by J. J. Holden
And then Ethan felt his strength fading. The guard atop him might be bleeding out all the faster for their exertions, but he had the leverage and body weight to wear Ethan down. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut and put every ounce of strength into one last attempt to shove the guard off him, but it was futile. He knew the HAMnet would fail. The 20s would fail. America would burn before its implacable enemy. All because of one fucking rock that he hadn’t seen in the darkness. God had a funny sense of humor. They would die atop that hill together, first Ethan and then his mortally wounded enemy.
The knife moved inch by inch inexorably toward Ethan’s head, and the insane guard grinned down at him like a wolf over its prey. Ethan’s arm shook from the effort of holding the bloody blade at bay. It was about to give out, and then it would all be over.
A bolt of lightning passed through both Ethan and the guard. What the hell? The faint light of the moon faded in an instant as consciousness fled him. The last thing Ethan saw was another man standing over both of them.
* * *
What the crap? He was alive. Or, he felt alive. He hadn’t left pain behind, at least. His arm throbbed with fire, and his face was a pit of agony. Ethan fluttered his eyes open, trying to see, but he could sense only darkness. Then he remembered it was the middle of the night. He forced his eyes to stay open, and his sight slowly adjusted. A light to his right… There was the moon! Hello, moon. How beautiful it was—he’d never truly noticed that before. He decided to just lay there for a moment, reaching out with all his senses while he tried to decipher what the hell was going on, what his situation now was.
A rich and beautiful voice spoke up, a woman’s mezzo voice, an angel’s voice no doubt. “Bunker man, I see you live. Thanks for the taser, it sure did work.”
Ethan turned his head toward the sound and saw an attractive woman couched nearby, sitting on her heels with a rifle across her lap. “What happened?” he asked, and felt stupid for doing so.
“For someone who avoided getting caught by Peter, you sure are dumb, mister. You were fighting. I picked up the taser. I tased him and it knocked you both out.” She laughed, and it was the sound of a choir singing. It had the moon’s beauty in it.
Okay, that was the after-effects of still being alive after a fight; he’d felt it before, after the ambush where Jed had died. Survivor’s High, Michael called it.
“Why?” Ethan croaked, keenly aware that his own voice sounded ragged at best.
“Why did I save you? That’s complicated I guess. But mainly because you’re a Clanner I don’t recognize, and so you must be working against Peter somehow. And this guy here,” she said with a motion at a tied up guard, “is a total scumbag. One of Peter’s creatures. Now my turn to ask. Why are you here, and what are you doing? Why shouldn’t I just kill you and turn your corpse in to Peter?”
A chill washed over Ethan, but then he remembered that she hadn’t bound him. She’d bound the guard instead. So, she must want to spare him. This was his game to lose, at this point. All he had to do was not screw up. Hopefully. “Well,” he began, “I have a big tin can I’m going to use to fix an antenna, so we can save America…”
* * *
Captain Taggart watched as Eagan ran up to him in the tunnels. The unit had been searching for Black and his goons for half an hour, and the grin on Eagan’s face told him volumes.
“Cap, we found them. Black and his men are holed up in an alcove waiting for an enemy unit to pass overhead before they go up through a manhole cover. It’s a really big unit, sir. Been going by for ten minutes already. Even has a couple of tanks. So Black can’t escape us, yet. We still could have tracked him if he hadn’t been blocked in, but this let us catch up faster. It could have taken days to find them if they got out of the tunnels before we found them.”
Taggart saw Eagan was babbling with excitement and smiled. “No kidding,” he said and smiled wider. “Alright, get our troops in position to open fire into the alcove once the upstairs ’vaders have left the area. We can’t engage until the troops are gone, unless we want to rush into hand-to-hand, and we’ll take unacceptable losses if we do that. We have to ambush them. For that to work, we can’t let them know we’re there until we engage them with small arms. Once the troops pass overhead and they seem to be starting to go for the manhole ladder, engage them with everything we have. I want it over before it even began. And search the bodies for hidden weapons.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on it,” Eagan said, and rushed off to implement the plan.
