“Like a sleeper cell?” said McCulver.
“I caught something about it on the internet. Part of that Wikileaks thing. Domestic Indigenous Response Team. It was stripped off the web almost as soon as it went up, which tells you something,” lied Eli.
“DIRT?”
“Yeah. They ain’t very creative with their acronyms.”
Chapter 27
EVENT +64:59
Limerick, Maine
Alex scanned the road ahead through the AN/PVS-15 Generation IV night vision goggles (NVG) generously provided by 1st Battalion’s supply chief. He held them like binoculars, instead of attaching them to the ballistic helmet at his feet. Battalion supply offered him a full set of “battle rattle,” which he had graciously accepted, despite the unlikelihood of ever using any of the gear. You could never predict when a second set of Dragon Skin armor might be useful.
“The turn is coming up on the right,” said Alex, lowering the NVGs.
“Striker escort turning right in five-zero meters,” said the driver into his headset.
“Almost home,” Alex said to the pitch-black cabin behind him, eliciting a few exhausted comments.
The marines drove without lights for most of the trip beyond the New Hampshire/Maine border. Human traffic disappeared after the state police checkpoint, making it safe to open up the convoy’s speed. All standard operating procedure designed to minimize the risk of ambush. What seemed a little overcautious thirty minutes ago, felt reasonable now that they were close to Gelder Pond. The less attention they drew to the compound, the better.
Alex dialed the ruggedized MSAT as the tactical vehicle eased right onto an inky stretch of packed-gravel road.
“Where are you?” said Kate.
“Turning into Gelder Pond. We should be at the gate in a minute or two. What’s for dinner?”
“Dinner? Didn’t they give you a few MREs for the trip?”
“Road snacks didn’t make the list.”
“Your mother just volunteered soup and sandwiches,” said Kate. “We’re trying to unload the fridge.”
“Good thing my mom’s on the scene.”
“We’ll see how long that attitude lasts. Meet you in front of the garage,” she said.
“Make that the barn. I want to keep the Jeep out of sight. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The Matvee veered left onto the eastern side of the Gelder Pond loop, eventually straightening on a rutted dirt road. A sudden jolt reminded Alex that not everything had improved since the Humvee.
“Looks like someone forgot to pave this side, sir,” said the driver.
“You should see it in the winter. Not too much further on the right.”
The convoy crept down the road while Alex peered through his binoculars at the forest fifty feet ahead of the vehicle, looking for a break in the underbrush.
“You can hit the lights now,” said Alex.
“Roger, that,” replied the driver, raising his NVGs. “Lead vehicle, lights on.”
Alex squinted as the road and surrounding trees appeared. Insects flashed in front of the tactical vehicle, streaking like meteorites until they cleared the beams. The Matvee slowed in front of the gravel driveway.
“Looks like a tight fit, sir,” said the marine.
“It’s designed to accommodate a small tow truck, but I think we can call it good right here, Corporal. We’ll toss all of the gear into the Jeep and take it from here.”
“Embarrassed of your new friends, sir?”
“Never, but I have a little explaining to do, and the fewer armored vehicles they see, the better.”
“Embarrassed,” said the turret gunner.
“Hey, I’m trying to let you guys down easy.”
“We’ll get your gear transferred and hit the road.”
A few minutes later, the Jeep sank on its axles, burdened by five adults and twice the volume of gear they had originally packed in Scarborough. Alex opened the lead Matvee’s front passenger door and extended a hand across the seat.
“Thanks for letting Captain Chaos take a turn in the turret. Sorry about the noise.”
“Don’t apologize to me, sir. That was the longest thirty minutes of PFC Jackson’s life,” he said, shaking Alex’s hand.
“Sorry, Jackson.”
“No sweat, Captain. He looked happier than my daughter at Disney World!” yelled the Marine through the roof hatch.
