The Battles of Rock Harbor

by J. B. Craig

  The Battles of Rock Harbor– A “Bugging In” tale of the Apocalypse

  By J. B. Craig

  January, 2018

  Copyright January 2018, Case #: 1-6218552471

  This book is dedicated to my bride, S.L. Craig. Thank you, dear for giving me the space to get this book out of my head, and not mocking me too terribly for it. I love you!

  A special thanks to all of you who read and helped edit the “friends and family version” of the book. All you Salmon Silencers and other family members who gave me non-stop grief, but ended up helping make the book better, rock out loud!

  Note to Readers – The explosive devices that are created in this book are NOT made with the ingredients mentioned. Yes, I was a combat Engineer, and No, I’m not going to give some 18-year-old kid the real recipe for making bombs. For you demolitions experts out there, you know well enough why I’m not sharing our recipes. Please don’t write to me challenging the recipe’s. They’re vague, and wrong on purpose. Hopefully that won’t damage your enjoyment of the rest of the story. Hooaahhh, fellow soldiers and other service members! Thanks for your understanding.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Editorial footnote to readers: For our non-military readers, ‘Whooaahhh?’ is an Army term for “you feel me? ‘Whooaahh!’ is the proper response, equivalent to “Hell Yes – I wanna Kill!” If it was the Marine Corps, they would be saying “Ooo-Rah?” and “Ooo-RAH!.” Air Force guys ask the same question with “Dude, we cool?” and respond we “Dude, we cool!” I won’t get into the Navy, as they picked it up very recently, and it sounds a lot like wanna-be Marines, but without capital letters and punctuation. The Coast Guard are very brave defenders of our coast, and may encounter “danger” more days per year than the other branches, but don’t have anything like that. God Bless all those branches that serve the USA, and there will always be Inter-service rivalries – that’s all this is. It’s what service members do when not being shot at by the enemy. As soon as that happens, we are all one fearless killing machine of One Heart and Mind.

  Author’s Map of Rock Harbor (He’s a writer, not an artist). Drawing not to scale.

  The Battles of Rock Harbor– A “Bugging In” tale of the Apocalypse

  By J. B. Craig

  Chapter 1 – Early April, Not too far in the future

  The end of the world as we know it, aka TEOTWAWKI, interrupted a rare fishing hat-trick. That’s when one person has 3 rods in the water, and there’s a fish on each one. Greg arrived at Rock Harbor around noon on a Monday morning in April. Rock Harbor is a peninsula of land jutting into the Potomac river downstream of Washington, DC, and Northeast of Richmond, VA. In his truck, he had his own fishing kayak. He also had his Bug-Out Bag, a Mauser hunting rifle, 2 low-capacity 9mm pistols, his favorite .40 caliber 1911, an army duffel bag filled with his oldest much worn clothes, assorted fishing gear, and some food, wine and liquor. His plan was to drop off a bunch of this stuff at the family River house and take a week to decompress from his recent heartbreak. He would do that by fishing, writing, drinking and flying his kite. Then he’d go back to Atlanta and deal with the impending divorce, grab the rest of his stuff, and move in to this house for the foreseeable future. The house was vacant except for a few weekends in the summer, when the extended family had a long weekend Luau, or party. His family heritage was half Hawaiian, but he spent much more time with them, and they threw great Luau’s, with outstanding food.

  According to Google, high tide at Captain’s Point was scheduled for around 10 pm and 10am. He fished the evening incoming tide from the dock, and only got a few nibbles in the Harbor. Walking up the 15 stairs from the river to the main level of the house to get a fresh beer made him breathe heavy, another hint that he was out of shape, and needed to work on it. He fished until about midnight with no success, so he went back in the house and drank from the table full of “collective alcohol”. Family members who came here would just leave whatever booze they brought on the bar, with beers in the kitchen, and back-up refrigerator downstairs. There was also a stand-up freezer downstairs, mostly filled with ice, and a few frozen foods. The kitchen fridge was just for day-to-day foods. Greg staggered around the house, remembering times with his Grandparents, until he was drunk enough to pass out. It was the first time he ever slept in his Grandparent’s bed in the master bedroom. He inherited the house, so he knew that eventually the new master of the property would have to take up residence in the master bedroom. The last thing he thought before losing consciousness was “Nice bed, Pop”.

