“General James,” the admiral called out, “the Russians are in contact and said that airplane has Iranian spec ops onboard.”
“Do you expect a suicide attack?” James asked.
“I’m not sure what to expect, General.”
James turned towards his men and yelled, “Get me some antiair defense, on the double.”
Iron Horse soldiers ran for their Stryker armored assault vehicles and readied their antiair support weapons. In the sky, the airliner was making its approach. It was not doing a dive-bomb-style attack, but appeared to be coming in for a landing. General James hesitated to give an order to attack because the landing gear appeared to be lowering out of the plane. He was closely monitoring the airliner, and nothing about it seemed to allude to an attack.
“Sir?” one of the gunners on the eight-wheeled Stryker asked. He needed a command to fire or to stand down, but was receiving neither.
Again the gunner called out, “Sir?” as he could see the plane getting ever closer.
There was still not enough information to make a good judgment call. All James had was a tidbit of intel that Iranian spec ops were on the plane; the pilot’s behavior suggested otherwise.
Maybe they’re coming for a fight? he reasoned.
“Light ’em up,” he commanded.
The Stryker vehicles began their barrage of high-caliber antiarmor and antiair defense systems. They were joined by a weapons company of Marines. The aircraft was being littered with bullet holes.
Captain Vyacheslavovich caught multiple rounds to his body. They penetrated the windshield of the airliner, the body of the captain, the cockpit door, and killed the passengers.
On the ground, every unit was rapidly pulling out of the area in anticipation of a massive explosion. The airliner hit the street at a low angle of impact, and immediately, its wings were clipped off by neighboring buildings, utility poles, and signs. The landing gear ripped off the front of the plane, planting the nose of the craft on the ground. Loud screeching sounds of metal on concrete joined together with the impact sounds of the airplane versus roadside obstacles to form a symphony of destruction.
The crowd of warriors watched as the plane came to a stop without an explosion. Nobody dared approach the plane for fear of some unseen fuel leak catching a spark.
After a while had passed, it was apparent that there wasn’t going to be an explosion. A group of brave soldiers entered the plane to neutralize any possible threats. The cockpit door had been blasted wide open by the antiair projectiles, revealing a bloodied and unrecognizable pilot. In the passenger section of the plane, there were nine dead Iranian spec ops soldiers. When the contents of the plane were called back to command, Buchanan notified Nathan of what was going on. He knew that Nathan had an open-ended storyline to wrap up with the man he called the Fist.
Nathan arrived with Denny and a few militia members to enter the plane. It had already been swept clean by the Army soldiers, so Nathan entered with his rifle at the low ready position. Right off the bat he saw the pilot. His body was shredded and was clearly unrecognizable. The only way to know that the pilot wasn’t the Fist was by his body size; also, his hands were smaller and lacked the complexion of the Fist.
He turned left and walked into the passenger compartment of the craft and saw the bodies of nine men. They were jumbled together in piles against the front of the passenger area, against the wall leading to the cockpit. He kicked a few of their hands and legs around to reveal faces, but confirmed none of them were the Fist. To be on the safe side, he checked the rest of the airliner, including the baggage compartments—nothing.
“This guy’s like a modern-day Osama Bin Houdini,” Nathan said.
Denny was shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t get it, boss. He’s like a fart in the wind.”
“Where did this plane come from?” Nathan asked one of the locals.
“O’Hare’s just a few miles west of here. It’s possible it came from there.”
“Had to. These are the guys from the building shoot-out.”
“Maybe the Fist is at O’Hare?” Denny asked.
Once again, Nathan was torn between mission and revenge.
“We have the numbers, Denny. We can take these guys to O’Hare and finish this.”
“Boss, I think they want to play their part in history. Nathan and Goliath probably won’t make it into the history books. But turning the tide in the District? That’s where it’s at.”
Nathan knew he was right. “Best-case scenario, the Fist turns up in the District.”
The men exited the plane and headed back to Goose Island, where the rest of the division was rallying together and setting up for the final push.
The night waned on and proved uneventful, giving everybody a decent night’s rest—everybody but a few Marines. Buchanan had caught the Recon Marines horseplaying out of boredom and gave them an assignment. Their job was to head back into the old Syndicate territory and compile evidence of Rory Price’s and Nathan’s claim of Markus committing acts of cannibalism. Their findings were to remain confidential until it was called upon.
Nathan lay on his back that night and stared up at the stars. Never in his life had he seen such a beautiful display of the galaxy. The night was clear, the clouds had vanished, and the coolness of the night air seemed to vanish. It was almost symbolic.
CHAPTER XIII
Somewhere West of Virginia
“But why Opal, Virginia?” Troy asked Nathan.
“I haven’t the slightest. Maybe he has an old score to settle there. I don’t know.”
The entire division was in a state of curiosity. Nathan, Denny, Troy, and a Marine named Smith had spent the last eight hours complaining about cramping legs and the need to empty their gutters.
That morning, at roll call, General John James mentioned that he needed to make a pit stop in Opal, Virginia. He didn’t give any excuses and he didn’t elaborate. Nobody knew if it was a side mission or if maybe he had a promise to uphold. The facts were that nobody but Belt McKanty knew what his intentions were.
