Margie, Mary, Shona, and baby Jacob were left to “hold the fort.” As they watched the two trucks drive away, both women started to cry.
The drive north was relatively quiet. They parked the trucks on a logging road three miles south of Princeton. From there, they traveled on foot in
“Ranger file.” The raiders were in position three hundred yards outside town by 3:30 a.m. There, they lay in the chill darkness, waiting. Radio silence was broken only once, at 4 a.m. Dan Fong, who was using an earphone with his CB heard the call, “Ready Freddie, over.” He whispered the reply, “Ready Mikey, out.” He rolled over to tap Mike on the shoulder, gestured to the earphone, and gave an “okay” signal. Mike nodded and patted Dan on the back.
At 5:20 a.m., Mike walked up and down the line of prone raiders, kicking them in the boots. Not surprisingly, a few of them had fallen asleep. After the adrenaline rush of their initial movement, lying down for two hours was enough to lull some of them into slumber. Mike whispered to each of them, “Quietly and slowly, stretch out and if need be, relieve yourself.”
At 5:30, standing in a skirmish line, Mike gave the arm signal for “forward.” Spread out at ten-yard intervals, the patrol moved forward toward the dim outline of the buildings in the half-light of dawn.
The raiders were already within the confines of the town before anyone was spotted. It was Kevin who was first seen by the bikers’ roving guard. Two quick shots from Lendel’s riotgun dropped the guard before he even had a chance to unsling his carbine. Immediately after he saw that the man was no longer a threat, Kevin quickly refilled his gun’s tubular magazine from the elastic nylon shell holder mounted on the gun’s stock.
After the first shots were fired, the rest of the raiders picked up their pace to a trot, and moved in the direction of their assigned buildings.
Jeff Trasel had been given the assignment of suppressing the bikers’ M60 machinegun position. Soon after he heard Kevin’s shots, thirty yards to the west, he came in sight of the machinegun position. The machine gunner, obviously nervous, was pointing the weapon in the direction of the commotion caused by Lendel. Fortunately, Jeff was approaching at a 90-degree angle to the muzzle of the weapon. Dropping to one knee, he fired four rounds from his HK91 at the man behind the M60. Three of his four shots hit the man in the chest and head.
Taking the initiative, Jeff rushed the position. As he reached the machinegun, he lowered the muzzle of his rifle and fired two more rounds at the chest of the dying biker. Crouching down behind the gun, he reloaded his rifle from one of the magazine pouches on his web gear, and then cross-slung it across his back. By now, he could hear more firing coming from down the street in both directions.
Jeff whispered a gleeful “Oh yeah,” as he picked up the M60. Lifting the gun’s feed tray cover, he could see that its bolt was in the rearward position, ready to fire. He muttered to himself, “Now I get to see if you work!” He snapped the feed tray cover back down into its locked position. With a quick search of the machinegun position, Jeff found another hundred-round belt of ammunition lying loose in a wooden box. Trasel unhooked the last round of this belt, and linked it back to the first round in the belt, forming a continuous loop.
This he slung across his shoulder, bandoleer fashion. Trasel then hefted the twenty-three-pound weapon, folded its bipod legs into their closed position, and flipped the trailing end of the ammunition belt across his left shoulder.
At the far end of town, Todd Gray was running into trouble. He, Lisa, and Lon were all concentrating their fire on a house that held at least two bikers.
The gang members were firing steadily but randomly from the house’s downstairs windows. Because of their positions, both the gang members and the raiders were having little effect. When he heard a pause in the fire coming from his side of the building, Gray made a zigzag dash across the street, firing as he ran, and flattened himself up against the side of the house. There, he quickly reloaded his HK.
Todd dropped prone and inched his way down the side of the building until he was directly below the window from which the shooting had resumed. The muzzle blast from the gun firing only two feet above his head was tremendous. Taking a grenade from his cargo pocket, Todd pulled its pin, letting the spoon fly away. Fortunately, the sound of the grenade’s primer and the hiss of the fuse were muffled by the noise of the shooting, which by now was continuous. After a silent two count, Todd tossed the grenade into the window. Just after he again dropped flat, the grenade went off with a roar.
With his ears ringing, Todd scrambled through the smoking window. He fired three times at the inert form of a man wearing only a pair of blue jeans.
He then moved slowly and cautiously from room to room. When he reached the front of the house, he was greeted by unaimed pistol shots coming from behind a half-wall partition. Gray aimed carefully at a spot three feet below where he had seen a gun hand occasionally pop over the partition. Centering on this spot, he fired a ten-shot burst in a horizontal spread. There was no more firing in reply from behind the partition.
To be certain that he had been successful, Todd lowered his muzzle to fire another horizontal burst just above the base of the partition. He did this assuming that anyone left alive there would by now be lying prone. His rifle now empty, Todd pulled his .45 automatic from his holster and thumbed down the safety. He took a peek around the corner to find the still form of a woman lying in a pool of blood. Her hand clutched an AMT long-slide stainless steel .45 automatic. Her gun was empty, its slide locked to the rear. Todd raised his own pistol and fired a one-round coup de grâce at the woman’s head. Listening carefully, he could hear the sound of someone sobbing upstairs. Todd shouted out the shattered front window, “I cleared the downstairs, but there’s still someone upstairs. I need some help in here.”
Lon Porter let out a hoarse, “On the way!”
Lisa followed his words with, “I’ll cover from out here.”
After Lon was in the front door, Todd shook his head twice and announced, “My ears are ringing two pitches at once. For the moment, I’m practically deaf. You’d better lead off.”
“Okey-dokey, Boss,” Porter said with a twisted grin.
Before they moved upstairs, the two men took turns reloading their guns.
“How are you doing for ammo?” Todd inquired.
“I put almost sixty rounds through the FAL, and I haven’t fired my three-fifty-seven at all.”
“Well, it looks like you might get your opportunity.” Gesturing toward the stairway with the muzzle of his HK, he said, “I’ll follow you.”
Farther down the street, Jeff was trying out his new toy. He fired first in reply to muzzle flashes coming from a second story window of a frame house.
Leaning up against a wall, Jeff fired four bursts of about ten rounds each at the window and at the wall below it. There was no more shooting from the window. After firing the M60, Jeff yelled at the top of his lungs, “This is Trasel! This is Trasel!”
Jeff then moved further down the street. His second “target of opportunity” was two men, armed with handguns, running out of town down a side street.
Jeff dropped to the ground, swung out the gun’s bipod legs, and lined up on his targets. By now, the two men were more than three hundred yards away. Five short bursts sent the men kicking in the dust. He again yelled, “This is Trasel!” because, as he was to explain later, he didn’t want anyone thinking that the M60 was still in unfriendly hands.