Alex grabbed his flashlight from the nightstand and illuminated the room. Nobody shifted—of course. They had all inherited their mother’s morning gene. He walked around the bed, careful not to step on Emily, who lay in a sleeping bag between the full-size bed and the elevated air mattress supporting Ryan. The room had been reconfigured to accommodate a sandbag position facing the backyard. The bed, normally under the backyard window, had been pushed across the room against the opposite interior walls. They had done the same in all of the rooms, hastily rearranging couches, beds, end tables and chairs to free up space for sheet metal and sandbags. Ed was right. The house had been transformed into the Alamo.
The door cracked; Charlie Thornton poked his face through the opening.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” he said. “Brought some coffee for your wife. Linda said she’d need it.”
Alex stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him, taking the hot mug in his hands. After a long sip, he patted Charlie on the shoulder.
“Thank you, Charlie.”
“It was Linda’s idea,” he said, reaching for the Walkers’ door.
“No,” he said, stopping Charlie. “Thank you for everything. I mean it.”
“That’s what friends do for each other, man.”
“Friends collect your mail while you’re away on vacation. You’ve redefined my concept of the word. It’s not a word I’ll use lightly again. Thank you.”
“Dude, you’re evoking man tears, which means—”
“No. We are not going to—”
“It’s time for that hug,” he said, embracing Alex.
Alex held the coffee mug away and let it happen. Charlie had been angling for this “man hug” since he arrived at the reservation with the battalion’s armed escort, and Alex had deprived him long enough, artfully dodging his outstretched arms.
“When the two of you are done hugging, I’d appreciate it if you started waking people up,” said Linda from the bottom of the stairs.
“He started it,” said Charlie.
“Thanks for the coffee. See you in a few,” said Alex.
Twenty minutes later, everyone was in position, scattered throughout the dark house with coffee. Alex found himself back in his bedroom, facing the forest behind their house. He’d moved Ryan onto the bed and given Emily the air mattress, sliding it against the bed to make room in front of the sandbags for a folding chair. Through the open window, he scanned the length of the tree line with his night vision goggles, catching the occasional flicker of a lightning bug. Linda had a similar view on one of the computer monitors in the dining room, but the surveillance cameras couldn’t penetrate the forest like his generation IV gear. He could detect a smoldering cigarette or the glow of a night vision scope eyepiece deep in the trees.
Kate watched the open expanse of land in front of the house through one of Alex’s old night vision spotting scopes, a Russian knock-off with 2X magnification and an infrared illuminator. With nearly one hundred fifty feet of clearing separating the southern tree line from the house, a diligent watch through the scope could pick up any unusual activity. Their concern with the southern approach extended to the buckwheat and oat fields, which could be used by intruders to close the distance undetected.
The eastern woods extending from the road to the house fell under Charlie’s watch. The Generation III night vision scope attached to his rifle gave him better magnification than Alex’s goggles, along with the best chance of catching headlights if their attackers were foolish enough to use them on Gelder Pond Lane. Tim Fletcher covered the pond and left side of the barn with the second spotting scope while Ed kept Alex’s mother company in the kitchen, waiting to relieve anyone that needed a break. With Linda in the dining room, they had all of the “fighting” adults on station to respond.
Their defense had a few flaws, the most glaring being their inability to effectively shoot at targets in the dark. Only Alex and Charlie had integrated night vision systems, leaving the rest to scan with their devices and shoot in the general direction of movement. Hardly ideal. The motion-activated lights mounted to each side of the house and barn had been fried by the EMP. He’d kept two spare lights in the basement surveillance kit, which Tim chose to install on the unobserved sides of the barn to give them some advance warning if anyone got past the motion sensors.
Later today, Alex would rig trip flares in the yard, fifteen feet from the house, and run the trip wires back to the house. A solid tug on the wire by one of Alex’s lookouts would detonate a 35,000 candle power M49A1 trip flare, illuminating the open ground for a minute and providing silhouetted targets for shooters in the house. With any luck, they could engage attackers in the open at relatively close range. Failing that, the flares served as a powerful deterrent against repeated attempts to reach the house.
Beyond the limitations imposed by a nighttime battle on his motley crew, Alex’s second-biggest concern was the barn. Located less than fifty feet from the house, it blocked their view of a significant portion of the clearing’s northeast corner and represented the closest point of approach to the house. The militia team that scouted the property yesterday afternoon would have seen the barn and recognized the opportunities it presented. If the militia managed to break through one of the unobserved outer walls, they could open the barn door and rush the house. Ideally, they should place a team in the barn to stop this, but nobody besides himself had the training required to pull it off, and he’d be needed inside the house to keep this motley crew from falling apart under fire—if that was even possible.
Like any static defense, their best strategy was to inflict as many casualties as possible within the first few minutes of the attack, forcing a withdrawal. He also planned to put as many guns as possible into the first few salvos to give his attackers the impression that they had a large number of defenders. Marine Corps and army infantry schools teach combat leaders that they need a minimum three to one attacker to defender ratio when assaulting a fortified position. If he could throw enough bullets out of several windows at once, regardless of the caliber used, he might be able to pound some battlefield sense into the rush and stop its momentum.