Taggart watched him sprint away and allowed himself another smile. Eagan was a terrible trooper in barracks, but in the field? He lived for this. And Taggart liked having him at his back. Maybe it was time to promote the kid, if he’d even accept a promotion. He had always enjoyed his lack of responsibility a little too much to ask for promotion, but maybe he’d take a higher rank if Taggart made it an order? Or maybe not. Well, time enough to think about that later—the invaders would pass by soon. Taggart thought of the men in his unit who would become casualties in the ambush, and frowned. In a just world, he wouldn’t lose anyone at all.
* * *
0600 HOURS - ZERO DAY +32
Jaz kneeled behind a bush next to Captain Boise, the CO of what was left of Echo Company. Choony had awakened during the night but, being Choony, he stayed well behind the unit, unwilling to participate in the killing. That had pissed off the Marines until Jaz explained that he was a very conscientious objector but a damn fine, courageous man. She had suggested they have Choony ferry ammo to the fighters if there was a battle and it was necessary, and told how he had done that under heavy fire during the fight for the farm. The Marines had warmed up again after that. It would give them one more trained Marine on the firing line. It didn’t take a genius to see that would make the small Asian into an advantage to them.
Jaz now shifted her rifle to be ready to fire, as below them, at the bottom of a shallow gully, ten of the Arabic troops and one North Korean walked single-file toward them. She couldn’t see the other Marines, but she knew they were out there, deadly ghosts waiting for a slaughter to begin.
Boise whispered, “We have triangulated fire on the ravine, so there will be nowhere for them to hide or run to. They don’t have a point man in advance, so as soon as their lead soldier reaches the tree stump to our west, my unit will open fire without a command to maintain surprise. We’ve done this a dozen times in Iraq, so don’t worry, miss.”
Jaz nodded and merely waited. She felt calm, which surprised her a bit. There was no way she’d panic or run—not anymore. Die, bastards, die. Totally ready for this shit. Her therapy would begin once the shooting started. “Not worried,” she grunted. “We totally got this, Captain.” Jaz saw the captain look at her appraisingly, and nod. Oh, yeah, she was ready for this.
As the enemy in front approached the tree stump, Jaz bared her teeth and grinned the grin of a feral wolf. It promised blood and violence.
- 17 -
0600 HOURS - ZERO DAY +32
ETHAN STRUGGLED DOWN the ladder in the tube to the bunker. It was rough going. The simple metal ladder wasn’t easy with his injuries, and he was worn out from both fighting the guard and repairing the antenna. He had bruised ribs—maybe cracked—that hurt with each breath, his right wrist seemed fractured, his nose had been shattered, and he had a huge clump of hair missing along with a lot of his scalp. He was covered in dry blood but thankfully had quit bleeding hours ago with some help from the White Stag sympathizer.
The instant he hit the ground at the bottom of the ladder tube, Amber pounced on him like a wild spider monkey, embracing him and burying her face into his chest. All of which hurt quite a bit. Ethan winced in pain. “Not so tight!”
Amber quickly released him. “Sorry.”
Taking a step back, she looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the visible wounds. Then her eyes met his and she said, “Next time, duck when a knee comes at your face. You look terrible.”
“I’ll keep
that in mind.”
“Well, whatever you did to get that woman to help you, it worked. All your computer stuff is back online, and your message went out. They replied, but I can’t decode anything.”
“That’s good news. It wasn’t anything I did though. She wanted to help me. She said there’s a small group of people working to undermine Peter and help the Clan whenever they can. They’re the ones who helped Jaz escape.”
“Good, at least they aren’t all monsters,” Amber said. “I hope Jaz is okay out there alone… So how did you fix the internet, with a tin can and some dryer duct? You’re like MacGyver with that stuff.”
