Home Port (A Deep State, Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) (Long Haul Home Book 4)

by Dana Fraser

  Looking at the contents, Thomas could understand the thought process that had spurred Agnetha’s revolt. She had put on her most alluring dress and favorite jewels before poisoning herself. The woman had preferred to die looking like a million bucks instead of living with makeup running down her face and dirt under her nails, with no au pair to hand Gisa off to. Thomas could count on one hand how many times he’d seen the woman hold her daughter over that four-day weekend.

  Leaving the contents of the bag scattered, he tossed in the garden hose then slammed the lid. The heavier pack he placed on the floorboard of the front seat, taking a few seconds to dig inside and remove the shortwave radio. He placed the radio in the center of the seat then climbed behind the wheel and carefully drove backwards for a quarter mile until he was off the bike trail.

  The best route to his home in Evansville, Indiana, was also the most direct. He passed unmolested through Manassas then headed southwest to Interstate 81. He followed it south to the I-64 exchange then headed west into the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest.

  Surrounded by the quiet beauty of the woods and hills, he could almost relax. Between the full tank he had started with and the gas caddy, he figured he would make it as at least as far as Huntington, West Virginia. Before that, he would keep an eye out for both the conventional and unconventional opportunities to get more gas. He had cash to pay, and some of the commercial operations would have tanks of fuel with generators running. Timber companies and farms would have hand pumps if they didn’t have generators, and he would pass plenty of both getting to Evansville.

  The farmers would be reluctant to give him any gas because it was specially dyed to mark it for agricultural use only. They would tell him to wait, tell him that the pumps in town would be working within a few hours, either because the power would be back on or the generators would be up and working. They would be wrong, but Thomas would do nothing to warn them. Instead, he would pull out a piece of Agnetha’s gold jewelry from his pocket.

  Greed would spark in the farmer’s gaze and the gas would flow into the Caddy’s tank. For a day or two, the farmer would shake his head in memory, maybe chuckle to his wife about the foolish traveler who had traded a thousand dollars worth of gold or a three-strand diamond bracelet for less than a hundred in gas.

  Then reality would set in.

  CHAPTER FIVE

 

  LANCE CORPORAL HAROLD MILCHER watched the beige Cadillac crest the elevation to his east with a shudder then coast downhill. He glanced at the man positioned on his left. USMC Scout Sniper Corporal Joe Vivante had already drawn a bead on the vehicle, his right index finger resting patiently against the trigger guard of his M40 sniper rifle.

  “Just an old guy on his own. Driver side window is down,” Milcher said. “No clearance markers on the Caddy. You gonna take him out?”

  There was a shake in the Lance Corporal’s voice. Since midnight, he and Vivante had been on a hilltop overlooking a stretch of I-64 some thirty miles east of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Each of them had received a coded text the evening before that they were being activated for Project Erebus. Their mission was to shut down this stretch of I-64 as part of a detachment restricting access to the project’s bunker under The Greenbrier Resort.

  Back in 1992, the government had decommissioned the bunker as an emergency relocation center for Congress after news of its existence leaked to the press. Project Erebus recommissioned it and expanded the facility under the guise of a Bunker Tour company.

  Finished mulling over Milcher’s question as the Caddy coughed its way up the next hill, Vivante spit a glob of tobacco juice downwind and wiggled his body into shooting position.

  “That’s what the orders say,” Vivante answered with a smirk. “I’ll catch the old buzzard on the next crest.”

  “COME ON, baby, you can do it,” Thomas cooed as the old Coupe de Ville sputtered and spit its way up another one of the park’s hills.

  Sweat rolled down Thomas’s face from the layers of clothing he had on. With the Caddy’s gas mileage worse than he had anticipated, he had been forced to roll down the driver side window instead of turning on the air conditioning. But one open window didn’t offer much relief while dressed in the CBP body armor plus the weather resistant jacket and pants he had pulled out of Gavin’s pack when he stopped at the park’s empty welcome center.

