Snafu

by Chris Lowry

  SNAFU

  A Situation Normal Series

  By

  Chris Lowry

  Copyright 2019 Grand Ozarks Media

  All Rights Reserved

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  12 NEW BOOK SCI FI SERIES

  SNAFU – Situation Normal

  He didn’t really have a choice.

  You put a pig in a dress, but that doesn’t make it pretty.

  Join or die. Stay or die.

  No choice at all.

  Archie Walker was on death row when the aliens showed up. The smart thing would be to let all the prisoners go, but some lightbulb in the head shed decided to keep them locked up.

  Until Sgt. Hammer showed up with a deal.

  A one way mission to fight the invaders.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You look like shit.”

  Archie Warren sat up on the thin mattress on the concrete bunk and started through the bars at the man on the other side.

  “Sgt. Hammer,” he cracked a grin through one side of his face. “Didn’t they tell you not to speak to a superior officer like that?”

  Hammer grinned back.

  He was a wide man, from broad shoulders that stretched the seams of his cobbled together uniform to thick thighs that would have looked at home on a football field.

  “What I hear is you ain’t so superior anymore? What did they bust you to this time? You make it back to butterbars?”

  Archie shook his head and motioned to the narrow six by eight concrete cage that penned him.

  “I think I’m looking at home for now,” he said. “At least until the Lick get here.”

  Hammer turned his broad face and spit on the floor.

  “Fucking Licks,” he snarled. “You think we got enough to fight without fucking fighting each other.”

  Archie shrugged.

  “I think we’re always going to fight each other,” he said. “Trouble is who is still standing after the first punch is thrown.”

  Hammer glanced further up the hall.

  A second later, bootsteps echoed on the floor. Two sets of boots from the sound of it, Archie thought.

  Hammer moved back and stood at attention as a white haired gentleman in an immaculate uniform stopped in front of the cell and peered inside.

  Archie glanced at the bird on his collar.

  “Colonel,” he snapped to attention.

  “As you were,” the man answered.

  Archie went at ease and let his eyes go out of focus. It was a trick that allowed him to take in the entire field of his vision without seeming to focus on any one thing.

  He had learned it speed reading and tried it during a droning General’s lecture on field logistics.

  He was happy to find it did two things.

  Made him look attentive and kept him aware of his entire surroundings.

  At the moment, those surroundings were two concrete walls he could stretch out his arms to touch and still have room to move, and the steel bars that separated him from the ice eyed man glaring at him.

  “I told them we should kill all the prisoners,” he said in a flat voice. “Waste of time and resources that should be put into the fight.”

  Archie didn’t answer.

  What was there to say to a man who wanted him dead?

  The fact the man was on one side of the bars maybe made him a little braver than he would have been under different circumstances.

  Archie had a reputation outside the prison as a man of violence.

  Inside, he hadn’t had a chance to prove anything yet.

  “High Command has sent me to make you an offer, Warren,” the Colonel spit through the bars.

  “You gonna offer to take me out back and put a bullet into the base of my skull?”

  The man grinned but it didn’t touch his eyes.

  “If I had my way, I’d strap a bomb to every single one of you and airdrop you into Los Angeles.”

  Archie nodded.

  “I can’t argue that it wouldn’t be effective. We still losing?”

  The skin around the colonel’s eyes grew tight.

  That told Archie all he needed to know, that and the fact the man was standing here talking to him.

  “Sgt,” the Colonel said without looking at Hammer.

  “We got a General Officer Bright idea,” he answered.

  “As bad as air dropping live prisoners as kamikaze bombs?” Archie asked.

  “I didn’t say it was a bad idea,” the Colonel smirked. “I said if it was up to me.”

  “If you’re part of this GOBI, spill it Colonel. Sir. Not that I don’t like your visit breaking up my daily routine, but,” he motioned to the empty cell around him.

  “Seems like Command thinks you boys are gonna have some use after all.”

  “What is this goat rope, Sarge?”

  Hammer glanced over the Colonel’s shoulders.

  “They aren’t gonna just drop us,” he grunted. “They’re giving us parachutes.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  He didn’t know the other men in the room.

  Two guards sandwiched him between their rifles and marched him four steps behind Sgt. Hammer who trailed the Colonel to the far edge of the prison somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

  Archie knew that because he had done his crime in Kansas, and they hadn’t dragged him too far for the punishment.

  No trail needed with plenty of witnesses, and considering what he had done, he expected to be shot.

  The Army didn’t bother with hanging or lethal injection anymore, not since the Licks showed up.

  The war wasn’t going so well for humans.

  Archie knew that much.

  The big corporate civilian prisons had been emptied out in the first few years of war, sent to Mars to die by the millions.

