Chapter 03

Attackers

A week after José and his men cross the river Pat and Erin drive out to collect the mail. Pat is slumped in the passenger seat like usual, so he can’t be seen when they drive out to the front gate. Then they drive to the eastern fence to do some practice hiding in the terrain there due to it being slightly different to what they’ve being using nearer the house.

The man Carlos has watching the front gate reports Erin checking the mail and then driving along inside the fence while heading south. He says, “She’s driving slow and looks at the fence a lot. I think she’s checking the fence. So she’ll probably check the southern fence too.” This is the first time in a week Erin has been away from the suspected house area on her own, or so it seems to the watchers, so José organises his men and they start to jog in a south-east direction to go meet her down near the southern fence.

After checking the few hundred yards of fence Sarge asked her to check Erin speeds up and goes to the area chosen for today’s training. The scrub here is of a slightly different type and colour to what’s near the house, so the way to stay concealed in it takes a bit more work since the BDUs don’t fully match it. On the drive Erin goes over the instructions on how to hide again, and when they arrive in the area she demonstrates how to hide in real life. After Pat shows her he understands the principles and he can hide near the truck he goes further west to hide while Erin stands by the truck looking east. At the end of the two minute wait she turns around and starts looking for Pat. His job is to hide and to call to her once she’s passed where he’s in hiding without her finding him.

Pat finds a nice spot to hide: it’s two low bushes together with a three foot high rock behind them on the slope of a slight rise. He takes care to push the two foot high bushes aside when he moves between them to sit down with his back to the rock then he lets the bushes close the gap he just made. He squats down to watch the area in front of him and to his sides. Although the BDUs he’s wearing are a slightly different shade to the bushes here it’s close enough he’s well hidden in this position and he doesn’t stand out. Being behind so much foliage helps in this regards.

Erin is very carefully checking out everything about her when she slowly moves west while searching for Pat.

A few minutes after taking up his position Pat sees Erin a little off to his right as she’s a bit south of him moving west while searching for him. Pat makes the mistake of concentrating on the known searcher, Erin, so he’s not aware of any others until a group of three men come into the side of his vision on his left when he’s about to stand to call to Erin. On seeing the men he stays still and waits until they move on a little more. Then he looks all around him a lot more before he moves out of his hiding place to follow the men. When he moves around the rock he stops to sneak a peek around it to check if anyone is in the area he couldn’t see before.

Erin knows Pat will let her know when she passes him so she’s not as diligent at checking her rear as she should be. However, she does see the three men hiding in the scrub to her right soon after she passes a small knoll. She starts to turn to check out behind her when a man with a Mexican accent says, from behind her, “Keep your hands in sight and we won’t shoot you.” Keeping her hands still she turns her head to see three men on the side of the knoll pointing rifles at her, and just behind them she sees Pat moving into position to attack them.

Pat sees the three men who passed him only a few yards away with rifles pointing at Erin and another three men about twenty yards away to his right. He draws both of his Defender Pistols: the forty-five calibre with his right hand and the four-ten shot with his left hand, he slips the safeties off as he does. With six of them he knows he can’t give them any warning and he prepares to fire while he moves up behind the three near him. All of the men are watching Erin so Pat knows he has a few seconds of surprise and he has to make the most of it or Erin will be killed.

Angry these men want to hurt a member of his new family Pat isn’t thinking about what he’s about to do, as he’s only thinking about how he’s going to do it. Both of the groups of men are in a triangle formation with one man in the lead and the other two at a forty-five degree angle back from being beside him with one on each side. After three quick steps from the rocks Pat has his left hand gun almost in the arse of the right hand man and the leader is lined up in front of the blast. The four-ten will disable both of them by taking out the balls of the first and the right thigh of the second.

