Jensen looked up. “Why don’t you go sell that load of horseshit to Marcy, she might be buying.”
Daniel looked around quickly to see if the tall, blue-eyed blonde was nearby. “Don’t screw with me like that!”
Jensen laughed. “Have you said more than two words to her yet?”
Daniel’s smile disappeared; Jensen knew that look. “You’ve never been married. Hell, have you even had a long-term girlfriend?”
His friend answered, “I don’t know what you mean by long term, but somewhere between 4-6 months is the longest relationship I’ve had.”
Daniel looked confused. “That’s a long timeframe. How do you not know how long you were dating?”
Jensen smiled. “Well, it was at least four months, because that’s when I deployed. I know it was fewer than six months, because that’s when I found out about her other boyfriend.”
Daniel looked at him. “Aww shit, Jody?”
Jensen nodded, “Jody.”
The larger man looked sad for a moment, “So … four months it is.”
Jensen looked shocked. “That seems unfair. It could have been longer!”
Daniel shook his head. “Have you seen yourself? Four months and a day, maybe two.”
Jensen looked down. “It’s not like there was a whole lot of opportunity. I was literally deployed 2/3 of the time. Gone for a year, back for half, gone for another year. You can’t find true love in six-month intervals every other year.”
Daniel looked off into the distance, “Yes, you can. You can find true love in a day if she’s the one. For me, that was Sonya. Even though she’s gone, she’s still the one.” He sighed. “That’s the problem. I like Marcy a lot. She’s sexy, she’s funny, she brews beer, but anything with her would feel like cheating on Sonya. I’m not up for that.”
Jensen said the only thing he could think of at the moment: “Give it time, man. Like the stream, it needs time.” He didn’t know if it was helpful or not, but he felt both lost and brilliant as he said it.
Chapter 8
“We should get solar panels,” Brent was telling the group. “I know of several businesses in Dahlonega that have them, because I installed them. If we go back, it would take me a few days at most to salvage them and bring them back.”
Jensen, the tactician, offered a possible issue with that course of action. “What if Dahlonega is gone? You left because of the fires. What if they’re gone? Burned?”
“Then we turn around and come back, nothing lost. It would take a few hours at most,” Brent offered.
“Who would go? Daniel and I know the tubs, you know how to take out the panels. Just us? Someone else?” Jensen trailed off, waiting for a response. He was comfortable with Jess and Dave’s shooting, even Abby and Emmy with their pistols, but they were still pretty inexperienced with the rifles. They trained every few days and they were all improving rapidly, but it was nothing compared to his own capability.
The room was quiet for a moment before Sheila said, “I’ll go.” Jensen turned to her, surprised. “There’s a much better chance of a firefight out there than there is here. I’m a doctor.”
Dave spoke up. “But you’re the only one with any sort of medical experience; if something happens to you, we’re screwed.”
Sheila looked at him, “You may have noticed there are only ten of us here, and there may not be any others coming. If something happens, I might be the only one that can do anything to save them. We can’t afford to lose anyone.”
They discussed the idea for a while, proposing alternatives and trying to find weaknesses in the argument, but what Sheila said made sense. She was one of the most valuable people in the group, but so were Jensen, Daniel, and Brent. They all had skills the group couldn’t afford to lose, and they were going to be out in the open trying to salvage a power supply. So it was decided.
The next morning, the four of them gathered near the fully charged tubs. The trailers had been cleared and attached to the hitches to haul materials. Since they could potentially be gone for several days, all four had been exempted from standing watch the night before. None of them slept very well though. They could all hear Jensen struggling in his sleep, talking to someone from long ago that hadn’t made it back home.
Sheila chose to ride with him, thinking she might be able to talk to him about his nightmares. Brent would ride in the multicam tub with Daniel. They each carried small packs with food, water, fire, and additional ammunition. In battle, there’s no such thing as extra ammunition. Inside the enclosed trailer were two tents in addition to nylon straps and some ropes, but they didn’t expect to use them. If they were out overnight, they planned to either use the safety of the tubs or a building they could secure.
