Return of Our Country

by David M Burke

  Briggs and Krieger exchanged glances and Krieger nodded. They didn’t understand the method, though they knew enough about communications on missions to understand some principles. All they could do was watch and hope.

  The computer screen scrolled with data from the bottom up, filling the screen several times. Then it stopped.

  Hemmele used his arrow key to scroll up… and down… and back up… and down… thinking… thinking… interpreting. Then he turned to his right with some trepidation. “Lindsey, look at this.”

  Lindsey, a blond woman who had worked with Hemmele for almost three years, looked. Her eyes lit up and she smiled and then looked down at her screen.

  Hemmele turned to Krieger and his eyes were alive. “Sir, we have identified the type of device that was used!” Hemmele turned back to his screen. “See the number to the right of the screen? It’s a probability number. It tells us the probability of the pattern of this mapped incident matching each known device and their known patterns. Well, in scientific terms we don’t say it that way, but basically we know with somewhere around ninety-seven percent certainty that this pulse was caused by this type of device.”

  “What type of device is it?” Krieger immediately questioned.

  Hemmele’s scrolled to the far-left hand side of the screen, and Krieger and Briggs saw his head lower. He highlighted some numbers and letters on the screen and exchanged a look with Lindsey before turning to Krieger. Krieger noticed that the look on Lindsey’s face had changed too.

  Hemmele didn’t answer the question immediately. He chose his words carefully saying, “Sir, this operation is beyond top secret because of the technology. The lack of knowledge about this type of capability… is because it’s funded by money that’s under many financial approvals that trigger close inspection. What I’m trying to tell you, sir, is that you’re about to learn what type of device was used. The perpetrators have no idea there’s any way for anyone to know what you are about to know. So, I’d keep this to myself if I were you.”

  Hemmele looked directly at Krieger.

  Krieger was about to ask Hemmele to get to the point when Hemmele finished with an ominous statement. “These numbers reference a device that’s only made by the United States Government.”

  Krieger thought to himself, I’d better call the vice president.

  Chapter 11

  That same afternoon…

  Outlined against the blue-grey sky, the wolf’s hair stood on end. Over six feet long, this male held his head down in a defensive posture.

  He must have been separated from his pack for some reason, Brooks mused.

  It had been almost a year ago since Brooks had been living back at his cabin in the Alaskan wilderness. Now fully retired, Brooks had spent the last year hunting and fishing. He was a patriot, but a retired patriot. The kind they don’t make many of.

  After being recruited and then working for the CIA for decades, he became known to a select few in the agency as Griffin. The name was a reference to the invisible man from the 1933 movie. When Brooks went under cover for years, his identity faded, but a new reputation grew. He became known as the CIA’s most proficient field operative. Because of his ability for eliminating a target in a manner which made it look like an accident, those within the CIA gave him the name of ‘The Shadow.’ Almost no one knew who he was. But they knew of him.

  He retired from the CIA without his identity ever being compromised. After the CIA, he had been doing contract work as a freelance hitman for a group of patriots who were finally beginning to fight back against the deep state. They quietly targeted traitors. It was those connections that had led him to risk exposure to rescue Adam from a remote location where he was being held at the hands of the globalists who kidnapped him.

  It had been almost a year ago when, sitting on the back porch of his bush cabin, Brooks had seen the wolf at the edge of the woods for the first time. Eventually, one day, the large animal had come down the path, closer to the cabin, and sat. His silver and white fur had glistened when rays of sunlight peered through the clouds.

  Brooks had watched as the wolf looked in his direction and followed his every move in the twilight. That night, Brooks had left a sizeable piece of moose meat on the porch. The next morning the meat was gone. Brooks continued this practice each night. Each morning the scraps were gone.

  It wasn’t long before the wolf would come and eat the scraps while Brooks watched. Then one time the big gray, now mature, came within ten yards. Brooks backed into the cabin and a few moments later, he threw a slice of freshly carved moose towards the wolf. The canine’s black tipped tawny-buff gray hairs on the back of his neck had relaxed. With nostrils flexing in and out, he had approached the meat. With fangs over two inches long, this one could already eat about twenty pounds of meat at a sitting. This piece, slightly over a pound, was just a snack for the big canine.

  Brooks tossed another piece of moose and the wolf was more at ease.

  In another month, the wolf would come and sit by him on the porch, both predators looking over the open meadow in silence. A bond had developed.

  One day, Brooks warily reached out and touched him ever so slightly; the wolf accepted that.

  Another month and Brooks had coaxed the lone canine into the cabin. Constantly wary, Brooks had kept his hand on his pistol.

  The animal was curious and had sniffed his way around the cabin. As time went by, they both became comfortable sharing the space.

  One time, Brooks had walked outside and closed the door behind him with the wolf still in the cabin. The instincts of the wild animal had taken over, and Brooks couldn’t get the door opened fast enough as the big gray went wild inside the cabin before he dashed out. It took a while before he was willing to enter the cabin again. From then on, he kept an eye on the open door.