  Greg got a few hours of sleep, then had a double screwdriver for breakfast, and went fishing around 9am. He broke a good, relatively healthy (OK, not dead yet) sweat as he rowed the 1975-ish model Aluminum Montgomery Ward’s rowboat out the channel of Rock Harbor, into the Nomini River, and steered left (Port, he reminded himself) into the middle of the Potomac River. The harbor was about 20 miles downstream from the 301 bridge that was near Dahlgren Naval Station and was one of the bridges to Southern Maryland. Later today, he would figure out which outboard in the garage worked, and probably mount it (heh, heh, ‘mount’ he thought to himself), but it was high tide, and he was going to go fishing, even if the new proprietor of the local convenience store where he got bait yesterday told him it was still a few weeks too early for any of the best fish. Greg had a streak of the Scottish stubbornness that his other Grandfather, father and siblings had. Being half Hawaiian and half Scottish gave him a personality that matched his Gemini astrological sign. Tell him that he couldn’t do something, and he would work over-time to prove you wrong. He knew that at least the Channel Cat would bite during high tide, it just took patience, and some beers.

  Greg paddled out to the junction of the Nomini and Potomac rivers, upstream of the Chesapeake Bay. There are 2 bridges connecting Maryland to Virginia once South of the Washington, DC beltway Woodrow Wilson Bridge - the aforementioned Route 301 bridge, and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-tunnel, a 23-mile-long bridge from Virginia Beach to the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Between the 2 bridges was just a whole lot of beautiful, tidal river and bay. The Potomac joins the Bay at Point Lookout, MD. There, the Bay gets wide. While being mostly known for the Maryland Blue Crab, the Chesapeake Bay estuary is full of wildlife. The tide coming in and out cleans some of the runoff and trash out of the Baltimore-DC corridor, while keeping the Blue Crabs fed with the dense population’s runoff crap.

  Greg’s Hawaiian grandfather bought the 25-year old rowboat that Greg was currently in when it was new. He was following Pop’s tradition, with 2 fishing rods rigged for double-bottom-hook fishing. These rods were ideal for catching anything from the small, but mighty tasty white perch, to the much larger Striper (also known as Striped Bass, or Rockfish), but today he figured it would be a catfish or croaker or nothing at all, as it was still too early for either Yellow or White Perch. Greg almost never came home with no fish on the stringer, and today was no exception. On the way out, he trolled a few blood worms in the Nomini channel, and already had a few nice sized croakers (they make that noise when you grab them), and a couple white perch dragging in the wake of the boat. Take that, web sites! Maybe he’d leave a comment on his success later.

  Pop, when he was still alive, used to razz Greg, like any Navy man will to an Army Veteran (and vice-versa) about Greg’s insistence on using a stringer. Greg didn’t like to see the fish suffocate in the 5 Gallon bucket that Pop used and was basically too lazy to change out the water as often as Pop did, to ensure they didn’t suffocate. With a stringer, at the end of a long fishing day, every fish on the stringer
was still fresh, with the rare exception of the fish that some sea turtle decided to bite in half.

  Greg reached the edge of the channel, as indicated by the channel marker, and dropped anchor in about 15 feet of water. He waited for the wind and tide to get him settled in a relatively stable place. He knew from experience that he could do a nice cast, and easily be in over 20 feet of water from this spot. His strategy was to cast one double-bottom rig into the deeper edge of the channel. Another rig would go sideways and hang out at the top edge of the channel. With both rods in place, and the tide running in, he clipped little bells to the tips of them. It’s hard to watch 2 rods in different directions anyway, and the bells helped. Finally, Greg pulled out his ultra-light Ugly Stik, with a Mitchell reel, and a #3 Mepps Black Fury spinner, and started casting for top-water fish. This model of Black Fury had caught Greg many nice sized Stripers over the years, but the bigger perch, spot and occasional sea trout would hit it, too.

