“Nah. This ain’t nothin’.” Mike effortlessly pulled the remaining fifty-pound bags of sand up against the back seat area, finishing their bulletproof barrier.
“Everyone locked and loaded?” Cyn called out.
Receiving three positive replies, she hit the starter and backed the HUMVEE out of the loading dock. With her elbows hitting the bags of sand to her left and Drosky to her right, Cynthia spat multiple curses as she awkwardly spun the steering wheel to navigate them back onto the main road.
Finally, they broke out of the residential area and turned onto the main northbound artery. State highway 17/92 ran from Orlando all the way north to Sanford. In the time before “the darkness,” it would have been a congested—but direct—drive to get to Mike’s stomping grounds. But today, it was nothing more than a trash-littered slice of asphalt, with burned out and looted vehicles peppering the road. There were no straight lines anymore, the EMP had seen to that.
DHS HEADQUARTERS
GROUND CONTROL STATION
“Dammit!” Nixon yelled at the sensor control officer. “Why can’t you find them?”
“They’re out there. It’s only been ten minutes since we got on station.”
After finding his men shot dead instead of Drosky and his worthless partner, Nixon sprinted to the drone’s control station. With a fiber optic umbilical cord snaking its way into the building’s core, it provided instant communication to one of the city’s two Predator remote vehicles. A quick call to Ramona Qualls confirmed his request, and then the remote-controlled flying tank turned gracefully in the west Orlando sky fifteen minutes after Drosky and Bru had hopped into the waiting HUMVEE.
“What do you have on board?” Nixon asked.
“Two five-hundred-pound Mark 92s,” the sensor control officer said as he continued to manipulate the drone’s cameras.
“That should do it,” Nixon said. “But what’s taking so long?”
“Sir, we aren’t even sure they went north.”
“Yes, we are. They have enough information about our troop deployment to know that the north is their best bet. It’s a no-man’s land. They’ll take their chances with the gangs before they try and run a DHS roadblock.”
“Then they know we’ll be looking for them with the drone.” The pilot said.
“Of course, but they don’t have a choice. They have to keep moving, at least if they want to live. They know that the countryside is their safest bet, and north is the most secure route. Just keep looking.”
“Hey, to the left” the sensor operator yelled. “Vector north 20.”
The pilot banked the drone, now at an altitude of over three thousand feet, and levelled out parallel with Interstate 4.
“There. Got ‘em!” The sensor operator pointed at a moving HUMVEE careening up 17/92.
“They’re all over the place,” the pilot noted as the HUMVEE swerved at high speeds around the stalled vehicles.
“We’ll have to do a low-level run,” the pilot said. “Let’s set it up.”
The sensor control officer began to tap commands into his keyboard, and information streamed back at them, providing the crew the necessary calculations to align their craft for the kill.
The pilot turned and banked, bleeding off airspeed to allow the giant craft to slowly descend. As their drone settled into a straight northern track up Route 17/92, their target shot past Lee Road, just at the southern border of Maitland.
“Ten seconds!” the pilot said.
As they began their final run, the drone’s computer received confirmation of its release order, freeing the crew to drop its ordinance.
“On my mark. Three. Two. One. Release!”
The aircraft, flying at five hundred feet, dropped its bombs toward the fleeing vehicle. Just one of those bombs would be enough to obliterate their target, but two was always better than one, at least when it came to blowing things up.
The Nixon and the RPA crew watched excitedly as the onboard cameras recorded their bombs’ flight. It took less than two seconds before two bright plumes ignited, temporarily washing out the video feed.
“BAM!” Nixon shouted, pumping his fist into the air.
HIGHWAY 17/92
“There’s Lee Road,” Drosky announced. They swerved around a bunch of cars that had been abandoned in the intersection, several of them having smashed into each other, creating a twisted mass of plastic and metal.
“There we are! And no shots fired,” Bru shouted from the turret, pointing at a train trestle that passed over the highway. “That’s the city of Maitland just on the other side of the overpass.”
