Francisco stared at the map. “Thank you, amigo.” Francisco clapped Bastardo on the shoulder. “You’ve given me something beautiful to think about. It’s quite a dream. Please send in Crudo.” With that, Francisco ended the meeting.
Bastardo and Romero climbed down from the RV and closed the door. A few minutes later, Crudo knocked.
“Come in.”
“Sí, Jefe.” Crudo stepped inside and walked over to the table.
“We attack Oakwood tomorrow at first light. Every man fights.”
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
In the middle of the night, gunfire crackled across the Great Lawn of the Homestead. Jeff and his teams had been fighting this battle for thirty minutes, and they still didn’t have a clear picture of the enemy. As was usually the case with a night battle, nobody could find their ass with both hands. Being shot by your own side became a bigger risk than being shot by the enemy.
Jeff guessed that a small group—maybe just ten or fifteen men—had penetrated the upper perimeter in an attempt to sneak in and rob the Homestead. The bullets now thudding into Homestead buildings probably came from a thrown-together group of armed, hungry men, most likely not the gangbangers. Most of the Homestead buildings were made of stone, and all of the tent-people had retreated into the bunkhouse. As long as the property didn’t get overrun, their families would be safe.
Because of the dark and because of their limited training, Jeff didn’t dare send more than one QRF into the forest after the attackers. If two QRFs went, they could cut each other to ribbons.
Earlier in the gun battle, one of his perimeter defense guards had shot one of the QRF guys accidentally—the first Homestead casualty—and it didn’t look like the QRF guy was going to pull through. Jeff sent all the perimeter defense men to their duty stations to keep them from wandering around and to prevent further blue-on-blue shootings. Except for the QRF, the Homestead perimeter defenders didn’t have enough training to fight in the dark.
The best way to kill the invaders without shooting one another would be the surgical application of night vision, thermal vision and excruciatingly careful gunfire. Every one of the QRF fighters wore an infrared sticky badge on the back of his bump helmet. At a quick glance, with night vision, the Homestead fighters could see the badge and refrain from ventilating one of their own.
QRF One ran the fight in the forest. One Homestead fighter had been wounded by the intruders, and another guy was in surgery, shot by the Homestead’s own guys. Based on the radio chatter, Jeff surmised that the squad leader of QRF One, Tim, was moving his guys carefully across the forest and down the canyon, herding the intruders in front of them toward the Great Lawn.
Even though it pushed gunfire toward their families, the plan made sense. QRF Two and Three, both at full strength, had set up a U-shaped picket around the Great Lawn. With open fields of fire, the blocking force would shred anyone stepping onto the lawn. The fight blazed dangerously close to the home, but it was the only sure way to contain and eliminate every intruder.
Winslow had a team of snipers set up on the ridge facing the forest, and they were carefully picking through targets with their thermal scopes as targets appeared between the trees. The first blue-on-blue shooting scared everyone straight, and the process of identifying targets slowed to a crawl. Everything had to be done with great care to avoid another needless death.
Tim’s QRF One all wore NVGs, but that wasn’t the end-all-be-all solution to winning a night fight in the forest. Yes, the team could see in the dark, but picking through a dark forest with NVGs was like trying to find Where’s Waldo while someone kicked you repeatedly in the balls. The forest looked like black-and-white scrambled eggs through NVGs. Half of the QRF guys carried big infrared floodlights to light up each chunk of the forest, one section at a time. Only the NVGs could see the floodlights.
The QRF had IR lasers mounted to the fronts of their rifles and handguns, allowing them to sight and shoot without shouldering their weapons. The IR lasers helped identify friendly forces; the QRFs could tell one another from the bad guys from the sweeps of the IR lasers back and forth. This kept the QRFs in a line. Also, every QRF fighter without an IR floodlight had a thermal monocular, scanning the forest every ten paces.
It was the Easter egg hunt from hell, every step methodically executed, and every pull of the trigger checked and doubled-checked before letting rounds fly.
“This is Winslow, Sniper One. Everyone stop and point your IR lasers straight up. I need you to copy that. Point your IR lasers straight up.”
“Copy. QRF One pointing lasers straight up.”
“This is Winslow. We think we have a bad guy in front of you fifty meters, but I need to confirm that it’s not one of you. QRF One: wave your lasers, please.”
“Copy. Waving our lasers.”
“The target is fifty meters in front of the sixth guy from the bottom of the canyon. Sixth man, please wave your laser.”
“Copy. Standby.” Three minutes passed.
“This is Winslow. That’s the fifth guy up the line I’m seeing wave his laser. I need the sixth man from the bottom to wave his laser.”
“Copy. Sixth man waving his laser.”
“This is Winslow. Okay. I’m seeing the sixth man. Repeat. Target is fifty yards in front of you. Can you see him with your thermal?”
“This is QRF team lead. No, we cannot see the target.”
“This is Winslow. I’m going to shoot. Please confirm.”
“This is QRF team lead. All team accounted for and online. You are weapons-free to shoot target.”
“This is Winslow. Shooting.”
All night long, the snipers and QRF teams worked through the intruders, making every step a deliberate action and adding to their exhaustion and bone-numbing stress with each shot.
After four hours, QRF One finally approached the Great Lawn. They had killed eight intruders, two deer and a porcupine. Luckily, they hadn’t shot any more friendlies.
Jeff reminded himself just how right he had been. They should have burned the forest down.
“Jeff, Tim calling, over.”
“This is Jeff. Go ahead, Tim.”
“QRF One is two-zero-zero yards from the Great Lawn. Estimate five Tangos between you and us. We have approximately eight Tangos down so far. Over.”
“Copy that. Do NOT get any closer to the Great Lawn than one-five-zero yards. Jeff out.”
The pace of fire picked up over the next twenty minutes, with the last remnants of the intruders fighting desperately, sandwiched between two forces. The QRFs methodically annihilated them like rats driven by fire from a cornfield. Every time a stranger squirted out onto the Great Lawn, pushed by QRF One, they were cut down by the blockers.
After another hour of painstaking night fighting, all gunfire ceased. The men of QRF One combed every inch of forest again with their thermal monoculars, IR floodlights and NVGs, finding only dead and wounded.
The Homestead med staff rushed into the gap as soon as the battle slowed, pulling men out of the tangles of Snowberry bushes and Oregon Grape, hauling the still-living to the infirmary.
Once Jeff felt confident they had eliminated all the enemy, he turned his attention to his wounded. By his count, his men had taken two casualties; one of them a “blue-on-blue,” friendly-fire incident and he had already died in surgery.
Jeff had seen the medical staff carrying a number of bodies and that worried him. He hopped into his OHV and headed to the infirmary.
Doctors and nurses rushed about like ants, patching men up and preparing others for surgery. Right away, Jeff knew he had a problem. Most of the men on gurneys in the doctors’ and nurses’ care were enemy combatants.