Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (41 page)

With surprise no longer a factor, the outcome of the third attack was a bit different. The defenders were a compact mass now, much more difficult to suppress, and no longer engaging their attackers piecemeal. When the line of attack boats roared toward them the third time, they met the concentrated fire of a dozen rifles and broke off the attack long before they were in shotgun range. They sped out of range downriver to circle and wait, like hyenas waiting for a wounded gazelle to bleed out.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the gazelle WAS bleeding out. The more severely damaged boats rode ever lower in the water, and they lost a second when they were five miles from
Pecos Trader
, cut loose to sink as they rearranged their makeshift screen.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Alvarez asked.

“If you’re thinking we’re going to be screwed when the river opens up to that big anchorage where all those old reserve fleet ships are, I guess I am,” Jones said.

Alvarez nodded. “That’s two miles of open water where we can’t hug the bank. We can try screening the lifeboat on both sides, presuming we have at least two screening boats still floating, but all the sandbags are on the starboard sides …”

Alvarez and Jones both looked up at the distant roar of outboards UPRIVER. A lot of outboards. “Or maybe not,” Alvarez said. “Sounds like our friends have called in reinforcements.”

“What the hell are we gonna do?” Jones asked.

Alvarez didn’t hesitate. “Put Pete, Jimmy and the rest of the Gillespie brothers in the lifeboat. Keep all the noncombatants low in the boat and a shooter at every gun port. Maybe they can keep those hyenas downstream off the lifeboat long enough for Howell to get it to the ship. You and I and everybody left will cut loose from the sinkers and take the two good boats back upstream to engage the bunch coming downriver. We’ll try to slow these bastards down long enough for Howell to get the families to the ship.”

“You know that’s at least a half hour, maybe more, right?” Jones asked.

Alvarez merely nodded.

“And you know your plan sucks, right?”

Alvarez nodded again.

“Just checking,” Jones said. “For the record, if we don’t survive this, I’ll be seriously pissed off at you.”

Neches River

Near Old Mansfield Ferry Road

South of Beaumont, Texas

Earl Gillespie drove back upstream toward the island they’d passed just a few minutes before in their downstream flight. The island split the river evenly, with the deeper, dredged shipping channel on its west side and an equally wide but shallower channel to the east.

As they neared the island, Earl slowed the boat, and fifty feet away, his counterpart in the other boat did the same. The sound of multiple powerful outboards could still be heard in the distance upstream, just around a bend.

“Which side of the island you reckon they’ll come down?” Earl Gillespie asked. “I mean, I DO figure you mean to set an ambush, seeing as how we have two slow, sluggish boats with bellies full of water, against God knows how many faster, maneuverable ones. Thing is, sounds like we gotta set it fast, and if we pick the wrong side of the island, they’ll just cruise on past.”

Alvarez was already nodding and pointing to the west channel. “There, those empty barges moored against the island. We’ll leave some bait to draw them into this channel then ambush them from the barges. Get us to the upstream end of the island, quick.”

Earl turned into the west channel, and the second boat fell in behind. When they reached the north end of the little island where the channel split, Alvarez ordered Earl to stop a hundred yards inside the entrance to the west channel and put them alongside the second boat. He shouted over to the man at the wheel.

“Drop your anchor, then cut power and come aboard our boat. We’ll leave your boat as bait, and when they stop to check it out, we’ll open up on ’em from those barges,” Alvarez said.

“The anchor will drag in this current,” the man replied.

“It doesn’t matter. It only has to slow the boat enough so it’s still visible when they come around that bend,” Alvarez said. “Which may be any minute, so move it.”

The man was moving before Alvarez finished speaking, putting out the anchor as the others switched boats. Less than a minute later, Alvarez glanced nervously upriver and pointed Earl toward the first in a line of empty barges moored against the shore of the little island. He shouted instructions as they moved toward the barge.

“Okay. We’ll split up. Jones, pick four men and we’ll land you on this first barge.” Jones nodded, and Alvarez continued. “Does anyone else have combat experience; before today, I mean?”

One man raised his hand.

“All right, you pick four men and we’ll drop you at the second barge. That will leave Earl, me, and two men here on the boat. We’ll pull out of sight downstream behind the third barge and engage targets of opportunity or any boats that make it downstream past you. Clear?”

