by Unknown
“Well Master Sergeant I can help you with a lot of that, why don’t you take a seat.” said Adam.
For the next couple of hours Adam explained everything Sergeant Delarosa could have hoped for and more. He went into how it all started the politics and how the Imam of a local mosque became the Sultan, he also covered the current borders and how they established them. He spoke at length about Sharia Law and how they were implementing it along with the morality police. He also covered that all males’ ages fifteen to fifty were conscripted into the Army with a few exceptions. They still needed men to run the cities and towns, Adam was a Civil Engineer and was considered too valuable to be sent off to the Army, it also added that most of the men who formed the nucleus of the resistance were the ones that were left behind and considered too valuable, he also added that woman were part of the resistance too.
The sad part that tore at Sergeant Delarosa and got him mad was how they were treating non-Muslim’s, enslaving them, literally, to use them as farm hands, laborers, anything and everything the Muslim’s detested doing themselves. They worked these people to death not caring whether they lived or died, they were lower than dogs all because they were non-believers. Adam went on to tell him that prior to that they would just kill anyone who refused to convert but found that they were killing the very people they needed to help them survive.
They also took the young children of the infidels that they held as slaves and they raised them as Muslim’s indoctrinating them young so they could carry on the ideals of the prophet. The stories that Adam told Sergeant Delarosa were horrendous by nature he found it hard to believe that people could do such things, but he was a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and knew they were true.
It was 0100 by the time Adam and Sergeant Delarosa had completed their discussion, Sergeant Delarosa thanked Adam for all of the information but said he needed to be on his way. Adam urged Delarosa to say the rest of the night stating that the police were out at night because of the curfews. Delarosa told him he didn’t need to worry he would be fine but thanked him for his hospitality. The two men shook hands and Delarosa left.
Adam watched the Sergeant leave and disappear into the early morning hours, it was pitch black outside, and people didn’t really realize how dark it got outside without street lights. Adam waited for fifteen minutes then left himself. Sergeant Delarosa had his suspicions regarding Adam once he left the house he quickly got out of sight. He had scouted the area several times looking for hides, granted the one he was using earlier wasn’t the best as Adam had sighted him. This time he was far more careful and he was far more at home in the dark then he was in the daylight.
He found a place deep in the bushes and trees where he could watch the house, as he suspected it didn’t take long to Adam to leave, going against his own advice about the curfew and police. Adam took off towards the mosque, Sergeant Delarosa was able to follow for a bit without being seen, the night was his friend. Adam entered the mosque and was in there for about twenty minutes, he then exited with two other men who were in uniform they stayed within the mosque compound and then entered another building. The building had all of its lights off but within moments it became alive, lights turned on and two vehicles arrived with more men in uniform. Sergeant Delarosa thought this couldn’t be good.
Soon Adam exited the building with several more men in uniform and they all got into the vehicles and left. Sergeant Delarosa waited another fifteen minutes before moving again after they left. Then keeping to the foliage and dark dark areas he moved back to where he left the team twelve hours earlier, hopefully they were still there. Sergeant Delarosa several times back tracked to see if he was being followed, he would wait up to twenty minutes listening and watching for anything.
It took him three more hours for him to make it back to the team who were still there essentially waiting for him. He quickly advised Captain Truhill they needed to move and move now that it’s possible they may be compromised. Captain Truhill didn’t ask any questions he ordered them all to move to the new hide now. They moved slowly and purposely through the neighborhoods, they moved over two miles away and it took them over two hours to get there and they arrived right before sunrise. Once there and security was set up Sergeant Delarosa briefed the Captain and the XO on what had happened. He told them everything that Adam had told him about the ISA and yes he believed it was the truth regardless of whatever was going on with the man.
He told them that he had followed Adam after he left and he headed directly to the mosque and aligned himself with what looked like the Army, Sergeant Delarosa said he believed he may have compromised but he also added that he told Adam that he was there by himself and no one else. Adam seemed to buy that and didn’t ask any further questions about it. Sergeant Delarosa said that in his opinion they had accomplished what they set out to do and it was time to get out of Dodge. Captain Truhill agreed he told them they would be moving out that night and for everyone to get some rest when not pulling security. They needed to be on guard it’s possible that they may put out a dragnet to capture Sergeant Delarosa.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The second A-Team was being led by Captain Charlie Wantabee, his XO was Chief Warrant Officer Terry Looken and the team Sergeant was Master Sergeant Booker Washington, then the other nine men. They were located on the far side of Dearborn on the outskirts of town collecting intel on the surrounding communities.
They had an easier time of fitting in only because there were new people being shipped into the area all the time so many men didn’t have fully grown beards yet and their clothes were worn. They were able to mingle in some of the villages which might have consisted of a couple hundred people at most. What they observed and heard people talk about was deeply disturbing; ISA definitely existed and was much more like ISIS the Islamic organization that took over a good part of Syria and Iraq.
