Chapter 8
John unfurled the map on the desk in his office. Assembled around him was a somber group. Among them were Moss, Reese, Devon and a rather cheerful Vice Mayor Ray Gruber, the latter’s sleeves rolled up, showing off his thin, veiny arms.
“Why do I feel like I’m at an AA meeting?” Ray asked, laughing like he always did at his own joke.
Reese was puffing on one of his vile Russian cigarettes and doing a horrible job keeping the smoke out of people’s faces.
“There are four main avenues into town,” John began. “From the west along State Route 297. North and south along Highway 27 and east along State Route 63. The approaches from the west and south run across the New River. That’s where most of the fighting is likely to occur. Those bridges need to be mined and heavily defended. I’m talking explosives at least six hundred meters before and after the crossing as well as foxholes overlooking the approaches. We’ll also need some forward observers to—”
“Why not just blow them up?” Ray asked.
“Not a good idea,” Moss said. “’Cause if we destroy the bridge then we lose the ability to funnel the enemy into a kill zone.” He turned to John. “With the equipment and weapons we have we might be able to hold off some lightly armed infantry for a while, but the minute tanks, fighting vehicles and airpower join the party, we won’t stand a chance. We’re gonna need artillery support as well as some anti-tank weapons or we might as well swing the door wide open and invite them in. Declare Oneida an open city, like they did for Paris in 1940. And as for those IED’s you mentioned, what the heck are we supposed to use for explosives?”
Moss was making some excellent points and John was glad because it meant he was thinking. The unfortunate reality was that John didn’t have all the answers. Trying to battle a powerful army with AR-15s wasn’t nearly as realistic as he’d thought before his time in Iraq. There was a common perception in the States that an armed population could give an invading force a real run for their money. The simple and rather unpopular reality was that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, guerrilla bands could descend from the hills, shoot up a convoy of lightly armored trucks and disappear, but anything stronger and bullets had a nasty habit of bouncing off.
The battle of Najaf at the beginning of the Iraq invasion offered a perfect example. Two armored cavalry regiments, including John’s, had rolled in and immediately come under heavy fire. The only real threat had been from shoulder-fired RPGs as well as mortar rounds fired by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Even then, thousands of enemy fighters were overwhelmed by American firepower.
One particularly bold tactic employed by Bradley crews was to cut their engine and fake a stall. The smell of blood was often too much for the insurgents to bear and more than once they rushed the vehicles with little more than AK-47s, forgetting that even if the stall had been real, the Bradley’s 25mm chain gun worked perfectly well. Needless to say, the carnage was often unbelievable and reinforced the silliness of facing any kind of tank without the proper weapons systems.
The rank smell of battle wafted past John’s nose as his mind returned to Moss’ question. “Tennessee is coal mine country, isn’t it?” he asked.
Reese’s eyes lit up when he saw where John was heading. “Sure is, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.”
“Thought of what?” Ray asked.
“Some of those mines must have dynamite and ammonium nitrate fuel oil stored somewhere on site,” Reese answered, stubbing his cigarette into an ashtray. “Once we get our hands on it—”
“Then I can show you how to make an IED,” John said.
Ray let out a nervous laugh. “I feel like an insurgent already.”
“Sorry, Ray,” Moss said. “I’m afraid you won’t be the one getting your hands dirty.”
John agreed. “You’re my eyes and ears when I’m away, Ray. I need someone to oversee the defenses and make sure things are going to plan.”
“Well, I already got my men filling sandbags,” Moss said defensively.
“Yes,” John replied. “I saw that and I have an idea. We need to establish a series of successively stronger defensive points to weaken and demoralize any enemy who approaches the town. A defense in depth. The outer ring around the city will be mirrored by an inner ring. Inside that we’ll have the buildings of Oneida as our last line of defense. HESCO bastions should form a tight perimeter wall. They’re easy enough to create with fence wire and sturdy cloth sacks sewn together. We’ll also need a tractor with a backhoe to fill them with sand and rocks. In town is where the fighting will be the fiercest. We’ll need loopholes cut into walls for concealed firing positions and buildings reinforced with sandbags.”
Moss was looking overwhelmed with the amount of work still to be done.
“As Hitler’s armies headed toward Moscow,” John reminded them, “Stalin ordered men, women and children to dig anti-tank ditches that stretched for miles around the entire city.”
“I don’t think we have enough people for that,” Reese said, searching for his pack of Belomorkanals.
John sighed. “I only hope that none of these preparations are necessary.”
After they were done, John headed to the kitchen pantry to grab a can of beef stew for lunch. The old days of heating it in a microwave were gone, maybe for good, and the prospect of firing up the old-fashioned stove oven they’d installed seemed daunting. He pulled a spoon from the drawer and decided to eat it cold. He was two spoonfuls in when Diane appeared.
“I thought you were working on irrigation systems?” he asked her, pleasantly surprised.
She smiled. “I was gonna ask you the same. Aren’t you supposed to be turning Oneida into Fortress Europa?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” he replied, laughing.
“Cold lunch again,” Diane observed.
“No time for creature comforts. Besides, I think I’m developing a taste for cold beef. How’s Emma? Has she eaten today?”
Diane gave him a look that said, Your guess is as good as mine. “I take it your conversation didn’t go over as well as you thought it would.”
“It’s a little hard to explain why the mayor’s barking orders right, left and center while his own daughter’s doodling in her bedroom.”
Diane crossed to the pantry and started searching for something to eat. “She’s traumatized, John. Maybe a little patience and understanding is in order.”
“I have been patient. We’ve all been traumatized. I saw Brandon’s sister Natalie out earlier lugging around buckets of water. All that after losing her father.”
“Yes,” Diane said, “and I commend her for it. But Tim Appleby was killed right next to Emma. She saw it happen. Had Tim’s blood on her face.”
John grew quiet. As a soldier overseas, he’d seen far worse sights. There were things the human mind wasn’t meant to see or experience, things that were disturbing enough to make a combat vet call out in the middle of the night. He could still see the faces of his men, dead because of orders he had given. Rescue missions launched to retrieve a single soldier that left half a dozen more dead. The few versus the many. John had thought those were equations he’d only need to make while deployed overseas, but ever since the EMP, he’d been put in that terrible position on a daily basis.
Perhaps seeing the distress on his face, Diane came in and hugged him. “I don’t envy you right now, John. It’s a tough spot to be in and I know how you take on too much responsibility for the people around you. Give Emma another couple of days. If she hasn’t come around by then we’ll try something else.”