Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 3): Escape and Evade

by Wohlrab, Jeff

  “Won’t that kill him though?”

  The woman looked up at her, seemingly calm as a cucumber as opposed to Madison’s nervousness.

  “I blame hospital dramas. A shock can sometimes reset an irregular heartbeat. It doesn’t do anything at all once the heart stops. So the ONLY time it can help is when the heart is beating. It won’t hurt him.”

  The two soldiers returned with a gurney, lifting it above the grass as they drew near. The sudden sound when the legs ratcheted out made Madison jump. The first man asked her to stand to the far side of the gurney, away from Brent, as they carefully lifted him into the stretcher. The woman had his head between her forearms and her hands on his shoulders as they lifted him.

  The woman gave her a smile and put her hand on Madison’s forearm as she picked up her medical bag. “Don’t worry, we’re going to take good care of your father.”

  Madison blurted out, “He’s not my father.” The lady looked confused for a moment as several possible scenarios played out in her mind. She took the drip from Madison’s hand and said, “Well, we’ll take good care of him anyway.”

  They rushed off toward the helicopter. It took several seconds for Madison to follow behind. When she reached the street, she could see the rotors spinning up as they prepared to take off. The woman was attaching electrical leads to Brent’s chest as the helicopter lifted into the air. One of the men smiled at her and waved.

  Without thinking, she waved back. Then she thought, “Why am I waving? I don’t even know who these people are or what’s going on.”

  Chapter 43

  Bobby Snead desperately tried to reach General Windmer. It seemed the General was out on the golf course when he first called. It took him over forty-five minutes to get to the phone and call the Senator. It seemed some of the jokes about the Air Force were true.

  What wasn’t a joke was raw firepower, which was what the Senator needed at that moment. There was a huge risk that the people who escaped from the mountain knew something they shouldn’t. Even worse, that they were in contact with military personnel.

  Most of the Senator’s plans hinged on having the support of the military. Of all the institutions in America, only one was really above reproach. Nobody trusted politicians. They weren’t necessarily fond of any other government organization either. Only the military seemed to be immune.

  The generals and admirals also had some of the greatest weapons of war the world had ever seen at their disposal. Russia and China had been making serious advances over the previous decade. Even India had been going through a massive modernization phase, but the U.S. still had the edge. It was thinner than ever before, but it was an edge.

  It took some convincing for the general to put some planes in the air. Even though he was aligned with the Senator, doing a bombing run on American soil didn’t sit right with him. Windmer didn’t have an issue with one helicopter, but he had no idea how many people were at the site Bobby wanted bombed.

  The general sent a couple of fighter-bombers into the air as he tried to get intel on the area in question. As far as he could tell, there was absolutely nothing there. There were a couple of homes, but the entire area was almost all trees. That wasn’t so bad. He was no stranger to collateral damage. He’d based a career on it.

  It was a career which was almost over. The military which had taken care of him for so many years was crumbling around him. He wasn’t a man who was willing to put in the work to fix it, he just wanted to enjoy the benefits. With his six-figure salary gone and no real way to enforce the UCMJ, the general was looking for something new.

  Bobby had promised him what amounted to a fiefdom in his new world. He would have several counties in Georgia supporting him. Now that was power. Power with fewer rules. Windmer didn’t have a problem with breaking the rules. It had helped him rise to the top. The trick was to deny, deny, deny.

  Now he was sending combat aircraft to bomb a location in the neighboring state. The vague promise that the targets were ‘insurgents’ didn’t make sense to him. Sure, it was possible, there might be some sort of militia group up there causing trouble, but wouldn’t he know if there were?

  As far as he knew, the area was peaceful. The only real conflict had been the two nuclear attacks up in the mountains. Why a foreign entity would bother dropping weapons on mostly uninhabited mountains was beyond him, unless there was some sort of secret military facility up there. Or may there were hideouts politicians built to save their own skins if war broke out. Whatever the reason, he didn’t know of any reason to send them up there.

  His aircraft were expensive to fly and maintain. Spare parts were hard to come by these days, as was jet fuel. It didn’t make sense to waste any more than necessary. Bombs weren’t exactly readily available either. Most of the larger military bases were little more than smoking holes in the ground these days. Sure, there were munitions around, but not enough to use them like pop caps as they had in the past.

