Now, Grant was faced with the fact that he had only fourteen men to defend the airfield against an approaching federal force estimated to number over forty troops. Captain Ryan understood this and told Sergeant Grant to deploy his troops and their two machine guns to defend the perimeter of the airfield and to fire smoke grenades to mark the positions of the approaching federal force. Then Ryan contacted Blake about the situation, and he agreed to order two of the Blackhawk helicopters into the attack to defend the airfield. The pilots easily spotted the smoke laid out by the infantry and put down a devastating fire with their 50-caliber machine guns. Most of the federal force members were killed or wounded, and the rest were taken out by the two infantry squads. There was no quarter for these federal troops since they were not Americans who were being forced to fight for the government; they were foreign mercenaries, and they were killed outright.
The situation at the other side of the camp was different because while the airfield was a good distance from the main camp, the areas where the American troops and their families had been held were much closer, and Blackhawks could not be deployed because their fire might kill their own people. Therefore, the defense was entirely in the hands of the four special forces teams. As a part of one of these teams, Jamie had a special assignment: find his sister-in-law and his niece and nephew. As he had entered each tent in the hostage compound, Jamie had called out for the Donnelly family and had received his reply in the third tent. He had just identified himself to his family members when gunfire erupted near the tent.
Jamie took his family members out of the line of fire and into the nearby woods where they were protected along with other militia families by several members of the special forces teams. Once they were safe, he returned to the fight to help save other families. Most of them had been evacuated into the woods, but he could see that the feds were in the process of surrounding the first tent where they had some families pinned down on the floor of the tent with three militia fighters trying to hold off nineteen federal troops who had taken cover behind some parked vehicles. Jamie was still in the cover of the tree line and on the enemy’s flank so he could see them but they didn’t see him.
Jamie could see that his three comrades could not hold off the attackers for long, and they would soon die along with the families pinned down in the tent. Jamie knew he had to do something quickly, so he slung his M16 over his shoulder and pulled two hand grenades out. His plan was to charge out of the tree line and throw his two grenades at the enemy, then unsling his rifle, hit the ground, and open fire on the feds. He was aware that his was probably a suicide mission, but the lives of other American women and children were hanging in the balance.
However, before he could initiate his heroic but probably suicidal plan, he was joined by Lieutenant Cannon and three other members of his team. Cannon put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder and said, “Do you really think we would let you be a hero all by yourself, Sergeant?” “Good to have you onboard, Lieutenant,” Jamie replied with a smile. “You have more help than you think,” said the lieutenant as he got on the radio and gave a one-word order, “Execute!” He then ordered Jamie and the other team members to attack the federal troops. As soon as they opened fire, militia infantrymen hit the feds from the rear. It was a skillfully coordinated attack that killed all the enemy soldiers and ultimately made sure that all the American hostages had survived.
The rest of the federal fighters had been efficiently dealt with by the A teams that had liberated the captured American soldiers and airmen. Some of the recued soldiers had been provided with weapons captured from killed federal troops, and these men assisted the militia in destroying the federal troops attacking the compound where the military hostages had been held and then going after the force that had bypassed that area and gone after the hostage families.
The operation had been a success since all the American prisoners had been saved, the aircraft and tanks had been captured, and when things had started to go wrong, mortar fire from the militia infantry had destroyed the federal communications center before it could alert anyone of the attack. However, thirteen militia soldiers had died and fifteen more had been wounded.
Chapter XLIV
General Donnelly had been awake all night, waiting for confirmation that John’s family was safe and the important militia base had been secured. The success signal was received shortly after four thirty in the morning and provided relief for him and his son Matt, but it would be later in the morning before they could convey that information to John. That was also when the next problem for the general and his staff would occur. They had promised to brief Walker and his staff on the militia defense plans in the morning and how Walker’s aircraft and other forces under his command would fit into the plans.
There were two ways this could now be handled. The first inclination of General Donnelly when he heard that the militia now controlled the base was to just arrest Walker and his team. However, if Walker did not report to the federal commanders, that would probably alert the federal command in Oklahoma that the militia would now have the resources of Walker’s airbase back under militia command. To prevent that from happening, Donnelly decided that the best plan was to conduct the briefing with Walker and his staff and basically lie to them.
They were told that the principal line of defense would be just south of the bridge over the Red River. There would be a fallback position, but the defense would be at the line closest to the bridge where the federal troops would initially be allowed to cross the river and then engaged. Walker’s team would not be told that the militia command knew about the other river crossing that the feds would be using to attack the militia and that it would be defended. The important thing was that this false information be conveyed by Walker to the federal command, but that obviously would not happen if he was arrested by the militia before he ever left Canton.