“We’ll get off this road and cut north through the neighborhoods.” Cyn said, smiling. “I can’t believe we’ve made it.”
Bru was leaning down into the cab to say something, when their world exploded. The light and noise were unbearable, but nothing compared to the compressive wave of energy that threw the five-thousand-pound vehicle end over end, punching the four occupants with a concussive force that sent several tons of dirt, wood, and iron into the air.
By the time the mangled HUMVEE had settled on the ground, it had cartwheeled three times and ended upside down, surrounded by hundreds of pounds of mangled train trestle and earth. Shrapnel peppered its thin walls, while the top of the heavy machine had been crushed a foot or more into the cab. No sound came from the four-wheel drive transport, other than the squeaking of tires as they slowly rotated to a stop.
CHAPTER 30
DHS HEADQUARTERS
“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
NIXON LEFT THE GROUND CONTROL station with a smile on his face. Not only had he finally gotten rid of Drosky, but leaving the claustrophobic room for the summer air felt oddly invigorating.
“Sir, Director Qualls asked that you report to her office immediately,” one of the female agents said.
“Thank you, but I need a ride over.”
“I’ll take care of it for you,” The young woman said, practically purring as she spoke.
“Very good, Agent…”
“Vicanti. Mia Vicanti.” She smiled.
“I would appreciate it, Mia.”
“Anytime, Agent Nixon. I’ve seen you before at the tower. I live on the twelfth floor.”
“I have an apartment there, but I’ve not been by in a while. I’ll look you up, next time I’m there.”
“Your ride will be waiting at the front door in five minutes.” She sashayed away, her hips continuing their conversation with an obvious sway and slight shake.
After grabbing a coffee in the cafeteria, Nixon found his driver and was at Qualls’ office within a few minutes.
“Success?” she asked after Nixon reported and gave his required salute.
“Absolutely. We got them. Drosky, his partner, and whoever killed our men.”
Nixon noticed that the director still looked pensive, her lips tightly pressed together, as she began to scan papers on her desk. Breaking protocol, he walked around her workstation and squatted down next to his new lover.
“What’s wrong, Ramona? You don’t look too happy.”
“How’s your anti-gang work going up north?”
“Fine. But it’s only been about a week.”
Nixon looked at the papers and saw AARs from Atlanta. “What’s going on in Georgia?” he asked after Qualls failed to respond to his presence.
“It seems some Marines are mounting an offensive against the government.”
“What? Marines follow orders. How is this possible?”
Qualls looked up at Nixon, a hint of fear in her eyes. That, more than any words she could have said, told him all he needed to know.
“Seems they don’t like what our president is demanding of them. They’ve pushed into Buckhead and took out a company of agents. It was a slaughter.”
“My God,” was all that Nixon could say. “What does that mean for us?”
“We have
to prepare for an insurgency,” Qualls replied. “This may just be the start.”
“How can I help?”
Qualls just sat there, uncharacteristically silent, tapping her fingers on her desk.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “But the first thing we need to do is take care of the immediate problem. We need to get the white supremacists out of the city.”
“Well, I’ll need more people to make that happen. I’ve baited a bunch of traps in Winter Park and Maitland. I’ll have to get further north into Casselberry and Altamonte Springs to cover their entire area.”
Qualls sighed. “Whatever you need.”
“Trust me,” Nixon said as he put his hand on her back. “We’ll own this city within the month.”
MAITLAND, FL
Although I couldn’t have known it, John’s HUMMER lay smoldering just few miles away while I dozed in my father’s study. The midday heat was becoming a problem. Now that the obscenely hot days were back, any movement or activity became a miserable chore. All I wanted was to be comfortable once again. Air conditioning was a fantasy, and a washing machine, hot shower and fresh food were pipe dreams. Life had become a dreary passing of time, and I’d been worn down. I didn’t want to think anymore because there was no way out of our predicament. The gang activity had grown overwhelming, with even night journeys becoming a challenge.
“Hey Charlie,” Janice said in a low voice, rousing me from my half-sleep. “I thought you might be in here.”