  Figuring the CBP windbreaker and cap had outlived their utility so far away from D.C., he had stuffed them in the trash and put on the camouflaged clothing. Then he had filled the two water bladders in the bag and topped off his own before grabbing one of the park’s free maps and a state map and doing a little more rearranging of his packs.

  Clearing out the CBP bag and tossing it with the windbreaker and cap, he focused on spreading the mission critical items between his carryon and Gavin’s hunting bag, plus filling every pocket he had.

  Pulling to a stop at the top of the hill, he set the parking brake. The Caddy claimed to have an eighth of a tank left, but he didn’t trust it and didn’t want to find himself stopped for refueling on one of the sharp slopes.

  Turning the car off, he arranged the wires for a quick re-start then popped the trunk lid. Exiting the vehicle with his carryon and the Browning across his back, a touch of apprehension ghosted down Thomas’s spine.

  He wasn’t worried about being exposed in the middle of nowhere. He would see and hear any vehicles before they got up close.

  Nope—his balls were tight because he realized for the first time since stealing the Coupe de Ville that he hadn’t checked to see if it had a locking gas cap. If it did, he wasn’t sure he had a trick up his sleeve to solve that dilemma.

  Reaching the rear of the car, Thomas pulled at the license plate, folding it down and smiling with relief. Just a simple cap. He unthreaded it, lifted the trunk lid and set it inside then stood the fifteen gallon gas caddy up inside the trunk. He placed the nozzle and started the flow of fuel, his gaze locked on the tank’s opening for the first hint of reflux.

  His eyelids drooped as he watched. He was dead tired, hadn’t slept much on the plane, was out of practice when it came to catching shut eye at a moment’s notice. That was a soldier’s trick, one he hadn’t needed in his final years of enlistment.

  Hunger gnawed at his gut, too. He had nibbled his way through two protein bars during the drive, but there had been nothing but nuts and drinks on the plane and he had blown through his energy reserves from the frequent surges of adrenaline once he landed in Dulles.

  Maybe it was time to try a couple of the baby food jars. Spotting a peach cobbler label, he dipped down to snatch it.

  A bullet whizzed above him, its trajectory slicing through the air where his head had been a heartbeat before.

  Thomas hit the ground and rolled toward the passenger side of the car. The nozzle tilted upward but didn’t fall out of the vehicle’s tank. The gravity feed on the fuel caddy kept forcing gasoline through the hose, where it spilled onto the pavement as Thomas scrambled for better cover.

  Another shot impacted the driver side rear taillight. Glass shattered and splintered onto the ground. Thomas low crawled to the passenger side door. The shooter wasn’t going to stop. He had to bail, but he wasn’t leaving the hunting bag behind. He would be as good as dead without it.

  Grabbing the pack, he saw something through the open window that made his chest cave.

  The shooter had fired a tracer round!

  The shot missed the car and the growing pool of fuel on the asphalt.

  Hooking the pack over one arm, Thomas tucked his head low and started to haul ass as another tracer round sliced through the air. A heartbeat later, he heard the gasoline ignite. He made it two more steps before a blast of heat slammed against him. A few more steps and something hot sliced into the outer side of his right thigh after a series of sharp pops sounded from the trunk’s vicinity.

  Pushing past the pain, Thomas kept running for the trees and the den
se undergrowth of bushes that grew along the road’s edges.

  Half a foot from safety, something punched Thomas in the back hard enough to knock him into a tangle of thorny brush. The oxygen left his lungs in a surprised grunt.

  Scrabbling forward, he tried to suck fresh air in.

  Bark splintered to his right. Thomas made one last, desperate lunge forward. His vision grayed from the pain screaming in his thigh and back and then the forest and the ground beneath him winked out of sight.