Ethan tried to bow, but it hurt too much. “Well, I call it a cantenna. If YouTube was up, you could see it for yourself. I used the tin can and some duct work to create an insulated tube for the signal and then mounted it where the messed up dish was. It took a while with a signal meter to get the damn thing aimed manually, but I finally got it connected with the rest of the HAMnet after a miserable hour at the top of an antenna with a broken wrist and my face swollen up like this. I could barely see.”
Amber looked concerned, but her voice was playful. “You complain too much. Stop playing Call of Duty and do some real work around here. Maybe then you wouldn’t get winded climbing an antenna.”
While he appreciated her humor, now wasn’t the time. Too much pain, too many aches, too close to death. “I need to check the messages now. Give me an hour or two to clean myself up and go over the files, and then we can get some rest. And Amber… Thanks for staying up to watch me on the cameras. Couldn’t have been easy staying here, but it was vital. You did good.”
He turned without another word and went to the mini-shower to clean the blood off him. The fact that some was his and some was someone else’s made him shudder, and he spent a half hour scrubbing himself down before he finally emerged, red and raw, and got to work on the files.
An hour after coming back to the bunker, Ethan had decrypted and read the files. The cover message came from Watcher One, with a bunch of attachments—scans of documents, copies of emails, even a few video clips. The message itself was brief: “Review and decide. You’re vital to America, and we feel you deserve to be brought into the fold and join us.”
Ethan let out a low whistle. What the hell was going on? He clicked open the scanned documents and skimmed them. They were copies of the Presidential declaration of Martial Law and the terms imposed. The President’s and Vice President’s death certificates—that was terrible news—and a vote tally of what remained of the House of Representatives, appointing General Houle as interim Secretary of Defense and the sole remaining member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “for the duration of the crisis.”
Amber, reading over Ethan’s shoulder, let out a muffled cry and then said, “They’re really dead? And this general is in charge of…what, the whole country? Were there enough representatives left for the vote to even be legit?”
“No, but without new elections, that’s what we have. It doesn’t bode well for later, when we kick the invaders out, does it? I mean, canceling elections is legal under Martial Law, or at least that’s how this could play out. Damn them for saying it’s for the duration of the crisis. That’s a dictator tactic. How frikkin’ long is the duration?”
“Let’s watch the video clips,” Amber suggested. “Maybe they’ll shed some light.”
The very first clip, a scant ten seconds long, showed a satellite image of North America, which then zoomed in repeatedly until it showed the Clan’s farm. Ethan shivered. It meant they knew his location, despite his HAMnet precautions. But that also confirmed Watcher One was legit and loyal to the U.S. “I suppose if Watcher was a Korean agent, the farm would already be gassed or bombed, right? So that more or less proves he is who he says he is, a loyal American.”
Amber squeezed his shoulder. “It’s also a bit of a threat, or at least I feel threatened. A power play. We know where you live…so do what we say. And why haven’t they sent help, if they know where we are?”
The next video answered her question. It was a shaky cell phone video of a soldier with a headset on, with a joystick. He sat before a computer monitor that showed an aerial view, and it streaked by at fantastic speed. A young male voice on the video said, “Sir, we’re receiving Dark Ryder’s updates. The asset is still operational.” Another voice replied, “Very well, abort mission. If he’s alive, we won’t risk collateral damage to his infrastructure.” Then the video ended.
The third video showed General Houle standing before a few dozen well-dressed but frightened-looking civilians. Ethan recognized a Virginia senator among them. It was a long video, but the gist of it was to confirm just what Watcher One had said. What remained of the U.S. government had voted Houle into the position of ultimate power, if only temporarily. It also showed that, wherever Houle was, he’d gathered up enough surviving Congressmen and Senators to his location that he felt confident holding such a vote. Were they coerced? Impossible to tell.
The final video was a close up of the same man from the last one. General Houle. It looked as though he was in an office at a desk. Ethan hit the play button.
