Apocalypse Austin

by David VanDyke

  Reaper said, “Now go about thirty yards away and use her radio to make a garbled transmission. When they look out the window, wave and tap your headset, then gesture for them to come out. We’ll take them when they open the door.”

  Bunny did as ordered, and when the door swung wide to reveal a sleepy relief guard, Reaper shot him with a SAM round from her suppressed pistol and leaped into the truck, Hulk right behind her.

  Reaper popped two more before they could get up from their bunks, and Hulk shot a fourth as he exited the toilet. They quickly disarmed the four, ignoring their groans of pain.

  “Hulk, watch these guys and explain their situation to them,” Reaper said.

  “You got it, boss,” he replied with a smile.

  Back on the harshly lit tarmac, Reaper said, “Put the first four inside. Crash, give them Eden shots, and then trank the wounded. Once that’s done, you, Hulk and Tarzan walk around outside, impersonating guards so everything looks normal. We got about ten minutes before they miss a commo check, and five to ten after that before the reaction force arrives.”

  Reaper found Hawkeye standing in front of the heavy metal vault door of a half-buried munitions bunker. He tapped it with a fist and they heard a thick dull metal thud. “Looks pretty solid.”

  “They all do at first,” said Shortfuse, taking off his backpack and digging inside. “You just have to know their weak spots.” He brought out a collapsible camping tent and began assembling it.

  “Uh...buddy?” said Crash. “I don’t think we’re going to be here long enough to need to camp out.”

  “What I’m going to do’s gonna create a lot of light,” explained Shortfuse as he worked. “We’ll want to keep from alerting the bad guys as long as possible.” He finished assembling the dome- shaped tent, and then placed the opening toward the door. He pulled out a foil survival blanket that he draped over the top of the flimsy structure and secured with zip ties.

  A maintenance truck drove past on a nearby road, not slowing. “Maybe we should hurry this along,” said Flyboy.

  “When it comes to demo,” said Shortfuse, pulling packages out of his pack, “you can do it fast or you can do it safely, but not both.”

  “I choose fast, then,” said Bunny. “We’ll just wait way over there.” She strolled back to her “guarding.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Shortfuse unrolled a cord from around a series of charges encased on one side by thick metal sheeting. Shortfuse had spent much of the drive up from Arizona tweaking the setup on these curious objects.

  He next used thick duct tape to place them over the three sets of hinges on one side of the heavy door, with the objects touching the joints and their metal casings facing outward. Unrolling the wire from each, he connected them to a small demo switchboard.

  “We ready?” Reaper asked.

  “Almost. Help me with this.” Shortfuse picked up the blanket-covered tent and maneuvered the bottom against the vault door, securing it in place with more duct tape.

  “Now?” asked Crash.

  “Yes. Everyone stand back.” When they had all moved to his rear, Shortfuse pushed a lever on the demo control board.

  They heard a series of pops and then a loud hissing.

  Crash said, “Kind of anticlimactic. I was sort of expecting something more...boom-like.”

  Shortfuse shook his head. “We don’t want boom. This is supposed to be a covert op. I’m using thermite to melt off the hinges. Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Reaper asked.

  He pointed at the tent edges closest to the hinges at the top and bottom. They were starting to smoke and glow. “The thermite’s heating up the tent’s nylon and melting it.”

  “Should we stop it?”

  “There’s no stopping thermite. Once it starts, best to stand out of the way and let it run its course.”

  The blanket and tent began to burn at the edges. Flyboy said, “You do know this is an air base. Planes come in all the time. A fire like this is likely to stand out just a little bit.”

  “I know, dammit!” said Shortfuse. “I’m the one who came up with the idea to hide it. The tent was supposed to be fireproof, and the blanket. Cheap made-in-China shit.”

  “What should we do?” asked Crash.

  “Nothing we can do. Give it a few more seconds for the thermite to stop burning and then we can pull the tent off and stomp the fires out.”

  They waited as the hissing noise lessened before finally stopping.

  “Okay, let’s –”

  There came a loud slow creaking and scraping sound. The tent started to bend backward, and then the heavy foot-thick metal door slammed down on the concrete pad with a thunderous crash that made their ears ring.

