“Can we expect some help?” one of the other volunteer leaders asked. “We’re just a few hundred people, against the thousands and thousands they’ll be sending against us.”
It was Harmon who answered. “For the moment we’re on our own, and help might not be coming at all. General Lassiter is pulling back along I-70 to his most defensive positions, and he’s diverting a few thousand soldiers to be ready to go wherever they’re needed to shore up weaknesses, along with all the heavy weapons he can spare. But along our territory this side of the mountains we’ve got a huge advantage, defending choke points or steep slopes the enemy’ll have a hard time with, and everyone’s expecting us to hold out.”
Davis continued where his fellow sergeant left off. “Make no mistake, this is going to be the hardest fighting we’ve seen since this war started. By the end of it we could be facing enemies attacking us from behind as they break through in places. We’re going to have to massacre an army that outnumbers us twenty to one or better along this stretch, and we’re going to lose people in the process.”
His tone firmed. “But this also means that the enemy is desperate. We’ve slogged through this fight for nearly two months. Summer is more than half over and a bitter winter is coming our way. We’ve bled the blockheads of supplies, and left them with no option but to win with one final push or withdraw. So take that one small bit of hope as we head out to do the impossible; if we can manage it, we’ve won.”
Lewis wasn’t entirely sure of that. The blockheads probably had two or three major attacks left in them, with the soldiers and supplies they had. The question was whether they wanted to completely destroy themselves attempting them. From what he’d heard of the situation in Canada, and how it was affecting the enemy’s ability to hold territories all over the country, the blockheads should’ve already withdrawn to try to keep what they had.
So Davis might be right that throwing them back now meant complete victory, but he might also be raising hopes about something that wouldn’t happen.
Either way, his words produced the response his earlier announcement hadn’t: soldiers and volunteers alike cheered the prospect over the radio. In spite of his reservations Lewis found himself cheering as well, as much for the sake of his and Jane’s squads and their morale as anything else.
Although the prospect of an end to the fighting, an actual victory, was enough to momentarily block out the thought of a tide of blockheads washing over the mountains, with only a few brave fighters to hold them back.
He hoped whatever preparations they’d made were enough.
“All right, everyone,” he shouted. “Our job is to move the camp before it’s completely destroyed, so let’s get going!”
Trev crouched halfway up the southern slope, behind a pile of deadfall up to his chest that stretched for nearly a hundred yards in a diagonal northeast to southwest slant. He had Deb and Grant with him, while the rest of his squad was in three more teams behind similar woodpiles, scattered all the way along the mile of territory they were assigned to guard.
Thanks to Lewis, Trev was fairly confident the Aspen Hill volunteers would be able to defend their stretch of forested slope south of Highway 31. Although admittedly this was an ideal spot for the blockheads to push in large numbers, through the thick cover provided by the trees, so the danger was very real.
That plentiful cover would favor the enemy nearly as much as Lewis’s volunteers in a firefight, as long as the blockheads didn’t walk into any outright ambushes. Which meant that even with prepared emplacements the fighting would be brutal, and the enemy would almost certainly win in the end. Probably with far fewer losses than acceptable.
Unfortunately for the blockheads, nature was on Lewis’s side.
Specifically, after facing one attack after another in the last few weeks his cousin had begun seriously considering what would happen if the enemy came with more than probes of one or two squads. He’d brainstormed with Trev, Jane, and the other squad leaders, and none of them had liked the obvious answers, so they’d begun looking at a way of turning the terrain in their favor.
That terrain was a slope densely treed with evergreens and a few small pockets of aspen, and about half of those evergreens had been killed off by the wave of bark beetles that had ravaged the area over the last decade or so. The insects had left ugly swaths of dead gray trees across mountainsides throughout the Manti-La Sal National Forest, still standing but ready to topple with a strong wind or winter conditions. Many had toppled, contributing to the thick tangle of deadfall blanketing the forest floor.
It created dangerous conditions for fires, several of which had already run rampant through the National Forest area. The amount of work it would’ve taken to clear away the dead trees had been daunting even before the Gulf burned, and now the area seemed doomed to devastation by wildfires at any time.
Lewis had decided that, for this particular slope and assuming the blockheads decided to try their luck sending large numbers of troops up it, that time was now.
Whenever they’d had spare time Trev and the other leaders had put their squads to work, piling branches and armfuls of dead pine needles beneath carefully positioned and stacked piles of deadfall in optimal places. While planning those piles they’d done their best to judge the prevailing winds and lay of the land, to guess where the fire would go once started. That was impossible to predict with perfect accuracy, but they’d done their best.
Lewis also had them clear away the upper slopes and create firebreaks that would hopefully push the flames downslope, leaving the area untouched where the Aspen Hill volunteers had set up to defend in earnest. They’d alerted the squads under Sergeant Thompson to the south of them of their plans, leaving them with a choice of what they wanted: to set up conditions so the fire would burn their terrain as well, or to create their own firebreaks to contain the fire to the southern slope.
Thompson’s people had opted for firebreaks, and Trev didn’t exactly blame them. Fire could spread with frightening speed, especially on a windy day, and especially helped along with a bit of planning and preparation. Once it got started they’d have to hope their efforts to contain it would be enough, because none of them were in a position to attempt major firefighting operations. Especially not during an attack.
By the same token, when Lewis sprung his trap the blockheads would have to either try to outrun the fire’s spread to reach the safety of the upper slopes, walking right into ambushes they wouldn’t have time to approach carefully, or fight the spreading flames even as they fought the Aspen Hill volunteers. As their least desirable option they could back away and let the wildfire run its course, then try again after the flames had out. Which could take hours or even days.
If the enemy went for that last option they’d then find themselves attacking up a bare, blackened slope where hiding would be next to impossible. Their only choice would be to charge uphill into a withering hail of automatic fire, firing back at an entrenched enemy shooting at them from behind the safety of emplacements. Brutal didn’t begin to describe the prospect.
No, Trev didn’t expect to have too much trouble defending this forested slope. Sure, it was possible things might go wrong and the wildfire wouldn’t burn as they hoped, especially since it was harder to get a fire burning downslope than upslope. But even so he was fairly confident his people had done enough to match this threat.