by James Hunt
“Yeah, they’re over in the hangar, just like you asked,” Jake answered.
“And Sydney is still working on the soil data?”
“Yeah, but he’s still not done.”
“Tell the sentries I want to be ready to take off within the hour, and make sure Sydney has whatever he needs to finish his work packed in the same amount of time.”
Chapter 9
The president’s war room was oddly quiet. Frizen, along with the rest of the joint chiefs, could feel the ominous cloud hanging over all of them. Their forces and resources were all in place. They had boots on the ground and fighters in the air, and every single one of those guns was aimed at the stronghold of what remained of the Coalition’s forces in Topeka, Kansas.
None of the generals, including Frizen, had a problem with dismantling the Coalition brick by brick, but all of them understood that, despite how they felt, the people who worked for the Coalition, which was funded and created by the US government, were all American citizens. Once they received the all clear from the president, more American blood would splash against their soil, staining the earth red.
It wasn’t a decision the president had come to lightly. It wasn’t something any of them had come to lightly, but the lack of acumen over the past three years during Gordon’s reckless tenure as head of the Soil Coalition needed to end. The onus of the capture and trial of Gordon Reath rested on everyone in the war room. And they didn’t have anyone to blame but themselves.
Frizen rubbed the dryness out of his eyes and reached for the Styrofoam cup of cold coffee he’d been sipping since his arrival. The bitter taste flooded his mouth, and he could feel the slight burst of energy enter his bloodstream from the influx of caffeine. He never liked coffee, and it wasn’t something he ever felt like he needed, but the puffy bags under his eyes were a response to the long days stretching into longer nights he’d brooked for the past week.
The president entered the room, and Frizen and the rest of the joint chiefs snapped to attention. The president seemed to have been suffering from the same sleepless affliction that plagued the rest of them.
“Where do we stand, gentlemen?” the president asked.
“General Cooley has locked down the air space around Topeka, and all of General Mears’s men are in understanding of their assignments,” Frizen answered.
“What will be the main point of entry?”
“The bulk of the Coalition’s forces have positioned themselves on the west side of the city,” Mears answered. “That’s where the main point of conflict will take place. We have forces completely surrounding the city, which we don’t believe will cause us considerable resistance. Once we penetrate the west, we’ll have a clear line of sight to the heart of Topeka.”
“And what about Gordon?”
“We received confirmation an hour ago that the Chinese reached out to him with an offer,” Frizen said. “Now, we don’t have the details of that offer, but we believe Gordon will try and meet up for some type of exchange.”
“Have we reached out to the Chinese about this?” the president asked.
“We have, sir,” Frizen answered. “They’re denying any allegations that they’ve been in contact with Gordon.”
“You don’t think they’ll send forces over, do you?”
“No, Mr. President. I don’t believe Sheng is willing to risk an international incident over the data, but I do believe they’ll try and make something happen off the Canadian coast between Alaska and Washington. Neither the Canadians nor us have any type of naval presence in that area.”
The president leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes and rubbed his palms on his forehead until the skin turned red and raw. Frizen could tell that the president was weary, worn, and frail.
The president had been the one to appoint Gordon into the Soil Coalition during its formation, and he’d been the one to approve all the executive orders that granted Gordon as much power as he had. The war-weary look was from a man who had battled everything to try and bring an end to the very monster he created.
“Gentlemen,” the president said, “today we are dismantling not just the Coalition, but the line of thought that created it. Once this is done, I will be resigning from the presidency and will give a brief to the solicitor general of my involvement during the Coalition’s formation, as well as the cover-up of GMO-24. The country has experienced enough of my failures, and I will stand ready to receive the consequences.”
This was the first open acknowledgement of what most of the room already knew, and a moment of shock and silence followed the president’s statement as the rest of the room processed what was said. Then, one by one, each of the generals in the room rose and saluted, a final sign of respect to their commander-in-chief.
***
It wasn’t like anything Alex had ever seen in his entire life. The number of military personnel, tanks, trucks, and aircraft all seemed too surreal. It was an odd mix of admiration and disgust that swirled around him. The admiration of the sheer might of his country’s military prowess and the disgust that it took so long for them to use it.
Deep down, Alex knew there was more to it than he understood, but with everything that was swirling about in his head, it was hard to focus on what those elements were. He shook his head and focused on finishing loading the magazine in his hand. Despite his optimism that the sentries would drop their weapons after the first wave, he wanted to make sure he’d have enough ammo in case they didn’t.
And besides, the main objective of the military was to capture the capital. The farm camps were a secondary measure, which both Alex and Luis had decided to make their primary focus. With the aid of Nelson and the military insight that Luis was able to bring from his superiors, the three of them had managed to come up with a strategy that would give them a good chance of making sure both Todd and Emma came out alive.
Ray had chosen to accompany Alex and seemed just as likely to put a bullet in the back of Alex’s head as he was to forgive him. But Alex knew how close Ray was with Todd, and an extra gun wouldn’t hurt the cause.
