Jack put one arm through a strap on his rucksack and tossed it onto his back, then grasping the sling on his AKM, he low-crawled north, pushing his rifle muzzle first as he went. The grass began to thin again, so he waited for the nearest team to make their next pass west before going any farther.
When he did, he made fifty feet before he moved out of the grass and onto dirt. He knew the silo was to his right, but the slight slope to the east blinded him from seeing it. Jack retrieved his filtration mask and put it on before resuming his crawl, he could already see that he was stirring up dust.
About fifty yards to his northeast was a mound or berm, he couldn’t tell more from his position. He decided to go there. About halfway to his destination, he could see he was in clear sight of the silo several hundred yards away. He slowed his crawl to a creep and moved by inches, keeping constant watch on those working there. When he reached the dirt feature, he found it was a waist high and arc shaped berm at the edge of a shallow depression perhaps a foot deep. He guessed it to be the result of an impact or excavation of some form in the past.
A peek around the left side of the berm showed the team at the silo hard at work recovering the warhead from the silo. A man furiously worked the ratcheting handle of the come-along, raising the reentry system in tiny increments with each throw.
Jack looked to the south and saw the nearest search team moving west once again, only their shoulders and heads showing above the slope of the land. He loaded four cartridges into his Savage rifle as he observed them.
He moved back to the left side of the berm and used his riflescope to get a closer look. He noted the proximity of what he guessed to be stacks of explosives near the crane and wondered if the PBX in the warhead might sympathetically detonate the rest of the explosives. He also wondered if that did occur, was he safe at his present distance.
He moved to the other side of the berm to see if it revealed anything he could not see from the left. It did. The twelve men who were searching now walked to the north, not directly at Jack, but it appeared they would come close enough that it was very worrisome to him.
The men stopped less than fifty yards away, between the between the berm and the silo, close enough he could hear their raised voices over the wind.
“Sam, take your team and patrol the area. Those that attacked during the battle may still be around, as might another group coming to pay us a visit. Be watchful.”
“We will.”
“The rest of you, let us help speed our journey. We’ll be on our way to the Homeland this day.”
Jack stayed quiet and listened for any sound that might indicate Sam and his team might be near. After a minute, he eased his way from the berm and looked to the north. The four men were walking toward the stand of trees. A peek around the berm toward the silo showed him the other eight were on their way there as a dust devil whirled nearby, playing across the flat dirt surface and then wisping away into nothing.
Jack sighted on one of the members of the crew working on lifting the reentry system. Using the metric marks on the reticle, he determined he was just shy of 350 meters away, or about 382 yards distant. Not knowing how much explosives TGG possessed or what types they might be was concerning. Explosives was not a subject he had any expertise in. Could I duck behind the berm before the shockwave arrives here? How much explosives would it take to generate a blast wave that might reach me?
Jack gouged at the berm as he thought. It reminded him of digging out of the facility in Old Norman. He had an idea. A loophole. You’ll be behind the berm when you fire. If the blast reaches here, you have cover. If your shot doesn’t set the PBX off, you have cover if the GGs start shooting at you.
He pulled his entrenching tool from its pouch on his ruck and started boring a hole through the berm, stopping every so often to see if anyone might be nearing his position. Much like digging into Ranger Hill, Jack’s boring operation went quickly. Eventually he was lying on his stomach, stabbing and scraping what he estimated to be the last foot or so before he would penetrate the opposite side. A poke with the e-tool knocked out a hole on the other side. A quick look through revealed he had only a slight bit of adjustment to make to have a clear shot at his target. He looked around the left side and saw Sam’s team moving his way, one of them carrying Mr. Vaquero’s lucky sombrero. Maybe his luck ran out, Jack thought. The team altered course slightly, coming toward him… straight toward him.
He cursed silently and quickly moved all of his gear against the side of the berm. He placed himself on his side against the berm as well, with his head facing to the north. It would necessitate him to shoot left-handed should it come to that, but if they came around to his side of the berm, he was sure they would come from the north and going southpaw gave him better cover and concealment.
They were close before he heard them, the noise of the wind masking a great deal of sound. The men sounded upbeat. Jack guessed the prospect of heading west and home had them in good spirits.
They came closer and closer, then stopped. Jack was sure they must be right on top of him. A boot knocking dirt onto him from the top of the berm told him he was correct. Jack looked up and saw the toe of a jungle boot, recognizing the sole pattern as the same kind he often wore.
“Won’t be long now,” one of them said.
“I know it.”
The boot slid out of sight, a bit more dirt trickled down onto Jack.
“Gotta go.”
Jack heard the sound of streaming fluid, a man urinating on the other side of the berm.
“Hey, see that?”
“A hole. Too low for me to pee in if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“It’s not. I wonder what dug it. Mutant mouse maybe?”
“Ha, more likely a standard run-of-the-mill R-A-T rat. Rotten things are nasty enough, they don’t need to mutate.”
“Reach in there and find out. Go on.”
“No way, I don’t want to die from a radioactive mouse bite or regular rat bite either. We’re going home.”
“You finished?”
“Am now. Let’s go.”