  About 10 minutes later, one of the bells pinged lightly. Greg was confident, based on the light “ting”, that it was the subtle kiss of a Channel Catfish or one of its smaller cousins, like the blue or grey cat. They tended to cruise along the bottom of the river, and sniff/eat anything on the bottom of the river. Catfish would circle back if they found something good, and then go over whatever bait was laid down. Catfish were the kind of fish a fisherman had to be patient with. Around the 3rd nibble, they’d gulp down the bait, and it was relatively easy to set the hook and land them. Greg figured he had 1 or 2 more casts with the ultra-light, and on the first cast, he got a hard strike.

  “FISH ON”, Greg yelled out of habit. Even though nobody was nearby to hear the call, that was drilled into him as a child, when fishing the Salmon River with his Scottish father. If you didn’t say that and had a huge Salmon on the line in Upstate New York, you’d very likely have your fishing neighbor cast and tug, as usual, but they’d tug the hook out of the Salmon, making both of you pissed, and the fish relieved. He’d been in a few fights on the river with assholes that knew what they were doing and hooked his fish on purpose.

  “I think this is either the world’s smallest Striper, or the world’s biggest Perch”, Greg said to his audience of none. This wasn’t unusual for a guy who sang to himself, or just had random conversations with nobody in his head. Greg knew he didn’t have a trophy Striper, but did have a decent fish – maybe a sea trout, or a large perch. The hook was set, and the fish was running with the very low drag Greg typically had on his light rods. If nothing else, low drag made little fish feel big, at least for as long as he couldn’t see them.

  At that point, Greg heard the bell on his channel-rod ring again and reached over with his other hand to set the hook as the rod tried to jump out of the boat. “Now, THAT’S a big cat” he said to his invisible audience, as he clamped the ultra-light between his legs, and let the mystery fish run while he started to dip and pump the reel with the (likely) catfish on it. As he was reeling in the second rod, the third one bent over, and he threw his leg over it as the line screamed out in a third direction. “Hat trick, bitches!”, he yelled out loud to nobody but the 3 fish.

  Suddenly, it sounded like God was making the biggest bag of microwave popcorn ever. Loud explosions, and bright flashes of light were happening all over both the Maryland and Virginia shorelines. Greg looked at the closest peninsula, Captain’s Point, and watched as a transformer on the telephone pole near him exploded. With the way water carried sound, Greg heard the explosions as they moved down both sides of the Potomac, towards Point Lookout in Maryland, and Norfolk in Virginia. “I hope that’s not what I think it is,” said Greg out loud. He read lots of prepper fiction, and it was starting to sound like a grid-down scenario, potentially with hackers doing what he had read about in several books.

  As things started to get quiet, a shadow passed over the boat. A LARGE shadow making the whoop-whoop sound of a ceiling fan out of balance. Greg thought the shadow that passed over him was that Osprey whose nest he came too close to about 20 minutes ago. Osprey are large birds that build their nests in the strangest of places. More specifically, they find a stray piling or channel Marker on the river, and then they bring a whole tree’s worth of shrubbery to it, and build a nest. They get pissy whenever Man comes close to their nest. This is even though Man (the species) is the one who put the damn channel Marker in the middle of the river in the first place. They “Peep Peep Peep” in a very “scary” birdie voice, and take off from the nests, circling Man like he is their prey. They are beautiful creatures, especially when flying over Man, showing off their black and white wing feathers They never actually attack Man. Well, Greg had been shat upon by an Osprey, but that’s the worst they’ve ever hit him with. They just put on a show, and then after you keep going where you are going anyway, the fly back to their nests all self-satisfied that they “defended their territory”.