Both Alex and Luis would be embedded with a small unit of soldiers infiltrating the same grid where both Todd and Emma’s farm camps were located. While the two were allowed to tag along, both were thoroughly instructed, at least six times, that the unit they were tagging along with could neither guarantee their safety nor help them with the extraction of the two individuals they were seeking. Every soldier’s mandate on that field was to take the capital, extract the soil data, and make sure they nabbed Gordon before he could take off anywhere. As badly as Alex wanted to be a part of the group that took Gordon out, he owed a greater debt to Todd.
It was an odd feeling, being this close to the front lines on the eve of such an historic battle. All the killing and hunting he’d done before felt different from how this felt. All the fights and battles up to this point had been filled with a reckless rage he hadn’t been able to control. But this—this was calculated, this had a goal bigger than the satisfaction of his own revenge.
A sergeant drove through the units, notifying the soldiers of the time left on everyone’s dwindling clock. “Two minutes! Two minutes!”
Alex managed to finish loading one more magazine, which brought his total to six. He pulled on the Kevlar one of the units had loaned him and picked up his rifle.
The fact that he was surrounded by a group of soldiers who had seen combat before gave him a boost of confidence. All he wanted to do was grab Todd and get him out. Alex looked around for Ray, and just before the lieutenant in charge of their platoon marched the first few steps toward war, he popped up behind him.
Those next two miles seemed to crawl and stretch forever. Each time Alex set his foot down, he felt as though his life were shortening. There was a finality that grew the closer he moved to the edge of conflict. He wasn’t sure what the finality meant, but he did know the answer lay just over the horizon.
Alex kept just to the right of the tank,
using it as a protective barrier as he scanned the north end, where Todd’s farm camp was stationed. The rumble of the tank tracks was interrupted by the gunfire from the first unit of sentries they came across. The rolling hills in front of them suddenly became alive with screams and the thundering explosions of artillery.
The air quickly grew thick with lead. Two soldiers to Alex’s right had already succumbed to the fire of war, their lifeless bodies collapsing to the dirt while a medical officer rushed to their aid.
The tank tracks slowed, and Alex crouched lower, keeping the barrel of his rifle up and looking for anything to shoot at, but the number of bodies on the field was overwhelming. Alex could feel himself hesitating. The end of the barrel moved from one sentry to another, each time he failed to pull the trigger after seeing the flashes of another barrel right next him. His palms grew sweaty on the rifle’s grips, and he could feel his breathing accelerate along in time with his heart rate.
A mortar exploded a few feet in front of him, sending Alex onto his back and flinging the rifle from his hands. The impact sent a rain of dirt into the air and down on Alex, covering him in a gray ash. Everything was spinning. The loud bass of the mortar’s impact left his body vibrating and shaken.
Alex rolled onto his stomach. The boots of men passed him as the bullets overhead continued their perforation. He could see his rifle’s stock buried in a pile of ashy earth. It was a few feet behind him, and he had to watch his hands to keep them from being crushed by the endless march of boots. Once the forest of legs had cleared, he pushed himself to his knees, when a foot slammed into his stomach and knocked him backwards.
“Fucking coward,” Ray said, sending another kick into Alex’s side. Luckily for Alex, the Kevlar had absorbed most of the blows.
Alex rolled quickly to his right, still disoriented from the previous hit, but evaded another vicious kick from Ray and managed to get to his feet. “Stop, Ray.”
Ray dropped his rifle and ran, full sprint, into Alex, sending both of them to the dirt. The two rolled over a few times, until Ray finally planted himself on top, but Alex gripped both of Ray’s wrists in his hands, restraining him.
“I won’t let you be the one who finishes him off!” Ray said, his face turning a shade of purple from the amount of effort it took for him to try and free himself from Alex’s grip.
Using the leverage he had on Ray’s arms, Alex rotated his arms, legs, hips, and torso to the left, which brought enough force to slam Ray to his side, where Alex pinned him down, and he pulled his sidearm and placed it to Ray’s forehead. “Listen to me! I know what I did, all right? Now, I swear to you, there are no other games or sides I’m trying to play.”
Even with the gun to his head, Ray refused to end his resistance, still attempting to push Alex off him. Alex felt the rage in him return. It was the same bloodlust that had consumed him the night he killed the sentries in his community. It boiled over, and Alex’s finger inched over the trigger, his entire body tense.
“Do it!” Ray said.
Alex removed his finger from the trigger and pushed himself off Ray, holstering the pistol. The tanks and trucks were a few hundred feet in front of them now, continuing their steady march to Topeka’s heart. “I’m going to get him out, Ray.”
***
“I need a medic up here now!” Luis yelled, placing his hands over one of the men who had collapsed with a bullet to the gut. The warm ooze of fluids squished between his fingers as the medic dropped to his knees to take over for Luis.
Once the medic had the hands he needed, Luis picked his rifle back up and rejoined the men taking the farm camp. A stack of sentries were positioned at the front door and kept a steady stream of bullets aimed in their direction. The use of any heavy artillery had been prohibited to eliminate any collateral damage.
Three armored trucks and a tank surrounded the farm camp, but any attempt to step away from the protection of their armored escorts was met with fatality, and the field of bodies between the trucks and the farm camp had grown substantially.
