Ned K’s War Journal
Chapter 2- The Battle of Waco Begins
Lynn’s missions to find family members turned out to be disastrous, not in terms of being attacked which did happen a few times, but in terms of psychological destruction. They would load up, drive out and visit a home to find corpses, brown puddles, or houses and bodies scorched by fires. The fires were breaking out all over because of gas left on, unsafe storage of flammables and fires left burning for other reasons, like arson People were burning houses and buildings for reasons we didn’t know. The fires were really starting to worry us too. The water wasn’t on and we had no way to fight the fires. All we could do was let them burn out. After 10 missions, Lynn announced that she couldn’t escort anyone else personally. No one challenged her. Two of the people from the club had opted to stay in their old houses rather than come back. I don’t know what happened to them. One girl took a Glock and went outside the club and shot herself in the head. Leah had gone to find her mother and brother found them both shot to death. Both had been raped in some fashion, or so it appeared. Apparently some sick fucks had survived and were running rampant.
When I heard, again, my thoughts went to Africa and stories of rape gangs and rebel armies abducting and brainwashing children to make them into soldiers. No one I had gone to school with was ready for that to come to our shores. The sick fucks out there were praying for it to happen. I heard people like that referred to as “violence geeks”. Personally, on behalf of geeks everywhere I find that term insulting. I think Sick Fuck is much better. Just like Alfred’s racial predilections came out when we were attacked by those “O-Dawgs”. My hate and ugliness comes out in the face of violence like that. I once had the chance to deal with one of them. I might write about it later. Maybe not. I’m not proud of what I did.
Leah took the helm from Lynn, who never went to her own home to look for her twin. I think she knew. Twins are funny like that. Leigh was not gone completely, though. I’ll tell that story later. Leah, who had seen probably the worst of any of us, led the last few missions to find family.
Soon there wasn’t time for that. All of our focus was on fighting for our lives. We had scored some pretty good spots. There was a former Sears’s repair shop on 18th and Waco drive that had held several businesses and directly across the street there was a home/storefront combo on a lot with an abandoned nursing home. We grabbed up all of it, boarded it up, fenced it in and turned it into a series of fortresses. We deliberately razed other nearby buildings and used the salvageable lumber to build makeshift towers on top so that we could see for blocks around. We still had the basement and we had a stone house in Cameron Park where we could walk to a cliff and look out over the entire Bosque River. We had walkie-talkies and were managing to pick up a few stragglers here and there. We had taken the National Guard Armory over on Lake Air Blvd. that yielded a pile of M-16 rifles with full-auto capability and a couple of machine guns. Karl taught Paul and Manuel to use the machineguns and we got a couple of M-203 grenade launchers and several fragmentation grenades.
The problem is we weren’t the only ones. We had the forethought to pick up scanners and started to monitor traffic. Matt and I both were used to scanners and liked to spy on the police and listen to peoples’ dirty phone calls before the war. Now we had a new job to do.
As it turned out, Matt and I both had a knack for spying. We had made a trip into Robinson and raided a shop called the Gizmo Guru where they had a lot of spy gear, stun guns and paintball supplies. That’s also where we picked up “Elvis”, who was the owner of the shop. His real name wasn’t Elvis, but he looked like the latter day pictures of Elvis with the sideburns and all. I think he may have been a white supremist, but I never managed to confirm that. We had a good stock of scanners. Learning this, Karl made is the de-facto intelligence officers and sent us out on spying missions. It was dangerous as Hell but it meant we didn’t have to spend all damn day in the sun, swinging a hammer or pouring concrete or worse yet, doing corpse duty and pulling dead bodies out of houses and burying them in mass graves we constructed in the park. Yecch! We, with the help of Elvis, fixed up equipment and took it to the streets. We had bugs and cameras in several key places and once we found some old TVs that would still work, we could see parts of Highway 84, highway 6 and I-35. That is what cued us in to the fact that there were other groups forming and branching out. The worst of them were the O-Dawgs, the same bunch we got into the firefight with when we raided that grocery store.