  The general agreed to a flight of four F-35s. That was a lie. Four bombers was overkill. He would send two. It’s not like the Senator was going to know. Each one of them could carry twenty-four 250lb bombs. That made forty-eight total explosions. That would be enough for any militia.

  He didn’t like it, but he was securing his future by following orders. His investments weren’t going to support him. He wouldn’t be receiving a paycheck, at least until a new government was formed. He had to do something to support his accustomed lifestyle. If bombing a couple of people the Senator wanted gone was what it took, so be it.

  Chapter 44

  Major Graham Stokes was one of the senior pilots remaining at Robins. He was the flight leader for the mission. It didn’t make a lot of sense. They were going to do a bombing run against a militia group up in the mountains. It wasn’t surprising. Coming from Montana, Graham had seen a lot of militia activity growing up. The ignorant country folk were always going on about government monitoring and abuse of power.

  Why would the people up in the mountains be any different? Hell, from the movies he’d watched, they seemed like they were decades in the past. He’d even seen shows where people from Georgia talked about how they were going to use taxidermied animals and propane tanks to battle a Russian invasion. Or Chinese. It didn’t matter, there was a lot of crazy out there.

  His wingman was Captain John Chase. They had worked together some, but he didn’t know him that well. The man seemed satisfied with the mission planning, even though they didn’t have any imagery of the site or solid target knowledge. They were supposed to target the homes along the western side of a town called Highlands in North Carolina. Allegedly, some crazy insurgent group had set up shop there.

  Even crazier, they were suspected of being behind the nuclear attacks on northern Georgia just a week ago. How the hell would a militia group get their hands on nuclear weapons? It’s possible when the infrastructure collapsed, they were just in the right place at the right time, but it wasn’t like walking into Walmart and picking them up off the shelves. Something seemed off.

  He still had a mission to accomplish. He had been flying combat air patrols over the base off and on over the past few months. That was boring, but not too bad. The worst was being on standing alert. That hadn’t been done since 9/11. The pilot sat in the aircraft ready to take off quickly, or scramble, at any threat. After a few weeks of being on standby, the Major took to napping inside the jet. Nobody was going to attack Robins Air Force Base.

  This was something different, and a little bit exciting. He hadn’t dropped munitions since his last tour in Pakistan almost four years ago. He was hoping to see some little Toyota pickups with machine guns in the bed, or maybe an armored personnel carrier of some sort. Some sort of target where he could use the GBU53 small diameter II glide bombs to their full effect.

  Blowing up houses was boring.

  As they screamed across the sky toward Highlands, he took the lead. There were no known air defense assets on the ground, so they had nothi
ng to worry about. In the F-35s, they were practically untouchable. Sure, there were more capable fighter aircraft, but none of them were in the same airspace. Unless the militia group had gotten some sort of surface-to-air missile, it would be a cake run.

  The first sign of trouble came as they approached the location. Targeting sensors picked up six different vehicles wrecked or on fire a couple miles from the target.

  “Doc, check out the vehicles at ten o’clock. What do you make of it?” Doc was the callsign for Captain Chase. He wasn’t a medical doctor, he just liked to boast that he was ‘Doctor Love.’

  Pilots don’t get to pick their callsign, but someone thought it would be clever to name him Doc as a result. Instead of realizing the sarcasm, he boasted about his prowess even more. Graham, callsign ‘Professor,’ wondered yet again if his IQ was too high to be a pilot.

  He had double-majored in aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering at the academy and finished near the top of his class. As a nerd in a world full of jocks, the name Professor almost seemed too easy. At least he realized the sarcasm, but there wasn’t a whole lot to be done about it.

  Graham slowed the jet and scoped out the scene. It seemed to be a collection of military and private armored vehicles. There was an Oshkosh tanker and a Humvee on fire, along with two armored scout vehicles, but there were also two civilian Canid armored personnel carriers in the mix. It was impossible to make out which ones were coming from which direction because they were scattered all over.

  What they had in common were gaping holes in the sides or smoke drifting into the air. Some had both. “Not sure, Professor. Looks like there was some kind of a fight.” Graham winced a little bit. Talk about an understatement. He had been asking if Doc had any ideas about what had destroyed the vehicles, not about whether or not there had been a fight. It just seemed too obvious.

