The enemy had to know that. There was no good way to fight up this slope aside from to come in one massive group, scattered as much as possible in case of grenades or other explosives. But they also had to be close enough together that when the hail of gunfire finally poured down at them, they were in a position to charge up the slope as fast as they could manage and try to storm the emplacements by sheer numbers.
It would be costly for them, but they had the soldiers to do it. And if they had grenades of their own they’d be able to soften up the fortifications before they got too close, improving their odds even more. Lewis still had nightmares about the rocket-propelled grenade that had killed Carl, and it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that a force this large had some of those.
At least the wildfire would force the blockheads to bunch up. But unfortunately by the time they got within range of the emplacement they’d be mostly past the fires and could spread out again, since the firebreak provided a good gap for them. Lewis hoped that wouldn’t impact his plans too much.
As he’d predicted the blockheads came in one single mass, swirling around the fires then rejoining as they spread across the slope. They climbed with the relentless determination of disciplined professionals, even when scorched by the piles of ash they waded through up to their ankles, or reduced to coughing fits by the dense smoke and swirls of sparks.
Within the first hundred feet the enemy soldiers were covered head to toe in white streaked in black. The ash and soot on the ground was kicked up into clouds around them, obscuring the lower hillside, but he knew the enemy was there marching on, faces covered by bandannas or their undershirts pulled up to filter the choking mess.
“Hit them hard as soon as they’re in range,” he said quietly into his mic. The blockheads would charge as soon as they realized they were under attack, and running into a withering hail of gunfire would decimate their forces. But eventually his fighters would need to reload, or they’d run out of ammo, and by then the enemy would’ve reached the emplacements.
Maybe, he could hope, the blockheads would break and run before then.
Everyone fell into tense silence as the enemy got closer, step by step. At some spots they broke into a run to get past patches of intensely hot ground created by the flames, or to circle particularly large patches of the wildfire. But for the most part they conserved their energy, preparing for the final sprint at the top.
Lewis waited until they were four hundred yards away. That was a long shot, but in some places they were bunched up enough that even a miss wasn’t necessarily a miss. And the sooner his volunteers started thinning the enemy ranks, and more importantly the sooner they goaded the blockheads into their charge, the longer the enemy would have to run into gunfire and the better his people’s chances.
He targeted a clump of blockheads circling around a stand of trees that still burned hot, and after several seconds of careful aiming opened fire. He heard the reports of gunfire all around him as his friends opened fire, and below blockheads began to drop.
Too few, and too slowly. The enemy broke into a trot, weaving their way up the slope. More dropped, the enemy casualties getting higher and higher the closer they got, but still not enough. Then, at some command Lewis didn’t hear, they broke into a sprint all at once.
“Give it everything you’ve got!” Lewis shouted. He’d reloaded while they were still a good distance away, so he had plenty of rounds left to unload on the enemy. Around him the steady cracks of gunfire became a staccato roar, as thirty men and women emptied their magazines on the hundreds of soldiers coming at them.
He estimated over sixty enemy soldiers died within the next ten seconds, before their magazines all ran out at near the same time and they had to reload. Some blockheads were shooting back on the run, but most had dropped their heads and were simply sprinting all out into the hail of death hoping to get through.
When the enemy was two hundred yards away Lewis dropped down and grabbed his pack. “Retreat!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He thumbed his mic and repeated the order in a more moderate tone. Then he turned and began sprinting up the slope himself.
In most situations, giving up their defenses with barely a fight would be a huge tactical mistake. Lewis just hoped it wasn’t in this case as he pushed for more speed.
They’d built the sandbag fortifications in the emplacements taller than usual. The specific intent for that was so they’d be high enough to block the line of sight of the volunteers’ flight up the slope from the enemy below. Which meant that whatever time it took for those blockheads to run the remaining distance and scale the emplacements, that was the time he and his friends had to get one hundred yards up to the line of piled rocks atop the ridge.
His team was close on his heels, the rest of his squad coming from their respective emplacements and Trev’s and Jane’s from theirs. It was a mad scramble up the slope, ducking and dodging where they could just in case the sandbags didn’t do the job.
Lewis had prepared paths directly above the emplacements, giving them narrow ways to get through the piles of rocks, so his people wouldn’t have to clamber over the piles and expose themselves to enemy fire. He reached the path above his emplacement and bolted down the narrow corridor with rocks rising to either side, doing his best not to trip over the loose stones underfoot.
Once he was past the rock pile he sprinted across the relatively flat space beyond, all his volunteers following close behind. Not a single one of them had paused to look behind them, which he was relieved to see.
As the three squads continued past him to safety, Lewis clambered up the rock formation that formed the absolute peak of the ridge. It was barely high enough for him to see over the piles of rocks to the abandoned emplacements below, which the enemy had nearly reached by this point. Lewis estimated there were still over three hundred blockheads down there at a quick count, even after everyone they’d lost.
He had to give it to the blockheads, they weren’t lacking in courage. Safety in numbers had carried them through a killing field, but if they thought it would help them now they were sorely mistaken. “Chauncey, you ready?”
The retired schoolteacher’s voice came back sounding eager. “Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this day since my youthful years playing in a sandbox.”
Well, at least someone here wasn’t sunk into the gloom of their impending demise. Lewis watched the blockheads swarm over the abandoned emplacements. A few braver or more foolish souls leapt atop the sandbag fortifications, whooping and waving their weapons over their heads to spur the soldiers still climbing the slope onwards.
Lewis targeted one and shot him in the head, then singled out and shot a few more. That stopped the cheering from below, and progress up the slope temporarily froze as the exhausted blockheads sought cover to prepare for another suicidal charge.
He couldn’t have asked for a better setup. “All right, Mr. Watson. Give our friends below a lesson on the Law of Gravity.”
There was no response, other than the sputtering sound of a diesel engine starting below and to his right. With a grinding of gears the backhoe loader at the end of the line of piled rocks started forward, its bucket shoving them over the edge just enough to start them moving in a suspicious rumble, a catalyst for more and more rocks and sections of the hillside to follow them in a spreading cascade.
As the tractor continued down the line the landslide started behind it, tons and tons of rocks and dislodged earth sliding down the slope towards the blockheads below.
Who began to scream, especially when they realized that the fires had loosened the ground and destroyed anything that might’ve stopped the cataclysm heading their way. Those with heads on their shoulders began bolting northwards or southwards to try to escape the landslide, but Lewis had planned ahead for that. Once they’d reached the ridge Jane and Trev had immediately moved their squads, taking them north and south to circle around the piles of rocks. They were there now, ready to shoot anyone who managed to get away.