by John Chapman
“We need to get Card.” Dylan said. Mark asked where he was and if he was injured and Dylan said, “He’s dead Mark. Him and the Pastor here got shot. Card is under a window on the east side of the house. The Pastor is inside.” Mark put his arm around Dylan’s shoulder and quietly said, “OK brother. We will take care of them.” Mark turned to Troy and said, “Get one of your vehicles to take Dylan to the police station. Have them brief Kyle then send one of Alpha’s HMMWVs to transport the bodies.” “Roger,” Troy solemnly said, and he led Dylan to the Equinox.
Mark got on the radio, “Knight Six, Knight Five.” Kyle responded, “Go ahead.” Mark gathered his thoughts and said, “We recovered Nowak out of the rectory. He’s injured but ambulatory and on his way to you in one of Delta’s vehicles. We have one other officer down hard and a civilian as well. Nowak can brief on officer’s ID when he gets there. We are standing by to recover them, then will be pulling off target and returning to you to…”
Mark was interrupted by the sound of several short bursts from the Mk46. He and Troy sprinted to the northeast corner of the rectory and did a high/low pop on the corner. Mark saw Darren running to the east then flop down in a prone position, obviously displacing after shooting. When Darren didn’t shoot again Mark shouted, “SITREP?” Darren replied, “One armed subject came out of the house to the south and pointed a rifle at us. I dumped him.” Mark said, “Roger. Go dead check him, get any ID he has, and collect his weapon.” Darren and Gary nodded and pushed off.
Mark ducked back behind the rectory corner and got back on the radio, “Knight Five continuing. We just had an engagement to the south of our pos. We need to recover our bodies and get off this target.” In a few seconds Kyle responded, “Copy Knight Five. Dan is bringing Alpha team to your pos now.”
On the roof of the fire station Kasey was starting to shake. At first, she put it off to it being cold outside but after a minute or so she realized it was the adrenaline bleeding off from her system. She tried to focus and do her job watching Mark’s back but a wave of nausea hit her suddenly. She came off the gun and vomited violently. Kasey was willing herself to stop, to get herself under control, but she couldn’t stop the physical reaction.
Branch put his hand on her back and said, “It’s OK sis. The same thing happened to me in Iraq the first time. You’ll be ok in a minute.” Kasey hated herself for showing weakness in front of a man other than Mark, but didn’t realize at the time Branch thought no less of her. He knew the true test would be the second time she had to shoot; would she let this experience mess with her head and affect her performance next time? He didn’t think so.
Kasey said a quick prayer turning the experience over to God and immediately felt better. She knew she would have to deal with it later but for now she could carry on. Kasey got back on the gun and said, “Thanks Branch.” “Don’t mention it sis.” Branch said, and returned to watching to the west. She did a fresh scan of the area and saw two HMMWVs to her east coming at them. That would be Alpha team. She watched as the vehicles pulled up and everyone bailed out to pull security. They must have done some basic drills before leaving the range because they looked professional as hell with that dismount. Kasey saw Dan get out of the lead vehicle and go to Mark.
Mark was getting antsy. It was going to be dark in an hour or so. He could see groups of people moving between the houses to their southeast and knew if these people were already chasing cops around shooting at them in broad daylight, four hours into this emergency, things would be completely off the hook soon. This part of town was going to be a war zone by tonight.
Dan came up to Mark and said, “Seems things have gotten sporting already.” “Seems so brother,” Mark replied, and then continued, “Can you peel off a couple guys to help us load Card and the other guy? I guess he was the Pastor of this church.” Dan said, “Will do. I grabbed some body bags from the detective bureau when I heard the radio traffic. I’ll go get them.” Mark just nodded and went back to scanning for problems.
