by Tripp Ellis
There was no doubt about it, Cassandra Rawlings was committed to her cause.
President Johnson was tied to a chair in his holding cell. There was a video camera focused on him. The red record light blinked.
“You are going to look into that lens and give a statement to the world. You are going to tell them that you have surrendered the nation to the American Commonwealth Republic under my control.”
“Fuck you,” President Johnson said.
Cassandra wound back and hit him as hard as she could. Her fist slapped against his face. Blood spurted from his nose and lip. There was a deep gash across the bridge of his now crooked nose. You could see the white bone underneath it.
“I will hit you as hard as I can, for as long as I have to. There is no limit to what I will endure.”
“And there is no limit to what I will endure.” Johnson spit blood and saliva as he spoke. His left eye was swollen shut. It looked like an egg plant.
Cassandra pummeled him once again.
The president spit a pink mix of blood and saliva on the floor. “I will never surrender. I will never negotiate.”
She clobbered him again.
His head whipped around from the impact. His neck was sore as hell. He probably had a bulging disc in the cervical spine. Every time she hit him, he felt the shock run through his neck and down his arm.
“At this point, what exactly do you think it is that you’d be inheriting?” the president muttered. “Have you looked around? There’s not much left?”
“We have legions waiting in shelters throughout the country. Waiting to emerge on my command.”
“You think you can just wait out the infection?”
“This virus is modified. The infected will be truly dead within a week.”
“I don’t think you have as much time as you think you have.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
The president grinned.
Cassandra hit him again. “Right now, I am the most powerful woman in the world.” She unholstered her pistol and pressed it against his head. “I think shooting you and broadcasting it to the world will illustrate that very well.”
President Johnson chuckled.
Cassandra looked at him, perplexed.
“I’ve got a signal,” Susan said.
Steele adjusted course to head for the new target.
The blip on Susan’s tracking display was somewhere over Central Texas—if it was correct. Steele estimated the distance would take about 20 minutes of flight time.
Susan accessed the network. She pulled up as much information on Red Viper and Cassandra Rawlings as she could find. Cassandra served in the military and was an operator in the Special Warfare Command. Highly decorated. Later recruited by the CIA and the Special Activities Division and the Special Operations Group. You had to be a total bad ass to even be considered for such elite units. Best of the best. But something obviously went very wrong.
She leaked classified intelligence to North Korea. The extent of the leak was still not fully known. But a host of weapons systems and cyber security weaknesses were among the most damaging. Shortly thereafter, North Korea bolstered their nuclear capability, invaded the South, then took over Japan. After the leak was discovered, Cassandra vanished without a trace and had been atop the most wanted list. At some time during 2035, it was speculated that she reentered the country and started recruiting forces. Largely with the financial backing of the North Korean government.
Steele circled the area indicated by the tracking app. It was a rural area in the Texas hill country. Nothing but mesquite trees, shrub brush, and prickly pears. The CAV surveillance cameras didn’t detect any movement on the ground—apart from a few deer, an armadillo, and 3 jackrabbits. The cameras did, however, sync the tracking signal to an item on the ground. But it wasn’t the president.
“I don’t see him,” Steele said. “Are you sure this isn’t another glitch?”
“I’m positive,” Susan said. “Set us down.”
Steele landed the CAV in a nearby clearing. He crawled out of the cockpit and headed for the back ramp. Delroy, Earl, and Duke were passed out. They were snoring like buzz saws. It was 4:30am, and they were all stretched a little thin on sleep. Steele slammed the butt of his rifle against the bulkhead. The clamor wrecked their slumber.
“Rise and shine, ladies,” Steele barked.
The cargo area was filled with sleepy eyes peeling open. Delroy, Duke, and Earl pulled themselves together and grabbed their gear.
