Krieger Platoon

by Jay Ivanovich

  Chapter 14 – Sure thing…

  The phone began to ring, and ring, and ring with its high pitched chirping for what seemed like an eternity. “Specialist Werner! Answer the phone!” Brett continued to type up the last of his after action report for Camp Iron with the information he received from Colonel Kirovich. Hopefully the brass would read it and rethink its recent order to recall EVERY unit in the field… ‘Think’ wasn’t really something they did too often… The phone was still continuously ringing, and Brett finally had enough. He walked out of his office and into the lobby and noticed his secretary was gone…no wonder.

  He picked up the phone at almost the same time Specialist Werner came sprinting down the hall; dropping her head in shame as Brett answered for her. Brett grinned toward her. “Hello, this is General Travis’ Office.” The phone line went dead as soon as he spoke. He glanced at the phone caller ID before setting it down, the number was zeroed out. “Well…that was strange.”

  Werner breathed in deeply and seemed to be on the verge of hyper ventilating. “General, I apologize…I had to use the latrine and I didn’t think anyone would call…”

  Brett held up his hand and flashed her a friendly smile. “Its fine, don’t worry! I’m going to scold you for using the bathroom. Just make sure if whoever that was calls back, make a note of their number and the time they called.”

  Brett returned to his office and quietly closed the door. He reclined back in his overstuffed leather chair and spun around for a moment, looking out his office windows toward the large man-made lake until he’d felt a tinge of dizziness creep up on him. The sun was in its final descent over the hills, and reflected off the glassy surface of the lake in a beautiful and almost hypnotic way. It reminded him of the lake his family use to visit when he was a child. Big Bear Lake…that was the name, how could he ever have forgotten that? Wonder if Mars will ever have lakes and forests like that…

  Brett continued to stare out of the window for a long moment before pulling himself back from nostalgia. He checked his watch and sighed anxiously; it was already 21:04… Krieger was an hour late and still no word from them... He really should tell Werner to go home… The phone rang on Brett’s desk a moment later, this number was blocked on the screen as well. Brett cautiously picked up the receiver, as if doing so would reveal whoever had called prior. “General Travis’ Office…”

  “Hi Brett, are you still working? Can you talk right now?” Brett smiled, it was his wife Patricia. Strange that the numbers were blocked though, he would have the IT guys look at it later. “Hi Honey, I’m taking a break for the moment, so yeah I can. Have you got ahold of the kids yet?”

  “Um…no I haven’t heard back from them. All the phones have been acting funny and the calls keep getting dropped, voice and text mail isn’t working either. There are soldiers all over the street now and they are talking about locking up the whole city… I’m really worried…Should I go try to find them?”

  There was a very real stress behind her words, and it naturally made Brett a little worried. He shook his head, even though she obviously couldn’t see it. “Well, at this point it may just be safer for you to stay there in the house.”

  “I don’t know what I should do… All of this is so horrible…I can’t stop feeling like something bad happened to them…”

  Brett leaned forward across his desk, and may have been a little harsher than he’d intended. “Listen, nothing bad has happened to them. All the lock up talk and all of that is just a precaution. Give it a few days and everything should go back to normal.”

  There was a subtle knock on the door as Specialist Werner slowly peeked in. “Uh General, sorry to disturb you but Colonel Kirovich and Colonel Reverent are here to see you. They say it’s urgent.”

  Travis nodded and smiled at her, holding his hand across the microphone. “Thanks, just tell them I’ll be a minute…” He uncovered the mic, and breathed out a sigh. “Patricia are you still there?”

  “Yes…what should we do? Should I call the police or someone?”

  Brett rubbed his eyes. Here he was sitting comfortably in his office, while his wife sat by herself hundreds of miles away, and stressing over a situation that only seemed to be getting worse. What could he possibly tell her at this point? “You could, but the police are dealing with a lot already. The kids will call back soon, don’t worry. If we don’t hear from them in a few days then we’ll figure something out. They’re all responsible adults and they’ll do the right thing, we raised them right.”

