CHAPTER 18
Chasseurs
The first eighty miles of the drive to Utah were uneventful. Life in the Clearwater River valley was obviously getting back to normal. There were cultivated fields and signs of regular commerce from Orofino through Kamiah and Kooskia. Grangeville was humming with activity. Large portions of the Camas Prairie were back under the plow. South of Grangeville, just below the White Bird hill, there was a large washout that had taken out all of one lane of the highway, and most of the other. Dan stopped the Bronco, got out, locked in the forward hubs, and shifted into four-wheel drive. It took an extra ten minutes to creep along what was left of the road, with Kevin guiding on foot. Two hours later they came upon three burned-out cars clustered together. This again forced them to slow down. Dan and T.K., who had encountered an ambush under similar circumstances, were both nervous until they were well clear of the cars. As they drove away from the wreck, Dan commented, “Oh maaaan, a little pucker factor there!”
Several of the small towns south of Grangeville were burned to the ground.
Others appeared undamaged but abandoned. There was no rhyme or reason to the destruction. Scenes of total ruin were within line of sight of buildings that looked like they were transacting business as usual.
For their overnight layover, they selected a spot two miles off of Highway 95, just above New Meadows, near the Hell’s Canyon National Recreation Area. They parked the Bronco on a low-tree-shrouded knoll just off one of the gravel access roads to the Hell’s Canyon Park. After parking the truck, they covered its headlights and windows with burlap and erected the camouflage net above it.
They made their camp some two hundred yards away, in a clump of even thicker trees. From this spot they could just barely discern the outline of the truck beneath the camouflage net. They positioned their sleeping bags like spokes of a wheel, with their feet almost touching. Because it was a relatively secure spot, they opted for one man guarding while the other two slept. They traded off this guard duty every three hours. Because of his night vision, Kevin got the midnight-to-3 a.m. shift.
After awakening at 6 a.m. and eating an MRE apiece for breakfast, they cautiously approached the truck, looking for any signs that it had been disturbed. They found none. Taking down and restowing the camouflage net took only a few minutes. Kevin and T.K. worked while Dan provided security.
They were back on the road at 6:40 a.m. Halfway between Wendell and Jerome, Idaho, they encountered a roadblock. It consisted of a pair of pickup trucks parked bumper-to-bumper across a cut through a hill. Six men stood around the roadblock, armed with a variety of rifles and shotguns. They wore an odd mix of civilian clothes, digital ACUs, and BDUs. As soon as he saw the roadblock, Kevin hit the brakes, sending the Bronco skidding to a halt. A hundred yards away at the roadblock, a man with shoulder-length hair and holding an M1 carbine yelled, “You’ll have to pay your toll before you can pass here!”
“This is a public highway, sir!” T.K. shouted in reply.
“Not anymore, it’s not. You owe us half of the gas you are carrying.”
Sounding emphatic, T.K. yelled in reply, “Oh no, we don’t. We’re not paying you any ‘toll.’”
The man at the barricade answered with a quick shot from his carbine. The next few seconds brought a dizzying roar of sensations. Bullets fired by the ambushers whizzed by. A few were heard hitting the Bronco’s roll cage. Dan Fong was struck by a bullet in his left shoulder, but it was stopped successfully by his Kevlar vest. T.K. and Dan fired rapidly in reply. Together, they fired more than forty rounds. They saw two of the bandits go down. Meanwhile, Kevin sent the Bronco roaring backward. The four surviving bandits ran out from behind the barricade, firing their weapons wildly. After he had backed up five hundred yards, Kevin again slammed on the brakes, and turned the Bronco around to continue their escape in a more conventional manner.
More than a half-mile away from the roadblock, the road followed the contour of a hundred-foot-high hill. After topping the hill, T.K. motioned to Kevin to pull over.
The truck came to a stop on the shoulder of the road, halfway down the reverse slope of the hill. After Kevin turned off the engine, T.K. avowed, “I think I can take them.”
Dan asked, “What? From here?”
T.K. replied, “It’s possible. ‘Standoff’ engagements are the best, you know.”
After taking a few deep breaths, he asked, “So Fong man, can I borrow your McMillan?”
“Suuuure,” Dan answered. With that, he hopped out of the Bronco’s backseat and pulled out the McMillan’s waterproof plastic Pelican carrying case.
Opening the case, Fong lifted the rifle with an audible grunt, and inserted a six-round magazine of hand-loaded match ammunition, and handed the twenty-six-pound rifle to T.K.
Kennedy declared, “I like it!” as he chambered a loose round, leaving the magazine full, and clicked on the rifle’s safety.
T.K. walked up the hill until he was near its crest. From there he inched along in high crawl position, with the rifle cradled in his arms. The weight and the bulk of the large rifle made this a slow process. Upon reaching the crest of the hill, he extended the rifle’s bipod legs, flipped open the scope covers, and began to scan the area where they had been ambushed. As this was going on, Dan and Kevin crawled up until they too could just see over the ridge top. They each carried a spare loaded magazine for the McMillan.
Tossing a bit of dry grass in the air as he had done at countless high-power matches, T.K. judged the wind. He complained, “Darn, I wish I had a windage table for .50 Browning. I’ll just have to guesstimate.” Getting ready for his first shot seemed to take forever. First, he made several adjustments to the bipod.
Then he squirmed around trying to get into a comfortable prone position. He tried placing his cheek on the stock several times before he found a position that was both comfortable and provided the full field of view through the rifle’s ten-power Leupold scope. Next, he concentrated on getting himself relaxed and controlling his breathing. Then, and only then, did he pick his primary and secondary targets.
“I’ll spot for you,” Dan said, as he pulled out his binoculars. Dan lay propped up on his elbows, peering through the rubber-armored seven-by-fifty Steiner binoculars. “What do you make their range, about eight hundred?” Fong asked.
“More like nine-fifty,” T.K. remarked coolly.
“Are you going to take out the guy with the scoped rifle first?” Dan asked.
“Yep.” After a long pause, T.K fired.
Because they were traveling faster than the speed of sound, the bullets arrived before the sounds of the shots. The first bullet struck the ground behind the bandit’s feet, kicking up a large puff of dust. “Three feet low, one foot left,” Dan whispered. A few moments later, T.K. fired again. This bullet struck his intended target in the right side of his upper chest. To the other men looking at him, it looked as if he had been struck by some silent, magical force. The loud report of the bullet arrived nearly a second later.
The long-haired man carrying the M1 carbine turned to see where the shot had come from. Just a moment later, he was hit by a second bullet fired by Kennedy. The 750-grain full metal jacket bullet hit near his solar plexus, knocking him to the ground. Finally realizing what was happening, the two other men dropped to the ground.