Standing Before Hell's Gate

by William Alan Webb

  Rosos turned and looked down at his shorter ally. Zhang wore sunglasses, so he couldn’t read the Chinese commander’s eyes, which annoyed him. It took him a minute to form the Chinese words in his head. “With all due respect, Generalissimo, forty-year-old battles are not my reason for being here,” Rosos said. “I came to help you expand your territory and sharpen your combat forces, but unless you formally appoint Adder here as your top military consultant, neither of those is possible.”

  “This confuses me, Károly. I have already given him complete freedom to inspect anything he wishes, and even to instruct some of the newer army members on the finer points of their duties. I am told that his work in the north was a great example for our men there on how to interact with new citizens of our great republic.”

  “That is not enough, my friend. Adder knows your enemy; he was one of them. You must give him the freedom to remake your forces so the next time you meet the Americans, you can defeat them.”

  Zhang rubbed his neck, stroking it up and down, which Rosos recognized as a stalling tactic. He knew then that the next thing the Chinese leader said would be a lie.

  “Nothing would make me happier than allowing Adder to train my army,” he said. “But I’m afraid my ranking officers would take offense, and they have great influence with the men. Many of them also have important positions in running the government. I do not believe they would look favorably upon my appointing an American as my head of training.”

  “May I be blunt without incurring your anger?”

  The folds of loose skin on Zhang’s face lifted when he smiled. “Friends cannot anger friends, except by design.”

  “Then I would have to ask how these officers feel about being soundly defeated twice by the same enemy?”

  The smile faded. “It is not the ideal outcome.”

  “Yet they wish to continue doing the same thing while expecting a different outcome?”

  Behind them, the approaching sound of a car’s engine let them know someone was coming, which indicated importance. For the Chinese, fuel wasn’t the restricting issue in using motor vehicles, since the oil wells in Los Angeles still pumped oil and two refineries still processed it into gasoline. For them, the problem was finding cars or trucks whose electrical systems hadn’t been destroyed by the EMPs detonated in LA during the Collapse.

  “The men whose power you wish to usurp have accumulated that power over four decades, and none of them have shown the least inclination to voluntarily give it up. I wish to expand our influence while we yet may, but with very few exceptions, they do not see the point in doing so. I am the one whose reputation suffered damage as a result of our setbacks, whereas their power increased. As of now, I cannot risk officially naming Adder as my chief consultant. I am sorry. I have given him all of the influence that I can.”

  “Then will they follow him into battle?”

  Even behind the sunglasses, Rosos could see Zhang squinting at the question. “Why?”

  “Here’s why.” In a few sentences, he outlined the plan to support Steeple in taking command of Operation Overtime, and the time frame it would require.

  “That only gives us one day to prepare.”

  “We only need two dozen reliable men to begin with, and six dozen more to follow. That’s not many compared to the potential gain.”

  “I shall have to ask my advisors, but I agree. It sounds like a fortune of war.”

  Rosos didn’t have time to reply before a dented Chevy Suburban, circa 2024, stopped in a squeal of worn-out brakes. An officer emerged from the passenger seat and directed two younger men, neither of whom was Asian, in lifting something out of the SUV’s hatch. As they leaned it against the Suburban, the officer strode toward the generalissimo.

  “My apologies for the interruption, sir,” he said in Chinese.

  “Mr. Rosos, allow me to introduce Captain Hu Yanlin. As you can see, Captain Yanlin was born after the People’s Republic of California was founded. Captain, this our esteemed ally, Mr. Károly Rosos. I believe you know Colonel Adder already. Now that formalities are dealt with, I hope your reason for being here is important, Captain.”

  “I believe it is, sir. There is something I need to show you, by the car.”

  Rosos and Zhang followed the captain, but Adder didn’t speak Chinese and turned to look out to sea, thoroughly bored with what appeared to be a bunch of nonsense. But the captain paused and Rosos saw him whisper in Zhang’s ear.

