But despite their work to track Tamare’s movements and gauge the level of defenses they would face getting into the mountain, Carson was uneasy at their lack of intel. They didn’t anticipate any enemy air power to stand against the Pave Hawk, but there might be anti-air defenses. They knew that Tamare had fled Longmont desperate and angry and had holed up in the mountain, but they didn’t know how many troops were in or near them mountain at any given time, nor the inner workings of its defenses. Brunson could only give them a basic idea of the layout and layers of secure gates.
Cheyenne Mountain loomed west, glowering under the gray sky. It was a rugged thing, gnarled with rock outcroppings and scattered with trees. Snow still clung and draped on the higher parts. Carson could see the antennae farm on the middle peak, slim white spears against the gloom. Unremarkable in its outside appearance, it was yet unique among the world’s mountains. During the 50’s and 60’s, the Cold War at its coldest, NORAD had burrowed and blasted their way into the granite, hollowing out a bomb-proof nerve center supposedly immune to even a direct nuclear hit. Over the years following, NORAD’s reliance on the facility had waxed and waned according to prevailing security concerns, but it was always there, an ace in the hole, one of the most impregnable locations on the planet.
So of course, Carson mused, it would be the one place he must infiltrate.
They’d sent their scouts and advance teams ahead by a full week in small groups and then lifted off in the chopper the night before. They flew south in the chopper, Carson and his crew, including Scala, plus Mason and his ten hardiest commandos. They swung west over the mountains to avoid any of Tamare’s scouts, and bypassed Colorado Springs entirely. Now they lay in the sagebrush staring at the mountain, the last nut that needed cracking, but one made from solid granite.
It was a crazy plan; Carson could see that. He was pretty sure they could all see that. But he knew that the craziness of a plan had made little difference to desperate people in any age, and it made little now. It was the best they could do, if they wanted to do the right thing, and Carson felt that this was the right thing. Mason had agreed. Dana had supported Carson, and Khalil had just shrugged. Brunson… Brunson hadn’t said anything, but Carson sensed that he would have no problem going against his former commander. Not armed with the knowledge of who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of this family. The little team had a goal beyond mere survival, and it kept them going.
Once the message had been spread, they would try to guide the fallout in the most positive direction they could, but it would be messy no matter how successful they were. At least, this way, if they fell, they fell forward. Considering the options that day in Mason’s headquarters, Carson had finally understood that America deserved the truth even if it gutted itself afterwards.
No nation lasts forever, not one. America had had a pretty good run. Short lifespan, maybe, but we knew how to party. We filled our years with noise and energy. No silent suffering into the grave for us, that’s for sure.
And maybe that wasn’t such a bad epitaph, once he considered it. America had enjoyed, for almost its entire existence, a quality of life that no other nation in human history had rivaled. The entertainment industry alone was responsible for multiple billions of dollars, and what other human civilization had been so successful, so flush with excess capital, that they could spend what the U.S. had spent on entertainment alone? Even the poorest in America had cars, TV’s, access to things that most people for most of history could only dream of. It was a good run.
But there were other thoughts in his mind, too. The wind hissed through the sage as Carson brooded. His country had developed a kind of liberty that was so free, so precious, that by its very nature was vulnerable to abuse. They all knew it, all the old ones. Socrates, Plato, all of them. They didn’t trust liberal democracies. Short-lived, susceptible to demagoguery, too easily manipulated. We had something precious, and we lost it, Carson mused. Didn’t even know we were losing it, until it was too late. You have to take care of freedom. Can’t be afraid of it, like Fromm said, like MacLeish said. Can’t be too scared or too bold. Like a plant, you had to water it and weed it and keep it safe from frosts.
And we lost it, somehow. We let the wrong ideas do the talking. We liked the easy short-term too much, and couldn’t commit to the difficult long-term. We even stopped breeding, toward the end there, didn’t we? Our birth rate went below replacement level. America was worth exploiting, but it wasn’t worth leaving for anyone else, anyone who came after. Maybe evolution just shook its head and let us clear ourselves off the map. Mother Nature doesn’t think much of life that isn’t willing to replicate.
