The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  Mary had been watching the security camera monitors all morning for her Step-Uncle to finally get there. When she saw his cab turn up the street, she jumped up and frantically began brushing her hair and straightening the top she had picked out to wear today. The teenager was out the door and past the honor guard to throw herself into his arms before the driver could get the trunk open.

  It had been a long time since he had been back, and Jack admired the new furniture along the way as Mary dragged him upstairs to see her new bedroom. He stopped at the door as she ran from one point of interest to another in the small suite, decorated in French Versailles style. That was a shocking scandal for her parents, considering how things were with France these days, she told him. Mary invited him to come and sit on the bed to see how soft it was, but he demurred, using the excuse that he had to go see if the guards had put his bags in the right room, since they’d changed everything so much. She pouted, but followed along.

  His room was still unchanged, of course, regardless of Jack’s joke. He hung up his uniforms and repacked his other gear in his issue duffel bag, to be ready for in the morning. Mary sat on the edge of his dresser and talked constantly about how much time she had spent in here, wondering what he was doing in college, all this time. He told her about his classes and the hikes in the mountains, but mercifully left out any mention of Tracy. A guard knocked on the outside of the open door, to let them know that it was time for lunch. Jack noticed that the S.S. uniform had changed, becoming more severe and crisp looking, as they followed him to the elevator.

  After lunch, Captain McNabb tried on his dress uniform, and he and Hope went to see Kip. Mary was told to stay and watch the younger kids. Her mom had noticed how smitten she was, and it embarrassed Hope more than it did her brother. On the way over she apologized, but Jack shrugged it off with a joke. He was used to it.

  The Secretary of State’s secretary buzzed them right in, and as they entered his office Kip got up and came around the desk to thump the two bars on Jack’s epaulet, grinning.

  “So, you got the promotion! In my day you wouldn’t even be old enough to vote, much less lead troops,” he teased.

  “In your day, you’d have been eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger by now, old man,” Jack shot back. The two men shook hands, and they all sat down in the leather chairs arranged there for small staff meetings.

  “Now, I hear you’ve become quite the celebrity. And teen heartthrob,” the Secretary of State smiled, moving some papers out of the way. Jack blushed. It was one of the things that girls loved about him, he always turned red easily. Hope nudged him with her elbow.

  “All the girls want to have his babies, and all the boys want to be just like him, from what Hess says,” she eyed Jack to see if he could a deeper shade of crimson. The far corner of the ceiling suddenly became very interesting for the new Captain.

  After some small talk, Kip told Jack about the mission they were undertaking. The week before, six highly contagious virus carriers had been airdropped into the Caliphate, four in Java, and two in their largest off-island colony, Kuala Lumpur. The operation, which was still highly classified, had created a few disease vectors, but the ‘Moerdani’s Gift’ virus wasn’t spreading as rapidly as Dr. Edwards had predicted. From what Tommy Bullens could determine, Sur was having whole villages around the landing sites quarantined and burned off, with the occupants still inside. It was heartless, but effective in slowing the spread of the virus.

  In retaliation, the Caliphate’s entire army was massing, apparently to make good on his invasion threats. The intelligence division was also concerned by satellite radiation readings picked up by some of Gen. Ball’s space-based monitoring stations on the lunar surface. Aside from the three preexisting readings from Java, there now were two more…and the sources looked to be mobile.

  “Does that mean that he has a couple of bombs?” Jack asked. Hope sucked in her breath, in fear. This was the first time she had heard about the radiation signatures.

  “They seem to have originated from the previous three sources, so probably Moerdani has made collected some fissionable material from the research reactors. Low yield, but very radioactive fallout.” Kip answered.

  “So, our job is to put an end to this before he ruins a big chunk of down under, huh?” McNabb asked.

  “Not just that. He could use them to open the whole continent up for invasion. And once he gets a foothold…” Kip let his thought trail off.

  Jack leaned back. “Well, do we have a better means of infecting them with the new virus?”

  Hope looked shocked. “Jack, we’ve already tried that. You heard him, it didn’t work. To try again would take too long.”

  “Actually,” Kip interjected, “we do have a plan in the works as we speak. Plan B. Not too creative, but it should soften them up before we send the poor guys like you in.”

  Jack looked at his sister. “See, worry wart? There’s always a contingency plan.”

  “I come here to put my arms around you and tell you one final goodbye, so come and let me put my arms around you, and I’ll see you on the other side.”

  “Do you ever get the weird feeling of vuja de?” Eric asked Lt. Williams, as they were met by their F-22 escorts from the N.A.S. Valley Forge.

  “Do you mean the strange sensation that somehow, what you’re experiencing hasn’t ever happened before?” his co-pilot finished the old joke.

  For this trip, the cargo bay was filled with eighteen racks of pressurized tanks holding an aerosol version of ‘Moerdani’s Gift’. ‘Plan B’ consisted of flying low over the island, and dispensing the viral load. Cargo masters in the rear bay would switch out each set of tanks as they emptied. The dangerous aspect of the mission was that they would have to fly low and slow, to get a good dispersal pattern.

