Jernigan's War (32 page)

A little snow remained and the night would be getting cold. There was some grass growing along the creek, so Porter took off the packs and saddles and put a halter on Old Dollar and hobbled them. Both seemed content to eat the grass along the stream bank. The troop set up camp, Bill was the corporal of the troop
and assigned guards for two hour shifts so that everyone could get some rest. All the other horses were also hobbled along the creek so they could graze. Porter piled up some rocks to reflect the heat of the fire towards him. He built a small fire and rolled out his bedroll. He cooked some rice with meat, salt and pepper. It wasn’t the best meal he had ever eaten, but it was filling and hot. The sleeping bag was warm and he was tired. He was woke around midnight for his guard duty. Nothing happened that night; he could see Dollar and Ruth in the moonlight grazing. They stopped after a while and appeared to be sleeping standing up. His father’s watch had a soft glow and it read 2 am, so he woke the guy who would take over the guard duty and he went back to bed for the rest of the night.

He lay on his back looking up at the stars and wondered what Sandy was doing back home. A kick at his feet brought him to a sitting position. It was early morning and he didn’t realize that he had been asleep. Sergeant Daniels said, “Jones, bail out, we got a long way to go if we are going to get into Louisiana in time to kill us some Commies.” Deciding to eat a cold breakfast, he put some honey in a couple of biscuits, which with hard tack would be nibbled on while he rode. Old Dollar and Ruth were easy to catch, they were about as tame as you could get, and he had them saddled and packed in no time. Sergeant Daniels told him, “Porter, it’s someone else’s turn to ride point. You can eat dirt today and bring up the rear.”

“Whatever you say, Sarge.”

They headed out like the day before with Porter bringing up the rear. He stayed back about 100 yards to stay out of the dust. The wind was still coming out of the Southwest so it blew the dust kicked up, by the 30 or so horses in front of him, away to his left. It was good thing he was hanging back, because the helicopter gun ship that appeared concentrated its gunfire at the men in front of him. Horses and men died in the melee. Porter turned
Old Dollar and Ruth down into a draw with a lot of scrub and cover. He tied Old Dollar to a stout shrub; and proceeded to a point where he could see the helicopter and where he had some concealment. He flipped the selector switch on his AK47 rifle to full auto. The helicopter was hovering facing the men and firing its forward mounted machine guns and cannon. They were at a slight angle to him which gave him a view of the pilot and gunner. A door on the side was open with another gunner leaning out with a machine gun mounted to the frame. Porter estimated the range at about 300 yards and squeezed the trigger. The 30 round magazine was empty in a matter of seconds. He slapped in a fresh one and got back on target. Once again he ran the magazine dry and slapped in a third. When he got back on target he realized that the side gunner was sagging against his harness and his gun was silent. The third magazine had no effect, but the fourth one caused the helicopter to lurch violently to the right and it literally flew hard into the ground where it exploded into flames. Leaving his cover he ran to the carnage that lay before him. Men and horses lay dead and dying everywhere. Sergeant Daniels was pinned under his horse but was otherwise unhurt. He bellowed, “Get this horse off me.” Without a word Porter snagged a rider-less horse and tied a rope around the dead horse’s head, the other end he secured to the horn of the standing horse’s saddle. He swung into the saddle and pulled the horse off Daniels. Once he was back on his feet, Daniels’s orders quickly brought some order to the chaos.

The next 4 hours were a blur of activity. All in all they lost 12 men killed and, and two incapacitated with wounds. They had the two mules and 12 of the 30 horses. Every man with the exception of Porter had injuries. Most had minor wounds such as cuts and bruises from falling off horses. One man had busted ribs from being kicked by a panic stricken horse. The two incapacitated men would be out of the fight for months. One had a leg broken by a piece of shrapnel that was still in him. The other was shot through the arm, both legs and hand. He was still unconscious
and had a goose egg sized bump on his head. There were a number of horses missing. Porter looked at Sergeant Daniels, “We need to get to where we have some water and can camp a few days, we are about 3 hours from where we camped last night or we can move on. The longer we stay here the quicker we run out of water.”