His reverie was broken by the arrival of a scout, and he shook himself. You think too much, Carson.
The scout was a short Native American man who Carson had noticed for his uncanny ability to move quietly and quickly over difficult terrain. He was attached to the partisan band operating out of Pueblo that was headed up by Mason’s brother, a charismatic man named Carl Walsh. The scout’s name was Bosin, and he had a lot of cred with the other veteran fighters.
Bosin slithered through the sage up to Mason, ignoring Carson completely. “Boss Walsh, good news and bad news. Your brother spotted a couple of Humvees coming to the mountain from the southwest. He recommends we circle around to the western side, keep out of sight. All except for the scouts.”
Mason frowned. “Is that the good news or bad?”
“That was the bad news. The good news is that we think Commissioner Masters is in one of the Hummers. And he’s not alone, so probably another VIP or two are with him. Looks like we may get a chance to pin some pretty little butterflies in there when we strike.”
Mason nodded his approval and spread the word.
They moved the rest of the afternoon, as quickly as they dared, but slowly enough that the scout up ahead could clear the way safely. Occasionally they paused while Bosin moved through a potentially dangerous area, or waited to cross a road. It was during one of these pauses that Carson turned to Dana to say something that had been weighing on him.
“Dana, I want you to know that Edith and I—”
“Who’s Edith?”
Carson was nonplussed. He pointed to Scala up ahead, marching in the line behind Mason.
“Oh,” Dana said, an unreadable but significant expression on her face. “I’ve only heard you call her Scala, or Agent Scala.”
Carson began to reply, stopped, and then considered dropping the whole subject.
“I just wanted to say that she and I—we don’t, I mean, we haven’t—”
“Just spit it out, Carson. You don’t have to pull punches with me anymore.” Dana’s bony chin jutted out petulantly, and her eyebrows were drawn down in a scowl. Carson briefly remembered the same disapproving look on her face when he’d told her he was leaving her alone at Hemingway Circle. But back then she had been softer and prettier and had hair. The Dana facing him now was tough, lean, and fierce like a tigress. Still beautiful, but her beauty was hard-edged and unforgiving.
“I just wanted to say that there’s nothing romantic between she and I. Nothing that should make you worry—”
“Why would I be worried?”
“I’m saying you shouldn’t be. Because I like you, and I don’t want anything to make you—”
“You ‘like’ me? What are you trying to say, Carson? I told you, you don’t have to go easy on me, I can take it.”
“Will you stop interrupting me?” Carson snapped, exasperated at how poorly he was doing. His question was loud enough to make Bosin, up at the front, turn his head and frown. “Dana, I’m trying to say that I want you, and I need you,” Carson continued in a near-whisper. “And I might even love you, after all this is over. If we both make it. It’s too crazy to sort out right now, but I want us to have a shot at being together afterward. If you’re at all interested in me like you used to be.”
They kept walking in silence and Carson wondered if he had jus
t sunk himself past all hope of a dignified, mutually beneficial relationship with the girl he’d come to admire so deeply during the time they had spent together.
“Thanks, Carson,” Dana said, finally. “I’m glad you finally got that out. It took forever.”
Carson had no idea what that meant, but a moment later Dana trotted up next to him so she could put his hand in hers, and held it that way while they walked through the trees.
The wind never let up, and the cold, gray afternoon segued into a colder, grayer evening. It wasn’t bad enough to force them to hunker down where they were and call it a day, but it was enough that outdoor travel of any kind was miserable. Finally, as the sun sank unseen behind the mountains, they arrived at what Bosin decided was a suitable place to rest and eat a meal.
The plan was to approach and prep for infiltration tonight, under cover of darkness. They were approximately four miles from the entrance to the NORAD facility in Cheyenne Mountain. Any closer, and Mason had argued that they might be spotted. Any farther out and they would have trouble coordinating the attack with Khalil and the others, and getting into position when the time came.