The O-Dawgs were a constant problem. They were well organized and anytime we tried to operate in South or East Waco, we met with armed resistance. Their tactic was to subdue and recruit all of the neighborhoods they crossed. Any white people they found, they killed. The black people were either forced to serve the gang or killed as well. They did have a Mexican contingent in South Waco, but there was some infighting there and I’ve never been sure if that worked out. We caught a couple of black families on the run and welcomed them into our group. Usually, though, by the time the O-Dawgs were done, most black people we met were so terrified of anyone they saw, they just ran and hid. Unlike the O-Dawgs, we let the people who survived in our area do their own thing. If they came to us for help, though, we gave them the ultimatum. They could work for us or go back home and go it alone. I always thought that was a fair deal, but occasionally a small group would try to force themselves on us. That didn’t work out for them too well. We would meet “survivalist” types or people “on a mission from God”, but by that time our group dynamic was so strong, they either were turned away or had to bite their tongues and assimilate.
The O-Dawgs had none of that. If they took your neighborhood, you soldiered for them or they shot you in the head, or worse? Remember my rant about Africa? Well we saw some black smoke from time to time coming from the O-Dawg camp.
The O-Dawgs were not stupid men. They were highly organized and had begun to amass the same types of equipment we had. Their center was Baylor University and East Waco, across the Brazos River. They used the Washington Street Bridge and I-35, which was a big problem for us. The Basement was right in the middle of all that shit so travelling there was proving exceedingly difficult. If the basement hadn’t been completely covered by the rubble of the restaurant, we never could have accessed it. It went from being our home base, to my and Matt’s scouting point where we would listen to scanners and watch the O-Dawgs. There was also the Alico Building, where we climbed to the top and used a telescope to watch the city.
It was through our spying that we learned of the true depth of the horror. There were people coming in from the north. They were refugees from Dallas, Hillsboro, Waxahachie and all the little towns north of us on I-35. The O-Dawgs had that area locked down. They had ambushes set up all along 35 and the service road where they would plant bombs, shoot and kidnap people. I’m not sure what they did with the people they kidnapped, but I have a good imagination.
They were also tagging out areas, spreading out past 35 and were drawing in closer to Waco Drive. They started posting sentries and attacking people who came through. The sentry would radio when they saw someone come through and a “gunship”, an armored car full of armed men would come peeling around the corner and take them out. They marked the areas with graffiti and the graffiti’d areas were getting closer and closer.
The skirmishes were becoming more common. We knew they were afraid of us. They must have been shocked by the flaming car they found after our first run-in. Of course, even in a shitty, torn up world rumors travel fast. If someone were to see one of our teams rake some enemies with full auto gunfire, it would get back to the people who needed to know. They had to be gathering Intel just like we were. We finally, lost a couple of guys, Brian and another guy whose name I don’t remember. They got ambushed down by 18th and Franklin. They were trying to get a truck from a nearby auto parts store, when they were ambushed but a gunship. They had an AK-47 and so did our team, so it was a murderous fight. Frank, who it turned out, was good at stealing cars made it back with one of our vans and a ford Ranger pickup driven by Brian, who despite being hit several times, drove the truck back. The other guy was left at the scene and I was dispatched later with Karl to recover his body. It had been taken, presumably by the enemy. We decided that was too close for comfort. It was time to take down the O-Dawgs, or at least drive them back into East Waco. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too late. All I knew is that it was going to be all-out war.
After the skirmish, we knew they would be expecting retaliation, so we waited. We had chewed them up badly as well, but having driven us back, we were confident they wouldn’t attack. This is not to say the planning didn’t start.
Karl, I, Dave, Matt, Wes, Lynn and Paul all go together in one of the empty rooms around a collapsible table. This was the War Room, so to speak. We all considered each other the core of the group, which, since the start of the war had expanded around us. We recounted that there were probably 50 in the group who could reliably operate a weapon of some type. The M-16 and AK are actually very easy to train. The AK, very much so. We started people off with paintball guns to get them used to the idea of shooting at moving targets. Anyone over 13 was allowed to play paintball. We decided 17 was the cutoff age for real weapons, though. We usually gave them an AK or SKS first, because you could train someone to shoot it, break it down, clean it and put it all back together in one day. Those who showed skill we would give a 16 and take the time to train them on shooting and field stripping. M-16s are the mother of pain in the ass to clean and keep functioning. That was probably a reason Karl kept his Mini-14, instead of taking advantage of the M-16A1s or A2s we found.
