“Those on left side of barricade and those on left side of tower, I want both of you to aim into the second vehicles and terminate them once the flares light up. We have ten seconds until they see our barricade. Get ready,” whispered the sergeant into his radio, and time began to slow down as the truck lights closed in on the barricade in the dark.

Preston watched as the black shapes of the vehicles came into view a couple of hundred feet away.

Very slowly, the eight vehicles came into the ambush zone, and the lights suddenly flickered onto high beam as their dimmed lights lit up the wooden tables facing the attackers. In the glow of the headlamps, the barricade really did look like a make-shift civilian barricade.

Orders barked out from the lead truck as engines revved and the first two trucks began to accelerate to rush the tables with their lights now on high beam. Preston could see the men’s silhouettes standing waist high out of the cabs, and both men raised their rocket launchers to fire at the tables. They were 40 feet from the barricade with all eight vehicles in view when the radios came alive.

“Snipers, fire!” ordered the Sergeant. “Flares, fire! Rear team fire at the last two vehicles facing you, now!” were his second and third orders as the snipers opened fire, hitting the men as the two front targets fired their rockets. One rocket went straight into the middle of the tables disintegrating the middle table, blowing the remains several feet into the air, and opening a hole in the three rows of sandbags, which flew in all directions. The second rocket angled off into the air over the barricade, the man was hit by the sniper fire a split second before he pulled the trigger and the rocket flew into a bush further down the road and harmlessly blew up.

The flares suddenly lit up the sky, and several machine guns immediately opened up, deafening Preston’s protected ears and opening the third and fourth trucks like cans of sardines as a steady line of tracer rounds from two directions rocked both trucks up and down. The man standing in the sunroof and his rocket quickly disappeared back into the cab.

All the vehicle doors opened as the flares illuminated the dark roadway like daylight, and men flew out in all directions, hitting the ground as hundreds of rounds poured into the ambush area from three directions, mowing down everything in their path.

Within seconds, the eight trucks began to look like twisted pieces of metal. “Armored car—fire down the middle space in between the vehicles–now! Men are hiding in between the vehicles,” shouted Sergeant Perry into his handset. ”Ambush squad—aim low, aim for the tires and anybody hiding underneath the eight vehicles.”

The second truck in the second row blew up, and the blast enveloped the truck in front of it and it blew up as well. The area turned lighter than day as continuous fire poured into the “kill zone.” Several of the enemy tried and succeeded to get into the forest on the other side of the road before the rest of them went down. A couple of men disappeared into the trees. “Ambush area, ambush area—cease fire, cease fire!” shouted the sergeant. Apart from the two trucks on fire and machine gun fire from the armored car at the end of the farm road, the area went silent.

It had taken less than 30 seconds and the attack was over. “Team behind the barricade, keep low, move forward slowly and in a line, there could be wounded. Secure the area.” Preston watched as a dozen men slid forward over the sandbags and tables. Two shots rang out and the shooter was immediately silenced. Silence also reigned down the road as the radio squawked again.

“Check all bodies. Need number count. Pull them out and away from the vehicles in case they blow. Snipers in the forest—I believe you have two or three coming your way. I want clean kills. Await my orders to move. Forest Checkpoint, what’s cooking?”

“Forest Checkpoint—both trucks immobile—no moving bodies. We believe two Charlies still alive and heading towards Highway Vanguard group. Over.”

“Highway Vanguard here. We roger that—we are ready for them. The road to the highway is secure and we will clear from our end. Over.”

“Forest Checkpoint,” continued Sergeant Patterson. “Stay put in case we have more issues coming your way. To all parties—we have ‘friendlies’ in the kill zone. Do not fire! They will be clearing the road towards you. Forest Checkpoint—I repeat, hold your fire.”

“Forest Checkpoint. We copy that.”

“Highway Vanguard, did you copy last message? A couple of possible ‘Charlies’ coming your way. Over,” continued the sergeant as they heard more shooting from the burning trucks.

“Highway Vanguard. We copied that and our guys with night sights are searching for them now.”

“All Forest Snipers—try and keep your shots high. I’m going in to secure the ambush zone and then work towards the main road. Medic section, we have wounded. I need stretchers immediately,” continued the sergeant over the radio.

The firing had stopped, and Preston climbed down from the fire tower and headed for the entrance gate to his farm. Several soldiers and the doctor ran past carrying stretchers and he ran with them to the gate, and then around the corner down the dirt road towards the barrier.

It was a mess. The fires from three vehicles glowed behind silhouettes of soldiers pulling bodies away from them. He got to the barrier, where he was halted by a soldier.

“Their tanks are going to go up at any second, sir. The sergeant said nobody past this point.”

The medics had already picked up two American soldiers and one of the Chinese men, who had an arm missing and several bullet wounds in his legs. Two more stretchers arrived as gun shots were heard deep in the forest. Carlos arrived a few seconds later, and they both watched as bodies and body parts were pulled out of the surrounding undergrowth. The troops moved forward as another flare lit up the sky and they saw half a dozen soldiers with Sergeant Perry halfway down the road. They were on each side of the road, bent over, running a couple of yards and then stopping in a crouch. They were slowly cleaning and checking the area for enemy.

Automatic fire suddenly erupted from the forest several yards in front of them, and the men dove into the ditches as a fire fight ensued. The first vehicle’s tank blew up as the men were still scrambling to pull bodies away from the rear vehicles and one man went down. There were soldiers searching through the trucks at the back as the front truck went up with a loud boom and they scurried away from the fourth row as the whole line of mutilated trucks began to catch fire.

“Preston, get us all your fire extinguishers and all the water containers you have! We need to stop the brush from catching fire. All soldiers not clearing and still in the ambush zone must go and help bring water,” shouted Sergeant Perry, running back to the barricade. There was a mass run towards the airport. Preston had 600 feet of garden hose he used to wash down the runway when it got dusty, and it was still connected to the nearest faucet to the road. The pipe would make it about halfway to the gate, if it went straight through the brush.

It took a couple of minutes to get the garden hose into position as close to the fire as possible with water gushing out of the end. Several men ran forward with fire extinguishers and plastic buckets collected from the medic tent and elsewhere.

A human chain was made from the end of the hose, and full buckets of water started moving from man to man and then were carried by more men down the farm road to the burning trucks.

For the next 20 minutes, they worked hard pouring water into the wooded areas that had several fires blazing. The fire extinguishers had dealt with the vehicles, smothering the flames pretty quickly as several men aimed their extinguishers onto the fires from several directions.