Around the house, the remaining German soldiers were in a panic. Most ran back toward the APCs at the county road. Three of them dived for cover behind a downed tree. Todd gave a thin-lipped smile and consulted his revised sector sketch. He hit another button, firing the fougasse that covered the area behind the fallen tree. It went off with a roar, shredding the three soldiers.
The pair of BTR-70s that were parked in the barnyard started their engines in rapid succession. The few surviving troops near the shop and barn piled into each of them. As they started toward the road, the 14.5 mm machine-gunner in one of the APCs fired his weapon in angry long bursts. Todd estimated that he fired more than a hundred rounds at the nearby hilltops. Two gunners in BTRs on the county road picked up the cue and began pouring fire into the Ander-son’s house and barn across the road.
As the first of the two BTR-70s neared the county road, Todd watched carefully through his binoculars. When he thought their position looked right, he triggered the vertical fougasse. At first Todd thought that he had hit the button too early, since the explosion went off under the BTR’s front wheels. The twenty-two-thousand-pound vehicle didn’t move perceptibly upward with the blast. The APC continued to roll forward briefly, then stopped. Smoke began billowing out of it. Some of the German soldiers ran toward the BTR. Two of them opened one of the back doors, hoping to help any survivors get out. They were greeted only by deep red flames and clouds of thick black smoke.
The fire in the APC grew more intense. By now, twenty German soldiers were milling around the back of the burning BTR-70. The BTR’s rubber wheels caught fire, and then the 14.5 mm rounds and grenades inside the APC
began to cook off. Fearing the explosions, the gaggle of soldiers instinctively backpedaled up the Grays’ driveway. Todd couldn’t believe his luck. He reached down and punched the button for the first of the fougasses that Mike had built. Chunks of scrap metal, short lengths of chain, and broken glass ripped through the cluster of soldiers, cutting down nine of them at once, like a huge invisible djinn hand. The survivors from this blast ran to the remaining intact BTRs, dragging two wounded soldiers with them.
All along the road, the drivers of the BTR-70s fired up their engines. Most of the 14.5 mm gunners rotated their turrets, firing in long wild bursts at the tree lines, mainly to the east. The AGS-17 gunners joined in, firing their thirty-millimeter automatic grenade launchers in seemingly random fusillades. The firing went on for several minutes. Todd smiled and laughed out loud, overwhelmed by the enormity of the expenditure of ammunition that was going on at the road below. Todd could also see fully-automatic small-arms fire coming from the firing ports on several of the BTRs.
The grenades and 14.5 mm tracers were igniting sporadic grass and brush fires. He realized that any moment one of the grenades might land next to him, but still he laughed. To his surprise, none of the rounds came within fifty yards of his position. Scanning with his binoculars, Todd could see the APCs remained parked during the firing. The Andersen’s house and barn, he saw, were now fully engulfed in flames. In the midst of the roar of gunfire Todd susserated, “Go ahead. Burn up your ammo. Knock yourselves out. You’re as green as grass. Sound and fury, hitting nothing. Burn it up! Burn it up boys. As for me, I think I’ll save my ammo for precisely aimed fire at distinct targets, thank you very much.”
After a while, the tempo of firing noticeably slackened and then nearly stopped. Todd fired off the remaining fougasses in rapid succession, even though there were no targets in front of them. Todd laughed and mockingly whispered to himself, “Vee are surrounded!” The gunners on the BTRs started shooting wildly again, and there was even more intense small-arms fire from the gun ports. Finally, the rate of fire slacked off again, and the column of BTR-70s started up the road, leaving the burning BTR behind. A few of the gunners still fired off unaimed bursts to either side of the road. Todd watched through his Steiners as they continued up the road until they were out of sight.
“Run away! Run away!” Todd mouthed soundlessly. Todd heard their engines gradually receding in the distance. Then, all that he could hear was the crackle and occasional pop of the fires. Dozens of small brush fires were blazing in a thousand-yard semicircle around the remains of Todd’s house.
Todd waited and watched. Most of the brush fires burned out quickly. A few on the drier southern-facing hillsides continued to burn longer. These too burned out when they reached the ridge tops. Luckily, none of them had been immediately below his position. The valley was still largely shrouded in smoke.
As sunset approached, the fires at his house and at the Andersen’s house were nearly out. They were still smoking heavily, but there were just a few spots of open flames.
Two hours after it was dark, Todd quietly disconnected the WD-1 wires from the Mr. Destructo panel, and wrapped it in his poncho.
He shouldered his pack and picked up the panel and his rifle. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air. Todd snorted quietly to clear his nostrils. He realized that the Germans might have left a “stay behind,” so he didn’t dare try to approach the house site to look for abandoned weapons. That could wait for another day. Todd silently and methodically started to hike in a circuitous route toward Valley Forge.
As he strode on, he quietly hummed the tune of one of his favorite songs, an old Shaker hymn, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” popularized by Enya.
As he walked, the tune and the lyrics rolled over and over in his mind, in cadence with his steps:
CHAPTER 26
Dan’s War
“Unus quisque sua noverit ire via.”
Dan Fong heard about the approaching troops while he was having his breakfast. The next-door neighbor’s teenage girl burst into the kitchen and exclaimed, “They say on the CB that there are Federal and UN tanks in Moscow and they are shooting at anything that moves, and searching house to house.”
Stepping outside, he could hear what sounded like artillery or perhaps tank main guns firing occasionally, far in the distance. Dan kissed his wife, snatched up his HK91, and dashed out the door. He was heading for the Town Hall.
The freeholders’ council had an impromptu meeting. It took only forty minutes to decide what to do, but not until after a lot of arguing. It wasn’t until it was made clear that there were seven thousand troops headed north and that they were burning everything in their path that the voices of dissent were silenced. The town council decided that Potlatch would be evacuated immediately. It was agreed that to stay put would invite attention and inevitably the wrath of the Federals. The wilderness to the east of town was vast and thickly wooded. The entire population of Potlatch, roughly four hundred people, could simply walk a few miles into woods and escape notice.