The Rag

  Jamie was equipped with an M16 automatic rifle with an attached grenade launcher. He saw Jones signal him to move forward so he could get in effective range to use the grenade launcher. The sergeant also signaled Jamie that he and Goldberg would provide covering fire while Jamie advanced. The young Donnelly acknowledged the order and stood up to start moving. However, when Jones stepped out of cover behind a tree to cover Jamie, he was cut down by enemy fire, but Jamie didn’t hesitate; he ran forward in a zigzag movement and miraculously avoided the heavy but random fire that was tearing up the trees and bushes around him. Then he jumped behind a fallen tree that gave him some cover and launched three grenades at the enemy positions.

  Five federal troopers were killed and three more wounded. In the meantime, Goldberg, who was an excellent marksman, had killed two other enemy soldiers. This was enough for the federal commander; he had lost almost half of his troops and really had no idea how large the militia unit he was attacking was. He ordered his men to stop advancing but to continue firing into the woods at suspected militia positions. This fire did no prevent Jamie from getting back to Sergeant Jones and to find that he had been killed by the incoming fire. Then Jamie checked on Goldberg and found him lying on the ground severely wounded. The random but massive amount of fire laid down by the enemy had been partially successful.

  While moving from one tree to another in his effort to get back to his comrades, Jamie had periodically stopped to fire at the federal forces, and this made them continue to think that they were facing a formidable force. The American military had a commitment to the philosophy that no one was left behind dead or alive. That philosophy was also ingrained in the members of the East Texas militia, and while Jamie knew that he could not carry both Jones and Goldberg out, he could at least try to save Goldberg who had become a good friend.

  He slung his weapon and reached down to pick up his friend when he felt a sharp pain in his side. He reached down and felt the wetness and knew he had been hit. He took his rifle off his soldier and despite the intense pain fired his weapon toward the federal position where he thought the incoming rounds had come from. He emptied his clip, reloaded, and emptied another clip. Then he quickly reloaded again, slung his weapon, and picked up his friend. He had apparently pinned down the enemy for the time being, and he was able to start making his way back through the thick woods in the direction that he hoped would take him to the rendezvous point where the rest of the team would be assembling.

  He just hoped that he would make it because he could tell that he was losing a lot of blood and growing weaker by the minute. He was also trying to ignore the excruciating pain; but fortunately, just as he felt he could go no farther, he saw three of his comrades rushing toward him out of the darkness. When the rest of the team had reached the rendezvous point, Lieutenant Cannon dispatched six men to try to find Sergeant Jones and his men. As three of them approached Jamie, his strength gave out, and he fell to his knees so he could lay Goldberg gently on the ground. One of the first three to reach them was a medic, and Jamie told him to take care of Goldberg first because he had been shot in the chest. While the medic attended to Goldberg, one of the other team members worked to stop Jamie’s bleeding. All special operations soldiers received some medical training, and within a few minutes, both Jamie and his friend were stabilized, at least to the point that their bleeding was stopped.

  The three other team members had arrived and established a defensive perimeter while their wounded comrades were cared for. Then they made makeshift stretchers using their jackets, and some downed tree limbs, and they carried the two wounded men back to the rendezvous point where they were all extracted by two Blackhawks. Both of the wounded men were flown back to the hospital in Terrell, Texas, and would survive, but the team was not able to recover the body of Sergeant Jones.

  Chapter XXXIV

  In spite of the casualties, the first part of Colonel Blake’s plan had been a success. The Iranian commander had moved his force south to defend the reserve center instead of north toward Fort Hood; however, that changed quickly when he received word of the attack on the fort. Now the federal leader had a quandary on his hands. His orders had been clear—he was to protect the reserve center—but now he received new orders to move his force to Fort Hood. Yet while he believed that his men had successfully repelled the attack against the reserve center, he had no way of knowing that there might not be a second attack. He was not aware that the assault had been a diversion. As a result, he made a decision to leave three tanks and two infantry companies behind at the reserve center. The rest of his command would move north, where Colonel Blake and his men were waiting.

  The survivors of the team that had attacked the reserve center had rejoined the main militia force and had been deployed near the intersection of the two highways that the federal force would have to go through to move toward Fort Hood. The Iranian commander had his tanks leading his force up the highway with his infantry following in trucks.

  For the federal force, time was now critical; and while the commander believed that his column would eventually run into some token resistance, he did not think it would happen until they were much closer to the fort. Thus, he did not slow down his column as it approached the crossroads in order to send out patrols to make sure that there was no ambush waiting in the woods. That played right in the hands of Colonel Blake who had decided to let the first few tanks go through the intersection before Matt Donnelly let loose his array of IEDs that brought down trees in front the approaching tanks. At the same moment, other IEDS went off, blowing the treads off the tanks while antitank weapons destroyed the tank turrets and killed the crews.

