Part 24 (1/2)
Claire cranked down her window slightly and asked, ”Are you all right?”
”Not exactly. I tweaked my back again. Getting old really stinks, you know that?”
Claire rolled up her window and began to hum the tune to the gospel song ”This World Is Not My Home.”
Alan wondered how long he would have to wait until someone with a stout vehicle would come by and help tow them out. He reached into his coat's front snap pockets and pulled out his camouflage hunting gloves and his green pile cap. After donning them, he let out a sigh.
The sun's direct rays were beginning to strike the pickup. It was a cold morning, but the fog was beginning to lift. The landscape now lacked its recent autumn beauty. The aspens had lost their leaves, and the western larches had lost their needles. The dense fir trees on both sides of the highway still looked beautiful, wearing a coat of frost. Where the sun was. .h.i.tting them, mist was rising from their boughs. He concluded that it was a still a scenic place to be stuck in a ditch.
A few minutes later, he heard a low rumbling accompanied by a higher supercharger whine from the east. Soon it became distinct: the sound of numerous vehicles in a convoy. In another minute, they came into sight. It was a convoy of four Norinco Type 92 wheeled six-by-six APCs followed by a canvas-topped Dongfeng 2.5-ton troop truck.
Alan shouted to Claire, ”A Chinese patrol. What do you want to bet they'll just wave and offer us no help whatsoever?”
Claire rolled down her window slightly and shouted back, ”What if they search us?”
”They won't find diddly-squat. But don't be surprised if they rough us up. You know they've been pretty brutal with folks they've encountered outside of city limits recently. So be ready for that.”
She shouted back one of her favorite sayings: ”We have nothing to fear in this world. This world is not our home.”
The convoy slowed to less than twenty miles an hour. Once they were within one hundred yards, Alan began to wave, flagging them down.
Mistaking the McGregors' spun-out truck as a ploy for a road ambush, the PLA's first lieutenant in the lead APC ordered a herringbone deployment using his radio handset. Once the APCs had splayed out, he shouted, ”Attack!”
The gunners on the first three vehicles opened fire with four machine guns-a type 67 (7.62x54r) and three Type 77 heavy machine guns (12.7mm DShK variants). After shooting Alan and shredding the pickup, the gunners on all four APCs engaged the tree line on both sides of the road with seven machine guns, mostly with fire from the Type 77s. By chance, one of the 12.7mm rounds detonated an old French land mine. This excited the gunners, and they fired even more frenziedly. The young second lieutenant commander in the second APC in the column even ordered his 25mm main gun to open fire where the mine had gone off. Finally, the convoy commander ordered a cease-fire using both his radio and his APC's public address loudspeaker.
The PLA later logged the incident as a ”thwarted ambush, with PLA prevailing. Two insurgents killed. No PLA casualties or damage.” They also dispatched an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team to map the land mines. The Chinese usually just mapped French minefields, rather than going to the trouble of disarming and removing them.
The Chinese did not bother to collect Alan's and Claire's bodies, or to tow away Ray's pickup truck. They simply dragged Alan's body to the side of the road and rolled it down the borrow-ditch slope. Stan Leaman's father discovered the scene several hours later and relayed the sad news to Ray. It was Ray, Phil, and Malorie who came to collect the bodies. By the time they arrived, a pair of gray jays was already pecking at Alan's body and ravens were starting to congregate nearby. Ray shouted and scared off the birds. Then he sat down near his father's body and sobbed.
They had brought several tarps to help them collect the bodies. Phil fought back tears as he wrapped up Claire's lifeless figure. Malorie helped him carry it up from the pickup. The corpse was placed in the back of Phil's pickup. By then, Ray had regained some of his composure, and he helped them wrap up his father's corpse in several rolls of a twelve-by-twenty blue tarp. After the three of them carried Alan's shrouded corpse to rest alongside that of his wife, Ray said to Phil, ”Please see what you can salvage from my truck. I don't want to look in the cab.”
The interior of the pickup was drenched with blood and the truck was thoroughly riddled with holes. All four tires and the spare had been punctured. All that they could salvage was the Hi-Lift Jack and the axe from the back end of the truck. The shovel's blade and handle had both been penetrated by 12.7mm bullets. From the glove box, they got a handful of road maps and a flashlight. They also took the tow chain, which was still in its box by the side of the road, surprisingly untouched by bullets.
The ravens had flown off, but the gray jays lingered, hopping around in a nearby larch tree. The birds seemed curious about what Ray and the others were doing.
As Phil was stowing the salvaged gear, Malorie asked, ”What kind of birds are those?”
Phil answered, ”They're called gray jays. They're in the crow family.”
In a surprising moment of clarity, Ray added, ”Around here, we call them whiskey jacks. That's an Anglicized corruption of their original Algonquin name, Wisakedjak. He was the Trickster in their mythology-a lot like Loki was to the Norse. To the First Nations, Wisakedjak was the one responsible for the Great Flood.” Ray's cheeks were streaked with tears, and his face showed profound sadness.
