SHADOWS OF THE VALLEY
Chapter 5: The Ambush at Twin Pillars
Date: May 22, 1936
Location: Southern Patrol Route, Shaanxi Loess Highlands
The wind was the enemy. It whistled a low, mournful tune through the eroded fingers of loess known as the Twin Pillars, carrying with it the fine, gritty dust that found its way into eyes, rifle bolts, and teeth. For Li Fan, prone in a shallow scrape atop the eastern pillar, it was a mixed blessing. It would mask small sounds, but it would also play hell with any long-range shot.
Below him, the patrol trail—little more than a goat path widened by booted feet—snaked through the narrow pass between the two earth pillars. Liu Feng's reconnaissance had been meticulous: the hybrid patrol passed this choke point every third day around mid-morning. Today was the day.
His team was dispersed, invisible. This was their first live test against a true military opponent. The plan was a classic L-shaped ambush, scaled for their tiny force.
Zhao Quan commanded the base of the "L." He was positioned with Wang and Bao thirty meters down the trail, hidden behind a collapsed section of earth wall. Their job was to block the enemy's advance and deliver a concentrated burst of fire into the kill zone. They had the ZB-26 light machine gun, now Zhang Wei's charge after days of obsessive drill. Its harsh chatter would be the signal.
Li Fan, with Chen Rui as his spotter, formed the short leg of the "L" on the high ground. They would oversee the kill zone and engage high-priority targets—the enemy NCO and the machine gunner.
Liu Feng and Zhang Wei were the wild cards, the assault element. Concealed in a dry wash that cut across the trail ten meters beyond the kill zone, they would close for the final assault once the ambush was sprung, their objective to strip the enemy of weapons and ammunition with brutal speed.
Li Fan checked his watch—a simple, robust mechanical piece that was his last functioning piece of 21st-century tech. 0947. He raised his head a millimeter and scanned the southern approach through his captured Mauser's scope. Nothing but dust and dancing heat haze.
He felt a light tap on his boot. Chen Rui, lying beside him, pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then gestured south. Enemy spotted. The boy's vision was preternaturally sharp.
Li Fan glassed the area. There. A flicker of movement at the extreme edge of his scope's field of view, maybe 600 meters out. He counted. Eight men, as reported. They moved in a loose, tactical column, not the bunched-up rabble of the Gaojiashan militia. Point man out front, scanning. The main body followed, intervals of five meters. A tail-end Charlie watching the rear. In the middle, he identified the Type 11 machine gun, carried by its gunner, the assistant just behind with ammunition boxes.
Professional. The assessment was clinical. But predictable.
He tapped Chen Rui's shoulder, made a fist for hold, then pointed at the machine gun team and mimed a scope. Chen Rui nodded, settling his cheek against the stock of his Hanyang 88, which he'd spent hours smoothing the trigger on. He was no sniper, but at this range, in an ambush, he could be effective.
The wait was an exercise in physiological control. Li Fan regulated his breathing, ignored the cramp in his leg, and watched. The point man entered the kill zone. He was jumpy, scanning the pillars. He paused, sensing the terrain's danger. This was the critical moment. If he probed ahead, the ambush could be spoiled.
Li Fan held his breath. The point man, after a long ten seconds, waved the patrol forward. Complacency. They'd walked this route before without incident. The human factor.
The patrol filed in. Li Fan counted them in his head. One… two… three… The machine gunner, number four. The man with the Bergmann submachine gun—the NCO, number five. Six… seven… eight.
He raised his left hand, open and flat, high enough for Zhao Quan to see from his position. Prepare.
The NCO was now directly below him, in the center of the kill zone. Perfect.
Li Fan dropped his hand.
The world erupted in noise.
The ZB-26 opened up from Zhao Quan's position, a stuttering, ear-splitting roar. The first burst was high, stitching a line of dirt geysers across the trail behind the patrol—intentional, to drive them forward. The second burst walked into the pack. One man screamed, spinning and falling.
Simultaneously, Li Fan and Chen Rui fired. Li Fan's shot took the NCO in the center of his torso. The man crumpled soundlessly. Chen Rui's shot hit the machine gun assistant in the thigh; he went down with a shout, the ammo boxes spilling.
The patrol reacted with shocked speed, diving for whatever cover they could find—shallow ditches, the meager lee of the pillars. The Type 11 gunner, disciplined, was trying to set up his weapon, but the fallen assistant was in his way.
"Shift fire! Left flank!" Li Fan yelled, though he knew Zhao Quan couldn't hear him. He fired again, pinning down a rifleman trying to bring his Mauser to bear. Chaos was the goal.
From the dry wash, Liu Feng and Zhang Wei exploded into motion. This was the moment of maximum shock. Zhang Wei, screaming a raw, incoherent battle cry born of all his pent-up fury, charged with his bayoneted rifle. Liu Feng was beside him, cooler, firing precise shots from the hip as he advanced.
It was too much, too fast. The surviving enemy, leaderless and caught in a crossfire, broke. Two men turned and fled back down the trail. Another threw down his rifle, hands raised.
But one man, the machine gunner, found his nerve. He kicked his wounded assistant aside, yanked the Type 11's bipod down, and swung the muzzle toward the charging Zhang Wei.
"Gun!" Liu Feng roared, tackling Zhang Wei to the ground as a burst of 6.5mm rounds buzzed over their heads like angry hornets.