Pat takes a breath, lets it slightly out, and he pulls the trigger on the gun in his left hand just before confirming the aim of the gun in his right hand is on the leader of the group to the right. He’s aiming for the man’s chest. The first gun fires and it’s immediately followed by the man screaming while he drops to the ground as the leader of this group also screams while he falls to his right when his right thigh is ripped apart. On the heels of the first shot, close enough to be almost one long shot, Pat fires the gun in his right hand and the leader of the second group is hit in the chest. While Pat moves both hands to get new targets the three men still standing start to turn toward him, so Erin draws her 9 mm pistol while she drops to the ground. Pat fires the left hand Defender and the third man in this group near him loses half of his head. Pat’s right hand gun fires again and the man closest to Pat is knocked down by the bullet hitting his chest when he’s shot while taking a half-step toward Pat as part of bringing his rifle to bear on Pat. The rifle fires while he’s falling backwards, and the bullet flies off into the unknown.

When Pat fires his first shot Erin throws herself to her left while she draws her pistol, before she hits the ground she takes aim at the man on the left hand side of the group to her right and fires. The man drops at the same time as Pat’s second target in this group. She rolls over and gets up. The three to the right are clearly dead, so is one of the group near Pat, but the other two are lying on the ground screaming. There’s no reason to take any chances with them so she waves Pat aside, takes aim, and puts a finishing round into the chest of each of them. Six up and six down for a clean sweep, as long as there are no more. The numbers match the new group so she thinks that’s it, for this time. She looks up at Pat, and smiles on seeing him leaning on the rock while he throws up, a very common reaction to a person’s first real combat firefight.

Erin walks toward Pat, and smiles when she sees him reloading his guns while still leaning on the rock for support. She gets out her phone to call Sarge and tell him where they are as well as what happened. When she reaches Pat she asks, “First time you killed someone?”

Pat grimaces and looks at her as he says, “The first time I’ve ever hurt someone or something, let alone kill them. But I wasn’t going to let them hurt a member of my new family while I could do anything about it. Weeks ago I decided if I had to look at another dead person I’d do my best to make sure it was the attackers and not my family. I’ve seen way too many dead family members!” She frowns at him, and he asks, “Didn’t Sarge tell you what happened to my family?”

“No. We were only told you’re now an orphan.”

“Rich rectum in a fast sports car lost it and hit our van head on. I was asleep and slumped down in the seat so I managed to live through it. But it woke me and I could see my parents, my baby sister, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin were all dead. None of them looked pretty. I had a broken arm and a broken leg. Not a nice event.”

“Damn! Well, you did good in taking them out the way you did. You also did good in hiding, because I never saw you. Neither did they as they had to walk by you to get between us.” Pat nods to her and he turns to look out the other way so he doesn’t have to look at the dead.

A few minutes later Sarge arrives with a pickup. Pat is given the task of collecting their weapons and ammunition as well as checking their pockets for information and valuables. Erin and Sarge load the dead into body-bags when Pat is finished with them, then they toss the dead into the bed of the pickup. A short drive back to get the other pickup then Sarge drives to where they’ve observed the Mexicans crossing the river while Erin and Pat drive back to the house.

Walking into the house Erin says, “Clean your guns. The others are out collecting the watchers. Sarge wants them to take the dead back across the river to return them to their boss. They’ll be back once all of the dead are back on the other side of the river.”

Pat nods to her and asks, “I know the police won’t be able to get anything from the four-ten shots, but what about the pistol rounds?”

Erin says, “You know we have one type of bullet for practice and we have another we load with after practice.” Pat nods yes, “For combat we load with frangible rounds very much like the hollow points for your twenty-two. They hit and break up. Thus more of the impact force goes into the target as they don’t pass through most targets and they don’t ricochet. I’ll have to start teaching you how to use the Beretta M Nine A One soon. What do you want for dinner tonight?”

Pat grins as he says, “Let’s make Sarge barbecue some steaks!”

“He did say you can have anything you want for dinner. We’ll get it ready after we finish cleaning the guns.” Some minutes later the two of them are taking the barbecue grill outside. They have it hot and ready for the meat by the time the rest return.