  This mutually respectful relationship lasted the whole summer and most of the winter until, when a mission called, Brooks left in the spring. He never saw the wolf again.

  * * *

  Brooks snapped out of his dream. The incident with the wolf had happened a few years ago. He sat up on the couch. He took a deep breath, still foggy from his nap.

  What was that about? he wondered.

  He had stayed out of touch with just about everyone since a few weeks after the election.

  Wow, that was vivid, just like it had happened. Except for the eyes. They were surreal, different. They were like… not like a wolf’s eyes. They seemed to be human eyes.

  Strange, was all he could think.

  Brooks tried to clear his head. His leathery palms rubbed each side of his face. He had been around long enough to trust his senses, and to pay attention to signs from God, no matter what form his messages took.

  Brooks was aging, but the feeling in his stomach was, I’m being called to serve my country again.

  The Shadow, which was what he had been called many years ago when he had been in the CIA, got up and walked to the bathroom. In there, he took out his pocket knife and scraped grout from around a wall tile. He removed the tile with his knife. He slowly drew it towards him as the fifty-pound braided monofilament fishing line pulled his cache from inside the wall. He reached in and helped his flexible tubular container navigate its way through the hole. In a moment he retrieved a few passports, drivers’ licenses and a key to a safety deposit box where he stored gold. He could trade in the gold at a friendly trading shop. He’d get ninety-seven percent of its current value.

  Brooks would replace the tile and re-grout in a minute.

  First, he pocketed a small plastic bag of SIMs chips and thought, Maybe it’s time to call Ferraro.

  Chapter 12

  The six-foot-three, two hundred and sixty-pound Sergeant Major Briggs had been getting everything ready all night. It was now two days after the local EMP blast had caused major civil unrest. It had killed several, sending many to ho
spitals and causing extensive damage to personal property. Hemmele had tracked where the stolen EMP device had been taken that night. Armed with that information, Mauricio, who was the field grade officer spearheading communications for each of Krieger’s teams, closed in on the general location. He watched and listened from a distance. It wasn’t long before he saw suspicious activity and monitored Arabic conversations centered around an old warehouse.

  There was no assurance the device was still there. But the activity indicated that something was definitely going on.

  The location fit an ideal extraction point. On the south side of the rundown part of Philadelphia, this warehouse was surrounded by abandoned buildings from a forgotten era when industry fed life into the middle class. With the Delaware river to its back, the ship yard just up river still built ships. But it wasn’t what it once was. The location also offered the terrorists easy access to interstate I95, the major highway that ran north and south. The terrorists could move the device on truck or boat. Nestled here, it was removed from the surveillance cameras that panned the busier parts of the city.

  Since the national guard had been deployed to some larger cities, Briggs had used the guard convoys to get his people into the city. Then to get closer, Briggs had acquired construction equipment and detour signs. He had men to the north, south and west. Some were on jackhammers; some operated equipment. A few were holding stop signs in case anyone came by.

  Krieger had flown up from DC on a small private jet. George and Adam had been adamant that he should not charge in with the entry team, declaring that he was too valuable to be hit in a firefight.

  Still, they must succeed, and Krieger was the type of leader who wanted to be there himself. These terrorists were still at large, and now that the handcuffs were off, Krieger could use his fledgling private team to stop this group from striking again.

  Krieger had stationed himself about a hundred yards from Briggs, his second in command. But with Krieger focusing so much attention on other matters for the President, this had become Briggs’s operation.

  Briggs verified final preparations with one of his teams. He waited for a response and adjusted his tactical head gear. He looked at Mauricio, who had set up all of the communications, including the plan of who was covertly speaking with whom. The construction teams in the field had fully covert communication sets with in-ear speakers. Operatives still concealed in trucks had a tactical head gear system which had both tactical command radios and soldier to squad radios. Mauricio asked for final verification from the remote team in a semi-truck. Nothing.

  Then from the window of a warehouse they were conducting their overlook from, Mauricio and Briggs saw something drop directly from above. It hit the ground like someone shot a goose out of the sky. They heard the distinct sound of plastic hitting the ground. Mauricio peeked out and caught a glimpse of a few more falling from the sky. Drones.

  He looked at Briggs, they both immediately picked up other electronic devices. “Shit, they’re all dead.”

  They had come to the right place. The terrorists had just used the EMP device again.

  Suddenly, the window Briggs and Mauricio were conducting overwatch from, was riddled with gunfire. Fragments of the old frame flew and glass shattered. Somehow, the terrorists had trained their weapons on Briggs’s location. Not only did the terrorists have the EMP device, as Briggs and Krieger had suspected, they must have other sophisticated equipment allowing them to detect the location of the team to launch a pre-emptive strike.

  Briggs raised his modified General Dynamics .338 Morma Magnum machine gun over the window frame and volleyed short bursts from side to side. Then he ducked back behind the security of the wall. After the terrorists returned fire again, Briggs knew they had a bead on the window, so he reached up without exposing himself and unleashed another ten rounds per second from the .338 Morma. He brought the big gun down and put his back to the wall.