If not, and they persisted, he wasn’t sure how long he could keep his civilian army in the fight under sustained gunfire. He hoped they were all wrong, and the men scoping out the house decided they had stumbled onto the wrong location. However, he knew that was wishful thinking.
A light flashed deep in the woods. Possibly a lightning bug, possibly not. Alex stared at the spot for a few minutes, not seeing a repeated flash. He considered “lasing” the area for Charlie’s magnified scope, but dismissed the idea. If the militia guys had some form of night vision gear, his IR laser would draw too much attention. He settled in for a long morning.
Chapter 31
EVENT +74:30
Limerick, Maine
Eli Russell waved the three oncoming SUVs onto the path leaving Old Middle Road and followed them past a thick stand of trees after checking the road for observers. He was going to skin these idiots alive. They were an hour late arriving at the rally point and had failed to respond to his radio calls. He’d considered abandoning the attack altogether, fearful that they had been intercepted by the returning convoy. Larry Bertelson jumped out of the SUV and sprinted to Russell, saluting as he arrived.
“Eli, I’m sorry about the delay. One of my guys wanted to grab a different scope from his brother. It was supposed to be on the way, but it turned out to be further than I had thought. Ended up in Limington; then we kind of got lost. Something’s wrong with my radio, too,” he said, keeping his salute raised and his eyes lowered.
Bertelson had definitely been the wrong choice of squad leaders for the attack. Unfortunately, Eli’s pickings were slim beyond Hillebrand’s and Brown’s squads, and he didn’t have time to call in reinforcements. Like one of the head honchos said during the Iraq War, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.” Of course, he’d have to switch t
hings around a bit. There was no way he could trust this turd to co-lead the primary breach team.
“Sergeant Hillebrand! Front and center!”
A lanky man with unruly red hair broke free from a group of nearby men and snapped to attention in front of Eli.
“Hillebrand reporting, sir!”
Eli saw the barely concealed look of contempt on Bertelson’s face and decided if the man survived the attack, he’d turn him into his personal piñata.
“I’m switching your squad with Bertelson’s. You’ll be my right-hand man for the breach. Bertelson’s squad will provide suppressing fire from the northern tree line. Bertelson, you have a crew that can work the thirty-cal?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bertelson, pausing. “I can bring the attack in with you.”
“Negative. Showing up late for beers is one thing; putting me an hour behind schedule on an operation is another. We’ll talk about this later. Brief your troops and transfer the thirty-cal. We step off in five minutes. End of discussion. Oh, Bertelson?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Make sure you get a working radio from one of the guys staying at the rally point, if yours is still broken,” Eli said, frowning.
The two men dashed off to take care of the last minute adjustment, making room for Eli’s executive officer, Kevin McCulver.
“Surprised you didn’t beat him over the head with his rifle.”
“I wanted to, Kevin. I really wanted to, but we need everyone we’ve got for this. Keep a close eye on the road. If the convoy returns, I need an immediate heads-up. You know what to do after that.”
“Roger,” McCulver said, nodding hesitantly. “I wish we had a chance to test it. This is my first ammonium nitrate bomb.”
“And it won’t be your last. Not with Homeland digging its heels into the area. Just make sure the guys jump out far enough away. A fifty pounder will screw you up a long ways out. They need to roll that thing into the military convoy.”
“Copy. We’ll follow them in and set off the explosive as they dismount.”
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” said Eli.
McCulver nodded. “I’ll send the rest of the vehicles in when you give me the signal.”
“Primary extract will be at the gate. I’ll march the men up the driveway when we’re finished. Secondary extract is where the two roads split, right where we enter the woods.”
“Roger. Once the pickup vehicles depart, I’ll park the car bomb on the turnoff from Old Middle in case we have late arriving guests.”
“Sorry to sideline you like this, but I need someone I can trust running rear security. If this goes south for any reason, you’re the only one with the tactical awareness to unfuck the situation for me,” said Eli, gripping McCulver’s shoulder.
“I got your back, Eli. I suspect this won’t be our last operation.”
“Not if the federal government plans on imposing martial law on us. Not by a long shot. If you’d do the honor of mustering the troops, I’d like to kick this off before I melt. Gonna be a scorcher today.”
Eli stepped into the shade and repeated the plan in his head. He’d accompany Hillebrand’s squad, followed closely by Bertelson’s, into the forest past Gelder Pond Lane. They’d head slightly southwest until they reached the lake, where they’d turn left and follow the water’s edge until his rangefinder put the dock at about a hundred yards. At this point, he’d lead them away from the shoreline at a forty-five-degree angle until they could see the clearing.
He’d send a few scouts from there to scan for sentries before moving Hillebrand’s group to a position hidden from the house by the barn. Bertelson’s crew would take positions in the tree line behind the house, and they’d all wait for Brown’s squad to settle in along the eastern woods in the same location they had used to survey the compound yesterday.
