hear you shooting, one of us will come to reinforce. Katie, just put the stock in your shoulder, aim this red dot at whoever tries to come across the back garden, and shoot them until they go down.”
Katie stared wide-eyed at the woman who just a day ago had seemed like a western version of Martha Stewart; she had transformed into a warrior.
“Are we clear?” Caroline asked, looking each of her newly minted recruits in the eye. “Good. Remember. No one is coming. It’s up to us. Take your positions.”
Caroline opened the bolt on her Brno rifle and pulled it back far enough to confirm that there was a round in the chamber. The magazine held five rounds of the venerable .375 H&H. Another was in the chamber ready to go. Ten more rode in a leather belt around her waist and she’d stuffed another ten in her pockets. The rifle had served her well since she’d first picked it up in 1971.
The home was still and silent, many of the windows open to let in what might be the last warm air of the season. Caroline had positioned herself on the second floor, inside a dormer window that faced the most likely enemy avenue of approach. She didn’t have to wait long to hear a diesel motor and tires gnawing at the dirt and gravel road.
A blue pickup came into view, its motor accelerating. She didn’t hesitate, dropping into a seated position and resting the rifle’s forend on the windowsill. Unlike the CZ 550 and most modern rifles, the Brno safety needed to be pulled back to fire. Caroline’s thumb clicked the safety into position, her cheek dropping to the weathered Turkish walnut Lux pattern stock, and centered the front post with the 200-meter leaf of the express sight on the driver’s-side window.
The Brno was made in Uhersky Brod, Czechoslovakia, when it was under Soviet occupation in the late 1960s. Now a rifle built in the ashes of the Prague Spring was about to be unleashed on a new Russian enemy. The heavy rifle barked, the recoil pushing into her shoulder as her round turned the windshield into spiderwebs. Though she couldn’t see from her perch, the 270-grain bullet took the driver in the throat. She cycled the bolt quickly and sent a second round through the center of the glass, which gut-shot one of the men in the backseat. The driver’s foot came off the gas pedal thanks to his severed spine and the big Ford began to slow.
With their leader in violent death throes, his severed artery splattering the truck’s cabin with hot blood, the rest of the men panicked. When the fourth round shot away the rearview mirror, the four assaulters who were still able to move bailed out of the vehicle as it came to rest. They had trained for and expected to deliver a violent ambush, not be ambushed themselves. Taking cover, they fired wildly on full automatic, spraying the large home with 7.62mm rounds. With no leader, the men didn’t communicate, they didn’t maneuver, they didn’t flank; they just hunkered down and burned through their ammunition as they continued shooting into what moments before had been a beautiful mountain home.
Caroline was single-minded in her purpose, firing a single round before moving to a different room and finding her next target through a new window. After the initial volley, she was careful to stay well back so that her rifle’s protruding barrel would not give the enemy a target. Her objective was to keep them pinned down so that they couldn’t approach the house. If they set it ablaze or moved inside, she would lose the tactical advantage.
It hadn’t been a question of what to do when the attack came. It was all about executing a preplanned emergency response, habits instilled in a different time and place, habits born of necessity in the African bush. That plan and those skills now kept her family alive. She remembered her own mother tucking her into bed and explaining the reality of life in Rhodesia: if someone with mal intent enters our property, they have declared war on our family.
These terrs had declared war.
A shooter found the courage to roll out from behind the truck’s rear wheel, firing as he rose to charge forward. Caroline’s next shot took him in the chest. She topped off the rifle with six more rounds as she moved into an adjacent room, looking for her next target.