  The Generalissimo nodded and called out to the big American in perfect English. “Adder, I am told this concerns you.”

  The loud shit Rosos heard from Adder didn’t come as a surprise.

  Once they were all by the Suburban, Zhang crouched to get a better look at the flat, jagged object braced there. Made of gray wood, it measured two feet by three feet.

  “This was found over a man whose throat was cut as he guarded some prisoners. Whoever did it came and went like the wind.”

  Zhang nodded and looked up at Adder. “He says a dead guard was found with this, and the prisoners he was guarding were gone. None of the other guards heard anything.” He turned back to the wooden fragment. “There’s something written here,” he said, leaning in close, then moving so his shadow didn’t block the words. A moment later, he turned to Adder. “This appears to be for you.”

  “Me?” Adder crouched beside him and squinted. The words had been scratched into the surface and some sort of brownish liquid used to highlight them. Wetting his finger, he touched the ‘ink’ and tasted it. “It’s blood.”

  In one of those tricks of light, Rosos could read the words better from his standing position than either Zhang or Adder could kneeling in front of them. “Adder,” he read aloud, “I’m coming for you. Green Ghost.”

  #

  1829 hours

  Károly Rosos shoved the front doors of his family’s home in Malibu open so hard that the inside doorknob smashed a hole in the wall of the foyer. Adder followed him inside and closed the door behind him. The Suburban pulled down the circular driveway after dropping them off.

  “That was fucking embarrassing!” Unlike his father and brother, the youngest Rosos was tall and lean. Not as tall as Adder, but close. Long fingers better suited for playing the piano balled into fists as he raged down the entry hall into the living room of the empty old mansion. “I spent all afternoon kissing that greasy Chinaman’s ass, only to have it blow up in my face! Now who the fuck is this Green Ghost character? It sounds like something out of a comic book.”

  Adder’s wide shoulders straightened. His muscled chest expanded and his eyes became slits. A slight twitch in his left nostril should have been the sign to Rosos to shut up, but he was too enraged to see it. “Green Ghost was commander of Task Force Zombie, one of the Nameless. He cheated me out of the command that should have been mine, but he’s still the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. If he’s here, some of the others will be, too.”

  “Do I look like I give two shits about that? You’re worried about one man while I’m worried about a whole country! You embarrassed me today and you’d better not do it again, you idiot!”

  The narrowed eyes widened. When Adder spoke, it was through clenched teeth. “What did you say?”

  Adder’s tone triggered a primordial warning signal in Rosos’ brain, an ingrained instinct that told him he’d made a huge mistake. “I didn’t mean that.”

  The one-time commander of Task Force Zombie’s Third Squad took a step forward. Rosos matched him by taking a step back.

  “Never mistake me for one of your stooges, Károly. Green Ghost may be the most dangerous man that I’ve ever met, but I’m that man for you. Don’t push me. It’s a big, empty country out there, and I know how to survive in it, but I don’t leave my enemies alive behind me. You take care of that fuckhead Zhang and I’ll take care of my old commander.”

  “Sure,” Rosos said, hands up in a placating gesture. “Whatever you say, Adder.”

  “He was a dickhead and an
asshole who took what should have been mine, but he was still a Zombie. We were the best soldiers in the whole fucking world… one of us was worth a thousand of those red riders of yours, or these useless Chinese. Don’t ever forget it. I’m leaving now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I wanna see this place Green Ghost showed up to, see if I can track him.”

  “Why bother doing that when you can make him come to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go to Overtime and help Steeple take it back now, while Angriff is gone. Then this Ghost person won’t have any choice except to come back, will he?”

  “And I’ll be waiting…”

  “And you’ll be waiting.”

  “You’re a weasel, Károly, but you’re a smart weasel. Let’s get this shit show on the road.”