Steele hit the ramp release, and the makeshift squad filed out of the CAV, weapons ready. They were out in the middle of nowhere. The night sky was crisp and clear. The stars shined bright and flickered. Steele could hear a coyote howl in the distance. They moved through the brush, following Susan’s tracking device. When they reached the exact coordinates, there was nothing.
Steele’s eyes scanned the ground. He caught sight of something underneath a prickly pear. He reached down and picked up a blood encrusted tooth. It was the president’s molar, embedded with a tracking chip.
Susan’s eyes widened. She deflated, and her face was grim. A thin mist of sweat coated her face, and she looked pallid. The stress was getting to her.
“Don’t worry. He’s still alive,” Steele said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because they’d have dumped his body if he was dead. Not just a tooth. You don’t go to the trouble of pulling out tracking chips unless you’re planning on keeping someone around for a while. My guess is they’re holding him somewhere between here and the point where you initially lost the signal. Probably underground.”
“Why underground?”
Steele eyed the tooth. “This is essentially the same type of tracker implanted in military personnel. The transponders tend to lose signal when blocked by thick concrete or metal.”
“Like a bunker,” Susan said, putting the pieces together. “That’s why we lost the signal temporarily.”
Steele nodded. “This is a perfect base of operation. Remote and isolated. Hundreds of square miles of rural land. You could build an army out here and no one would ever know.”
“But why leave his tooth here?”
“Who knows. Decoy, maybe? A distraction? Or maybe they plan to ambush whoever comes looking for this tracking chip?” Steele thought for a moment that maybe he had walked right into a trap. But the fact that nobody was sniping at him was a good sign.
“We’re running out of time.” Susan looked distraught.
“We’ll find him,” Steele said, trying to comfort her.
“I’ll tell you one thing you found,” a craggy voice yelled. “Trouble.” The words were followed by the sound of a pump action shotgun.
CLACK, CLACK.
Steele’s eyes snapped to the owner of the voice. It was a scrawny old man in overalls. He emerged from behind a mesquite tree. He had a crooked nose and sunken cheeks, thin from age. He had a black border collie with him that was snarling.
This was a man who had spent most of his 70-some-odd years on a tractor, plowing a field. His skin was lined and splotched. He was mean and ornery—and that was when he was in a good mood. But he was alive, and that was something unusual. He didn’t seem infected.
“You’re trespassing,” the man said. “I told you sons-of-bitches last time to stay off my property. Now I’ve got to put some buckshot in your ass.” He didn’t give two shits that he was outgunned and outmanned. Somebody was going to catch hell for trespassing across his land. And if he got shot and killed in the process of defending his turf, he figured that would be a good way to go out. He sure as hell didn’t want to go out sucking on an oxygen tank in a hospital room. He’d already seen too many friends go out that way, and that wasn’t for him.
“Sir, we didn’t mean to trespass. I’m Major Jack Steele, United States Army, Special Forces, Zulu.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn who you are. I told you wing-nuts to stay off my land, and I meant it
.”
“Sir, we’ve never been on your property before.”
“Don’t backtalk me, boy. I’ll put a hurt’n on you, Zulu Force pussy.”
Steele had to stifle a laugh. This old man was feisty. Steele kind of liked that about him. This was probably how the major would turn out in another 40 years. Cranky and old and still full of piss and vinegar.
“What branch did you serve in, sir?” Steele asked.
The man stood at attention. “1st Marine Raider Division, Special Operations Command,” he hollered with gusto. “I’m Gunnery Sergeant Boyd McKay.”
“Semper Fi,” Steele said. It was the Marine Corps slogan: Always Faithful.
“Ooh Rah.”
“We need your help, Gunny,” Steele said. “This is Susan Norton, the National Security Advisor. The president has been kidnapped. We’re on a mission to retrieve him.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed to slits. He wasn’t sure if Steele was full of shit, or not.
26
“Don’t you watch TV. Mr. McKay?” Susan asked.
“Hell no. Why would I waste time with that idiot box?”