  Greg was trying to negotiate 3 different levels of fishing “DEFCON One”. He grabbed the spinning spool and broke off the line to the catfish who was on the large rod, while giving almost as much attention to the (hopefully) Perch on the ultra-light. He was shifting attention to the ultra-light, because his internal dialog convinced him that a large Perch, or small Striper tastes much better than catfish, and glanced up to show the Osprey what a great fish hunter-God he was, when realized it wasn’t an Osprey. Suddenly, Greg’s eyes widened when he realized that it looked a lot like someone threw an airplane… Like a United Airlines airplane, through the sky like a Frisbee. The plane’s engines were out, and it was, yes, pin-wheeling through the sky….

  Of course, that is not how physics works, so the plane was also DROPPING from the sky fast. It was dropping so fast that it exploded into the Potomac river about 200 yards away from Greg.

  Greg grabbed the spool, broke off the fish, whatever it was, dropped the rod into the bottom of the boat, and grabbed the oars. He spun the boat quickly towards the oncoming wave so that the bow was pointed towards the plane. Even with that, the wave hit his rowboat and almost flipped it. The boat got over 45 degrees horizontal, then crashed down into the trough of the wave, only to have secondary wave repeat the process. He held onto the oars, using them as outriggers to keep the boat in the right direction, and vaguely steady. His feet were wedged under the aluminum front bench seat, stabilizing him more. The last bottom rig, and whatever was on it went into the river, with the fish running away with his bottom rig and rod. After several more waves of this chaos passed the boat, Greg put his back into to the oars, and started paddling for wreckage while avoiding fire. “I hope they didn’t all die” was all he thought as he paddled harder than he ever had in his life.

  His section of river was under the approaches to Dulles and National Airport in DC, and tangentially, Baltimore Washington International (BWI) airport. He heard several more explosions as airplanes coming or going went down. He could only focus on the one right in front of him, even as he mourned for those lost souls, and for what all these explosions meant. It was definitely not just a power grid problem.

  On the way to the nearby debris, Greg heard a crash as 2 vehicles of some sort presumably ran into each other back towards the family river house. “I guess they saw those crashes too – and not so much each other”, was what he thought, as he kept rowing. “I hope someone calls 911, but I guess I’ll have plenty of help shortly, because plane crashes aren’t something that go un-noticed for long.”

  As Greg got to the edge of the debris field, his first thought, between deep breaths, was “Damn, I’m out of shape”. His second was “Holy shit – there’s nothing left here!” Greg approached, while avoiding patches of flaming water, and saw floating bits of seat-bottom, random carry-on bags, and pieces of aluminum plane, slowly sinking. Then he saw the first body. It was a flight attendant, based on the uniform. She was only somewhat intact, but most assuredly dead, since you can’t live very long with your head bashed in and a leg missing. She was already starting to sink, so he paddled on, hoping to he
lp someone.

  Greg paddled through the detritus of the plane wreck for almost 20 minutes, seeing nothing resembling a live Human. By the time the fires were going out, he decided to call in the cavalry, because he was surprised at the lack of response. There were no helicopters, there was no Coast Guard, there was NOBODY out there in the middle of the Potomac River as he tried desperately to be of assistance. At this point, Greg dug through his over-the-shoulder tackle bag, and took his cell phone out of the Ziploc bag that it was always in when he was on the water. He hit the iPhone button on the front, and the phone didn’t light up. He hit it again, figuring that the fingerprint sensor didn’t get his ID, because his fingers were sweaty and sooty. Still, nothing. Then he tried the power button on the side, and nothing. “Damn, I thought I had it charged up”, he said to himself, while dreading the worst-case scenario. He tried one more time, then put the dead phone away, just about the time someone hailed him.

  “Hellooo – Is anyone out there?” he heard from about 50 yards away.

  “Yeah, I’m here” said Greg. “Keep talking – are you OK?”

  “Well, yeah, I’m fine, I didn’t just crash in a plane, how are YOU?” Asked the strange voice.

  “Neither did I”, he said. “I was just fishing, and then this happened!”