  #

  Operation Comeback

  0018 hours, April 27

  General Schiller leaned back and rubbed his face. His eyes wouldn’t focus any more and he knew that tomorrow would be a long, dreary day of sleep-deprived exhaustion, but he had to figure out the discrepancies in the inventory. It was the missing Stingers at Prime all over again, and he couldn’t relax until he’d solved it. It was just in his nature. And this time it wasn’t one or two cases of Stingers, it was ten.

  They weren’t missing, either. At least, not according to the paperwork, but this was the kind of thing he was known for. His specialty was digging through the paperwork of transfers and rearrangements designed to confuse an auditor by making it nearly impossible to track down missing items. After doing it for so many years, Schiller had developed a sixth sense of spotting suspicious transactions on otherwise routine-looking invoices and manifests. And now he knew, as sure as he was sitting there all alone past midnight, that ten cases of Stingers had vanished at some time in Operation Comeback’s history.

  The clock on his monitor read 2:21 AM when he found it. An invoice on an outgoing truck filled with leftover parts from construction of the heli-pad listed ten cases of single person launch systems, which could only be the missing Stingers. It was dated 12 March 2012. The only notation was a handwritten word that appeared to say Steyer. In a different hand beside that, this time in red ink, not black, was a scribble that read per SoS.

  #

  Chapter 31

  Use every moment wisely, to perceive your inner refulgence, or ’twill be gone and nevermore within your reach.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Painted Desert north of Winslow, Arizona

  0701 hours, April 27

  As was their wont, they’d been in the saddle since before sunup. For the first four days of what they called their ‘vacation’, the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves seemed like an old friend to Dennis Tompkins’ little group of survivors. During their fifty years of wandering through devastated North America, they’d driven vehicles whenever they could, but more often than not the only mode of transport available had been equine. Nor had they been in a hurry to get anywhere; they all seemed to sense this was probably their last trip together and wanted to savor it for as long as they could. On day five, however, all six of them began to remember the biggest problem with long journeys on horseback.

  “I cain’t feel m’ legs, Skip,” John Thibodeaux said. “Tell me again why we ain’t drivin’.”

  “There’s two reasons, John,” Dennis Tompkins replied. The burning in his lower back reminded him of the constant pain he’d been in during the long years in the wilderness. “First, I said this was more fun, and second, I’m an idiot.”

  Passing through a narrow valley, they rode single file. Sheer walls of rock rose close on either side. Riding first, Paul Hausser chuckled and called back over his shoulder, “You’re not an idiot, Skip. You just got old.”

  The usually taciturn Derek Tandy, bringing up the rear, almost had to shout to be heard. “Anybody who grew old during the last fifty years can’t be an idiot.”

  “Asides,” Thibodeaux said. “If we was in a Humvee, we couldn’t be in this pass right now. I think riding horses was the right call, me.”

  Second in the column, Tompkins twisted in the saddle. The motion felt good to the stiff muscles in his back. “You were just complaining about not taking Humvees, John.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “It was thirty seconds!” yelled Tandy from behind.

  “An’ that’s a long time,” Thibodeaux replied.

  They emerged from the pass facing the gently rolling dunes of the Sonoran Desert as it led north. The colors of spring carpeted the ground in pinks, blues, green, yellows, and every shade of red. They avoided the ruins of Holbrook and crossed Interstate 40, headed toward the Little Colorado River. Lunch was a leisurely affair of MREs eaten in a boulder field after ensuring that no rattlesnakes were using the area for a nest. But old habits die hard, and they took turns at guard duty. After fifty years, they couldn’t relax without that ritual.

  It paid off.

  Monty Wilson had gained fifteen pounds since the previous summer, so his sagging face appeared less gaunt than it had. He wasn’t a tall man and always scrambled to the highest available point when it was his turn to stand watch. Only Tompkins noticed him shield his eyes with his hand, and then bring the binoculars up to his face.

  “See something, Monty?” he called.

  “Riders, coming’ this way.”

  “How many?”

  “It’s hard to tell; they’re kicking up a lot of dust. More than a few, about two miles away. Maybe twenty, maybe more.”