There were another 50 people or so who were there, but not as reliable or able-bodied. Women, a few children and young teens and a few old geezers who had the horse sense not to play in the funk when it dropped. Not to diminish the geezers. Some of those old bastards could shoot and knew a thing or two about war. They compared the O’s to the “Gooks” or the “Charlie’s” of the old days. Naturally, we gave any who were able some weapons.
It was one of the geezers, in fact, a guy named Hopkins, who gave Karl the idea for our attack. Hopkins was a Marine in Viet Nam and though he moved like a turtle now in his old age, he hadn’t lost his wit and I’d still be afraid of him if he had a rifle pointed at me because I knew that geezer would drop me and use my body as a sand bag. He wanted an M-14, but he settled for an M-16A2 and a .45. Not a Glock, mind you, he wanted a 1911GI just like Karl’s. He got one.
We knew fighting in Waco was going to be ugly. There are so many packed in little side streets and alleys, you could chase people around for months and never find them all. We decided to use this to our advantage. We knew the O’s could cross the river via Waco Drive, Herring Ave. The Washington Ave. Bridge (which they more or less controlled anyway), I-35, and LaSalle Ave. Karl had us get some of the big diesel trucks and bulldozers and start barricading the ends of the bridges with piles of defunct cars, house wreckage and other debris. The O’s were on the other side watching us work, but they didn’t shoot. They did yell some insults from time to time and when we moved to the Washington Ave Bridge, they began to gather so we beat a hasty retreat. They held areas on both sides of that bridge now, but that didn’t matter to us. We couldn’t barricade I-35 so we left it alone.
At the same time, Matt and Alfred were taking working cars and towing non working cars to barricade Waco Drive, starting at 25th street and all the side streets facing Waco Drive, blocking the road so that no vehicle could get through, only someone on foot. All those cars we had painted red, that wouldn’t move. We did the same thing all the way out to 13th street in the other direction. This would make it much harder for gunships to get through. We also blocked 4th and 5th streets past Bosque Blvd since that was a major escape route to our safe house in Cameron Park.
We already had huge debris walls that surrounded our complex on 19th, 17th and Fort Ave. extending all the way across Waco Drive. That made it so anyone arriving at our location had to use 18th street to get in and we had running school buses with steel over the windows that we used as mobile gates. All of the windows were covered in wood and sheet metal, but had gun ports notched into them. Since we knew of an existing threat from the beginning we were ready to be attacked at any time. We had also pumped all of the gas out of the nearby gas station and the entire diesel, too and stashed it in an undisclosed location. It was all in 55 gallon barrels in the basement of a church over on Sanger Avenue, and we always had one guard there with an emergency radio.
The attack was pure genius. I will tell it as it happened from my point of view and then try to explain what all happened. On a Saturday night, Matt, Manuel and I got our orders. We were to take one of the machineguns, a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), our own rifles and pistols and a ton of C-4 plastic explosive and sticks of dynamite and get it into our boat. It was a bad ass, little ski boat that we used to trek the river sometimes, but we had painted it black and rigged up a quiet motor so we could travel back and forth from The Basement and a wooded area near Cameron Park undetected. We also had some tear gas grenades we had liberated from the police station and some military HC (Heavy Cloud) smoke grenades. The little boat was loaded down, but we managed to putt along to each bridge from Herring avenue, north of us to the big suspension bridge by Indian Spring Park and rig every one with enough Dynamite, TNT or C-4 to blow it up. It ended up taking several trips up and down and we ended up having to go ashore at Indian Spring and haul 55gallon barrels of ammonium nitrate explosive up a hill to rig the Suspension bridge. That was scary. Literally 100 feet away from us were O Patrols sitting in a gunship. One loud noise would have ruined everything. They also had taken the Hilton so we had no way of knowing if we were under surveillance from above.