Footsteps ground in the dirt and the sound faded into the wind as they walked away. Jack leaned out enough to see them headed south. He waited until they were a hundred yards away before he moved. A check of the hole showed that one of the men had kicked dirt into the hole. Jack went prone and scraped the sides of the hole to make his adjustments and pull out the last of the dirt. His final task was to clear the outer portion where the GG had refilled it. As daylight showed through, he saw the glint of yellow metal. It was an expanding watchband. Jack grimaced. “Dumbass dropped his watch,” he whispered. If he notices….
He leaned over his rucksack to his right to check on the patrol. Twenty-five yards away was a single man trotting toward him, tan sombrero in hand. They saw one another at the same time. You lost your watch, but you hung on to that damned unlucky hat, passed through Jack’s mind. The sombrero fell to the ground as the man brought his rifle to his shoulder. Jack moved out of sight behind the berm and grabbed his AKM.
The man yelled to his comrades and Jack took a gamble, leaning out to take a shot in the hope the man instinctively looked to his rear when he yelled. Jack was right, his head was swiveling Jack’s way as the Ranger leaned out. The man saw Jack and they fired at almost the same instant. The man’s round dug into the dirt inches to Jack’s left, Jack’s shot hit the man in the middle of the torso. The two exchanged near simultaneous shots again, Jack’s round dropping the man while the other’s shot flew well high and over Jack.
Sam and his two remaining team members ran toward Jack. The Ranger fired a trio of rounds at them, driving them into the dirt. Jack was sure it was out of self-preservation and not wounds that caused them to go prone. He fired another trio of rounds, and then tossed his AKM to the other side of the depression. He tore his filtration mask away, not wanting it to interfere with his shooting. Grabbing his Savage .308, he dropped to the bottom of the depression and
scoped the silo through the loophole. Several men fired from the area around the silo, others continued to work to raise the reentry system, and it appeared to Jack they were nearly to the point of success. Bullets buzzed by overhead, some striking the berm and throwing dirt.
Jack already knew the range. He knew the amount of holdover for the distance and bullet he was firing. He knew the adjustments he needed for the wind. Three hundred and eighty yards, one hundred sixty-eight grains of boattail hollow point at twenty-seven hundred feet-per-second needs just less than two feet of holdover, wind from the rear will play no factor, went through his mind in a fraction of a second. Breathing, pulse, finger lightly hooked on the trigger, all the things training and a lifetime of shooting made almost automatic were in place. Men ran at him firing wildly as they closed. Others threw lead from positions around the silo. Jack ignored it all. The shot, that’s all that matters. Let’s hope we get enough bang to do the job. The trigger broke cleanly and the rifle pushed into the pocket of his shoulder. Moments after his shot, the world came apart.
Jack rolled to his left, away from the loophole as the sound of a massive explosion split the air and ground jolted and bucked under him. In a flash, the blast wave scoured off a considerable portion of the berm protecting him, dirt and debris following in its wake. He curled into a ball, his arms over his head in fear of injury.
Jack knew the impact of his shot was enough to detonate the polymer bonded explosive within the warhead because it was abundantly apparent an explosion had occurred. But unseen and unbeknownst to Jack, his shot initiated a lightning-fast chain of events. The warhead explosion detonated a stack of unused demolitions charges that lie near the opening into the launcher closure, which in turn ignited the solid fuel propellant in the Minuteman II missile in the silo and detonated the considerable stockpile of TGG’s demolition explosives stored nearby. As the blast wave expanded, the third stage of the Minuteman II blasted from the silo, somehow freed from the rest of the missile, terribly damaged and unguided. It climbed well into the sky before it tumbled and came apart in flames and scattering pieces. The rest of the 73,000-pound missile consumed itself in the silo, the long reinforced steel silo liner serving as chimney and blast nozzle. The burning solid propellant in turn set afire equipment inside the underground structure and initiated the explosive charges in the ballistic gas generators, which hurled the damaged launch closure from its place atop the silo.
Among the flying pieces of debris, blasted from its place near the silo, a mass of concrete and protruding rust-tinted rebar arced through the dust cloud generated by the blast. Velocity, angle, altitude, wind, and gravity combined to determine the concrete blob’s course. The mass, hitting the ground and bounding once, twice, then plowing through a shallow berm, came to a sudden stop with a crunching thud at its new resting place: a shallow hole in the ground containing dirt, an entrenching tool, two rifles, one rucksack, and a Freelands Ranger named Jack Traipse.
The impact added more dirt and debris to the already polluted air. By the time the gusting winds pushed it away to the east, all that could be seen at the impact site was a flattened rucksack under the ugly wad of steel and concrete, and a the buttstock of an AKM protruding from the dirt nearby.
. . . . .
20
Wayfaring and Means of Separation
. . . . .
The truck came up the north side of the hill, McCarty skillfully avoiding the scattered bodies of the rads and barbed wire that littered the slope, and stopped at the summit. The Rangers on the hill smiled and waved. Sean walked toward Flour Power as everyone aboard disembarked.
“Took us longer than we intended,” Art shouted. “Had to find a ford through a creek.”
