Ree again nodded. “From a philosophical standpoint, that is correct. I allow the Americans themselves to punish those who are traitors to their fellow citizens. Many of those hoarders die in those supply raids, and such traitors do not deserve to live. I use the Americans to punish Americans and no anger rises toward us. The irony pleases the Great Leader.”
“I am sorry, Big Brother. I can think of no other questions to ask.” The aide lowered his head and looked at the floor, showing his submission to the general’s superior knowledge and wisdom.
Ree then smiled warmly, looking for all the world as though he was greatly pleased. In truth he was pleased, but such outward displays were by design, and never spontaneous. “There is another reason, though not as important as those you already asked about. If I attack him and his cells where they hide like the roaches they are, I would kill most of them but probably not all, and I would no longer know their whereabouts and intentions.”
“So as things stand, my general, if you wish to stop a terrorist raid then you have only to reinforce the guards at that target, and they scurry away to find easier targets?”
Inwardly, Ree grinned. What a find, this aide! He may be only a lieutenant now, but that would soon change if he did nothing to betray Ree’s trust and confidence. And he hadn’t guessed Ree’s ulterior motive: Taggart must never be allowed to leave the city. Hemmed in here in the city, he was useful. Out there, he could be a genuine threat to Ree’s plans.
The rest of lunch was quite pleasant.
- 14 -
1800 HOURS - ZERO DAY +154
THE RADIO CRACKLED, startling Ethan mid-bite. He scrambled to set his dinner plate down and get to the damnable thing to throw on the headphone mic, dancing to correct as his food slid toward the edge of his plate and dropping his fork to the floor in the process. He cursed as he put on the headphones, and heard, “…do you read me? Bravo One to Charlie One, come in.”
That would be Brickerville, trying to contact the Clan directly. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Bravo One, this is Charlie Two. Say again.”
“Heya, Ethan. This is Josh direct. We have a problem. Break for copy.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’re under attack by ’vaders. I thought Charlie One would like to know. We’re completely surrounded by them. We figure at least a hundred, mostly small arms and a couple RPGs, but they haven’t used them yet. Seems pretty low-intensity for an assault. Any ideas?”
Ethan had plenty of ideas, but needed more information before he could take it to Michael or offer advice. “Copy, surrounded and under attack. Low intensity doesn’t sound like they’re trying to roll over you, though. How are they arranged, what side are they on rather?”
A slight pause, and then: “They’re on all sides. Same five-man teams they’ve been using lately, just scattered all around us. Every time a sentry sticks their head up, they take heavy fire. We’ve extinguished the wall torches, but that means we have to double up the guard to make sure no one creeps over the walls. We’re already run ragged, so this isn’t the most welcome news. It’s like a siege laid by an armed Boy Scout troop. Doesn’t make much sense.”
Ethan took a deep breath and realized he had clenched his fists. He relaxed them, then rolled his shoulders to release tension. Okay, this was better than a full-on assault, but it could be a preamble to much worse. Something just felt different about this, though, maybe from the tone of Josh’s voice but maybe his intuition had got onto something…
“Hey Josh, risk some people to take a gander with those NVGs we sent back with your ambassador, the ones our redneck engineer made up. Take a close look at a few different ones and then give me every detail—what are they carrying, how are they dressed, what gear can you see with them. The works. I may have an idea.”
“Scout with night goggles. Copy that. I’ll get back to you.”
The air went dead, and Ethan took off the “earmuffs.” He swiveled over to the nearest laptop, set up his sandbox and the other usual security protections, and linked up to one of the birds through his back door. A glance told him one precious satellite was overhead. One was enough. There was no way he’d divert one unless everyone’s survival depended on it, so he said a quick prayer of thanks upstairs. Not that he really believed in God, but living with Mandy these past several months had given him cause to doubt his belief in no belief. She was tenacious and made a lot of sense, so maybe there was something to what she said… anyway, they were all in a foxhole these days so it was okay to call on God, even if it made him feel a tad embarrassed.
