Echo of Tomorrow: Book One (Drake chronicles)

by Rob Buckman

  ECHO OF TOMORROW

  (Book One)

  By

  Rob Buckman

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  Forewords:

  Sometime in the not too distant future, maybe here, or on some distant plant humans have colonized, we will be able to design a human being from the ground up, maybe even skipping the natural birth process altogether. What then, what sort of man would he or she be, a super soldier, a financial wizard, or just a mindless grunt toiling in a mine or a factory? We have already let the genie out of the bottle, with no way to put it back in, and with enough money, power, or both, who is to say what we ask the genie for? But like the old Chinese proverb says, be careful what you ask for.

  RB

  PROLOGUE: The Sword of Allah - Saudi Arabia-Iraq border

  The fine, powdery dust stuck to everything, persistently working its way into every nook and cranny of the M1B3 tank. Even supposedly airtight electronics equipment. The dun colored sand stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see, silent and uncaring, searing hot in the daytime, bitter cold at night. The desert gave uncaring justice to all, covering the sins of beggars, tyrants, saints, and sinners with a blanket of forgiving sand. Where once proud armies fought and died in forgotten wars, only the sand remained in mute testament to their deeds.

  Sitting in the turret jump seat, General Scott Drake rested his elbows on the still hot rim of the turret to steady the binoculars as he studied the desert landscape to the North East. His eyes gritty from lack of sleep, sand, and burning sun. Eastward the desert was already shrouded and dim in the gathering darkness, but the setting sun still burned the back of his neck. The rough material of his tan shirt rubbed the fine coating of dust into the skin, making it red and itchy, but he didn't care. A thin, bitter wind blew sand as fine as talcum powder across the desert floor, piling it up in small drifts around the treads of the massive, steel juggernauts, and like that of a blind man, inquisitive fingers of dust worked their way into any opening it could find. In the gathering darkness around him other tanks waited in brooding silence, while two miles away on the temporary LZ sat two hundred AH68 (D) Apache II and COBRA gunships, their crew sitting in the cockpits with the doors open to catch any vagrant breeze to help them cool off while awaiting orders. Scott Drake contemplated the move he was about to make, and the lives it would affect, but he no longer cared about the consequences. A red haze of hatred overlay every thought of every waking moment. His life had no purpose save one goal, and one goal only. After he reached that, death would be a welcome release from this nightmare.

  On the air base in Dhahran a wide array of war birds waited, all ready to fly at his command. Fighters, bomber, C140 gunships, and only god knew what else. Even now, three nuclear powered warships were steaming at flank speed to reach their assigned combat position by the deadline, threatening to burn out their engines in the process. Their Captain's pushing the crews and ship past the red line, and if they had to row the last mile to get to the waypoint, then so be it. At last, Scott made his decision, and muttering a silent prayer to a non-existent God, he keyed his Comm unit.

  "Comm!" He tried, then coughed and spat over the rim of the turret to clear his throat. He lifted his arms to look down inside the turret. "Comm?"

  "Yes Sir." The answer came back immediately from below, as if the man was waiting for his call.

  "Send the go code." His voice sounded grim and as hard as iron as he gave the order.

  "Tell me three times." The radio operator asked, following his orders to the letter by asking for confirmation. His voice trembled as he asked the question.

  "I say again, send the go code - send the go code." Scott didn't have to elaborate.

  "Yes, sir." The radioman answered in a shaky voice. "Sending the go code now." He keyed the transmission, and nothing on earth could stop what was about to happen. The preset burst transmission flashed out across the ether to all units, and set the irrevocable train of events into motion. With that, General Scott sat back with a sigh. It was done.

  To anyone monitoring the radio frequency the encoded message was nothing more than a garbled high pitch warble buried in the background of the general Comm traffic. As he spoke, the tanks massive twin turbine engines spooled to life, and in Scott's mind's eye, he could see the helos cranking their blades into motion as the war birds starting their engines.

  “Order the advance, Comm."

  "Copy that, sir." His tank rumbled into motion with a squeal of steel treads on gritty sand, as slowly, his command tank moved forward, spearheading the attack.

  Each squadron took up positions on either side of him in an arrowhead formation and with 'Old Glory' snapping in the breeze, they gradually picked up speed. Slowly, the drivers brought the unit up to full throttle, and by the time they hit the Iraq border eighteen minutes later they were thundering across the open desert at 80 miles an hour as if the hounds of hell had slipped their leash. Seven minutes later they blew the first group of enemy tanks to hell and gone without even slowing down and the war was on. Twenty six thousand men and woman had thrown in their lot with Scott Drake, and he wondered absently how many would get to go home again. Not that any of them would change their minds, even if they knew they wouldn't be going home again. Most had no home to go back to, still more had a debt to collect that they were willing to pay with their lives. They were soldiers and this is what the soldiers did. He'd unleashed the dogs of war, and he'd let God sort out the guilty from the innocent, if there were any innocents.

  Four short months ago, life was perfect. The Balkans were finally at peace, as was the Mid East to a major degree, and his new job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs looked to be long and boring. That was until the night the Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Kansas City and Tel Aviv ceased to exist. Each vanished in a split second, destroyed by a twenty-megaton nuclear explosion. In that split second Scott's life ceased to exist as well. His wife and two young sons vanishing in a thermonuclear flash along with fifty million other people in the Los Angeles basin. It was only by virtue of an overseas inspection tour of military bases in Saudi Arabia and the Mid East that he wasn't killed as well.