  CHAPTER SIX

 

  THOMAS WOKE LIGHTHEADED AND REELING, his mind desperately trying to assess the situation as rapidly as possible. The morning flooded in on him—the airport, Gavin’s home, reaching the stillness of the forest, stopping to refuel the Caddy.

  Someone had shot him. He remembered that.

  He moved his arms slowly along the ground. Shifting the right one sent a wave of pain radiating along his shoulder. He was familiar with the nature of the pain. Beneath the armor, he was sure to have one hell of a bruise, but no bullet wound.

  Next he moved his legs, an instantaneous nausea making his head spin. His right ankle throbbed and, when reached down his right leg to touch his thigh, he found the fabric had a sticky wetness to it. Contorting with a grimace, he looked at the area to see shards of glass sticking out.

  The tracer rounds—he remembered those, too.

  That explained the burning in his lungs. The car was still on fire. And the glass bottles of baby food must have shattered with the heat, causing several thick, curved shards to penetrate his leg because of how close he was.

  Guess I can’t have my peach cobbler and eat it, too.

  He snorted once before the seriousness of his situation flooded back in.

  Someone had shot him. That someone or a cohort was likely going to make sure he was dead. He needed cover and he needed to get the shards out and the wounds disinfected and bandaged.

  Before any of that, he needed to make sure his immediate area was clear of threats. He listened first, the forest and the highway beyond silent at ground level. He lifted his head next, studying the route his flailing body had taken into the woods for signs of someone following him.

  His lunge had carried him past the tree line. The hunting bag had fallen off his shoulder and was just barely on his side of the natural border. The carryon was still secured across his back and the Browning rested along his side.

  Keeping his ears trained for sound in every direction, he peered into the woods. Soldiers or trained hunters would not blindly follow his path from the road into the trees. They would not come at him from behind but from the side or somewhere ahead of him.

  Thomas had no idea how long his period of unconsciousness had lasted, but they either weren’t coming after him or hadn’t reached him yet.

  There was damn little chance they weren’t coming after him.

  He belly crawled forward, the Browning slung on his screaming shoulder once more and the Maxim in his left hand. For the first five feet, he kept reaching back and tugging the hunting bag forward half a foot at a time.

  When he had the bag out of view of any rifle scope on the highway or beyond, he left it as bait and crawled another five feet forward to reach a massive tree, its trunk split and growing in three different directions.

  With his back propped against the tree, he reached into the carryon and pulled out the first aid kit, then fished the Karambit out of his pocket. He unfolded the knife and held it between his lips as he pulled out three shards. Then he cut the fabric to see what he was working with.

  There were two additional puncture marks in the skin with part of the glass remaining in one of them. He huffed once in anticipation then locked down on his breathing as he used the curved tip of the knife to fish out the piece of glass.

  He didn’t have time for pretty or perfect. If he was still alive come evening, he’d do a more thorough job. For the time being, he wiped the wounds with alcohol swabs and slapped on a large adhesive square.

  Finished, he reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out a camouflaged face mask. He jerked it down his face then dirtied up his hands as he scanned for a hiding spot that would give him an unobstructed line of sight on the hunting bag.

  His choice of locations was a painful twenty feet on. He pulled himself up the trunk of the tree, his gaze sweeping all around him as he continued to listen intently. With his ankle screaming, there was no way he could step lightly enough to leave no impression in the soft dirt and fallen leaves that covered the forest floor, so he picked his way among the twisting tree roots and settled into the cramped confines of a natural blind of bushes and piled leaves to wait.

  THOMAS SAW the marine’s shadow before he saw the marine. A hulking Sasquatch with his ghillie suit on, there was no face to the man. Even his weapon was one of the forest’s ghosts, the length of the rifle covered in wisps and strips of local foliage.

  The figure moved so slowly, for a second Thomas thought his eyes had tricked him. But the purposeful shadow he cast caused Thomas’s grip to tighten instinctively around the grip of the Maxim 9.