It was a risk, but the prospect of having power again was enough to propel them forward, and after a final check of the Humvees and some last words to the six remaining, Jensen drove forward down the hill toward the road. It was quiet for some time as they drove toward Clayton and turned south toward where the two groups had initially met. Eventually, Sheila broke the silence when she turned to look at Jensen and asked, “What were you dreaming about last night?”
At first, Sheila wasn’t sure he’d heard her, but finally he answered. “Billy.” Sheila waited in silence, respecting his choice to either continue to explain or not. Eventually he continued. “Billy was a Lieutenant from Arkansas. He was a scout driver, like me.” Jensen took a deep breath before continuing. “We had intel on a group called the Lashkar-e-Taiba and were going in to check things out.”
“It was just supposed to be a cleanup mission. The Air Force bombed the hell out of the camp as we got close. We were only going to go in to collect survivors and check the area for any documents or media we could send back to the spooks.” It was a full 30 seconds before he continued again. “I had Billy in the lead. It was good training for him, and we were pretty sure they only had small arms, no rockets or anti-armor weapons. It should have been safe.
“Then one of the pilots decided to do a strafing run on the camp. Something happened with the gun and one of the shells hit Billy’s cockpit.” Jensen paused again, even longer this time. “It went through the side, right here.” He pointed to his left, at the hatch. “This was a huge shell, 30 millimeters, and it went through the armor and right into Billy’s legs. It probably should have killed him, but it didn’t. One of the rounds went through here,” he indicated the top of the tub, “and killed his scout.
“The rest of the shells hit around his tub and kicked up dust. We couldn’t even see what had happened at first. It took me a while before I realized his tub had been hit. At first, I thought he’d just stopped because of all the dust, but when it started to clear and he still wasn’t moving, I got worried. It wasn’t until I drove alongside that I saw the hole.”
By this time, Jensen had started to slow. The tub had lost speed as he recounted his experience, one of the many nightmares he had almost every night. It wasn’t just this one, but this was one of the worst for him. “I tried to open his canopy and help him, but it was fused shut from the round. I could see his legs were destroyed and he was badly burned.
“Billy just kept trying to open his hatch. Once or twice he asked me to help him; I don’t know if he meant help him to open the hatch or just help him.” He picked up speed slightly, seemingly aware that he’d slowed. “I kept trying to get him to use a tourniquet, but it was like he didn’t even hear me. He just kept trying to open his hatch and screaming. Then he stopped.
“Command made us finish the mission and sent a recovery vehicle out. They didn’t get Billy or his scout out until the next day.” He took a deep breath, “I couldn’t help him. I could only watch him die.” Sheila expected tears after recounting such a horrible trauma, but Jensen just gave a tight-lipped smile and told her, “I got him killed. I should have been in the lead, not him. That’s why I have nightmares.”
Sheila put a soft hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t get him killed. That pilot d
id.”
Jensen shook his head. “No, we saw the video later. His targeting reticle was on the camp; it was just a software glitch. The pilot didn’t do anything wrong.” He looked far ahead down the two-lane divided highway. “Just a software glitch.”
The doctor, who did have tears in her eyes, unlike the broken veteran, didn’t have anything to say to that.
“He had a son a month later. His widow gave birth to a son. She named him William Jensen O’Rourke.”
They rode in silence after that, Sheila’s hand still on Jensen’s arm.
Chapter 9
They didn’t encounter any other vehicles during the rest of the drive, and neither of them broke the silence again. The outskirts of Dahlonega appeared untouched by the fires. Jensen drifted to a halt and keyed his microphone. “Black Widow? Canada. You guys take the lead and bring us to the first location.”
