Forty Days at Kamas (46 page)

"Do you know these men, Major Whiting?" Tracy asked.

"I certainly do," the Wart replied with a sardonic laugh.

"What do you propose we do with them?"

"Let's give them one last chance to cooperate," Whiting suggested. He unbuttoned the flap on his black leather military holster and turned to Skinner.

"You, Skinner, are you going to help us or not?"

"Go to hell," Skinner replied.

Without a moment's hesitation, Whiting drew his pistol from its holster, pointed it at Skinner's chest and fired twice. Skinner's body fell backward and hit the ground with a thud. The speed and utter cold–bloodedness of the shooting took my breath away.

"Now, let's see about the others. You, Gaffney," he called out, still holding the pistol. "Are you going to help?"

Gaffney opened his mouth but seemed too stunned to speak. Whiting raised the pistol.

"Hold your fire!" Doug Chambers called out suddenly and brought his hand down on Whiting's extended arm. "Not here. Wait and let it happen inside the camp, in the heat of battle. Handcuff him to the turret, if you have to. The same with Wagner here. Warders!"

When he said my name I thought I saw a look of sadistic pleasure in his eyes.

At that moment, two of the warders who had marched us to the tent pulled plastic strip fasteners from their belts and grabbed Gaffney's wrists to tie them behind his back. At first Gaffney seemed to submit, but in a flash he broke free. He flattened the first warder with a punch to the jaw and lowered his head to charge the other.

"Don't shoot!" Chambers shouted once more to Whiting. "Take him alive!" The warder who was the target of Gaffney's charge grabbed hold of his attacker's coveralls with both hands and held on tenaciously until Gaffney slowed, lost his balance, and fell heavily onto his side. In an instant the other warders piled on, flailing away with their nightsticks and wrenching Gaffney’s wrists behind his back.

From the moment Whiting unbuttoned the flap on his holster, my mind had been racing. Having shot Skinner, would he shoot all three of us? What if I agreed to help? Would they chain me to a tank turret, anyway, and kill me inside the wire looking like a traitor after all? My spirits sank and I regretted more than ever having left the camp.

Just then it became clear to me that, above all else, I must not let the bosses take me back inside the wire. I accepted now that my life was over. All that remained was to avoid doing harm to my friends and show loyalty to the revolt. I felt bitter disappointment at not being able to rejoin my family but I had long ago come to terms with the possibility of dying in captivity. My bitterness was more for my daughters’ loss of a father than for my life coming to an end.

I saw Grady and Mills finish with Gaffney and start toward me with plastic wrist fasteners in hand. I felt an instantaneous surge of strength and vowed that they would not take me alive. My eyes fixed on the earthen berm and the row of tanks before me. Beyond them stretched the electrified perimeter wire. All at once I realized that, if I ran for the wire, death would be certain, either by electrocution or by gunfire. All I had to do was outrun a pair of hulking thugs long enough for one of their trigger–happy comrades to fire on me. It would be so sudden I probably wouldn't feel a thing.

With the other warders still swarming over Gaffney, I dodged Grady and Mills, sprinted past the tanks to the edge of the berm, and clambered up the rock–strewn slope. At the top, outlined against the horizon, I fully expected to die. But when I remained unharmed I lurched down the other side and poured on every bit of speed to cross the remaining fifty yards to the perimeter fence.

I heard pistol shots and commands for me to stop but kept on running. As the fence loomed nearer, I thought momentarily about whether I should grab the wire or run straight into it like a sprinter breaking the finish line tape. Then the frightening thought came that someone may have turned off the electricity in anticipation of the attack. Never mind, I thought, I'll crawl under the fence and keep going until they shoot me.

Less than ten yards separated me from the wire when I felt hands grasp me around the hips and topple me to the ground. A moment later, a second pursuer slammed onto my chest and knocked the wind out of me. I heard their breathless shouts and curses and recognized them as Grady and Mills. Their well–aimed truncheon blows came next, first on my head, then on my back. I curled into a ball with my hands clasped behind my neck and let them pound away while I set my mind free. I barely felt the pain until a crushing blow struck my lower back at a spot where I had been injured twice before.

