He spotted an officer’s shining silver hat insignia, and cut him down. Dan muttered, “What an idiot! Wearing garrison insignia in the field. Serves him right. That brings the count to seventeen.”
He picked out two other soldiers that were signaling the others, trying to coordinate the advance. “That’s eighteen and nineteen.” Dan put a fresh rotary magazine in the rifle.
Across the canyon, the approaching infantrymen paused, and then turned to hurriedly run back over the hilltop. One of them dropped his rifle as he ran.
Dan got just one of them as they retreated—a straggling machine-gunner. The man rolled on the ground, hemorrhaging. He shot him a second time, this time in the head, to put him out of his misery. “That’s twenty.”
Once the sounds of the retreat convinced him that they wouldn’t be advancing again soon, Dan reloaded all of his magazines from the boxes in his pack. He shouldered his pack and clicked on the rifle’s safety. Quietly, he moved six hundred yards to the northeast, selecting a good vantage point on the brushy military crest of a circular hill. He set up his small camouflage net and settled in. He spent a few minutes estimating distances to various points within his line of sight. Then he quietly ran patches through the bore of his rifle, nibbled at an MRE, and sipped from one of his canteens. The day wore on. He did a second and more thorough cleaning of his rifle, and inspected its optics. As the sun began to set, Dan whispered to himself, “How long is it going to take these guys to friggin’ regroup?”
The enemy approached again, this time more cautiously, and this time from the north. The angle from which they approached was unfortunate for Dan.
They didn’t come into his line of sight until they were only four-hundred-and-fifty yards away. “Much too close,” Dan whispered to himself. He could see them clearly now through the Trijicon. They were wearing the German Flecktarn pattern camouflage fatigues and carrying AK-74 variants of some sort, equipped with fat muzzle brakes. He fired as soon as several of them were in view. He saw many of them go down in the heavy brush—possibly killed or wounded, or possibly just too scared to move. The enemy fired back sporadi-cally. Most of them expended magazine after magazine in long bursts, spraying the hillsides. They couldn’t spot Dan. Fong turned the selector ring on his scope from black to green. It was dark enough now that he could see the dull green glow of the Trijicon’s reticle bars and dot. The tempo of the infantry’s fire increased. Dan could hear bullets hitting nearby.
Now at just under three-hundred-and-fifty yards, the enemy was getting uncomfortably close. Fong realized that if he didn’t move soon, he would be outmaneuvered. He reloaded his SSG, this time with his one and only ten-round magazine. Dan put on his pack and stood up. Just as he started to run, he was struck by a bullet, knocking him back to the ground. It struck his right buttock and carried through to smash his pelvis. Through a gaping exit wound just below his belt, Dan could see part of his hipbone protruding. As he writhed on the ground in shock from the hit, a second bullet struck him, deeply slicing into his belly, sending his intact intestines sliding out to land at his side. “Oh crud,” he exclaimed.
He breathed deeply a few times, partly regaining his composure, and then rolled back over to a prone position and retrieved his rifle. With considerable effort, Fong pulled the two quick release tabs on his ALICE backpack’s shoulder straps, and twisted his upper body, sending the pack to the ground. He backed up slightly and got down behind his pack and rested the SSG’s forearm on it. Fong looked down again in horror at his intestines and then his wounded hip. The hip wound was starting to spurt bright red blood. Fong reached for the first aid pouch on his web gear and pulled out a Carlisle bandage. He tore off its plastic cover and stuffed it into the exit wound below his belt. Strangely, the slit across his belly hardly bled at all. There was a lot of blood on his hands.
It made the rifle feel slippery. Bullets continued to thump into the rocks around him. Three hit the backpack beneath his rifle in rapid succession.
Two platoons continued their advance, firing wildly into the gathering darkness. Where they were now, there was hardly any brush or rocks for concealment. Dan picked out two figures that were gesturing “forward” with their arms. Perhaps they were squad leaders. He shot them each once in the chest. Then he shot two soldiers that were at the lead, less than two hundred yards down the hill. “That’s four more, to make twenty-four.” His next target was a man who was waving and shouting orders—surely an NCO. He hit him low in the abdomen, sending him to the ground. The NCO was screaming something German. “That’s twenty-five.”
Their will broken, the lead platoon turned and started a disorganized retreat, pell-mell back down the hill. Some were shouting “Ruckzug!” Dan surmised that it was German for “retreat!” The second platoon soon followed.
All of the shooting stopped.
As they ran, Dan shot three of the soldiers in the back, sending them tumbling to the ground. The remnants of the two platoons disappeared into the trees below before he had a chance for another shot. He gasped out loud, haltingly,
“That’s three more, for twenty-eight.” The fallen NCO quit screaming. After so much shooting, the night was strangely quiet.
He rolled to his side and reloaded the SSG, using the last of his loaded five-round Steyr magazines. He wondered how he would be able to reload the empty magazines with his hands so wet and sticky. Dan looked down at his pile of intestines on the ground. Dirt and twigs were sticking to them. He shook his head and said, “Oh what a mess I am. Gut shot. Give me strength, Lord.”
The bleeding from the hip wound had slowed. It was then that he realized that only a small artery had been hit. There was plenty of blood, but the bullet had missed his femoral artery. If that had been hit, he reasoned, he’d be dead.
Fong peered through his scope at the tree line below, looking for targets.
None dared show themselves. More blood, some of it half-clotted, gushed from the exit wound on his hip. Dan repositioned the bandage. Without the accustomed support of his lower abdomen, Fong’s diaphragm went into spasm.
He hiccupped, repeatedly. He shook his head and laughed out loud. In a falsetto child’s voice, he joked, “Was your daddy in Civil War Two? Yes, but he died of the hiccups.”
Dan spent another minute scanning the trees below, hoping to see another target of opportunity. His diaphragm was still in spasm. Then his hands started to shake uncontrollably. His entire body was taken in a long convulsive shiver.
He rolled over onto his back, clutching his SSG in both hands. He muttered to himself, “The party’s over.”
With his strength failing, Fong lapsed into a disconnected semi-delirious speech to himself. “Not a bad life… not a bad ratio. Twenty-eight-to-one. Hah! I made ’em pay dearly for Potlatch… I hope I did the right thing, Lord….” He lapsed into unconsciousness for a minute, then roused briefly to sing quietly, “Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we’re in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for an eye….”
A few moments later he spoke his last. “God Bless the Republic, death to the New World Order. We shall prevail. Freedom.…” A broad smile spread across his face as he lost consciousness.
At civil twilight the next morning, the enemy resumed their advance. Some of the troops at first balked at moving forward. They complained that to advance was suicidal because they were outnumbered. It took several shouted orders and threats from a replacement Wehrmacht master sergeant to get them moving. The lead elements found Fong’s body an hour later.