  The Caliph’s air force had been badly depleted by the recent conflicts with the New American fleet’s air wing, but two outdated Taiwanese Air Force jets rose to meet them as they descended over the Timor Sea. The F-22s swatted them out of the sky like flies from twenty miles away with air to air missiles. The two men in the C140’s cockpit watched the streams of fire whoosh away, then the radar blips disappeared from their screen. A long Chinese Mig got a shade closer, before suffering a similar fate. Before the next contact, they were edging over the steep mountainous coast, and Gruber hit the ‘active’ button to signal the Cargo master’s to begin earning their dinner.

  The first set of tanks got them past Kupang, at such a low altitude that Eric could swear he saw people running in the streets below as they approached. When they crossed the strait and dived in towards Mataram a few minutes later, anti-aircraft fire streamed up to meet them.

  “Well, at least somebody is awake down there.” Williams snarled.

  The Captain nodded and pulled up, so as not to belly into the stream of flak rising in a deadly arc. Another gun emplacement opened up to their North, and was quickly silenced by an air to ground missile barrage from their escorts. The buildings of the city loomed up like cypress knees out of the smog swamp, then passed behind them. A thunk and screech of shifting pallets in the back indicated another change in aerosol tanks. The ‘ready’ light turned green. They were right on schedule. Under his breath, he sang…

  “I’ll fly away, oh glory, I’ll fly away. When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away…”

  He had seen video of one of the teenaged girls, hanging from a tree by her parachute harness. She had begged for help until a villager had climbed up and cut her down, careful to catch her before she fell. That villager had been bedridden the next day. He, and his family, were dead two days later. This viral strain, whatever it was, was much quicker acting and deadlier than the original. The symptoms were similar: diarrhea and vomiting, followed by passing blood, then bleeding from all orifices, and death, for most. Sur really had to give credit to whomever had done the virology work for the infidels. His newly called up army had surrounded the half dozen sites as quickly as possible. Kuala
Lumpur and a village at the foot of Mount Merapi had not been contained, and the virus was spreading there. The rest of the sites, he had ordered quarantined and bulldozed and burned. Anyone who tried to leave was shot. It reminded him of the good old days, only in reverse.

  His big twin surprises were ready, and being loaded onto old tankers, since they had ended up being much larger than he had expected. Each was the size of a car. Not that it would matter. They would do the job, just the same. Two hundred thousand martyrs were ready to cross the Timor Sea to Australia, at his command.

  The first reports of another unidentified craft, he just discounted. Their New American fleet did flyovers every day. Then the reports clarified that a flight of incoming aircraft were making their way, at low altitude, across Java, from East to West. A half dozen of his impossible to replace fighter interceptors had been lost, trying to stop them, by the time a sickening twist in the Caliph’s gut made him realize what they were doing. A chemtrail, the air defense marshal said. Oh. Oh. Those clever, clever prophet-denying infidels.

  He had to act quickly. He was out of time. Moerdani frantically called his officer of the day. “Tell every plane we have to get up and take down that spraying demon, any way they can. Crash into it if they have to. Allah will be grateful and reward their martyrdom. Stop that plane, at all costs!”

  “Yes, my Caliph,” the General replied. “And the invasion? Should we postpone it until the situation is clearer?”

  “No! Now, load them now, on every boat that floats, every ship, send them now, it starts now! I declare a jihad against the infidel unbelievers. Jihad!” Sur screamed at him. They were all so Harolding stupid.

  In Yogyakarta, the throngs of Muslim holy warriors were ordered to begin climbing aboard the flotilla of private craft they had amassed for the crossing. It would take at least three days for the lead elements, the faster ships, to arrive at Darwin. The rest would filter in behind them, as quickly as they could. The operation began in Lombok, too, but some of the soldiers there were already reporting feeling nausea. Their officers yelled at them and called them cowards and whipped them onto the boats. In less than two hours, a large part of the army was on the water, headed South.

  One of their F-22 escorts took a direct hit after they were swarmed by several fighter jets at once, and pinwheeled out of the sky. Eric heard the pilot curse then begin to pray before he impacted. Reinforcements with full loads of armaments arrived to replace their other escorts before the interceptors attempted one final approach. They were knocked out of the sky from a safe distance. By the time they dispensed the second to last set of tanks over Jakarta, the Javanese were throwing helicopters and training planes and even a passenger jet at them. Their desperation hurt to watch. He looked at Williams, and exchanged grim nods. This day would stick with them.

  “Man, Lieutenant, don’t you have any tunes?” he growled. Back in the cargo bay, the last set was in place. They turned as tight a U-turn as could be made in such a beast, as the green light turned on, again. Gruber finished his arc and aimed for the biggest buildings in the city, downtown. The path took them through the aerosol stream they had just released, dispersing like a thinning cloud as it fell onto the city.

  “Hey, Captain, you got any Indian in ya?” Williams yelled, as the aerosol washed over their windshield.

  “Nah, I passed the test, without even studying. How about you?” he answered. His co- pilot just grinned. They’d soon find out.