We finally made it to the Basement at about 4 in the morning and loaded in, stashing the boat under some rubble and camo netting like we always did. We hit the sack, listening to the scanner and taking turns at guard. None of us really slept, though. Absolute Radio discipline was always in effect in our camp and only core members usually carried them. Not so with the O’s they chattered like Parrots over there. That’s how we got the name “Metal Militia” or “Double M’s”. Matt and I heard two O’s on the squawker one night talking about us, debating a run for one of our fuel bumps.
“Shit, let’s do it,” one tried to convince.
“Fuck that!” said the other. “Them crazy crackers stay up there.”
“Let’s just strong arm it.” The other was still in. “fuck their white asses up and take it and leave.”
“Hell, no, nigga. Them white folks ain’t right. They like a fuckin military wit’ they heavy metal shirts and they cammies.”
“Fuckin’ Metal Militia”
They both laughed. I knew which dump they were trying for and radioed a coded message to Karl. We were ready that night but the attack never came. The name “Metal Militia” stuck and we often used it. I heard us referred to as “Double M” and they even had a name for Karl. “Fonzie”. Though he looked nothing like that and still wore his blue Mohawk, it wasn’t the first time I heard the Fonz reference and he hated it. It was probably because of the leather jacket he wore sometimes. The O’s had a pretty deep respect for Karl in spite of wanting to kill him.
We just waited and listened to chatter until late afternoon. It was mid-October, but in Texas it is still warm and every Sunday night, the O’s would rally and cook barbecue in Bear Park. Attendance was mandatory for any member and they had a whole cadre of lesser members, women and young people, mostly who were charged with serving food and drink. It was there that we learned of their nebulous alliance with a lesser Mexican gang from the South side, though the Mexicans generally stayed on their turf and did their own thing. They had enough soldiers to protect their area just like we did, so we basically let them have the South, which was all of the Beverly Hills area and on to Highway six. We listened to each others’ radio, but there was always the silent agreement that we’d leave each other alone. We kept our eyes out, but neither of us had crossed any boundaries yet. We really didn’t want to fuck with the Mexicans, just because of their sheer numbers. Like Jorge said, “you mess with one bean, you fight the whole burrito.” I think they knew we had Mexican and black members, so they knew (except for a few like Alfred) that we weren’t white supremist rednecks who wanted to kill them just because they were Mexican. The Mexicans kept pretty good radio discipline, too so our Intel on their numbers wasn’t reliable.
We could hear the party starting. People were already getting drunk and high. A couple of guys started freestyle rapping into their walkies and were told to shut up by a commander. I could smell the barbecue from the Basement and it was making me hungry. I feel sick about it now, because later I found out they had exhausted most of their stores of food and some of those ambushed refugees occasionally ended up on the barbecue pit. I know it to be true because I saw it with my own eyes. When we liberated the Baylor Library, an adjacent building had been turned into an ersatz butcher shop. Not all the meat in there was animal. Whether all of the people knew they were becoming cannibals, I don’t know. I think that the leadership of the O’s was crumbling under its own weight. From some of the black deserters we picked up, we got the impression that people in the O-Dawg hierarchy were squabbling and the other people, who were virtually serfs, were getting caught in the middle and occasionally executed for things that had nothing to do with them. The O-Dawg commander was a guy called C-Rock and he had a council of governors who dropped orders down to shot-callers, who in turn hustled the people around. We estimated their total number at 350-400, almost 4 times ours. As far as combatants, I guesstimated the number to be more like 100-150, still more than 3 times what we had. If this attack had failed we would have been through. After the last encounter at 18th and Franklin, We knew it was a matter of time before an all-out assault occurred. I think the only reason it hadn’t before was infighting and fear of the Mexicans who could attack if they were weakened.
As the sun’s edge touched the western sky, I heard the roar of engines. In a desolate city, a sound like that just echoes. The rumble got louder and louder and we all woke up, grabbed our weapons and hunkered down. The roar got louder and we started hearing gunfire echo off I-35, very close to us. Suddenly there were panicked black voices on the scanner.
“Double M!! Double M!!” several voices were yelling. “They on 5th street! They shootin’’!”