Li Fan saw it all in slow motion. The gunner, exposed from his position on high ground. A clean shot. He squeezed the trigger. Click. A misfire. A cursed grain of loess in the chamber.
Chen Rui saw it too. He had been tracking another target. He swiveled, a smooth, practiced motion that belied the panic in his eyes. He didn't have a clear shot—the gunner was partially shielded by the body of his assistant. It was a poor shot, at a difficult angle.
He took it.
The crack of the Hanyang 88 was lost in the din. The bullet struck the gunner's raised right elbow, shattering it. The Type 11 clattered to the ground, unfired. The gunner shrieked, clutching the ruin of his arm.
Silence descended, abrupt and ringing. The firefight had lasted less than twenty seconds.
"Clear the zone! Now!" Li Fan barked, scrambling down from his perch, his heart hammering. The two fleeing enemies were gone. One lay dead (the NCO). Three were wounded, including the gunner and his assistant. One was unhurt, a terrified boy no older than Chen Rui, kneeling with his hands locked behind his head.
Liu Feng and Zhang Wei were already among them, moving with ruthless efficiency. They collected weapons, slung the Type 11 and the ZB-26 over their shoulders, stripped ammunition belts and pouches. Wang and Bao emerged from their position, weapons trained, securing the prisoners.
Li Fan approached the kneeling boy. "Unit. Commander's name."
The boy stammered, "3rd… 3rd Composite Patrol Company. Under Captain Ma. Please, don't kill me."
"Composite? Of who?"
"Our unit… some from the 32nd Army, some from the… the Peace Preservation Corps." A collaborator unit. These were Kuomintang regulars mixed with Chinese troops in Japanese employ. A messy, telling detail.
Li Fan left him with Zhao Quan and went to the wounded. The gunner was bleeding heavily from his elbow, his face pale. The assistant's thigh wound was also bad. The third had a through-and-through in his shoulder. They would die without care.
He made a decision. "Liu Feng, apply tourniquets to the two worst. Use their own field dressings." He turned to the prisoners. "You will carry your wounded back to your lines. You will tell Captain Ma that the shadows in the valley do not want war with his men, but we will defend our ground. If he sends more patrols to hunt us, we will send more back to him like this. If he leaves us be, we will leave him be. Do you understand?"
The unharmed boy nodded frantically.
"Take their boots," Li Fan ordered Zhao Quan. "And their canteens. Not out of cruelty. It will slow them down, give us time. And they will remember the walk."
Five minutes later, his team had vanished back into the labyrinth of gullies, laden with a staggering haul: two light machine guns, five Mauser rifles, over a thousand rounds of ammunition, grenades, maps, and field gear. Behind them, a shattered patrol began the agonizing, shoeless trek back to their base, a message of fear walking with them.
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Date: May 25, 1936
Location: Site Charlie (a fortified gully), Central Valley
Three days later, in their newest, most concealed location, they conducted the after-action review. The captured gear was inventoried and cached. The mood was triumphant but tempered.
Li Fan stood before them, the captured Type 11 disassembled on a cloth before him. "Tactically, the ambush was a success. We achieved surprise, dominated the fight, secured our objectives, and withdrew without loss. Materially, we are now twice as powerful as we were three days ago." He let the muted pride swell for a moment before crushing it. "Now, the failures."
He looked at Zhang Wei. "Your charge was brave. It was also stupid. You broke from the assault plan. You presented a perfect target. If not for Liu Feng's awareness and immediate action, you would be dead, and the machine gunner might have killed others. Your anger is a weapon. You do not throw the hilt at the enemy. You must control it."
Zhang Wei stared at the ground, his earlier swagger gone, replaced by the visceral memory of bullets cutting the air where his head had been.
"Chen Rui," Li Fan turned. "Your shot on the machine gunner. It was a one-in-a-hundred chance. You took it. It worked. That does not make it correct. You had a designated sector. You abandoned it for a low-probability shot. If another enemy had been active in your sector, he could have killed me, or Liu Feng. We are a watch, and each of us is a gear. If one gear jumps track to do another's job, the whole mechanism fails."
Chen Rui absorbed the criticism, his face serious. "I saw the threat to the team, sir."
"And your team saw the threats in your sector. Trust them. That is the hardest lesson."
Finally, he looked at them all. "My rifle misfired. My primary weapon failed at the critical moment. I became a spectator in my own ambush. Lesson: equipment fails. Drills overcome failure. We will institute immediate action drills for every weapon we carry. We will train until clearing a misfire is as natural as breathing."
He knelt, picking up the bolt from the Type 11. "We hurt them today. Not just in men and material. We hurt their morale. We proved they are not safe. Captain Ma will now have two choices: throw a large force into a fruitless search, or pull back. His superiors will question his competence. This is psychological warfare. This is how a small force influences a larger one."
He reassembled the Japanese machine gun with swift, sure motions. "But we are now on the map. The next response will not be a patrol. It will be a company. Or artillery. Or aircraft." He saw the flicker of alarm. "So we change. We split. Liu Feng, you will take Wang and Bao and establish an independent observation post to the south. Monitor Captain Ma's response. Zhao Quan, you, Chen Rui, and Zhang Wei will come with me. We are going further north, beyond the reach of this local feud. We have weapons to trade, and a company will not build itself."
The unit was splitting for the first time. It was a risk, but necessary for growth, for survival. They were no longer a single shadow. They were becoming a scattering of darkness, stretching across the valley.
End of Chapter 5