The Independents (39 page)

Before long
,
Bishop was escorted down the steps and out the front door. Deacon Brown was standing with a group of eight men. As Bishop looked them over, he was struck by the mixture of weapons and equipment
being
carried. There were two M16 rifles
, a couple of hunting shotguns
,
and several different calibers of deer rifles. One gent
was carrying a
n
M1 Garand. They
all had makeshift slings,
packs,
and ammo pouches. A few camping canteens were hanging from belts
,
and two of them had matching bright blue hiking backpacks. The man who had hit Bishop during the initial interrogation was leading the group and clearly not happy about it. He gave Bishop a dirty look and said, “
I hope you can shoot better than
you did before.”

Bishop stared the man down.
“Let’s hope I don’t have too.”

Bishop explained where they were going and told the patrol about Bones. Everyone nodded
,
and the group moved toward the perimeter wall where a car was pushed back just enough to provide an opening for the men to pass through single file.

Bishop took the lead because of his night vision. It took everyone a few minutes to adjust to his pace, but they managed to keep up. He noticed they tended to bunch
up,
as they got further away from the
church. At one point, Bishop stopped at an intersection, t
aking cover behind a metal mail
box on the street corner. When he turned around, all eight men were right behind him
,
huddled up in a tight group. He shook his head and motioned them inside the empty building close by.

When everyone had settled down, he whispered, “Hey, look, don’t bunch up like that. That is how I saw you guys coming before.
We need to go down this street, so I want four of you on one side and four on the other. Stay about ten feet apart and leap frog each other. Scan right and left, don’t just watch the guy in front of you. Keep some space between you. Got it?”

Bishop could see several heads nod up and down in the dim moonlight drifting into the building. After he checked it was still clear outside,
they all
moved
toward the meeting with David.

They had moved a few blocks when Bishop heard the sound of an engine. He motioned everyone to take cover and watched as the patrol clumsily tried to hide behind cars, trees and even a picket fence that lined the street.
No wonder these guys are losing this fight, they have no idea what they’re doing.

They turned a corner and were almost to the car wash where Bishop had had David hide before. As the
y
approached the building that had collapsed on Bishop’s head, he noticed something was out of place. Ahead on them across from the car wash was a pickup truck parked along the street. He was almost positive it hadn’t been there before. Bishop scanned the area on both sides of the street carefully with the night vision, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He moved quickly up to the new truck and took cover behind a wheel. He thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he checked it out, nothing was there.
Something just isn’t right here.
He motioned the pa
trol to continue moving up
the street and was pleased to see that their spacing was improving somewhat. As the men were moving past him, his head itched from the cut
,
and he pulled off h
is glove to scratch. He absent-
mindedly put his hand on the hood of the truck and felt warmth.

Several things happened all at once. When Bishop’s head snapped
up,
he saw someone rise from the roof of the carwash. He raised his rifle and screamed “Ambush!”
while trying to bring the target into view. Everything was moving in slow motion. It seemed like it was taking his arms forever to bring his rifle up to his cheek. He could see twinkling muzzle flashes from two other shooters out of the corner of his eye. Small holes appeared in the fender of the truck he was behind. Finally, after what seemed like mi
nutes, the red dot of his rifle
scope was almost on the rooftop shooter and Bishop’s brain sent the message to his finger to pull the trigger immediately followed by
a
warning to his arms that they had better center that dot quickly or he was going to miss. Just as the dot centered on the green outline of the target, the rifle pushed gently against his shoulder and he saw the man fall forward off of the roof.
Quickly, Bishop centered
again,
where he had seen a muzzle flash and let go with three quick shots. He couldn’t tell if he had hit anything. He swept the rifle left and fired where another shooter had been hiding and squeezed the trigger three more times. A spark flew off of the fender he was
using for cover
and he realized someone was behind him. He moved quickly across the road and scrambled for the raise
d
concrete platform where the car w
ash vacuum cleaners had once been
. As he slid behind the cover, bit
s
of pavement and chips of rock flew into the air all around him.

Bishop was safe behind the low barrier for a moment and tried to collect his thoughts. The best way to get out of an ambush kill zone was to break through one end or the other. By pure luck, he had taken out one side of the attacker’s setup and wondered where the other threats were hiding. Movement caught his eye and t
wo
of the men in his patrol scrambled around the corner of the building next to the carwash.
They were dragging an injured member of the patrol.
Bullets quickly followed them and Bishop saw muzzle flashes off in the distance. Whoever had planned this bushwhacking had known what they were doing. Bishop could tell their enemy had set up in a classic horseshoe formation.  Bishop’s patrol had walked right in
to the open end of the trap
.
Normally, h
e would have pulled back through that open end, but now some of his men were pinned down, perhaps even dead.