The scout had picked a thick juniper woodland, snug against a steep slope. The trees broke the full force of the wind, but it was still cold. Mason’s assault force, nearly thirty strong out of the hundred or so total fighters that had converged on the mountain, scattered into whatever nooks they could find and dug into packs for a cold, cheerless supper. Everyone knew that it would be the last meal for some of them.
Carson found a dead cottonwood which had blown over years before, its root system still clogged with dirt and rocks, forming a giant circular wall fronting a depression where the tree had stood. He crouched down in this, out of the wind, and wrapped himself in a poncho. Dinner was jerky and dried apple slices. He chewed and gnawed and watched Dana carefully preparing a small lean-to against a log that would block the wind and most of the dew, but didn’t make enough of a profile that anyone would notice until they tripped over it.
When everyone was bedding down for the night, she curled up in the hollow of the lean-to and then beckoned to Carson. He hesitated.
“Come on, Carson. I’m not getting fresh with you in front of the others. I’m just offering to share my spot. Unless you’d rather sit in the cold wind all night.”
It was getting quite cold, and neither of them had been tapped for guard duty. Carson crawled over and lay down next to her, covering himself with his poncho. Dana’s lean-to cut the wind nicely.
“Thanks. You make a fine shelter.”
“I got good at it, while I was out alone moving south.”
“Hmmm. Sorry about all that.”
“I’m not.”
He turned to look at her, but the dusk had gathered and he could barely make out the shape of Dana’s head lying in the lean-to. “Okay. Then I’m not sorry either. I’m really glad you made it to Colorado Springs. You’ve changed a lot, but I admire the new you in many ways.” He put out a hand and felt her arm. She turned toward him and he put his arm around her shoulders so she could lean into him and rest against his chest.
They lay like that for a while as Carson thought of many things to say. He was about to open his mouth again, but realized suddenly that her breathing was even and she had gone silent. She was either asleep or pretending to be, and he didn’t feel like making a fool of himself pouring his heart out to her under the circumstances. So he closed his own eyes and waited for sleep.
But he left his arm around her for the rest of the night.
Chapter 12: A Cleansing
After a few short hours of sleep, Bosin came around and gently woke everyone with a touch. They arose silently, still in utter darkness, and made ready. Two hours later, they were in position with loaded rifles in their hands. Carson recalled the feeling from his combat days in the Marines, a light and loose feeling in the legs and chest but a tightness in the gut. The knowledge that shortly they would be staring death in the face.
Cheyenne Mountain loomed above them in the night, an invisible, brooding presence. It was practically impervious to the type of EMP attack that had brought down the rest of the country, situated under two thousand feet of solid rock. And with its own internal power plant and water reservoirs, the installation remained fully functioning and self-contained as it had always been.
Despite its extreme security, however, Brunson explained that Tamare had walked into the Cheyenne Mountain complex without a shot fired. The men left inside when he arrived had been so desperate for leadership that when a general showed up, they opened the doors and welcomed him inside. After making contact with the Decemvirate he had returned to Peterson AFB and continued to use it as his main base of operations, but he had kept a small force in Cheyenne Mountain with orders to button up instantly if anyone but Tamare approached. With time, however, and with the region under increasingly solid Correctionist control, Tamare’s men had grown complacent. The guards at the prison camp were inadequate, which Carson had taken advantage of, and he hoped the same would be true of the guards here.
Cheyenne Mountain had been designed with two entrances and exits in case one was blocked or unusable. Carl Walsh’s Pueblo men were rallying near the other end of the long, bending tunnel, so no one would be getting out that way. But it was Carson’s team, at this end, that would make the first attempt to actually breach the gate and enter the complex.
