Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Three squads were assigned to hit Dewey and the other two to hit Humboldt. Their approach was slow, circuitous, and cautious. The vehicles had all of their side and taillights covered with duct tape. Their headlights were covered similarly, leaving just half-inch slits exposed. This provided such poor road visibility that they drove toward Dewey at just over a walking pace. The infantry teams parked their vehicles almost a mile north of Dewey. Since they were quieter, the dragoons’ horses were tied up only a half mile away east of Dewey, in a brushy draw.

As per their instructions, the team members didn’t wrap the special ignition paper around their Molotovs until after they had dismounted from their vehicles and horses.

The two platoons split up just before midnight. They spent more than two hours approaching Humboldt and Dewey at a very slow pace. They sat spread out on line. The platoon leaders walked between their respective squads, pointing out particular vehicles to torch and whispering final instructions. At 2:45 a.m. both Ian Doyle and Doug Parker started their approaches to the two towns.

Parker was able to spot the sentries easily, since they were both smoking cigarettes. Approaching the first sentry from behind, he shot the man in the head from a distance of ten feet. The bullet went through both sides of the guard’s cranium and he dropped immediately, hardly making any noise other than the sounds of his arms and legs thrashing and a low gurgling. The pistol had made a sound that was much like a hardback book being dropped on a floor. Parker approached the downed sentry, who was still twitching. Wondering if he should use his knife to slit the man’s throat, he instead simply stood on his throat until he lay still.

Parker then walked toward the center of Dewey, to where he knew a second sentry was seated in the passenger seat of an open-top Jeep. The sentry turned toward him and asked, “Como?” Parker was seven yards away. He raised his HK pistol and pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed the side of the man’s head. Wounded, the sentry tumbled out of the Jeep and ran, stumbling. Parker fired twice more but missed. The sentry ran into the nearest house, and the door banged shut.

Because Parker did not have a radio, word of his botched shots did not reach Doctor K. for three minutes. Even though they had lost the element of surprise, he decided to go ahead with the attack as scheduled just two minutes later.

Meanwhile, in Dewey, Ian Doyle had approached the nearest sentry at a normal walking pace. He thought it was best to appear nonchalant. Ian said quietly, “?Hola!” At a distance of less than three paces, the guard realized that he didn’t recognize Doyle. But by then it was too late. Ian raised the M10, which was loaded with subsonic ammo. The gun’s selector was set to semiautomatic. It coughed twice and bullets hit the sentry in the cheek and forehead. The man’s head snapped backward and he dropped into a twitching heap. With the large Sionics suppressor attached, the Ingram didn’t make much more noise than a loud hand clap. It didn’t even alarm nearby dogs. Ian soon repeated the process with the other two sentry positions that they’d scouted out before. The first was sitting on a Chinese nylon folding camp chair in front of a bank armored car. He never made it out of his chair. The other one was standing on a driveway with his back to Doyle, sipping from a wine bottle. Only this last sentry made any significant noise, when his wine bottle and Romanian AK clattered as they fell on the concrete slab driveway.

Ian glanced at his watch. It was 3:10 a.m. He was pleased that La Fuerza was still oblivious to their presence. He knelt and twisted the M10’s cocking handle 90 degrees, putting it in a safe position. Then he replaced the partially expended magazine with a full one from his satchel. Realizing that things would soon get very noisy, he flipped the gun’s selector switch to the full-auto position.

The three Humboldt squads crept forward, keeping roughly online. Lars raised a clenched fist, and the signal was passed down the line, signaling a halt. He checked his watch. It was 3:11 a.m. Ian Doyle trotted up to Laine, and whispered, “I got all three guards. I think the gang is still asleep and clueless.”