  Honesty was the best policy, but Brett didn’t really believe his own words. It seemed like he was just saying it to help his wife feel better. Maybe he was? “I need to go now though, some of my Officers are here and it’s important I speak with them…”

  Bag and Jon barged in a second later, completely caked in dust and grime head to toe, and still wearing full combat gear from the field. Brett held up his hand to indicate they should wait. “Ok Patricia…I love you…I’ll call you again in a few.” She responded with a hint of disappointment, but Brett didn’t have much he could do at the moment. “Ok….be safe Brett. I love you too…”

  Bag closed the door behind him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt a personal call. Was that Trish? How’s she doing?”

  Brett nodded and let out a long sigh. “She’s doing fine… I guess the cities are all going on lock down. Things could be better…but everyone is fine right now…” He didn’t want to think otherwise either.

  Bag nodded, and knew from Brett’s expression it was best just to drop the topic. “Right, I’m glad to hear it… So you going to tell me what’s going on now? I have heard a lot of rumors in the past few hours.”

  Jon grunted and took up his characteristic shitty tone when he was pissed off about something. “Not to mention scrapping the entire mission that YOU sent us on in the first place… Seriously Patriot, that was bullshit. A lot of bullshit.”

  Brett stretched out in his chair. He didn’t want to deal with this right now, but they had to know. “Well to put it plainly, the President and most of his cabinet were killed in a ‘terrorist’ attack earlier this morning at Congressional Hall. The best part is the weapons the attackers used were all found to be European made and very modern. There is rioting in the major cities, raiders are running rampant through the frontier, and martial law has been declared pretty much everywhere in the US. The EU and the rest of the nations with military presence are on high alert…and let’s just say tensions haven’t been this high since the last war…and we know how that ended.”

  Jon looked annoyed. “So…you mean to tell me the EU killed our President? That’s out fucking standing…”

  Brett sighed with frustration at Jon’s quick conclusion. “We don’t know it was them for sure.”

  Bag took a step forward toward Brett’s desk. “Ok, so if that’s the case, then why would you order us back here in to begin with? It’s kind of counterproductive when we could be out there dealing with this head on.”

  “I’ll show you why.” Brett stood up and walked out of his office with the two Officers, and then locked the door his thumb print by way of touch sensor. “Specialist Werner, please transfer all my calls to my wrist coms… and go home once you’re done.”

  “Uh…Yes General. I will.”

  The three walked briskly down a long hallway and toward an elevator guarded by two fully combat equipped military police, distinguishable as such from the black MP patches on their shoulders. One of the MPs moved off to the side and opened a retinal and palm scanner, which Brett promptly used. Bag crinkled his brow and looked over the elevator carefully. “Well…this is all new.”

  Brett snorted in agreement. “Yeah, well we added a few things over the years. Most of it even works right.” It was a joke, but then it wasn’t… Nothing ever worked right anymore.

  The elevator doors opened into an impossibly clean silver elevator with olive green carpet, and of course a jazzy sound track playing over the ambient speakers. The
three entered the elevator, and Brett immediately pressed a button for Level 6; closing the doors and slowly lowering them down into some new underground bunker. Brett began to sniff the air in Bag’s direction, then turned and looked at him curiously. “Were you rolling around in sewage? You smell horrible!”

  “Well…I actually fell out of a window and into a pretty nasty dumpster…so I guess yes?” Bag instantly became embarrassed.

  Jon burst out laughing; Bag turned to him and raised his brow. He knew that as soon as he showed an ounce of embarrassment, Jon would jump on it. “What Jon?” He inquired suspiciously.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all…hah!”

  Bag sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to hear the end of how shitty he was for a while. No pun intended. He appreciated it though, it was just Jon’s way of being sociable. “Yeah…well I plan on showering at least twice right after this.”

  Jon continued laughing. “You should probably burn those cloths too, you know just to be safe.”

