Burning Skies_The Fall

by Ford, Devon C.

  THE VALUE OF SUCCESS

  Friday 12:58 p.m. - Free America Movement Headquarters

  Colonel Butler stood at the front of his assembled command center staff with Suzanne at his side. He watched the bank of screens, scanning the ticker-tape text scrolling from right to left for information and occasionally calling out to an aide to record something.

  One screen showed an image of black smoke pouring from a tunnel entrance, and a reporter holding a microphone, scanning her eyes left and right as she nervously gave the report, obviously wanted to get out of there.

  “Holland tunnel,” Butler said, snapping his fingers, and pointing at a young man with a clipboard. The man hurriedly searched for the mission objective on his list and ticked it off. Butler was happy, because he was winning. Another screen showed an aerial view from a helicopter filming the devastation in Washington where the power plant had previously been. Now it was a smoking crater, betraying a blast radius far bigger than their estimates imagined, and he watched as the footage switched to blackened and destroyed police cars thrown hundreds of yards away. The footer on the screen showed the evocative title:

  “Terror Attack on Capitol Hill”

  He said a silent prayer of thanks to Taylor, seeing the success and dedication his team had showed, and wished him well in his next mission.

  Turning his eyes back to the footage from New York, some of it obviously taken from cell phone videos uploaded to the internet, he saw different pillars of smoke rising from the subway stations and streets. Leland had done well, but there was yet to be any mention of the stock exchange being permanently shut down. No doubt the eyes of the city were on the series of small explosions and fires instead of their investment portfolios. The attack on New York City had gone well, very well, and even now the city-wide panic began to breed and grow at an unfathomable rate. The idea was not to destroy the city but to cause widespread fear and chaos, which it seemed was happening as he watched. Already the news reported looting happening in parts of the city which were unaffected by the bombs.

  “Are we ready for phase three?” Suzanne asked him.

  “Not yet,” Butler replied. His eyes never stopping scanning the screens for a second, as he assimilated so many different sources of information but still remained present in the room. “We’re waiting for the response before we show that card. We wait.”

  Suzanne nodded, not that he saw her gesture, and lapsed back into silence as she too watched the screens.

  “That’s Willis Avenue Bridge,” she said, recognizing the scene from another news channel, and the bearer of another clipboard searched their list to record it.

  The title from the news channel showing events in Washington changed then, the text reading “No response from the White House,” and showed military vehicles at the iconic building. Muzzle flashes sparkled brightly on the screen, catching Butler’s eye.

  “Turn up the sound on screen four,” he called to the room, rightly expecting that someone would obey his order and not make him wait. Within a second the graphic showed up on the bottom of the screen and the numbers blurred as the volume went high.

  “…what appears to be gunfire on the White House lawn. The National Guard are on site and seem to be engaged in a firefight with unknown gunmen inside the grounds …”

  The reporter giving the commentary clearly had not the first clue about a firefight. If anyone had looked at the big picture there, it would be obvious to them that the National Guard were moving forwards in a well-drilled tactical formation, firing and maneuvering as other squads provided covering fire, and were assaulting the building. The people the news anchor had called ‘unknown gunmen’ were the Secret Service responding to the threat of attack.

  Butler, having been involved in and commanding more firefights than he cared to remember, appreciated the discipline of the troops. The Secret Service, as well trained and incredibly well equipped as they were, did not have the odds on their side as a brigade of battle-ready troops stormed their gates appearing to be friendly. The 9mm rounds coming from their service-issued weapons, the only firearms available to them at immediate notice, embedded in the ballistic vests of the troops they were lucky or skilled enough to hit. In contrast, firing full-auto 5.56 ammunition and working in effective fire teams, the troops overwhelmed them in minutes as Butler and his team watched. Stacking up to breach the doors and filing inside to perform a brutal room clearance, Butler saw a glimpse of the man leading them and knew his message had been received five by five.

  Taylor was making it happen.

  “Sir!” someone said in a shrill voice which bordered on panic, annoying the colonel with the tone of lapsed discipline.

  “What?” he growled in response, to see the same young man with his clipboard pointing at another screen. Snatching up two remotes as he dropped the clipboard, the man simultaneously muted the Washington news screen and raised the volume of another. This one showed an airstrip, with two F-35s blasting away into the sky. Butler didn’t need any screen text to know that the Naval Airbase in Virginia had responded to the perceived terrorist threat in New York City.

  This was expected, and catered for. As much as the American people didn’t like to admit it, the military response post 9-11 was swift and under brutally strict orders. Anything in the air which did not respond to their hails to break away from the air space would be assumed to be under terrorist control. It was an uncomfortable truth, but the reality was that these Naval aviators were there to shoot down anything potentially unfriendly in the skies.

  “Prepare to start phase three,” he said calmly, despite the obvious fear of a military response some of his team were radiating. He turned to face them.

  “Those jets aren’t coming here, they’re heading for New York. We’ve anticipated this and planned for it, so you carry on with your job, son, and leave those aircraft to me.” He turned back to the screens as Suzanne rejoined him, holding out a burner phone. It had been tested once, using a different phone on the same network, so he knew the signal would go out. Turning it on he took a piece of paper from Suzanne, input the different cell numbers into the message recipient field, and handed the phone and paper back to Suzanne to be double-checked. She read each one carefully and handed it back.

