by Jordan Ervin
“I don’t know,” Adam began. “But—”
“And I may be French and Lev over there may be Israeli, but we too want the same thing.”
“Which is what?”
“To live in a world where powerful men can’t simply take what they want because no one ever dared to slap their hand.”
“But what happened, Gene?” Adam asked, turning to Gene. “I mean, how did you manage to organize such a resistance without anyone knowing?”
“I wouldn’t quite say I managed much more than a loss of a hell of a lot of good men,” Gene grumbled. “After we parted ways in Montana, I spent my time gathering every weapon and every soldier I could muster without letting too many in on our secret. We managed to pretty much stay incognito till the end. I had friends overseas like these guys willing to drop what they were doing and come to our aide, as we had done for them so many times before. On top of that, I had a multitude of retired and royally pissed off vets ready to hang Lukas and every other crooked politician in DC by their own entrails. I even had the state militias that the Feds had been tryin’ to suppress for years ride with me. By the time Hewitt up and quit on us, I figured the time had come for America’s last guardians to deploy.”
“How did you know Lukas was going to take over Washington?”
“It’s what I would have done had I been a treasonous maggot who played the world for a fool,” Gene replied dryly. “When I heard about his plan to step down during the State of the Union address, I knew that was when we needed to be there. And no offense, but you’re one dumb son of a bitch, thinking he’d actually go through with that. But I spread the word, managed to stay hidden as we quietly marched toward DC, and signaled our men to move in once Lukas started blabbering.”
“What happened?” Adam asked.
“We had three main advances,” Gene replied. “The plan had been to begin by moving in with small strike teams. Someone was jamming all communications in DC and we managed to locate the source of the jammer at Reagan International. Marc and Lev infiltrated the airport with their team of commandos to disable the Graystone device and open up comms as we signaled the attack by activating the old tornado sirens. Alpha team had fifty men infiltrate the Capitol Building to secure Lukas while Bond and his men moved in to extract as many politicians as possible—mainly you. As that was going on, we were supposed to set up an aerial blockade with nearly sixty fighters and half as many fast moving helos. They were to keep out any drones that the Patriarchs launched while our amphibious tanks moved off the Potomac and set up a base of operations on the National Mall. Lev helped us outfit the tanks and infantry with new anti-drone Pulsar weapons, courtesy of our allies over in Israel.”
“They’re designed to disable airborne drones via a concentrated electromagnetic shock,” Lev said, looking up from his tablet. “Though I’m more than sure they’d disable ground troops as well. It’s a lot like wielding lightning.”
“I think I saw something similar on William’s gun,” Adam said.
“The smaller the shotty packs disrupt the targeting systems,” Lev replied. “But the bigger guns can bring down an entire fleet of drones with one well-placed shot.”
“We’ve got one on top of the stealth Humvee outside,” Gene replied. “The Humvee is not as fancy as the newer JLTVs, but it’s retrofitted to drive under the radar and upgraded to the max. If we’re smart, we’ll stay out of sight—never needing to use the Pulsar, save maybe to discourage a fight.”
“So you’re telling me you had this grand plan with enough equipment and technology to secure DC,” Adam said. “You’re still not telling me what happened?”
“I messed up,” Gene replied. “I thought we’d be battling small airborne drones, maybe some tanks and whatever soldiers the Patriarchs could muster. I didn’t think we’d be fighting hundreds of Yellow Jackets and a fleet of unmanned fighter jets with our Air Force out of commission.”
“Yellow Jackets?” Adam said. “I remember William shouting about a Yellow Jacket after this monstrous drone ripped into us.”
Gene nodded. “They call the big ones Yellow Jackets. It’s ‘cause of the reverberating sound the blades make and the sting the weapons unleash. They’re slow moving, but they’ve got mini-guns, rocket launchers, and an automatic targeting system that makes them perfect for hunting down men.”
“But William’s men managed to take one out,” Adam said.
