by Noah Mann
Hellfire
The Bugging Out Series
Book Seven
Noah Mann
Copyright
© 2017 Noah Mann
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events, locations, or situations is coincidental.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
Thirty Nine
Forty
Forty One
Forty Two
Forty Three
Forty Four
Forty Five
Forty Six
Forty Seven
Forty Eight
Thank You
About The Author
Part One
Night
One
Not long ago, in the rage of a winter storm, bodies had spilled onto the shore from the churning Pacific. This morning, as a darkened dawn broke, two more forms emerged from the surf, very alive, wearing wetsuits and rebreathing SCUBA gear, the M4 rifles in their hands aimed at Corporal Enderson and me.
“SEALs,” Enderson said, eying the approaching special operations troops.
We both had weapons in our possession, sidearms and long guns, but Enderson’s M4, and my AR, both hung from slings across the front of our bodies. Neither of us wanted to present any threat to the warriors just coming ashore.
“Identify,” one of the SEALs said, loud but not shouting.
“Corporal Morris Enderson,” he said, the first time I’d ever heard ‘Mo’ willingly use his legal first name. “United States Army.”
“Eric Fletcher,” I said.
The pair of SEALS stopped a few yards from us and lowered their rifles. Beyond them, just off shore, a small rigid hull inflatable boat was riding the breaking waves, its helmsman steering it through tight circles to keep it on station. And, a greater distance out, closer to open water, the squat grey hull of the Rushmore was just becoming visible in the day’s dim new light. To the east, ash had spread across the horizon, blotting the sunrise so that it was little more than a weak, jaundiced glow.
“Lieutenant Harker,” the first SEAL said, identifying himself, then gesturing to the other member of his party. “This is Chief Nguyen.”
“Welcome to Bandon,” Enderson said.
“We need to speak with your senior officer on station,” Harker said.
The natural response that Enderson could give was to tell the man that Sergeant Lorenzen was senior while Captain Angela Schiavo was absent. But the situation wasn’t that clear, in technical terms.
“Our sergeant has operational control,” the corporal replied, walking the finest line he could without actually avoiding the truth.
“I’m not here to talk to a sergeant,” Harker said.
Enderson gave me a sideways glance, knowing where this was going.
“Commander Clay Genesee is the senior military officer in town,” Enderson told the SEAL leader.
“Take us to him,” Harker said.
* * *
I drove the Humvee which Enderson had used to bring us down to the beach after lookouts had reported a shadow on the horizon. A shadow the size of a ship. We’d suspected, correctly, that it might be the Rushmore, and were dispatched by Lorenzen to verify its presence off the coast as he completed the final preparations for our mission to locate and assist Schiavo, Martin, and Private Carters Laws, who’d begun their journey to Portland less than three days before. Twenty-four hours ago, Mt. Hood had erupted, spewing a constant gush of burning ash into the sky. So far, the cloud had not reached Bandon, but, as Enderson and I had earlier walked across the sand toward the water’s edge, we both felt the change in the weather. The wind was cool, and light, but it was now coming from the north.
We could expect ash from the eruption to reach us within hours.
“Do you have supplies for us?” Enderson asked.
He sat next to me in the passenger seat, the SEALs behind, their gazes playing over the slumbering town as we cruised through. Each seemed almost shell shocked by the normalcy of what they saw. Houses. Dry land. Small trees alive and green in the sweep of the vehicle’s headlights.
“We’re not here for that,” Harker said.
To this point, Nguyen had remained silent. I glanced over my shoulder at the junior warrior, a thirtyish man filled with experiences of one twice his age. He’d seen much. Too much, maybe.
“Chief,” I said, alternating my view between him and the road ahead.
“Yes.”
“Any information on what happened in San Diego?”
The chief looked to his lieutenant, their shared surprise just shy of obvious.
“How do you know about San Diego?” Harker asked.
I told him about the bodies. Bodies of people we’d known had once inhabited the San Diego survivor colony.
“San Diego is lost,” Harker said.
Still silent, Chief Nguyen shifted his gaze out the side window, more an attempt at distraction than interest in the scenery.
“Lost how?” I pressed.
“We’re not getting it back,” Harker said, polite and bland, offering information without emotion.
“Was it the Unified Government?”
To my question, Harker nodded and looked away. The SEAL community had a deep connection to the area, with much of their rigorous training taking place on nearby Coronado Island. Losing such a place would be a harsh pill to swallow, and, from the reactions of both men, that was a reality they were having difficulty accepting.
“How much farther?” Harker asked.
“Almost there, sir,” Enderson told him.
Neither Harker nor Nguyen had come to talk. At least not to me or the corporal. They were on their own mission, which, for some reason, Clay Genesee was the focal point of.