  “Good to go, sir,” she said.

  “Outstanding,” Butler said loudly, exuding the confidence of a leader who knows some of his troops are experiencing the fear of conflict for the first time.

  “I expect those fighter planes to be approaching the city within ten minutes”—he checked his watch— “so phase three will begin at 13:07 local time.”

  With that, he smiled and turned his attention back to the screens, keeping a careful eye on the Washington news channel.

  ~

  Seven thousand miles away as the crow flies, if a crow could traverse half the earth, at one in the morning was a similar command center. This one, as with any modern tactical command hub, did bristle with wires and phone lines. Banks of screens showed live news from all around the world, and a digital bank of clocks gave local time for every major city in the world.

  This part of the operation was critical, as so many factors could be controlled with the exception of foreign interference beyond their influence.

  The woman in the dark suit watched with her cold expression giving nothing away; she could be angry or she could be experiencing the happiest moment of her life, only nobody but her would know. She watched as the flaming jet trails of the two F-35s soared away from the ground and the camera shot panned out to see the aircraft disappearing over a fluttering stars and stripes flag.

  Internally she sneered as her face remained as stone. Their theatrical sense of national pride would soon suffer irreparably, she reminded herself.

  FALLING SKIES

  Friday 1:07 p.m. - 3rd Avenue, NYC

  Cal was making slower progress now, as the streets became packed with people fleeing the financial district. Some had been sensible and had headed south for t
he ferries which would revert to evacuation at the first sign of any attack, but even if he had thought of it, that wasn’t an option for Cal. His passport was in his hotel room safe, but the biggest priority was to find the only person on this island he cared about.

  In contrast to the chaos and panic in the streets, he saw a table of five people a little younger than himself inside a coffee shop. They were sat in silence, but all were still and calm as they sipped their drinks from oversized cups. Shaking away the image of them, to Cal the image of stupidity and a lack of any sense of self-preservation, he jolted back to the present with a painful impact.

  A cab driver had decided to ignore the rules of the one-way streets, and broke free from the traffic jam by clipping the bumper of the car in front and spinning his tires as he shot down a side street against the normal flow of traffic. He did this at the exact moment Cal ran into the road.

  Rolling up the windshield and hitting his lower back sharply on the taxi sign on the roof, the cab stopped and rolled him back down over the hood to slam into the street again. Groaning in agony and shock as he took a long, tortured breath to fill his lungs, Cal rose unsteadily to his feet and limped to the passenger side of the vehicle where his confusion made him instinctively think the driver would be sitting behind the wheel there. He wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to say to the cabbie, other than to give him abuse, but he never got the opportunity as the tires screeched again and the cab took off down the street.

  “PRICK!” Cal shouted after him impotently.

  “Hey, buddy. You okay?” said a voice behind him, still muted by the temporary deafness he suffered. Cal turned to see a man, olive skinned and dark haired in appearance with the contrasting twang in his voice of a New Yorker. He had his sleeves rolled up and wore a grease-splattered apron which Cal imagined had been white at one point in its existence.

  “You got yourself hit pretty good there, huh guy?” he said, his face showing a mixture of concern and amusement.

  “Yeah,” groaned Cal, bending at the waist to try and catch his breath as he screwed his eyes shut. “Fucking arsehole,” he said, meaning the cab driver.

  “Buddy, listen, forget about it. The whole city’s going nuts out here and you need to get yourself someplace safe, huh?” the man said, eyes darting around at the rising panic.

  “You too,” said Cal, standing up stiffly. He knew that he was going to be in some serious pain tomorrow.

  “Oh, I will, don’t you worry,” he replied with a chuckle. “But I need to lock up my deli first so none of these dumb schmucks decide to do a little redecorating. After that I’m checking out if you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” said Cal again as he wavered on the spot with a wave of dizziness.

  “Buddy, you don’t look so good …” the deli owner said, eyeing the Brit with concern.

  “I need to get to the Waldorf,” Cal told him, his desperate need coming back to him, “which way do I go?”

  His concern forgotten, and the chaos enveloping the city momentarily pushed aside, the man launched into directions. “Okay, what you want to do is head north on 3rd, take a left on 23rd for two blocks then head north on Park.” The man glanced side to side and bounced his shoulders as he talked.

  “Thanks,” Cal grunted through gritted teeth before he straightened up and went to walk away.

  “Buddy, that’s west! You gotta get your bearings,” he was told, but any further response was drowned out by a helicopter coming in low.

  ~

  The pilot of the Bell 429 came in low and slow, heading toward the financial district after they were re-tasked from monitoring the vehicle fires on Broadway. As they passed overhead, never knowing about the conversation between a British man who just lost a fight with a city cab and a local shopkeeper, a text message was received onboard.

  The cell phone taped securely to the small box hidden away toward the back of the cabin lit up, connected the circuitry inside, and blinked out.

  Simultaneously, the instrumentation onboard also blacked out, and as the pilot fought to control the flightless bird he suddenly found himself in, gravity did what it did best, and reminded the human race that they had never evolved to fly.

