Tomorrow War

by J. L. Bourne

  America could no longer pay for the endless wars for which it continued to engage; until the very end, we persisted with the deadly economic Russian roulette attempt to jumpstart systemic poor economic performance through outrageous Keynesian war spending.

  With echoes of Soviet fleets left abandoned after Moscow’s collapse, our unpaid military was forced to follow in Communist footsteps.

  But what happened to our military in the beginning was nothing like the gutting of our domestic security.

  Police officers were off the force in droves, replaced by the worst of the worst federal law enforcement officers—those loyal to the state and seeing anything that stood in its way as a barrier to progress. The good local and federal police resigned, most of them joining their local resistance, leaving only statists behind to man the helm of domestic security. Formerly disgruntled TSA agents were promoted to positions of power within the new Federal Police Force (FPF) and given the authority to stop travelers on any road or thoroughfare in the United States—for any reason.

  Papers, please, I thought.

  The new War Powers Act, passed by a quisling traitor provisional government, gave the FPF the powers of a judge during times of crisis, meaning that they could kill on the spot for what the state deemed as egregious violations of enacted national emergency laws. Laws such as the banning of all semi-auto firearms and some curfew violations, especially those inside prohibited areas. The list of executable offenses was too long to summarize.

  This was where the United Nations came into play. Angst fueled from decades of American exceptionalism opened the gates to outside intervention. The provisional government, in a bid to leverage power from our debt status, called upon China for help with domestic security . . . actually promising land as payment for past debts. As in U.S. soil.

  Being reliant on technological infrastructure, urban China was hit just as hard as the rest of the world when the grid was attacked, but their massive rural farmscape and mining infrastructure allowed them to revert back to preindustrial supply lines faster than most first world countries. Their place behind us in industrial development actually helped them weather the storm faster than the technologically crippled United States.

  With supply lines running back and forth with Russia, China was able to trade raw materials for military hardware. It turns out that starving Russians preferred food and diesel over their own fleet of idle naval troop transports. Intel from ex-pats overseas via HAM radio reported that in the months after the initial collapse, Chinese shipyards were buzzing with activity, returning former Russian troop transports to conditions of readiness for a transpacific voyage.

  The United States possessed thirty trillion in debt when I left for Syria last year. Yes, most of it was owned by the American people, but a huge chunk of that money was owed to the People’s Republic of China. A country that in past decades had constructed islands and claimed hundreds of miles of territorial waters above and beyond Law of the Sea Convention constraints. A country whose thousand year plan was to extend their empire east to Guam, and eventually to the west coast of the United States. The cyberattack that brought down the world seemed to accelerate that plan, as there were already quite a number of Chinese security personnel in the major population centers of the United States.

  It was rumored that self-sufficient ranches out west, rich in oil, natural gas, and cattle, had already been seized for debt payment, a move endorsed by the current government representing United States interests. Millions of acres have already been signed over in lieu of the promise of order from the Chinese. There have also been reports of Tiananmen Square–style enforcement.

  Inky had managed to become the resistance intelligence hub in this region. His communications apparatus sucked up information like a Dyson, sifting through it daily and forming accurate and actionable intelligence. He’d managed to tell me more about what had transpired since I escaped to Newton County than anyone else I’d encountered since meeting the NAI.

  After going into a lot of detail on this underground rebel base and its function, Inky brought me over to the table.

  We sat down, and his first words were “I know they have Rich, and that’s probably why you’re here.”

  I nodded and began to tell the details of what had happened since I disappeared, melting into the hills of Newton County, and how I came about the information of Rich’s subsequent incarceration.

  Inky knew Rich. Rich, me, and the ghosts were the goddamned resistance before it grew to what it was today. There was no one else in those early dark days of chaos and confusion. Inky could see the rage and pain in my eyes as I told him the information that Maggie had revealed to me.

  Slapping me on the shoulder, Inky said, “Fear not. The building they’re using is well known. We recovered the schematics from county paper records, and we have people here that used to work there; they know the layout of the floor where they’re keeping Rich. The only issue is getting inside the building perimeter fence. Once you do that, security is a lot more manageable.”

  Inky called one of his adjutants over, asking for the ex–retail giant HQ blueprints. He scurried off, returning in less than a minute with ten scrolls of paper tucked inside cardboard tubes.

  “If you can get inside the perimeter, we can get you to Rich with these,” the former marine said with confidence.

  “I can get inside, but ex-fil with an injured sixtysomething-year-old man is a different matter altogether,” I said.

  “Max, have faith. I’m sending for the three people we have nearby that used to work there before the government nationalized it. They know the things that we can’t see in these blueprints. But, please, tell me how the hell you intend on getting inside the wire?”

  I told Inky precisely what I was going to do. He just laughed and called me a crazy bastard.

  —————

  Twelve-hour Planning Session—-—FML

  I never thought all the joint planning courses I’d slogged through would ever be of any use until today. Well, they’re still a load of shit, but there was something to be said about the techniques one used to strategize a complex paramilitary operation. I started off as a one-man mission going in to get Rich, alone and unafraid; that has changed. Yes, I’m still going in alone, but I’ve also gained the advantage of power, cyber, and explosives support.

