“I’m not talking about cutting and running here, Hector. But I am talking about contingency plans. We’ll be dealing with hundreds of wounded while simultaneously coming under attack. You remember how that worked in New York, right?”
Guerra didn’t even blink. “Like I could ever forget?”
“Yeah, we can’t get caught like that again. And if something happens to the train, you can bet it’s going to be a kinetic event. So the first thing we want to do is gather the dependents, assess their ability to travel, then secure transportation so we can continue the roll to Colorado. We’ll of course take as many people as possible—I doubt the Guard is going to prevent that, but if push comes to shove, we need to square away our own first.”
“MRAPs can roll about three hundred and fifty miles,” Hartman said. “Five tons less. Call it two twenty-five, two fifty. Maybe not even that far, if the shit is fucked up. That’s something we’ll need to consider, if we lose wheels on the road.”
“Mobility is going to be an issue,” Guerra agreed. “We already faced that before, so we know what to expect. You know what we might want to consider? You guys’ll think I’m crazy, but seriously?”
“What’s that?”
“School buses. And if not those, then super C motor homes.”
Ballantine did cackle at that. “Motor homes? Shit yeah, we’ll all just drive one of those.”
“Seriously, man. Some of those things mass more than an MRAP. Big, tall, straight sides, little opportunity for the reekers to grab a handhold other than the mirrors. Some of ’em can even tow forty thousand pounds.”
“Sounds like someone wants to do some shopping,” Hartman said.
“Hey man, they’re built on a Freightliner or Volvo tractor chassis,” Guerra said. “Those things would be unstoppable, since they’re originally cargo haulers. We get a couple of those, we’d be good. Admittedly not much to hold back the reeks if they catch us while stopped, but you can’t be choosy.”
“And then ... there are school buses,” Ballantine said.
Guerra spread his hands. “Admittedly, less pimped out but equally viable.”
“Guerra, you certainly have some expensive tastes. But let’s plan on using available rolling stock, okay?”
“Hey man, was just making a suggestion for when we’re out on the road and we lose some assets.”
“Yeah, all right. So listen, I’ve been all up and down the rail cars from here forward,” Ballantine said. Up front, we’ve got lots of troops and vehicles, mostly Humvees and five-tons. You guys know how many MRAPs are behind us?”
“Seen about a dozen or so,” Guerra said. “MaxxPros. Don’t know if they’re standard issue or with the improved suspension system or not. Might be more, haven’t made it all the way to the end of the train myself. Hartman?”
“Yeah, same. Might be some of the XL variants back there too.”
“Okay. For our purposes, that’s what we’ll need. So if the train gets clobbered, we’re going back there to unload our rides. We’ll bring them up here, get our people aboard, then wait for the Guard to catch up. We’ll help where we can and provide security, but if shit gets too hot, we’ll have to start moving westward.”
“You think the Guard is going to let us do that?” Hartman asked.
“I’m not talking about abandoning them—”
The door to the next passenger coach opened, and Captain Bellara entered, followed by a tall, reedy black woman whose hair was pulled back tight. The Indian American officer looked tired, and when he flashed Ballantine his usual smile, it was a dim copy of its usual self.
“Sergeant Ballantine,” Bellara said. “Just who I was looking for.”
“Sir?” Ballantine asked.
Bellara motioned to the black woman who stepped in after him. “Meet First Lieutenant Robinson, my XO.”
“Ma’am,” Ballantine said automatically. “Uh, Staff Sergeant Guerra, Sergeant Hartman.” He dutifully pointed them out.
Robinson nodded to them curtly. “Lightfighters. Hear you guys are the holy grail among American fighting men. Glad to see you’re not all white, corn-fed farm boys.” She looked at Guerra as she said the last.
“Trust me, LT. I’ve eaten plenty of corn in my day,” Guerra said.
