Chapter 8
The battalion and I crept up the hill in the darkness to the poorly lit launch pad of the Confederate missile. I sent a team of three of my best to reconnaissance the site. I grew nervous that they might blow the mission because I heard them stumbling around in the dark into the bushes and making tons of noise in the process. I was in luck. Maybe a half hour later, the squad returned back to the rest of the battalion who were waiting silently at the base of the hill and reported that there seemed to be minimal Confederate presence at their own launch site. I was relieved. I started sending one squad silently after the other to start crawling up the hill and everything had seemed to be running smoothly until I heard and saw an explosion where my highest squad was. Screaming shortly followed and more explosions were lighting up the sky like the fourth of July. I had thought that this operation had been going a little too smoothly and now I had led half my battalion straight into a minefield. More explosions and screams as I had to sit at the base of the hill with the remainder of the battalion watching my troopers guts flinging in every which way. This was truly war, and it terrified the hell out of me. As I remember my world history, or maybe it was my reel history, teacher at Longview High School many years ago had told me about a famous Admiral named Akbar who had said "It's a trap!". I was now in his shoes, this was not just a trap, it was a disaster. Half my brothers in arms lay slain before the true battle had even started and it was all my fault.
If my scouts careless fumbling in the darkness hadn't managed to awaken any of the sleeping Confederate troopers, than surely the sound of their booby-trap minefield going off would have done the trick. The whole base was now on alert and it wouldn't be long before they'd come and engage us. I had to figure out a way to get the remainder of my troops up the hill and through the minefield before the Confederates came and mowed us down. After a good five minutes of thinking, I came up with a plan. I would have a squad clear a path through the minefield by pushing an old truck from a nearby road up the hill and that should in theory set off any of the remaining mines. After watching three squads struggle to push the enormous eighteen wheeler up the hill for about fifteen minutes, all the remaining mines had been set off and I sent all remaining troops with me up the hill to engage the Confederates and help me destroy the Confederate nuclear missile. In about an hour of heavy fighting, we had managed to slaughter all the Confederate troops and all that was left to do was to destroy the missile. We approached it and it was massive, over twenty feet tall. It seemed to be hooked up to an old Apple II computer and looked as though it was about to be launched within the hour had we not arrived. I sent my squad who was comprised of pre-war tech geeks and former engineers to figure out the missile and its targeting system. After nearly two hours of examining the primitive "nuke", the senior squad leader had informed me that the missile was currently targeted for Dallas but that the target coordinates could be reset. I was thrilled, instead of simply destroying the missile, we could now use their own weapon against them.
I pulled out my Texarkana regional map and instructed the squad to input the coordinates for the Interstate 20 bridge over the Red River in the Confederate garrison of Shreveport. Even though destroying the bridge would do little to none collateral damage to Shreveport, the destruction of the Interstate 20 bridge would slow the advance of more Confederate troops to Longview and stop their wartime supply lines. To any fledging post-apocalyptic nation your (crumbling) Interstates and highways are like the arteries and veins of your country. If you slash these arteries than your nation starts bleeding out in the form of money and goods, which is bad for business. All the remaining troops and I stepped away from the missile as its thrusters started to glow a bright orange. Seeing the missile arc through the sky was even better than watching that rocket launch at Johnson Space Center in Houston in college. All the troops started cheering and I joined in hooting and hollering, For our success today I decided we shall make camp at this launch pad for tonight so that we may be well rested for our long march home towards Longview. We will beat those Confederates savages across the state line and frankly I can't wait to see their miserable faces when they realize that we have showed up and their reinforcements/supplies won't be coming in for awhile. After all, in this dog-eat-dog kind of world, what goes around comes back around.