Two
Commander Clay Genesee lived in a small house less than a five-minute walk from the hospital, a mode of travel he preferred to using the Humvee that had been assigned to him. That vehicle sat at the curb, the one we’d arrived in double parked next to it, almost choking the narrow street as we walked up the stone path to the doctor’s front door. Just as we reached the bottom steps to the porch a four-wheeled ATV came around the corner and sputtered to a stop facing the pair of military vehicles. Sergeant Lorenzen climbed quickly off and met us, shifting his weapon so it was slung across his back.
“This is Lieutenant Harker and Chief Nguyen,” Enderson said, offering the introductions.
Lorenzen rendered a quick salute to the Navy officer. From the corner of my eye I saw a flash of subdued embarrassment on the corporal’s face as he realized he hadn’t saluted Harker when learning his rank on the beach.
Even in the world as it was now, rank mattered.
But not enough for Harker to care, it seemed. He had more immediate concerns.
“Sergeant,” Harker said. “Will you wake the commander?”
It wasn’t given as an overt order, but that’s precisely what it was. And Lorenzen obliged the stranger’s directive, moving past us to mount the steps and cross the porch to thump his fist solidly on the front door. Before a second knock was needed the door opened and Genesee looked out, bleary eyed, wearing only a pair of blue sweats, his gaze swelling with confusion when he saw what had arrived upon his doorstep.
“What’s... Who...”
“Doc, you have some visitors,” Lorenzen said.
Harker gave the sergeant a sideways glance, reacting to the informality that Lorenzen was expressing toward his superior.
“What time is it?” Genesee asked, rubbing his eyes and glancing past us to the muted glow of the new day on the horizon, ash filtering the coming daylight to almost nothing as the pair of strangers on his doorstep each saluted him. “What’s going on?”
“It’s early, commander,” Harker said, not waiting for the superior officer to return his salute. “May we come in? We have intelligence you’re going to need.”
Genesee puzzled openly at the SEAL’s deference toward him, then let an actual chuckle slip past his lips.
“Lieutenant...”
“Harker,” the senior SEAL prompted. “Michael Harker.”
“Right,” Genesee said. “Lieutenant Michael Harker, you don’t want me. You want these folks right here.”
Genesee gestured toward Lorenzen, Enderson, and me.
“I’m just a doctor.”
“Pardon me, sir,” Harker began, “but you’re a commissioned officer in the United States Navy, and ranking officer here in Bandon. This is correct, yes?”
For a moment, Genesee was flustered, the early hour and unlikely interaction combining to dull his faculties.
“Lieutenant, I’m not your guy.”
“Again, pardon me, sir, but according to what we’ve been told, you are our guy.”
Harker’s insistence finally broke the mental logjam which had stalled Genesee’s acceptance of the inevitable, and the Navy commander, bare from the waist up, stepped aside and let his five early morning guests into his house.
* * *
Genesee excused himself to get a sweatshirt from his bedroom, leaving the five of us who’d awakened him to wait in his living room.
“Lieutenant, if this is going to take a while, Fletch here and I would like to get back to preparations for our mission,” Lorenzen said. “We’re leaving this morning.”
It had been decided that Lorenzen and I would head out to locate and assist our expedition to Portland, which had to have been affected by the eruption of Mt. Hood. The sergeant had dispatched me and his second in command to investigate the reports of a ship offshore, with no expectation that we’d be returning to town with a pair of special operations troops. In fact, when reporting that very occurrence via radio to Lorenzen as we started back toward town, his reaction had bordered on disbelief. But there was no doubting the reality of the situation now, just as there was no question that we had to get back to readying our equipment and supplies for the arduous journey to begin in just a few hours.
“Is this a mission to find your people heading to Portland?” Harker asked.
It shouldn’t have surprised us that the SEAL knew about the expedition which had set out to, presumably, reach Air Force One. The directions to expect a message had come from the Rushmore, which had obviously sent these men ashore in a small launch. But the manner in which Harker had made note of it hinted at some connection to his purpose here.
“It is,” Lorenzen confirmed.
“You’re going to want to put that on hold until we finish here,” Harker said.
Lorenzen looked to me, both of us curious, and wary, that state of concern lasting until Genesee returned, dressed from neck to ankles now.
“So what is it you need to tell me?”
“Com aboard the Rushmore picked up a transmission from your people about six hours ago,” Harker said, instantly seizing our full attention. “It was bounced off a satellite.”
In the past, particularly during interference by the White Signal, we’d used a transmitter set up to relay messages using communications satellites passing overhead at specific times of day. That had been a fairly reliable method of defeating the signal which overwhelmed the airwaves. There was just one problem with what Harker was sharing.
“Lieutenant,” I began, “they didn’t have a satellite transmitter with them. Just line of sight radios.”
“They found one,” Nguyen said, speaking for the first time.