An uncomfortable, palpable silence enveloped the cabin as Jackson’s statement synched. Alex suddenly felt like a complete asshole. They’d spent nearly five hours in the Matvee, and he’d been too self-focused and tired to ask about the marines’ families. They’d become an instrument, their sole purpose to deliver him safely home to his family amidst jokes and stories about their experiences in the marines.
“Sorry,” said Alex.
“Nobody wants to talk about it, sir. Trust me. We all signed up for this,” said the corporal.
“Still,” he said, pausing. “Has anyone been in contact with their families?”
“Negative, but Jackson lives thirty minutes away in Fitchburg. His wife knows to head over to Devens.”
“What about you?”
“Worcester. CO said they’ve started to evacuate military families to Fort Devens. I’m hoping they send a truck down. Four guys from the battalion live in the area. Good chance, right?”
“I think so,” Alex said. “Either way they’ll be fine. Corporal Lianez, see you on the other side.”
“Not if I see you first, sir.”
Alex left the door open for the convoy’s senior marine, Staff Sergeant Evans, who stood behind the vehicle.
“Staff Sergeant, good luck with the rest of your mission.”
“Same to you, sir. Give us a holler if you run into trouble. Colonel said they shifted our tactical SATCOM network one hundred miles north of Boston. Use the ROTAC to reach us. We’re programmed into the system as Striker Five-One.”
“Which one is the ROTAC?”
“Small, green handheld. Ever use ROTAC before?”
“Sorry, I’m a bit of a dinosaur. Sincgars was new tech in my day,” said Alex.
“Shit. I’ll have to break this down Barney style for you.”
“Thanks,” said Alex, sarcastically.
“Menu button brings you ‘channel select.’ Scroll to Striker Five-One and press ‘Lock.’ Push to talk after that. It works over EMSS, typically in a regional DTCS configuration,” said the staff sergeant.
Alex shrugged his shoulders.
“Satellite stuff. Two hundred fifty mile range. PFM. You just press the button like a walkie-talkie, sir.”
“Pure fucking magic is right. What’s my station identifier?”
“I have no idea, Captain, but we don’t screen our calls.”
“I’ll let you roll. You’re welcome to swing by on your way south, grab a warm meal. Just saying.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Welcome aboard, sir,” Evans said, coming to attention and snapping a salute.
“Carry on, Staff Sergeant.”
Alex jogged onto the gravel road, using the light from Ed’s Jeep to guide his way to the gate. He turned to watch the last Matvee rumble past the driveway entrance, headed south on Gelder Pond Lane. The dark shape disappeared, swallowed by the trees and thick brush. He turned his attention to the gate’s touchpad and pressed “Intercom.”
“No solicitors,” said a male voice through the speaker.
“Looks like I’ll have to take your grandson elsewhere.”
“We’ll have none of that. Coffee’s brewing! Welcome home, son!”
Alex inserted his key into the metal box and turned it clockwise to manually override the fried circuits in the touchpad. The gate sprang into action, squeaking on its track. He heard his mother above several voices yelling in the background.
Chapter 28
EVENT +65:18
Parsonsfield, Maine
Eli leaned forward to examine a piece of
stained poster board that featured a crudely drawn map of the Fletcher compound. The ancient velvet sofa creaked with his movement, causing one of the men standing in the background to break the silence.
“Damn, Eli. This is close quarters, and I’m not ready for a chemical attack.”
A few of the men stifled laughs, but quickly straightened up when he fired a murderous stare at the disheveled, overweight bald fuck that made a joke at his expense. The room was pushing ninety degrees from the late day sun, compounded by insufferable humidity. The ten men jammed onto folding chairs in the cramped living room of Eli’s mobile home had turned the place into a cesspool of body odor and shit breath. He’d have held the meeting outside if the mosquitos and no-see-ums hadn’t pushed him to his limit earlier. He was looking for an excuse to reinstall some discipline in his organization, and Dennis whoever-the-fuck looked like a good candidate to serve as an example.
“Dennis, I need to have a word with you outside.”