  “Yeah, it worked!” called Bunny, clapping her hands from her position across the tarmac. “Are we still covert?”

  Reaper growled at Shortfuse, “Get inside. We need to do what we need to do and get the hell out of here.” She used her headset to say to Hawkeye and the others. “Stick to the plan. If they show up, buy us as much time as you can.”

  Shortfuse stepped through the metal doorway and Reaper followed. The hinges still glowed and smoked. She hit a series of switches near the doorway, and florescent lights began to illuminate the inside of the domelike structure.

  Wooden crates of munitions were piled high against the walls, making room for a half-sized semi-trailer with no markings other than a few numbers.

  “I guess the warheads must be in there,” said Reaper.

  Shortfuse stared around them, aghast. “This is really horrible procedure for storing nuclear weapons. I can’t believe how sloppy they are, putting them in the middle of a bunch of conventional munitions. Even though they don’t have any dedicated nuke bunkers here, they should have emptied one of these out and stored them alone.”

  “Everybody’s taking shortcuts. Between the external threats, the anti-Eden campaign and the scramble to get the Texas situation under control, the U.S. is stretched thin.”

  “Lucky for us.”

  “Think they have any more warheads handy?”

  Shortfuse shrugged. “According to our intel, these are the only tactical weapons nearby. At least it should buy Texas a few weeks, before they can pull and prep some more.”

  “That long?”

  “Nukes ain’t like hand grenades. They take a lot of care and feeding or they deteriorate, especially the small ones. They use plutonium, which is far more finicky than uranium.”

  “So how do we open it?”

  Shortfuse walked over to the trailer, looking at the back door. “This is a standard portable anti-access vault, as expected. It’s made to hold out for several hours against anyone trying to get in and steal the weapons. My plan was to put all the rest of the thermite on top and let it melt its way through.”

  “Won’t that set off the bombs? I don’t want to be anywhere near when that happens. I know we’re Edens and all, but I’m not sure our healing properties extend to being obliterated by a nuclear explosion.”

  Shortfuse shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. It actually takes a lot of work to set off the reaction that makes the big boom. Any tiny thing goes wrong, you get no nuclear yield. But as soon as my thermite gets to the warheads, the heat will ignite – not detonate – the conventional explosives inside and all they’ll have is a really nasty radioactive mess.”

  “Go ahead, do it,” Reaper said.

  Shortfuse grabbed his rucksack and climbed atop the trailer. Quickly, he set several devices there, and then climbed down.

  Reaper’s headset crackled. “Boss, we got company,” Hawkeye said.

  “Delay them,” she snapped. “Everyone else, exfil now. Shortfuse and I will be right behind you.” The rest of the team acknowledged as she heard the sound of firing from a heavy sniper rifle begin.

  “You sure this will work?” Reaper asked as Shortfuse stopped near one wall of boxes and rummaged in his nearly empty rucksack.

  “Nope.”

&n
bsp; “Nope?”

  “Those vaults are made to resist cutting torches, thermic lances, diamond saws, you name it. The trailer probably weighs fifteen tons, and most of that’s armor – high-tech alloys and ceramics. The whole point is to buy time for a strong reaction force to recover the weapons. But they made a mistake this time.” He pulled out a block of C4 and stuck a radio-command detonator in it, and then shoved the assembly between wooden boxes.

  “Oh, shit,” Reaper said as she realized what he was doing.

  “Yep. This bunker contains at least twenty tons of explosives, mostly shaped charge warheads for precision-guided munitions. My demo will set up a chain reaction that’ll blow it sky-high. Even if the thermite doesn’t destroy the nukes, the shock and blast should render them useless until they’re repaired at a specialized facility.”

  “What about the tranked guards? Will it kill them?”

  “Shouldn’t. They’ll probably be deaf for a while, but they’re Edens now. These bunkers are made to blast upward and outward so an explosion in one won’t set off the stuff in the next one.”

  “Boss, you need to extract now,” Reaper heard Hawkeye say.