“Don’t doubt it,” she replied. Ballantine looked from her to Bellara and back again. The lieutenant had an interesting look, all fire and fury that was tempered by an almost demure presence that he wasn’t terribly used to in the military. He slewed his eyes away from her and locked them onto Bellara again.
“Sir? Something up?” he asked.
“In about four hours, we’re going to be coming up on the switching station south of Chicago,” he said. “My company is going on the ground. Would like it if you and your troops could jump in and help out.”
“How so, sir?”
“We can’t know what we’re going to run into,” Bellara said. “And ...” He looked at Guerra and Hartman. “Uh, good to speak in front of these men?”
“Yes, sir. Saves me the time of filling them in later.”
Bellara nodded slowly. “Okay. Anyway, like I said. We don’t know what we’ll find, and the train might have to halt for quite a while. This was a heavily traveled area in the rail network, and the general consensus is that a lot of maintenance might not have been conducted once the emergency started. So we’re going to want to hedge our bets and get some units ready to move by road if something goes pear shaped.”
Guerra and Ballantine exchanged a glance while Hartman studied the floor. Bellara took it all in.
“And I kind of think you guys were talking about the same thing,” he continued.
“Just contingency planning, sir,” Ballantine said. There was no point in evading the question. What was Bellara going to do, turn him in for trying to stay ahead of the threat matrix?
“You guys have something pulled together?” Bellara asked.
“Not necessarily, aside from ensuring the safety of our dependents and securing suitable transportation,” Ballantine said. “Legally, of course. No one’s going to steal vehicles without authorization, but those vehicles need to be offloaded from the rail cars and stocked for transit.”
Bellara nodded slightly. “They do. We’re planning something similar, which is what I”—he paused quickly to glance at Robinson before shifting his gaze back to Ballantine—“we wanted to talk with you about. You guys aren’t necessarily integrated with us, and while you have more field experience than a lot of us do, you’re numbers are awfully low. I guess that’s why Jarmusch has you hanging out here in the passenger coaches instead of with the rest of us Nasty Girls.”
Ballantine shrugged. “Maybe, but I thought Captain Hastings had managed to score this.” He waved his hands around, indicating the passenger coach.
Bellara shrugged as well. “Maybe. Don’t know, he had a lot more face time with the command group than I did.”
“So you have something in mind for us, sir?”
“I think so. What was on your wish list, if you had to bug out?”
“MRAPs and five-tons,” Ballantine said. “A buff with fuel. If we could manage, a couple of gun trucks with GAUs on ’em.”
“And motor homes,” Hartman added quietly.
“Oh shut up, man,” Guerra snapped.
Bellara’s smile suddenly had a little more life. “Motor homes? Damn, I could get into that. Afraid we have none available, but if we keep our eyes open...?” He shrugged, indicating he was open to the possibility.
“See what I mean, man?” Guerra said to Ballantine. “Right there! The captain gets it!”
Bellara held up a hand. “What I mean is, it’s an interesting concept. But I’m not so sure we can be commandeering property that doesn’t belong to the US government. Hell, and as a Guard guy, I’m not sure I can even do that.”
Ballantine didn’t like the banter, not when there was not just one but two National Guard officers squaring off with him. “Sir, do you have offici
al orders for us?”
Bellara shook his head. “Not yet. Thing is, if orders don’t come down in a few hours, then we’re going to have to make this up as we go along. If the train gets immobilized in the middle of deadhead city, it’s going to be a chore to get everything squared away. Lots of things are going to be happening at once. We’ll need to stay solid to see our way through.”
“Yes, sir. We know that, but that’s not much of an answer,” Ballantine responded. Coordination of the larger issues was supposed to happen well above Bellara’s pay grade. If Jarmusch’s staff wasn’t making that happen, then it was going to take a lot of elbow grease to get it going from the enlisted man’s level. Bellara and his lieutenant most certainly knew this, and that made the entire conversation extremely odd.
“Sir, is there a conversation you want to have with us?” he asked Bellara when the captain didn’t immediately pick up the thread.