Sarge gets out of the pickup, sees the grill, and laughs. They can all cook a good barbecue, but Pat says his tastes better, so Sarge knows he’s cooking tonight despite it being Erin’s turn. Moving to the grill he says, “Pat, from now on you take your rifle with you everywhere you go on the ranch, along with a full ammo load. Got it?” Pat nods yes. “When we go into town you put it in the rifle rack and the combat harness goes in the box behind the seat.” He turns to the others, “The same goes for all of you.” They all nod agreement to go around better armed because they now expect whoever is behind this will to want to retaliate for today’s event and the loss of their men.

Señor Santiago is not happy to learn six of his best soldiers are dead, and he takes his anger out on Carlos. After Carlos leaves Señor Santiago makes arrangements with his second in command to launch a major assault on the ranch in a couple of weeks’ time, along with the shipment.

Carlos is happy to be demoted as it means he can go back to working as a farmer instead of being involved in the things he doesn’t like doing, but he has to do them because his Patrón ordered it.

During that night and the next day Sarge and Erin spend a lot of time with Pat talking over the shooting. Pat isn’t happy about killing the men, but he accepts it had to be done to save Erin, so he sees it as the fault of the men for putting him in the situation of having to do so.

After their talks Erin gets Sarge by himself and asks, “Sarge, I can see Pat is a little disturbed by the shooting, but why isn’t he a lot more shook up by it? I would’ve expected someone as young as he is to be extremely disturbed by the shooting.”

Sarge replies, “He’s grown up on Army bases talking with lots of people who are prepared to go to war to protect their country, family, and friends. It’s natural he’d pick up a lot of that attitude. Also, kids are naturally self-centred and less caring of strangers than the people they know. Part of raising kids is to civilise them by teaching them to care for others outside of their own circle. In the environment Pat grew up in with his parents the caring for strangers wouldn’t have been stressed to him as much as it would be for many other kids while the protection aspect would’ve been more heavily emphasised. The result is he doesn’t like shooting people or killing them, but he can if he has to when protecting someone. He does what he feels he has to do. I’m surprised you don’t know most of this stuff from your medical training or your training for chief.”

“I thought you knew! I never did the course for chief, it was a bump in rank while I was recovering from being blown up and just before being discharged. So I never got a chance to do the course. My medical training was more on treatment than understanding, and what little there was given on the psych stuff was how to deal with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in adult combat troops. Anyway, I don’t think those who put the training courses together expected us to be involved with kids at any time.” Sarge nods his understanding because a large part of what he said to her came from the books on parenting he read.

They both decide to keep an eye on Pat and to help him with having to be involved in a shooting while they wonder if there’ll be more such events in their future that’ll involve Pat.

Second Attack

Señor Santiago decides to send a large force to the ranch when they have the shipment ready to go across the border and travel on to San Antonio so the people in Texas will have it to sell. A large force will protect the goods while also dealing with any of the ranchers who get in his way. Since they rarely leave the ranch he hopes to repay them for the recent insult at the same time.

The Wednesday of the first week in August is when the shipment is ready to go. However, Señor Santiago has a meeting to attend in Mexico City so the transfer is being handled by his two sons with one on each side of the river. The crossing is set for mid-morning Thursday because they think the Border Patrol won’t be expecting activity in the area then.

After breakfast Gunny and Erin head into Rosita to arrange for Pat’s formal exams to enable him to attend the 5th Grade. Sarge and Bubba are going to Eagle Pass to collect some special electronic equipment they’ve ordered and Q has it ready for them to collect. They’ll also get more food supplies while in town. Hard Ball will stay at the house cleaning while Digger gives Pat some training as part of a patrol of the ranch to the river and along part of it.

Gunny and Erin drive due west to drop Digger and Pat in the north west corner of the ranch before they drive up the boundary road to go to their meeting at the school. While looking for movement or tracks on the edge of the river below them the two on patrol walk along the ridge just before the drop down to the river. They don’t walk right on the edge of the ridge, but a bit back from it so they’re amongst the brush.