  “Come on, firebug. Time to go.” She grabbed Shortfuse’s shoulder and propelled him toward the exit as soon as he finished setting the demo.

  Outside, she led him around the back of the bunker, and they ran in the direction of their van. Behind them, Reaper could see armored Humvees advancing, machineguns firing. Hopefully Hawkeye was pulling out as well; one sniper against a platoon of security forces wasn’t much of a contest.

  When she and Shortfuse reached the crest of the first of the series of scrubby ridges in the desert, she stopped, grabbing her comrade. “Blow it now.”

  “I already set off the thermite, but it’s still burning. Better to let it do its work.”

  “Wait one.” Reaper took out her binoculars, surveying the situation. “They’re almost to the bunker. If you wait, some of them will probably be inside when you blow it. We’re not here to kill a bunch of ordinary joes doing their jobs. Do it now.”

  Reluctantly, Shortfuse took out his demo board and flipped a switch. A tiny light went from green to red. “Might want to get down.”

  Reaper dropped her binoculars from her eyes and slid farther into the sandy depression, Shortfuse right behind her. “Fire in the hole,” he said over his radio, and then toggled another switch.

  The night lit up with fire, and a wave of sound smote them. The sand they rested on jumped, and dust rose to hang in the air.

  Shortfuse scrambled to the top to look at his handiwork for a moment before Reaper grabbed him by the empty rucksack and yanked. “Get moving! We’re on the clock!”

  They raced up and down the ridges as Reaper tried to keep them on course, glancing at the stars she’d tried to fix in her mind for this purpose. A few minutes later they hit a paved road and she looked through the night vision scope of her weapon, scanning. The shine of what might be the sought-for near-infrared glowstick showed off to her left, but she couldn’t see the van.

  “Hawkeye, this is Reaper.”

  “Hawkeye here.”

  “You at the van?”

  “Yep.”

  “Toss an IR glowstick in the air.”

  A pinpoint of light popped upward, and then fell near where she expected. “Okay, we’re coming in.”

  When they arrived, Reaper threw herself onto the passenger seat while Shortfuse climbed into the back. “Drive.”

  Hawkeye drove with night vision goggles, navigating unerringly toward the edge of the base far from the mess they had made. “Helos,” he said, gesturing out his window.

  Reaper could see two helicopters, one circling the bunkers, one apparently patrolling the fence line, its spotlight on full. “This will be the hard part,” she yelled toward the back above the sound of the racing engine. “This place is buzzing like a hornet’s nest.”

  By the time they approached the little-used gate they’d chosen as an exit, two more helicopters had taken off, and Reaper could see flashing strobes from police vehicles, spinning yellow lights from maintenance trucks, and headlights from just about everything else. “Maybe we should have just tried to go out the front gate. There’s no way this clusterfuck is under positive control.”

  “The base will be on lockdown,” Flyboy said. “Air Force bases aren’t as porous as Army facilities. We have to get out of the perimeter fast.”

  Behind them, they could see vehicle headlights racing for their position, while a helicopter approached from along the fence line. Hawkeye pulled up at the gate and Hulk jumped out, a huge set of bolt cutters in his hands. Two quick snips and chains fell to the ground. He shoved it open and ran for the van. As soon as he was in, Hawkeye accelerated rapidly into the night.

  ***

  Instead of heading toward the Mexican border as soon as they could, Reaper’s team cut across White Sands National Monument, and then drove eastward on highway 70 through Las Cruces. Their fake Air Force personas, coupled with their obvious American accents, got them through two checkpoints without difficulty.

  It apparently hadn’t quite sunk in that, with Edens in detention and Texas in rebellion, “American born” didn’t necessarily mean “loyal to the U.S.”

  Shortly after leaving Las Cruces on I-10, they departed the interstate and headed south on the minor roads, still trusting in their disguises. That’s why it was all the more disheartening when they came over a ridge and saw a dozen border patrol vehicles blocking the way.

  “Crap,” Hawkeye said as he slowed. “Make a decision fast, boss. Run or bluff.”

  “Bluff,” she said. “Everyone lock and load, and be ready. And smile.”

  “This road was supposed to be clear,” Hulk rumbled.

