Shoot. Lovely. Half the morning gone and no closer to getting my dad back. Well, at least we have help coming from an unexpected source.
And that was yet another reason to worry. Yes, I had trust for Staff Sergeant Barlow. He’d proven to be a good man and was one of the reasons we managed to make it back home in one piece after the events in McAlester. Hooking up with his team got us through more than half of Oklahoma and into Texas without so much as a stubbed toe. But for him to show up like this, offering assistance from a freaking Special Forces A-Team, that was just beyond the realm of coincidence.
“What happened at Camp Gruber? Colonel Forshe get the base back?” I asked, curious and wanting to kill a few minutes while we waited for Barlow’s friends to show up.
“Yeah, they did. We lost some good guys taking back the barracks, but we rooted them out. And discovered why they were fighting so hard. They didn’t want to stick around to get caught when we found the body pits out back. Luke, they were running an extermination camp there. Stealing all the food they could carry off from local farmers, then hauling them back to execute at the pits. Didn’t leave behind any bodies to be found that way.”
Suddenly, I felt the urge to throw up and a shot of panic ran through my body. Was that the game plan here, with my family? Thoughts began to whirl through my head as I waited.
Then I got to meet the captain and realized that none of this was coincidence at all. There really was a war going on, and we’d just gotten caught up in the gears of that fight once again.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Once we got the order circulated to stand down, the ten men accompanying Staff Sergeant Barlow and Deputy Radalak drove up to the impromptu roadblock and bailed out of their Hummers. Even though I watched closely, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary about these men, these soldiers, at first. Well, except that all of them looked to be a little older than the average mix, and none wore rank tabs or name badges.
And they were carrying heavy, with two men lugging around M249 machine guns and at least one of the men must have been carrying a small mortar since I saw each man had at least two of the mortar rounds strapped to their packs. From the size and sway of their packs, they must have been carrying a real load but none of the men seemed to be slowed. I found it interesting and informative that even though they had trucks, they still carried their packs wherever they went.
Once we got to the Big House, Mike had invited everyone available to join us in the living room, where Captain Marino made brief introductions and proceeded to give us an abbreviated briefing on the goings on around the country and in our own part of the state. As the captain spoke, I found myself relieved to discover this whole exercise had nothing to do with my own earlier actions against the Homeland folks.
As best the military could tell, Jeffrey Chambers, the Secretary of Homeland Security, was hiding out in one of the government bunkers somewhere. He was a high-level Presidential appointee, a Cabinet member no less, and he had been with the President when the lights went out. And yes, the federal government did have advanced notice of the massive solar flare that wiped out most of the high technology backbone that seemed to run the world.
This information was somewhat scattered, but apparently the opinion varied on the severity of the pending solar strike. Thank God, Marino stressed, that the Secretary of Energy took the warnings seriously enough that the nuclear plants were all shut down, with vital electronics shielded, before the pulse hit. Even now, experienced engineers at all nuclear reactors in the country insured the systems were being maintained. This was somewhere the military stepped in early to assist, averting a crisis that otherwise would have rendered huge chunks of the country uninhabitable.
“When this all started, nobody seemed to know anything. Base commanders received orders to hold what they had but to not engage in piecemeal assistance efforts because a plan was coming from higher authority. So we held out, and we waited. Some of our guys made their way back to our base, but my team figured we could do more good if he hung around Ft. Polk. When coordinated actions started around the country, we thought the Homeland moves were coming from the President,” Marino explained.
“We didn’t like it, but he was the man in charge and we took the orders. Sometimes we interpreted those orders a little loosely, but we held off acting against the paramilitaries. That all changed about six weeks ago, when we got a defector, an Army colonel who somehow managed to get out of the cordon around…well, it doesn’t matter. Colonel Walters was assigned to the President’s staff as part of his military advisor team, and when he made his way to the nearest base, I’m sad to say, nobody would believe him at first.
“His story just seemed too bizarre. But, fortunately, he managed to bring some proof. Data smuggled out on a thumb drive. His biggest challenge was finding some way to download it.”
That comment generated a rueful chuckle from the room. We were all mesmerized by the captain’s story up to this point.
“The President is incompetent.”
Well, that got a few more chuckles, having to do with the man’s low popularity in this part of the country even before the lights went out.
“Okay, that was too easy,” Marino said, but he chuckled, too. “I walked right into that one. What I meant was, he has been relieved from office after suffering a debilitating and apparently permanent psychotic break. Long term, anyway. The doctors thought it was a stroke at first, but after a few frantic hours deduced the real problem.”
Well, that explained some things.
“So bring out the Vice-President,” Gaddis Williams called out from the back of the room. The old man was still fiddling with the bandage placed over his side from a grazing ricochet that had left a stripe of blood along his ribs. That the bullet had gone through the narrow slit of the firing port, struck the wall behind him and bounced back to do the injury was proof that crazy things could and did happen in the middle of a gunfight.
