William Weber - Turning the Tide

Camped along the edge of the St. Francis wildlife reserve, they split into four groups of three men. Seconds later, teams one to three crossed the open field and used bolt cutters to enter the perimeter fence. Group four remained behind with the horses and equipment. If the operation fell apart, each team would head back to Oneida on its own predetermined path. This way they couldn’t all be scooped up at once.

John was with team one, which consisted of Moss and Devon. Reese would stay behind as part of group four and provide the infiltrating units with sniper cover and overwatch. Upon reaching the fence line, John raised his index and second finger in a v shape to call forward the soldier with the bolt cutters. The others waited, weapons at the ready, pulling rear and flank security. Within seconds they were through the chain link, the cut fence pushed back into place to avoid rousing suspicions. They weaved between the parked trucks. A combination of landmines and phosphorous grenades attached to rudimentary timers would do most of the damage.

John gave the signal and the three teams broke in different directions. They might not have explosives for all of the vehicles, but the hope was that vehicle fires would spread and take out as much as eighty to ninety percent of what was here.

Ten minutes later, with all the explosives in place, they returned to the fence. John scanned the treeline and spotted the all-clear signal from Reese. One by one they shuffled out and moved in teams back to the rendezvous point.

John’s team was last to leave the area. He checked his watch. Ten minutes to go until detonation. One more pass by the perimeter guards and Reese waved them forward.

“Everyone accounted for?” John asked, after he, Moss and Devon caught up with the others.

Reese nodded. “Yes, sir. Should we saddle up?”

“Not yet,” John replied.

“Are you sure?” Moss said. “Don’t we wanna be as far away as possible when those bombs go off?”

“Our position is safe from flying shrapnel, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I wanna see how long it takes the reinforcements to show up. At the first sign of them, we’ll pull back into the woods.”

They waited for a few more minutes when Reese spotted a convoy of military trucks approach the depot.

“Hey, we’ve got company. Three soft-tops. Can’t tell yet if they got any troops on board.”

“Heck, we may just kill two birds with one stone,” Moss said, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

“All right, those soft-tops have pulled up in front of the gates and are unloading…” Reese’s voice trailed off.

“What is it?” John asked, raising his binoculars and getting an answer he hadn’t expected.

The men being led off the soft-tops weren’t Chinese or North Korean soldiers.

They were American civilians.

“What do you make of it?” Reese asked.

“I’m not sure,” John replied. “Going by the expressions on their faces and the way they’re being forced to line up, I’m not entirely sure they’re willing participants.”

“Truck drivers conscripted by the Chinese?”

John nodded. “Looks that way.” These men were innocent civilians and they were about to be blasted into smithereens. A squad-sized group of Chinese soldiers were with them.

Tension rising up his neck, John checked his watch. “We got less than a minute.” What was he to do? Let them die, sacrificed like the countless other civilians throughout this ugly war?

“There’s nothing to be done,” Moss said. “Wrong place at the wrong time, man. That’s all there is to it.”

“I got the Chinese squad leader in my sights,” Reese said, staring through the scope. “He’s got sergeant’s stripes.”

John bit his lip.

“What you want me to do?”

“Take him out,” John shouted.

Reese glanced over at him. “Before the detonation? You sure?”

“Yes, do it.”

Glancing back through his scope, Reese made a single click left on the elevation knob. Then he released a long slow breath as his finger settled over the trigger and squeezed. He’d brought the suppressed Remington 700 this time and it kicked back into his shoulder, making a dull clank as the round was ejected at nearly four thousand feet per second.

John watched through his binoculars as the shot hit the Chinese sergeant in the neck, spraying blood on the American civilians standing in loose formation before him. The Chinese soldiers around ducked for cover, shouting orders and scanning around fearfully. In the chaos the Americans broke free and ran. Ten seconds later the first landmine detonated, destroying a group of closely packed U-Haul trucks. On the heels of that came a second explosion, then a third and soon the entire depot erupted in a gout of twisted metal and flames. The heat was so intense, even from here John could feel it warm his cheeks.

The rest of the men mounted up while John and Reese remained concealed on the ground, waiting to observe the enemy response time. John’s watch ticked away the minutes. At last, two ZBD-08s appeared and stopped near the rows of burning trucks. Then a handful of soldiers on motorcycles sped past them and down the road.

“How long was that?” Reese asked.

John checked his watch. “Nearly twenty minutes.”

“Not great.”

“It is for us.”

Both men slid away from the treeline and headed for their horses.

“We homeward bound, boss?” Moss asked.

“Not yet,” John replied. “We have one more stop to make.”

John felt the tension among his men spike. He might not have come right out and said it, but they knew perfectly well where that next destination would be. The Jonesboro concentration camp.

As John and his Rough Riders were making their way south toward Jonesboro, Brandon was dropping seeds into small holes dug by a prisoner five feet in front of him. Scanning his surroundings, he saw thousands of American POWs draped in the same vomit-brown uniforms. Those who’d been here from the beginning were often reduced to skeletons in tattered clothing.

Brandon wondered when the North Koreans would replace the scraps some folks were wearing, especially since winter was marching steadily closer. He wanted to believe that even the heartless North Koreans had enough sense to preserve the very workforce which helped to feed them, although as the days passed, he’d begun to understand their disregard for human life. First the re-education program, then the breeding program and now the never-ending executions only served to reinforce the idea that this wasn’t about the war effort or forging ahead with a twisted North Korean version of America. This was about slow and painful extermination.

Brandon also understood those sorts of feelings needed to be controlled. For now, his mind was all he had left, the only refuge where he could pretend he was once again in Oneida with Emma and the people closest to him. The note he’d seen on the leaflet told him he hadn’t been forgotten. They knew he was still alive and right now that was worth more than a mountain of table scraps.

He’d met with Dixon a handful of times over the last few days, mostly in the bathrooms where the guards wouldn’t bother them. Dixon refused to divulge any part of the escape plan other than to say that it was coming together nicely. Brandon had told him about the message on the leaflet and how help was on its way, but Dixon didn’t buy it. There was no way he was going to sit and wait for help that might never arrive.

The man had a point, but what alternative did they have? If they managed to break out, they would be forced to live with the knowledge that their actions had led to the retribution killings promised by the camp commandant. Nothing in Brandon’s life had prepared him to make that kind of decision. But one thing he knew for certain—after that leaflet drop, Gregory’s resolve had started to waver. Upon hearing that Oneida had stood strong in the face of the Chinese assault and that a rescue attempt might be in the making, Gregory had predictably opted out of the escape plan. It seemed his fear of being shot in the back crawling under razor-wire fences was greater than his reluctance to be left behind.