The facility itself lay deep in the mountain, buried in granite, at the furthest bend of the U-tunnel, and it was a multi-leveled city in itself, with several interconnected multi-story buildings built on massive springs in order to take the concussion of a direct nuclear hit without breaking into pieces. The main problem getting in was the set of blast doors. The tunnel leading to the facility at the heart of the mountain boasted three of them, each made of solid steel three feet thick and weighing twenty-five tons, capable of closing in thirty seconds from an alert. Each, of course, had a manual override and could be operated by one or two soldiers in the event that power was lost. At the first sign of attack, Tamare would shut the doors and then literally nothing could open them until the Correctionists arrived and cleared away any resistance.
Speed, therefore, would be the absolutely essential key to any successful attack. At a time like this, and with Tamare on the run from his defeat up north, covert infiltration was not considered feasible in the near-term. Their only chance lay in a sudden, all-out attack during which a rapid-strike element would have to penetrate the mountain and secure all three blast doors before they could be closed.
They had only three things going for them. First, if in the initial seconds of the attack they were able to take out the exterior communications, then those deeper inside the mountain might not know an attack was taking place, unless they could hear the actual gunshots.
Second, there was a possibility that even if Tamare was alerted, he might choose to keep the blast doors open in order to send out his reserve forces. That might buy them a few additional minutes. If they were lucky enough to catch Tamare outside of the mountain, Mason believed he might keep the blast doors open long enough to bolt inside, possibly allowing a fast team to follow him in.
Third, and last, they had the helicopter, and of necessity it figured heavily in their plans. Mason’s people had guarded it carefully ever since the rescue in Longmont, and Khalil had checked on it every day with almost Zen-like devotion. Mason had scrounged some additional fuel from a small airport in Boulder, and Khalil had hand-picked three crewmen. They had mostly done dry rehearsals in the high school’s courtyard, but Khalil had managed to get his crew enough training that they had a fighting chance at success. The chopper was armed and dangerous, and would be an overwhelming shock to the enemy forces caught out on the face of the mountain.
Even with the helicopter, though, the odds were slim and everyone knew it. But the alternative was emphatic and irreversible. The Correctionists were only tightening their grip on the region, and soon they would
have enough manpower to flood central Colorado. Cheyenne Mountain would be stuffed with more soldiers and the Decemvirate would guard the prize carefully. It was now or never, and even a scrapped-together plan was better than no plan.
Carson was keenly aware that their chances weren’t very good, and that not all of Mason’s people were a hundred percent on board. Some had been quite vocal that they preferred to avoid direct engagements and wait it out, see what happened. But in the end they had agreed to follow him to Colorado Springs, and they were trusting him now as he led the way into battle.
Mason placed his people as well as he could in the darkness. His best marksmen were covering the parking lot and outbuildings just southeast of the facility’s southern entrance. Assault teams with automatic weapons were placed in closer, as close as they dared, to rush the strongpoint and guard stations as soon as the fighting began. Bosin, the most elite scout, was also the lead sniper. He was placed on a wooded rise just to the north of the road where he could cover the entire gate area with his scoped rifle.
Carson settled in behind a fallen log with his crew, close to Bosin on the wooded rise, and began to study the area in the pre-dawn darkness. Dana, despite his vehement protests, had insisted on coming in right behind him for the rush on the main gate. Scala was nearby too, but she would enter the facility behind him and independent of his movements. Brunson was further off to the right, next to Bosin. He cradled a 10-gauge Mossberg pump, and had been assigned as Carson’s tail along with Dana.
Khalil and his chopper crew were waiting somewhere a few miles out, hidden beyond sight and sound. By now, Carson realized, they should be en route, and it was their arrival which, if everything went according to plan, would trigger the assault. Mason and his men checked the positions of each group, including several teams of additional assaulters and backup shooters. They received word that Carl and the other fighters were in position facing the north portal to the mountain, and were awaiting the fireworks to begin their attack. The others waited, tensely calculating both Khalil’s chances and their own, as they studied the opposition.
Assault on Cheyenne Mountain (Denver Burning Book 4) Page 9