Once everyone was in place, Bertelson’s squad was to pour rounds into the back of the house while Eli breached the door attached to the screen porch with Hillebrand’s squad. Brown’s team would establish fire superiority on the eastern flank and rush to the garage, looking for a second breach point along the front of the house. With two squads converging on the target, radio coordination played a critical role in avoiding fratricide, a point he needed to reinforce.
With the three squads formed up in the woods, he stepped forward to address the troops.
“I’ll keep this simple. Today we strike the first blow against tyranny. I don’t expect this will stop the government’s plan to take over York County, but it’ll sure as hell make them think twice about putting boots on the ground,” he said, amazed that he could conjure this stuff up on a whim.
The men muttered in agreement. He might have heard a “hell yeah.”
“We show no mercy here—like they showed no mercy at the bridge. Kill everyone in the house, no matter what you find. They’re harboring the enemy, and we need the word to spread. Harboring the enemy is the same as taking up arms against the people.”
More cheers.
Man, this is fun.
“Squad leaders, keep your radio earpieces in at all times—and listen up. I don’t like repeating orders, and we have two squads breaching the house from opposite ends. There’s potential for a blue on blue engagement if we’re not careful. Got it?”
The squad leaders verbally confirmed his warning.
“Rifles on safe until I give the order to open fire. You do not want to accidently discharge your weapon and compromise the operation. If you do, just put the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger. Save me the effort. Keep your eyes open and your mouths shut. Are we ready to take the fight to the enemy?”
A mixed garble of chants erupted, most of which seemed to indicate they were ready.
“XO, make a note. Task Force Liberty crossed the line of departure at zero seven forty-two hours. Let’s move out!”
Chapter 32
EVENT +75:03
Limerick, Maine
Kate checked her watch and rubbed her face. This wasn’t how she wanted to start the day, let alone every day until the Maine Liberty Militia was—how did Alex put it? Neutralized? She wondered what it might take to make that happen. Did Alex really have the power to list them as a critical threat and summon a giant boot to crush them? She’d thought his statement sounded heavy handed and Gestapo-like, especially on the heels of waving his magic badge around, but now she’d gladly help him craft the words required to prevent a continuous string of 4 AM wake ups.
After breakfast, she’d suggest that he draft his first report, emphasizing the immediate need to hunt down and stamp out this group, if they even existed. Maybe the kids had been full of shit, running their mouths after four too many tallboys. Maybe Alex had crossed paths with a one-off gang of opportunistic weekend warriors. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter, just the off chance of an organized attack meant she’d continue to experience the pleasure of studying a grainy, light green image while mosquitos found their way through the open window with the sole purpose of distracting her free hand from her coffee mug.
She sighed, knowing full well that she’d never complain about any of this in front of the others. Leaders didn’t whine, and they certainly didn’t put up with whiners.
“A few mosquito bites are a small price to pay for vigilance,” she mumbled, imitating Alex.
“What was that?” said Alex, appearing in the doorway to the sitting room.
“Nothing. Just muttering to myself. I ran out of coffee, and I can’t think straight,” she said.
“I think we’re out of the attack window for now. We’ll resume these positions about a half hour before sunset and keep them manned until 10 PM. Militarily, these are the most likely periods of time for an attack. I’ll put up a bunch of trip flares around the house later today, which should give us an advantage if they hit us in the dark.”
“Good, because, uh, I couldn’t see shit out there. I might have spotted them moving toward the house, but that’s about all I could do about it,�
� she said, standing up from the folding chair.
“I know. Tonight and tomorrow morning, you’ll have two wires running through the window, each attached to a flare. If you see something through the scope, pull the wire and fire.”
“You’re a poet. What’s for breakfast?”
“Chef’s surprise. The fridge isn’t working right, so my mom is clearing out the perishables, which somehow includes frozen bacon.”
“She likes bacon. How much coffee do we have left?”
“There’s a fresh pot brewing.”
“No, I mean like, in the grand scheme of things. Stockpiled.”
“The good stuff?”
“I don’t really care at this point.”
“You might once you taste the instant stuff.”
“How close are we to tapping into it?” she said, suddenly looking concerned.
“Six pounds.”
“That’s not good. Time to switch to instant. Most of them won’t know the difference. I saw Charlie watering his coffee down with tap water. What’s wrong with that man?”
Alex raised an eyebrow.
“I heard that!” said Charlie from the kitchen. “Not my fault you’re serving this fancy mud stuff.”
Kate picked up her backpack, which was filled with spare rifle magazines, and slung her rifle.
“You can leave that stuff here. No sense clunking it around the kitchen,” he said, stepping out of the sitting room.
Kate didn’t argue. She hated carrying the rifle around, constantly adjusting the sling and checking the safety—worried that it might discharge accidently. Logically, she knew it was impossible, even with a chambered round, but the very act of carrying a deadly weapon felt awkward. Alex handled his rifle like a natural extension of his body. Barely an afterthought. He shifted it out of the way with no apparent effort while navigating tight spaces or working. To her husband, the rifle was a simple tool. To her, it was a killing instrument to be feared and distrusted. She wondered if she’d ever adjust.
Event Horizon (The Perseid Collapse Post Apocalyptic Series) Page 20