“That was one of hundreds,” Gene said. “Maybe thousands. And William’s men were some of the few men equipped with portable Pulsars and incendiary rounds. But it wasn’t just Yellow Jackets we were fighting. Hell, they had dozens of old MIG fighter jets that had been retrofitted to fly remotely. Regardless, the main advance launched an hour before the speech near Widewater State Park and managed to stay hidden until they beached again near the Roosevelt Memorial. My hope was that the three advances would have attacked simultaneously, squeezing Lukas and whoever was there with him faster than they could react. We didn’t think they’d be the ones with a jump on us. In all my zeal, I broke the cardinal rule of warfare and underestimated my enemy.” Gene leaned forward, his angry eyes fixing on Adam’s. “It won’t happen again.”
“No one could have known what they had waiting for us,” Marc said. “Surprise and deception; it has always been the way of battle. It was not your fault any more than it is your fault that this whole war began in the first place.”
Gene paused, staring back at Lev as he quietly shook his head. “If only you knew the truth behind that statement. But someone’s got to take the blame. Months of raising the Sons of Liberty, years of preparing myself, and now….” Whatever else he had been ready to say trailed off, ending in a harsh curse under his breath. Adam’s eyes passed over Marc and Lev before settling back on Gene. “What went wrong?” Gene began again, laughing weakly under his breath. “Hell, I can’t think of a single thing that went right.”
“You got Tanker and me out,” Adam replied. “And from the little I saw, you might have brought the Capitol Building down on Lukas’ head.”
“I reckon William did his job getting you out, but that was him and his men,” Gene said. “We wouldn’t be hiding in a basement if I’d had ten thousand replicas of William, Marc, and Lev.” Gene paused, looked up as a cold misty cloud escaped his mouth. “All my fighter jets were moved to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base over the past four weeks. The helos were scattered about military bases in Virginia and Maryland, waiting for the word that the jets were over DC and the time had come for them to move in.”
“You still haven’t said how you managed to stay hidden for weeks.”
“The entire country was falling apart,” Gene replied. “Cities were falling to hordes of drug hungry addicts and bases were seceding. If the panic that began a few months ago helped us in any way, it made it easy for our resistance to stay hidden in the madness. A few men here, a couple armored vehicles there—we made sure it all trickled in little by little. Regardless, when my men moved in twenty minutes before the main advance arrived and infiltrated Reagan International, we quickly discovered someone else had beat us there. Lev’s intel told us that we’d be dealing with lightly armed civilian guards, but Russian mercenaries had secured the Graystone device before us. We don’t know how the Patriarchs got the jump on us, but an army of retrofitted Soviet planes intercepted our fighters just after they got airborne. Info was scarce and we still don’t know how many survived, but I only counted five A-Tens over DC. Five…out of sixty.” Gene shook his head in disgust and anger before continuing. “Lev’s been trying to break through the communications blockade to figure out who else survived, but all he’s managed to find out is that those Yellow Jackets chased my men to exhaustion and has been putting them down like rabid dogs.”
Silence filled the room as Gene lowered his head, a hot rage filling his eyes—combating the pain and sorrow that concealed his face. Eventually, Marc spoke.
“You should know that while everyone else was fleeing the battl
e, Gene sent a Blackhawk after you and William, dragging me and Lev with him in the Humvee to save you. You owe your life to that man.”
“He owes me nothing,” Gene spat back. “No one owes me anything.”
Silence dominated the room and Adam hesitated, knowing what question he needed to ask next but unable to mutter the words. Finally, he took a deep breath and forced the question from his lung.
“Lukas said Fort Bragg had been destroyed,” Adam began slowly. “My family….” His throat locked up and he wasn’t sure he could continue. He remembered what the president had said and knew Fort Bragg had supposedly been hit, but the attack on the fighters from Seymour Johnson gave Adam a hope that maybe Fort Bragg had been spared or given the time to mobilize a defense. It was a selfish hope, but it was all he had left. “Sarah and the kids were there. So was Elizabeth, my parents, and Eric.” Gene gazed back at Adam, sadness breaking through the coldness on his face. Adam barely breathed his final words. “Gene, I need to know.”