Harker nodded to his subordinate and the man retrieved a device from the gear vest strapped snugly across his chest. It was a waterproof GPS unit.
“GPS hasn’t functioned for a while,” I said.
“Yours hasn’t,” Harker said, making it clear that the military, or portions of it, were still able to access the constellation of Global Positioning System satellites.
“The contact was initiated from here,” Nguyen said, pointing to a digital pin that had been dropped on the GPS’s map screen. “North of Eugene around a town called Coburg.”
“What was the communication from them?” Lorenzen asked.
Harker looked to Genesee to give his answer.
“They said they need a doctor.”
Genesee absorbed that.
“What was the nature of the need?” he asked. “Who was hurt? What are the injuries?”
Nguyen shook his head.
“The Rushmore was only able to acknowledge their transmission before the contact was lost,” the chief said.
“Could be atmospheric disturbance from the ash,” Harker suggested. “Or something else.”
Something else...
I didn’t want to venture any guesses as to what those other possibilities could be, because none were as benign as too much volcanic dust in the air.
“You need to get there, Commander Genesee,” Harker said. “That mission has to reach Portland, and if some injury is holding it up, that obstacle has to be removed.”
The SEAL officer spoke of what might have befallen the expedition as though it were some benign growth that was easily removed. Except it wasn’t. It was a mystery, and it existed far from where we stood, in possibly hellish conditions. To expect that Genesee, more civilian than military man, by his own choice and actions since being stationed in Bandon, could somehow fix an unknown was a hopeful thought at best.
“Lieutenant,” I said, and Harker reluctantly shifted his attention to me. “Sergeant Lorenzen and I can get to them, and we can get whoever’s hurt back here.”
To that, Harker simply shook his head.
“The voice on the radio was male,” he explained. “Captain Schiavo could be the one who is hurt.”
Lorenzen processed that, clearly troubled by the possibility.
“She’d put herself in harm’s way before she let someone else get hurt,” the sergeant said.
“She can’t be brought back to Bandon if she’s hurt,” Harker told us. “She’s the one who has to make it to Portland.”
“The only one,” Nguyen added.
The statement was one of military fact, not some cold assessment of the expendability of those who’d accompanied Schiavo on the trek. Still, it made clear the reason for the SEAL’s almost laser focus on speaking to Genesee. To them, and to whoever had concocted this new mission, he was a savior.
The reluctant Navy commander, though, did not see it that way.
“I’m not some field guy. I’m not you. Okay? I suture cuts and set bones.”
“Noted, Commander Genesee,” Harker said. “But this isn’t an option. I’m relaying a direct order to you from Admiral Adamson. You are to go meet up with the mission already underway and ensure that Captain Schiavo is fit and able to reach Portland.”<
br />
Genesee, still, wasn’t buying into the premise of his necessity.
“Are you telling me I’m the only doctor available?” he challenged the SEAL officer. “When I came in on the Rushmore there were two other doctors. You must have one on board who can do this. You could put him ashore further north, which is a lot closer than we are to this Coburg place. And what about a helicopter? You had two Seahawks on board when I was there. You could drop that doc right to them and pull out anybody who’s hurt. Hell, you could fly them to Portland in...that...”
Genesee suddenly realized how his protest was coming across. As though it was being delivered by a man afraid of the duty he’d signed up for long ago. Long before the blight turned the world into a daily battle for survival. And long before Mother Nature had decided to interject a reminder that she controlled all things beneath our feet, including the long dormant volcano which had left that state of quiet behind to add its own devastation to our corner of the world.
“Look, I don’t know that I can do this,” Genesee said.
Harker exchanged a look with Chief Nguyen, then fixed on Genesee again.
“Are you refusing the admiral’s order, sir?”
The man who’d come to Bandon a cold and distant practitioner of medicine, but who’d slowly grown to be more a part of our town, and the community of people that inhabited it, looked to Lorenzen, Enderson, and me, his gaze steeling with each passing second. Finally he faced Harker again and shook his head.
“I am not, lieutenant,” Genesee said. “I will do what I’m ordered to do.”
“Good,” Harker said, then nodded to Nguyen, who handed the GPS to the Navy doctor. “This will guide you to their last known position.”
Genesee eyed the device, the digital pin marking the location flashing on the screen. A light circle surrounded it, indicating any probability of error, and showing that our friends could be anywhere within a half mile radius. Not quite a needle in a haystack, but not marked by some flashing neon sign, either.
“One question,” I said, drawing Harker’s attention to me once again. “Why not do what the doctor suggested? Have the Rushmore put someone closer? I know the helicopter idea is out because of the ash cloud, but you could put people a lot closer, and a lot faster. You could even transport us up the coast, put us ashore near Florence and we head inland. That could cut a day, maybe two off our trip.”