Dan and two other Alliance SWAT assaulters from his team collected the two bodies and gently placed them in the cargo bed of the lead HMMWV. When they were done Dan sent them and two other Alpha team assaulters to check the rectory. They cleared the building quickly and came back out with three bloody PMags, all marked with ‘NOWAK’ in yellow paint pen. All of them were empty. They turned them over to Dan with the comment, “There was brass everywhere in there. Nowak must have shown them what time it is.” Dan just nodded. Before today he wouldn’t have bet a single dollar Nowak had it in him. He was pleased he’d been wrong.
Chapter 10
Police Station
Alliance, OH
When Mark and Dan walked into the briefing room at the PD it was jammed full. Kyle and the Chief of Police, Harold Stone, were at the front of the room writing lists on the white board while others in the room were talking over one another. When the crowd saw Mark, they stopped talking. Kyle looked up and said, “Hey bros, glad you guys are OK.” Mark replied, “Me too,” then looked at Chief Stone and said, “Hi Sir.” Stone walked over to Mark and Dan and gave them both a bro-hug. “You guys OK? Anyone else hurt?” Mark said, “No Chief.” Mark really liked the Chief; he had always found him to be a calm, reasoned leader with good judgment, possessed of a finely tuned political subtlety that got shit done without unnecessary heartache, and a genuinely great dude. So, when the Chief’s first question had been about the Men’s welfare he wasn’t surprised. No histrionics about the end of the world from Chief Stone; just solid leadership. He was thankful to be working for him.
“What have we done with Card’s remains?” the Chief asked. Dan replied, “Sir, we placed him in the evidence room.” Stone said, “Thank you. That will have to do for now. I know he was a single guy with no family, so we will have to decide soon how to deal with his remains.” Dan said, “Yes Sir. I’ll stay on it and handle whatever needs to be done.” Stone replied with a simple, “Thank you Dan.”
Mark looked around the room and took note of who was present. He saw and said hi to the Mayor, Ron Barnhart. He was happy Barnhart was Mayor at a time like this. Ron was a recently retired police officer and SWAT Team member, and he and Mark knew one another well. Mark trusted Ron’s judgment and silently thanked God that Ron had taken office the month before.
There were four uniformed police officers, all of whom he recognized as Day Shift guys. That meant everyone else had made it back to the station. He also saw the Day Shift Sergeant and Lieutenant were present. That was less of a surprise, as both rarely left the station other than to grab lunch.
The last row back consisted of the Admin Sergeant Jim Wiggins, the City Attorney (also the city prosecutor) Kathy Jones, who also happened to be Kyle’s fiancé, and the city’s Maintenance Director Gabe Riley. Most importantly to Mark, besides Kyle’s fiancé Kathy, was seeing Mitch “Bones” Clark in the back corner. Bones was a detective, and was the only SWAT team member who hadn’t been present at the range when the pulse hit. Bones was a very experienced SWAT leader and assaulter, who worked full time as a Task Force Officer assigned to the Canton regional FBI Violent Crimes Task Force. His wealth of experience and unflappable attitude was a needed element of the team’s dynamic, and Mark was very happy he was ok.
Mark had snatched up the Fire and EMS Chief Mark Dalano and brought him to the PD when they had recovered Kasey and Branch from the fire station. Dalano was just taking his seat.
Mark asked where the department’s two Captains were. Kyle said, “They and two of the Lieutenants went to training in Columbus this morning.” Mark said, “Damn. We need to make sure we grab their families if we can. Those guys won’t be back for a while.” He left off the ‘or most likely ever’ from the sentence. Everyone was already thinking it. Most of Columbus was a third world shit hole before the lights went out; now it would be the seventh ring of hell.
Kyle went back to leading the group through their thoughts on the priorities of work. Mark apologized and interrupte
d, “Things out there are off the rails already. I think our first priorities should be one; evacuating the police and fire stations and city hall and displacing to the range; and two; recover all of the family members and off duty officers and families we possibly can immediately.”
Kyle nodded his head and said, “We were just talking that through.” Mark said, “If that’s our plan I’ll head back to the range now and start coordinating. Bravo team should be back and available by now, and Charlie team’s two hours expired 10 minutes ago. I’ll send the MRAP here so you can start loading essential people and gear to get the move started. I’ll wait to hear from you to start pushing out family recovery missions. It will probably take us some time to figure out where we need to go anyway.”