Therefore, Donnelly decided that General Walker and his staff would be allowed to board their helicopters after the briefing and head back to the militia base, which he would believe was still under federal control. This was done in the hope that while onboard the choppers Walker would make use of the fact that he was in the air, and closer to the federal command in Oklahoma he could easily make his report before arriving back at his base. If he did not take advantage of that opportunity and chose to wait until he returned to his base, the communication would never be allowed to happen since he would be arrested the minute the helicopters landed.
The first clue that the plan was going to work was when John Donnelly, who had flown in on the general’s helicopter, was assigned to the other helicopter for the return flight. Obviously, Walker did not want to communicate with the enemy in a situation where Donnelly’s son John might overhear him. Ray Thibodeaux had his intelligence team plant microphones in both of Walker’s helicopters that would be monitored by a militia Blackhawk flying well behind Walker’s aircraft and using a cloaking device to avoid being detected by the radar on the enemy choppers.
Shortly after Walker’s aircraft left militia airspace, the crew of the militia Blackhawk monitored a transmission from the helicopter containing the general that gave the false militia defense plans to the federal command and confirmed that the aircraft and troops under Walker’s command would attack the East Texas militia from the rear. This was what Donnelly needed, and when the two helicopters landed, they were immediately surrounded by militia troops and Walker and his staff were taken into custody and ultimately transported back to Canton for intense interrogation.
Prior to boarding the helicopter, John had said good-bye to his brother Matt who had slipped a note to him, informing him that his family was safe. Upon landing, John was taken to them by Jamie, and he learned from his wife and children that Jamie had saved them. John had always loved his brother even when he had gone against the family and supported the new federal government, but now he knew that Jamie was truly home and was a hero.
Meanwhil
e, General Donnelly was immensely relieved by the fact that Walker had been arrested, but he was bothered by the question of why a general in the US Air Force would willingly betray his country. Under interrogation, Walker admitted that it was his ego that had been damaged because when he agreed to transfer the assets he had at Barksdale Air Force base to East Texas, he assumed that he would be in total command and was not happy that he was to be under the command of General Donnelly. However, he claimed that this was not the reason that he had agreed to cooperate with the federal command. Before the feds had approached him to betray his country, they had taken his family hostage.
Ironically, Walker’s family had been rescued by the members of the American militia that he was planning to betray. He had authorized the detention of the families of hundreds of American soldiers and airmen who had been willing to sacrifice themselves and their families to defend freedom. Since Walker had not been willing to resist the federal demands on him, he would ultimately be tried for treason, but that would come later.
The first concern for General Donnelly and his command was to defeat the impending attack that would be coming in days. He had appointed his son John to command the military units that had formally been commanded by General Walker. The first thing John did was to order the armor units and their supporting infantry to Canton where they were then deployed to the river crossing downstream from the bridge over the Red River where the main federal attack was to take place.
Secondly, John sent his helicopter units to the airport in Tyler, Texas, and his fighter jets, bombers, and A-10 Warthogs to the airport in Longview, Texas. That put them in a position to make immediate responses to the coming federal assault. Ray Thibodeaux had concluded that based on the information his intelligence units had uncovered, the federal attack would occur on midnight in two days. For the massive number of militia that were preparing for the fight, it was a nervous time. They were not being lied to by their commanders. The militia knew they were going to be outnumbered and outgunned, yet they prepared to make what might be the final stand of the best chance for America to regain its freedom.
General Donnelly wanted to raise the morale of his troops by letting them know that there was additional air power and armor support that would be coming to their aid, but he had to do it at the last minute so the information would not fall into the hands of the enemy. He was confident that the feds were not aware that the militia had taken back the base in South Texas, but he wanted to do something more to lure the federal forces into the trap that was being prepared for them. Ray Thibodeaux had the solution: militia private and federal spy Leroy Jones was still being carefully monitored and used by the militia intelligence to provide false information to the federal forces.
Once the construction of the forward trenches and redoubts that were part of the ruse being prepared to lure the federal troops into the trap was completed, Jones had been transferred to another unit that was doing routine construction on what was supposed to be a forward airfield near the Red River where militia Blackhawk and Apache helicopters from Canton were to be stationed. Jones was not aware of the false artillery and tanks that were being constructed in the original trenches, so he was allowed to meet with his federal contacts and inform them of the airfield.
This ruse was designed to do two things: confirm to the feds that there were no additional aircraft available to the militia and provide them a target where no militia aircraft would actually be deployed. After this contact, the battle on the Red River was imminent, and Jones was no longer of use to the militia intelligence, so he simply disappeared. However, the information he had provided was critical to the plans of the federal commanders. They had set the attack of the ground forces to begin at midnight, but they could not risk having all their armor and infantry cross over a single bridge; so the armor would use the bridge, and the infantry would cross the river in small rubber boats. This would be combined with other infantry and armor crossing the river downstream at the ford. All this would be preceded by a heavy artillery barrage on the militia forward positions, but that would only come after a daylight attack by federal fighters on the forward trenches and the fictitious airfield.