Ah! He was in. Without adjusting the camera, so as to avoid detection if the Mountain’s people were watching, he went into the software and started sorting through the high-res images. That took a while—the files were huge, and the connection had the lag that satellite comms always did.
Then he found the one he was looking for, a shot of the Brickerville region, and began the download. Between the limited bandwidth and the sluggishness of sending data back and forth through his filters and multiple sandboxes, whatever, it would take at least a couple of minutes. Fortunately, the satellite wouldn’t go out of view before he was finished. Thanks, he thought again, looking up, then looked back down, feeling silly. An opportunistic believer, that was him. He shook his head and shrugged.
Getting up, he stretched his legs and went to get another cold soda. Those were a huge luxury, but hell, if the fox guarding the henhouse couldn’t take a chicken once in a while, what was the point? Amber would disagree, of course, but she was above-ground doing family stuff with other families. She’d never know so it couldn’t hurt.
When he got back from the cold locker, the image had finished downloading. He terminated comms with the satellite and, scanning as he went, he pulled it out of the remote sandbox, transferred it to the isolated bunker PC, and loaded it into the rather odd program used with that satellite’s file format. It was a sluggish, bloated beast of an application, embodying everything he had come to expect from multi-million dollar code-monkey projects developed by Uncle Sam. Hairball garbage coding, of course, but the app worked and he had it, so…
There. He zoomed in on Brickerville and noted the timestamp. Only twenty minutes old. After it finished re-rendering at the zoom he needed, he saw a much clearer picture of the situation—no pun intended. Damn, sometimes it sucked to be right. For every couple of teams camped out, there was a horse-drawn covered wagon, with kids and people in civilian-looking clothes. Cooking fires, wooden outhouses at each camp’s periphery, the works. This wasn’t an attack, it was a migration, and Brickerville was right in the swarm’s way.
Ethan began furiously writing notes about the images he was seeing and waited for Josh to get back on the radio.
* * *
2100 HOURS - ZERO DAY +154
Cassy watched over Ethan’s shoulder as the hacker went through his meticulous notes and images while Michael stood watching over his other shoulder. She was glad Michael had been free when Ethan asked her to come down there—they’d need Michael’s more experienced take on the information.
Michael’s face was unreadable as he looked at the images and notes Ethan had made. “Yes, those are mostly invaders, but with families. This isn’t an attack formation like anything I’ve seen before. Women, children, wagons… I agree with you, Ethan. They’re moving in to stay.”
Cassy let out a deep breath, full of frustration and fatigue. Why did these idiots have to invade a settlement when there were so many empty farms around? They didn’t act wild, like the earlier cannibal raiders had. Did these problems never stop? But of course they didn’t. The world had been sent back to the dark ages, and they were indeed dark.
“Fine, I agree,” she said. “I don’t want to, but it seems clear it’s hostile. An invasion. But you said ‘mostly’ they were invaders. What do you mean?”
Michael looked to Ethan, who gave him a nod, and Michael said, “The ’vader uniforms are different from ours. I’d expect every
fighter, male or female, to be in a uniform. Barring that, any women not in uniform should be in traditional garb. Burkas, veils, whatever was their local custom. But here we have women in pants and shirts, but not in uniform. Plus, I figure there aren’t too many blonde Arabs or Koreans.”
Ethan added, “It could be assimilation of the locals. Both the Romans and the Huns did that as policy.”
“Or they could be slaves the invaders brought along. The early U.S. did that, too,” Michael commented.
Sure enough, Cassy noted, the image did show a few blonde women, or at least women with very light hair. So the invaders had traitors or slaves with them and that, too, suggested they intended to stay. “And right now they have Brickerville surrounded,” she commented. “But they’re not approaching and not going far around the town. Given your experience, what does that tell us, Michael?”