“So, you have no idea what’s going on in the outside world?”
“The whole world could collapse, and I could care less. Me and Buddy got more than enough supplies to last a lifetime.”
Buddy barked in agreement. The old man smiled and reached down to pet him.
“At your age, that’s what, like two weeks?” Duke quipped.
“Boy, I will put my boot in your ass.”
“I hate to break it to you, but the world has collapsed,” Susan said.
“Can’t say as I’m surprised. It’s been heading that way for years.”
“You mentioned trespassers.” Steele said. “Tell me about them.”
“Military types. Wannabes, though. Not real military. Always playing their damn war-games. They bought Turnbull’s farm. Almost 2000 acres. You’d think that’d be plenty of room to keep them off my property. Always raising a ruckus. Firing weapons all hours of the night. Blowing shit up. If I wanted to hear that, I’d re-enlist.”
“Where’s Turnbull’s farm,” Steele asked.
The old man pointed a crooked finger. “Right over yonder.”
Susan looked at her GPS device. She nodded to Steele. McKay was pointing towards the location where they first lost the president’s tracking signal.
“What else do you know about these military types?” Steele asked.
“I know they’ve got a hell of a compound. Tanks. Aerial vehicles. They’ve even got an underground command bunker.”
“How do you know all this?” Delroy asked.
“I seen it, son.” McKay glared at him. “Hell, if they can sneak across my property, I can sneak across theirs. Me and Buddy had to go check it out. Wasn’t the first time I’ve ever pulled a recon operation.” He grinned, slyly.
“Can you show us exactly where the bunker is?” Steele asked.
Retired Gunnery Sergeant Boyd McKay puffed up his chest and stood tall. This sounded like a real mission. And he hadn’t been on a real mission in a long time.
McKay led Steele, Delroy, Duke, and Earl through the rugged terrain. He had an RK 709 that Steele had given him. If they ran into any trouble, that shotgun of his wasn’t going to cut it.
Buddy followed along. Steele wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about having a border collie as part of the reconnaissance team. He loved dogs, but a stray bark could give away their position. But McKay wasn’t going anywhere without Buddy. And Buddy wasn’t going to let McKay go anywhere without him. McKay assured Steele that Buddy knew how to handle himself on covert ops.
At the edge of the property, they scaled the rickety barbed wire fence that led to the old Turnbull farm. For a guy in his late 70s, McKay was surprisingly nimble. He got over that fence better than Earl did.
They snuck through the brush. But it wasn’t long before Steele grabbed McKay by the arm. He signaled for the rest of the team to stop. Buddy whimpered.
“What is it?” McKay whispered.
Steele pointed to a clump of prickly pears 10 feet ahead.
Delroy shrugged. “So what? It’s a cactus.”
“Look again,” Steele said.
Delroy’s eyes fell over the disagreeable looking plant, dropping down to the ground. He saw something even more disagreeable—a proximity mine.
They were about the size of tennis balls, with hundreds of sensor prongs. They were programmed to detect micro vibrations consistent with ground targets. Black orbs of death. Anything that came within a 10 foot radius would be blown to smithereens. They were made of dielectric composite materials, like stealth bombers, and were almost impossible to detect. They were the reason Steele was half man, half machine.
Delroy looked at Steele in awe. “How the hell did you see that?”
“I didn’t.”
Delroy’s face twisted up, perplexed.
“I heard it.”
Now Delroy was really confused. Proximity mines didn’t make a sound, apart from the initial activation alert.
All but the latest models of proximity mines emitted a high pitched whine around 50 kHz. It was above the range of human hearing. Buddy heard it. Steele heard it—the benefits of a bio-mechanical hearing implant. It was at the upper end of the hearing spectrum for most dogs. Some could hear it, some couldn’t. It made them unreliable mine detectors. Just like people, the older the dog, the less high frequency hearing they have. The high pitched hum was a design flaw that had subsequently been corrected in newer models. But there were still plenty of the old models in the field.
