from the tank’s machine gun smacked into the street behind their racing feet, Susan vaulted onto the tank and shot the loader in the face just as the surprised man reached to close the hatch. In the blink of an eye, she unpinned a grenade, dropped it down the opening, slammed the hatch shut and jumped for cover behind the bulldozer.

Michael and Daniel reached the Cat a second later. A muffled boom announced the death of the tank’s remaining crew. Susan was closing Mitchell’s death-glazed eyes, tears running down her face.

“Aw, shit,” Daniel whispered. He would miss Mitch’s strength and his pranks. He vowed that, if he lived, Mitch’s son would become his own.

*

In spite of their heroics, in spite of the best that brave men and women could do, the enemy poured into Provo in a never-ending stream. Sheer numbers finished what superior technology began.