“I’m sorry, Eli. It was just a joke. I wasn’t thinking, and it just flew out of my mouth. Won’t happen again. I promise. Seriously.”
“You done?”
Dennis nodded with a pained look of regret and fear.
“Outside.”
“Eli, I really—”
The handheld standing on the kitchen counter next to the sofa squawked. “Liberty Actual, this is Recon One, over.”
Now he had Jeffrey Brown dicking up his job, too? There was no feasible way for Brown’s radio to transmit eight and a half miles. They had been lucky to get a mile and a half out of these pieces of shit. Either Brown had abandoned his assigned reconnaissance position early, or every hill and tree between here and Limerick had been obliterated. His bet was on the former. Eli reached out and grabbed the radio, never taking his burning eyes off Dennis.
“Why are you out of position, Recon One?”
“I saw something that needed to be reported, sir.”
“Unless you saw my nephew’s SUV, you better get your ass back into position.”
“You need to hear this, Eli. I just witnessed a small convoy of military vehicles pull into Gelder Pond.”
“Say that again?” said Eli, noticing most of the men in the overcrowded room shift uncomfortably.
“Three vehicles approached from the west on Old Middle Road and turned into Gelder Pond. Two Matvees and one Jeep Wrangler running with no lights. I say again. They were running dark, with no headlights. The two military vehicles reappeared seven minutes later and turned east on Old Middle, heading toward Limerick.”
Kevin McCulver, his second in command, stood from his chair next to the couch and mouthed, “Jeep?”
“Are you positive that you saw a Jeep Wrangler?” said Eli.
“Affirmative. I watched them through night vision. Four-door model. Driver only,” echoed Brown.
“Could you determine the color?”
“Negative. Too dark without the night vision scope. Definitely Maine plates, though. Do you want me to head back to the OP?”
A sudden combination of exhilaration and uncertainty forced Eli to pause. He needed a moment to process the implications and spin them in his favor. On one hand, he was thrilled by the sudden appearance of a Jeep matching the description of the one used to ambush his brother, especially in the vicinity of the Gelder Pond compound. Connecting the Jeep to the assassination of his nephew should remove any shadow of a doubt that the attack on the compound was legitimate, not that he had heard or detected any opposition to the proposed operation. His men seemed eager to put their training to use, however he suggested.
On the other hand, he couldn’t readily explain the presence of a military convoy, unless the story he had concocted had been some kind of subconscious manifestation of his true suspicions. He’d blurred the lines between fact and fiction so many times in the past three days, he could barely keep it straight himself. Shit, maybe he’d been right all along. He hoped that wasn’t the case. A government-sponsored, false-flag operation of this magnitude meant they were headed for trouble. Federal trouble. Once he mopped up the Fletchers, or whoever they claimed to be, he needed to accelerate the recruitment and training of his army, on the off chance he had to lead a real fight against a government occupation.
“How many men do you have at the OP?”
“Three, including myself. I left two behind to keep an eye on the road,” said Brown.
“Roger. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Head back and tell your two men to stay in position and observe the entrance to Gelder Pond for the rest of the night. Then drive straight to HQ. We have some decisions to make. How copy?”
“Solid copy. Turning around now, sir.”
“Good work out there. Make sure those two don’t fall asleep. We need to know if those military vehicles return. Did you see any mounted weapons?” said Eli.
“Affirmative. M240s.”
“Roger. See you shortly. Out.” Eli placed the radio on the counter and resumed his position on the couch. “Dennis?”
“Yes, sir!” he said, standing at attention.
“You pull shit like that again and I’ll hang you from a tree. Copy?”
“Copy, sir.”
Dennis’s ghost-white face betrayed no emotion. He stared at the middle distance like a good soldier. One more slip-up and he’d join Hatfield in the barn.
“Mr. Brown’s sighting can’t be a coincidence. Hatfield confirmed that a black, four-door Jeep Wrangler participated in the attack at Milton Mills yesterday. My brother reported it over his radio, right before the ambush.