  The elevator dinged from Level 5 to Level 6; a robotic female voice came over the elevator. “Welcome General Travis. You are now on level 6, Command and Control.” The doors opened up into a single enormous room, lit entirely by dim blue combat lights that gave it the feel of a war room in a star ship. A large three dimensional globe of the planet was displayed over a central work table, radiating an orange light from the holographic projectors from the ceiling. The entire floor was a frenzy of activity from the local pale inhabitants, the Intelligence Specialists, who were busy running about using dozens of computer work stations and a variety of other computer oriented equipment. It had a claustrophobic feel to it too since the roof was so low, at just above 7 foot high.

  Brett led the two through the crowd, and into a large and windowless corner office, with the name ‘Colonel Martin, Command and Control Officer’ in holographic letters on the door. Brett knocked twice then led the group in and over to several cheap, beat up metal chairs in the back of the room. Bag naturally took a seat in the chair farthest from the rest of the group, in a vain attempt to make the smell of the room less horrible for its occupants.

  Colonel Martin sat silently staring off into space, resting her chin in her hand in an obviously not too amused pose…though she paid no attention to her three new guests. Like the rest of the people down here, she looked like she didn’t get too much sunlight, or sleep for that matter. Her eyes had darkened circles around them from the long term abuse of it all. Did she even know it was night time? How would you in a place like this?

  Martin went from being completely silent, to screaming into the well concealed microphone earpiece no one had noticed until just then. “Just stop right fucking there…! No…! How about I have you court martialed for dereliction of duty? I don’t care who the hell sent that order to you, you always document it! I swear to God, if I find out you erased any other files… Then find the damn files and do your job!” Martin pulled her ear piece out and threw it across the room, narrowly missing her trash can. “Fuck today…I’ve got server crashes and intrusion alarms up to my damn ears….and no one knows how to do their job all of a sudden!”

  She sighed loudly and carefully looked over the three guests, calming herself down but not losing the obvious irate tone. “Sorry…What can I do for you, General? I hope it has nothing to do with the 25th’s after action reports…because they apparently just got lost…along with their entire database.”

  Well, Martin was fiery today…but he could understand why. Brett made an effort to be a little friendlier than normal. “Actually, this is Colonel Kirovich and Colonel Reverent. They’re the officers in charge of the Krieger unit. I was hoping you could show them the full scope of our situation down here.”

  Martin stared emotionlessly at both Bag and Jon for a moment. “Krieger? You boys just got back from Camp Iron… I just got the report. That’s some crazy shit if what you say is true…”

  Bag acknowledged calmly. “It’s all correct, and we would really appreciate to know why exactly we were recalled in the middle of our mission.”

  Martin suddenly looked even more annoyed, if that were possible. She now had a very clear New Jersey accent as well, which Jon had to refrain from laughing at. “First off, I didn’t recall your team and I have no clue as to why you were, so take that up with your command. I’m in intelligence, and I frankly don’t care about your problems as long as I get my reports on time.”

  Jon grunted a partial laugh at her. “Well, you’re a huge help already…”

  Martin glared at Jon intensely and had to have noticed his obvious reaction to her. “Ok, let me just drop everything and try to accommodate you… Follow me outside.”

  The three stood up and followed Martin out of her office, over to the large holographic globe of Mars. She was actually much shorter than she first appeared…much shorter. Like barely 5 foot. The globe spun in a slow rotation and the entire section of Mars labeled US Territory was lit up with dozens of red blinking dots.

  Martin turned and stared with frustration at Jon, and resorted to a told-you-so kind of tone. “That’s why, Colonel. Every one of those dots is a major town or city, all of which are reporting both cyber…and very real attacks by everyone from angry civilians, to political groups I’ve never even heard of! Our entire network has gone to shit in a hand basket. The government has its thumb up its ass, and those rebellious raider assholes, who should I remind you don’t like us very much, are trying to take advantage of all of that and burn out the frontier!” Martin sighed and began to walk back to her office. “I have more important things to do than hold your fucking hands! Excuse me.”