More gunfire began to erupt as O forces started zeroing in to attack our guys who were roaring down 5th street, merely a couple blocks and one cemetery away from us. The roar went southwest of us and we heard the grenades and a SAW start cutting loose. There were also bursts from AK-47s and other small arms. There was a huge explosion and a fiery mushroom cloud. I could hear screaming in the air. The roaring engine was heading back our way. We all picked up our weapons and ran past the campground behind the Ranger museum and into the cemetery. As we left, I heard screams in the scanner and one voice.
“They comin’ down 18th! AAH Fuck! I’m hit!”
I had an AK-47, a frag grenade and a couple of the military HC gas grenades. I only had 3 mags of ammo. All of it had already started to feel heavy as soon as I put it on. I’d lost some weight in the past month or so, but I still wasn’t in peak shape. Manuel was a big dude and he carried the SAW with all the belts of ammunition. Matt had a tricked out M-16 with a bull barrel and a laser-enhanced sight. He had a frag grenade and a tear gas grenade too.
We hit the cemetery wall in time to see a big bread truck with gun parts and a cow catcher welded to the front come wobbling around the corner of Dutton onto University Parks Drive, the road adjacent to the cemetery. From the light of the western setting sun, I could make out Alfred in the driver seat. They were being pursued by at least three gunships and a mob on foot that must have been a hundred people. I almost shit my pants. Instead I recited Shakespeare’s King Henry V. I used to have this goofy history teacher that would recite it before tests. This was one Hell of a test!
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Manuel and Matt looked at me like I was nuts.
“Or close the wall up with our English dead.”
The truck was covered every inch in bullet holes.
“In peace there's nothing so becomes a man, as modest stillness and humility.”
The truck pulled past us and I could see a man called Cliff firing a SAW, holding the trigger down as blood poured over his face. There were sand bags all inside the back of the truck and one other man was firing from a prone position with an unrelenting blast of 5.56mm from an M-16A1.
“But when the blast of war blows in our ears,”
The man, who I also recognized as a 17 year-old named Nate kneeled as the truck came to a screeching halt and used the M-203 grenade launcher under his M-16. The grenade nailed the first gunship through the windshield and it went up like a fireball. It veered to the side and the one behind it crashed into it, sending one of its occupants flying out the window into the street.
“Then imitate the action of the tiger”
We all cut loose at once. Manuel started tearing into the approaching crowd with the SAW. I opened up with the AK and Matt started bursting full-auto fire from his M-16.
Dave, Nate and Alfred piled from the truck. Cliff tried but was ripped apart by bullets. Dave and Nate dove back in and retrieved the SAW and a few other items. They threw it over the Cemetery wall as Matt, Manuel and I covered them. All at once, my AK ran dry and so did Manuel’s SAW.
“Grenade!!” I yelled, pulled the pin and threw my frag grenade. We all ducked as Alfred, Dave and Nate dove over the wall. That’s when we lost Nate. He looked over the wall as the grenade went off and a piece of shrapnel tore the right side of his head off. Nate slumped to the ground already dead. Manuel was quick to get another belt in the SAW as Matt threw his frag. There was another hideous boom and again the ground shook. Manuel jumped back into position as dirt and debris fell all around us.
“FUCK!” he yelled and opened up with the SAW again. The other four of us popped above the wall to the sight of a huge mob, still a hundred people charging on foot. It was as if the grenades and first volley didn’t even make a dent. They ran right into Manuel’s burst and several toppled. They still fired back. They still kept coming. Some of them were only armed with machetes but they were here for war.
“RUN!” Dave Yelled.
I pulled the pin on an HC grenade and dropped it, running like mad through the cemetery. Even though I was half deaf from the gunfire and explosions, my ears could detect the din of the angry mob at our heels. As we crossed the cemetery into the campground, I dropped the other HC. The anger of the mob was buried in a blanket of white smoke. We saw the Basement ahead and the bunker we had built around the door. Matt stopped and threw the CS gas grenade into the fog. We sprinted and all five of us dove behind the bunker.
Dave and Manuel immediately set up the SAWs while Matt and I started to ready the boat for launch. Alfred loaded another high explosive grenade into his M-203. As I ran past our radio I thought I heard a voice say.
“They’re behind us!”