The blow sent a column of pain roaring up my spine into my head with such force that it seemed to burst out the top of my skull and soar into the night sky. Like the ball of glowing fire that carried me through the roof of the prison car the night I arrived at Kamas, the surging pain took me high above the valley to an altitude where I saw the sun’s spreading glow of the sun just below the far rim of the Uinta Mountains. Far below, scrub–covered foothills spread out in all directions.

I turned my attention toward camp and instantly found myself hovering over it. Peering inside its walls, I saw huddled defenders waiting nervously behind the barricades, observers scanning the horizon from barracks roofs, and sentries marching in pairs along the inner perimeter wall.

Outside the wall I saw platoons of expectant shock troops looking to the skies as if for a sign and machine–gunners in their watchtowers fingering belts of shiny brass cartridges. Beyond the no–man's–land I saw tanks and APCs lurking behind the berm and felt the throbbing of their engines as they awaited the command to attack. And nestled among the hills overlooking the camp, I saw a brightly lit administration building whose broad balconies stirred with restless generals and bureaucrats eager to view the show that was about to begin.

A steady wind swept across the valley from the northwest, creating swirls of dust on the open range. As I hovered above the camp, I felt buffeted, not by the winds, but by waves of emotion similar to those I had sensed when looking down from the sky the night I arrived. Once more I felt the prisoners' hatred, resentment, despair, and outrage rising up in a cloud destined to burst upon those below in a storm of catharsis. And as I had done before, I turned my face away from the camp and climbed higher.

I looked down again in time to see signal flares ignite over the camp with the brilliance of several full moons. This was the sign that the attackers had been awaiting. Suddenly the mighty engines of the tanks and APCs roared into action. Across the berm, pre–set explosive charges ripped massive gaps in the perimeter walls and fences through which the tanks could enter. Behind the tanks, helmeted troops in full body armor boarded APCs that would carry them into battle. And from low bunkers scattered to the north and south, mortars lobbed round after round of tear gas canisters from one end of the camp to the other.

I saw the canisters bounce and roll, burning with a white–hot heat and spewing clouds of choking gas across the open yards and among the barracks. I saw the snipers in the watchtowers, taking aim through night–vision scopes at forward observers, sentries, and defenders inside the wall. And in the same watchtowers, I saw machine gun crews lay down interlocking fields of tracer fire across the women's camp and the Service Yard. The defenders who had been issued Jerry McIntyre's primitive gas masks wore them, while others covered their faces with moistened undershirts or whatever scraps of cloth they could find.

Al Gallucci and Jon Merrill looked up from their observation post on a barracks roof in Division 2 the moment they heard the pop of the first flare being launched. It was Al Gallucci's last moment of life. The sniper who took aim at him from a tower at the northwest corner of Division 2 sent a single round straight through Gallucci's generous and ever–cheerful heart. Seeing Gallucci slump forward, Jon Merrill scurried to the edge of the roof and dropped to the ground. There he sounded the alarm before crawling into a hole under the barracks' cement foundation to hide from the machine guns' raking fire.

A burst of gunfire caught Judge Richardson unawares while he made his way to the latrine. At about the same time, a tear–gas canister plummeting through the roof of the judge's Division 2 barracks drove his colleague O'Rourke outside, where he, too, was brought down by sharp–eyed gunners. And all across the camp, snipers and machine gunners kept the camp’s defenders pinned down in their bunkers and trenches while non–combatants cowered within their flimsy barracks.

An orange flare rocketed skyward. A few seconds later the gunfire stopped. For a moment all was still. Then the clanking of treads and the throbbing of titanic tank engines grew louder outside the walls. Suddenly explosions rocked the northern edge of the women’s camp where sappers demolished the exterior wall. A dozen or more heavy battle tanks waded through the smoking rubble, lining up abreast into an unstoppable phalanx as they swept southward through the women's camp and into the Service Yard, their machine guns blazing at anyone who crossed their path.