“You’re right, kid let’s head back to where we camped last night. Some of the lost stock might head back there for water. The pack horse with the radio is one of the ones missing.”

He gathered the men together and told them the plans. “Out of curiosity how many of you got off a shot at that helicopter?” They looked at each other and saw that Porter was the only one with his hand raised. “Don’t look at me, if I hadn’t drifted back to stay out of the dust, I would have been piled up with the rest of you guys.”

Daniels shook his head, “How many rounds did you shoot?”

“Four-thirty round mags, sir.”

“How did you manage to even hit it?”

Porter gave him a puzzled look, “It wasn’t but about 300 yards away; back at the ranch, I could hit a target the size of a washing machine that far away, that helicopter was a lot bigger than that.”

All Daniels could say was, “I’ll be damned, Charlie was right.”

The men made litters for the injured men so they could be dragged behind the horses.

“Do you mind if I go over to the crash site to see if there is anything we can use?”

“That’s another good idea, kid; since our corporal is dead I’m making you the new acting corporal. Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to corporal the pay is still the same.” Porter made his way over the crash site; in the meantime, the men buried their dead and butchered the dead horses so as not to waste the meat.

At the crash site, Porter found what he suspected. There were four dead men that he could count. There must have been a gunner on the opposite side he hadn’t seen. He couldn’t tell if they were Chinese or not, the flames had cooked them beyond recognition. There was nothing he could find that they could use so he returned to help with the dead and wounded. They took all the weapons and extra ammo and divided it among the living. Porter was able to replenish his spent magazines with ones from the dead men who had also been packing AK47s. They took the remaining weapons and ammo, packed them in a Gortex sleeping bag cover, and left them where they could find them. If Porter got a message to Charlie, he would tell them where to look. The extra food was packed away on the pack horses. Daniels and the other men were preparing to leave with the wounded to head back to the previous night’s camp. “Porter, do you think you can look around for those runaway horses, especially the one with our radio, without getting lost?”

Porter just looked at him, “With the trail we’ve been leaving, it would be impossible for me not to find you.”

Porter started riding in a circle around the ambush site. Each circle was a bit larger than the previous one. It wasn’t long before he hit a set of tracks and then another. Before the afternoon was out he had found six of the missing horses including the one carrying the pack with the radio. He found two more that had been badly wounded; these he dispatched with a shot to each of their heads. He took the pack saddles off the dead horses and replaced the riding saddles on two of the remaining horses. He stopped long enough at the ambush site to pick up the cached weapons and ammo. He also loaded up the extra packs and saddles to carry back for the ranch.

He arrived back at camp with Old Dollar trailing Ruth and the other six horses. Daniels shouted, “By God, I’d promote you to sergeant, if we didn’t already have one.”

“I got your radio Sarge, let’s radio Charlie and tell him what happened.” They set some wire for an antenna and raised Charlie on the radio and told him what happened. Charlie radioed back to leave the injured, he and the boys would come get them and put them up at the lodge until they were ready to travel. That night they once again took turns standing guard. All was quiet, but the camp was sad from having lost so many friends. They hung around the next morning until Charlie and Sam got there. Daniels greeted them, “I’m not much of a leader, I’ve lost almost my entire command and I never even got a good look at the enemy, if it weren’t for the kid, we’d all be dead!”

“I told you he could carry his weight.”

“I’ve promoted him to corporal already, at this rate I’ll be reporting to him.”

Charlie took Porter aside, “Try to keep them alive until they can at least get a shot at the bad guys; at night start teaching them some of the things I taught you, it might keep them in the fight a little longer.”

“Sure thing Mr. Charlie, I was just trying to follow orders the first few days.”

“The main thing, Porter is to try not to get hurt or killed; I’d have two girls who would never get over it.”

“I don’t think I would get over it either,” he laughed.