Donnelly knew that in order to be effective, the federal airstrikes would have to occur during the late afternoon prior to the midnight assault by the ground troops. So early in the morning, he went to the front and met with his commanders to make sure that everyone was on the same page when it came to the defensive deployment of all militia troops. He also told them to inform their troops that they had more backup than they previously knew about. They were told that if they saw fighter aircraft coming from their rear, they needed to know that it was friendly support, and tanks coming from behind them were also friendly.
Because of the results of the EMP attack, the militia had limited long-range radio capability, but the Oklahoma militia had eyes on the sky that reported via a series of short radio transmissions from one outpost to another that a force estimated to include thirty federal fighter jets was coming in from the north. John Donnelly immediately ordered the eighteen F-16 fighters under his command to intercept the federal fighters. It appeared to be a mismatch since the militia fighters were clearly outnumbered. However, the National Guard and regular air force pilots were highly trained and many of them were combat veterans while most of the federal pilots had received the usual minimal training and only two of them had combat experience.
The result of the air battle was decisive: two American planes were shot down, but the militia fighters took down sixteen enemy fighters, and most of the rest of the federal planes withdrew. The militia couldn’t stop them all, and four made it to the American forward position, and two fired on the phony artillery emplacements and empty trenches while the other two attacked the bogus militia airstrip. Then they headed back to their base in Oklahoma, but two of the planes were ultimately shot down when they ran into the returning American fighters that were headed back to their base in Longview, Texas. The American pilots then landed and were quickly rearmed and refueled to prepare for their next mission.
This disaster in the air alerted the federal commander to the fact the militia had aircraft he did not know about, but he still had no reason to believe that the South Texas base had been retaken by the militia and that he no longer had an attack force that would hit the militia units from behind. In addition, he believed that his aircraft had done some damage to the militia positions, and he also still believed that his ground forces had a massive advantage over the East Texas militia, and so at 11:30 p.m., he ordered his massed artillery on the north bank of the Red River to commence their bombardment on the American redoubts and trench line. The feds had sent forward observers across the river, and they were using night-vision equipment to direct the artillery fire. They were too far away to detect that there were no American personnel in the positions, but they were able to report that there were secondary explosions in the area that indicated the artillery fire was not only destroying enemy artillery but also setting off their small arms ammunition and artillery rounds.
Three of Matt Donnelly’s best combat engineers were actually setting off fireworks to simulate these secondary explosions. Some of the fireworks had been in the false militia positions and had been set off by the federal air assault and subsequent artillery fire. However, Matt had wanted to make sure the ruse was successful, so more fireworks had been set up about one hundred yards behind the phony American positions. To the federal forward observers, these were close enough to the area being bombarded to convince them that the explosions were in the militia positions and were being caused by the federal artillery bombardment.
The explosions were being set off by Greg Forney, Douglas Brennen, and Tony Mitchell, three noncommissioned militiamen who had volunteered for the job. They were dug into foxholes where it was hoped they would be safe from the federal bombardment. They had wires buried that would allow them to set off the fireworks remotely. Some of the rem
ote detonations worked, but as was feared, some of the artillery rounds fired by the federal artillery had overshot their target and destroyed some of the wires leading to the fireworks.
This required the three engineers to set off all the fireworks they could remotely and then move forward toward the federal artillery impact area and set off the other fireworks manually. They had to try to dodge the federal artillery fire that was still raining down on the faux militia positions. Greg Forney (a short but agile young man from Shreveport, Louisiana, who was the son of a former army ranger) and Tony Mitchell (a former college student at Southern University, a predominantly black college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) went in quickly. Both men had been members of their local militias and had escaped to East Texas when their units were disbanded because of the threat of them being uncovered. Both of these young men had become excellent combat engineers in Matt’s unit and did their jobs effectively, setting off their firework displays that helped confuse the federal forces.
Unfortunately, their friend and comrade in arms, Doug Brennen, a young man who was proud of his heritage as a descendant of an Irish American family that that migrated to New Orleans in the mid-1800s, was killed by a federal artillery round almost immediately after leaving his foxhole. The thirty-two-year-old sergeant was survived by his young wife and two small children. Despite this devastating loss, the militia plan had worked: the federal commander believed that between the limited air raid and massive artillery barrage, he had neutralized most of the militia force that was capable of opposing his assault. He ordered his tanks and troops to begin crossing the river and move to the attack. He also ordered his units at the ford downriver to commence their crossing. These units were to be deployed to attack the right flank of the militia positions, and they were not expecting any opposition to their crossing. In fact, the armored battalion from the treasonous General Walker’s former command had been deployed just south of the ford along with another militia tank battalion and two infantry battalions that included a heavy weapons company with mortars and antitank weapons. The south bank of the Red River ford had also been heavily mined by another group of Matt Donnelly’s engineers.