  Inky wanted Rich out of that place just as bad as I did and his actions verified that in spades.

  —————

  12 Minutes

  I took off just before midnight, flying into a slightly waning moon. Using the full tank I had, I pushed the engine to max safe RPM as the small craft began to climb high into the dark Arkansas sky. After function checking the trim settings on the aircraft, I was more confident that my plan might actually work, at least the first part of it. As the aircraft approached ten thousand feet, I twisted the valve on the oxygen bottle I’d brought with me and placed the clear plastic mask over my mouth and nose. The aircraft continued its climb.

  The snow-covered landscape below looked as if it could be a scene taken from the skies of some Siberian forest. I decided to turn the aircraft 180 degrees to give me more time to hit my target altitude. The aircraft’s battery charge held steady at fifty-two percent as it trickle charged from the small alternator being spun by the gas engine.

  As I ascended, I began to shiver from the extreme cold. My wrist altimeter read twenty thousand feet as I leveled off and kept flying north. An instrument had been retrofitted to the aircraft before the mission, which allowed me to fly over the fusion center by following a needle pointing to a transmitter placed just outside the security zone that led inside. I needed to be five hundred meters north of the beacon to be on top of the facility at 20,000. Using mental math calculations, I estimate that I had about fifteen minutes before go-time.

  I placed the O2 sensor on my freezing index finger to make sure I was getting air from the green bottle I was sharing the seat with. Satisfied with an upper 90s percentil
e on O2 saturation, I set a timer for two minutes so that I could check my readings again. I knew it would be cold at that altitude, but I didn’t expect it to be ten-below-zero cold. I flew with my knees for a bit, letting my hands defrost until the O2 reading reminder went off again.

  I repeated this cycle of cold torture what seemed like dozens of times but it could only really have been about seven based on the countdown to the facility in front of me on the iPad multifunction display running the ultralight aircraft systems.

  My face was completely numb when I cut the internal combustion, replacing propulsion with the battery. The cold must have had a negative effect on the battery’s performance, as the charge percentages began to plummet by the second. The beacon needle swung 180 degrees and I started another chronograph. I’d need to be out of the aircraft in forty-five seconds.

  My kit was prestaged. I attached the heavy pack via carabiners and straps and set the trim controls on the ultralight in a very slight climb.

  Ten seconds to go.

  I strapped my long gun across my chest, unbuckled my harness, and clutched the O2 bottle like it was my own life. When the timer began to blink wildly, I rolled out of the seat, over the safety bars, and down, down, down into the frigid air below.

  I began to flail, trying to angle my legs to stabilize my tumble. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten since training that I really needed my arms to do that. Reluctantly, I shuffled the small O2 bottle over to one arm and began to stabilize. At about 12,000 feet, I regained control of my body.

  At ten thousand feet, I removed the O2 mask and began to scan the fast-approaching earth as well as my altimeter as it spun like a ceiling fan. The winds were light and variable on the flight up, so I decided to pull the chute a little early at 9,000 feet. Unfortunately, after I did that the chute yanked so hard that I dropped the O2 bottle, sending it shooting down to the ground below, the mask and O2 line fluttering behind it like a drogue chute.

  I wasn’t yet low enough to make out any details besides the massive fusion center building, so I didn’t know where the metal bottle would land. I released my pack on a twelve-foot strap so that it would hit the ground a second before I did.

  With newfound mobility, I began to work the risers on the chute, flying to the target as I descended. There was a helicopter on the roof, but through my NVD, I could see no IR signature or signs of preflight activity. As the building got bigger, I began to wonder where my trusty ultralight might end up when the battery ran out.

  I made final course adjustments on the parachute risers, steering myself to an area of the roof a good distance behind the helo pad so that I could quickly land and stow my chute. The lack of any searchlights or activity below indicated that my O2 bottle hadn’t drawn much attention when it shot into the ground at a couple hundred knots.

  So far so good.

  The building approached at breakneck speed. A few seconds before a hard touchdown, I flared the chute, significantly slowing my descent. My pack hit first and began to drag when I landed just in front of it. Thankfully, I didn’t break anything. As soon as I hit, I deflected the impact energy, rolling from my feet to my knees, to my buttocks and up my back. The first thing I thought of was the chute. I frantically reached for the risers and began to pull the large silk half sphere down to me, crumpling it up, making it smaller so the breeze wouldn’t catch it and pull me over the side of the building. As soon as I got the chute to low vis, I released my Koch fittings and wrapped the shoot around one of the many roof vents, tying it off with the risers.

  It was time to go to work.

  I made weapons ready and adjusted my NVD, giving a knock to my front XSAPI plate if for nothing more than extra peace of mind.

  I moved forward to the roof access door positioned twenty-five meters ahead. With no movement or lights on the roof that I could see, I was beginning to feel confident. At the monolith-like roof access structure, I checked my watch.

  Twelve minutes to go.