  By now they were all on their feet, their food forgotten except for Thibodeaux, who held the edge of the MRE’s plastic dish up to his mouth and scooped chicken, noodles, and vegetables it. With both cheeks filled like a cartoon chipmunk, he picked up his M-16, pushed in a magazine, and chambered a round.

  “Are they wearin’ red scarves?”

  “Not that I can see, Skipper… but there’s somethin’ wrapped around their heads. It looks like… I can’t make it out… it looks maybe like writing.”

  “Writing?”

  “Yes, cursive writing… oh, shit!”

  But Tompkins had already guessed what it was. “It’s Arabic, isn’t it?”

  “Too far to tell for sure, but that’s what it looks like.”

  “Have they seen us?”

  “I don’t think so. Looks like they’re cantering but not galloping.”

  “But they’re headed this way? No chance to lay down the horses and let ’em pass?”

  “I don’t think that’ll work this time, Skipper.”

  “Dang it. Lemme know if that changes.”

  Nobody panicked. Instead they all turned to Tompkins. He’d been their leader for fifty years and they were all still alive because he’d made the right decision in countless situations like this one. Nor did he make a hasty choice. He mentally estimated they had eight to ten minutes before the riders would be on them, and it would take them less than thirty seconds to mount up. Turning in a full circle gave him time to look for better defensive territory. Two miles to the north he saw their chance, a ridgeline with what appeared to be a cave high on its face.

  “All right, boys, there’s our place to hole up,” he said, pointing. “Let’s ride like hell.”

  #

  Chapter 32

  Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.

  Ronald Reagan

  Eastern Arizona

  1015 hours, April 27

  Lara Snowtiger leaned on the sunny side of a Humvee, munching on the high protein crackers developed from pumpkin, sunflower seeds, and the limited grains available to the Republic of Arizona. They tasted like cardboard but were surprisingly satisfying when you were hungry. The Marines had adapted to eating them by dipping them in whatever liquid was available, preferably a packet of beef or chicken broth powder in their MREs, mixed with water. Unfortunately, all she could find was some orange drink powder.

/>   “It still sounds crazy, Lara,” Zo Piccaldi said. As usual during downtimes, he lay anywhere in the shade with his boonie hat covering his face, trying to doze. In this case, it was in the vehicle’s back seat.

  “If you could get inside here,” she said, pointing at her chest, “you’d know what I mean.”

  “If I could get in there, I’d be in Heaven.”

  Enough women had given him the drop dead expression that he knew what it looked like. Snowtiger’s version of that look matched every other one he’d ever seen; he assumed it was instinct.

  “Do you ever think about anything else?”

  “No, never.”

  “You need estrogen shots.”

  “I like my toxic manliness.”

  “Toxic, yes, but I’m not sure about the manliness part. What I’m saying is that if you could hear and sense what I hear and sense, you’d believe me. My sister is out there somewhere.”

  “Alive?”

  “I think so. That’s what it feels like.”

  “Whatever you say. Who am I to argue with a Medoh?” Medal of Honor.

  “Bite me,” she said, and stalked off.

  “Just gimme the chance,” he said to her back.

  “Do you want me to hit you with a sexual harassment writeup?”

  “You can hit me with whatever you want.”

  “How about a brick?”

  “Oooo, talk dirty to me.”

  A Humvee sped their way, boiling a dust cloud in its wake. Both snipers stopped to await its arrival, but Snowtiger couldn’t resist getting in the last word.

  “When flying pigs swim in barbeque sauce.”

  The Humvee stopped in the center of the laagered vehicles of First Platoon. Without a word, the scattered Marines gathered around their commander, Lieutenant Hakala, known to them affectionately as Loot Hack. Hakala had been executive officer to Lieutenant Embekwe when the latter died in the so-called Battle of Last Stand Hill. The men and women of his platoon knew that when the shit hit the fan, he’d be standing right beside them.