  “On the wings of a snow white dove, God sent his pure sweet love, yes he sent down his love, on the wings of a dove…”

  Some six thousand five hundred miles away, Captain Jack McNabb was sitting on a Hawaiian beach in his issue swimsuit, telling Sergeant Chittum and a group of four junior officers about Yvette. Now that the election was over, the incident had been mentioned casually in the news, so he felt safe giving his side of the story. With a bit of embellishment, of course.

  When he’d shown up for mission briefing and unit assignment, he’d requested that his old platoon be one of the four assigned to him as his new Company. Sgt. Chittum, grumpy as always, had been glad to see him. He could tell by how the noncom criticized his gear as being too shiny and noisy. The rest of the guys stood a little taller, to be back with him, and relished being the pets of the Company. They were designated First Platoon. That had made the other three noncoms push their men even harder. Since this was his first Company-sized command, McNabb would have only sixty men to potentially mess up with. After some experience, he would earn a couple more platoons.

  They had expected another long train ride, but instead they’d been loaded immediatel y onto troop transport planes after a ten minute dissertation on the situation by Gen. Ferguson himself, from a stage in the assembly hall. The eight thousand assembled Unified Command soldiers tried reading the faces of their nearest officers for more insight into what they were headed into. Jack, like the rest, kept his best poker face. General Brown had already given the officers a more in-depth briefing, minutes before. It had pretty much jived with what Kip had told him, with less specifics. This was just a back-slapping cheerleading session, by comparison. Starless Stripes everywhere, ‘America The Beautiful’ playing softly in the background, the works.

  A force of the size being moved would be leapfrogged in stages across half the continent to Coos Bay, to load onboard the Seventh fleet. The skies above St. Louis were soon crowded with planes, headed out. It hadn’t been a flight of comfort, and Jack had used the time to chat with his four new lieutenants and their noncoms. He knew it was crucial that he get to know them, and build some bonds of trust, before they went into battle together. He might have to give these men an order that would mean their deaths, or worse, the deaths of their men. They needed to have faith in him.

  During the three h our mess break in Coos Bay, they hadn’t had much of a chance to see the growing Oregon city. Just the naval base alongside the airstrip, and a gray stretch of rocky, churned up mud flats from the excavations. Most of the town was inland, they’d seen as they landed.

  Sgt. Chittum took lead over the other noncommissioned officers in instructing their men to use the bathroom, get something to eat, and reassemble in an hour. Just like herding kindergarteners, he called it. The base was so crowded that it was hard to even move through the halls. This was a huge operation, they realized. They were a part of something really, really big.

  As Jack wolfed down some macaroni and cheese and Salisbury steak in the officer’s mess, he listened with half an ear to the rumors being shared. Most of the officers were just as scared and clueless as the men they commanded. They just weren’t allowed to show it. In between their conversations, many of them kept stealing sidelong glances at the celebrity. One thing he hated, was how everybody looked at him like he was expected to perform, all the time. He could never just be. A plasma screen in the corner flashed images of men like them loading onto ships just like they would be, but the conversation was too loud to hear what they were saying about it. Since it was the Post Dispatch TV news broadcast, he could imagine it, though. Sisk-boom-bah, rah rah rah, go troops!

  After another trip to the head, just to make sure, he got all of his junior officers together and ordered a headcount, claiming a corner of a terminal waiting area as their own, right between two other units. Officially named Company C of the 4th Battalion, 2nd Regiment of the New American Expeditionary Force, they were still a few helmets short. Captain McNabb sent two corporals back to the enlisted mess hall to round the slow eaters up. After they returned and another headcount confirmed the lost sheep were all there, he had all four platoons do stretches, pushups, and sit-ups, before herding up again. The next leg of their trip would be even longer.

  Soon a loudspeaker announced directions for each unit, twice, and they pushed and shoved in a good-natured and somewhat orderly fashion to the right pier, and managed to find the right ship launch, amid the organized chaos. Walking up and down, he organized his Company by platoons, and squeezed them into lin
e with the others. The troop carrier they were set to board loomed above them, just twenty feet from the edge of the dock. The ships were really packed in tight, in and around the port. Slowly, the line started shuffling forward.

  Getting them all to their quarters as the first order of business, so the soldiers could get out of the way of the crew, and the ship could get underway. Another just like it was waiting in line next to sidle up and take on another regiment.

  In less than a half hour, they felt movement, and wished they could see the ocean topside. It felt like they were in a steel tomb. He ran his finger along a fresh weld in the bulkhead, still damp with its’ new coat of gray paint. Jack tried not to think about how far below the water line they were, or how long it would take to fight their way to the top deck if anything went wrong. He just hoped he would get used to it.

  Over the next four days, he did, kind of. In rotation each Company got some deck time each day for calisthenics and fresh air. The rest of the time was spent checking and rechecking gear, mission briefings giving updated reports on the situation as it developed, and lots of joking and story-telling and camaraderie building. Jack had been sitting in his bunk, writing a letter to Tracy, when Lt. Shaddon stuck his head in his curtain, knocking against the steel rail as he did.

  “Captain McNabb, Sir, Colonel West requests your presence in the officer’s club,

  Sir.”

  “Son of a…” Jack sighed. The letter would have to wait. Just his Harolding luck.