Finally, the radio squawked “Francisco. This is Crudo. Both tanks are on fire. We’re in the homes now and the gringos are retreating. Send more men. Most of my men up here are dead.”
Francisco’s eyes flared, and he tore at his hair with ferocity. He couldn’t imagine how four hundred men could be “mostly dead.” And how did the tanks catch on fire? He felt like he was suffocating from lack of information. How was he supposed to use the two remaining tanks if he didn’t know how to keep them from catching fire?
“Crudo. How did they catch fire?”
Crudo answered, but the first half of what he said came through clipped. It sounded like, “trash bags and gasoline,” which made no sense whatsoever.
“What?” Francisco pleaded into the radio. “How did they catch fire?”
Crudo replied, but his words were drowned out by the rumble of the two front-end loaders driving past him.
“¡Hijo de puta!” Francisco screamed at the radio. He came close to throwing it, but thought better of it at the last second.
Francisco grabbed his megaphone and screamed at the hundreds of men crouched in the middle of the boulevard. “Move up, cabrones! Move up!”
Alec had assigned Jesse and Victor to Jason’s “special purpose” element. Since he had missed much of QRF Two’s training, Jason couldn’t be integrated into the main force of the team. Instead, Alec ordered Jason and his two friends to execute a wide flank, where they wouldn’t need to coordinate so closely with the rest of the team. Jason’s radio was tuned to Alec’s command frequency rather than the team frequency. This would de-conflict any mistakes Jason might make on the radio.
Jesus, Jason thought, making radios work is a bitch.
QRF Two had been assigned to the southern flank of the blocking force. Jeff had taken a big risk, placing one-third of his best assaulters in a position to block the enemy from climbing straight up a mountainside. In all likelihood, no enemy would do that. The risk to the Homestead forces, if anyone did happen to climb straight up the mountain, would be astronomical. Even a small flanking force coming up the mountainside could cut Homestead QRF Two, and then Jeff’s main force, to ribbons, firing on them from the side. Jeff couldn’t risk a flank, so he had sent Alec’s QRF to counter-flank, which meant some of his best shooters might end up sitting on the sidelines for the entire battle.
Alec had assigned Jason’s three-man contingent to conduct an even deeper counter-flank by sending them farther to the south. More of a recon element, Jason, Jesse and their buddy Vic would sound the alarm if the enemy tried to come at them from the deep south. If QRF Two was an insurance policy, then Jason’s team was an insurance policy on top of the insurance policy.
On one hand, it seemed like a waste of good shooters to Jason. He wanted to fight, and there was no doubt; he was a good shooter. On the other hand, Jeff and Alec knew exactly what they were doing, so Jason didn’t waste time worrying about it.
Jason’s three-man team spread out on the lip of a precipitous drop in the mountain. They could see all the way to the bottom, but the dried grass looked deep, and the folds in the terrain could easily hide an enemy force. From where they sat, they could hear the battle raging on the boulevard five hundred yards to their north—thousands of rounds being fired in waves like pounding surf.
Jason tried to imagine why the gunfire wasn’t sustained, and why it would crescendo then diminish, almost coming to a silence. Then the gunfire would rise again in a mysterious rhythm that sent chills down his spine. His friends were dying. His precious daughter fought for her life in the middle of that orchestra of death.
While his mind stressed over the battle just a quarter-mile away, Jason’s eye caught slight movement below his position on the face of the drop-off. He snatched his binoculars from a pouch in his vest and zoomed in on the area. His blood chilled and his ears began to ring as he squinted through the binos at an undeniable shape: the top of a man’s shaved head.
The fight was coming. Jason keyed his radio. “Alec. This is Jason. Over.”
“Go ahead.”
“I have an unknown number of enemy coming up the mountainside. Will advise.”
“Copy,” Alec replied. “Unknown enemy force approaching your position. Over.” Alec clicked off, probably jumping to another radio frequency to let Jeff know about the imminent flank.
Jason didn’t bother to radio Jesse and Vic. They were close enough to each other to whisper. “Jesse. Enemy below. Get ready. Pass it along to Vic.”
Jesse’s eyes went wide, and he reflexively checked the chamber of his assault rifle and peeked up and over the berm. He turned to Vic, whispering loudly. A moment later, all hell broke loose. Nearly a hundred men appeared from behind tall grass down the hill, leaping up from cover. But they didn’t charge. Instead, they began a guttural shout in unison, stomping their feet, pounding their chests and shouting at Jason and his men.
“Oh, fuck,” Jason muttered to himself. He knew exactly what this was. These hundred men, a football field away, downhill from his little defensive position, were either Tongans or Samoans. He peered through his binos and could see they were all shirtless in the frigid October morning air, most with elaborate tattoos. Some of them carried war clubs in addition to their guns.
The scene made no sense to the three gunmen at the top of the hill. How was it they were facing a vicious horde of shirtless Polynesians in the middle of Utah in the middle of the fall?
What sprung to mind was the battle of the Island of Lanai. Jason had hunted mouflon sheep on the island once, and the guide had showed him a deep canyon where the men of King Kamehameha fought straight up a grassy cliff to defeat the defenders of the island. The two cliffy mountainsides looked almost identicaclass="underline" Lanai and Oakwood, Utah. Kamehameha had crushed the defenders despite the steep climb.
The violent war cry was coming to an end and, Jason had to admit, it scared him shitless. With a final pound on the chest and a stomp, the islanders launched up the hillside with a roar. Jason and his buddies began firing, wildly at first, but then slowing into a rhythm. They had to make the most of the seconds it would take for the attackers to charge the hill.
Why didn’t we just shoot them while they were doing their Haka? Jason wondered as he picked another target and squeezed off a three-round burst. The target went down and Jason moved on, methodically putting bullets into men.
Jason would shoot a man, knowing he had made a good shot, and the guy would keep coming anyway. As this happened over and over, Jason knew they were losing the battle. His damned AR-15 was punching pencil-sized holes in gorilla-sized men. As one might expect, the fast-and-tiny holes delivered by his rifle were failing to drop pumped-up Polynesians. Every target required three, six or ten rounds before the man would fall. At this rate, they would run out of rounds before stopping the assault.
Jason swapped his fourth mag when the first screaming man reached him. With a palm smack to the slide release, Jason ran the bolt into the battery, whipped the sight into position and snapped a shot into the man’s forehead. The tattooed Tongan paused mid-step and arced over backward, rolling back down the hill.
Jason moved onto another target, a huge man closing on him, and began firing into his torso. After placing four quick rounds into his chest, Jason’s AR-15 jammed. In a flash, he ran his malfunction drill—slap, rack, squeeze—but nothing happened. Trying to stay calm, Jason flipped the gun sideways and glanced into the ejection port. He saw a tangle of brass and dropped the useless rifle, going for his handgun.