  ~

  “Abort! Abort!” shouted the F-35 pilot as he yanked the stick toward him, put the machine at a right angle to the earth, and punched it. Climbing straight up at hundreds of miles per hour, his wing man copied the maneuver instinctively. Hitting the radio mic, he hailed Chambers Field.

  “C-F, C-F, this is Phantom. Be advised we are bugging out. NYPD rotary wings have been downed by unknown E-W. Repeat, NYPD birds have been downed by E-W,” he reported, his voice muffled and robotic partially disguising a Florida accent.

  “Say again, Phantom,” came the reply from the Chambers Field naval airbase in Virginia.

  “I say again C-F,” the pilot said in a voice which made it clear he wasn’t impressed with the request. Reducing his airspeed and rolling to level out and point the nose of his aircraft toward home with the blood returning to the front half of his body, he said, “Unknown electronic warfare in play. NYPD rotary wings are down. I saw two drop simultaneously. We are not equipped with ECM and request orders to RTB. Repeat, we are not equipped with ECM and have no response to threat.”

  A pause before the radio operator came back.

  Phantom imagined the base commander standing behind her, the handset of a landline pressed to his shoulder with an important call waiting. The F-35 truly was at the cutting edge of fighter plane technology; its onboard computer systems were capable of identifying threats and deploying countermeasures in an instant without the need for the human pilot to react. What Phantom had seen, however, was what he truly believed was a directed energy weapon or something similar, and he didn’t much like the thought of having his ride go dark on him.

  “Negative on the RTB, Phantom,” said the voice in his ear. “Climb to ninety-eight hundred feet and stay on target as CAP. Repeat, floor of operations is now ninety-eight hundred. Acknowledge,” she ordered.

  “C-F, Phantom. Acknowledged.”

  The lead F-35 banked hard left, sweeping around to return to Manhattan, only this time climbing to a much higher altitude. It could only have been some kind of EMP or energy weapon that could cause the two helicopters he saw to both go dark and drop in perfect synchronicity, but now any directed electronic warfare weaponry would have to be flying alongside them at a little over two hundred and fifty miles an hour to take them down.

  This way they were still on site to conduct their primary role, that of a combat air patrol, but the new floor of operation being raised to the three-kilometer mark made them, in theory, safe from the threat without electronic jamming countermeasures. Height advantage or not, both pilots were very nervous at the prospect of having their fifty-million-dollar plane’s electronics fried with them in the driving seats.

  ~

  Cal woke, coughing and spluttering, with an incredible pain in his head.

  “Hey, buddy. You okay?” came the familiar voice. Cal was confused, thinking that when he got hit with the car he hadn’t actually got up, and had some weird dream or premonition. His eyes saw ceiling, and his brain registered that he was now inside instead of on the street.

  Cal saw the man who asked him again if he was okay, and squinted as he looked around the dark room. Sound from outside penetrated his thoughts and he registered a lot more screaming and sirens than previously.

  “What happened?” he asked, realizing that the deli owner’s apron now sported a bright, wet bloodstain over the patterns of grease.

  “Heck do I know?” he said. “One minute you’re getting up from your bust up with the cab, the next thing a goddamned police helicopter drops on the street.” He was shaken up, badly, but had still retained the good sense to get himself inside and drag Cal’s unconscious body with him.

  “How long have I been out?” Cal asked, tenderly feeling the sore swelling on the back of his head. Nothing broken,
he reassured himself as he tested the movement of his neck, I don’t think so anyway. Checking himself out from head to toe, Cal decided that he was pretty beaten up but still functional. Patting his pockets to make sure he still had everything, Cal glanced up at the man to prompt an answer.

  “I don’t know. A couple minutes, tops?” said the man who was watching the inferno in the street through his shop window.

  Shit, Cal thought, I need to get the hell out of here.

  Rising slowly, he found that his feet still worked, just about, and he walked carefully to the front door.

  “Whoa, Jesus, you can’t go out there! I can’t even get through on 911 but you need a doctor or something,” said the man holding up both hands.

  “I have to get back to the hotel,” Cal said, entertaining no further delays. “North on 3rd, left onto 23rd for two blocks and right onto Park?” he said.

  The man hesitated, but shrugged. “Yeah, but you need to be careful. It’s nuts out there, I mean real pandemonium.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Cal said, reaching for the door. He paused, turned his stiff neck to the man who watched his neighborhood with concern out the window. “Thank you,” he said.

  The man shrugged again. “Forget about it. Welcome to New York, huh?”

  REGULAR SUPERHERO

  Friday 2:55 p.m. - 23rd Street, NYC

  Cal staggered around the corner, glanced up at the four-way signpost to confirm he was on the right street, and shuffled his feet west. He had wandered in a daze through the city, screams and sirens echoing on every street. Everywhere he looked he saw emergency first responders rushing around, and it seemed impossible to Cal that there were even more people in the streets than there were before. If his brain had registered the facts, if he wasn’t suffering with back-to-back concussions both sustained inside an hour of each other, then he might have realized that it was because nobody was using the subway.