The Shift: Book II of the Wildfire Saga

by Marcus Richardson

  The NKors were certainly wearing heavy duty body-armor. Nothing like he’d ever seen before. Through frustrating trial and error, he and his team had discovered the only way to take them out was to aim for the face or anywhere below the knees. Otherwise, the little bastards just kept coming and there seemed to be a shit ton of them in San Diego. Cooper had some serious doubts about the success rate of his mission.

  “Sparky, talk to me—”

  “Still no contact. It’s like our gear doesn’t even transmit…wait one.”

  Cooper heard the crack of the sniper’s rifle and clicked his helmet’s HUD display to see what the team sniper saw. A body in the street. The sniper’s view shifted to another target and jerked as the rifle bucked. Cooper watched the little picture-in-picture window as the target’s head disappeared and the body crumpled to the pavement. He then saw himself, backed-up against the concrete barrier. The NKor had been only a few yards away.

  “Time to fall back,” Cooper announced. He switched back from the sniper’s view to his own. There were just too many NKors and not enough SEALs. The mission had been risky—Cooper had known that from the start—but with an entire Marine Expeditionary Unit on their heels, he’d felt confident they could pull it off. All he and his team had needed to do was perform another HAHO jump and infiltrate the NKor base.

  Join the Navy, they said. See the world, they said…

  Cooper looked to his left and saw another NKor creep around the corner of the burned-out 7-Eleven, trying to flank Jax. He lined up his HK MP5SD and whistled. The enemy soldier looked in his direction an instant before three 9mm rounds dropped him to the ground in a spray of blood.

  Gunfire rattled around him as the SEALs slowly fell back toward the San Diego Public Library. The perimeter was collapsing—his team was hemmed in on the west, south, and east. The library was their third expedient fall-back point. Cooper was running out of options and the NKors just kept coming out of the woodwork.

  Getting in was the easy part. Nobody said there’d be this many shock troops. He adjusted the grip on his rifle and checked team POVs using the little picture-in-picture feature of his HUD again. The NKors had acted like they wanted the SEALs to gain entry to the base they were constructing around PetCo Park. There were very few guards and not much of an internal security presence, considering the ball field had been turned into some sort of regional HQ.

  On their way in, Cooper had spotted a handful of Chinese cargo planes—clearly marked with the Chinese flag, no less—and a small private jet. Their intel had been correct on that point, at least. The Chinese had sent some grand Poobah to meet with the NKor high command. It was the proof the President needed to implicate China in the invasion.

  It had all been too easy to this point. He should’ve known something was wrong. The intel boys were never that good.

  Cooper smacked the back of his helmet against the wall in frustration. The HUD crackled and Jax’s view of another dead NKor in the street was tickled by static before snapping back into clarity. I should’ve smelled this trap a mile away.

  Everything had gone to shit after they’d wiped out the command staff at PetCo Park. Cooper had snagged all the paperwork he could find: maps, dispatches, reports—he didn’t take the time to examine anything, just grabbed it all. The others had pilfered hard drives and data sticks while Charlie had laced the place with C-4. They’d lit up PetCo Park and disappeared into the night to await the rolling thunder of General Rykker and his Marines.

  Then he’d discovered their comms were dead. He could communicate with his team and that was it. After they’d completed their part of the mission—Charlie had mentioned it had been too easy and Cooper had laughed it off.

  A helmet bobbed along over the other side of a traffic barrier Jax was using as cover. With the patience developed over a decade of covert ops, Cooper trained his rifle and waited. Come on, just a little further, you little son of a bitch…

  “Jax, you got one over your right shoulder, about four yards. Don’t move, I got ‘im.”

  “Just be careful where you aim…”

  Cooper ignored the jibe and watched, blocking out the gunfire and sounds of battle that echoed down the streets all around him. Eventually the enemy helmet stopped moving about ten feet from Jax and a face appeared over the barrier for a quick peek. Cooper carefully squeezed the trigger and dispatched another NKor.