Bellara nodded. “Sure. Since you guys are kind of freewheeling it a bit, I figured it might make some sense if you and your team were to take charge of the civilians if something blows up. I know you guys are vaunted light infantry and all that, but you have your own people right here with you. So it might make some sense to have you guys overseeing any evacuation that might take place. Any interest in that?”
“Yes, sir,” Ballantine said. “We could most certainly do that.”
“Tell me how you’d want to get it done?”
“We were thinking we’d obtain some vehicles and stage them near the passenger coaches if something goes down. That way, we can provide security while having the transportation assets on station for when and if we need to bug out. It’ll take time to offload the vehicles, which we would expect. But it’ll take longer to reload them under attack, should the train become mobile again.”
“Sergeant, if something manages to stop this train I’m not expecting it to ever move again,” Bellara said. “From where I sit, we won’t have to worry about reloading shit. It’ll be rubber meeting the road the rest of the way.
“Yes sir, that’s pretty much the way we see it as well,” Ballantine said. “Like a lot of you guys, we have some dependents we need to see to. Obviously in the usual scope of military operations, that wouldn’t fall to us, but it does consume a fair amount of planning bandwidth.”
“Totally get it,” Bellara replied. “I’m with you on that.”
“Some of our people have been through a lot, so they know what to do,” Ballantine continued, “but they can’t be expected to man an M249 and have at the dead.”
“Can they help us round up other civilians?”
Ballantine exchanged glances with Guerra and Hartman. “Maybe. Depends on how intense the engagements are. If we’re under direct attack, that might be asking a lot. If things aren’t as dynamic, then yeah. I’d guess they could.”
“They might be able to tend to the injured,” Guerra said. “That would free up a lot of manpower if they can do that.”
“Agreed.”
“You guys have any medics assigned to you?” Bellara asked. “I don’t know your teams’ specialties.”
“No, none,” Ballantine said.
“Okay. I’ll send one or two back to you. Might make sense to have some medics prepositioned back here in the passenger cars anyway. Anything special I need to know about? Any pre-existing issues, medically speaking?”
“We have a soldier who has a compound fracture of his leg. And we have a child with severe autism.”
Bellara frowned. “Wow. Both of those must suck. All right. Let me see what I can do.” He pointed to the rear of the train. “Past the passenger cars, there’re four flat beds. Two have vehicles, the others have troops. The commander back there is a captain named Paulick. Big guy, like your size, Ballantine. Good guy, but very measured—not the kind of leader to respond to things without guidance from above, you know? That’s why I’m going to leave Robinson here. She can work him through that stuff. She can make sure he knows that he’s up for taking care of the civilians. Getting them loaded onto vehicles, etcetera, etcetera. I’ll try and pass on to him that you’ll need vehicles and that you’ll be leading the effort to evacuate the civilians. So for the moment, you’ll be working under her. Is that cool?”
Ballantine looked at Lieutenant Robinson. “LT, you know your shit?”
“Probably not as well as you know yours, Sergeant. But I can get Paulick to do what we need, most definitely.”
“How? He’s a captain, you’re a first lieutenant.”
“He wants to fuck me,” Robinson responded without missing a beat.
Guerra snorted and Hartman shook his head. Ballantine merely shrugged.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. I mean, uh, I guess I should be, anyhow. But if we can use that to our advantage, it might not be such a bad thing.”
Robinson stared at him, the whites of her eyes prominent against the darkness of her skin in the shadowy compartment. “Are you insinuating I actually sleep with the slob, Sergeant?”
“No, ma’am. Seems pretty obvious it’s not something you’re into. But these are desperate times, so if you can strut a little for the guy to get what we need, I might encourage that.” Ballantine shrugged again. “It’s embarrassing, but...”
Guerra held up a hand. “Hold on. LT, any chance this guy might like Asian girls?”
Hartman laughed. “Jesus Guerra, you want to unleash Diana on the guy? Why not just shoot the fucker? It’d be more humane!”
