Overrun: Project Hideaway

  Tuttle pulled out his own light and pointed it at the men. His beam added to Cranden’s and further lit the horror the men had endured within the room.

  The chains still clinked as they continued to gently sway.

  Tuttle moved closer. With his gloved hand, he tugged at several ripped pieces of material along the bloody arm of the man Cranden had just turned around. Matching several pieces together, an insignia became recognizable.

  "Officers," Cranden whispered peering closer into the light.

  "Look at this," Tuttle said pointing to a spot higher up the dead man’s arm.

  Cranden moved the light to where Tuttle indicated with his finger.

  "Facility commander stripes," Cranden breathed. "Jesus. The dome commander didn't even get out. I don't think as many escaped as some people seem to believe."

  "Let's just hope they had enough time to safeguard what they've been developing all these years," Tuttle said and switched off his light.

  "Jesus," Cranden said again and extinguished his own.

  Cranden hooked his assault weapon across his shoulder and brushed past Tuttle towards where Samuel waited outside the room.

  "The command center has got to be close," Tuttle heard him say as he walked past Samuel and disappeared around another corner in the dark.

  Tuttle followed him out.

  Behind him, he could still hear the chilling sound of the two dead bodies as they continued to gently swing.

  Chapter 20

  "When did we reestablish contact?" the President asked while following Baldwin from the elevator. Two bodyguards wearing plastic face shields, heavy body armor, and carrying full assault weaponry and gear trailed closely behind him.

  Ford and Baldwin walked briskly down the hallway to the underground command room. Ford’s bodyguards trotted at their heels. Their hands were clasped tightly across the assault rifles they held at their chests. And their gear clinked quietly with their every step.

  "First signal came in six hours ago when they first entered the facility," Baldwin said leading the group down the hall. "We've been monitoring their progress to the command center. We expect another contact soon."

  Baldwin took the group around a corner where two more bodyguards in assault gear stood on either side of the brightly lit passage. These men were noticeably bigger. And their weapons were nearly twice the size and caliber of the other two guards.

  Neither man moved or reacted to the sudden appearance of the President and his small entourage. They were positioned outside a mammoth steel door where a series of switches and controls blinked from a control panel to the right of its frame.

  The President, Baldwin, and the first two guards stopped just outside the door. When the clatter of their running feet subsided from the hallway, a dull hum could be heard coming from the control panel.

  They stood outside the doorway while one of the sentries swiped an access card across the panel. Ford’s guards pressed up closely behind him.

  After swiping his control card, the sentry stepped back while the giant door lifted gently up.

  Baldwin bent his head and stepped quickly beneath before the door had withdrawn completely back into the ceiling. The sentry tucked the access card back into his gear and retreated back to his post making way for the President and his guard detail to walk past.

  Inside the command center, there were more than fifty empty chairs and dozens of blinking command terminals throughout the room. A handful of men and two women hurried quietly about the command area working hard to monitor them all.

  Some moved quickly. Others moved unhurriedly like they were plodding through a dream. An officer approached with sweat dripping from his forehead. He nodded respectfully at the President as he brushed hurriedly past. The man had already left before Ford could return the gesture.

  "Troops have been detected about fifty miles from the safety zone barrier," Baldwin said moving to the front of the room.

  “From Science Dome 15?” Ford asked quickly.

  “No,” Baldwin replied as quickly back. “From here. Troops have been sighted within fifty miles of the Administration Dome facility. They are getting close.”

  The President didn’t answer. He followed silently after Baldwin. They both stepped awkwardly through the multitude of chairs spread haphazardly across the room.

  "They are twenty miles from the maximum range of the Death Wall.”

  Ford removed his suit jacket and threw it over the back of an unused workstation console.

  The leather holsters containing the two brilliantly polished high-caliber Sunszk hand weapons hung tightly across his white sweat-soaked shirt. The gleaming metal tips of their extra rounds protruded noticeably from his large leather belt.

  A few workers in the room stole quick looks at the sight. Most, however, did not react or take notice. It wasn’t the first time the President had openly carried fire arms while in office. He had realized long ago the responsibility of keeping himself alive did not begin and end with his personal entourage of guards. It ultimately began with himself.

  Especially in the world in which they now lived.

  The head of the guard division had never balked when Ford first approached him with the desire to be trained in light and hand weaponry. The guards on his detail themselves had expressed their agreement and complete support of this idea many times over.

  Despite the multitudes of extra personnel that had been assigned to his protection detail, he carried a weapon for years following the first assassination attempt. Either concealed or sometimes just outright. It was only in the most recent of years he had finally stopped.

  It was almost twenty-five years to the day since his family was lost.

  He began heavy weapons training the following morning. The day after he became a widower and learned he would live the rest of his life without his children.