They had established a Caliphate right here in middle America and are calling it the Islamic States of America. They found out that the people that refused to convert to Islam were turned into slaves and literally worked to death in factories and the farming fieldsn’t. They had learned that men from the ages of 15 to 50 were inducted into the military if they were converted to Islam, however there were some who had special skills such as Engineers, Doctors, Nurses and other who were spared, for now anyway, the slave labor camps and the Army. Everything that they saw reminded them of the extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, it wasn’t pretty.
Over the last day they had noticed an increase of Soldiers in the area they were looking for something, fortunately for them they were as dirty, smelly, unshaven as the newbies that kept arriving by truck almost daily. They would be very difficult to tell apart from the other peoples they were bringing in. However, they knew something in the dynamic of the ISA had changed and Captain Wantabee and the others felt it was time to get out-of-town, for the most part they had accomplished the mission, and it was time to head back to Camp Grayling.
Captain Wantabee ordered that they would move out a couple of hours after night fall the night was after all their friend. The men rested and waited for night fall it was over two hundred miles back to Camp Grayling by road and by air around a hundred-fifty. The XO Chief Warrant Officer Looken was fix winged certified there plan was to make it to the nearest airfield and see if they could find a Cessna or piper that was large enough to fit them all that was also fueled up or they had a way to get fuel for it then if it all went well fly the hell out. They weren’t far from Ford Airport maybe fifteen miles or so from it they needed to secure some transportation. They had been planning for this since the day they got here they knew where the motor-pool was and where the trucks were parked. There were no guards on the trucks something that would probably change after tonight. They had observed the trucks leaving the park throughout the night heading in and out-of-town; they didn’t expect any problems there either.
Again it all came down to what happened at the airport they had really put all of
their eggs in one basket.
They were staying in an old run down motel that had been commandeered by the ISA to house workers, fortunately for them they didn’t need any type of ID or anything else for that matter to get a couple of rooms. All that was needed was room availability and they were in, there were people coming and going at all ours, the field supervisors would determine the number of people they needed that day then go from room to room collecting the occupants, then march them out to a truck, load them up and take off for where ever, a lot of times those people never returned.
At 2100 two men from the team left the room and went to the motor-pool found a truck that was topped off with no one around, finders-keepers, they figured. They climbed aboard found the keys in the ignition, started the vehicle up and headed back to the motel. At 2117 the truck arrived, honked a couple of times then all of the team members exited their rooms and loaded into the back of the truck. Within five minutes they were on their way to Ford Airport and to whatever awaited them there, and that they would know in about fifteen to twenty minutes.
As they approached the Airport they noticed and absolute lack of any activity around it which they thought odd, back at Parks, Irwin and Grayling the airports were very busy places still. People working on getting aircraft working, maintaining what was working and fueling aircraft for flights. Ford was dead though, what they suspected was that the ISA hadn’t figured out that not all aircraft were affected by the event or the more likely is that the people who could fix and fly the planes they had killed at the onset of establishing the Caliphate with not much regard to future planning.
They would have to keep a low profile because since the airport was vacated it was possible that anyone around would notice a bunch of guys running around it, get suspicious and report it to the morality police, not something they wanted.
They pulled into the airfield and accessed the fight line where all of the aircraft was located. It was pitch blank outside but even as they passed the commercial aircraft they could see that they had certainly been looted and in some cases the aircrafts dismantled for parts and or pieces. They ventured over to the far end of the field where they found the types of aircraft they were looking for there were several Cessna’s but all of them were locked up tight. Not that it was a problem, it wasn’t but it was going to take them a bit it access them.
They finally got two of the Cessna’s open they both were large enough to carry the team in and would definitely have the range to get them back to Grayling. The first one the XO climbed into and tried to start was dead dead dead the engine wouldn’t even crank over. The second Cessna was about thirty years old and looked it. When the XO climbed into it and tried to start it the two engines really tried hard to turnover but it wasn’t happening.
The XO looked at the fuel and battery gages which looked to work fine but showed no fuel and the battery was just about dead. Thinking about it, the battery anyway, it had been sitting for almost a year so it made some since it might not have enough of a charge to start it. He sent a couple of guys to try to find some jumper cables for a car. After about ten minutes of searching the hangers and vehicles that were near with flashlights they found some. The XO’s idea was to pull the truck up and use its battery to try to jump start the plane the problem was is the trucks battery is 12 volt and the planes is 24 volt but it might still do the trick the planes battery wasn’t entirely dead.
Next they needed to get fuel into the plane before they tried anything however there were no fuel trucks any place, they surmised that the ISA had taken them, but they didn’t siphon the fuel from the other aircraft. The XO ordered the men to find fuel cans and siphon fuel out of the other Cessna which he noticed was full. One of the men returned from a hanger with a charging apparatus and showed it to the Chief who checked it out he reasoned that it was still good and would actually do better than jumping the planes battery from the truck.