Ray's pickup had not caught fire in the attack, even though its gas tank had been punctured by the Chinese machine-gun fire. The vehicle still reeked of gasoline. Just one tossed road flare was all it took to set the pickup ablaze. As they watched the pickup burn, Ray picked up a few pieces of the Chinese .30 and .50 caliber bra.s.s from the highway. The bra.s.s had ”CN,” ”101,” and ”CNIC” head stamps. He tucked the bra.s.s in his coat pocket.
”Evidence. Also made in China,” he said.
Ray decided to bury his parents' bodies side-by-side on the knoll behind the ranch house. They were still wrapped in the blue tarps. As they dug the shared grave, Ray mentioned that it was on this same small hillock where his great-grandfather Samuel McGregor had pitched his tent, when he first staked claim to the ranch in 1913.
They read some psalms and said prayers. Then they refilled the grave and said another prayer. Phil helped Ray construct a matching pair of crosses for the grave the next morning.
Almost immediately after the deaths of Alan and Claire, Ray and the rest of Team Robinson decided to do some combined operations with another local resistance group that Stan had met. The unnamed group had eight members and had been responsible for several sniping incidents and repeated sabotage of PLA vehicles from Anahim Lake all the way to Bella Coola. Their trademark was a time-delay vehicular incendiary device that used a machine-rolled 100mm cigarette as a time-delay fuse.
What started out as a cooperative agreement eventually turned into a merger. While Phil and Malorie would still be in charge of intelligence a.n.a.lysis, Ray went on to lead the combined group, which had a.s.sumed the name Team Robinson.
Fighting the Chinese turned out to be much more difficult than fighting the French. Because they had so many more armored vehicles, IED-initiated ambushes were far less decisive. This meant that there were fewer opportunities to capture weapons, and that ambushes often ended with the ambushers fleeing for their lives into the forest, as their fire was returned by damaged but still partly functional APCs. Because they wanted to minimize track wear, the Chinese tanks rarely left their garrisons. Even if they did, few resistance units would attack them while they were manned and in motion. Nearly all of the Chinese tanks destroyed by the resistance were sabotaged while they were parked and unattended.
The first Chinese weapon that Team Robinson ”inherited” was a QSZ-92 Services Pistol (”Type 92 handgun”) that was stripped from the body of a uniformed Chinese junior officer. This young man was foolish enough to drive an EQ2050 East Wind (a Chinese Humvee equivalent) into the town of Anahim Lake by himself. Perhaps he was looking for romance. Three shots from Ray's FAMAS ended his military career and his life.
Fearing that the vehicle was equipped with a hidden transponder, Ray left it where it was. But Ray did get the pistol, a full-flap holster, two spare fifteen-round magazines, a magazine pouch, and the officer's wallet. He also grabbed a Chinese e-tool entrenching tool, which was superior to the U.S. and Canadian models.
The QSZ-92 Services Pistol, designed and made by Norinco, shot the diminutive 5.8x21 cartridge. Ray described the gun as ”China's idea of how to make an FN Five-Seven.”
54.
THICKER THAN WATER.
I heard my country calling, away across the sea, Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head, And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead.
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns, I haste to thee my mother, a son among thy sons.
-From ”I Vow to Thee, My Country,” a British patriotic hymn, based on a poem by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, set to a theme from Gustav Holst's ”Jupiter,” a movement in The Planets suite Tavares, Florida-March, the Eleventh Year The Jeffordses arrived in a chartered Super Osprey amphibian plane. The plane touched down on Lake Dora and taxied to the city of Tavares Seaplane Base. The breezy day made the water choppy. The Altmillers were waiting for them. Janelle Altmiller and Rhiannon Jeffords had arranged this meeting, primarily to discuss their parents in British Columbia. The sisters were worried that they had been out of contact for so long.
Lance Altmiller was now twenty-two years old. He had found part-time work in the local thrift store, moving and sorting boxes of donated household goods. He still lived in his parents' home. Sarah Jeffords was eighteen, and had recently begun arguing with her mother about wearing eye makeup. She now spoke with an acquired Australian accent.
The Jeffordses were home in America, to stay.
The first thing that Rhiannon said when she saw her sister was, ”Uggggh. You got old.”
Janelle replied, ”You've got wrinkles too, sis.”
”Well, we can count our blessings. At least you never got fat, and I got skinny and I stayed that way. And we all have our health.”
Janelle nodded. ”Yes, G.o.d is good.”
Unloading their luggage took a while, and was tricky, even with the amphibian plane tied up to the pier. The swells caused the plane to oscillate, making for hesitant footing at the cargo door. The Jeffordses had brought seven suitcases, two Pelican pistol cases, and four Kolpin long gun cases. The six people and luggage were a tight squeeze in the two vehicles that the Altmillers had driven to the seaplane base.
The conversations on the short drive to the Altmillers' home focused on the Jeffordses' lengthy flights on an Airbus A380 and a Boeing 747-8 to Miami, and then the charter in the smaller amphibian to Tavares. The men were in one vehicle, and the ladies in the other.
When they reached the house, they were ushered in by the day guard. Their housekeeper, Elena, already had lunch ready for them. The Habana sandwiches and mojito salad were served with coffee and iced tea.