Gene paused before looking over to Lev and nodding his head. Lev slowly lowered his eyes, swiping around the see-through tablet.
“I found this on one of the Russians at Reagan,” Lev said. “I don’t know if it belonged to Lukas’ men or the Patriarchs, but what I do know is it’s the only thing allowing me to access their heavily encrypted data. They had been running dozens of Graystone devices up and down the east coast until about an hour ago. I won’t dare transmit anything; I’m sure they’d be triangulating our position and—”
“Please,” Adam interjected. “I just need to know where they are.”
Lev nodded and tapped the device—the screen lighting up with a dim glow that flickered where the cracks crossed. He handed the tablet over without a word.
Adam took the tablet in hand and stared at the image, the screen’s glow illuminating the tears Adam failed to hold back. It had been six hours since the attack, but he could clearly see the fires that still burned brightly at the base. He scrolled around the live video feed and found the barracks his family had been housed in—or rather, the crater where the building had once stood. A smoky fire billowed from the ruins next to the blackened field his children had played on not twenty-four hours ago.
The tears beading in his eyes grew, warping his vision as he stared blankly at the screen. He zoomed out and could see that the entire base had been blanketed by an aerial attack. Where fire and smoke didn’t cloud the ground, deep depressions peppered begrimed rubble. Tanks and drones continued to move about the base, undoubtedly searching for those who might have survived.
In what Adam had thought to be his last moments, he had accepted Lukas’ words and believed his family had died as he fled DC. Looking at the smoldering tomb that held his wife, parents, and children only renewed that sinking despair. He handed the tablet back to Lev with a silent nod. He wanted to weep and howl and almost felt guilty that he didn’t. But instead of lamenting, he wiped away the few tears that had broken free as he fed a murderous wrath inside of him that demanded revenge.
Images of his wife with her glowing blonde hair and affectionate smile passed through his mind, as did the daydreams of hacking the life out of those who were responsible for her death. He reminisced about the joyful memories he had made with her, even that past year when things had begun to spiral out of control. He thought about his kids—Judah running around the meadow before begging Adam to stay— though even those pictures were interspersed with fantasies of Adam lining up America’s turncoats on a similar bloody field, executing them one by one. He then thought about Grace and Eva, their ever positive and oblivious attitudes even as the world crumbled around them.
Would they have wept had they known what their daddy longs to do to their killers?
Adam didn’t know how long he had sat there quietly, but by the time he looked up Lev and Marc were talking quietly to each other as Marc tended to William. Gene stared back at Adam wordlessly, his face again unreadable.
“The feel of the shovel gets familiar in everyone’s hands during times of war,” Gene said quietly, shifting his gaze to the side, staring blankly into the darkness. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a father burying his son or a wife burying her husband; there’s no avoiding it. We like to think the chaos won’t ever find a home where we lay our heads, but it always does with a painful and noisy rattle. Don’t be sorry if you need to cry. I reckon even I might shed tears before we’re through.”
Adam wiped away the last solitary tear, fighting to hold back the deluge of sorrow.
“You’re the soldier, Gene,” Adam said. “I’m just a man. You know how to handle this. I can’t survive without them.”
“You can always choose to survive, Adam. Losing friends, losing family—no one gets used to it. I didn’t waste good men getting you out of the Capitol Building. I know you’re hurting and I’m hurting too. Eric…he was like a son to me—more than you know. But I got you out of DC because I knew I’d need you for whatever comes next.”
“Next?” Adam asked dryly. “And what does come next, Gene?”
“We might have lost today, but this war is far from over. I’m going to make damn sure it ain’t finished yet. I don’t have all the answers, but Lukas is looking for us and looking to make the world his little snow globe full of ashes and blood. There’s no chance in hell I’m letting him get away with it so long as I draw breath.”
“So what? We go back to DC—the few of us?” Adam asked. “We march with our one Humvee, an old truck, a few guns, and a handful of men to bring justice the world’s most powerful man?”