Jensen trusted that Brent knew the town better than any of them and would be able to guide Daniel far easier from inside the second tub. “Copy that. Widow in the lead. That still feels racist.”
Jensen laughed and shook his head softly at the reply.
Sheila was amazed. During the drive, he had recounted the most horrific story she’d ever heard, how his buddy had been killed and he felt responsible, yet here he was less than an hour later laughing. When she looked over at him, her confusion must have been apparent, because he just shrugged and said, “It’s what you do.” He watched as Daniel drove around, the tall black man and the older construction worker both flipping him the bird as they passed. He chuckled. “It’s what you have to do. Anything else is madness.”
She indicated the tub ahead of them. “Does he know?”
Jensen nodded, “He knows. He knows about Billy and dozens of others. But he’s been through his own hell that’s just as bad.”
Sheila looked confused again, “Wasn’t he in intelligence?”
Jensen nodded, “He was.”
Sheila prodded, “Has he been in combat like you?”
Jensen shook his head, “Not like me. He’s been shelled by rockets and mortars but hasn’t been in direct combat.”
Sheila tried to work this through in her head. “Then how can he have experienced something that bad?”
Jensen was quiet for a moment, following the tub ahead of him. “Do you know what intel does? His kind of intel?”
Sheila looked forward at the same multicam vehicle. “They came into the clinic sometimes, but they didn’t really say much. So, no.”
Jensen nodded; that made sense. “They don’t say much for a couple of reasons. First off, they can’t. They could legitimately be put to death if they did. But it’s something else, the things in their brains. You can’t imagine them.” The former cavalry officer, who had recently recounted his harrowing experience, struggled with what to say next. “Do you remember the Chicago bombing?”
Sheila nodded, “Who doesn’t? It was horrible.”
He nodded his head toward the other vehicle. “Daniel thinks he might have been able to prevent it.”
Sheila shook her head. “I don’t see how, wasn’t he here in Georgia?”
Jensen nodded, “He was. With his stuff, he doesn’t have to be there to monitor things. He could be anywhere.”
Sheila understood that. She remembered the cyberattacks which had shut down air travel for two full weeks. The perpetrators had been in Iran.
“He heard a lot of chatter about Chicago, but passed it off to another team for processing. It wasn’t his mission.” Jensen thought for a minute, there was nobody to prosecute him if he said something he shouldn’t. “Three days later, Chicago happened. He doesn’t know what he heard. It was interesting, but he was working on something else and there was a team for that, so he sent it to them. Maybe they didn’t get to it, maybe they didn’t think it was important, or maybe it was nothing, but he knows the little bit he listened to included a boat and Chicago.
“That man has spent 16 years listening to targets and locating them for kinetic strikes. He has been responsible for far more death than I have. Some of it is probably justified, some of it isn’t, and the bombs and missiles always kill the people close by in addition to the target.” Jensen looked over briefly, “In his heart, he knows he’s killed innocent women and children, directly or not. And he thinks he could have prevented Chicago. So in addition to the hundreds or thousands of others, he feels responsible for those 78 killed.”
He said one more sentence as they slowed near what appeared to be some sort of bank. “So you have to, or you’ll go mad.” Sheila didn’t respond, but she was pretty sure both men were mad, no matter how well they hid it.
They were stopped on the edge of town, still surrounded by the browns and greens of the winter foliage. The pavement was patched and broken in places, but the bank to their front looked brand new. It was one Jensen had never heard of before, Millennial Bank. That sort of made sense; the oldest of the millennials were now in their early fifties.
Millennials had been crying about being stolen from for decades, so it seemed fitting that they were here to steal from them yet again, only this time they were stealing electricity. It also made sense that a millennial-owned business would have a strong solar power capability. It was that generation that had made the electric car, solar power, and even his own tub a real possibility.
Jensen drove his tub through the shallow ditch toward the brick building. He cringed a bit as his trailer followed; it wasn’t built the same way as his armored vehicle. “Black Widow, I’m going to circle around and see what we’ve got. Post in the lot pointing toward town.”
