The huge man was on him, bleeding from four holes, but still very much alive. Jason’s Glock came up just as the man’s battle club came down, crushing Jason’s bump helmet and knocking him sideways into a rock. The combination of impact from the club and from the rock made Jason’s world go wobbly. The last thing he saw before darkness descended was the AR-15 lying on the ground in front of his face.
Jeff had located the third barricade around a bend in the road. This next defensive section wasn’t nearly as good as the first two. There were homes on both sides of the street and that would give the enemy the cover of McMansions on both sides, allowing them to suppress for one another. Still, the Latino army wouldn’t be able to circle around behind them. The tiered levels of the gravel quarry continued to provide Jeff’s men with a significant defensive advantage. The enemy couldn’t flank. They had to come straight up the road. The boulevard continued to funnel the attackers into a fighting front less than forty yards across, allowing only a few dozen Latino guns to join the battle at a time.
Jeff moved QRF One up to the next road, allowing them to fire down from the homes over the section of road. The tactical situation wasn’t as golden as the fatal funnel they’d had in front of the first two barricades, but it was still a decisive advantage.
QRF One redeployed and rearmed from ammo stores they had pre-positioned. They moved up one street and then into the backyards and back windows of the homes on the bluff above the road, giving them a similar elevation advantage to the one they’d had before.
“In position, Jeff,” Tim called over the command frequency.
“Roger. Here comes the armor.” The two front-end loaders turned up another switchback in the boulevard. Whoever commanded them had learned from the last two. Rather than letting the armor get in front of the troops, they held the tanks back and used them as shooting platforms and cover for the middle of the street. The gasoline-and-garbage bag trick wouldn’t work twice. Anyone trying to make a run on the armored vehicles would be cut down before they could get half-way to the tanks. Jeff wished they had more fifty-caliber rifles. As it was, he would be betting everything on Winslow and his Barrett.
Emily Ross deployed to the battle with her unit, QRF Three. She didn’t know for sure how many men she had just killed from the bluff, but it had been a lot. She could see the scope picture in her mind’s eye, then the crack of the rifle. She had placed the crosshairs and pressed the trigger, and men had disappeared. She didn’t know how many.
She moved like a ghost, in a listless state. Some part of her mind struggled to deal with the death she had dealt and with the last horrifying thirty minutes, when in any given instant a bullet might pass through her own head.
She had been drenched in adrenaline for almost an hour. She had always been good at compartmentalizing, but the battle overwhelmed her ability to control her emotions. Her fingers tingled, as though from lack of oxygen, and she couldn’t feel her toes. Worse, she couldn’t shake the urge to sob. Reloading her magazines required a massive amount of willpower, just to force her fingers to perform the simple function of snapping .223 rounds into the mouth of each mag.
Press, snap, slide. She willed her fingers to do their job.
“We’re moving out,” Josh shouted. “We’re the blocking force on the west side of the street. We need to make sure nobody climbs the bluff. We gotta move. They could already be climbing up on us.”
Emily finished her last mag and ran to catch up with her unit. She was supposed to be the corpsman in the group—providing medical care when needed—but all she had done so far was kill people. Considering the size of the enemy they faced, medical treatment was the least of their concerns. The Homestead fought against total extermination.
As the team fanned out and took up their blocking positions, Emily slipped into rearguard, the position she had been assigned in training. She set up her rifle in a second-story window in what was previously a child’s bedroom, covering a sector that might expose her team to a flanking action through the long row of homes.
Ten minutes after she had settled in, she saw a glimmer of movement in a backyard three houses down. Her adrenaline rose again, making her dizzy. All the families in this neighborhood had evacuated an hour earlier. She had no immediate backup, and the movement she had seen could only be one thing: the enemy.
“Josh. This is Emily. We have movement behind us. Repeat. We’re being flanked down the row of houses behind us to the north.”
“Copy, Emily. I’m sending help. Hold them up until we arrive.”
“Roger,” Emily squeaked, her throat constricting.
From the child’s room, there were many ways an attacker could get around her; she had tons of blind spots. She would have to head downstairs into the backyard or risk being surrounded.
Emily ran down the stairs and slowed once she hit the main floor. Gently sliding the glass door open, she slipped into the backyard, scanning with her M4 rifle at the ready.
The backyard offered an open shooting lane that ran the width of the property. In order to pass by, the gangbangers would have to cross the gap. Emily found cover behind an air conditioning unit, crouched and waited.
Moments later, the vinyl fence shuddered.
Gabriel and his team moved carefully from yard to yard. It had taken them almost an hour to circle around the battlefield and climb the bluff. Now they were moving toward what he believed was the enemy’s rear. So far none of his men had fired a shot.
He came to a white vinyl fence, the fifth one they had crossed, and he climbed on top of a doghouse and took a quick peek. He saw nothing in the next yard, so he slung his rifle and vaulted the fence, landing in a crouch.
He pulled his rifle around to his grip and placed his finger on the trigger in readiness. Just then, a girl in camouflage leaned around a gray metal box, pointing her rifle at his chest.
He paused, cocking his head at the sight. The last thing Gabriel saw was her long blonde hair swinging around her shoulder.
Emily opened fire on the man, shooting holes in his chest, shoulder and gut. He slumped backward, sprawling on the lawn.
Instantly, bullets punched through the vinyl fence, the enemy team firing blindly into her yard. Emily balled up behind the air conditioner as bullets slammed into the stucco wall behind her, stinging her head and neck with chunks of rubble. Assault rifle fire erupted from the other side of the yard, and Emily heard her own team joining the fight.
“Emily, moving up,” somebody shouted, probably Josh.
“Here,” she shouted, leaning out from around the air conditioner and returning fire through the fence.
Three members of her team bounded up to her, fanned out around the house and pressed their attack. After trading fire and enveloping the enemy position, Josh moved to Emily and smacked her on the shoulder.
“Last man.”
“Moving,” Emily shouted and moved forward, now on auto-pilot, following her training and moving around the fence, working from cover to cover around the next house.
Within a few minutes, her team wiped out the flanking force. Bodies of young Hispanic men lay cast around the yards, pools and play sets of the luxury homes, caught up in a gunfight they were ill-prepared to win.
As soon as the rifle fire died down, Emily checked in over the radio and headed back to the man she had first shot.
She looked down and noticed his face. More a boy than a man, he couldn’t have been older than eighteen. She had seen him raise his rifle, then he had paused. He could have easily shot her, but he hadn’t.