  Gulag, concentration camp, hell, Archie had even heard rumors that refugees were shipped across the space lanes to fight as cannon fodder against the advancing alien armada.

  None of them came back.

  Mars was a death sentence, and if he had been in this prison a few years ago, it would be his.

  He might last longer than some, due to his training.

  But so far, Mars was a one way ticket.

  None of the space fleet brought anyone back.

  He glanced up at the brilliant blue sky as they led him from one building to the next.

  Everything looked empty.

  No guards, no prisoners to guard. Not anymore.

  The steel door at the end of a short corridor was guarded by one man with a rifle.

  He opened the door and Archie followed Hammer and the Colonel through.

  It closed behind him with a metallic bang.

  The Colonel was in the room alone with him.

  With them, he corrected.

  A short man with black hair sat in one of the chairs, one leg crossed over the other and watched them all with an air of detachment.

  Archie didn’t like him.

  Didn’t like his vibe, his longer than regulation hair, or the superior smug set of his face.

  The other three were almost as bad.

  At least they looked like soldiers, or some variation thereof.

  He knew with the war going the way it was, that pickings were slim and it was a take what you could get recruiting effort, but those three looked like they had at least survived basic.

  Not like the man in the chair.

  He was the only one sitting.

  One more strike against him, Archie thought. Just sitting there, looking calm and shit.

  The Colonel turned around.

  “I would tell you I’m glad you could make it, but it’s not like you had any choice,” he addressed the men in the room. “You can stand, you can
sit, this won’t take long.”

  His eyes moved over the men in the room.

  Archie stood next to Sgt. Hammer opposite the man in the chair.

  Two stood on his left, one on his right.

  They all looked pale, thin, like they had been in their cells on low rations for as long as he had been.

  Which meant the Army hadn’t decided what to do with criminals in the rank.

  Until now.

  “You’ve got a chance to do some good,” the Colonel said.

  “What’s your name?” Archie asked.

  “My name is Colonel None of your Fucking Business, shit for brains,” the Colonel answered. “Does this look like a q & a to you?”

  “Numbnuts,” Hammer muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  “This is all A, and the only answer you’re going to get is what I say. Lima Charlie?”

  The man on his right grunted a Hooah.

  “I’d tell you that you had a choice,” the Colonel continued. “But you won’t like your options. Command has decided your more valuable to us alive than dropping you out of a plane with a backpack bomb or taking you into the field and putting a .45 in the back of your head.”

  Archie nodded.

  This was a one choice mission.

  “The Licks have built up an FOB in Santa Monica. You six are going to destroy it.”

  “The Licks have landed?” Archie gulped.

  How much had happened in the few weeks he had been behind bars?

  He knew they were coming.

  Hell, everyone knew they were coming.

  But no one knew when.

  Communications with Mars had gone dark almost a year ago, and fleet communication was spotty as satellites were knocked from the sky by scout ships.

  Archie had fought several scout parties, two or four alien crews.

  But a forward operating base in Los Angeles meant they were serious about a western push.

  He wondered if there were other locations on the east coast or Texas.

  “Is this a part of a concentrated effort?” he asked.

  This squad could be one of many, he thought.

  “Need to know,” said the seated man.

  Archie shot him a look.

  “You’re telling me I’ve got one option, to go fight Lick in the streets of LA and I don’t need to know if he’s got back up?”

  He sneered at the dark haired man.

  “Where’s the map? Where’s the roster and mission plan?”

  He turned toward the Colonel.

  “You’re going to drop us strapped up, but with chutes, right?”

  The Colonel glared at Hammer before he composed his face into a stoic expression.

  “We can’t get you close to the base,” he said. “We need boots on the ground to deliver the packages with redundancies in place.”

  “Four?” Archie pointed to the line of men he stood in.

  “Six,” Hammer corrected.

  The broad man tapped himself on the chest and nodded to the man in the chair.

  “What do they have on you?” Archie asked Hammer.

  “Chance for glory and honor?”

  “Stow the gung ho bullshit, Hammer. You can sit this one out. They can’t make you do it.”

  Hammer shrugged.

  “People have lots of reasons, Arch. Not all of us need a gun to the head to do the right thing.”

  Archie sniffed.

  “And you?”

  The man spread both hands in a wide, placating gesture.

  “I know things,” he shrugged.

  “Yeah? Well I don’t know you. I don’t know any of these soldiers, except the one man who shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

  “Guards!” snapped the Colonel.

  The guard crashed open and the two soldiers that had escorted him from his cell pounded into the room.

  He tried to get in a punch or two, but they snagged his arms and cinched them behind his back.

  “Back to his cell?” the guard on his left asked.