Kyle nodded and looked at Chief Stone. Stone thought for a minute then spoke to Mayor Barnhart, “What do you think Ron? I think we should do it.” Ron said, “Sorry, I thought it was a no-brainer. Yes, do it.” Stone nodded and pointed at Mark and said, “Go.” Mark and Dan both said, “Yes Sir.” and left the room. Behind them everyone got up to start getting things ready to move.
When Dan and Mark exited the front door of the PD they joined a couple of Alpha team assaulters, one of whom was Jim Keel, one of the CQB students and a Las Vegas Metro SWAT cop who had come to Alliance to take the class and hang out with Mark and Kasey. Mark put his arm around Keel and said, “I’m praying for Becky (Keel’s wife) brother.” Keel said, “She’s at her parent’s ranch in Austin Nevada. She will be fine ‘till I get there.” “Thank God,” Mark said. “In that case I bet you’re glad you weren’t in Vegas when the lights went out.” Keel grinned and said, “Dude, you have no idea.” From where they stood they could see two columns of black smoke coming from the area of Ward 5 where Card and Nowak’s patrol cars had been left. Mark lit a Marlboro, slowly blew the smoke out of his nose, and said, “Well, this is going to suck.”
*
City Police Range
Alliance, OH
Manny stuck his head in the office and told David, “The generators are placed. They put the big unit on the north side of the scum removal building. It looks like that one 1500 kW generator will power the entire water plant and the range as well.” “That’s great news. That will leave us the other two generators for other things,” David said, thinking about the water towers in town. “How long until we have power back?” Manny said, “The electrician told me less than an hour, barring complications.” David said, “Thanks. You guys ready for another mission?” Manny smiled and responded, “Oh hell yes. That escort was a milk run.” Bravo team’s mission to escort the water plant folks and pick up generators from the city yard had taken less than an hour, and the biggest challenge had been navigating around dead cars in the road.
“Alright, here’s your next mission,” David said as he handed Manny a hand-written op order. Manny read the order quickly and said, “Looks good. We will get the M113 warmed up and get ready to move. I’ll check in before we go.” David had ordered Bravo team to collect all of their own and several other guy’s family members who lived within 5 miles of the city, four families in all, and to bring them back to the range. Manny said, “This will make some of the SWAT guys happy; they are worried about their families.” David responded and said, “I figured. We have to take care of the guys so they can focus on the hard missions that are sure to come tonight.” “Roger that,” Manny said, and left the office to get things moving.
The last couple of hours had been a rough transition for David. The world changing so rapidly had shaken him up a little; after all, he wasn’t 25 anymore. He was thankful, however, that he had his experience as a Special Forces NCO to carry him through. He was adjusting rapidly; but he would feel better when he went and got his family in a couple of hours.
David’s planning and organizational skills, learned in the crucible of the extremely austere environment of the Central American drug wars of the 80’s, were standing him and the entire team in good stead. While he would rather be out in the city gunfighting, he knew he had a critical mission to perform here; one he was uniquely qualified for. David liked practicing medicine, and he was gifted at it, but in his soul he was a gunfighter and leader of Men first. Knowing he had a lot of work to do, David stopped navel-gazing and got back to it.
Manny, on the other hand, was in his element. A near lifetime of leading teams in non-permissive third world hell holes, always fighting with limited resources and time, combined with his formal US Military Academy training and time in the Ranger Battalion, had prepared him for this challenge probably better than any of the other leaders in the group. It was almost as if God had lead him on a career then put him in this place, at this moment, to serve a specific purpose. The men he had selected for Bravo team, three SWAT guys and two out of state cops, were all US Army veterans with combat deployments. Two of them were fellow Ranger Qualified guys, though neither had served in the Regiment. Manny was confident Bravo team could handle just about anything their leadership or the apocalypse could throw at them.