“Either their destination is close or they’re in too much hurry to give Brickerville a wide berth, so they plan to roll over them, I imagine.”
Cassy said, “Ethan, you said there’s been increasing activity lately, and Brickerville was already under a low-intensity siege when Jaz and Choony went there last time. Their ambassador said the same thing. They aren’t in a rush or they’d have moved on by now. Process of elimination…”
Michael said, “It could be they’re just loitering in the area, waiting for something. Some surprise they know is coming. Damn.”
Ethan set down his notes and rubbed his chin. “That sounds ominous. What could they be waiting for? And should we be getting ready for it, too?”
Cassy rubbed her neck with one hand, feeling the stress build in her neck and shoulders. The unknown was pretty terrifying when everything and anything could kill you, and too much of it actively wanted to. She’d have bet ten bucks that Adamstown joined the invaders. They’d come from the east, so they had to go through Adamstown to get here, and Adamstown collaborators might explain the civilians traveling with them better than the idea of bringing slaves with them on a migration. Maybe Adamstown quislings were running the wagons for them and such.
“We should definitely get ready for something, Ethan,” Cassy said. “This isn’t just random. Let’s get an inventory done, and give me a list of who we should bring down into the bunker if things go sideways on us.”
* * *
0700 HOURS - ZERO DAY +155
Ethan was just finishing his first cup of coffee for the morning, made with yesterday’s coffee grounds. Soon there wouldn’t be any coffee left, and he’d be stuck drinking some weird concoction made with ground-up walnut shells and cattail pollen or something. That would be a sad day.
The radio buzzed, alerting Ethan to incoming chatter, and he set down his mug to pick up the mic, waiting. “Bravo One to Charlie One, are you there?”
Ethan figured it would be Josh over in Brickerville, hopefully with the results of his little intel-gathering mission, suggested by Ethan after the briefing with Cassy last night. “Charlie Two here, go ahead.”
“We sent a scout team over the wall last night with those night-vision goggles you people made. Our guys got back an hour ago and we just finished debriefing them.”
“No casualties, I hope. So what’s the verdict?”
“The ’vaders wiped out that little religious nutjob compound north of us in the woods. Your people had to sneak around it—I’m sure you remember it from their report when they got back with the gasifier. Those people were no loss. Anyway, they’re all dead. The ’vaders left that area, though, because the house and one of the garages got burned down during the fight. Their storage barn was cleaned out, but the ’vaders never found their underground storage.”
“I take it your scouts did?”
“Of course. Turns out those wackos had a whole armory in there. Nothing too spectacular, but a couple of nifty toys. My advisors and I came up with a plan, but we’ll need Clanholme’s help to pull it off.”
* * *
Just after breakfast, Cassy put her dishes in the first water-filled 55-gallon drum, which was kept at a slow simmer by means of a rocket stove built into a Dakota fire-hole. It wasn’t the most efficient rocket stove setup, but far better than just setting the drum over a normal fire. Not that the Clan lacked wood, but heat was a resource. Why be wasteful?
Looking up from the drum, she spotted Ethan approaching the Clan’s outdoor kitchen area. He saw her and walked briskly toward her. She hoped it would be good news this time. Last night’s revelations about the invaders moving into the area like hostile settlers were unsettling.
As he drew up to her, Ethan smiled. “So, Brickerville has a plan, and I think you and Michael will like it, but they need our help.”
“Walk with me,” Cassy said, and turned toward her house, their headquarters during the daytime.
Ethan fell into step beside her. “You remember that religious compound Jaz and Choony had to sneak by on their way to the Falconry? Well, the ’vaders wiped them out and burned most of it to the ground. Brickerville used some of those NVGs we sent them for their scouts to check it out and they found the compound’s armory. Get this—it was loaded. They found five Soviet-made RPGs with a couple dozen rounds, which is great, but without working enemy tanks it’s not crucial. Better yet, they found crates of dynamite with all the fixin’s. They can string up tripwires, daisychain homemade mines, whatever. But I’m saving the best for last.”