A couple of hours later they’re approaching one of the points where it’s fairly easy to get down to the river on both sides of it near a spot that’s easy to ford. This is where they’ve seen most of the past illegal crossings being made on the ranch border. They see five armed men on their side of the border at the river ford. So they look at the scrub on the other side to see some trucks there with a lot of men around them.

Digger and Pat glance at each other, move back into the scrub a bit more while they get out the earpiece units for the cell phones and put them into their ears. Digger activates his phone in the voice mode and sends a group voice message saying, “Digger. Crossing Delta. Large force of armed men, some on both sides moving north. Interdicting. Out.” Pat and Digger are moving while checking their rifles for use as he talks and they look for a place for each of them to set up to shoot from.

Pat points at a good spot near the edge of the drop with bushes around it and he touches his chest. Digger looks at it, nods approval, and points at a spot several feet away then touches his chest. Pat nods to show he understands, then they both move to where they’ll fight from. In a moment both are in prone combat positions amongst a group of bushes while both of their positions have a good field of fire of the crossing area.

Five trucks stop at the ranch front gate. A man gets out with large bolt cutters in his hand, he goes to the lock and he cuts it off. He pushes the gates open and the trucks enter. The man climbs into the cab of the lead truck when it stops beside him in the gateway. They drive into the ranch, heading toward the crossing where Pat and Digger are.

At the house Hard Ball receives the message. He calls the Sheriff and the Border Patrol with the information while he secures the house before he grabs his rifle, along with a heavy pack of extra ammunition and more weapons while on his way out the door. He checks the house is secure and hidden before he jogs toward the crossing.

Sarge and Bubba are just leaving Q’s Store when the call comes in, so they jump into the truck and race out of town on their way home. While Bubba drives Sarge checks all of the guns in the truck are ready to use.

In town Gunny tells the school people he’ll call them to reschedule the meeting because they have to leave due to an emergency at home

Digger shouts out, “You’re under arrest for trespassing. Put down your weapons and surrender.” Neither Pat nor Digger expect them to do as told, but it needs to be done for legal reasons as Digger has on a body camera he turned on when he took up his position.

The men beside the river all look up at the ridge to locate who is up there, and so do many men on the other side of the river. The men at the flatbed farm trucks continue to unload the trucks.

For legal reasons Digger doesn’t want to shoot at the men yet, so he changes magazines to one loaded with solid brass jackets, aims at the front tyre of the only pickup there, and he shoots at it to clear his rifle of the frangible round in it. The men take cover. He aims at the fuel tanks of the flatbed trucks and fires. After a few more rounds fuel is spilling out onto the ground under the trucks. The men near the fuel all move away from it. Some of the men see Digger’s rifle flashes and start shooting at him. The five on this side move toward Digger’s position while several more start to cross the river. Digger calls out to Pat, “Take the river.”

Pat doesn’t say a word, he simply aims at the upper chest of the man at the front of the group in the water, takes a small lead, and he fires at where he expects the man to be when the bullet gets there. The man falls at the same moment as the one nearest Digger is shot by him. The group in the water turn and run back to cover because that’s closer to them while the group on this side look for cover around them. Four shots later Digger switches aim to the men on the other side of the river while Pat continues to locate and shoot those he can see in the scrub over there.

They’re several minutes into the fight when Pat sees a group of three men near the pickup truck and one is giving orders to the other two. Knowing taking out the leaders will help them he aims at the leader and he puts a round through his throat. The other two are shocked when their boss starts sprouting blood from his throat.

Hearing vehicles behind him Pat turns around to see five trucks pulling up. He glances at Digger who’s still firing across the river. Ten men get out of the trucks and start shooting at Digger. Pat aims at the one who’s directing them and he puts a round in his forehead, the man falls down. Pat moves target and he works his way from left to right, shooting each man in the chest with a .22 calibre hollow point round. The last of the men from the trucks falls down and this side is quiet.

