From his perch, Cameron heard the shot and knew instantly it was a big gun, probably .50 caliber, and not his or Danny’s. He worried how far the sound had carried in the night air and tried to locate the source. It seemed to come from his left and likely from the east side of the road, since the boys had approached from the west. Apparently, the patrol had a scout out there, presumably with a sniper rifle. Danny was a sitting duck, fortunate that first shot had missed.
Cameron switched his line of vision from the man hiding behind the rocks to the direction of the shot. He found the soldier just as he was raising a flare gun and pierced his heart with a bullet as he pulled the trigger. The flare fired as he fell forward. Fortunately, it never climbed more than thirty feet off the ground, rocketing through the darkness over the jeeps and disappearing into a valley west of the highway. Rolling out from under the jeep and disabling all but one of the radios, Danny swung out wide around the fire. Cameron returned his focus to the remaining soldier, pinning him down with a few close shots, while Danny crawled up behind him. Cameron then descended from his position and ran towards the road. He had seen us coming and needed to cut us off until Danny could complete the task.
Danny jumped the man from behind and sat on his chest, knife to his throat, interrogating him for a quick minute. When he got all he could, he slit his throat. The soldier provided nothing useful. Danny didn’t believe for a second there were thousands of troops nearby, or that they were already coming this way. The gunshot and the flare could have raised the alarm, but they hadn’t heard a single sound on the radio since. If other patrols had heard or seen the action, someone would have checked in. Danny ran back to the fire and put it out. He collected the soldiers’ weapons, a radio, and two crates of explosives from the jeeps. We loaded those supplies into our trucks and took off south at 3:14 a.m. We didn’t have time to go back for the bikes. If we were lucky, we’d have a fifteen-minute head start before the captain checked in again. We had to fly.
We were five miles from the south end of Camp Crook Road when Captain Eddie called in. A minute later, after no response, we knew he was rushing west. We heard him give several orders to other troops to follow suit. At that point, we tossed the radio, knowing he’d soon be tracking it. We anticipated he’d go to his downed men at the jeeps first before chasing us south. If we were right, at best, that was going to give us an hour lead.
We stopped at a small bridge north of Camp Crook Road, and Wes wired it with explosives. He and Cameron ran a trip wire across the middle that would blow up the bridge upon any significant impact. It cost us twelve valuable minutes, but if that slowed them at all, it would be worth it.
We had no way of knowing while Captain Eddie had ordered all of his men to the site we’d just come from, he had also tracked all of the radios. He had picked up one signal at the end of Camp Creek Road and he, his brother, and the twenty men with them had broken off from the others and were cutting diagonally towards us. They were less than twenty miles behind us when we started driving again, and they were closing fast.
TWENTY-FOUR: (Eddie) “Too Close for Comfort”
Captain Eddie ordered the lights off on all their vehicles as they rounded the corner near the base of Camp Crook Road, heading towards the radio signal ahead. It hadn’t moved since he’d first begun tracking it, so either they were lying in wait or they’d pitched it. He figured it was the latter, since no other heat signatures had shown up on their radar yet, not even as close as they were right now. But he also knew he couldn’t ignore the possibility it might be some kind of trap. Acknowledging that option was probably giving the Americans more credit than they deserved, but they’d fooled him before. Several times. Caution was in order here.
As expected, there was no one with the radio, easily located in the roadside ditch. Trap? Ha! He’d already received the message that none of the twelve soldiers he’d stationed on Highway 323 had survived. His men had found the bodies, each with a single bullet hole. Precise. Professional. Military. The scout had fired off the flare, but the troops to their east hadn’t seen it or heard any gunfire. Then again, eighteen miles was a considerable distance away.
Looking south down the highway, Eddie had the impulse to jump back in his jeep and race after the Americans. His diagonal route here couldn’t have missed them by much. They couldn’t be that far ahead, and he did have twenty men with him. But the rest of his men were a few miles away and would be here soon. It wouldn’t hurt to wait a few more minutes. At best, the Americans would have a thirty-minute lead, be traveling much slower, and not have the luxury of using their lights. He knew he and his men could make up the distance in a hurry. They’d probably catch them by Belle Fourche.
He saw headlights approaching and counted. Twelve sets. All his men. Two trucks and ten jeeps. He hopped back into the passenger seat of his jeep. “Let’s go,” he commanded. His driver spun the wheel and whipped the jeep around. They had pulled back onto the road and gone about a hundred yards when there was a huge explosion and brilliant arching fireball behind them. The driver slammed on the brakes, and Eddie instinctively rolled out of the jeep to one knee. He jumped to his feet, gun up, and looked back in shock as flames leapt high into the sky. He took several steps towards the flames, gun ready, until he was certain he wasn’t in any imminent danger.
A few seconds ago, there had been a bridge behind them, and now there was nothing more than a giant gaping crater. Even worse, all his soldiers were stuck on the other side. He grabbed his head with both hands, yanked his hat off in frustration, and then ordered the men with him to go help. They rushed back to the bridge and looked down. The front jeep had been torn to shreds, all three passengers certainly killed. The second jeep was no longer drivable but otherwise intact, all three passengers alive and scaling the walls of the ravine back up the other side. The riverbed was low enough at several points for the vehicles to cross, but they were down three more men now and two more jeeps. Eddie’s company, eighty men strong a couple days ago, had been whittled down even further to fifty-eight.
It took half an hour to find a manageable crossing point, get all the vehicles across, and start moving south again. Eddie knew they’d lost valuable time, and yet that wasn’t as troubling as a few other revelations. The Americans were starting to get aggressive. How had they snuck up on his twelve armed men and taken them out without being seen or without his men sending out a radio alert? Surely his soldiers had been watching the radar. He’d been calling in on the radio every thirty minutes. It didn’t make sense to him. He knew the purpose of the bridge explosion was to slow him down, but the action had sent another message, too. These weren’t amateurs. It wasn’t lost on Eddie that had he not taken a different route, he’d have been in the first jeep that exploded. His haste and negligence would have resulted in the ultimate waste. He was fortunate he’d sent men to this alternate route, or the Americans would have passed in the night without a trace. Sure, he could have gambled and had all his men on this route, but that could have backfired too. He knew he had to accept this as yet another loss on a frustrating losing streak.