“When we go back to DC—and we will go back to DC—we’re going back with an army. For now, we head west and get to Texas before the Imperium gets to us. Damn Texas for leaving when we needed it most, but I’m not going to lie; they’re our only hope now. Vengeance is all that matters and if they can help us, so be it. If we can’t save those we love, we can be damn sure we take out Lukas before this is done. And this time, I don’t care what the pacifist inside you says. There is no diplomatic solution. Whatever tomorrow brings, whoever we need to ally ourselves with, we do it. We’re not finished until he’s dead.”
Silence reigned. Adam stared at Gene as he looked inwardly at himself. His emotions shifted from rage to sorrow to hopelessness faster than he could blink away his grief. He wanted to embrace the vengeful despair inside of him. The fury within was oddly familiar—much like that sickening blackness that he had felt inside him earlier in his nightmare. But that had been a dream and this was reality. If he couldn’t rely on his family to help him through the madness, he would rely on the wrath that festered in his heart to give him the motivation to endure the days that followed.
Gene eventually rose, walking over to speak with Lev. As Adam lay down to fall back asleep, his anger continued to fester within—growing into icy-hot hatred that heated his ears. Even though he was beat up and exhausted, the glow from his rage kept him from immediately falling back asleep. Part of him wanted to survive, find refuge, and continue to uncover more about the God he had begun to rediscover, to seek some sort of healing. The other part of him—the part that churned like a storming ocean of fire—wanted to survive and kill everyone who stood between him and his vengeance.
Adam hoped Sarah had died holding his children. He hoped his parents had left this world hand in hand. He hoped that wherever his family was, they wouldn’t be looking down on him as he did what he had to do. Then, as his hatred nearly filled his heart to the breaking point, a soothing rush of tranquility swept over him, his mind drifting to the last words he had spoken to his son.
No matter what happens, we are both children of a powerful and loving God. Never let the failures of men be the reason you fail to remember the real Lion of Judah.
He could almost hear his wife’s words, begging him not to go down the path of retaliation. As Adam struggled against the anger inside, he began to see the truth about the real battle that was to come. He had begun to rediscover God before his family di
ed. Now, after their violent deaths, he had also found a thirst for vengeance.
What is the balance? Adam wondered. Where is the line between justice and revenge?
As he sought that answer within himself, the only thing he knew for certain was that the coming war would be so much more than a struggle for survival and land.
It would be a battle for his very soul.
Chapter Two
Tears of Fire
Eric Corsa slowed as he approached the sprawling mall at the heart of Fayetteville—a city illuminated by the midnight fires that blazed nearby at Fort Bragg. Sweat had begun to line his brow, intermixing with the winter air and chilling his forehead with a piercing headache. His muscles pleaded with him to stop and rest for a moment. Nevertheless, he focused on his years of training, pushing the pain and weariness into a vast cavern of forced indifference.
Unwilling to holster the pistol that he held with his right hand, he quickly wiped the sweat away with his left, careful not to touch the chemical burn that had cauterized the deep gash on his arm. He knew he would carry that scar for life—a small price to pay for another day.
The attack on the base a few hours earlier had been so sudden and deliberate that he had almost failed to get himself and the others to safety. Sarah had invited him to join her and her family in the large media room back at the barracks to watch Lukas step down, but Eric had declined. He had remained alone in his own room, praying for the strength to overcome the hatred that boiled within. Eric’s fight with Lukas Chambers went back years, though very few knew the truth about his life-long mission. A part of Eric wanted nothing more than to watch Lukas die, but the other part—the part of him that had found hope for something more than revenge as a young soldier on the distant battlefield—wanted peace more than he wanted Lukas’ death. Watching Lukas step down would have been a big step toward final closure for what had been done twenty-seven years ago, and Eric wanted nothing more than to be alone when that fight ended. But all his hopes that night had winked out the moment the lights overhead darkened. Eric had known immediately that his struggle to bring justice to the man who had caused him so much pain was far from over.