  Jax was drawing them in like flies to sugar—he was purposely exposing himself so he could get longer shots down their flank. It was working in that the NKors were having to loop farther south and east. They were now moving into the expansive parking lots of PetCo Park, filled with supply vehicles and construction equipment. It was a good tactic, but the NKors were starting to focus too much on Jax.

  “Pull back a little, Jax—you’re attracting too much attention. I can’t cover your ass all day—”

  “It’s cool, Coop. There’s a mobile command truck down the street, I think I can—”

  An explosion knocked Cooper to the ground. The noise was muffled by his sound-dampening HAHO helmet. For that much, he was grateful—but it couldn’t stop the overpressure. He cursed again as he got to his hands and knees and tried to peer through the gloom of sudden twilight. Smoke, ash, and dust swirled around him. He switched to IR and the world went gray, but at least he could see the buildings and the parked cars that blocked his path to the library.

  “Mortar fire!” called out Sparky’s voice. The sniper was perched up near the peak of the funky, cage-like structure on top of the San Diego Public Library. “I got eyes on…I’ll start to loosen ‘em up, but you ladies might want to think about getting the hell out of there.”

  Three barks from his MacMillan TAC-338 and Sparky signaled the all clear. Cooper crept along the crumpled wall until he found Jax. “You okay?” The mortar had landed almost exactly between them and left a small crater in the street.

  Jax’s dented HAHO helmet nodded as he slid on his back away from the new opening in his wall. “That was fun,” he muttered.

  Cooper switched to night vision and scanned the streets. There was still too much smoke. A car, tossed on its side from the mortar round, had burst into flames and continued to feed a thick blanket of black smoke across the street, effectively screening their position. Thank God for small miracles.

  “Let’s go—they’ll be lobbing some more at us when they realize they missed,” Cooper said, hauling Jax to his feet.

  “Coop, now’s your chance. They can’t see through that smoke anymore than we could without our gear. They’re clustering together on the other side of that intersection to our south.”

  Sparky’s observation from his perch high atop the library made Cooper’s decision easy. Time to go. They had been on the run since the trap had been sprung, three long hours ago. Cooper had known they were on their own when the NKor base suddenly came to life and they discovered hundreds, if not thousands of enemy soldiers pouring in toward their position.

  His team had completely taken over the command and control building, wiped out the entire command staff—including the Chinese grand Poobah—taken photographic and physical evidence, and sabotaged the NKor comms and defensive network.

  There should have been nothing stopping the Marines from rolling into the base and slaughtering everything that moved. It had been the middle of the night, after all. Instead, at 0125 hours, precisely 15 minutes after the mission plan called for the Marines to have arrived on-scene, every light on the base turned on, all the buildings emptied of fully-armed soldiers, air-raid sirens wailed, and the Marines never showed.

  Cooper and his team found themselves without comms, without Marines, and surrounded by an army of pissed-off North Koreans. There was no other explanation required. It had been a trap. A setup.

  The SEALs, however made a quick and bloody evacuation through the enemy forces—after all, this was Naval Base San Diego, so it was like walking through a long-time neighbor’s house—and made their escape. They had home-fie
ld advantage. Even still, Cooper and his team barely survived long enough to reach the San Diego Public Library.

  The retreat had been costly. He’d lost three men during the flight from the NKor base.

  Before they left, Admiral Bennet had explained that trainee’s from the current BUD/S class would be added to augment Cooper’s depleted Team. In addition, three veteran SEALs, on sick-leave stateside when the invasion began, were reassigned to Cooper.

  There’d been no communication from the other Teams located overseas: one in Pakistan, one in Afghanistan. Even if they could be reached and were alive, Admiral Bennet didn’t have much hope they could arrive in time to help fight the invasion.

  Cooper ducked again as a lucky shot through the smoke shattered a window behind him. The NKors were definitely moving. He heard a high-pitched whine and looked up into the murky haze. Another mortar screamed overhead. Two more added their noise to the first. “This is it, boys. Everyone inside the library!”

  “Moving,” said Charlie. “Maughan is with me.”