Then the radio became a garble as several people tried to key up on the same frequency. I heard the SAWs and grenades start go rip as Matt and I shoved the ski boat into the water. As the angry crowd came coughing and stumbling through the tear gas, Manuel and Dave were cutting them down like wheat, alternating bursts on the SAWs so they could re-load and Alfred occasionally covering with blasts from his M-16/M-203 combo. Matt and I were starting to take fire from across the river and returned with our weapons as we sat in the boat with the twin Evinrude motors idling. The SAWs stopped and a moment later all three of our companions came running out onto the river walk screaming “GOGOGOGOGO!”
Go we did. Alfred took the helm and cut a sharp U-turn in the water and the twin 200hp Evinrude outboards roared like lions sending us careening across the water at breakneck speed.
“Hit it!” Dave yelled at me.
I pulled out my radio detonator and clicked. The chain was started. First the basement blew up. A gasoline bomb inside turned the place into a fiery Hell. Our pursuers were still trying to give chase when it went up and there were people on fire everywhere. It looked like a horrifying dance as dozens of burning bodies rose and fell, some diving for the river to save themselves.
We passed under I-35 and then the railroad bridges. Several O’s on top of the trestles were shooting at us as we went under. I clicked a button and blew both bridges out from under them. Concrete, steel and screaming people and even a vehicle fell into the water below in a thundering billow of smoke and flame. I knew we would catch it from the suspension bridge too. I clicked again and the Ammonium nitrate blew all of our potential opposition right off the bridge. Cables gave and it crashed into the water only seconds after we passed under. Dave gave me a nasty look. Manuel and Matt both had their heads down. I don’t think either of them uncovered their eyes until we stopped the boat. Alfred just gritted his teeth and piloted the boat as fast as it would go up the Brazos. Taylor Street, Washington Avenue, Waco drive, Herring Avenue, every bridge that crossed the Brazos went up in a plume of smoke and then crashed uselessly into the water. We circled around and grounded the boat where University Parks Drive met Bosque beside the river. An old car waited for us there
It was then that I became aware of the fires all over town. It seemed from down below that the whole town was on fire above us. We drove with just our weapons down Bosque in a desolate area of town. We hoped to make it back to the compound and find it still in one piece and everyone alive. Now that we were quiet, we could hear heavy fighting in all directions. Especially to the South and Southwest. As always, Alfred manned the wheel like an expert, driving through resistance areas and around obstacles.
Every now and then we would hear more explosives going off and see plumes from a gasoline bomb.
After what felt like forever we saw the bus that formed the back gate of the compound. A watchman identified us and the bus pulled back and let us through. We looked from the roof of the compound and saw the fighting all around. We had people in every standing structure, firing on the O-Dawgs that had made it past Franklin Ave. There were fires and burning cars and buildings that were stopping the gunships. They were in panic and were abandoning the gunships and running on foot. Every now and then a house or building would blow up. I knew that part of the plan. If they chased you into your building, you ran out the back, blew the place up and then ran into another building.
I heard the roar of engines again and up 18th street came two of our trucks, armored bread trucks like the one Alfred and company were driving. They were full of holes and riding on rims, sparks flying behind them. Also behind them was a literal convoy of gunships, followed by a throng of people. There had to have only been a couple hundred, but it seemed like thousands, all grimacing black faces. All wore a part of the O-Dawg uniform, some toting guns, others with spears, machetes and even large kitchen knives.
I ran to the ammo room and grabbed everything I could carry. I passed Lynn who was screaming into her walkie-talkie. “GO! NOW! THIS IS IT!” As I made it back to the roof, I could see now that there were twenty of us up there. Across the street there were twenty more and on other roofs lining 18th street there were pods of 5 or 6 people, each armed with a machinegun, assault rifle or even shotguns with long barrels.
I knew who was in the trucks, too. Karl piloted one and Wes the other. Just as Alfred’s team had done, they were driving at breakneck speed, Karl smashed through barricades, his men shooting at anything that attacked from the front or sides and Wes’ people kept the massive crowd to the rear far enough back that they couldn’t do any damage. As both of our trucks passed Waco Drive, Karl broke right and Wes Broke Left. They and several others spilled out of the trucks and ran behind barricaded cars parked all over the street.
