by A J Blanc
Crossing Rubicon
By
AJ Blanc
White-Knight Press
Crossing Rubicon is a work of fiction. Although there are some historical facts regarding places and events presented in this book, they are only provided to add a sense of realism to the overall narrative. All other names, places, characters and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.
Copyright © 2019 by Andrew White
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019904278
Print ISBN978-0-9994574-2-9
Ebook ISBN978-0-9994574-3-6
Written and published in the United States of America
Dramatis Personae
Sonya Kane: Chief Hunter, former Marine Scout Sniper
Milo Durron: Deputy US Marshal, retired Army Master Sergeant
Jamey Kirlan: Supervisory Deputy US Marshal
Colonel Takbrite: US Army Criminal Investigation Division Commanding Officer
Jacen Carter: US Army Sergeant
William Karrde: US Army Criminal Investigation Division Agent
Jaina Isard: Daughter of US Air Force General Joben Isard
Marcus Hyde: US Air Force Senior Airman - Colonial Response Force
Darius Parker: US Marine Recon Corporal
Elad McCone: Hunter, former Governors Police Bureau Lieutenant
Joram Bachman: Rosen Network Lead Public Relations Announcer
Raymus Watson: Military Intelligence Contractor, former Navy SEAL
Alena Sarne: National Institute of Corrections Supervisor
Prologue: The World’s a Stage
2076 - Zone Neptune
Another seeker drone fell from the sky. Its black and tan form tumbled across the bright Nevada sand only a few meters away from the man who shot it down. He quickly, yet meticulously, scanned the area with his specially designed rifle scope for any more unwanted visitors, and decided to risk leaving the cover of an abandoned utility shed after determining the area was clear. He eased out of the crumbling door frame, took one more look at his surroundings, and then sprinted toward the remains of a tank, long since overgrown with weeds. He dove into tufts of long grass and crawled under the rusting armored treads.
Peering out of a hole in the armor, made larger by decades of rust, he looked around at the other derelict military vehicles slowly decaying in the grassy depression of the landscape. Many of the machines that still had some semblance of a shape were familiar to him. He had even used a few of them while in the Army. When they were transported to this desolate place in Nevada however, their days were numbered. What eventually became referred to as Zone Neptune used to be where the Air Force tested its bombs and missiles on various vehicles, as well as experimental building materials.
The man, a contestant publicly known as Prisoner 24601, waited and listened. His number, while randomly chosen by the network, was quickly recognized as the prison number of the legendary Jean Valjean from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, so the name Jean soon became a replacement for the number in the public eye. Ironically, Jean’s alleged crimes weren’t much more heinous than his fictional characters’ namesake. Hugo’s Jean was sent to prison for stealing bread; the retired Army Special Forces Jean was forced to choose between imprisonment for stealing life-saving medication for his wife, or participate in one of the Rosen Network’s infamous game shows. He never would’ve guessed the show he would be placed into would be The Most Dangerous Game, a nefarious sporting event where trained ‘hunters’ track and kill convicted criminals, unless the hunted became the hunter.
With the promise of his wife getting the medicine she needed, Jean decided to take the plea deal and sign with Rosen. Ever the eternal optimist, he felt fortunate for being assigned to operate in the former military proving ground known as Zone Neptune, with its ample protection and supply drops. His respite, however, was broken when he heard the sound of a Cirrus X7 rocket pack power down nearby. Jean now knew his contender had finally tracked him down, but he dared not move and give away his position.
“Shooting seekers still provides a general location, which is why you haven’t used yours, I suspect,” the Chief Hunter yelled into the small valley of decaying war machines.
Jean knew the voice well. The first woman in the Marine Scout Sniper Division to have a confirmed kill count in the triple digits is difficult to forget. He knew it wouldn’t take her long to find him, so he snaked his way into a position where he anticipated she’d approach. Jean selected smart targeting on his Heckler & Koch G11 rifle and waited tensely.
The late afternoon sun aided his efforts, casting her growing shadow onto the dilapidated shack he’d just vacated. The shadow materialized into an expertly camouflaged figure. The built-in scope on the revived weapons platform indicated his smart targeting was active, and he fired.
The caseless uranium core round punched through the rocket pack and into her left shoulder. Instinctively, and seemingly faster than a human should be able to move, she dove for the edge of the shack, while simultaneously throwing a countermeasure in the opposite direction.
Smart targeting is designed to direct subsequent fire to the first impact point, even on moving targets. But certain countermeasures can disrupt that feature. As a result, all of Jean’s shots headed towards her thrown device instead, requiring him to change settings and relocate to a different firing position. He crawled out from under the tank but kept it between him and the shack. He knew she was injured, and realized that he needed to smoke her out before she had time to patch herself up and figure out an attack plan.
Jean lobbed a concussion grenade directly into the shack’s doorway. Still got it, he thought with pride over the perfectly landed throw. The force of the explosion blew the roof off and further destroyed the entrance to make the building entirely inaccessible. He fired off a few more bursts for good measure and intently watched for movement.
