Turnbull watched through the binos as Caring Company’s tanks took up defensive positions in an open field on the northwest side of Route 231’s bridge over the muddy White River. A quarter mile south were the northernmost reaches of Jasper, with the narrow road lined with cement companies, stores, and abandoned gas stations. It was hilly, with the sight lines broken up by trees.
No wonder the tanks were reluctant to come.
The PRA infantry and the logistics elements were arriving, but for the moment no one was making an effort to advance over the bridge.
Davey Wohl lay beside Turnbull with his Winchester 700 rifle, peering through the Nikon Buckmaster scope. Another three dozen guerrillas were deployed within a quarter mile of them.
“If they come, we can’t stop them,” Turnbull said, counting the armor. “And I don’t want to.” The enemy was concentrating in that field, with infantry and the surviving logistics elements moving in. “I sure wish I could call in an air strike right now. They’re all clustered up. Just sitting there.”
“I can drop one from here,” Wohl suggested.
“Look for an officer. He’ll be the one moving around a lot and not accomplishing much.”
“I got one,” Wohl said. He exhaled and fired. Through the binoculars, Turnbull saw one of the tankers stagger and fall. The whole field turned into chaos as troops ran for cover and one by one the PRA machine guns started firing back in their general direction.
“That should set them back an hour or so,” Turnbull said, watching with satisfaction. One man with a deer rifle had held up an army.
Ted Cannon placed the butt of his AK on the ground and knelt. The old woman was still breathing, but how he didn’t know. With four bullet holes in her, she would soon join her fellow townspeople in the afterlife. He held her hand until the bewildered medic joined them.
“Do what you can,” Cannon told her as she opened her aid bag. “But don’t use any plasma or anti-coagulant bandages.” The medic nodded. Those would be needed for the people who had a chance.
None of his team were from Alfordsville – the town’s unit was further south in the area north of the Portersville Road Bridge over the White River – but the massacre still hit them hard. They had moved into town silently from the north after seeing first the black SUVs and then the majority of the paramilitaries leave. They took advantage of the smoke and maneuvered quickly and quietly, catching unawares eight PVs who had found a case of beer and lagged behind the rest.
The Volunteers died in a hail of rifle fire. No quarter went both ways.
The team finished the sweep of the town. No more paramilitaries and no more survivors. He rubbed at his face – he still looked like hell and his jaw ached. But that didn’t matter. The policeman in him was arising again. Someone had to account for this. Someone had to pay.
It wasn’t about revenge. It was about justice.
“We’re hunting PV and PSF,” Cannon said. The other guerrillas nodded solemnly. The medic rejoined them, her work finished, her patient passed.
“Let’s move out,” Cannon said, heading back out of town and into the wild.
Route 257 was the third major axis of advance south, and the farthest west. Alpha Company, now known as Accountability Company under the new nickname regime, approached the bridge over the White River at high speed. It had not taken any fire at all on its movement south, and its commander hoped she could race across the 200 meter bridge that loomed 20 meters above the dark green water before anyone could stop her.
She had sent scouts ahead in hummers, who reported a huge open field to the south past the wall of trees that lined the bank. There were no guerrillas in sight.
As she approached down Route 257 from the wooded north down a low hill that sloped to the bridge, she ordered her tanks to accelerate to 40 kilometers an hour. It was a large, reinforced concrete bridge, and the engineers had assured her it would support their weight.
The first platoon, short with just three tanks, entered the bridge, kicking up chunks of asphalt. The commander’s tank was next, followed by second platoon.
There were six tanks on the bridge, with the lead tank was just yards from the opposite shore, when the guerrillas blew it.
The explosives went off simultaneously across the underside of the bridge – the saboteurs had cut the detonator cord into precise lengths to ensure that happened. The special purpose shaped demolitions had been carefully placed by the former combat engineers to scythe through the concrete supports and to shift the bridge off balance. The supported road bed immediately sagged on the right side, and the 420 tons of armored weight on top of it slid in that direction.
There was no stopping it after that. The roadbed cracked and collapsed. Six M1 tanks tumbled over the side, falling ten to twenty meters, landing upside down. Some were not entirely submerged; others disappeared completely into the muddy water. The seventh tank, seeing the road to its front disappear, along with the armor on it, braked hard, but it was following too closely too fast. It skidded forward on its locked tracks and flew forward off the embankment into empty space, its 120 mm main gun stabbing into the mud and bending on the bedrock beneath.
The woods erupted with fire as several independent bands of guerrillas converged on the backed-up convoy north of the bridge. With its leadership gone and the vehicles trapped, the guerrillas could hit at targets at will along the half-mile long traffic jam.
“Sort of like picking off the legions at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest,” Turnbull had told them when outlining his plan. “They’re the Romans, you’re the barbarians,” he added helpfully.
The vicious struggle went on all night as the survivors desperately fought a losing fight to keep the invisible guerrillas at bay.
The PRA combat engineers waded into the muddy White River water and splashed under the Route 231 bridge to remove the guerrillas’ explosives under the watchful gaze of three tanks that had pulled up to the embankment to cover them by fire. Aimed rifle shots every few minutes from guerrillas in concealed positions took one or two soldiers down, but mostly they drew a thunderous volley of machine gun fire in return in the general direction of the shot. That was the idea. Slow them down, burn their ammo.
Turnbull did not blow it. That would have disrupted his plan. Instead, he let them discover the explosives and remove them so they would risk crossing. Turnbull then left Wohl in command south of the bridge and moved back into Jasper proper to make sure the preparations were underway for when the tanks finally got into town.
The tactical command post for the 172nd Brigade was actually three HUMVEEs plus two elderly M577 armored command vehicles. They looked like green boxes on tracks, and they provided a mobile forward command post for the brigade commander. The main command post, remained back in Bloomington; it was not planning to jump south until Jasper was secured.
Inside, bouncing around on the hard bench seats as they moved south on the torn-up asphalt of Route 231, Major Little was receiving updates on the status of his brigade’s battle. The rear area was a mess, his S3 explained. Support units were under attack throughout the backfield.
“I’m worried about our logistics, sir,” the operations officer said.
“We won’t need any if we just take the town!”
The ops officer paused; that was not how this worked.
“You need to understand, sir. Except for the tanks, we’re road bound. The insurgents can go anywhere. They choose when to fight and from where. They have the initiative. They engage us with their damn deer rifles at long range and our M4s and AKs can’t effectively return fire. They’re hitting us in our weak spots, the supporters and logistics units. They aren’t taking on our tanks in the open head-to-head.”