There were hesitant nods, and Alvarez continued, looking at Jones and the other newly created squad leader.

“Spread out on the barges, and find something solid for cover. I don’t know how many boats to expect, but it sounds like a bunch. If you get overwhelmed, do the best you can. If you have to retreat, jump into the mud and water on the shore side of the barges and crawl into the brush cover on the island. We’ll reform on the opposite side of the island if it comes to that.”

“When do we engage?” Jones asked.

“You’ll be in the best position to see what’s going on, so you decide when to fire, and when YOU open up, everyone else will fire at will. Got it?” Alvarez looked around the group. They were all nodding now, a bit more confidently.

“One last thing,” Alvarez said. “A still target’s a lot easier to hit than a moving one, so target the boat drivers. That should slow down their response as well.”

He finished just as Earl pulled alongside the first barge. One by one, the men stood on the bridge rail and crawled up aboard the tall barge. He left Jones deploying his group and moved on to the second barge to repeat the operation. Two minutes later, Earl nosed the boat in behind the third barge, and Alvarez boosted himself up and moved across the barge to crouch at its edge, where he had a better view upstream.

He smiled as the first few boats rounded the bend at high speed, then slowed and made for the west channel and the bait boat. His smile faded quickly.

“Sweet Mother of God,” he whispered to himself as he watched boat after boat turn into the west channel. They were powerboats of all types, no doubt looted from dealerships and private garages. He stopped counting at fifty, and the only thing they all had in common was they were all faster and more maneuverable than his own waterlogged vessel. He turned and moved rapidly back across the barge to yell down at the boat.

“Plan B, Earl. Pull the boat completely out of sight between the barge and the bank, and everyone climb up here and spread out. There’s no way we could survive engaging this force on the water. We’ll have to add our guns to the fight from this barge,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez barely had his men positioned when Jones opened fire, prompting a fusillade from the second barge as well. It went as planned, and a dozen boat drivers dropped.

Except the plan hadn’t included so many boats. Though the first strike was deadly, it wasn’t disabling, and the other boats started moving again immediately. They’d stirred up a hornet’s nest, and the hornets were pretty pissed.

Even though the distance was greater, Alvarez ordered his group to open fire, in hopes it would spread the cons out and draw some of the hellacious fire away from the first two barges.

Alvarez crouched behind the block of a pump engine, firing in disciplined three-round bursts, while the others fired from their own spots of cover.

“Hey, Alvarez,” called Earl, from behind a hatch coaming.

“What?” Alvarez replied.

Earl flashed Alvarez a nervous grin. “Jones was right. Your plan sucks.”

Neches River

Just North of McFadden Bend

Howell started to pull the lifeboat door closed after the last of the men had come aboard, but Jimmy Gillespie stopped her.

“I’m thinking we should keep a shooter here,” Jimmy said. “And the same for the forward access hatch. Between that and a shooter at the gun ports on either side, we won’t have any blind spots.”

Howell nodded. “Makes sense. They’ll probably start circling us like a pack of wolves anyway. We can at least try to hold them at bay until we get to the ship.”

Jimmy nodded to Pete, who picked his way to the forward access hatch through the women and children seated on the deck. Jimmy’s two brothers did the same, taking positions at the improvised gun ports on opposite sides of the lifeboat. Movement was difficult, with the boat full to over twice its rated capacity. Howell had ordered all the passengers to get as low as possible, and they were taking up almost every square inch of real estate the bottom of the lifeboat had to offer, in many cases on top of each other.

Howell headed downriver as fast as the lumbering lifeboat would go, wondering how long it would be before their attackers engaged. She didn’t have to wonder long.

“Here they come,” Pete said from the front hatch.

“They may not realize we have teeth,” Howell yelled. “Make the first shots count. You only get to surprise them once.”

“They’re forming two lines to run down both sides,” Pete yelled. “I’ll take the lead boat on the left.”

“I got the right,” Jimmy yelled from behind her. She glanced back through the open door and only then realized he had used the closing dogs on the open door as footholds to boost himself up so he could steady his rifle on the top of the fiberglass canopy and shoot over it.