  “Can you raise Krieger?” he yelled.

  “Negative sir, we’ve got nothing,” Mauricio yelled back over the uproar and began searching his pack. “Give me a second.”

  Briggs shot a few more short bursts. The equipment they had tracked had just been used again on them. With the value of that device, it was likely an HVT (High Value Target) was inside.

  Mauricio quickly pulled out his high-tech, hybrid communication device, which used a combination of newly developed miniature vacuum and insulating technology to withstand an EMP burst. At Krieger’s request, the good Dr. Hemmele had equipped the team leaders, just in case. The hybrid communication devices didn’t have the range of his usual equipment, but luckily, they didn’t need that much range.

  Inside the building, Mohammed Adair and his men were fighting for their lives, and they were extremely well equipped to do so.

  By the time Mauricio called Krieger, Krieger had already thrown down his radio and reached in his pocket for the backup from Hemmele. Once communication with Krieger had been re-established, they agreed and gave the signal.

  The back of two unmarked semi-trucks opened and an extra highly trained team of twenty two surged towards the target. With new drones now replacing the fallen ones, Brigg’s team, who had been on the ropes, was ready to counter punch.

  Mohammed Adair was taken aback. On the screen of the US military device provided by the deep state, he could see the size of the American force. It was surging towards him, forward in an orchestrated offensive from all directions.

  Sand sprayed his face. Whatever type of rounds the Americans were using pierced the sand bags stacked against the walls.

  He had been directed not to communicate with his superiors until he was out of the area. But this was an emergency. He opened a protective lock box and frantically removed his cell phone. Something was jamming it.

  Mohammed’s men screamed to communicate over the noise of the firefight. This was a counter-attack he hadn’t planned on.

  Who were these people? This type force and equipment wasn’t supposed to be in cities inside the US.

  Briggs’s team unleashed tactical sniper fire. Now equipped with the new telecommunications devices, they surged forward in unison. The impact of the tactical hits was magnified by an overwhelming amount of debris filling the air.

  A robotic armor protective vehicle led the way. It protected the special operations team that deployed from the trucks.

  Drones shot small tactical missiles into the terrorists’ stronghold from all sides. Mini-drones flew in through the broken windows. Briggs’s tactic was basic: deploy overwhelming force and capture the device before they could either destroy it or communicate with anyone else. He could not underestimate this team. He assumed he was up against highly trained terrorists. They were possibly led by an HVT on site.

  Krieger correctly surmised that these terrorists had been told to lay low for a period of time before moving out. With very few signals filling airwaves across the city, any communication would be easy for the US military to isolate. Communications could give them away by allowing the military to pinpoint their location. Since no communication was detected, Krieger was sure the terrorists hadn’t communicated with anyone since the EMP attack.

  It was a good plan. The terrorists had done what they were told. But they hadn’t counted on Hemmele’s ability to track their location.

  Glass exploded from almost every direction. It rained down on the men inside the warehouse. Flashes of specially designed tracer rounds filled the air. They added to the disorientation of the terrorists. Krieger and Briggs were using every tactic available. The terrorists were overwhelmed. Then a small prototype percussion bomb came through a blown-out window, and exploded inside the warehouse. The impact disabled everyone in the room. Men were sent half way through walls, ribs broken.

  These terrorists’ ultimate mission had been to overthrow the infidels, to drive the country to Allah, and to allow ambitious globalist men to
take control of the resources. Now, that was the last thing on their minds.

  Glass exploded outward from the percussion bomb. That was the signal to Briggs’s team to take the fight inside.

  “Move it!” Briggs yelled. They surged forward.

  Krieger followed orders. He wasn’t part of the entry team. But he knew his priority was to find these terrorists, eliminate them and, where possible, capture and interrogate them. He had to find out as much as he could.

  Krieger waited for Briggs to give the all clear.

  * * *

  Broken glass crunched beneath Krieger’s feet as he walked across the warped wooden floor.

  Only three men remained alive in this main room. The percussion blast had taken out those who hadn’t succumbed to the onslaught.

  Krieger surveyed the contents of the room. It was a textbook stronghold.

  Under the debris, Krieger found a US military device. It used a heat signature to detect anyone approaching. It was a recent model. It was one of the best; a US military device.

  Krieger picked it up and shook it in the man’s face. “Where did you get this?”

  The smug jihadist retorted in Arabic. He had no way of knowing that Krieger understood. The jihadist had done his job here, but was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to replicate this in another city. His soul would now escalate to the pinnacle of his religious belief: he would spend the rest of eternity with 72 virgins.

  Mohammed Adair looked up at Krieger and wheezed, “Allah Akbar. Now you can make my day. I saw that movie on the internet. We will never talk.”

  “I saw that movie, too. I have something for you… from the internet also. It’s called 27 Bubbas.”