After leaving the office Manny gathered his guys together and briefed them on their next mission. He assigned tasks to the guys with the stated intention of launching in 20 minutes. The team bomb-burst and got to work. Manny grabbed Jerry, one of the SWAT guys, and went to the vault, where he signed out an M240 and 1000 rounds of linked ammo. He and Jerry took the weapon and ammo to the M113, where another team member already had the back ramp open and the engine warming up. After they mounted and loaded the 240, Manny directed the driver to close the ramp and drive over to the 300-yard range. As they moved Manny got on the radio and called David, telling him they were about to test-fire the 240. David cleared them to go hot.
By the time the M113 rolled back off the 300-yard range, the other three team members had pulled their assigned soft skinned HMMWVs into line near the gate and were standing by for a final check. With the M113 in place between the two HMMWVs, Manny lined everyone up and did his pre-combat inspection; making sure everyone had all their armor, mags, radios and so forth.
In their minds, it didn’t matter that they had just done the same thing an hour ago before they left on the earlier escort mission; they all understood winning was in the details. After Manny checked everyone they lined up facing the range berm to the north and made their weapons ready. They loaded up with two assaulters in each vehicle and moved out. After exiting the water treatment facility onto Rockhill Avenue, the team turned left, taking the back way into town on county roads on their way to the first of the recovery objectives.
While the M113 had road treads on the tracks, it still moved at what seemed like a snail’s pace, forcing the lead and trail HMMWVs to moderate their speed to match. The vehicles kept about 25 yards of separation, and all eyes were alert to the outside world. The guys alternated their scans between the far horizon, about 100 yards out, and 25 yards away; constantly shifting their focus in an effort to maintain awareness and hopefully see problems long before they got to them.
The first recovery involved picking up team member Phil’s wife Linda, at Tractor Supply, where she worked. When the convoy pulled up in front, they found her waiting in her now useless car. After embracing Phil, she immediately started with the questions about what was going on. Phil told her that now wasn’t the time, and she needed to just get in the M113.
As he was helping her load a few things from her car into the back of the lead HMWWV, Manny turned around from where he was pulling security and asked her, “Do you guys sell hand crank fuel pumps?” She looked confused and Manny repeated the question. She finally said, “Yeah I think I’ve seen them in the farm equipment section. Do you need one?” Manny replied, “No, I need all of them. We will need them to get fuel from gas station tanks.” Phil’s wife shrugged and said, “Well we can’t take money, nothing works.” “Is the manager still here?” Manny asked her. She pointed to a man standing with several employees near the front door staring at the heavily armed men and said, “That’s him. Kn
ock yourself out.” She then turned and walked up the ramp into the M113.
Manny approached the manager and introduced himself. The manager said, “Oh thank God! See Mary,” he turned to one of the women standing with him, “I told you the military would come to help us.” Manny cleared his throat and said, “Sir, I’m sorry but we aren’t the military, and we aren’t in a position to help much right now. I actually have a request for you.” The manager looked confused and said, “Well you have guns and a tank,” the manager said, gesturing at the M113 armored personnel carrier, “So you’re someone official. You’re supposed to help us in a disaster. I demand you help us.”
“Actually Sir,” Manny said, getting annoyed, “I recommend you walk home and shelter in place for now. We have another mission we have been assigned.” The manager got red faced now, “Oh, I see how it is! You have running trucks so you spend your resources going around collecting your families? Using public assets to take care of your own. I see what’s going on here; I know Linda is married to that cop.”
Manny was already tuning out the manager, but something he said gave him an idea. He said, “Sir, where do you and these ladies live?” The manager sensed he had gotten the upper hand and said, “I live over by the college (Mount Union, a private university in Alliance) and both of these ladies live right around the corner from here.” Manny said, “Sir, I came over to talk to you to tell you I needed to buy some equipment from inside. If you can help me out I can bend the rules and take you guys home.” The manager thought about it for a few seconds and said, “Deal!”