  Cooper winced. Charlie was half-supporting, half-training Jack Maughan, one of the trainees. Fresh out of BUD/S, he hadn’t even gone through Hell Week yet. Throwing raw recruits in with the veterans might have made sense to the Brass, but now that everything had gone goat-fuck sideways, the kids were paying the price. Two of their three KIAs were rooks. Cooper added that to his list of discussion topics for Admiral Bennet when—if—he returned to Colorado.

  He ducked as the first mortar impacted a building across the street. The explosion sent bricks raining down like hailstones on to the pavement below. Cooper’s head jerked forward as one orange chunk bounced off his helmet. I’m going to find out who sold us out and kill the son of a bitch.

  “Right behind you,” growled Swede’s voice. He had a trainee as well.

  “Clutch, on the move,” called out the voice of Master Chief Calvin “Clutch” Larkiss, one of the veterans. He had been recovering from a back injury when the world had turned upside down. As one of the walking wounded, Clutch had been part of the small group successfully evacuated from Coronado. The North Korean onslaught had been so sudden, Cooper learned, most had been left between. Cooper didn’t want to think about what had happened to the bedridden.

  “Copy that,” replied Deklan “Juice” Johns. Another transplant, but at least he was a veteran. He didn’t talk much, but Cooper had to respect the man’s combat ability.

  The second and third mortars pock-marked Park Blvd. “Let’s go,” Cooper said as he slapped Jax on the back. They retreated back to back toward the eastern side of the library.

  “I got movement on thermal,” warned Sparky from the library’s roof. “They’re probing, nothing serious. You got about thirty seconds before they see you.”

  Cooper and Jax turned and ran for the building. The library had been used early during the flu crisis as a gathering place for the homeless when the police and emergency services began to wind down. The weaponized flu had struck especially hard in San Diego and while they hadn’t come across piles of bodies like they had in their escape from L.A., Cooper was almost as creeped out by the fact that most buildings appeared completely deserted. The Public Library had been no exception.

  “They knew we were coming,” muttered Swede’s voice from somewhere inside the building.

  Cooper paused just inside the wide entrance and peered out looking for targets. No one had followed them. He kept his rifle at his shoulder and backed into the darkened library’s huge multi-floor foyer. The garbage and leavings of the homeless littered the ground floor. Yeah, the homeless knew we were coming as much as the NKors. Bet they could hear the fighting from three miles away. When it got louder, they left. Smart move.

  He swept the foyer and finally lowered his weapon when he was satisfied it was empty. Problem is, the NKors knew we’d head here too. There’s no other explanation for the mortars. He looked around the circulation desk. This was the last of our backup rendezvous points. This mission has been fucked from the moment we jumped. Someone’s going to pay for this.

  “Okay, everyone’s up off the main floor,” reported Charlie’s voice.

  Cooper turned and sprinted up the long, frozen escalator. “Let’s get the perimeter set. Charlie, take the kids to that overhang on the second floor and set up shop. Jax, Clutch, and Juice, you lock down the corners. Swede, check the fire escapes. I’ll cover the main entrance from here.”

  “Still nothing on comms,” reported Sparky from the rooftop. “Foot-mobiles approaching from the south and west.”

  “Dammit,” hissed Cooper. He slapped a hand on the safety railing. They were good and trapped. He knew this would happen sooner or later when they’d made their impromptu retreat from the base. They had no choice. It was either sit there and die as wave after wave of expendable NKors crashed into them, or make a run for it. If they continued to run now, eventually they’d have to hole up somewhere and they’d be trapped all over again. Without the Marines to back them up or comms to call in air support or evac, they were on their own.

  Lose-lose situations pissed Cooper off.

  “We gotta find a way to unfuck ourselves,” he muttered to himself as he peered out the gaping maw of the library’s main entrance. Damn doors had to be at least three stories tall. He marveled at the sheer size of the library—it felt more like a cathedral.

  “Coop,” said Swede. Static crackled over the radio.

  “Yeah.”

  “Got what looks like a construction exit on the north end of the building. Someone was doing some repairs here awhile back. There’s a couple of CALTRANS trucks parked out back. No movement.”

  Finally. Something seemed to be going their way. “Sparky?”