The men had finished draining the fuel from the Cessna when they saw flashlights heading their way from across the field, this can’t be good thought the Captain, in response he put out security, but he knew they had about ten minutes before those flashlights found them.
As quick as they could they emptied the fuel cans into Cessna which took over five minutes to do and the lights were getting closer and closer, there were yells for them to stop by several armed men quickly approaching. The XO goosed the engines and then tried to turn them over, the propellers slowly turned, then the engine coughed and came to life. As the engine kicked over a shot rang out from one of the men coming across the airfield.
The Chief called out for everyone to get onboard now and let’s get the hell out of here. Another shot rang out this time directed at the aircraft which was taxing down the runway with the team members climbing aboard. As soon as the last man was in the cabin the Chief gunned the engines gaining as much speed as he could. The aircraft was barreling down the runway gaining as much speed as possible, the Chief knew this couldn’t be good for the engines they hadn’t been run in probably. More shots rang out directed at the plane but they were wild at best the nose of the plane started to lift into the air and as quick they were airborne.
Now there was a wall of bullets being fired at them from all over the airport as they pulled away and gained altitude. The Captain came up to the cockpit and sat next to the Chief, “How are we doing Chief?”
“Doing good, no problems up here, we’re on a heading now directly back to Grayling.” replied the Chief.
“Great, I guess the cat’s out of the bag now right?” said the Captain.
“Well if not they’re sure scratching their heads and wondering what the hell just happened? How’s everyone back there?”
“Good Chief everyone’s fine. How long until we’re back at Grayling?”
“Hour to an hour and a half I suspect. You should try to get some rest there’s nothing to do now except wait.” said the Chief.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The search for the man that Layth Baz told them about had turned up nothing he had disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Across town at Ford Airport an airplane had taken off carrying several men and who they were no one knew. Both incidents raised a lot of questions by the local police forces that reported it up their chain-of-command. It was a day and a half before it finally reached General Harb who was livid that this sort of information had taken so long to get him. He quickly ordered that this Layth Baz person be sent to him now he wanted to talk to him, he wanted answers.
An hour later Layth was escorted into the Generals Office Layth noticed the office was sparsely decorated with a huge desk in the center of the room with the General sitting behind it. There were no chairs for a visitor to sit in, the General waved him over and he didn’t get up to greet Layth.
“I’m General Layth the Supreme Commander.”
“Yes Sir I know who you are.” said Layth.
The General eyed Layth wondering if the tone in his voice might signal some sort of attitude. “Brother Baz from what I understand you were recently visited by a man claiming to be in the United States Army.” stated the General.
“Yes Sir, a Master Sergeant Delarosa US Army Special Forces so he claimed.” responded Layth.
“I see,” said the General. “How did you run across such a man?”
“I was on my way home from a security meeting and I saw him standing between a wall and some bushes at sunset. I didn’t want to confront anyone as I was alone and there was no one else on the street. As I walked by him I asked him to follow me.”
“Why would you do that?” asked General Harb.
“Well Sir as a member of the local security force I had been undercover investigating the resistance. I thought that the man was a member attempting a meet with me its happened before.” said Layth.
“What happened then?”
“He followed, I went into my home leaving the door open, and he entered holding a firearm. I introduced myself using my western name and claimed I was a mem
ber of the resistance. We talked for a bit and I was able to convince him I was truly in the resistance and then I was able to get him to tell me who he was.”
General Harb nodded as he was listening, “Very good, very good. Did you ask why he was here?”
“Yes Sir, “replied Layth. “He said that he was here to collect information about ISA. I also asked him if he was here by himself or with others. He said it was just him.”
“All very interesting, what did you tell him?”
“Well Sir, being undercover and trying to get into the resistance I do have some leeway to discuss the ISA as a way to gain their trust. Now with that said I gave him a brief history of the Caliphate, its boundaries. He did ask what I knew about the Army of Allah and since I don’t know much about it myself I couldn’t tell him what he really wanted to know. I did tell him that men from fifteen to fifty were required to register for service and that there were waivers request for people such as myself as a civil engineer.”
General Harb was a little upset by what Layth told the alleged Sergeant he didn’t like any information given out but he did understand the conversation had to be give and take if he was going to get the Sergeant to trust him, “Was there anything else?” asked the General.
“Yes Sir he asked how the Caliphate was feeding itself, transportation and what weapons the Army was using. I couldn’t help him with the weapons information but I did tell him that the Caliphate was farming and ranching as its primary source of food.” said Layth.
The General got the feeling that Layth wasn’t exactly leveling with him, “Did he spend the night or leave?”
“He left around 1am I waited until twenty minutes after he left and then quickly left myself and went straight to my security unit at the mosque and reported it.”
“Did it occur to you he might have been watching you?” asked the General.