  “Murphy strikes again,” Reaper replied.

  When they came to a halt at the barrier, it became clear that this was some kind of command post for the INS. A custom RV with “Immigration and Naturalization Service” printed on the side was parked and freshly leveled.

  Lights speared them, and a voice said from a megaphone, “Step out of the vehicle and show your hands.”

  “Hawkeye, stay in that driver’s seat. I’ll lock my mike open. If I tell you to execute, the lights are yours,” Reaper said.

  “On it.”

  “The rest of you stay out of sight and be ready. I’ll try to talk our way through.” Reaper slid her pistol into its regulation holster and got out of the passenger side of the van, her hands to the sides and empty.

  A border patrol agent carrying a shotgun stepped up to speak with her. “Evening, Captain.” That was the highest rank she’d thought she could get away with, given the Eden-induced youthfulness of her appearance.

  “Morning, I think, officer,” she said pedantically, checking her watch. It read 03:22. “Let us through, please. Official business.” She held up a hand against the light and walked confidently around the man, placing herself in a position to see what they faced.

  “I need to see some orders.”

  As Reaper moved into the darkness, she could make out one other agent with an assault rifle at the ready, and two more inside an unarmored SUV, watching. She frowned. “I don’t have written orders, officer…Alvarez, is it? Someone hit Holloman over an hour ago, and we’re looking for whoever did it.”

  “No one’s come this way since sundown,” Alvarez said. “We’re securing the border. Aren’t you kind of far out from Holloman, anyway?”

  “Just running down a tip.” She faced him, hands on her hips. “So you’re sure no one’s slipped by? No activity along this stretch of the border?”

  “Nothing outbound. One family of Mexicans trying to slip in.”

  Reaper showed surprise. “Illegals are still trying to cross northward?”

  Alvarez shrugged. “Not so many lately, but a few. America’s still the land of opportunity.”

  “Well, we need to go through anyway. My boss won’t take your word for it, with all du
e respect. I’ll need to tell him I checked myself.”

  “And I can’t let armed military with no orders go messing around in our sector. Too much chance of fratricide.”

  “Then I need to talk to your boss.”

  Alvarez sighed. “She ain’t gonna be happy to be woke up.”

  “My responsibility. Where is she, in the RV?”

  “Yeah.” Alvarez led Reaper over to the vehicle and opened the door without knocking, and then preceded her inside.

  As soon as the door closed and the man flipped on the interior lights, Reaper drew her suppressed pistol and put a round into his kidney, and then one into his thigh for good measure. The shock kept him from crying out, and she quickly shot the three other INS personnel, two rounds each, as they lay in their bunks.

  “Execute,” she said over her open mike, turning off the light and hunkering down on the floor of the RV. With only a small-caliber pistol and lacking night vision, she had to trust that her team would finish what she’d started.

  Weapons fire stuttered, answered by yells and terse orders in her headset. Within thirty seconds, she heard, “Hawkeye, entering the RV. Don’t shoot me, boss.”

  Reaper lowered her pistol and waited until she could see his silhouette. “I’m good. Crash, trank the four in here.”

  “Ah…” Hawkeye trailed off. “Crash took a stray round to the neck. He’s down, maybe out.”

  “Out?”

  “Tarzan and Bunny are working on him, but he might bleed out.”

  Reaper leaped out of the RV to see Crash lying in a pool of blood. Lit by truck headlights, Tarzan held pressure on the man’s throat while Bunny slipped an IV into his femoral artery, trying to keep his blood pressure up and feeding him nutrients for his Eden Plague-powered healing to use.

  “Anything I can do?” Reaper asked.

  “Pray,” said Bunny. “This is a Hail Mary if I ever saw one. His throat’s blown wide open.”

  Hawkeye swore, then began to recite a prayer in Spanish.

  Reaper tried desperately to pull something, anything, out of memory. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she said, and then stopped.

  She couldn’t remember any more.

  Ten minutes and four bags of fluids later, Tarzan shook his head. “No pulse.” He removed his hands from Crash’s mangled throat and closed his staring eyes. “Sorry, dude.”