  The colonel shook his head.

  “Shoot him.”

  They lifted on his arms and dragged him from the room.

  Hammer reached out, but the Colonel snapped out his name. The sergeant drew his hand back and watched as the two guards dragged his friend out to his death.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The guards lifted his arms up in a classic frog step move. Archie had to stay on the tips of his toes and skip along.

  Otherwise, the pressure was too much on his shoulder blades. Everything felt like it was about to come out of socket, from elbow to shoulder down to wrist.

  The right guard was adding a little twist, which hurt like hell even more.

  Archie growled.

  But the frog walk skip kept him from saying anything.

  They slammed him into the door to the outside twice before they opened it.

  He could feel a warm fountain of blood gush from his nose.

  Wouldn’t matter in a minute, he thought.

  Not the arms, not the nose, not the Licks in Los Angeles.

  They would carry him to the yard or the edge of a field and Archie Warren would cease to care about much of anything.

  It pissed him off.

  He didn’t expect to care about dying.

  As soon as he committed his crime, he figured death was on his horizon.

  And it was a short horizon.

  What was left of the military just didn’t have the resources and manpower to house and monitor prisoners.

  Wartime footing meant wartime solutions, which were often harsh and final.

  The guards dragged and fumbled him across the dead grass in the yard. It was smaller than a baseball field, surrounded on three sides by four story squat brick buildings with smooth brick walls.

  The fourth side was open to the famous fields of Kansas that stretched forever, all the way West until the Rocky Mountains crumbled up in the continental divide.

  A fifteen foot chain link fence topped with triple coils of razor wire separated him from the view.

  He was right.

  They were going to kill him in the yard.

  And they seemed like the kind of guys who would leave his body for the crows.

  It pissed him off even more.

  He waited until they slowed near the fence.

  The one on the left loosened his grip to just one hand as he moved to retrieve his weapon.

  Archie lifted his feet and fell forward.

  The guard didn’t expect the change in weight. His hand came loose.

  Archie rolled, spinning around in a jujitsu move that scissored the right guard’s legs between his.

  It ripped his other arm free, and slammed the guard face first into the dirt.

  The other one hopped back, his hand scratching for his pistol.

  Archie yanked on the right guard’s belt, found a cylinder holster and popped out a can of pepper spray.

  He wanted the .45.

  He settled for the stream of stinging spray that jetted between him and the guard standing over him.

  The man screamed and dropped his weapon.

  His hands pawed at his face as he tried to claw the fire away from his eyes.

  Archie grabbed the right guard by the hair.

  “No!” the man tried to turn his face away, squeeze his eyes tight.

  Archie jammed the nozzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  The guard couldn’t scream.

  He couldn’t even choke.

  His body reacted by vomiting everything in his stomach.

  Maybe everything he had ever eaten, Archie thought by the look of it.

  He grabbed both pistols and two extra magazines.

  Archie debated shooting them, just to protect his six, but decided against it.

  The two men were writhing on the ground, obvious in their agony, and he didn’t want to punish them just for doing their job.

  Even if they were going to shoot him.

&
nbsp; He settled for two swift kicks to the face, one each and smiled as silence settled over the empty yard.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The door was locked.

  He shook it as if the rattle would make a difference.

  He didn’t know what he would do if another guard opened it from the inside.

  Maybe he’d shoot that one.

  Archie glanced back at the two still forms in the yard.

  One of them must have the keys.

  He jogged over and did a quick search.

  The right guard had them in his pocket.

  Archie carried them back to the door and it opened to an empty corridor.

  He bolted the door from the inside and snapped the key off in the lock.

  There was no telling how much time it would buy him, but it might delay them a little.

  He just needed to get to the motor pool and get clear.

  He stuffed one pistol into the waistband of his prison issue pants and held the other ready by the side of his leg.

  The two magazines he carried in other side of his waistband.

  If someone came across him, he hoped he had time to bean them and knock them senseless.

  He didn’t really want to kill anyone.

  Anyone else, he corrected as he marched along the corridor like a man who knew where he was going.

  No one bothered a man on a mission, he thought.

  He was lucky he had been in a position of authority before. Officers had a bearing, he knew.

  Some called it arrogance, but Archie knew it wasn’t quite that.

  Confidence, maybe, that good men would follow good orders when given.

  Lots of training helped.

  But some had it natural.

  Just natural born leaders, just like natural born killers.

  Some men were born to lead others.

  He thought he was one of them, which was why he loved the Army so much.

  Some men were born to kill.

  Another reason he loved the Army.

  He just made a mistake with who.

  The corridors were empty.

  He came to an intersection with doors at the end of each short corridor and tried to remember what direction the guards dragged him.