Suddenly, a second explosion went off behind the shack. Due to its brightness and substantial amount of flames, Jean assumed it was the rocket pack. No one could survive that, he convinced himself. He lingered several minutes more, but detected nothing threatening.
He decided to inch his way around the tank to inspect his handiwork in defeating the third and final hunter of the three-round game. Jean cleared the corner of the tank at a snail’s pace, but froze in his tracks when he noticed a glint of light from a grassy knoll a few dozen meters behind the ruined shack.
Jean didn’t need to look down as searing hot pain enveloped his chest. He knew he’d been shot through the heart. He fell to his knees, and with his last ounce of strength, he managed a firm salute to his worthy foe. It was a gesture of respect from a former soldier to a Marine, before collapsing onto the soft desert foliage amongst the other dead military properties.
Sonya Kane, formerly a staff sergeant in the USMC and now a literal hired gun and Chief Hunter for the Rosen Games Network, approached her latest kill confidently but cautiously. She had left her rifle in the grass where it had just been used, but removed the sling to support her injured left shoulder. She came alongside Prisoner 24601, holstered the sidearm in her right hand, and returned the salute he had so honorably given to her.
Hunter Kane held that pose longer than she needed to. As she stood in the blood-speckled sand, she imagined the cheers likely erupting around the so-called civilized world for the close of one of the most challenging hunts she could recall.
Her victory gave her little comfort, though. Not only had she lost a couple more colleagues, she had also killed who she suspected was another fellow veteran… all for sport; a vet who seemed likely to have been specifically chosen to face off with her in the hunt. While she wasn’t immune to pride, misgivings with the Network’s recent c
ontestants began to creep into her subconscious over the past several months, due in part to a few anonymous messages she had received. She knew something desperately needed to change about her lifestyle choices, and her future in general; she just didn’t know how to go about making that happen.
Chapter One: Dereliction
Chicago – Government building, Dearborn Street
Milo Durron sat besieged at his desk while his office mates continued to rave about The Most Dangerous Game of the night before. He must’ve heard at least four times already how Kane set her rocket pack to explode so Jean would think her finished. He didn’t know what surprised him more; that the brutal gladiatorial game was able to continue long after the Population Control Act was repealed, or that his fellow deputy US Marshals could be entertained by such a thing. Milo stood up in a huff, unable to tolerate any more deviant claptrap.
“Where you going Durron? You a Jean fan or something?” one of his colleagues asked mockingly.
“Just going down two floors to see if ATF has any contraband alcohol and tobacco I can swipe for lunch,” Milo quipped as he exited the congested office corral.
Even at mid-morning a drink sounded good to him, so he headed toward the vending room for one of the non-alcoholic variety. Being a veteran of thirty years, he was far too traditional to drink on duty. Milo had no idea what he would buy when he got there, but when he heard his name yelled in angst down the hall he knew that decision no longer mattered.
“Durron!” Supervisor Jamey Kirlan breathed laboriously. “I’m glad I caught you Milo. We have a situation that may require your… unique expertise.”
Kirlan becoming a supervisor was quite the mystery to everyone at the office for the first couple months of his transfer there. The way he got so sweaty and anxious in even the slightest of stressful situations made people wonder how he became a deputy marshal in the first place. Eventually, one of the office gossips found out that he had spent his entire career in the Financial Services Division. He was good with numbers, not so much with people it seemed.
Almost a year ago, Kirlan was given an ultimatum; choose another division to cross-train in or one would be chosen for him. Information Services and Intelligence were filled up so he went with Prisoner Operations, or POD, and was given a temporary promotion in the Windy City to test his resolve. Despite supervisors not being needed in the field as much as regular deputies, promotion remained a difficult adaptation for him.
“Ok. What unique expertise are you referring to sir?” Milo asked, after letting the man catch his breath.
“There’s been a prison break at Leavenworth” he answered, as he wiped his brow with one of his embroidered kerchiefs. “I understand you worked there for a time?”
“That’s right. At the training center, for my last two years in the Army to finish off my thirty on active duty. How many got loose?”
“They’re saying three… By ‘they’ I mean the task force that’s waiting in the operations room for us. Waiting for you to be more specific.”
Milo strode into the darkened operations room as casually as if he lived there, despite only having the occasional meeting in the windowless, government grey space. Supervisor Kirlan slunk in behind him and quietly took a seat in the corner. The task force’s two men and one woman already seated, and an Army officer waited impatiently on the central monitor. His thick brow drooping lower as Milo sat.
“Well, now that we’re all here…” the colonel began with disdain. “Our fugitives have had a head start of approximately twelve hours, give or take. The locals are coming up empty on leads for how the escape occurred, as well as any trails to where they may be headed.”
The colonel inhaled to continue with his rant-like briefing, but one of the other men in the room cut him off.