Sean opened his mouth to speak. “Glad you cou—”
Suddenly, the ground moved in a sharp shudder, and the rolling thunder of a frightful and distant explosion rippled the air.
“What the blazes was that?” someone said.
Sean turned and looked at the growing storm of smoke miles to the northeast. He shook his head, wide-eyed. “Jack. What the hell did you do?”
Everyone on the hill looked to the same place and saw the smoke billowing up from the blast and exhausting missile fuel.
“It’s a nuke!” someone said.
“No, it’s not,” Amanda replied.
“That’s a mushroom cloud,” Ranger Watts said.
“Not every mushroom shaped cloud is caused by an atomic warhead going off. Ever see a fuel explosion?”
“Okay, maybe not. But if Jack’s over there, how would he survive such a blast? He was on radio before, right? Now there’s nothing.”
“We lost commo long before that,” Jerry said with a gesture at the growing cloud.
Daley looked up from a map he’d taken from one of the rad dead. “Looks like they sent a team to Lima-Zero-Two.” My money’s on a lucky sombrero-wearing hombre leading that group, he thought.
“We have to go see if Jack’s alive,” Amanda said.
Watts shook his head. “What if there are still rads out there? Or TGG? How could he survive such a blast anyway?”
“That would depend on how close he was when it went off, or if he had cover,” Amanda said. “If there are rads or TGG out there, that’s all the more reason to go.”
Sean nodded and looked at Watts. “If it were you out there, Jack would already be on the way to check on you.”
Watts closed his eyes and nodded also. “You’re right. We need to be sure… one way or the other.”
“What about commo?” Lieutenant Geiger said. “Jack was beyond broadcast range. If you get in trouble, how will we know?”
“We set up a relay station,” Jerry said. “Three or four miles out.”
“If Jerry is willing to run the relay, Stan and I will go with. Rads, TGG, mutant cats, none of them will find us,” Will said.
“Take the truck,” Geiger said. He looked at McCarty. “You have the fuel?”
McCarty looked at the gauges on the tanks. “I think so, counting the fuel Tucker’s group has on the wagon over west. If I’m wrong, somebody’ll have to hoof it a few miles to get some from Geneva.”
“Go. Art, take charge.”
“You heard the LT. Lewis, Hays, Trahearn, Stark, Baker, Baskin, and Stafford, get aboard. Michaels, Dando, Dando, get your TROG on and let’s go.”
Jennifer had not said a word the entire time, the expression of concern on her face evident of her feelings.
Amanda grasped her arm as they walked to the truck. “He’s alive, Jen. Don’t ask me how I know, but he’s alive.”
. . . . .
The ground beside the chunk of concrete shifted, as if an enormous mole were surfacing. Suddenly Jack sat up, dirt pouring from him as he coughed and gagged, and finally spat. The deep hell storm roar of burning solid fuel propellant jetting from the missile silo filled Jack’s ears, overwhelming any other sound. He shook the grit from his head and opened his eyes, grimacing at the discomfort from the myriad foreign objects under his eyelids. The scent of countless burning things assaulted his olfactory senses.
Jack sacrificed a canteen of water to clear the contaminated grit from his face and glasses, saving enough for washing down a pair of extremophile capsules. That done, he pulled another filtration mask from a thigh pocket and put it on.
He looked at the concrete mass that had missed him by inches and shook his head. As he extricated the rest of himself and his two rifles from the dirt, he saw his rucksack, now pressed into the ground under the mass. “Shit. That’s just what I need right now,” he said to himself, sure the TROG could not survive such treatment. The jetting rocket fuel in the silo expended itself in spitting chuffs as it guttered out. All he could hear now was the crackling sound of fire, gusting wind, and the ringing in his ears. “At least I’m not deaf or dead,” he muttered. He looked down to observe the dosimeter clipped to his coveralls and found it was gone. “Let’s see if the rad meter fared better than the TROG.”
Jack moved to the side of the hole near the concrete and sat down on the ground surface above the mass, then pushed with both legs. The concrete resisted, but with great effort finally tilted and rolled away from the rucksack. It was obvious the TROG did not survive the encounter with the mass of concrete and steel. He gently wiped the dust from the lenses of his riflescope, then scanned the area around the silo for any signs of life. He saw nothing but the large smoldering crater at the center of the blast; scoured dirt; burned and shredded human body parts; the silo lid, now in pieces and thrown some distance away; concrete remnants of the surrounding silo structures; and a few metal poles jutting haphazardly from the ground.
Jack pulled his radiation meter from its place in a rucksack pocket and found it intact. He looked at the gauge. The levels were up despite his upwind location from the blast. The explosion threw radioactive material this way, he thought. Get yourself moving Ranger.
He affixed his bolt-action rifle to his rucksack, and noticing the handle of his e-tool protruding from the dirt, recovered it and placed it in its pouch. He heaved the ruck’s straps over his shoulders and pulled them tight. He stood and looked at the apocalyptic scene to the east. He took a few steps toward the silo, noting the increase in the reading on his rad meter with each step. He turned and hurried away grimacing. Could you have cut it much closer? He noticed the grass that had provided him concealment just a short time before was now gone, sheared away in the explosion.
The Blastlands Saga Page 68