Marino had held up his hands, palms up, at that point. “Yes, except he died that first day. He didn’t believe the doom and gloom reports and was flying back from an emergency meeting in Brussels regarding the Iran situation. We have this on very good authority, but of course no body. That left us with the Speaker of the House, naturally.”
“Except the President and all his people hated the Speaker,” my mother said. These were the first words she’d uttered since getting word about my father. She was all out of tears by now, and sat with a hollowed-eyed stare that would have worried me in the world before. Now, she just fit in with most of the rest of the crowd. Paige was huddled in next to her, and a few seats away I saw Lori holding little Summer in a similar pose. Everybody was hurting and reeling from the damage done today.
Marino nodded at my mother’s words. “Correct, Mrs. Messner. We think that animosity is what started the deception. The Speaker, along with a majority of the members of Congress that could be located, were being sheltered at a separate location. Guarded by the military. Messages went back and forth, of course, via secured landlines.”
Marino paused, clearly thinking about how to broach the next subject. “Congress was getting antsy and demanded the President do something. Reports were coming in, slowly and largely anecdotal, of the chaos outside, and they worried about their constituency. Or their reelection chances. Of course, these were some of the same folks who worked day and night to tie the President’s hands, before. But that’s not the point. According to the colonel, this pressure is what got the members of the President’s cabinet stirred up and into mischief.
“Walters didn’t know who hatched the plan, Chambers with Homeland or Jerzek, the intelligence czar, but the Office of the Department of Homeland Security started activating units all over the country.
“Some units were publically acknowledged, of course, but others had been created clandestinely over the years. Black budget expenditures weren’t just for the CIA anymore, and Homeland had been quietly creating armed response t
eams at various suspected trouble spots for nearly a decade. And these weren’t just rent-a-cops, either. Some of them had military training, though not as many as you might think, while others went through paramilitary courses in parallel with the FBI and the ATF.”
“Great,” muttered Mike, “they really did go make their own army. Meant to fight the militia groups and Tea Party extremists, I’ll bet.”
“Who knows?” Marino admitted. “Rumor only has it they got word to prepare for an EMP-type event and hunker down at least thirty-six hours in advance. I can tell you, at least as far up as I have been able to go on my chain of command, nobody gave us a head’s up.”
This last part came out with more than a trace of bitterness, and I wondered who he had lost when the planes rained down that day.
“So what is the game plan, Captain?” Mike asked.
“Chambers is trying to secure the country, and do it without having to use the military.”
“And…” Mike prompted, getting frustrated.
“He’s effectively locked out the members of Congress with a few exceptions, and blackmailed or strong-armed most of the President’s supporters with the premise of preserving the ‘proper’ America. You know, the states and regions that sent them to the White House in the first place.”
I sighed before finally speaking. “And how is that working out for them?”
“Terrible. That’s why they are here. And why they tried the same garbage up in Arkansas and Oklahoma. And in Kansas. Going after the food sources to try to feed at least a portion of the starving masses in the Northeast and out West.”
“Shoot, we don’t have any spare food. This part of Texas has never been big agriculture except for some cattle, and those are already long gone.”
“Not spare food, Luke. Homeland wants every scrap of food. Every can of beans or ear of corn. That’s why they don’t care about the casualties they inflict. They don’t want you and your kind to live, anyway.”
I heard a collective gasp run through the room at the captain’s pronouncement. Fighting raiders was one thing. Despite what some government-hating militia-types espoused, the average prepper didn’t look forward to a fight with the government. My family sure didn’t. And most of the people sheltered here at the moment didn’t start this disaster as any kind of survivalists. Mike and his family, sure. The Thompsons were somewhat prepared, but their kids didn’t seem to be all that well indoctrinated. Or brainwashed, as the liberals might have turned the phrase.
“Just what kind is that, sir?” Ike Stanton asked, though I could tell he was dreading the answer.
“People who are self-sufficient, sir. Or at least, who have the will to go out and try to make a living from the fruits of their labor. This isn’t a fight about race or even politics. This is about a select group who wants to dominate the country and enslave the portion of the population they allow to live.”
Allow to live. Marino’s words seemed to ignite a smoldering fire in the crowd, as women and men alike realized just what he was saying. Secretary Chambers and his allies wanted to use this opportunity to rebuild America in their desired image. As a totalitarian state. Call it fascism or communism or statism, the label didn’t matter. After the Die-Off continued through this first winter, the numbers of survivors might be numbered in the low millions. Those who survived would owe their very existence to the men and women who fed and sheltered them through the cataclysm. And everybody on the outside would need to be handled.
“Pine Bluff,” I whispered. Or thought I did. Marino caught the name and nodded.
“Not their first try for that sort of thing, either. There was also a raid at Kings Bay. The Marines held,” Captain Marino announced. That meant nothing to any of us except Mike, who gave a little yell that seemed to shock those who sat around him. His family. Then he looked around a little sheepishly before explaining.
“Kings Bay is a Navy base in Georgia. Submarine base. They keep special weapons there. The kind that plants mushrooms all over the countryside.”