  On the south side of the intersection, militia mortar crews opened up a devastating fire on the trucks loaded with troops. As trucks exploded and men, often on fire, bailed out, they were met with a hail of bullets from militia infantry and special operations soldiers on the flank. This kept the enemy closest to the crossroads from effectively organizing to move into the woods and counter the militia attack. However, the militia was still heavily outnumbered; and approximately fifteen minutes after the attack had started, it abruptly ended. The Texas troops moved out and headed for the landing zone where the Blackhawks were waiting to extract them.

  The team had accomplished its mission. The highway heading north was now completely blocked because as the first tanks in line had been disabled or destroyed, the following tanks had moved into the other lane to pass them before they too were hit. However, it didn’t work because the militia had hoped it would play out exactly that way, and the second group of IEDs were set off and disabled several of the tanks in the other lane. The same thing had happened to trucks that had tried to pass the burning vehicles on the highway south of the intersection. The direct route to Fort Hood was completely blocked because not only were there burning vehicles in the way, but Matt Donnelly’s combat engineers had also used C-4 charges to bring down several more large oak trees to further block the road.

  The Iranian commander inspected the carnage and knew that it would take several hours for the road to be cleared by his remaining tanks, pushing the burning armor and large trees off the road. He had one other option, and he prepared to take it. He had four undamaged tanks, and they were used to clear the road south of the intersection so that the remaining trucks carrying infantry were free to reach the intersection and follow two of the tanks as they turned west. They would have to move twenty miles before they encountered another highway headed north. Half of the Iranian force would take this route while the other half would wait until the first highway was cleared and then proceed.

  Unfortunately, for the Iranian commander, the action at the intersection was not finished. Colonel Blake had left half of one of his A teams behind to monitor the reaction of the Iranian commander because the colonel had one more card up his sleeve. When he got the word from the team leader that the Iranians had taken the bait as the remaining members of the
A team moved out to join the colonel at the landing zone, Colonel Blake launched the two Apache helicopters that were sitting in the LZ along with the Blackhawks. They were over the intersection within minutes and hit the two tanks leading the column to the west. They hit fast and hard with rockets and cannon fire and knocked out both tanks and several trucks. Then they returned to cover the Blackhawks that were heading back to join the two militia battalions that were retreating to Canton with their captured federal equipment and troops. The Iranian command was in disarray. There was no clear route available for them to move, and by the time a route was cleared, it would be too late for the force to impede the militia escape.

  Chapter XXXV

  The militia battalions received a triumphant welcome as they rolled back into Canton. The tanks and artillery they had captured had being hidden in various locations along the way through Van Zandt County, and the antiaircraft guns were deployed mostly in the area around Canton where enemy air attacks were eventually expected to increase. Preparations had been made to protect the militia members, their families, and the civilian population. Extensive underground shelters had been prepared, warning systems were set up, and evacuation plans were in place to get everyone to safety. The addition of the antiaircraft guns would provide much-needed additional protection, and it did not take long for the militia to train crews to effectively operate them.

  The attacks on Fort Hood and the Iranian force trying to relieve it had been amazingly successful. The men were allowed to celebrate their success for a few days, and the homemade wine flowed freely. Then the soldiers had to deal with a harsh reality of their hard-won victory. They had to bury thirty-five of their own who had been killed in the fighting and remember two others, including Sergeant Willie Jones, whose bodies had not been recovered and brought home.

  Many of the members of the two militia units had not stayed in Canton to party with their comrades but instead headed home to be with their families. Yet they had all returned to town for the funerals of their fallen brethren. They stood in formation with their brothers in arms while their friends were brought in their flag-draped caskets to their final resting places in a military cemetery set up across the road from the historic downtown Canton cemetery. General Donnelly was at the funeral that was presided over by the militia’s chief chaplain, Major Calvin Vickery, a former longtime protestant army chaplain from the Canton area. There was no political correctness required of militia chaplains. That had been enforced in the federal military to the point that all the chaplains had eventually resigned or been forced out of the military. After all, according to the progressives in the new federal order, the Socialist Republic of America was no longer a country based on Judeo-Christian beliefs. In fact, the only religion tolerated and encouraged was Islam.

  The interment took over an hour and was ended by the playing of taps and the firing of the traditional twenty-one-gun salute. All the militia members stood at attention and saluted as their comrades were laid to rest. There was not a dry eye among the people assembled, both military and civilian, and this included General Donnelly who was openly weeping. To his men, this was not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength and compassion from a man who would send his men into battle to defend their nation and their freedom but suffer each time one of them died. On this occasion, Donnelly was thankfully able take the time to personally visit with and console each of their families, but some of the people closest to him saw that it was starting to weigh heavily on him.

  There were now over three hundred soldiers buried in the military cemetery, and Donnelly feared the worst was yet to come. The price of freedom had always been high. Yet following the funeral, Donnelly had other duties: visit the over four dozen soldiers who had been wounded in the battle. There were three major hospitals in the militia-controlled counties that took care of the men and women units, two in Terrell and Longview, Texas, and the other in Tyler, Texas. Soldiers wounded in the assault on Fort Hood and the Iranian brigade had been transported to all three hospitals.