  The group stared at the globe fixedly, coming to the realization that the war had just escalated to a point beyond anything it had ever been before. The entire frontier was marked red and that was beginning to stretch all the way into some of major cities… On top of that, there were small pockets of red springing up in the rural areas in the inner colonies, confirming the hints of extremists groups taking advantage of the dire situation. It was a nightmare just looking at it.

  Bag turned to Brett, gravely troubled. “Is all of this why we were recalled? I still don’t see how this warrants pulling us out of an ongoing mission. If anything it should be the opposite.”

  Brett remained silent and stared into the globe, suddenly overruled by an unpleasantly snobby and pompous voice which called out from behind the three. “Why you were recalled is not important, just that you were ordered to do so. Come on, Kirovich, you should know better. You’re a ‘soldier’ after all. Good soldiers follow orders.”

  Jon and Bag turned to see Agent Pierce, still wearing the same dirty black suite and sunglasses, even in the almost painfully dark bunker. He had a naturally distasteful atmosphere about him, and it was just compounded by the fact that he was a CIA Agent that had interfered in their mission. Bag narrowed his eyes and Jon grumbled loudly. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Jon snapped back at him.

  Pierce walked over to the globe and began to type in various commands on the console. “We’re in command and control. Don’t you think the Central Intelligence Agency would be involved in matters of Intelligence gathering? That’s kind of our job, remember?”

  Jon growled and turned to Brett. “What the fuck is this? Why is this asshole here?”

  Brett was now being unusually quiet, and that worried Bag more than anything. “…Brett?”

  Brett sighed and dropped his gaze to the floor. “This is coming directly from Joint Command…all Special Operations groups are to return to their base of origin and be on combat standby for immediate reassignment. The order came through a few minutes before I contacted you…”

  Pierce continued to type furiously on the console. “I have a new assignment for your unit, General… That is, if you’re done trying to get out of this.”

  Jon grunted loudly in frustration and stared with anger toward the blank faced CIA Agent. “Who the fuck put him in charge? I’m not taking orders from him! T
his is absolute bullshit and you know it, Brett!”

  Bag moved over closer to Brett and spoke softly. “Brett…what the hell is going on?”

  The Agent overheard Bag somehow, and cut in before Brett could respond. “I was appointed by the acting Chief of Staff of the United Sates Army, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to this post. Trust me, I would much rather be back in the city where I have competent teams to work with.”

  Bag continued to stare intently at Brett, who turned his head away slightly. “Krieger has been placed under Agent Pierce’s authority for the duration of his current assignment. You will obey his orders and complete the assignments with the same dedication you always do. I have the utmost…’faith’…in Agent Pierce to help us end what could potentially be the beginning of new and devastating war.” It sounded rehearsed…

  Pierce turned to Bag and stared blankly. “For the duration of my current assignment; that means the faster I complete my assignment, the faster you can go back to playing GI Joes. Now, if we’re done delaying the inevitable, I have several things to show you on the command console.”

  Jon threw his hands up in frustration, moved to the far side of the map table away from Pierce, and stole an office chair from a recently absent intelligence specialist. Bag stared at Brett in disappointment for a long moment, then began to move over to the map table. At the last moment Brett grabbed his arm, and subtly placed a note into his pants cargo pocket. “We’re still a go for that Friday lunch, Bag…” Then quickly walked over to the departing elevator.

  Agent Pierce turned and stared at Bag. “Are you going to join us any time today, Colonel?”

  Bag had felt him place the note, and just went with it. He walked over next to Jon, and stood with his arms crossed; Pierce didn’t show an ounce of emotion as he zoomed into the city center of New Madrid. “This is the European Union’s Mobilized Warfare Academy, home to much of their Officer Corps in training for their Army and Navy. Fifteen minutes after our President was killed, a single message was transmitted from room 214 of the Staff Headquarters. The message read, ‘Even a trickle of water can split a mountain over time’. Shortly after that, our system crashed and we’re still trying to recover the bulk of our database.”