“Here are the facts. Gunmen in Waterboro kill two of our own and steal their car. Witnesses have them approaching the two sentries on bicycle and shooting them in cold blood. Very accurate shooting, I might add. We tracked this group to an isolated property on the eastern side of Gelder Pond, complete with security gates, cameras and solar panels. This place is not your ordinary lake house.
“Now the same Jeep involved in the bridge ambush arrives at the Gelder Pond location—under heavy military escort? This confirms it. We have a government-sponsored Special Forces unit operating in southwestern Maine, and I think we just found one of their safe houses, if not their primary safe house. We need to hit this location with everything we’ve got. Break these sons of bitches and send the government a message. They are not welcome in southern Maine.”
The men stared at him, paralyzed by his suggestion for a moment.
“Tonight?” said one of the squad leaders.
“Against Special Forces?” said another.
“Early morning at the latest,” said Eli, standing up to establish some dominance over these quivering bitches.
“Mr. Russell? I heard that the shooters were women.”
“What’s your point?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to imply—”
“I didn’t ask to hear you chatter away like a bitch. If you’re gonna interrupt me, you better have a fucking point. What’s your point?”
“I guess it’s that a bunch of women with guns doesn’t sound like a Spec Ops team,” the man blurted.
The room catapulted into silence, everyone avoiding eye contact with Eli.
“Why is everyone so quiet all of a sudden? Bertelson had the first sensible question of the evening. Thank you, Mr. Bertelson. Look, I don’t believe we’ll find a Special Forces team here. I’ve read about this kind of thing on Wikileaks. We’re looking at a government sleeper cell put into place after the 2013 pandemic. They go about their lives until the government initiates the next false-flag crisis. You should have seen the place by Gelder’s Pond. Definitely a self-sustaining compound—with electricity.
“They probably got caught off guard by the EMP like the rest of us. No way the government would risk any kind of advanced warning, even for the sleeper cell. The bridge attack occurred around the same time. I bet the men took the Jeep and sent the women on bikes so they didn’t miss the ambush deadline. Brown and his crew probably witnessed one of the sleeper a
gents returning from a face-to-face meeting with Homeland and military commanders in New Hampshire. Whoever they delivered must be pretty damn important to rate a heavily armed escort. I say we take them out before they have time to execute the next phase of their plan.”
“How many men?” asked McCulver.
“Three squads. Twelve each. Two to breach the house, one to provide suppressing fire. We’ll put the thirty-cal into action for this one,” said Eli.
“No shit! That’s what I’m talking about,” shouted another squad leader.
“Count my squad in,” said Paul Hillebrand. “I have two men trained to use the thirty-cal.”
“The job’s yours,” said Eli. “Any more volunteers?”
Everyone stood at once, vying for Eli’s attention.
That’s more like it.
He settled on Bertelson’s squad, against his better judgment, but looking around the room, the crew-cut wearing, beady-eyed ex-army specialist was the only squad leader beyond Hillebrand that didn’t look like a crumpled bag of dog shit. He stepped outside to cleanse his nostrils of their stench. Nobody followed except for Kevin McCulver, who joined him for a cigarette on the muddy gravel driveway. They walked until they were far out of earshot of the mobile home.
“I’m a little concerned about the military escort,” said McCulver, lighting Eli’s cigarette.
“A little? I nearly shit my pants when Brown passed that over the radio. I thought he was fucking with us.”
“What does it mean?”
“For what?” said Eli. He took a deep drag and blew the smoke at the mosquitos above his head.
“For the operation. What if you’re right about this group being linked to the military?”
“What if I’m right?” he said, taking a step back from McCulver.
“Eli, it’s me you’re talking to. I knew this whole government angle was a ruse when you first suggested Special Forces kidnapped one of our guys. I played along, because I don’t care. I’m in this for the long haul.”
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 87