Cassy grinned. That was fantastic news for Brickerville! What to do with all that? Knowing Josh, their leader, Brickerville probably already had ideas. The problem with the way the invaders were arranged was that you couldn’t just attack them. They were too spread out, but could respond in force pretty quickly if anyone attacked their perimeter. Only a major, concerted attack could hurt them, and in that event they were well set up to just scatter and melt away into the woods or whatever. “So what’s the best part?”
Reaching the front door to Cassy’s house, Ethan opened it and held the door for her before replying. As they went inside, he said, “Drones. They had two dozen good-sized drones still in the packaging down there in the underground armory. The kind that can carry about a kilogram each. They have cameras on them that feed back to a display on the controllers. They sound like the 3DR Solo quad drones, pretty much the best prosumer drones around. Too bad they didn’t get a bunch of 3DR’s Pixhawk boxes. They can run off GPS, which is still working, and they could have programmed all those drones from the compound and just sent them on their way.”
“Wow, you are such a geek, Ethan,” she laughed. But that had definitely gotten Cassy’s attention. An amazing find that presented some new challenges. “So, they either have to sneak out two dozen people to use the drones from the compound, or sneak all that material back into Brickerville through the scattered camps. Either way could invite a disaster. Michael says it would be all but impossible to sneak through the invader positions with the way they’re set up, at least not with cargo or so many people.”
“Yep. But Josh has a plan to deal with that, and he needs our help. He wants us to raid all along their southern and western perimeter, hard enough to draw away squads from elsewhere. Then Josh will send out half a dozen people with small human-pulled wagons, like rickshaws, and load them up for retrieval back to Brickerville.”
“Not a bad idea,” Cassy said. “At least it sounds workable. But Michael will have to give the final word on it. I should think we can spare about a dozen people for that, probably send our Marines out. They’ve been acting restless lately and it’s right up their alley. I don’t think that’ll open the window wide enough for the operation Josh described, though. Let’s call in Michael.”
Ethan sat on the couch and ran his hand through his mop of hair. She’d have to talk to him about keeping up appearances later, but now wasn’t the time. “I suppose we could radio Ephrata for some people. If they aren’t getting hit too hard right now by Hershey, they could maybe spare a squad of trained fighters.”
“Yep. They won’t
want the invaders to take out Brickerville any more than we do, and they’ll be eager to get that trade route to Falconry open again. After we talk to Michael, you can radio them and see what they can send our way. I think we’ll also send word to Taj Mahal and see what they can spare. Time to earn their keep, I’m thinking.”
Ethan grinned, and it was that infectious, boyish grin he used to show so much. Cassy loved it. “Cassy, you’re really calling it Taj Mahal? I suppose it works. Those Indians we settled out there did seem plenty willing to be a part of this thing we’re setting up.”
Cassy shrugged. “If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t have settled them near us. We’d have sent them on their way to wherever. But I have to consider the good of the entire alliance we’ve started, not just our own good, so having them buffer both us and Liz Town just made sense, strategically.”
“I don’t know how it fell on you to be the leader of this motley alliance, but hey, it works. Either way, they’re smart enough to see that their survival depends on the goodwill they’ll earn, and anyway they kind of owe us. Barry will get the rest to go along. Remind ’em of how it was before they cadged a meal off us and so on.”
If they didn’t go along to get along Cassy would drop all assistance to them, which would probably wipe those suburbanites right out. But she wasn’t about to tell Ethan that. There was no way she would allow even neutral groups to live so close to Clanholme. But she believed it wouldn’t be a problem. Their leader Barry seemed like a practical man and they were heavily, emotionally invested in their new farm by now. This was a debt—Barry would see that they paid it. Just another example of how one-time everyday decisions had become matters of life and death, even if you didn’t realize it right away.
Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft Page 22