  Baldwin he arranged for top military munitions experts and guerrilla class snipers to set up a camp two floors beneath the Administration Dome. Ford spent many long hours with these men still all the while attending to the required duties of being President. He spent even more time in the makeshift weapons camp during the trial of the men that had caused all of this to be.

  He became adept in small arms, long-range, and assault weaponry. He even went so far as to having made arrangements to secretly take the place of a member of the Judicial Firing Squad should they have been assigned the duty of the executions.

  It was to his disappointment when the verdict was read. The punishment of death was handed down, but the JFS was not given the execution assignment.

  It was decided by the Judiciary Committee that their terminations would be carried out with radiation injections. Radiation injections administered during a live holovid broadcast. It was thought that publicizing the horrific spectacle of a radiation injection execution would hopefully deter any such future attempts on the President’s life.

  The trial and sentence were all carried out within the span of two weeks.

  Ford stood between them when the poison was slowly leaked into their bodies. He remembered how much he relished in their terror. And he remembered the fear he felt at how much pleasure and satisfaction it brought.

  For many years past, he struggled with the tragedy and death that had befallen his family. He also suffered silently through the nearly debilitating paranoia he had of future assassination attempts. He seethed with hatred at what had already happened and what still could come.

  For more than a year, his heart felt like it would rip open a hole and fall right out of his chest. At the end of each year, he was always surprised that it was not his last.

  And then came the second attempt. It was a day Ford also recalled vividly.

  He was walking from his own private bathroom when he noticed a muzzle tip pointing at him from just outside his bedroom door. He stopped just before crossing the weapons path. The assassin had not yet seen him and still waited for him to pass.

  Ford pressed up agains
t the doorway and stuck his own weapon, a small one he always carried with him, into the doorway crack. He fired three shots straight into the man’s chest.

  The would-be assassin had dropped over on his back on the other side of the doorway and laid there bleeding while Ford walked into the room. Ford leaned over the dying man and stared without mercy or compassion at the seeping hole in his chest.

  He kneeled down and watched him try to stop the rush of blood from his wound with a shaking hand. He stayed there and waited until life had completely seeped from his body and ran out onto the floor.

  It was then he realized he wasn’t ready to join his family. There was too much hate in his soul to die before he could find some sort of release. Some way to end his bitter frustration and find justice for the lost lives of his family.

  His guards still followed closely behind as they made their way to the front of the command center where Baldwin approached a woman standing at its center.

  She had long brown hair, and her uniform was neatly pressed in sharp comparison to the disheveled look of the rest of the command center staff. She spoke briefly with Baldwin and walked to the rear of chamber. She moved gracefully through the room as if completely removed from the chaos erupting around her.

  After speaking with a few of the communications personnel at the rear of the room, she returned and sat at one of the main command stations. Baldwin leaned over her shoulder and pointed at one of the four empty holovids to her left. Blue static crackled across all of the holovid screens.

  The President stepped behind Baldwin. With his hands on his hips, he turned his body and looked around the command center. Located deep beneath the Administration Dome, it was virtually empty.

  The Administration Dome command center was one of the main operations and communications facilities of the entire dome military command. There should have been more than 200 people bustling around the room manning the equipment.

  Ford only counted fifteen.

  Noticing his stare, Baldwin turned around and lowered his voice so that only the President could hear.

  "We've had to send as many people as we can out to combat. As far as staffing, this is the best we can do."

  The President nodded in acknowledgement. A bead of sweat dropped from his brow.

  The two guards stepped away from Ford and took positions against the walls on either side of the command center. Their assault rifles rested in their arms ready to fire.

  "Mr. President, we’ve lost nearly 425 domes," Baldwin said taking a seat next to the woman with brown hair.

  His arms swept across the consoles next to hers making more of the holovid screens glow to life.

  "Along with those, about eighty-five percent of our scientific facilities have also been lost. We’ve confirmed a ninety-two percent personnel loss. Eighty-three percent of our military force has also been eliminated.

  “More than ninety percent of the Vulture Squad is dead,” Baldwin said softly and more slowly while turning to the President. A lot of them died in their own attacks. The J.G.U. are going where they wish and neutralizing everything in their path. We haven’t been able to do anything to stop them."

  The room around Ford became suddenly eerily quiet.

  Only faint hums from equipment consoles and the hiss of static across unused holovid screens broke the silence. The small number of people working the command center moved steadily about the room. A faint quiet horror started to take hold of the President’s head.

  He reached absently at the holster hanging under his left arm and shifted it further towards his back.

  "The times we have come across here, Mr. President, are extremely grim. I don’t think I even know anymore what it is we should exactly do."

  Ford looked around the room eyeing up the empty stations.

  "Everyone capable has been called to outside battle,” Baldwin explained following his gaze. "Communications monitoring. Troop tracers. Most command systems, even here at the Administration Dome, are being operated by extremely diminished crews."

  The President let his breath out slowly.