Pat realises Digger isn’t firing now so he looks over. Part of Digger’s head is missing. Pat is now very angry. He turns back to face the river to see the men on that side are now moving toward the river. He waits a moment for more of them to come into the open. While he waits he changes his magazine. He takes aim at a man on their eastern edge and he fires, shifts target and he fires, again, and again, and again. The men can hear a low snap sound from the rifle but they can’t see a flash so they can’t spot Pat. However, they can see their men falling so they know someone is shooting at them, and they move back to cover again. It’s not long before Pat has to put another magazine in his rifle. He’s now using the scope to scan the brush and he’s firing whenever he can find a target. He spots the third leader, takes aim and shoots him in the eye.

A voice behind Pat says, “They’re done and leaving. Let them go.”

Pat turns to look at Hard Ball and asks, “Got something to set those trucks on fire? The ground around them is soaked with fuel.”

Hard Ball grins, slips off his pack, gets out a tube, extends the tube, takes aim, and fires at the truck furthest from them. The rocket races across the space to hit the truck, causing it to explode and start to burn. It takes two more rocket shots before the fires expand to have all five trucks burning. Hard Ball hands Pat the tubes as he says, “You need to get back to the house before the authorities arrive. Take these and hide them. Did you shoot any on this side?”

“Only those behind us.”

Both take care while moving back. Hard Ball goes to each of the dead men at the trucks and he fires a round into their wounds.

Pat asks, “Why did you do that?”

“To mess up the wound entry and exit points. I don’t want them to know anyone fired a twenty-two here. Now let’s police your combat spot and get you out of here. Also get the handguns and camera off Digger.”

It takes a few minutes to collect all of the spent .22 cases, but it’s fairly easy due to the bushes stopping them from going far. When they’ve got every case they can see Pat sticks them in his pockets, turns, and jogs off through the scrub on a direct path to the house. This takes him away from the path those driving from the gates will take.

Hard Ball studies the situation then he calls in an update to the Sheriff and the Border Patrol. He also updates the other ranch members. Erin and Gunny are back on the ranch so they now change direction to go to the house. Sarge and Bubba continue to lead two Deputy Sheriff’s cars to the crossing.

While going to the house Pat thinks about the fight. At the time it seemed to him to take hours. But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes because it was all over before Hard Ball could jog down from the house. Hearing a helicopter Pat moves deeper into some bushes and he squats down until well after it passes by after it circles him.

In the Border Patrol helicopter flying to the crossing the tech says, “Got a heat source down there.” The pilot swings back over the spot, then the tech adds, “Forget it, too small to be a man. It’s probably a large animal hiding from us.” The pilot goes back to his original heading.

When they get close enough to the river to have a good view of more than the smoke from the fires the pilot says, “Look at all of the bodies. It must have been a hell of a fight, whoever was fighting who for what.”

Pat reaches the house to find Erin is waiting for him. Gunny is on a patrol of the area around the house. Pat hands over the tubes and camera so Erin takes them away to hide them while Pat moves to the armoury. All of the spent cartridge cases he has are put in a mesh basket and the basket is put in a large tin of cleaning fluid to clean out the gunpowder residue. He sits down at the table to strip and clean his rifle.

Erin walks in, grabs the boxes of .22 long rifle hollow points, Pat’s rifle magazines, checks what’s in each one, and starts to reload the magazines that don’t have a full load. Pat looks up, gives her a weak smile of thanks, and says, “I only used the rifle. The bastards killed Digger.”

“I know,” is her reply. A moment later she adds, “At least he won’t have to worry about a slow death from cancer now.” Pat looks up, and she nods yes to him. He didn’t know Digger had cancer. They finish with the guns. Pat goes to have a thorough shower while Erin puts his clothes through the washing machine. They’re making sure to remove all of the evidence Pat was involved in the fight.