Luis found the lieutenant in charge of the platoon. “We need to get the tank closer!”
“We’d be in grenade range, sir!”
“Then we’ll throw them back!”
The young lieutenant ordered his tank forward. Luis, along with twenty other soldiers, filed closely behind. The bullets ricocheted off the heavy armor. The concerto of war that was the rapid beat of metal on metal was a piece of music Luis had become familiar with. But what made this song so lethal was the crescendo, which revealed some new type of horror every time it was played.
The front entrance was only twenty yards away, and just as the lieutenant suspected, the first grenade landed three soldiers in front of Luis. While the rest of them scattered, Luis stepped on his horse and sprinted toward the grenade, palmed it on the run, then chucked it back to the farm camp’s entrance, where it detonated.
Any of the sentries who didn’t get wiped out in the blast retreated back into the farm camp. Luis turned around to the soldiers still in shock from his throw. “C’mon!”
Luis was the first man through, and the inside of the camp was completely pitch black. He lowered his night-vision goggles and turned them on.
The room morphed into a sea of green. The bodies of the dead and maimed sentries littered the ground, and Luis did his best to avoid losing his footing on the blood-soaked floor. The entrance was a short hallway, which opened up into the larger warehouse-like room where the bulk of the plants were grown and the majority of the farm workers would be.
The closer Luis moved to the opening of the hydroponic farm inside, the quieter it became. He could see the thin, frail bodies of the workers all hunched in a corner, shivering and silent. He stopped right before the entrance and signaled the men behind him to do the same. He looked around, searching for where the other sentries may have gone, but couldn’t see them.
Then, on the second level above them, a flash of light blinded Luis, and he ripped the goggles off his face as he felt a blast of heat overtake him. When he turned around, the inside of the warehouse was on fire, and the workers inside were scrambling to escape.
“Emma! Emma!” Luis called, sprinting into the blaze. Half the workers inside were paralyzed with fear, and the other half ran aimlessly through the building in a wild panic. Luis turned to the men following him and pointed to the surrounding chaos. “Grab as many of them as you can and get them out. Now!”
The team hurried to action, cutting through the flames and attempting to quell both the fires and the panic inside. Luis searched frantically for Emma, trying to distinguish her features from the flashes of faces rushing past him and the rising flames that consumed the building.
The farm camp was massive, with hundreds of workers attempting to flood out of whatever exits were close. Luis scanned the second floor of the building, trying to see if Emma was working there, but the smoke was becoming too thick.
“Help!”
Luis followed the cries, searching through the rising flames for the source. The long wooden tables holding the hydroponic tanks had tipped over, forming torched hurdles in his path. He took a few steps back, got a running start, and with the extra thirty pounds of gear on his back, he barely made it over the flames, rolling to his side on the other end.
One of the light fixtures broke loose from the wire holding it in place and crashed to the ground next to him, covering him in a mixture of embers and dirt. He patted the small fires out on his chest as the cries for help continued. Luis leapt to his feet, following the sound and dodging the flames devouring everything around him.
Then, down one of the aisles between a pair of tanks, Luis saw Emma with her shoulder under the arm of an elderly woman, dragging her forward in attempt to outrun the flames. Luis dashed down the aisle, catching both Emma and the woman as they collapsed. “Hang on, I’m gonna get you out of here.” Luis scooped up the old woman in his arms, and Emma held on to his shoulder for support as the walls of flames close
d in on them.
The massive fire hurdles had multiplied tenfold, and Luis knew he wouldn’t be able to make the jump with the frail woman in his arms.
“We need another way out!” Luis said.
Both he and Emma hacked and coughed as the smoke grew thick in the air. The heat was sweltering, making it feel like Luis’s skin was slowly dripping off his bones.
“There!” Emma said, pointing to a side door.
“C’mon!” Luis said.
More tables and hanging light structures collapsed, weakened from the intense heat. Luis looked down at the old woman, now unconscious in his arms. He wasn’t sure she was even alive anymore. The door was blocked by one of the fallen tables, and Luis laid the woman down and rushed to clear the path.
Luis’s hands gripped the burnt, hot ends, which seared his flesh as he lifted the table and tossed it aside and into the encroaching flames. With his hands still red and blistering, he picked up the woman and shoulder-checked the door open as he tumbled outside into the fresh air and surrounding gunfire.
The soldiers had managed to push the sentries back, deeper into Topeka, but there were still a few lingering sentries. Luis stripped off his shirt and handed it to his sister to cover herself. He wrapped her in a hug and the two wheezed, both still lightheaded from the smoke inhalation.
“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again,” Luis said.
“Me either,” Emma replied.
Luis pushed her back slightly to get a good look at her. “Are you all right?”
“Todd. Where is he?”
“There’s a unit getting him out right now.”
Emma let out an exhale and then collapsed back into Luis’s arms. He looked over at the old woman, still lifeless on the ground. He let go of his sister and placed his fingers on the side of the woman’s neck. She still had a pulse and was breathing, just barely. He flagged down a medic and a transport and piled both the woman and Emma inside, taking them away from the front lines.