  Thomas knew the instant the man spotted the hunting bag. A small vibration of emotion ran across the finer adornments on the ghillie suit.

  He was good, Thomas thought, but not in full control of his adrenaline. Probably meant he was a bit green, not long out of training and had likely never killed a man.

  Memories squeezed at Thomas’s chest—memories of men he had killed with his bare hands and those he had killed with his words, commands given in battle, men assigned to missions from which they would never return.

  When it comes to murder, you’re outclassed, kid. Should have stayed in your cozy bunk instead of coming out here to pick off civilians like some kind of coward.

  Patiently, Thomas waited, his eyes and ears still open for the sound of other members of the man’s team.

  The marine was almost as patient. He moved centimeter by centimeter, stopping to scan for long seconds. When he cleared one of the two trees framing the bag, his gaze hovered for a few heartbeats at Thomas’s spot.

  After a small eternity, the man crouched in front of the bag and softly drew his last breath.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

 

  LANCE CORPORAL HAROLD MILCHER AND CORPORAL JOE VIVANTE—those were the names of the men Thomas had killed in the space of an hour. Milcher was the first target down. He was the easier target, too. Vivante had been more on guard, his smaller form harder to spot.

  But Thomas had left bait for him, more compelling bait. Two bodies, his own and Milcher’s. Only Thomas had put on the lance corporal’s ghillie suit and stuffed the dead man’s body into Gavin’s hunting jacket, the bottom half of his uniform covered in brush and leaves with an artful placement of the pack to hide the rest from most angles.

  The placement had been a little too artful, the symmetry alerting Vivante’s subconscious before Thomas had a perfect shot lined up.

  Thomas had no problem with imperfect. His bullet hit the corporal in the wrist bone. The second shoot blew out the man’s knee and the third left him dead with a face not even a mother could love.

  When it was all done, Thomas hid the bodies and took what gear he could use, including a topographical map of the area. A final trip to the tree line revealed there was nothing left of the car but its burnt frame and other metal parts. The Caddy didn’t explode in the fire. It had just been Thomas’s bad luck to have the tightly sealed glass jars exposed to the sudden flame burning at over a thousand degrees.

  Kind of like his old buddy Gavin biting him in the ass one last time, he thought as he wrapped an ace bandage around his ankle and forced its swollen circumference back into the boot. Gaining his feet, he shouldered the hunting pack, his carryon and the Browning strapped to it. He layered the ghillie suit on top and took Vivante’s M40 sniper rifle.

  “Had to be Jarheads with their old assed equipment,” he groused, heading in a northeast directio
n that would take him deeper into the woods but erase a few of the miles he had covered in the Caddy.

  He would have preferred to have a soldier shooting at him. The Marine Corps manufactured its own weapons and hadn’t kept up with the ever changing terrain of warfare. The Army had finally finished replacing its M24s in 2011, increasing the effective range of their snipers to thirteen hundred yards, compared to the eight hundred yards the M40 offered. The Army had also adopted heavier bullets. The changes had been needed for the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan.

  Well, as long as I’m only coming up against marines and not soldiers, I’ll be fine.

  A grin replaced Thomas’s pained grimace as he started up the steep hill that would bring him to a secluded creek bed. There, with the clean, cold water, he would deal more thoroughly with his injuries, rest for a few hours and plan his next move.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

 

  EVEN WITH THE sprained ankle and thigh wounds healing quickly, getting out of the national park and covering any distance beyond its borders proved harder than Thomas had estimated. Armed patrols roamed the woods. Some were like the marines he had taken out, their uniforms and gear issued by the government. Others looked military but smelled of corporate money.

  Thomas avoided both types of patrols, stopping and hiding when he saw them and traveling mostly at night when their often brazen lack of sound and light discipline as they bunked down for the evening made them easier to detect.

  In the quiet daylight hours, concealed and unable to sleep, Thomas kept his mind occupied with an unexpected discovery.