“And if I say no?”
“You walk down to the hard road and hitch a ride anywhere you want to go.”
“I’ll stay.”
“I’m so thrilled.”
Molina said, “I’m fat, out of shape, and never touched a weapon in my life.”
“When this is over, you’ll want to join the NRA.”
“What about me?” Sarah asked.
“You are my inside surprise. You can toss grenades and shoot if they come through the door in front or back. I suggest that you pick a few spots to watch the back of the building. If we get visitors with something nasty on their minds, they will drop someone off to come through the woods behind us. Your job is to guard the rear.”
I showed the three of them how to operate the carbines, grenades, and AT4s. “Don’t fire one of these AT4s in the house. The back blast will burn the building down.”
When I thought they had the basics, I gave them a little heart-to-heart about combat. “You are going to be very scared when the shooting starts. Concentrate on making your weapon function and keep firing it at the bad guys. It’s really easy to shoot the wrong people, which will not help you nor the rest of us. The main thing is to stay in the fight.”
“What about prisoners?”
“What about ’em?”
“Well, what if they throw down their weapons and surrender?”
“Anybody who gets into a shooting scrape with us wants our weapons, vehicles, and food. If you surrender, they’ll kill you. I suggest you do the same to them.”
“I can’t do that,” Molina said frankly. Yocke nodded his agreement.
“Don’t worry. Someone will do it for you,” I said. “Just don’t let ’em run off.”
“Could you shoot a man with his hands up?” Yocke asked Sarah.
She looked at him as if he had asked if she were still a virgin. Women are usually tougher and more realistic than men.
One of the troopers in the back of the first C-130 in the string flying just above Louisiana was Specialist Jimmy Schaffran from Minnesota. His story was unique, as was the story of every man in the plane, but perhaps similar to many. He had been a chubby nerd in high school, addicted to video games, partly because he wished to find some way to escape a bad home situation and partly because he was unattractive to girls. He had no idea what to say to them. Certainly he wasn’t a jock or rocket scientist. There was no money in the family to send him to college when he graduated from high school, a fact he didn’t fret because he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and doubted that he was smart enough for college, anyway. He got a job delivering sandwiches in his father’s old work car, then pizza because the tips were better, and finally decided to join the army.
Recruit training nearly killed him. Pushed mercilessly by the sergeants, the pounds began melting off and his stamina increased dramatically. After thirty pounds of fat were gone, he began gaining muscle.
Jimmy Schaffran found a home in the army. He had some buddies and they went into town together. He met a girl, a cute waitress in Killeen with a little tattoo over her heart, which happened to put it on the top of the swell of her left breast; she loved to neck in his car, the first one he had ever owned, cherry red, only three years old, with a loud aftermarket muffler.
When this Texas thing went down, a Guard officer asked him if he wanted to go back to the U.S. Army or fight for Texas. Jimmy hadn’t hesitated. “I’m from Minnesota,” he said, “but now I’m a Texan.” His buddies, from California, Michigan, and South Carolina, also decided they were Texans. “Be a shame to break up a good team,” one of them said. So all four were in this assault on Barksdale, two on this plane and two on another.
“Hell, it’s all an adventure,” Jimmy Schaffran told himself, wished his stomach would stop doing flips, and squeezed his weapon a little tighter.
Nathaniel Danaher sat behind the pilots in the cockpit of the first C-130 to approach Barksdale. The planes, strung out in trail about a mile apart, had flown the entire distance from Fort Hood at a hundred feet above the ground. They had managed to avoid several radio towers, which would have made flying at this altitude suicidal at night.
As briefed, the pilot called Barksdale Approach, gave his position from the field, and asked for clearance to land. “I’m leading a flight of six. My playmates are in trail and would like to land behind me.”
There was a long silence, then, “We don’t have a flight plan on you. Where did you take off?”
“Fort Rucker.”
Another pause, then, “Make a modified straight-in to Runway Three-Three, Altimeter two niner niner six, wind three one zero at seven. Switch to Tower and report five miles.”
“Wilco.”
The copilot flipped the radio freq and made the call, trying to keep his voice airline-pilot, ah-shucks cool.
“Flight of six, cleared to land.”
The copilot turned to Danaher. “They’ll get on the phone to Rucker, sir.”
“Regardless of what they say, land. Taxi right over in front of base ops and drop the ramp.”
Danaher went into the back and got his troops ready. They had been carefully briefed, and knew they were to go off running as soon as the loadmaster lowered the ramp.
In Barksdale Approach Control, confusion reigned. The only planes scheduled to arrive at noon were a flight of four F-22s. If Ops had received messages about arriving Hercs, no one had seen them, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist somewhere. And there was something else. Approach Control radar showed blips without transponder codes, up high and approaching from the south. What were these airplanes? The duty ops officer called his boss, a colonel, who confessed his ignorance. Flipping madly through the messages on the message board, and calls to the message center, didn’t help. Nor would calling Center do any good: Center was off the air and no one was answering the telephones.
The first Herc touched down and, ignoring orders from Ground Control, taxied to a stop in front of the Ops building; armed, helmeted troops in battle dress piled out of the plane.
An enlisted controller in the tower remarked, “Rucker must have sent an advance party to augment base security.”
Very shortly, everyone in the tower was disabused of that notion and jerked headlong into the reality of war. Troopers entered the tower, pointed their guns, and waved the air force controllers away from the scopes and microphones. An NCO growled, “You people get on the floor, hands in your laps, and no one will get hurt!” Troopers bound the air controllers’ wrists with plastic ties. Cell phones were confiscated. Another trooper sat at a microphone to guide approaching aircraft.
Similar scenes were enacted at the base ops center, where Colonel Danaher established his command post, and at the message center. It all happened so quickly that no message of the attack was transmitted. As far as the Pentagon knew, Barksdale was still owned by the United States Air Force.
Danaher couldn’t believe his good fortune. Lady Luck had just given him a gift of a few hours.
The second C-130 taxied to the B-52 parking mat. As the troops disembarked, an air police SUV came roaring up and two armed men jumped out. When a couple of the troopers fired bursts over their heads, the air policemen jumped back into the SUV and started off, but now someone shot the tires out. It kept going anyway. Another burst into the rear of it brought it to a stop. One of the air policemen was slightly wounded. They were disarmed and led away across the mat to a holding area as the troops fanned out and the C-130 began taxiing for takeoff. There were more troops at Fort Hood that needed transport.
Two minutes after the sixth and last transport off-loaded its men, Colonel Danaher could look at the base’s mechanics, officers, and pilots seated in rows, hands fastened with plastic ties, and under guard. It was a quick victory for Texas. Hearing the reports over handheld radio, Colonel Danaher breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in his life, he understood the ennui that engulfed the military personnel in Pearl Harbor in the weeks before the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. It is devilishly difficult to instantly transition from peace to war. Danaher knew he wasn’t up to speed yet, but thought maybe he better get that way fast. No doubt all the air force personnel on the base were waking up mighty quick.