As soon as they were clear, everyone on top of the buildings began to open fire on the mob. People dropped flaming gasoline cans on top of the gunships and bullets flew from everywhere, tearing into the crowd like a dog into a rag toy. The seeming thousands were cut down in waves as they were funneled right into the line of fire, being blasted from three directions with bullets and explosives. Many of them recognized the ambush and started to retreat, clashing into the others who were still trying to charge ahead. They began to trample and clamor over one another in a confused attempt to either attack or flee. We all just kept shooting. Fires spread and corpses piled up, cars started to explode and finally the decision was unanimous. The entire throng began to trample each other in an attempt to retreat. We all regrouped in the part of 18th street that was fenced in by buses between the old house and the Warehouse building we had converted into a sort of home base and Hotel. As the crowd retreated, our people collected their weapons and abandoned the rooftops.
There were only about 50 people left in fighting shape. Some of our guys had died, too and some were wounded. Ammo and weapons were scattered.
“We can’t let them regroup.” Karl was war torn. His clothes ripped and bloody and cuts from shattered glass on his face. His bulletproof vest had two noticeable pock marks. Anyone who can, I need you to get in the trucks and chase. We are going to drive them across the I-35 Bridge and then Ned’s going to blow it up.” Forty of us piled into the trucks and started limping them after the retreating crowd. They had scattered, but Karl was prepared. He hit a button on an old tape recorder. A recorded message began to play at 150 decibels.
“ATTENTION O-DAWGS! GO TO THE I-35 BRIDGES AND GO ACROSS! IF YOU CROSS THE BRIDGE YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED! IF YOU RESIST, YOU WILL DIE! OUR FORCES ARE FOLLOWING AND WE ARE PREPARED TO SHOOT!” The message was followed by three siren-like blasts and then started again.
I was sitting in Karl’s truck. It had been an ice cream truck and still had a clown head on top of it, although Karl had given the clown an evil grin with some black paint. All the shooting had died out and all we could hear was the messages from the trucks reverberating off buildings. Ahead, we could see the fleeing mass as we drove them across Waco like cattle. They were dropping weapons and running. They had no idea that they still had us outnumbered.
Karl and Hopkins had planned the classic ambush! My team wired the bridges, Lynn’s team rigged the red cars with explosives and Alfred, Karl and Wes’ teams had stirred them up by driving right into their turf and declaring war. They knew they had superior numbers so they chased us back. That’s when my guys had blown up the bridges and Lynn’s team used the burning cars piled in alleys and people in houses to herd them all toward 18th street. When Karl and Wes ran out of juice, they led their pursuers up 18th as well and it put 90% of our enemies in a spot where they could be bombed and shot at from 3 sides. We defeated an enemy that we know now, outnumbered us by five to one.
As we herded the walking wounded to I-35, we started to again meet with resistance. All of the enemies, who couldn’t cross because we dynamited the bridges, had made it to 35 and their gunships were beginning to appear and we had to stop because we were taking fire. That’s when Karl’s radio keyed up.
“Hey Ese.” Said a confident voice on the other end. Karl and I looked at each other like What the Hell. “Come in Fonzie, this is Juan Silva.”
Karl picked up his radio. “What’s up, Captain?”
“Joo don’t worry,” said Silva calmly. We knew he was the leader of the South Siders. “We handle these jotos from here. We got a bill to collect from these fuckers. You won’t see them again, you got my word and the word of all my people.”
“I’m not complaining, Silva.” Said Karl, “But why help us out?”
“Joo give us our space and respect. These O-Dawgs don’t respect anyone. They was supposed to chare their supplies in exchange for protection, but the pendejos just steal from us. Besides, my stupid sister thinks you’re cute”
“Have at ‘em then,” said Karl. “I gotta warn you, though. As soon as they cross the bridge, get your peeps offa there.”
“What for?” asked Silva.
“AAaaaay” Said Karl, impersonating the Fonz character from Happy Days. “Just trust the Fonz, OK?”
“Si Fonzie” said Silva. “Joo better get back now.”
“Si señor.” Karl hit the brakes and turned off his radio, “so that’s where that Fonz shit came from. I’ll be a son of a bitch!”
That’s when the Mexicans cut loose and nobody was prepared for that shit.