Daniel, in the multicam tub, simply replied, “Copy,” before he started moving.
Behind the bank, Jensen saw a flat field that stretched perhaps 50 yards to the wood line. There was nothing there to note, so he continued around the building. He proceeded slowly as his eyes swept the terrain, ignoring the building for now. His recon loop took about two minutes just to circle the brick building and its twin drive-up lanes.
As he passed Daniel’s tub, he looked through the thin window and gave Daniel a thumbs up before stopping his tub facing diagonally toward the way they had come. He hadn’t sensed anyone following them as they drove toward Dahlonega, but it never hurt to be careful. Jensen turned toward Sheila. “I’m going to check this out. Stay in here and keep the canopy closed.”
Once he was on the ground, Jensen did a full circle, listening intently as he did so. When he was as confident as he could be there was nobody else around, he motioned for Brent to join him. He watched as the older man got out of the second tub slowly. His joints were stiff from the cramped compartment where he’d been sitting for the past few hours. Jensen thought to himself just how much he feared getting older, and how unlikely that was based on the past few months.
As Brent drew closer, his gait started to smooth out just a bit as he worked through the stiffness in his joints. Jensen asked him “What are we looking at here?” Brent looked over the building, confirming what he remembered. “We’ve got enough panels on top to keep a supermarket running, redundant controllers inside, and several power banks inside, though I don’t remember if we can get to all of them.”
The two men walked toward the windowed front of the building. Jensen tried to look past their own reflections into the darker interior, but couldn’t be sure if there was anything moving or not. Brent continued, “This was one of our newest installations. They only opened last year, so the equipment is about the best we’re going to find without getting all new stuff.”
Jensen paused. “So we can power all of our stuff with just what’s here?”
Brent turned to him. “Theoretically, the equipment that’s here could probably power about 20 or 25 homes if we took it all. The owner wanted to power the entire place, sell power back to the utility company, and still have enough juice left over to keep it running for a month or so with no external power. The entire setup cost over half a million dollars.”
&nb
sp; Jensen whistled softly. That was a lot of money. Then he considered the cost of the two tubs that they’d rescued from Fort Benning. Those were about as much as the entire power setup here. He considered how they were going to get in. He’d never given much thought to robbing a bank, but simply getting inside shouldn’t be too tough as long as they didn’t try to get into the vault. They didn’t have any sort of equipment to do more than strip out some electronics.
As he mulled it over, Brent unholstered his M&P Pro and put two bullets into the center of the sliding doors. Then he simply pulled one to the side. The older man noticed the shocked look on Jensen’s face and told him, “That’s the only way we were getting in. I built this place.”
The two men walked into the small antechamber, where Brent simply pulled the inner doors aside. He explained, “This is mostly to prevent wind from blowing directly inside and screwing up the climate control. You may have noticed it gets pretty hot in Georgia. Air conditioning can get expensive.”
As they entered the main chamber, lights on the ceiling sprang to life. It felt like a miracle to Jensen after spending the past few weeks in unlit buildings with only his tub, fires, or handheld lights providing illumination. It made him want to cry. He was suddenly eager to get started and bring this miracle back to the camp. Somehow, over a month after the power had gone out everywhere else, this place was still operational.
Their first priority was to get the solar panels. The batteries and the controllers wouldn’t do them any good if they couldn’t produce power. Jensen tried to think of other ways to produce power if they only had the inverters and other equipment without the panels. Wind? Steam? Hydro? The method that took the least work, at least for now, was sitting right in front of them.
Once on the rooftop, Jensen’s heart sank. The panels were huge. The heavy frames were bolted into the rooftop and looked immovable. He turned to look at Brent, certain they couldn’t remove them without a crane. “There’s no way we can get this stuff off of here. We’d need heavy equipment.”
Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 2): Fractured Paradise Page 6