“Hello,” the General said. Even sitting, he was an imposing figure. He was built like a Marine, Ethan decided. He had a square jaw and buzz cut, high cheekbones, and eyes that showed no emotion. Dead eyes in a caricature of what a capable officer should look like. Ethan disliked him immediately. “If you are watching this, then we’ve succeeded and you are alive. Many of the coded orders you’ve been sending out have put a large number of American loyalists and soldiers in harm’s way, to draw the enemy away from you. This is why your region is so devoid of strong enemy presence.”
The General coughed, and it sounded wet and more like a gurgle than a cough, but when he spoke his voice was again clear and strong. “Sorry about that, Ryder. I got a whiff of their Pea Soup—that’s what my boys and girls are calling their defoliant fog—and this is the result. Do avoid that fog at all costs. Anyway, the reason we’ve devoted irreplaceable resources to keeping you as safe as we’re able is that you are connected to both the U.S. military via Watcher One, and more survivor and Militia groups than we can count. Also, if we go wide from our location, the Korean hackers will track us down and we can’t have that. Not yet.”
Houle then smiled, and Ethan noted that the grin seemed to reach his eyes this time. Ethan’s tension level fell a little—at least the caricature’s grin seemed genuine. “Soon it won’t matter though,” the General continued. “Operation Backdraft is nearly set. And we need you to make it happen. One of the Militias—unknown which one—has some sort of tight-beam communication with a surviving nuclear submarine in the North Atlantic. You’ll re-send orders for us that no one but the brave men and women on that submarine can decode. Likewise, you’ll pass on information to Watcher One, who will relay additional orders to an isolated Air Force control center. I can’t tell you their orders, unfortunately. Need-to-know, you being at risk in the field, and all that. But I can tell you this, Dark Ryder: if you decide to cooperate, this war will change forever. We’ll be back on an even footing with those bastards.”
He straightened his collar, buying time while he collected his thoughts. “Ryder, our civilian leadership let us down. We knew something major was coming days before their EMPs hit us, but it was politically inexpedient to respond, to take proactive measures to protect our citizens. Those politicians are largely dead now, but that’s a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we’ll get around to replacing them, and their replacements will be people like you with the will and flexible mindset necessary to survive and operate uncaptured. On the other hand, it means I’m running the whole show for now, and that is not a position I desired. I do it for the love of our country, just like you, but I don’t have to like it.”
The General steepled his hands in front of him, fingertips resting on his chin, looking pensive. After a long moment, he continued: “Within seventy-two hours, you will receive our co
ded information through a relay network of terminals we’ve established. We’ll use it once and then never again. The enemy will have no way to track it back to you or to the source of the orders. That coded information consists of the go-orders for Backdraft. You need only to distribute it as you have been doing—the right people will see it, recognize what it is, and proceed accordingly. I don’t exaggerate when I tell you that the future course of the world likely depends on the success of your mission. It goes without saying that we’ll be in an untenable position, in the long run, if you fail. Good luck and God bless, son.”
Ethan stared at the monitor, riveted to the now-frozen face of General Houle. His mind raced, a jumble of thoughts and feelings he couldn’t yet sort out but he noted revulsion in there somewhere. Air Force control stations and nuclear submarines? Equalizing the strategic situation? Houle hadn’t spelled it out more than that, but Ethan felt a raw, roiling pit in his stomach as he drew the obvious conclusions from his limited information.
“My God, Amber. They’re going to launch EMPs at the enemy. Or worse. I wondered why it hadn’t happened yet, and now we know. No one was left to push the button, until now.” He looked up at her with dismay. “They want it to be me!”
Amber narrowed her eyes as her own mind raced along parallel tracks. Then she raised an eyebrow and shrugged one shoulder. “Can’t do more damage than it has already, right? I mean, we’ve already been hit with EMPs. Knocking out all their equipment and communications seems like it really would give us a fighting chance.”
Ethan nodded, but the knot of dread tightening in his gut refused to hear her logic. He spent the rest of the day brooding, deep in thought and nursing his wounds.