“Not for long. I can barely stay in the house at night, let alone deal with this during the day. It’s beginning to feel like a sauna.”
“I know,” Janice replied.
She stood there in front of me, a stupid look on her face. It was like she was stuck between coming and going, frozen by her indecisiveness.
“Here,” she said as she handed me a paper bag.
Inside, there was an open box of feminine products as well as a partially filled bottle of pills.
“I know you’re almost out, so I brought you these.”
Feminine products were one of the two items were in very short supply. If I had a franchise of tampons and toilet paper, I’d have made a fortune.
“Janice! Where did you get these? And what’s in the bottle?”
“Birth control pills,” she replied.
“Pills? Why don’t you use them? I’m not the one with a twenty-year-old boyfriend.”
“He’s twenty-one,” she replied. “We figured out that his birthday was a month or so ago, but we forgot.”
I thought about it and realized that my birthday was coming up sometime soon. But without knowing what day it was, birthdays were no longer a concern.
“But why don’t you use the pills? You and G-man fighting?” I asked with mock concern.
Janice gave me a frightened look, and I knew instantly why she was here.
“Don’t tell me,” I began.
“Yeah,” she replied, interrupting me before I could continue. “I’m pregnant.”
“But, you’re on the pill.”
“That didn’t seem to make a difference. And I don’t know whether to be happy or scared out of my mind.”
“I’d be both,” I said sympathetically.
“Oh Charlie, what am I going to do?”
I stood there, not knowing how to help, when she moved forward and put her arms around me. I hugged her, as she quietly sobbed. After a while, she pulled back. Her eyes were swollen and red, but she had a smile on her face.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered with a grin, then her face dropped and she said it one more time. “Oh, God! I’m pregnant.” And she began to weep once again.
“It’s alright,” I said, trying to mollify her. “It’ll be alright.”
“How am I going to do this? I can’t have a baby out here. Pregnant or not, if the gangs get me, I’m dead. And so is my baby.”
“How far along are you?”
“I’ve missed my period by over four weeks.”
Janice’s condition meant we needed to take action. We had to make the push to Dr. Kramer’s place. We were living in a war zone, and within a few months, Janice wouldn’t be able to walk herself out of here. We had to leave, and it had to be soon.
CHAPTER 31
MAITLAND, FL
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
— Sun Tzu
DROSKY BEGAN TO STIR. LIKE an old computer that had suffered from a power surge, his mind started back up in fits and stages.
First, it was the ears. A constant, high-pitched noise that diminished to a lower frequency as his awareness increased.
Next, it was his sight. It sluggishly returned, starting with a small circle of light that eventually widened into a tunnel. Batting his eyelids to clear the scratchiness, he tried to focus on the shafts of light that danced around the inside of their HUMVEE. The inside of the crushed vehicle was a jumble of sand, dirt, and broken electronics. He realized that the vehicle was upside down and adjusted his brain accordingly.
After that, it was the pain. His head pounded like the worst hangover he’d ever experienced, only times ten. The pressure lanced through his neck and spread out evenly across his entire skull.
Then, it was the pressure. His legs wouldn’t move, sending adrenalin coursing through his system as fears of paralysis or amputation caused his nervous system to react. Pushing aside the pain and dizziness, Drosky frantically began patting himself down. Starting at his chest, he squeezed and probed his body until he eventually ran into a heavy object covering his lower torso.
Sandbags, he thought with relief. He reached down and pulled the first one off, but after shoving it to the side, he saw why his legs still wouldn’t move.
Drosky cried out as he jerked his legs out from under his partner’s body. Bru wasn’t moving, his shoulders and head obscured by debris from their crash. John frantically tried to uncover his friend, but he soon ran into the roof of their overturned HUMVEE. Bru’s body stopped there, his head and upper torso crushed under the two-and-a-half-ton truck.
Drosky gasped and sat back, striking his head on an upside-down metal bar. The blow sent pain shooting down his spine, overwhelming the shock from the vision of his friend’s headless torso. He realized Bru must have been caught outside the vehicle when it flipped.
“Shit,” he said, unable to think of a more eloquent response.