He spotted three more of his party to his right, hiding behind roadside cover. These guys had been at the rear of the patrol and hadn’t made it into the kill zone. That left two more unaccounted for. Bishop broke cover and ran for the corner where the three men were hiding
. As he got close, he yelled, “M
ake a hole!” and
slammed his body against
the wall of the structure. He did a quick snapshot around the corner and barely pulled his head back
as
the brick erupted from
the rain
of bullets
.
This isn’t good. They know exactly
where we are
,
and if I had this advantage
, I would rush this position.

Bishop unsnapped his blowout bag from his vest and tossed it to the men trying to help their injured friend. They were trapped. If they tried to move away from the wall, they would expose themselves to
withering
fire from two sides. If they stayed where they were, eventually the attackers would catch on and flank their position. Bishop kept trying to figure a way out. Every time he poked his head around the corner, a volley of fire would spray brick and mortar fragments. Already a good six inches of the corner brick had been eaten away.

Bishop tried to alternate high and low when looking around the corner. Twice he stuck his rifle around and fired random
shots just to keep the attackers off guard.
When he poked around again, his blood froze with the image he saw. Five men were running down the middle of the street in a single file toward
him
. They were less than 50 feet away
,
and when they came around
,
it would
be over quickly. He decided he would have to chance
exposing himself
again
in an attempt to
slow them down.

Despite the
intense
fire, Bishop went prone and popped his head and rifle aroun
d the corner. Clay shards
stung his face and hands as
he
centered
the red dot into the chest of the lead man, now less than 30 feet away and running
hard
. The shooters supporting the charging men leveled their rounds at Bishop
,
creating more dust and stinging missiles of brick chips.
I’m
going to get off maybe one shot here.

Bishop’s fi
nger
started to squeeze the trigger
,
when a dark shadow
appeared
suddenly behind the charging men. In less than a second, the rear man’s body was flying through the air, quickly joined by a second, then a third and finally all five. A flash went by Bishop’s corner
,
and he recognize
d Bones as it careened past,
going at least 60 mph. A sicken
ing
seri
es
of “thuds” an
d “crunches” sounded as the five
already dead men landed on
the roadway, some of them flying more than 100 feet in the air.

David slammed on Bone’s brakes
,
and the big SUV skidded to a stop sev
eral blocks away. S
uddenly
, e
very
thing became q
uiet as the shocking results of Davi
d’s move set in. A cheer rose
from the surviving patrol members
,
and Bishop took the opportunity to gather the guys next to him and head out of the kill
zone. Once reunited with
the
rest of the patrol
, Bishop turned back to see their rescuer.
Bones
was sitting, immobile,
sideways in the street. He couldn’t see David behind the wheel. Bishop keyed his
mic
and said, “David, are you okay?”

No r
esponse. Bishop sprinted
toward Bones as fast as he could, covering the four blocks quickly. As he approached the vehicle, he heard David before he saw him.
The young man was lying across the front seats with his face buried in his hands, small convulsions raking his body.  David was crying. Bishop wanted to console
him
, but there
just
wasn’t time. In a strong
,
but friendly tone, he said
,
“David, no time for that right now. I’ll help you handle the pain you’re feeling after we
’re
out of this. Move over
, buddy. W
e still have work to do.”

Bishop absent-
mindedly tried to open the door, an
d then remembered he had to hop
into the cabin. He climbed in and gently picked David up, moving him to the passenger seat. The boy was like a rag doll and unresponsive.

Bishop put Bone
s in gear and sped back to the remaining members of the patrol. It appeared as though David’s action had broken the ambush, but the attackers could regroup and hit them again any second. The injured man was loaded into the back of Bones
,
and the other men all climbed aboard. Bishop was still worried about the missing men, but one of the survivors told him they were both w
ith G
od now.
The man was 100% sure.

Bishop turned Bones around in the carwash parking lot and sped back toward the church with a
ll of the patrol barely managing to hang on
.

As they approached the wall surrounding the church grounds, Bishop slowed down and looked at the men behind him. “Is there some sort of signal you use when coming back in? I don’t want the guards on the walls opening up on us.”

One
of
the men volunteered
to get out and approach the guards with the signal. Bishop pulled over and remained parked until the man returned and waved them forward. In another five minutes, Bones was parked in front of the church steps
,
and people were rushing out to help the injured man. David hadn’t moved.
Bishop finally got David to snap out of it a little
and helped the boy out of the Humvee
. He put his
arm
around Davi
d and escorted him upstairs to the d
eacon’s office where it was quiet.

Bishop spoke in a soft voice.
“David, I know what you’re feeling. I felt the same thing my first time. It’s normal
,
and you should be feeling it. Sometime
soon,
you will want to talk about it. Find me
. Until then, stay up here and lay down. If you have to puke, which
is also normal, here is a waste
basket
. Don’t fight puking…it will help.”