The guy by the quad reached up and tried to start it, but didn’t have any luck. He called for help on his radio. He aimed his rifle over the seat and would fire a few bursts in the direction of the woods. He looked back toward the compound and saw a side by side four wheeler coming up. One guy was standing in the back and firing. He had rigged up a harness to keep himself steady.
The militia man heard his partners yelling at him, “Get in. Get in.” He jumped up and ran over to the four wheeler and jumped in; it took off before he actually landed in the seat. The man in the back spun around as it left and laid down some more suppressing fire. The four wheeler shot toward the other side of the compound to get away from the townsmen and their fire.
They were passing a small wooded area when a blaze of rounds opened up from their left. The man in the back went down and dangled from his harness as the driver swerved to avoid the gunfire. The driver took a hit to the arm and floored it. The passenger they picked up was able to avoid getting hit. The four wheeler made its way quickly back toward the admin building.
The militia men cut the harness and lowered the man down. He was already dead. He had been hit four times total. One shot pierced a lung, one his spleen and another his stomach, with the final round severing his femoral artery. He had passed out and then bled out all within two minutes. The driver had a shattered forearm. He was taken inside and his friend was taken to an empty hangar, where they had set up a morgue of sorts until they could bury the men from the marina and the track fire.
Two townsmen ran back out to finish cutting the fence open. They had started to snip the wires again when another shot rang out. One man fell backwards and the other one grabbed his arms and started to pull him back toward the woods. Another shot rang out and the man was hit again. The militia sniper had made it up to his rooftop and went to work. The man was already dead when his friend dragged him into the woods.
The sniper had them scared. After Haliday had blown the guy’s foot off they went on the roof and fortified the position with more sandbags. Nobody could really see him now and they didn’t quite have the range to effectively reach him anyway. The man up there now wasn’t one of the two snipers the militia originally had, but he had been training to become their third. He was still a damn good shot.
Across from the main gate there was a small car repair shop. To the west of that were a couple of small houses and a clump of trees by the road. Rob and a couple of other guys had rigged up a huge redneck style slingshot behind the trees using rubber tubing. They filled a bunch of quart jars with gas and shot them toward the front gate and then sent over some flaming bottles.
The militia had set up two “U” shaped sand bag emplacements on each side of the gate. As soon as the gas started to hit they ran toward the row of cars behind them to use the defensive positions they had set up there. The sand bags were burning and causing the walls to falter as sand fell out of them.
The two guys had about 50 feet to make it to the row of cars. They had both run for fear of catching fire and burning like the people in the track had done. From the darkened window of the repair shop came an unnoticeable twang of a bow. The arrow hit one man right in the back and he stumbled forward, fell and crawled toward safety.
His partner just left him there to make it back on his own. The sniper looked around. He had concentrated on trying to find the guys firing the Molotov cocktails and without a muzzle flash he didn’t know where the shot came from. He assumed it was a suppressed weapon. It was too dark for him to see the arrow in his friends back.
The man hit by the arrow made it toward the row of cars and crawled behind them. The sniper continued to scan the area, but could not find the gunman. The fires were still burning and had turned the emplacements into piles of sand. The plastic type surplus sand bags weren’t such a good deal after all. The militia would be foolish to try and use these barricades again.
The archer inside the auto shop pulled out an arrow. The arrow had a card board tube on the shaft which was filled with black powder and finishing nails. He had taken care to balance it as much as possible and glued it to the shaft. The fuse was taken off some fireworks he had lying around. He drew back and another man lit the fuse. He released the arrow and sent it over the cars. They heard the arrow explode but it sounded like more of an M80 than a bomb.
This gave away their position and they headed toward the back of the shop. The sniper put a couple rounds through the front windows just for the sake of doing so. The arrow was not effective enough to do any damage. Just a few small nicks from the nails. They had hoped it would have a more profound effect than it did. No such luck. It was a wasted effort. They felt stupid for trying it instead of just using regular arrows and firing from the dark window.
Rob took a plastic ball that his wife had used in the washer for fabric softener and he packed this with BB’s and gun powder. The hole was sealed with wax with a fuse attached. They lit this and used the slingshot to launch it toward the building. It landed just behind the cars out front and exploded sending BB’s everywhere. This was far more effective. The two front windows of the building shattered and one of the militia got hit in the face, losing an eye and embedding another BB in his chin. People always looked too long at objects thrown at them instead of taking cover and this guy found that out the hard way.
The lower windows had been covered with wood, but a smaller upper window shattered. Not much building damage, but at least they had made a statement. The townsmen concentrated coverage toward the front of the building. The main problem was the sniper on the roof. They couldn’t really advance while this guy was up there. They would have to figure out how to get him down.
A woman came out of the back door of the admin building with two men. The men fired wildly toward the street providing cover fire as she ran toward the motor pool. She had her rifle slung on her back and keys in her hand. From a distance of 150 yards away and from another small building across the street came another shot dropping one of the men.
The round struck him at the base of his nose. His AR fired as he fell. Blood trickled out of his ears and nose as he lay motionless on the ground. The remaining man fired toward the building on full auto, burning through magazines. The sniper looked, but didn’t see anything; he had a lot of ground to try and cover. They were calling the attack in to their patrol group at Haliday’s, who were engaged in their own assault. Both groups were on their own.
The townsmen were slow and methodical in their fire. They didn’t want to waste the ammo they had and didn’t want to give away their positions to the militia. The wide open spaces around the airport made it hard to get close. They were also playing it as safe as they could. They knew this was serious, but didn’t know how serious it really was. They heard a truck start in the motor pool.
Haliday shook it off and rolled over. He looked over toward the house. From within the property and the surrounding area he watched occasional patches of muzzle flashes. He was quickly trying to get a fix on where most of the action was taking place. It was sporadic; there was no sustained attack on any one part of the property.
He checked the militia man and found his radio. He unplugged the man’s earpiece and listened for a few seconds. It was all static and he could hardly make anything out. During the struggle, the antenna had been broken near its base and the reception was poor at best. He kept it close regardless. Anything he heard would be better than nothing.