  After a brief pause, the sniper reported in: “I got nothing new. Scouts are still approaching. The rest are all clustered at the south-west end of the block I’d say about 50 or 60. They try and rush us, it’ll be fun. Scattered heat signatures to the north—mostly civilian I think. Yogurt’s startin’ to get a little thick, Coop.”

  “Fuckin’ A, bubba,” replied Cooper. The situation was going from bad to worse. More mortars landed just south of the library. Two of the huge windows below him shattered, the noise almost as loud as the mortar impacts. He ducked behind the railing and turned his head. Jesus. When they train those rounds on this place, we’re dead.

  Cooper flicked his eyes down and looked at the local time displayed in the glowing blue numbers of his HUD. 0442 hours. Little more than an hour left before dawn. “Check the trucks, Swede. If they got gas and we can use ‘em, they might be our only ticket out of here.”

  “I’ll cover you,” said Sparky. “North seems pretty clear, but I got movement out of the PetCo Park lots, you need to hustle, brother. They’re going to flank us.”

  “Roger that. Moving,” said Swede.

  “Everybody, listen up,” Cooper said. “New game plan. If Swede can get those trucks running we’re buggin’ out. Everyone be ready to bounce in five. Reload and grab a drink if you got it. Keep your eyes sharp and for God’s sake, stay frosty.” Cooper tightened the grip on his rifle and peered into the darkness. If they could get out of the city, they might just have a chance of surviving the day.

  He was surprised that NKor helicopters weren’t patrolling the skies already. We must have done more damage than I thought back at their base. That’s something, I guess…

  Static crackled and popped when Swede reported, “One truck’s good to go, the other’s toast.”

  Damn. “Can we all fit?”

  Swede chuckled. “Gonna look like an ISIS limo, but yeah, I think we’ll fit. I got dibs on shotgun.”

  “Aw, dammit!”

  “Shut up, Jax,” Cooper said. He couldn’t keep the smile from his voice. “You got bitch seat. I’ll drive. Let’s go, ladies! North side construction entrance, ground floor. Be there in two, or I’m leaving your ass.”

  Cooper was proud to see his team assemble in the pre-dawn darkness in less
than two minutes. A rope dropped out of the dark sky not twenty feet from the truck. As Cooper made sure the last of the rooks had climbed into the back of the truck bed, he watched Sparky’s shadowy form slide down the rope in silence. Hanging beneath him was a large gear bag and his rifle, attached to his hip by a second rope. He landed on the ground like a ghost and loaded up without a word.

  Cooper slapped the back of the truck. “You kids keep your Goddamn heads down below the utility boxes. We might just make SEALs out of you yet.”

  Cooper climbed in behind the wheel and flashed a grin at Jax, wedged in the middle seat next to Swede’s bulk. “The fuck you lookin’ at?” he growled.

  Cooper shook his head and laughed. He couldn’t see Jax’s face for the HAHO helmet he wore, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t smiling. “HQ, if anyone’s listening, Striker is Oscar Mike.”

  “Got the map ready,” said Jax, the sullenness gone from his voice. Cooper could see the glow from Jax’s wrist-mounted map pad out of the corner of his eye. “Where to?”

  “Head north and east. Got a known checkpoint two blocks east and one south. If we can get past that…”

  Cooper knew what that meant. From there, it was a straight shot—as straight as one could get in a huge city like San Diego—to the desert. Or, they could head south into the suburbs.

  Chula Vista. Home.

  He switched POVs and saw Charlie looking at the map pad on his own arm. He had focused in on Chula Vista. Cooper sighed. The mission was a bust. They were running for their lives. Why not see what they could find? This could be the last day any of them ever saw…

  Cooper made up his mind. “Hold on to your asses, ladies. We’re going home.”

  “Coop—” began Charlie.

  “Charlie, I’ll make you a deal,” said Cooper as he turned the key and the big diesel roared to life. The NKors had to have heard that. He winced. They’ll be on us in no time, as loud as this thing sounds. “You keep ‘em off my ass and we’ll make a bee-line for your house. Deal?”