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,
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,
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.”
They shook hands and Lars said, “Good job, Ian. You can get back to your squad.” Lars waited, watching the nearby houses and frequently glancing down at his wristwatch. At precisely 3:15 a.m. he shouted, “Now!” They all started throwing their Molotovs at the parked vehicles. The firebombs burst into flames, making surprisingly little noise but lots of light. But then the shooting started, and it soon rose in an ear-shattering crescendo. A few of the Molotov jars failed to break, but most of these were soon deliberately broken by rifle fire. Any vehicle that wasn’t immediately set ablaze became the recipient of some of the remaining firebombs. There were so many Molotovs exploding that the street was lit up almost like daylight.
After the firebombs were expended, most of the raiders dropped down prone and continued shooting. Lars fired half a magazine from his Valmet M62, aiming carefully at muzzle flashes or movement inside the house windows. The volume of rifle fire from the houses soon surpassed that coming from the raiders. Laine could hear bullets snapping by and felt one bullet catch the brim of his boonie hat, nearly tugging it off his head.
Laine saw a man to his right go down hard. He was kicking and clutching his chest. Lars ran to him and saw that he had been hit twice in the upper abdomen and was gushing blood. The worst of the two wounds was next to his sternum. Laine had seen a wound like that-a “heart hit”-once before, when he was in Iraq. He saw that the man was a member of the infantry team. Two tracer bullets whizzed by, uncomfortably close. Realizing that the man would be dead in moments, Lars dashed away to get out of the line of fire.
After running behind some brush, Lars stopped and knelt down. He leaned his Valmet up against a rock and pulled out a pop flare cylinder that he had earlier removed from its shipping tube. He fumbled with his prosthetic hand, slipping the flare’s cap onto its base. He slammed it on the ground. After a bang and a whoosh, a red star cluster flare burst two hundred feet above him. That was the planned signal to withdraw.
Laine snatched up his Valmet and bellowed above the gunfire: “Alphas, cover! Bravos, move!” He deliberately fired the rest of the magazine wherever he saw movement or muzzle flashes in the houses occupied by La Fuerza. A stream of tracer bullets from one of La Fuerza’s machine guns went over his head. As he reached the bottom of his magazine, Pat Redmond ran by with his M1A at the high port position, shouting, “Let’s get the flock out of here!”
Now Lars shouted, “Bravos, cover! Alphas, move!” He jumped up and trotted to the rear, reloading his rifle as he ran. His rubber hand made reloading cumbersome. He dropped the empty magazine into the dump pouch on his belt, just as he had done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After traversing fifty feet, he stopped and turned to kneel and aim his rifle. He shouted, “Alphas, cover! Bravos, move!” He fired an entire magazine, shooting roughly once per second at any likely targets. Then he shouted, “Bravos, cover! Alphas, move!” He ran again, reloading as he ran.
In this leapfrogging manner, Laine’s dragoon team got over the hill in relative safety. Lars noticed that Hector Ruiz had his rifle slung while all the others had theirs held at high port. They quickly counted off and formed a Ranger file. They jogged two hundred yards over a second hill to their horses. With so much running while carrying a heavy load, Lars was winded by the time he reached Scrappy. The horse was prancing in place, obviously nonplussed by the gunfire and explosions. To his right, he saw that Johanna was looping the sling of her Galil over her saddle horn. Just as he was about to put a foot in the stirrup, Hector Ruiz ran up with his rifle still slung and clutching his left arm to his chest. He grunted, “I gotta little problem here, Johanna.”
Hector pulled back the sodden sleeve of his ACU shirt to display a nasty grazing wound that ran up the back of his forearm. The deep gash was eight inches long and spurting blood at the upper end. Pat Redmond held a red- lens penlight to provide Johanna enough light to see what she was doing as she positioned a Combat Application Tourniquet on Hector’s biceps. Then she strapped a large bandage over the wound.
As she worked, Johanna told Ruiz, “Let’s ride a couple of miles and then we can stop and I’ll staple this up. If we somehow get separated, loosen this CAT tourniquet after twenty minutes. If it starts bleeding a lot, then retighten it as needed. But don’t leave it on for more than thirty minutes at a time.” She seemed concerned that the bullet had chipped a bone in Hector’s elbow.
“We’d better get moving,” Laine urged. “I don’t want to be here when those bad attitudes come over the hill. That may be in just a couple of minutes.”
“Yeah, we better go. I’ll be okay,” Hector agreed.
Johanna nodded. “I’ll keep my horse right behind you, Hector.”
Laine’s team quickly mounted their horses and rode north. As they rode, they could see the majority of the infantry teams streaming over hills, heading east. Lars felt good, knowing they’d be back at their vehicles and out of the area before daylight.
The two squads that attacked Humboldt didn’t fare nearly as well as the Dewey teams. When they threw their Molotovs and started shooting, they were answered with withering return fire. The extent of their casualties did not become apparent until they returned to Prescott.
43. Escape and Evasion
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments from Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