Bellara and Robinson looked at the trio of lightfighters, and their confusion was plain. “Guys, what the fuck are you talking about here?” Bellara asked.
“One of our dependents is a, uh, was a stripper. She could probably distract this Captain Paulick if that’s what was required,” Ballantine said. “Doubt she’d be up for it, but if things are especially dire...” He let the sentence trail off, mostly because he didn’t want to continue the entire line of discussion.
Bellara seemed eager to abandon it as well. “Yeah well, we’ll figure that out when we have to. But Brenda here can probably handle Paulick better than anyone on the train, aside from the command group. He’s not a bad guy, just kind of ... well, not really a deep thinker. His mission is to protect the vehicles, so that’s what he’s going to do.”
“Any tankers back there, sir?” Guerra asked.
Bellara thought for a moment. “There are a couple of HEMT tankers, but I don’t know what their load is. I would guess either diesel or water.”
Robinson said, “Whichever it is, we should probably try and get them both.”
“Roger that, LT,” Ballantine said. He was starting to like her.
“So, here’s a the plan at the moment.” Bellara looked at the lightfighters and adjusted his rifle strap. “You and the rest of the Tenth are going to oversee the evacuation of the civilians, as many as you can. Brenda will oversee everything and serve as the liaison between you guys and the Guard, but the word is your team are water walkers so no one’s likely to get in your face no matter what you ask for. My company will fall back and provide overall security as much as we can, and assist with the evacuation process if possible. If not, we’ll at least hold as many of the dead away as we can and give you guys enough time to hit the road.”
Ballantine cocked his head to one side. “You’re not mounting up with us, sir?”
“If we can,” Bellara replied. “But we all know how fast this stuff blows up. We may not be able to. We’re entering a high density population area, and that probably means we’re going to be outnumbered a thousand to one—just like at the Gap. Only we won’t have walls to hide behind, just a rail car with lots of glass windows.” He pointed at the passenger coach behind them. “That’s probably going to hold them off for about twenty seconds if they manage to get to us in force. So yeah, you guys probably shouldn’t wait for us. If the reekers make it to the train, we’re likely already dead.”
“You talk about it like that, it’ll come true,” Robinson said.
Bellara flashed her his customary smile. “Hey, it is what it is. Can’t let anything get in our way.”
“No sir,” Ballantine said. “You absolutely can’t.”
Bellara nodded to him. “That’s why I came to you guys. Our families are on this train too. If anyone can get them to where we need to go, it’s you.”
“You said you’d send back some medics, sir?” Guerra asked. “Aside from Trevor, we don’t have any immediate need for them, but if push comes to shove, they’re going to be handy to have around.”
“Roger that, Guerra. I’ll send them back ASAP.”
“Captain, you know Chan? Commanding officer of the MPs?” Ballantine asked.
“Sure.”
“He might be a good addition to our force here.”
Bellara shook his head. “MPs got hit hard. They’re providing physical security for the command group. Already made a run at him, and he has his assignment.”
“Okay. Too bad. Sir, it would really be best if you were to try and get Jarmusch on board with all of this. We can’t have any confusion when things fly off the rails. No pun intended.”
“I get that, Sergeant Ballantine. I’m on it, and the colonel’s smart enough to understand that the mission essentials need to be taken care of first. I’m pushing it through the command group, they’re just stuck trying to figure out what it is they need to do first, and when, and in what order. All I’m suggesting we do here is that we come up with a plan that we can execute in the absence of other orders. Right?”
“Right.”
Bellara looked from Ballantine to Robinson. “So you guys are good with Robinson being underfoot?”
“We are, sir,” Ballantine said.
“Brenda? Think you can manage not to piss off the lightfighters?”
Robinson’s full lips twitched slightly in a vague attempt at a smile. “I think I might live longer if I stay out of their way.”
These Dead Lands (Book 2): Desolation Page 22