  "Sir," Baldwin said softly. "It’s come down to it. We're running out of men. Many to combat. Many others to desertion. Our government is crippling, sir. We’re starting to pay for what we’ve wrought."

  These last words brought complete silence to the room. Most everyone within earshot stopped working at their consoles and turned to stare at Baldwin and Ford. The brown-haired woman next to Baldwin dropped her hands from the control table in front of her and folded them in her lap.

  Both Ford and Baldwin stood at the center of the room without speaking for a few minutes deep in thought. Neither seemed to notice the scared looks from the command center crew around them or the intense silence. Ford struggled to think. Trying to comprehend that he was the first president in United States history to preside over the country as it slowly fell to foreign defeat.

  The invasion upon U.S. soil was almost nearly complete. The country was quickly running out of time. He had to act now.

  Ford turned his head and looked again at the brown-haired woman near him. He tried to lose himself in her movement and grace. Her face glowed with a spiritual warmth, and her warm gaze lashed out against the pressing gloom.

  "What about the Hideaway Project?" Ford asked.

  "So far…,” Baldwin answered. “…so far, we just don't know."

  "If we have it and have access, will it be enough to bargain with the J.G.U? At least get them to talk about a cease fire or terms of an amicable truce?"

  "It might be Mr. President,” Baldwin answered slowly. The brown-haired woman next to him had started working at her station again. “It's why they're here. To acquire the beam cannon technology. It’s why they're ripping through the science domes. That’s the information they’re seeking. We can only pray that they haven’t been able to access it yet.”

  “It’s really the only chance we've got," the President whispered though everyone was still able to hear him throughout the room.

  "It is, Mr. President," Baldwin answered him. “I totally agree.”

  Ford rested his hands on his hips and felt the muscles settle and sag across his face.

  Light glinted off his eyes like shards of broken glass, and his jaw set in a cold solid line.

  Everyone and everything within the command room ceased to move. He could feel the eyes of everyone pushing hard at his back.

  He let his breath out in a loud exhale and stood there for a brief while. No one in the chamber around him dared to move. Silence continued to suffocate the air.

  "Mr. President," the voice of the brown-haired woman brought him back away from the hopelessness of his own thoughts. He looked down over her shoulder at her hands gliding gently over the console controls. The static filling the holovid screens in front of her began to lessen, and a hazy image slowly came into view.

  "Mr. President, we have a signal,” the woman said again. “We have a signal and images starting to come in from the overrun Science Dome 15 site."

  She maneuvered her chair to the side of her command terminal to allow the President room to sit down next to her.

  A face appeared across the pale blueness of one of the holovid screens. Baldwin tapped at the controls in front of him to pull up the signal on his own monitor.

  "Security clearance requested," the voice of the man appearing across their holovid came suddenly through.

  The image faded in and out making his voice slurred and slightly garbled. "Authenticity verification from message recipients requested. Please comply."

  "Give him the clearance code," Ford said to Baldwin through the side of his mouth without taking his eyes from the holovid. His order was unnecessary as Baldwin was already pounding furiously into the keypad near his screen.

  "This is General Maxwell Tuttle, Quadrant Commander," the voice said while the image settled into clearer view.

  Tuttle’s face was splattered with blood and covered with grime and soot. His eyes were
dark and lit eerily by small fires burning around him within the confines of the war-shredded room. "Reporting reconnaissance efforts from within the Science Dome 15 command facility."

  Two figures lurked about the shadows behind him. Shattered bodies were strewn amongst the rubble all around them.

  One of the figures moved about the body of one of the command staff slouched over an equipment console. Pulling the man’s body gently by the shoulder, he lowered it delicately behind him onto the floor.

  Dust and smoke hung heavily through the air causing Tuttle to cough harshly while he spoke.

  Behind him the figure stared across the ground and stepped carefully across the body he had just pulled away from the console.

  “Go ahead, General," Ford said quietly.

  Tuttle’s eyes flashed a look of recognition at the sound of his voice.

  "Mr. President," Tuttle wiped at blood running from a small cut across his left eye. "Mr. President, we've just entered the command area of Science Dome 15. As you can see there’s not much left."

  "Have you been able to access the central network?" Baldwin asked from his own holovid unit.

  "We're working on that now, sir," Tuttle replied.

  Over his left side, a second figure appeared from behind a giant portion of the collapsed ceiling lying in the center of the room. The mounds of twisted metal and obliterated concrete stood like a small island in the center of the destroyed command center.

  The second figure carried two bodies, one across each shoulder. Hauling them behind where Tuttle was making the holovid transmission, he set them delicately down on the opposite side of the outermost doorway.

  Reentering the command center, the second darkened figure became quickly lost again behind the mountain of wreckage.

  "There are a couple of things of which we can be certain, Mr. President," one of the them spoke over Tuttle's shoulder from the dark. He walked forward to stand next to Tuttle in front of the small holovid.