  “I think you’re right,” was his only response. “Keep your eyes peeled for anything else out of the ordinary. I want to get a look on the ground before we drop.” As they approached, Graham’s radar warned him of an approaching aerial vehicle. It was too slow to be a fighter.

  “Doc, we’ve got a bogey. Let’s gain some altitude and see what’s going on.” The newer radars were better at picking out moving targets from ground clutter. The newest tactics had pilots ascend to a few thousand feet above any approaching target to let the systems get a better read while giving them altitude which they could trade for speed if they had to.

  The tactics hadn’t exactly been tested in battle, but in theory it made sense. Most battles happened outside of visual range using radars and missiles. It didn’t do much good to take away the third dimension by staying too close to the ground.

  “IFF is military. It looks like a helicopter.”

  Graham listened and thought for a second. “Turn on your blue forces tracker. Let’s see if it’s transmitting.”

  It took a long thirty seconds for the tracker to power on and start displaying dots on their screen. The approaching target was an Army Blackhawk.

  What was even more surprising were the number of blue dots which showed up on the ground below them. It looked like a major military outpost in the woods. There wasn’t a military base for a hundred miles. What in the world was going on? Was the Army here fighting this group, too?

  He got on the link to Robins. “Hey ATC, we’ve got blue forces on the ground at the target site. How should we proceed?”

  The controller told him, “Professor, hold one.”

  It took a lot longer than a second for the controller to get back on the radio. “Continue the mission as planned.”

  Graham was stunned. What could that even mean? The ground forces were transmitting the proper codes. They certainly appeared to be friendlies. What the hell was going on? He tried to think the situation through without getting back on the radio. Doc wouldn’t be any help and he had his orders from Robins.

  There had been some sort of fight between what appeared to be a private military corporation and military forces near this town. His blue forces tracker showed an approaching Blackhawk, certainly military, and a number of other assets spread among the town and surrounding homes below. If they dropped now, they’d almost certainly be killing their own.

  “ATC, this is professor. Those are BLUE FORCES on the ground. They are transmitting proper codes. Please repeat.” The controller repeated the same phrase, “Continue the mission as planned.” Something must have happened on the other end. They were taking their orders from someone.

  “Doc, I don’t like this. This doesn’t feel right. Something is wrong here.” He watched as his wingman separated from the pattern just a little bit. “The problem with you, Professor, is that you don’t get any action!” As he listened, he heard Doc say, “ATC, proceeding with first run.”

  No, this was wrong. “Doc. As mission commander, I’m aborting this mission. Do NOT proceed with your run. Return to base.” The second F-35 didn’t change direction. It was several miles from the target now and heading back toward the blue forces. “You heard what they said, Professor. Continue the mission as planned.”

  Graham was left with a decision. Follow orders and risk killing his fellow countrymen. Hell, fellow military men and women, or abort the mission. ‘Just following orders’ was not a legal defense against war crimes. This appeared to be a blue on blue action, and he couldn’t live with himself if it was. Maybe the folks back at Robins had some bad intel, but from here, it looked pretty clear.

  Mathematically, it would take those folks hours to get anywhere. He could land, refuel, and be back flying over their heads before they got far. Especially if they were transmitting codes. That didn’t make sense. “Doc, abort the mission. We’re going home.”

  “Not happening, Professor. I’ve got a lock on my targets. Proceeding with bombing run.” Graham watched in horror as 12 of the 24 bombs left external and internal racks on the other F-35. “I’ve got bombs away. Good release. Coming around for second run.”

  Far below, Graham could see explosions popping up where homes used to be. He was close enough now to see an Apache helicopter on the ground. “Abort now! Visual confirmation of friendly forces! Abort your run.”

  Doc ignored him, “ATC, beginning second pass. Targets are locked.”

  Graham had a difficult decision to make. His wingman had decided to proceed with the mission, even with visual confirmation of friendly targets. He could either let it happen, or he could stop him.

  Professor flicked off the cover on his trigger and quietly whispered “Fox 2.” Doc never knew what hit him as the pair of AIM 9x Sidewinders blew his F-35 apart. Graham wasn’t quick enough though, Doc’s remaining bombs had already cleared the racks on their way to the ground below.

  Far below them, Jensen sat in a room, alone, on a metal chair.