She watched through her viewing port as the attacking boats separated, two in line to her left, and three to her right. They grew larger as they raced toward her, and she had all she could do to keep from screaming SHOOT! SHOOT!

But she needn’t have worried. She heard Pete’s M4 in the front of the boat, and the driver of the lead boat slumped at the outboard, and the boat veered off at a crazy angle. Then Jimmy’s gun barked, and like Pete, he had targeted the driver, striking the man in the arm.

The driver jerked, sending his boat smashing into the now driverless boat from the left column, capsizing both. The following boats only narrowly avoided the wreck and spread out wide to either side of the lifeboat, guns blazing.

Howell heard the strange double THWACK of bullets passing high, through and through the fiberglass canopy, punctuated with the altogether more terrifying sound of rounds striking the steel plates protecting her position. But most of the fire was directed at the front hatch, below which Pete now crouched, out of sight.

So intent were they on the front hatch, the cons roared past on either side oblivious to the side gun ports. The Gillespie brothers rewarded their inattention by shooting two cons out of their boats, one on each side.

The attackers roared past out of sight. Howell willed the lifeboat downriver as she heard Jimmy in the open doorway behind her, blazing away at the boats as they raced away upstream.

“GOT ONE OF THE BASTARDS!” she heard him yell, followed by, “THEY’RE COMING BACK!”

Jimmy’s gun was their only defense now, as he was the only one who could see the attacking boats. She heard repeated three-round bursts as he fired, punctuated by lulls and muttered curses as he changed magazines.

“GET DOWN, MATE!” Jimmy yelled as he backed down the short steps into the lifeboat and fired aft through the open door.

Howell rolled out of the coxswain’s chair to drop on top of him just as bullets shredded the unprotected fiberglass at the back of the canopy and tore through the coxswain’s chair where she’d been sitting seconds before.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” she said. “And thanks.”

Jimmy only nodded. “This ain’t good, ma’am. They stay back here on our ass, and we can’t steer. Plus we only got one shooting position, and they’ll have five or six guns on it. All they have to do is creep up close and start laying into us with those shotguns.”

No sooner had Jimmy spoken than the back fiberglass bulkhead behind the coxswain’s seat exploded as it was shredded by multiple loads of buckshot. Round after round tore through the bulkhead until all that was left was a ragged spiderweb of glass fibers. The coxswain’s chair was destroyed, and the steering wheel hung at a crazy angle. All the children were screaming and crying out, and she had to yell to be heard above the bedlam.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Howell said. “Nobody’s gonna be steering. But the engine is still running, so I hope—”

Another fusillade destroyed what was left of the fiberglass bulkhead, and debris rained down on their heads. When Howell looked up again, the throttle control was hanging by a single wire as the engine sputtered to a halt. Behind them, she heard the outboards cut back to a guttural rumble. They were there waiting, no doubt with all their guns trained on the lifeboat.

“Y’ALL THROW YOUR GUNS OVERBOARD AND WE’LL GO EASY ON YOU. BUT IF ANY MORE OF US GET HURT, Y’ALL ARE GONNA REGRET IT. THAT’S A PROMISE.”

“What we gonna do, ma’am?” Jimmy asked.

Howell thought a moment. “As long as we stay low below the steel plates, I think we’re safe enough. And they can shoot as many holes in us as they want, but they’re not likely to sink us with all the extra buoyancy there is in a lifeboat. I don’t think they’re too eager to come charging in and get shot either, so it’s a standoff as long as we’re still armed.”

“So what we gonna do?” Jimmy asked again.

Howell shrugged. “Stall and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“The cavalry,” Howell said, reaching for the radio. “The ship’s less than three miles away now. They can send the patrol boat out for a quick punch in the face, then rush back to cover the ship—”

But Hughes had apparently anticipated the situation. She lowered the radio as a new sound penetrated the bedlam of the screaming children and praying women—twin outboards, and big ones. She’d hardly processed the sound when it was blotted out by the sweet tune of a large-caliber automatic weapon. They raised their heads in unison just in time to see the cons’ boats, and the cons in them, shredded by machine-gun fire. It was hard to watch, even though she had no doubts the men dying would have done the same to her, or worse.