“What have these men been charged with Colonel Takbrite? Can we get access to their service records? That may help in tracking them down and anticipating their next move.”
A slight shimmer around the edges of the deputy who just spoke indicated that he wasn’t really there. Milo sighed at having been fooled by another hologram projected into a chair. He subtly checked the table display dimly glowing in front of him, and discovered that he was the only real person in the room, aside from of course Kirlan, fighting to stave off an ulcer in the corner by the look of him.
Takbrite cleared his throat and continued. “You should have the service records before the end of this conversation, or most of them anyway. In regards to their charges, I’m afraid that’s classified at the moment. We’ll revisit that issue at a later date I’m sure. Anything else? Very well. As I was saying… representatives from your respective field offices were specifically selected not only of course due to proximity to the incident, but also because combined, your offices have the most experience in fugitive recovery of any other region in the continent.”
The holograms from the Saint Louis, Lincoln, and Oklahoma City field offices glanced up at each other and shrugged. Milo sat up in his seat, finally realizing what seemed odd about the meeting of the virtual minds.
“Is this everyone working on the escape Colonel? Seems like an awfully small task force for such a high-profile situation.”
The question seemed to annoy the oversized projection. “The usual bulletins will go out to the local PDs. As far as the size of the TF; if you were here a minute sooner, you would’ve learned that we’re trying to keep as many noses out of this as we can by keeping a low profile. Also, this is only half the field agents because we’re pairing experienced deputies with counterparts from the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division,” Takbrite answered without even looking up from whatever held his attention out of camera range.
Milo slouched back down, satisfied with the answer but still skeptical of the approach. He couldn’t recall a single instance where Army CID not only worked on a fugitive case like this directly, but also aligned with an outside agency on equal jurisdictional footing to their own.
“Now then,” Takbrite continued, “with pleasantries finally out of the way, you’ll notice mission briefings appear on your secure in-boxes, code-named Rubicon. You’re all getting the same information so there’s little-to-no redundancy. Let’s go get em.”
The colonel’s image abruptly vanished precisely when the chime of a new message arrived. The digital deputies nodded at each other and faded like the ghosts they were. The lights automatically returned to their normal intensity of a sleepy-dim, faux twilight level. Looking around the room, Milo always liked to admire the paintings of old Chicago, alternating with pictures of early Marshals and other federal agents. He looked down to regard his unopened case file and sighed.
“Good pep talk coach,” Milo retorted to what he thought was an empty room. He then jerked his head over to see Kirlan snoozing in the corner, and grinned to himself at the irony the lack of excitement the case seemed to be inspiring.
Chapter Two: Old Friends
The trip from Chicago to north east Kansas didn’t take anywhere near as long as it used to, thanks to flying cars and the open sky lanes of the lesser-populated Midwest. It was made particularly short with the speed and classic comfort of his new Studebaker Sky Hawk II thought Milo. He could never afford such a luxurious vehicle on even double his pay, but the car was donated to a regional contest for the American Legion, and he had won. The only time in his life he had ever won anything of note.
Studebaker had shocked the world when it went back in business a hundred years to the day its main plant in South Bend, Indiana had closed its doors in 1963. A pair of the original owners’ great-grandchildren had gambled on reinventing the company from a name lost to history, and the risks paid off. In an era where most car companies had either gone under or been absorbed by others, offering a stylish, sleek choice alternative to the universally boxy look created by the remaining auto designers, had been an instant boon for the former failed company.
The ride was so smooth that Milo almost forgot to finish reading his portion
of the mission documents. It seems things were quite straight-forward, which was no surprise to him considering the lack of details during the briefing. Due to his familiarity with the oldest military installation west of the Mississippi River, he was directed to look for any discrepancies at both Kansas facilities, Departments of Defense and Corrections, as well as its personnel who had contact with the fugitives.
Milo briefly circled the non-restricted airspace above the Fort before landing in the visitor’s lot. He had to check his readouts to make sure he’d actually landed, because the touchdown was so soft he wasn’t sure it had even happened. He stepped out into the warm, Midwest morning sun and shielded his eyes to take in the all-too-familiar view. He closed the scissor-door of his Studebaker and turned to look up at the imposing towers of the US Army Disciplinary Barracks of Fort Leavenworth. Most of the original facility, with its last major renovation completed in 2002, still remained, but multiple additions and updates had been made in the interim.
Milo’s final active-duty posting was actually as an instructor of ‘command doctrine’ for the Army’s Combined Arms Center, which was a stone’s throw away from the prison grounds. However, he frequently visited the military’s only maximum security prison to provide examples of what poor leadership and discipline could cause. With some spectacular exceptions, many of the inmates held within the stone and steel walls of the prison were there due to a breakdown of consistency and command structure, in Milo’s purview anyway. The old saying of ‘idle hands are the devil’s playground’ always came to mind when he took his students to the prison.