An hour after the fight the Mexican police are very busy cleaning up their side of the river while the Maverick County Sheriff’s Deputies are cleaning up on the US side of the river. The Sheriff goes down to meet an officer of the Mexican police in the middle of the river. After the greetings the Sheriff says, “Up on the ridge we’ve got ten dead Mexican nationals with five more down beside the river. One of the ranch hands is dead up on the ridge as well. It looks like he was fighting off an army. Empty casing all around him. The bullet wounds to all the other dead look like they came from his rifle. What have you got, Pedro?”

The Sheriff’s old friend replies, “There are fifty-six dead on this side, five burnt out trucks with what looks to be a large load of drugs. Most of it is destroyed by the fire, but there’s enough left to identify it. I think your man set fire to their trucks when he found them as there are bullet holes in the fuel tanks. It seems the ranch hand caught and stopped a major drug shipment. The owner won’t be happy to have lost all of those drugs, the trucks, or the men.”

“I don’t know about your side, but all of the dead up on the ridge have good identity documents on them while the ones by the river don’t have any. One of the dead is Juan Santiago. I bet his father won’t be happy to hear the news.”

Pedro smiles as he says, “Juan’s brother Jesus is amongst the dead on this side. I’d say Señor Santiago just suffered a severe loss on many levels. Seventy-one men dead here, with both his sons on the list. Plus the drugs and vehicles. I also heard he lost six men a few weeks back. He will not be a happy man. When you finish with the bodies you best send them back to us for a proper burial by their families.” The two talk on a few other matters they expect to arise from this event before they return to their own sides of the river.

When he gets back to the ridge the Sheriff says, “Sarge, we’ll take all of the guns and the bodies, but we’ve no evidence those trucks were part of this. They’re recently purchased but the ownership transfer hasn’t been done yet. The papers are in their glove boxes. I don’t want to go through all of the paperwork for them if I take them in. So why don’t you just get them out of here and do what you like with them.” Sarge nods to him to agree to do so then the two old friends talk for a while longer.

During the following week Sarge gives the five trucks to local farmers for their use on their farms. They appreciate the new trucks as their old trucks were well overdue for being replaced.

When the news of the gunfight at the river reaches Señor Santiago he’s so angry at the deaths of his sons he orders the twelve soldiers who survived the fight to be executed. His other men are so frightened they immediately carry out the order before anyone can properly debrief the men about the fight. This means the fight survivors never tell anyone there was a second person near the river shooting at them.

Erin and Sarge spend a lot of time helping Pat deal with being part of such a major gunfight at his age. Both are saddened by the way it’s aged Pat so much. He’s lost a lot of his innocence in the last few months due to the death of a lot of people close to him as well as killing people out to kill him and his friends.

The Next Week

Tuesday of the next week Erin and Gunny take Pat to see Dave. At the office Gunny stops to talk with Angela while Erin and Pat talk with Dave. Angela says, “Go straight into the conference room as they’re all in there and ready to go now you’re here.” Pat wonders who the ’they’ are.

When Pat walks into the conference room he sees three people he doesn’t know and Dave. Pat sees Erin smile at a girl in the room who looks to be eighteen or nineteen. Dave coughs and says, “I’m Dave Bannister, Master Sergeant Eric Goldsmith’s lawyer. On my right is Ann Dawson, Eric’s sister, her husband, Robert Dawson, and their daughter, Erica Dawson. On my left is Pat Nolan, a young man Eric has taken under his wing, and Erin Richards a friend of both Pat and Eric who’s here to represent Pat’s grandfather, Master Sergeant Daniel Riley, a very good friend of Eric’s. Dan is busy with an important matter on his ranch.”

Everyone takes a moment to evaluate everyone they don’t know. Pat has heard a lot about the Dawson family, but he’d not seen any photos. He knows Digger liked his niece, but he also knows she can’t say no to either of her parents. Pat wonders why they’re all here.

Dave gives Pat a letter while he says, “Pat, you have to read this first.” Pat takes the letter, opens it, and he reads the letter.

Hi Pat,