When the general escaped certain death by fleeing the District, he’d found some Jewish friends that accompanied him to Opal and were assisting him in reaching his objective point in the Black Hills of South Dakota, but an unfortunate turn of events led to a run-in with a community of cannibals. John, Belt, and a young man named Michael managed to escape with their lives, but the memory was still alive for John James. When Buchanan pressed him to assist with Nathan Roeh’s quest for vengeance, he thought of Opal, Virginia, Joshwa, Zamora, and Aaron. He longed for the moment he could see the man known as Arnie and his associates—Alex, Sebastian, Ethan, and Bailey—swinging from a tree.
The enormous convoy came to a stop. Looking back at its sheer size, one would think he controlled the entire interstate. It spanned several miles and consisted of a diverse range of military and privately owned vehicles. The group increased in size at every interstate merger as fame of the patriot resistance grew daily.
With electrical power being restored, communications were being restored. The radios in the civilian vehicles of the division had been turned off for so long that most of them didn’t know that periodic stations were coming back online. It wasn’t until the convoy came to a stop that one of the drivers of a civilian vehicle was excitedly waving people to gather around his truck. The civilians, enlisted military, and officers all became as excited as children on Christmas morning as they gathered around the vehicle and listened to the sounds of a patriotic voice that was coming from an American radio station.
“This is the voice of the fighting American, coming to you from an undisclosed location. I have just received word that the United States Army has regrouped and is formulating a counteroffensive against the United Nation’s invasion of our country …”
“He’s not even got the story right,” one of the Marines shouted, in protest that all the credit was being given to the Army. He was quickly shushed by several others w
ho wanted to hear what was being said.
“From what I’ve been able to gather from our affiliates on the West Coast, some kind of massive electromagnetic attack has knocked out all of their electronics. They are literally having to travel east, out of the affected area, to communicate with us exactly what is happening. Again, I say it is believed that the West Coast has been attacked. Also, there is a massive pandemic of sorts that has shaken the area and seems to be spreading rapidly. At this time, we do not know if it is the result of the attack.
“On the West Coast, things are different. It seems that UN forces are being forced to withdraw from their previous area of operation and are being reassigned to the District area. It is believed that the leader of the UN forces has completely shut down the capital and is making a last stand of sorts.
“You are encouraged to make your way to the nearest group of patriot resistors and commit to ending this stranglehold on US sovereignty. They are assembling in every major community, it seems, and it would behoove you, if you are a leader of one of these groups, to make alliances with them. Only together can we restore our freedoms. Ronnie Reagan once said, ‘If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.’”
“Lock it up,” General John James said. “Are we going to sit here and motivate ourselves by listening to some scared voice on the radio, or are we going to end this?”
The whole group was eager to end it. That was their reply.
“We have one more stop before that. Just a little east of here is an area where the Admiral and I nearly lost our lives. A group of cannibals ravaged three, maybe four of our friends. These friends were patriots, like you. Their dream was to live in a free America or die for it. Instead they died for a man’s belly. I aim to roll onto their property and string them up like the animals they are. The last time I was here, I had to run. But this time, this time I send a message: that all men have a right to life and liberty. Treason is the poisonous fruit of tyranny. I aim to water the tree of liberty this day and tomorrow with their blood.”
John paused to look around and make sure he made eye contact with everyone. He wanted them to hear and to know what his intentions were.
“Yesterday we struggled; today we resist; tomorrow we fight; but beyond that … we defend. Now, mount up. We have a tree of liberty to water with the blood of tyrants.”
Opal, Virginia
Mayor Arnie was slapping his television set, hoping to get a better signal. There were faint images trying to come into view, but he couldn’t make it out.
“Sebastian,” he called out.
“Yes, sir,” Sebastian said as he came running in.
“Are you sure all the lines are connected?”
“Yeah, I mean, I’m not a cable guy.”
“Argh,” Arnie moaned as he went outside to check the lines and connections.
“I already checked the—”
“Shhh,” Arnie interrupted Sebastian. “Do you hear that?”
The sounds of vehicles were heard coming in from the west.
“Cars! Get the men together and take up your positions.”
Sebastian gathered up Alex, Ethan, and Bailey, and they took up defensive positions near the same roadblock that John James had taken down before to make his escape. The sounds of moving vehicles quickly faded and eventually disappeared altogether.
“Must’ve been a false alarm,” Alex said from his position.
They waited a while longer to be on the safe side. When Alex was certain there were no vehicles coming in, he stood up. Arnie was carefully watching from the window of his mint green house.
“Get down, you stupid—” Arnie started to say, but was quickly interrupted by a pop sound that was accompanied by a pink mist as Alex’s forehead split open from some unseen force. The blood sprayed outward away from the roadblock, and his body dropped lifeless to the ground.