The small surviving troop left once again for Louisiana. Each man had a horse and led a pack horse. Porter still had Old Dollar and Ruth. The days turned into weeks as they wormed their way across Texas. The terrain was less arid as they passed between Austin and San Antonio. There were small farms and ranches with occasional windmill water pumps.

They met up with other Constitution forces near New Braunfels and discovered that there weren’t a lot of troops
available for combat. Due to the fact that these forces were protecting their families, their role was limited to defense. Only single or widowed men with no young children were free to go and fight. By forming local militias they had managed to fight off the gangs and defend against the Chinese. The pioneer spirit was alive and well in this country. Even the women were packing rifles and pistols. It was not uncommon to see older children armed as well. This limited the Chinese to the main roadways in and out of Houston. When the Chinese destroyed Fort Hood, it stopped the main offensive drive against them in the region.

There were still bands of thieves and gangs, although their numbers were greatly reduced. There was word that the country was dotted with small fiefdoms where local chiefs set up shop and ruled with iron fist. Porter figured that they would be the next to fall, if the Chinese kept landing troops, even the Constitution forces would fail. This was a war of attrition, the goal was to make taking and occupying the country so expensive the Chinese would have to give up.

It was mid April by the time they made it near the Louisiana border. They were somewhere below Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Sabine River when they reached Cooney Jones on the radio. “Porter, I thought I told you to stay on the ranch with Charlie and Bonnie, what are you doing traveling across no man’s land coming to Louisiana?”

“I have been killing communists, sir.”

Cooney paused for a moment and thought before asking, “How many communists have you killed thus far?”

“About 2 dozen so far.”

“Put Sergeant Daniels on the radio.”

“Daniels here.”

“Is it true what I just heard?”

“Yes sir, he’s the toughest little sunabitch I have ever been around. He asked if he could come along with us when we passed through Charlie Cross’s ranch. We would all be dead if we hadn’t allowed him to join up; he’s now a corporal in the Constitution army.”

Cooney stated, “I’ll be damned. I’m a Captain in the Constitution army and I am placing you under my direct command. We are a gorilla outfit at this point. We will be defending a squadron of A10 Warthogs operating across the river at Natchez, MS. We should be able to defend and maintain the squadron at this time. The Chinese operating out of Alexandria, Louisiana, have been trying to get to Natchez; but, we have every major bridge blown with the exception of the bridge at Natchez and Vicksburg. All the bridges south of Natchez are sitting in the river. Even the bridges on the Pearl River and Hwy 90 are down. We can operate from the countryside because we know the area and have some local support.”

Daniels asked, “What are your orders, sir?”

“I want you to help support us in Central Louisiana. I want you to make your way through central Louisiana, to join us in Catahoula Parish. If the Chinese get across the Black River at Jonesville they have a shot at getting to Natchez. They have a lot of helicopters, but they are short of transport aircraft for some reason. The A10s are hitting them but they are scattered out between Alexandria and Houston which limits what they can do.”

“Why don’t they just helicopter them in and drop them off on the Mississippi side?”

“The range is hurting them as well as the resistance from what’s left of us. There is something else going on that we can’t figure out. We are puzzled why they don’t just start landing troops and equipment and just overwhelm us with sheer numbers. They could bring in 20,000,000 troops and they would never miss them. They’re being born quicker than we can kill them.”

“We should be there inside a week at the most; we’re traveling cross country and avoiding the roads.”

“Good idea, they have most of the roads patrolled in your area, in fact they have probably zeroed in on your radio transmission. Be careful, I don’t want my grandson hurt, put him back on.”

Porter answered, “Yes, sir?”

“You are under my direct command, you have to follow my orders, do you understand?”

Once again he answered, “Yes sir!”

“I want you guys to get here as soon as you can without exposing yourselves and getting killed. We are expecting a lot more trouble here and I am going to need every man, be careful, now get the hell out of there and hide until you can move.”

CHAPTER 28