Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

“Well, I don’t think we’re likely to sneak a hundred people to anywhere within a mile of Larry. There’s just too many of us.”

“Yep.” He looked at me. “Want some advice?”

“Oh, yeah.”

The relief must have been evident in my voice, because Ken smiled before he began. “Their greatest advantage is their firepower, the fifties and the seven-sixty-twos mounted on their vehicles. So we find a way to take out their vehicles. Larry’s gonna expect you to come after him in Bixby.” Ken drew an X in the dirt with a stick. “So in the morning, we go to Jennings.”

I tried to remember where Jennings was. If I remembered correctly, it was about twenty miles northeast of Bixby. “Why Jennings?”

“So we can get around them and set up our ambush.”

“Sounds good. How do you propose we do it?”

“We head north in the morning. Jump up to Highway two seventy-nine and take it east to Jennings. At Jennings, we drop back down to one eighty, on the other side of Bixby. Then we wait for Larry and take out his Humvees.”

“All right. And just how do we do that?”

Something thudded into the ground in front of me. A miniature cluster of nails fused together in such a way that no matter how it sat, it always had one point sticking up.

“Caltrops. Mark and I made several dozen this morning.” He stared at me like I was crazy when I started to laugh. “Did I miss something?”

“No.” I laughed so hard tears flowed. Several seconds later, I got myself under control. “It’s just… hell, Ken, I take back every bad thing I ever said about making nails!”

For as long as man has fought, the idea behind the ambush has been simple. One side attempts to catch the other by surprise and strikes hard and fast enough to compensate for whatever their opponent’s advantage might be.

As Ken had pointed out, Larry’s advantage was superior firepower. Ours was superior numbers. If everything went as planned, we would turn off the main highway before getting anywhere near Bixby, cut to a parallel road some ten miles north, and drop back south when we got past him.

Everything went as planned.

We weren’t foolish enough to think we could take Larry’s group head-to-head, not even with the ambush, but the caltrops blew all four tires in the lead vehicle, two in the second, and one in the third. Our snipers took random shots at some of the others before fading into the trees to observe. Larry’s boys ripped the surrounding trees and brush to shreds in response, wasting much of their ammunition and hitting nothing but foliage.

After considerable screaming and shouting, Larry finally got them to cease firing. “Leeland!” he screamed to the trees. “Leeland! I know you’re out there! I have your son!”

I watched through my binoculars, and my heart leapt into my throat as I saw him reach down and drag Zachary up and lay a pistol to his head. So Eric had already reached him.

Larry yelled into the trees again. “I don’t want to hurt him, Leeland. That would complicate things unnecessarily. But I’ll do it if I have to! Don’t make me kill him!”

Zachary kicked Larry in the shins. “Let go of me you… you, asshole!” I remembered him telling me that I shouldn’t use that word-that it was a bad word.

Then Larry cuffed him and lifted him by the collar of his shirt.

As hard as it was, I held my tongue, and Larry eventually must have decided that he’d scared us off. He started yelling orders at his men to get the blown tires off the damaged vehicles and get the convoy moving. Men scrambled to pull spares off of other vehicles and rush them to the front of the line, while others hustled to remove the flat tires.

The binoculars brought the terror on my son’s face right up to me. I could see the tears in his eyes, and his ten-year-old determination to keep them in check.

But I thought I also saw something else. Something in the way Han stood beside Larry-a sudden tension in the big man’s stance.

“ For all his fine skills, my teacher has some simplistic beliefs. He would never willingly take the life of another person, except in self defense or honorable combat.”

I sighed with relief as I realized that Zach was safe. My attention was drawn back to the ranting Larry. He screamed at his men about their incompetence, and I had to grin as I saw their problem. Seven flat tires and they only came up with five spares. They were going to have to lose a vehicle.

He finally seemed to calm down enough to accept that fact and was soon yelling orders at his men to get two vehicles going, the machine gun and the two good tires off the final Humvee. I watched closely as two men pulled out simple socket sets and unbolted the makeshift mounting rig from the roof. They carried the big gun with them as they piled in the remaining vehicles and drove away.

Ken slumped down next to me, his relief obvious. “When he pulled Zach up like that, I was afraid he was going to do something stupid for a second there.”

“I don’t think he can.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s something Larry told me the first time I met him, back on D-day. Something about Han.” I explained what Larry had said about his teacher.

“So he can’t kill Zach without alienating his teacher?”

I nodded. “His teacher, his bodyguard, and I’ll bet Han is also one of the main reasons his men have stuck with him so long. He’s a combination mascot and enforcer.”

Ken smiled. “So if Han leaves Larry…”

“I’ll bet a good portion of his men leave, too.”

“Best news I’ve had all day.”

“All right. So, we stopped one Humvee, and two others left with leaking radiators. And I’d guess we used less than a dozen shots.”

I put the binoculars back in their case. “And Larry’s boys used considerably more than that.”

“Yep. And I guarantee you they’ll be traveling a lot slower now, too.”

“Um, Ken?”

“Yeah?”

“Do we have any spares for that Humvee?”

Ken laughed and called Billy over. “Billy, see how many spare tires we have in this group that might fit that Humvee. If you can find four, then we just got another vehicle.”

We got another vehicle.

The tension between Megan and me eased some the next day, and she joined us in the Humvee during our second attempt to get around Larry’s troop for an ambush. Ken’s driving reminded me of the wild trip in the pickup on the day of the Kindley massacre. Unfortunately, there was something we hadn’t counted on this morning.

Again, the idea behind an ambush was simple. One side attempts to catch the other by surprise and strikes hard and fast.

They hit us just before our turn off. Our Humvee was in the lead when a storm of bullets sent us on a sudden swerving, bumping, sliding trip down the steep embankment that took us off the road. Our trip ended abruptly when the Humvee and a pine tree teamed up to prove quantum physics correct-two objects could not occupy the same space at the same time, no matter how much force was put into the attempt.

I sat stunned for a second, but the recurring whine of passing bullets and the sudden cries of the battle brought me quickly back to the moment. In the back seat, Debra stirred and groaned, and I turned to make sure she was all right. Her eyes didn’t seem to quite focus properly. Shock, probably. But she nodded when I asked if she was okay. Cindy nodded, too.

“Good. Get Megan and get out on her side!”

I turned to Ken and was surprised to find him still in the driver’s seat. I had half-expected to find him already out and running toward the fight. Instead, he was turned away from me, bent over and rocking back and forth. I watched with horror as blood began pooling in his seat. “Oh, shit!” I yelled at Debra. “Open Ken’s door! He’s hit!”