The tanks no sooner passed from the women's camp into the Service Yard when some fifteen armored personnel carriers swarmed in from the north behind the tanks and pulled up opposite key buildings in Division 1, including the commission offices and the Security Department offices in the old women's jail. The armored vehicles raked these buildings with gunfire before disgorging shock troops to take the buildings. But the invaders found all the offices abandoned and nearly all documents destroyed, their ashes still smoldering in blackened oil drums outside.

Having expected a massive opening attack, the defenders had left only a token force to defend the women's camp. The force retreated quickly in the face of the tanks' advance. So instead of seizing the ringleaders of the mutiny and documents proving their guilt, the shock troops of the invasion's first wave had to content themselves with evacuating captured women.

They assembled the terrified females–and in some cases their male companions–in the yard and marched them north into the no–man's–land. Having heard fantastic tales of orgies and debauchery among the prisoners, the troops singled out the male captives for brutal beatings, knocking many of them senseless with blows from rifle butts before commission member Betty Shipley interposed herself between the attackers and their victims. But Shipley’s selfless intervention merely infuriated the attackers; a moment later, one of the rifle butts smashed into her skull, killing her on the spot.

Meanwhile, in the Service Yard, defenders torched the Technical Department's offices and workshops. They were making an orderly retreat to trenches and bunkers along the edges of the yard when tanks entered from the women's camp. Now the snipers and machine gun crews fired again from the watchtowers, picking off any defender who did not enjoy perfect cover. A sniper took off the top of Chuck Quayle's head when he peeked out from his bunker with Molotov cocktail in hand. J.J. Johns was nearly cut in two while scrambling from one barricade to another in search of better cover. And then a new volley of tear gas canisters rained down upon the Service Yard and upon divisions 2 and 3.

The defense forces held their positions while they waited for the tanks to advance further into the Service Yard. Most of them were well protected in a network of deep slit trenches, while others occupied two–man foxholes scattered throughout the yard. All the digging had been carried out at night and remained carefully concealed by day. Here was where the defenders positioned their best and most experienced fighters. Glenn Reineke was there with fellow veterans of Vladivostok and the defense of Alaska. Hundreds of Russian, Chinese, Mexican, and Canadian POWs waited with them. Gary Toth was nearby with a company of picked men, including D.J. Schultz and other martial arts devotees in their dyed–black coveralls. And Colonel Majors stood by gripping a cavalry saber he had checked out from the storeroom, ready to fight as well as command.

The most highly trained veterans were entrusted with the best arms and equipment, including gas masks, Molotov cocktails, and improvised weapons designed to disable a tank or APC by breaking a tread or stopping an engine. Some were armed with longbows, crossbows, spears, and throwing darts to engage attacking infantry at a distance so that others could close in for hand–to–hand combat. Rookie fighters carried pikes, swords, fighting axes, and machetes.

While the defenders waited for the attack to penetrate further into the Service Yard, the tanks slowed to a crawl, then stopped. For a moment the defenders seemed puzzled. Then, as enemy sappers suddenly brought down a lengthy section of the camp's perimeter wall, their plan revealed itself.

Behind the cloud of dust that rose from where the wall had been, a line of ten or twelve tanks advanced westward along a front extending from the northern end of the Service Yard to the southern edge of Division 2. The enormous vehicles punched straight through the walls of warehouses and barracks and came out the other side trailing bricks, barrels, and boxes.

One of the buildings that the tanks demolished was the old dispensary. A tank entered the building through the mental ward, crushing Libby Bertrand and Irene Cunningham under its treads before burying them and a dozen other helpless inmates under a pile of rubble. The same tank fired a cannon round into the dispensary's operating room, blasting Georg Schuster and his entire operating team to pieces as they prepared for surgery.

In Division 2, each tank struck out for a separate row of barracks, crushing one after another of these flimsy structures and sending the panicked inhabitants into the maw of the machine guns. Jerry McIntyre met his end when a tank rumbled over his barracks and crushed him underneath. Colonel Majors’s pretty secretary caught a sniper's bullet attempting to flee from the mess hall as the tanks closed in. And Jon Merrill, having been first to sound the alarm, met death when a tank’s tread collapsed the burrow that had saved him from the machine guns.