Honor Road by Jason Ross (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

colored shawls and windswept burkas where none existed. But Mat had no idea how to accomplish the two opposing goals: preserving civility and crushing aggression. He settled for soothing Morgan’s concerns.

“I hear you sheriff. We’ll make our statement, eighty-six the murderers and get back to town.”

The sheriff nodded. “I’m coming too. Stick me with a team—low man on the totem pole.” The sheriff turned and vanished into the station, probably to gather his fighting gear.

Two hours later Mat stood in the Walmart parking lot in front of fifty men and one woman. Gladys Carter was the only woman to volunteer for the strike mission. Mat had declined over a hundred men from town, and opted instead for a smaller fighting force with more control and experience.

Mat split his force into two with a simple plan. They were too tired for L-ambushes or complex flanking maneuvers. They’d come at the camp from two fronts, set at forty-five degrees from each other, and they’d become a single firing line when they hit the edges of the camp. He couldn’t afford much of a blocking force. If their blood got up, a blocking force would shoot their own guys coming through the trees. It was better to flush the camp like a pheasant hunt.

Mat posted two of the town’s best marksmen with scoped hunting rifles overlooking the highway. They would take down armed targets that attempted to cross. Those had been Mat’s orders: “Shoot refugees who look like they probably attacked the town.”

Mat’s forces had yellow caution tape tied to their hats and around their necks. It looked patently uncool, but would look cooler than a bunch of body bags from friendly fire incidents.

They entered the woods from Hansen Lane at two o’clock in the afternoon. Fifty yards into the forest, one of his men slipped and fell.

“Damn rats don’t even bury their shit.”

“Quiet,” Mat ordered.

The “go signal” would be the bullhorn. Team One, led by Juan Cabrera, radioed that they’d reached the fringe of the camp. Mat signaled the man on his team with the bullhorn to get ready. The two flush lines met in the middle and everyone came on-line for the final assault.

“All stations, this is Mat. Execute, execute, execute.”

The bullhorn blared, “This is punishment for last night's attack on town. Stay away from town.”

Even before they reached the tumbledown camp, the snipers over the highway boomed. The rats must’ve heard them coming—had probably expected the reprisal. The overwatch hunters called out their hits over the radio with precision.

“Overwatch one. One target down.”

“Overwatch two. Two targets down.”

Mat hadn’t asked them to do that. The hunters racked up kills on the highway like culling a deer herd.

Team one on Mat’s left opened fire, first a trickle, then a roar. The woods exploded with rushing people. They were in the refugee camp proper now; drooping lean-tos, ragged latrines, and smoldering fire pits.

Mat had pictured a slow drive, converging on the camp, then pushing toward the highway. With the constant radio call outs of enemy casualties, and the chaotic melee of human shapes darting through the trees, the plan came undone in the first three seconds.

“This is punishment for last night’s raid. Stay away from town,” the bullhorn hollered.

Refugees sprinted in every direction—men, women, children. Almost everyone had something in their hands. The strike team opened fire at anything that looked like a weapon, which was pretty much everything. Mat stepped over the motionless body of a teenage boy gripping a folded-up camp chair.

A cluster of tents came into view as Mat stepped around a huge beech tree. Rats ran for the thickest brambles, or bolted down muddy paths toward the highway. Some ran in circles. Others snatched at belongings.

Return fire pattered from the camp, weak and sporadic. A hurricane of fire rained down in response from the strike team, hacking the brush to bits and sawing off branches from the trees. A tent collapsed. A metal pot on a campfire exploded.

“This is punishment for last night’s raid. Stay away from town.”

A group rushed toward Mat’s team, probably running away from the snipers on the highway. Mat put a handful of rounds into the front-runners—they were carrying sticks and knives. The rats attempted to scatter but none was still standing after half a second of sustained gunfire. Two more rats popped up off the ground, ran away and were shot in the back. One looked like a teenage girl.

“Let them go!” Mat screamed, but he hadn’t clicked the push-to-talk on his radio. He couldn’t call a cease fire while anyone in the camp was still shooting at them. They were taking incoming gunfire.

Mat despaired and finally radioed, “Hold fire!”

A few on the channel responded, but the gunfire continued—rifles and shotguns in the woods, and the booming long guns on the highway.

“This is punishment for last night’s raid. Stay away from the town.”

“Robert’s hit! Shit-eating rats!” someone on Mat’s team screamed.

“Light ‘em up!” the college kid next to Mat yelled and rushed into a cluster of ramshackle tents.

“Hold fire! Cease fire!” Mat shouted. They’d overrun the campsite, but kept pushing through the swampy, filthy hovel and into the surrounding forest.

“Fuck these guys!”

“Hold! Hold!” Mat bellowed. “Cease fire.”

Finally, gunfire slowed. Mat made his voice heard. “Cease FUCKING fire!” he screamed into the pause. Other than the booming hunting rifles, the strike team quieted their guns.

Two minutes later, it was over. Finally, the rifles on the road either ran out of ammo or the snipers came to their senses. Mat’s teams milled around, hiding behind tree trunks, pointing their guns into the now-quiet woods. Few looked back at the camp.

Mat turned and looked. It was a massacre. At least two dozen men, women, and children lay strewn across the camp. A lot of them cried in pain and writhed on the wet ground.

Gladys Carter slung her rifle and ran back into the camp. She scooped up a crying little boy next to a woman’s limp body. He screamed and fought in her arms until