  I planned for six minutes of extra time, not twelve. I had no clue as to how I’d made up those extra minutes. Maybe I flew too fast, or I didn’t calculate my drop speed correctly after my chute opened. It didn’t matter. I knew at that moment that all I needed to do was survive on the roof for twelve more minutes.

  I stood there hunched over in the shadows of the small access structure, calculating my plan and working out possible contingencies to things that hadn’t happened yet.

  I had five minutes remaining when the roof access door went flying open, spilling bright light into my face, whiting out my optics. The steel door behind the two unsuspecting men closed behind them with a thunk. As it did, I brought up my sub gun, instinctively firing at center mass.

  Four pops from my suppressed 9mm rang out in quick succession, punching through the chest cavities of both men, sending them stumbling out of breath to the asphalt roof, where they died in short order.

  They were armed and would have wasted me if given the chance. If you worked in this building, you were a traitor in my book—at least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

  The two men were dressed like Maggie and the goon that tried to smoke me back at my father’s cabin, the same clothes I now wore. They had sidearms, but I was already covered in that department.

  I dragged them into the moon shadow and away from the door. As I did so, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter fell from a dead hand. They were only coming outside for a cigarette break. It’s all about timing, I guess. Everything is.

  Three minutes left until go-time.

  That was when I remembered why I needed the extra minutes. I needed to work the lock that had just closed behind the guards. Quickly, I tried to bump it first, rake it second, and with only a minute remaining I had to go OG and pick the individual tumblers. My watch gave a single beep when the time came and went. The lock wasn’t letting me in.

  At one minute past go-time, things got really quiet, telling me that Inky’s people had held up their end of the deal.

  The generators that powered the building were down. Inky and his people had induced a massive charge into the local microgrid, frying the generators from a power line that ran outside the wire to a security checkpoint two miles away that they’d likely just hit. Inky assessed that he could keep the power down for thirty minutes.

  I began to sweat as my fingers became numb from trying to get through the roof door lock. I was about to give up when the last tumbler was pushed into place, calling me to torsion the cylinder over and free the internal mechanisms that were keeping me from my objective.

  I brought my gun up and opened the door. The fact that no light spilled from the door frame brought a sinister grin to my face. The power was down, and I seriously doubted that many people inside the building had NVDs, or were near enough to them that it mattered. How many times did I have them on me in the halls of the intelligence community?

  Never.

  I had a series of cards encased in a clear plastic sleeve that I wore on my left forearm.

  Simplified and miniaturized building schematics.

  I knew where the holding cells were located. Moles that worked as contractors on the inside told the NAI where they were paid to install the bars and reinforced holding units.

  I had two hundred rounds of subsonic 9mm. My trilug can checked tight on my MP5K, giving me the confidence to go kinetic at will in the halls of the fusion center.

  As I descended the stairs into the bowels of the building, I checked my schematics and headed for the nearest elevator shaft.

  Using the small titanium pry bar I’d jumped with, I forced the elevator door open, revealing, you guessed it, an elevator. Cursing, I left the open door and headed for the stairwell.

  I had about another ten minutes before the NAI rained down mortars on my position; I had to hurry.

  I hit the door open, seeing movement at the bottom of the stairs. Raising my gun, I began to descend. Red emergency lighting cast the shadow of someone approaching. As soon as the guard rounded
the corner, I blasted, but not before he let loose a round from his pistol, hitting me in the chest, hard.

  I doubled over, feeling the skin behind my bulletproof armor plates. It hurt like hell, but there was no blood. I spent the next couple of minutes recovering on the stairs, hoping that the guard was a fluke and that I still possessed the element of surprise.

  After catching my breath and fighting through the pain of being shot, I kept moving forward, down the stairs and around the landing to the floor below. At the door, I opened it slowly, creeping onto the next floor.

  Confusion abounded. Battery-powered emergency lighting was removed from the wall; people on the floor were using them to move around. I tried to act like I belonged and kept going. The clothing I wore seemed to be familiar to some, and so they went past me without even really acknowledging that I was there . . . until someone in a suit and tie began to question me.

  “What’s going on? Do you know anything?” the man in the fancy clothing asked.

  “Sir, it looks like it’s only a power disruption. Should be cleared up in a few minutes,” I responded, trying to put him at ease, so that perhaps he might do the same for the rest of the people on this floor. They were all bad guys as far as I was concerned, but I only had so many rounds and my objective was Rich. The suit scurried away wearing a bewildered look. I’d let these compartmentalized traitors live for now.

  At the elevator door, I waited for a group of workers to pass before I put the crowbar to the door again. This time I knew it’d be clear, as the elevator car was one floor above. The door budged open about two feet and I climbed through, gripping the greased cables for my descent to the basement. With only ten floors to go, the trip only took a minute. I was of course covered in thick cable grease, but I wasn’t in this mother for a fashion show.

  At the bottom of the shaft, I took off my gloves, tossing the spent rags to the grease-covered floor. The door to the basement level was about hip height, giving me perfect leverage on the center of the closed door. In a few seconds, I had the elevator door open just enough for me to squeeze through into the detention area of the fusion center.