Coordination implied a plan, and plans were dangerous.
She didn’t have long to ponder the threat before she came face to face with a bigger one. Chased by rebels who thought the twin black SUV’s were leading the charge, the security crew in the lead vehicle headed straight towards the first clump of federal soldiers they saw.
The US combat engineers, busy trying to set up hasty vehicle barricades, were shocked to see the rebels so close already. They were amazed at how quickly the militia turned to insurgent tactics. In line with their training, they took cover and engaged the apparent suicide car bombers.
The bodyguards in the second car, ignoring the frantic congressman in the back, were damn good. The driver didn’t flinch when the lead vehicle was Swiss-cheesed at close range. He didn’t hit the brakes or even try a U-turn. He just dropped to a lower gear, banked gently to the right and shot off the road and out of the kill zone as fast as possible. The turbocharged and under loaded “off-road” vehicle still wasn’t able to clear the draining ditch completely. They cracked the muffler and the rear fender flew away, but they squealed the SUV behind some seafood restaurant and out of sight in seconds.
There they took a breather. The driver jumped out and confirmed the rental car still had a few miles left in it. Probably. The shooting on the other side of the fish joint wasn’t getting closer, at least. Of course, any closer and they’d be a target. Time to find a way back to friendly lines, if such a thing still existed. The survivors of the private security detail didn’t waste a moment to check on their fallen comrades. Bodyguard work was a nasty business. Their leader sighed and nodded at the driver. He pulled out of the back lot unto a deserted side street in search of a quick way west.
Kadush!
A speeding pickup truck sideswiped them immediately. The security chief wiped some of the blood from his busted nose and hacked at the air bags around him with his always-handy blade. His field of vision didn’t improve much. Some young guy in old-fashioned BDUs squirmed on his back on the hood of their car. He kept banging his good arm against the windshield. Someone else stuck his head in the passenger side window. The bill of a camouflaged hat bobbed inches from the bodyguard’s face.
“Are you fellas all rig—pop, pop!” A pair of 9mm rounds from the stunned and startled security man was the only answer.
Blood and brain matter covered the windshield of the truck that hit them. Someone hopped out of the mangled pickup and fired wildly as soon as his buddy’s body fell out of the way. The M16 rounds ripped just as easily through the aluminum SUV door as through the organs of the security guard and driver, before flying out the far side and ricocheting off the pavement.
In the backseat, Eliot shrieked and clawed at the far passenger door. Jessica saved his life by jerking him back inside and springing out herself. Her long blonde hair checked the militiamen’s trigger fingers.
“Don’t shoot! I’m a reporter!” She gave her best camera-ready smile and gently lowered her arms. “You just captured a congressman! What unit are you boys with?”
One of the pissed off militia fighters opened the side SUV door. A well-dressed, middle-aged fellow held an American flag lapel pin out like a cross fending off vampires. He cowered in the corner, baby raccoon-style, and babbled nonsense at the grinning militiamen crowding around. At length, he finally spit out something intelligible. “I’m a Republican too! We’re on the same side!”
One of the men posing for pictures turned around. “What the fuck does politics have to with anything?”
The militiamen rushing headlong into Lake City and ready for their first taste of combat found exactly what they expected: the enemy falling apart in terror by the ferociousness of their advance. Better than a movie. Most of the Georgian Guardsmen either surrendered or jumped into the welcoming arms of the rebels, turning their weapons on their former brothers when needed. The few holdouts scattered or made hopeless last stands against superior firepower.
The small Florida National Guard contingent riding along with the militia were busy mopping up, consolidating their position and trying to find out where in town the enemy was located. They weren’t in any hurry to advance. Except for turning their towed Cuban artillery section and the captured mortars on the small airfield, packed with Army helicopters on the far west side of town, they kept to themselves. Such was not the case with the thousands of militia volunteers around them.
The irregulars, emboldened by their first “victory,” fanned out through town. A target rich town. Like a tide, they washed over the federal division’s surprised support elements. What little discipline the volunteers possessed promptly collapsed. Each rebel group tried to gobble up as much glory as they could, to hell with what the others were up to. To the support soldiers’ credit, they neither panicked nor surrendered, and even tried time and again to form defensive lines, but without much success. Their hasty fortification attempts were as effective as sand castles against high tide.
The rebel horde’s complete disorganization happened to be their greatest strength. For the federal troops, stopping their advance was like trying to catch water with your hands. When the Fed defenders covered the streets, they would found themselves quickly surrounded as the militia poured through buildings, lawns and alleyways. Whether on foot, in convoys of pickup trucks or in captured Humvees, the enemy militia fighters were everywhere if you were trying to make a stand, but nowhere if trying to call in an artillery strike.
At one major intersection near downtown, several federal support teams came together to make a tougher stand. An air defense company, armed only with M16’s, bravely set up a hasty ambush. A communications officer, leading a platoon of mechanics with real few machine guns, rushed up and took charge.
The rag tag federal force got the drop on an entire militia platoon barreling down the highway. They shredded the pickups before the Floridians could get a single shot off. In their confusion, the platoon of militia amateurs following behind began a spirited firefight with some other militia group trying to flank the ambush site.
The federal defender’s exhilaration was short lived. Their laughter died quickly when they took heavy fire from a Dollar General store behind them. Some rebel chucked grenades at them from the roof of a Subway. One squad of the surrounded soldiers tried to fall back. Abandoning their exposed supply trucks blocking the road, they raced for safety among the brick houses across the street.
That sound strategy fell apart when the first soldier through the door took a shotgun blast to the face. The forlorn soldiers hesitated too long before they realized the extent of their encirclement. Naked in the front yards, unseen rebels cut them down with fire from every window and doorway.
There was no question about the rear echelon soldiers’ courage or fighting spirit, but they obviously weren’t combat troops. These narrowly trained specialists didn’t know the first thing about the organized shifting of fire, bounding and covering principles or reacting to a near ambush. As soon as they found themselves surrounded, the common glue of discipline began fraying. Instead of one 200-man unit fighting off the enemy, they were 200 one-man units, each basically fighting for themselves. As the battle coalesced around a single point, the rebel’s need to seek the safety of numbers gave them a level of rudimentary organization that was an edge in this kind of fight.
Encircled, outnumbered and shocked by such massive casualties the soldiers were about to cave in. An old mechanic master sergeant gathered volunteers for a final charge that might distract the enemy long enough to allow the other survivors to escape. As he put the final touches on this frantic plan, a sidewall of the rebel’s Dollar General redoubt exploded and dropped the roof in. Some nearby drive-through liquor store and its enemy machine gun crew disappeared off the face of the earth in another cloud of smoke and splinters.