  General Donnelly had already been to Terrell to see his son Jamie and tell him how proud he was of him for not only putting up a great fight but also risking his own life to save a fellow soldier. He was happy to inform Jamie that his friend and the man he saved, Phillip Goldberg, was going to fully recover. The general had also visited the other wounded at the Terrell hospital and their families, but not everyone would make it. Two of the wounded had died and were among those buried in the mass funeral the general had just attended. Now he would go to Tyler and Longview to see the rest of the wounded.

  While the general was taking care of his men and their families, his newly constituted intelligence staff now under the command of Ray Thibodeaux had been interrogating the prisoners captured at Fort Hood. Some of them were single men who were obviously hard-core supporters of the new federal government, but many others were men with families, and they all told the same story. They had been forced to fight for the federal government because their families were being held hostage in a detention facility in Mesquite, Texas.

  Thibodeaux reported directly to the general and said that he believed the men, and this complicated the original problem of what to do with the prisoners. He now firmly believed that if they were held by the militia, the families would no longer be of any value to the feds and would either be turned out on the streets to fend for themselves and probably starve to death or simply be executed by the feds. If the prisoners were released, then the original scenario would probably occur, and they would be sent back into federal units to fight the militia.

  Neither option was acceptable to Ray or the general, so Ray requested that he be allowed to send out a recon patrol to find out the layout of the detention center. The general agreed, and the first patrol was sent out. Once this decision had been made, it was a wait-and-see situation as far as the prisoners were concerned, but that was not the only thing that was occupying the militia intelligence section and recon patrols. Ray Thibodeaux’s cousin Daniel and his Donaldsonville, Louisiana, militia had continued to monitor the federal activity in New Orleans. The string of recent defeats of the federal troops had made them more cautious about confronting the militia with anything less than an overwhelming force. As a result, they continued to bring more troops, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, into New Orleans along with more armor and artillery.

  However, the buildup was slow because word about the victories of the East Texas militia had spread throughout the county and had once again caused a surge in resistance movements in many other states. This diverted federal resources to other locations and made it difficult to gather the sufficient force needed to take on the East Texas militia. So at this point, there was little the feds could do about the growing power of the Texas forces, but it increased their determination to take some decisive action.

  Chapter XXXVI

  Jamie Donnelly was unaware of any of this as he was recovering in the Terrell, Texas, hospital from the wound he had received while saving his friend, Phil Goldberg, during the battle near the reserve center in South Texas. His wound had been severe, and he had lost a lot of blood, so recovery would take a while. Jamie was not happy about this since he was anxious to rejoin his unit, but there was a plus side to his hospital stay.

  He was being well cared for by a beautiful young nurse named Kathy Gilmore. She was twenty-five years old with natural blonde hair and a gorgeous body that was a result of vigorous exercise when she was off duty. She was totally dedicated to her profession and had been honored to be appointed to the rank of lieutenant in the militia medical corps. She had immediately found herself attracted to this young soldier and had often come to visit him during her off-duty hours. She was impressed by the fact that Jamie did not try to use his status as the son of the commanding general to get any special attention. On the other hand, Jamie was impressed by the fact that Kathy was not awed by who he was and was just interested in him as a young man who was fighting for
their country.

  During her time off duty, she would often spend it with him, mostly talking in his room, although when weather permitted, she would help Jamie into a wheelchair and take him out into the hospital courtyard. The couple would spend even more hours just talking. Jamie told her about his strange odyssey that had led him to this place and this time. He also confessed that he was uncomfortable with the fact that he was being hailed as a hero for doing something that any American soldier would do.

  Kathy told her own story that was similar to Jamie’s. She had originally revolted against her family and been caught up in the progressive movement. The new federal government had sent her to nursing school, and she believed she was going to be providing health care to the most downtrodden elements of American society. Instead, she found herself in a hospital in Dallas that catered to the federal elite and their families. When the EMP attack occurred and everything was thrown into chaos, people who were being subjected to starvation and disease were flocking to area hospitals but were turned away by the hospital where Kathy worked.

  It did not take long for this highly intelligent young woman to realize that the new order declared to exist by the government she worked for was a fraud that was designed to establish a totalitarian government existing only to protect the relatively small group of people who would run this new Socialist country. Everyone else was to be considered little better than slaves. Shortly after the EMP attack, Kathy had gone to her superiors to see if she could get a leave of absence and transportation so she could return to her home town of Forney, Texas, to check on her family. She had not heard from them in weeks and was crushed when her request was denied.

  She was informed that her duty was to serve the federal government and nothing else was supposed to matter to her. That was when she started looking for a way to escape; however, without transportation, there was no way she could make the thirty-six-mile trek from Dallas to Forney. Fortunately, she found an unexpected ally when she confided her plight to one of the doctors she worked for at the hospital: Dr. Jarod Reynolds. She did not expect him to help her, but she felt he was someone she could talk to without being betrayed.