His mind cleared at the sound of someone else stirring inside the vehicle. Drosky abandoned thoughts of his former partner for now and crawled toward the noise.
“Hello?” Drosky shouted as he pulled himself to the front of the wreck, shoving aside sand that had ruptured from the paper bags. Using his arms like a trowel, he scooped the sand behind him, creating a path to the front seat.
He found the other two people dangling upside-down from their seats. Mike wasn’t moving, but Cyn was rolling her head as she began to regain her senses. He felt Mike’s neck and was rewarded with a fairly strong pulse.
“I’m stuck,” Cyn gasped as she struggled with her safety harness.
“Can you move your legs? Is there any pain?”
“Yes, I’m in pain. And yes, I can move my legs. Now get me the hell out of this thing.”
Drosky got his folding Spyderco knife from his pocket and quickly cut the polyester webbing and gradually lowered Cynthia to the roof of the four-door cab.
Mike groaned. “What happened?”
“We were hit,” Cyn said as she righted herself. “Can you unlock your harness?”
“I’ll try.”
“Hold on for a sec,” Cyn replied. “John, I’ll need your help.”
Drosky wormed his way up next to her, and the two of them braced Mike’s shoulders.
“Go ahead and release the belt.”
Mike reached down with his left arm and pressed against the roof. The click of the belt releasing was followed by a less than graceful tumble, earning the three of them several more bruises.
“Where
are we?” Mike croaked.
“Maitland,” Cyn replied.
“We need to move,” I said. “They’ll be back, either with a drone or a couple of squads.”
Mike craned his neck and looked at the crushed front doors. “How are we gettin’ out of this thing? There’s dirt everywhere.”
“I’ve got sunlight back here. And…something else,” Drosky replied, earning a look from the other two.
“Oh My God!” Mike gasped when he saw Bru’s body trapped out of the turret. “He’s dead?”
Drosky solemnly nodded.
“I’m sorry, John,” Cynthia said. “We can mourn him later, but right now we need to get clear of the wreck. Grab whatever gear you can and let’s go.”
After retrieving their rifles and one of their “go” bags, John kicked out the rear driver’s side door and crawled out onto the street. The HUMVEE was partially buried by debris and the dirt from the elevated railroad trestle.
“That’s what saved us,” Drosky said, pointing back at the crater. “The bomb hit the berm.”
“That, and the bags of sand absorbed enough of the blast to keep us alive,” Cyn replied.
“Yeah, but they’ll know we made it when they get here and only find one body,” Mike added.
The big guy unfastened a dented jerry can from the bed of the HUMVEE. It was leaking diesel fuel from a couple of pinholes where shrapnel had penetrated it.
“We need to burn it,” Mike said. “I hate to do that to Bru, but it may buy us some time.”
Drosky hesitated, until Cynthia chimed in. “He’s right, John. We should burn it.”
He at last nodded. It made sense tactically. But it still didn’t feel right.
Mike splashed the heavy fuel onto the overturned vehicle while Cyn added a second can. Then Mike lit a gas-soaked chunk of debris and tossed it into the HUMVEE’s interior. Within a minute, the truck was engulfed in flames, the cab becoming a funeral pyre for their dead comrade. The three survivors moved with a purpose and disappeared on foot into the abandoned Maitland subdivision. Once again, they were in enemy territory and had miles to go before they could rest.
The rest of the day, the three slowly moved north before stopping on the southern shores of Lake Maitland. John had little first-hand knowledge of the area, given that he never patrolled these streets. But growing up in the city had given him some experience in driving the roads and streets, so the trip to Sanford wouldn’t be totally blind. Unfortunately, the lake extended all the way east to Winter Park. If they pushed to much farther in that direction, they would run into gangs, so sneaking along 17/92 was their best option. Running that mile-long gauntlet would best be done at night, so they found an abandoned mansion and took refuge on its second floor. The back of the house stared across the huge lake, where they could see other empty mansions sitting on the water, all of them falling into disrepair.
Charlie's Requiem: Resistance Page 25