Arnie panicked and backed away from the window, tripping on a coffee table and falling onto his back. Ethan, Sebastian, and Bailey stood up and ran into the house. They ran to the back room, where the laundry room used to be, and began trying to lift a trapdoor to a secret compartment in the floor. It was secured from the inside. Arnie, believing he wasn’t seen, ran to his hideout and locked the door from the inside.
“Get out of there, you idiots,” he shouted from the basement crawlspace.
“Let us in,” Ethan said.
“I won’t. They’ve seen you, but they haven’t seen me. Go on, now. Go hide,” Arnie insisted.
The men ran outside and saw a huge number of Marines and soldiers coming out of the woods and stepping onto their property. They were well within firing range and way too close to make a run for it, so they laid their weapons on the ground and raised their hands.
“What now?” Sebastian asked.
“We’re done here, I reck’n,” Bailey said.
General John James stepped onto their property, and they recognized him immediately. The three men looked back towards the house and saw that it was being raided by Marines. They looked back to the barn and the story was the same.
They watched John as he walked up to them.
“Hello, gentlemen. Do you remember me?”
“Yeah, you’re that Marine officer that came through here a while back.”
“That’s right. I remember asking you guys a question. Do you remember what that question was?”
“No, sir.”
“It was have your friends ever killed anybody? You answered no.”
“We do what we have to do to survive, mister.”
“And I’m going to do what I have to do to make sure others survive, gentlemen.”
John looked at the Marines that were with him and said, “Bind them.”
A shotgun blast was heard coming from the house. Inside, the Marines had found the crawlspace door and heard Arnie rustling around inside, so they shot the hinges off and ordered him out.
The door opened and Arnie was brought outside and placed on his knees next to the others. He was bound while the Marines searched the property and found human remains all over the place. The Marine that made the discovery reported back to his general the finding. Arnie and the rest of them heard the evidence against them, but made no comment.
Another Marine exited the house, and in his possession were several driver’s licenses, state ID cards, and various picture IDs. He handed the stack to John, who flipped through them, paying special attention to each one. When he found Joshwa’s District cab driver’s ID, he was sickened. He also found Zamora’s residential ID and Gideon’s and Aaron’s driver’s licenses. John picked them out from the stack, tossed them onto Arnie’s lap, and pulled his pistol out of his holster.
“Do you have any last words?” John asked.
Arnie opened his mouth to speak, but John blew a hole through his head and systematically shot the next three men.
Next, John called for Warrant Officer Roeh. Nathan walked up to the bodies of Arnie and the others and looked down at John’s handiwork.
“I understand you have somebody you need to judge?” John said.
Nathan looked at Buchanan and said, “With your permission, sir, I believe you have some evidence for us?”
Buchanan called out to Banks, who brought with him Markus, a leader of the Syndicate. With them came a couple of Recon Marines.
“What did you find?” Buchanan asked the Recons.
“We found butcher bays on virtually every floor of every building that Markus was in charge of.”
“And what was in the butcher bays?” Nathan asked.
“Human bodies gutted and quartered like swine,” one of the Recons replied.
Through all of this, Markus remained silent.
John handed Nathan his pistol, and the Marines forced Markus onto his knees.
Nathan pointed the pistol at Markus as he opened his mouth to speak.
“We do what we have to do to survive, Nathan. Improvise, adapt, and overcome,” Markus s
aid.
There’s no adapting to a bullet through the brain, man-eater,” Nathan said. He pulled the trigger and ended Markus’s life.
“Burn it,” John ordered. “All of it.”
The Marines set fire to everything on the property.
0600 hours, the Next Day
The Pentagon, the District
In the basement of the Pentagon, located in the old Defense Department’s command center, Executive Commander Abdul Muhaimin was looking in the mirror at his nicely trimmed beard. His eyebrows were perfectly trimmed and his custom-tailored executive commander’s military uniform was neatly pressed and fit perfectly. Never, in all his life, had he ever seen such a deftly poised man of war. He had ascended the ranks of the Iranian military, taking on the mantle of an elite Special Forces officer, evaded death by converting from Sunni beliefs to Shiite fundamentalist ideals, excelled in the jihad wars against Western influences and rose through the ranks of the United Nations ground forces to assume control of the entire UN military operation in America only to be undermined by his own people, betrayed by his allies, and forsaken by the global community. At least, those were the thoughts of Muhaimin. His conceited opinions of himself were not swayed by exterior factors. He knew who he was and what he was capable of.
On this particular day, he knew the odds were against him, but he was way too vain to let that influence his decisions, so he donned his military uniform to look the part of a supreme military commander who had everything in control. He would be calling the shots from the command center. He had told nobody of his whereabouts and assumed nobody would discover him. He sent every able-bodied soldier out to secure a perimeter around the District to fight in the impending battle and keep the capital secure. In Muhaimin’s mind, as long as he had the capital, he had the power.
To the east, seventy-five thousand Marines were disembarking from the main fleet and making their way up Chesapeake Bay. Admirals Dixon and McKanty were working well together in the coordination of communication between themselves and the Marine Corps fleet. They had the fighter jets checked for fuel and serviceability; their engines were warmed up and ready for flight. The entire naval fleet was on high alert.
Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) Page 75