Elizabeth? With the stress of preparing for the attack, he had tried not to think about her. She had insisted that she fall in with the reserve battalion. John could not veto her demand and had simply nodded agreement, unable to speak.
As he watched them head out, spreading out into combat column spaced far apart on either side of the road, he remembered the legendary story of General Robert E. Lee at Antietam: at the climax of the battle, the Union troops about to break through his center, he had personally ordered in a reserve battery of artillery only to then see his beloved youngest son, not yet eighteen, going into that most deadly of fights. But he did not stop, did not call out to the battery commander with orders to send his child to the rear. He had turned and rode away to other sectors of the line. Only at day’s end, having barely hung on to fight another day, did Lee return to that stricken position, breaking down in tears when he saw that his boy had survived unscathed.
If Elizabeth demanded to serve with the reserves that would now be the main assault force, if an attack was needed to finish this fight, he could not stop her. He recalled as well a much-beloved film, a favorite of his students when he showed it in class, about a Quaker family during the Civil War, the father portrayed by Gary Cooper, who, when confronted by his son’s decision to fight, had replied, “I am only his father, not his conscience.”
He went back into the Sears building where his troops where strapping on gear, gulping down the last of their cups of coffee, and forming up to move out. They truly did look like combat veterans, youth with old eyes, a sense of perpetual weariness at age twenty. But regardless of their weariness, they were ready to go into the next fight.
“The mortar position and their outposts?” John asked Kevin, forcing his thoughts away from his daughter.
“Took them out nearly an hour ago, though not sure we have all the outposts. But we did capture the mortar intact with fifty rounds.”
“Our losses?”
“Two dead, one wounded,” Kevin replied.
“Prisoners?”
He shook his head, and John did not ask. The fight was getting ugly, and after the outrages committed against the reivers and his own town, unless he was present to enforce discipline as he knew it, the passion of the moment was bound to take hold. He had come dangerously close to it himself with the Apache pilot.
He stood up, stretched, and nodded to the door. “Time?” he asked, gulping down the last of his coffee.
“Five minutes to go.”
John nodded. “Saddle up.”
Out the door of the Sears building, he started the long walk up Tunnel Road, passing the collapsed sign of the Old Mountaineer Motel, a favorite diner of his from before all of this started across the street. It was a walk he wouldn’t have thought of doing three years earlier when one had a car to go from parking lot to parking lot. But now? Though far more fit, he was feeling his age, and his cracked rib hurt like hell. Within a few hundred yards, he felt a bit winded as his far younger troopers, support units, and personal security squad kept sprinting ahead while his fractured rib throbbed with every step. The radio crackled with a report from an observer that she could see black-clad troops running down from the tunnel entrance and into the twin courthouses and the county jail alongside it, with positions manned behind heavy concertina wire. Dale had played it as he had hoped—pulling all his assets back into that complex of buildings, most likely assuming his Alamo could hold out until help from the outside finally arrived.
Not a shot had been fired so far as he paused for a moment to catch his breath at the entry to the tunnel that passed under Beaucatcher Mountain and emerged on the far side with the courthouse complex straight ahead. Several squads were running through it, their footsteps sounding hollow while the main assault force pressed through the gap of I-240, flanking wide before infiltrating into the center of town above the courthouse center.
He followed the lead elements, flanked by Lee Robinson, still ready to haul him out of harm’s way, his radio operator, security team, and message runners squinting from the morning sunlight as they emerged on the far side and gazed down at last on Asheville. It was once a vibrant, bustling city of a hundred thousand. At last estimate, there were fewer than five thousand still alive in its abandoned buildings and streets, most huddled along the French Broad River on the west side of town—and hopefully well clear of a fight if one was about to happen.
The skyline was still essentially the same, though shortly after the Day, the old Battery Park Apartments had burned to the ground. The BB&T building was somewhat intact, though a number of windows had been knocked out, a perfect place for a heavy-weapons squad to set up on an upper floor—a position that Kevin Malady, leading a unit burdened down with captured armaments along with a dozen reivers toting deer rifles and high-powered scopes, was racing to secure. He heard a distant humming that grew louder, and then he saw the L-3 passing overhead, Billy Tyndall at the controls, undoubtedly far more comfortable in his old plane after the experience of flying in a helicopter with Maury. The radio with John crackled to life.
“Bravo Xray online and overhead. I’ll call it as I see it.”
Unlike Don Barber, who had come in far too low during the fight with the Posse, John had ordered Billy to stay at least fifteen hundred feet above the fray and to get the hell out if any fire came up his way. He had not even considered the prospect of putting Maury and whatever helicopter they were lucky enough to capture into this one. He’d either crash out of sheer amateurish piloting or get shot down within five minutes. That asset was to be cherished for some future use.
He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes more to let his far more fleet-footed young troops sprint to the far side of the courthouse, enveloping it from the north and south and cutting off retreat, while some of the captured heavy weapons were moved up for the assault from the east.
The minutes clicked off. There was an occasional explosion of small-arms fire, either a sniper taken out or trigger-happy troops on his side reacting to a shadow in the window.
Two minutes before eight.
John turned to his radioman. He had feared that the batteries for the old-fashioned unit would not have held out this long, but they had captured a supply in the cache at Sears. D batteries were a thing of the past, but with a little twisting of wires, his man had rigged it up to work for several hours more using captured double As.
“All positions reporting in,” was the report, and John nodded. He felt obligated to try one time, and he took the mike, clicking it several times first.
“Fredericks, I know you are monitoring this channel. The game is up. We’ve captured your helicopter base, along with a Black Hawk. You can hear one of my planes overhead; we own the air now. The courthouse is surrounded. There is no alternative but surrender. Tell your people to drop their weapons and come out with their hands up. All who surrender will be treated by the rules of war and will be exchanged or paroled. That is my one and only offer, Fredericks. I have someone else here who wants to speak to those under your command.”
He held the mike open, and nodded for Deirdre to speak.
She identified herself, repeated John’s offer, and added that what they had been told about the treatment of prisoners was a lie. All had been fed and treated with respect, and the wounded were already back in a hospital. “What they told us is a lie!” she cried. “I know many of you. Please surrender. This is a senseless fight. Please listen to me.”
John took the mike back. “Any of you serving under the lying despot, this so-called administrator Fredericks, put your weapons down now, come out with hands up, and you will receive parole and exchange and returned to your families. You have one minute to act. Otherwise, may God have mercy on your souls.”