“They made a play for the nukes?” Gaddis said in dismay, and then clutched his side sharply at the pain.
“They’ve got just about everything else,” Captain Marino conceded bitterly. “This Colonel Walters, though. His evidence changed things. We’ve managed to cobble together something of a command group made up of senior military officers. The whereabouts of the Joint Chiefs is unclear, and we need to somehow coordinate our responses.”
“So who do they want to nuke first? Military bases or resister strongholds?” Paul Sandifer asked, his voice dark with anger. He had every right to be angry, having lost two of his people to this attack.
“Toss up,” the captain replied candidly. “I think they want to use the nerve gases on the population centers they can’t control, and nuke some of the military bases to make the others fall in line, but that’s just my opinion.”
“So how does McCorkle fit into all this? He hates the President and has made a career of poking them in the eye whenever he got a chance.” That was from Andy Ferrell, who was listening as intently as anyone else.
“That’s what we mean to find out,” Captain Marino said, and then we got down to the brass tacks. Why that term was used, I don’t know. I would have asked my dad, and the thought sent a jolt of pain through my heart.
As I sat there, Amy leaned into me and gave me a hug that seemed to pull the thousands of pounds of weight right off my shoulders. “You shouldn’t have been driving that Hummer,” I whispered. “When I saw you through the windshield, it almost gave me a heart attack.”
“I couldn’t just sit around, Luke. I had to do something.”
She was so earnest that I couldn’t help teasing her despite the grim circumstances. “Well, try something less dangerous next time, sweetheart. Remember, I’ve seen you drive before.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
We went in after dark, ghosting through the thick woods at a slow, steady pace. Master Sergeant Burghoff led the way, and I was amazed by how well the man could navigate in the dark over unfamiliar terrain. He was the assistant team leader but was also a sneak specialist, so he took point.
Moving in a loose diamond formation, I didn’t mind being the guy in the middle, the newbie to this incredibly talented group of soldiers. I was number seven in the six-man team, if that made sense. Burghoff was leading this element while Captain Marino, the detachment CO, handled the roadblock and held up with the reserve force.
I thought back briefly about how we’d gotten here and realized I might not have gotten off on the right foot with these men. However, they’d seemed polite enough after, so maybe they were willing to cut me some slack. They hadn’t come at the best time. Except, somehow, they had.
I remembered how everyone had been opposed to me joining in with the scouting mission. Finally, I just said that if they wanted to keep me out, they would need to get their own set of plans. That stopped the captain, and everyone else in the planning meeting, in their tracks.
“You have the area around the house mapped? And plotted?” Captain Marino asked in disbelief.
“And floorplans for the house. With the most recent, as in before the lights went out, alterations,” I replied. “What he’s done since, I couldn’t say. But I still think it is a bad idea.”
The captain’s plan to go after the congressman instead of assaulting the courthouse, was met with initial resistance from some of the residents of the ranch. Well, from me in particular, but the captain soon educated me in the ways of the world.
“McCorkle has scraped up roughly two companies of National Guard troops from the surrounding communities. He has half that force, nearly a hundred men, camped out around the courthouse complex. He’s got the commander there convinced the sheriff and his deputy are dangerous subversives. The man has these men thinking he is there to stop the federal government from taking over and sending them all to FEMA camps.
“They are just following what they think are legit
imate orders, from a non-existent reorganizing Texas government, and they are braced for an attack. We could go in and try to do either a sneak or a straight up assault, but too many civilians and military personnel are likely to get themselves dead.”
Marino brought me around with his inescapable logic. When outnumbered, use your strength where your enemy is weak. If we could take out McCorkle, especially if we could produce evidence of wrongdoing by the congressman, then we could likely bring the National Guard major over to see the truth. Or so the captain’s two men already surveilling the town assured him.
I didn’t want to agree, but the facts were the facts. Even using the freed deputies and scraping up every able-bodied neighbor, we could only manage maybe fifty shooters. That left us short on manpower for an assault, and even I knew that a stealthy approach against an alert foe was a recipe for disaster. So as much as I wanted to go in, guns blazing, I was finally brought around to see reason
Of course, I didn’t bring the plans, or mention their existence, until we got down to just the small group going. And Amy. She wouldn’t leave my side and no one had the heart to make her leave.
I explained that I had an interest in old houses and architecture, which exactly no one believed. Amy would have none of that, however, so she spoke up. “The congressman’s twenty-two-year-old son got away with raping a fourteen-year-old girl back before the lights went out. He used his daddy’s connections to destroy the evidence, and then organized a smear campaign that drove the girl to suicide.”
“You planned on extracting a little revenge there?” Captain Marino asked, and I just shrugged.
“McCorkle was a pretty popular figure for a scumbag piece of dog shit. He was real good at wrapping himself in the flag, though, and the voters around here who didn’t do their homework ate it up. There’s a reason he was a ten-term congressman. Let’s just say I am somehow not surprised the man’s loyalty is only to his own survival. But, the target was the son, Chad.”
Walking in the Rain (Book 4): Dark Sky Thunder Page 19