Steele tapped his enhanced ear.
Delroy sighed. “No fair.”
“Go blow yourself up. You can get one too.”
“I’ll pass.”
Proximity mines liked company. If there was one, there were dozens.
“Maybe you better let me take point, Gunny,” Steele said.
McKay nodded. He pointed in the direction of the compound. Steele weaved the squad safely through the maze of proximity mines that littered the field.
They had an hour of darkness left, if they were lucky. Assaulting a heavily fortified compound during broad daylight was not Steele’s first choice. By the time they arrived at the outskirts of the outpost, the sky was already beginning to lighten.
The compound wasn’t much to look at from the outside. Built into the side of a mammoth hill, two large metal blast doors led to an underground bunker. Above ground was a CAV, an armored personnel carrier, and a tank. They were covered in camouflage netting. The fabric was made of paper thin, flexible LED screens. They mimicked the surrounding terrain, making the vehicles virtually invisible from above.
Steele could see the Red Viper emblem painted on the side of the CAV. They were in the right place. The trick was going to be getting into the compound.
“That’s it?” Delroy said. “These guys brought America to its knees with a tank, a CAV, and an APC?”
“They’ve got equipment hidden all over the property,” McKay said.
“Still, this is nothing,” Delroy said.
“Apparently, it was enough,” Steele said. Through his tactical goggles, he zoomed in on the blast doors. “How many troops do they have?”
“Hard to say,” said McKay. “They got at least two full platoons.”
“Well, that’s a fair fight,” Delroy said. “The five of us against 100 men?” He shook his head.
“Is there another way in?” Steele asked.
“Not that I know of,” McKay said.
“Looks like we’ve got to go in through the front door,” said Steele.
“How are we going to do that?” Delroy asked.
27
“Delroy, can you drive a tank?” Steele asked.
“I can drive anything.”
“Have you ever driven one before?”
“Not exactly.”
“I can drive,” Earl said.
Steele shot him a
sideways glance.
“I play Armored Aggressor: Urban Tank Assault all the time.”
“This isn’t a video game, Earl,” said Steele.
“Armored Aggressor is pretty bad ass,” Delroy said. “It’s multi-payer and you fight in tank teams.”
“It’s an accurate simulator,” Earl said. “That tank there is an M9 Apex A2 Thunderbolt. It’s got a multi-fuel turbine engine, composite armor, 120mm smoothbore gun that fires the M997-A4 armor piercing or the M998-A2 high explosive anti-tank round. It’s got—“
“Okay, okay,” Steele conceded. “I get it. It needs a four man crew to operate. A driver—
“We know,” Duke said. “A gunner, a loader, and—“
“Tank commander,” Steele finished.
“Let me guess, you’re going to be the tank commander?” Delroy said.
Steele scowled at him. “Earl, you drive. Duke, you load. Delroy, you’re the gunner.”
“Yes.” Delroy clenched his fist in celebration.
“What the hell am I gonna do?” McKay asked.
“Observe,” Steele said.
“Horse shit. I want in on the action.”
“Get up on that ridge and snipe targets.”
“Now you’re talking.” McKay started to head for the high ground.
“And keep an eye out for those proximity mines.”
McKay patted Buddy and grinned. “I got my ears with me.”
Steele kept low and ran toward the CAV. The others followed single file behind him. He lifted up the camouflage netting and ducked under. Then he affixed magnetic grenades to the hull. He placed one on the top side of the nose. The blast would take out all of the navigation electronics. He placed grenades into thrusters as well. He could remotely detonate them at any time. The last thing he wanted was Red Viper soldiers in a tank busting CAV.
When all the charges were in place, Steele scurried to the M9 Apex Thunderbolt tank. He crawled under the camouflage netting and held it up for the others. Earl climbed onto the hull and opened the hatch to the driver’s hole. Then he climbed inside.