  As the tank force rumbled across the darkening desert, he wondered if dying in the initial attack might not be the best thing for humanity, or blowing his brains out from grief. He'd been tempted, as so many others had, but instead, his training took over, and he got mad. Not angry, but a deep down hatred that sat like a hard burning knot in the pit of his stomach, driving him forward, revenge the only thing on his mind. Rather than go catatonic, he stumbled to the communication center and took command, finding the one remaining Government official alive to take over. That turned out to be a pencil necked Senator from Alaska who'd missed attending the opening of Congress by virtue of a cold. Gradually he pieced together a picture of what happened. Cursing himself and others as the picture became clear, shocking, and tragic in its simplicity. The successors to Mama Khadafy, Sodom Insane, and the Ayatollah something or other were all celebrating the destruction of America, the great Satan. The people sang and danced in the street in celebration, burning the American flag, beheading American tourists and diplomats. Men, woman, and children all died during that first terrible night, adding to the mounting debt.
The Grand Ayatollah in Tehran egged them on, spewing his hatred of America and claiming it was Allah’s will that he should destroy the infidels in that cursed land. The sweet wine of victory made even sweeter because the vaunted American Military had done nothing to avenge the act.

  The scenario for the destruction was simple in its beauty. A Boeing 787 Cargo Conversion had declared a fuel emergency and been given permission for a straight in landing at Dulles Airport. As it passed over the inner marker, the carefully shielded 20-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonated. Washington vanished, as did Kansas City a moment later by the same means. Los Angeles and New York were taken out by two foreign flag vessels that had steamed into harbor two days before, each claiming engine trouble; each triggered their bombs at the same moment. Tel Aviv went after a modified Tomahawk missile air burst over the city center. Nobody knew how Kansas City went, not that it mattered. The only thing remaining was a radioactive hole in the ground. All the major Islamic countries claiming to have had a hand in the victory in one way or the other, but most of the blame could be laid squarely on Syria, Iran, and Iraq.

  Through his contact in London he found out that the weapons themselves came from North Korea and not the old Soviet Union as he had first suspected, but that only came later in bits and pieces from different intelligence sources. What made it even more tragic was that America hadn't seen it coming. After 9/11 they should have known they were vulnerable, but they had become complacent, thinking themselves safe behind the fictitious wall 'Homeland Security' had erected. This time America paid an even higher price for that complacency than it did on 9/11. Now the death toll was in the millions.

  Now the man known as ‘Ivan the Terrible’ had taken power in Russia. He first urged, then demanded the new President of the United States take swift, decisive action against the perpetrators, much to everyone's surprise. Sadly, all he got in reply was talk of appeasement, of calming the situation down, and assessing the damage. Scott and the Joint Chiefs of Staff tried desperately to persuade the new President to do as Ivan the Terrible had suggested, but a combination of fear, and power can do strange things to people. Scott’s teleconference with the new president felt almost surreal.

  "Mr. President, a limited nuclear strike against these people is our only option if we are to survive as a Nation!" Scott pointed out, but it fell on deaf ears.

  "Now, now, General Drake, there is no call for us to take such drastic action," the president intoned, "that will only inflame the situation further." He sniffed and blew his nose for the tenth time, his voice snippy with resentment. He was now President of the United States, a position he'd only dared dream of holding. He'd be damned if he let some knee-jerk soldier with dirty fingernails tell him what to do.

  "I strongly disagree, Mr. President!" Scott shot back, biting back the hot reply on the tip of his tongue, his barely controlled anger threatening to get the better of him.

  "If we do nothing, these and others will do everything in their power to see to it we are completely destroyed.”

  “That’s true, Mr. President. Even as we speak everyone, other than Great Britain, is grabbing American possession as fast as they can." General Gordon added.

  "Egypt, Syria, and Jordan are pouring troops into Israel, and the Cuban's have taken over Guantanamo Bay." The red haze of hatred pulsed behind Scott’s eyes as he spoke. He still had trouble reconciling that fact that the Marines stationed there hadn’t fought back when the Cubans attacked.

  "Even now, Mexico is making a grab for the Southern United States for Christ sake! North Korea Has invaded South Korea, not to mention the Saudi's trying to take over our base here." He added.

  "You haven't started trouble out there I hope?" A vision of the Saudi's cutting off oil supplies tiptoed through his mind.

  "No Mr. President, a small show of force convinced them we weren't as demoralized as the Marines in Cuba.

  "Thank goodness for that."

  "Mr. President..." He rubbed his forehead in frustration. Why was he telling this pencil dick idiot anything? He should know all this by now, it was all in the Joint Chiefs’ briefing. As President, he should be prepared to do something about it, but he wasn't, nor, it seemed, would he listen to anything he or the Joint Chiefs had to say. All Scott Drake heard, was talk of appeasement.

  "We need to take things easy for a while until the situation settles down and we can clarify matters. After that we can take stock of the situation and regroup." In truth, he didn't have any clue what to do, but it sounded Presidential and about right. "I'm sure this was all a misunderstanding."

  "Misunderstanding!" Scott spluttered. "How on Earth do you nuke four major cities by mistake?" He snarled. "And as for regrouping, good god! By that time there will be nothing left to regroup with!" He shouted back over the telecom link. "At this rate, the US will be stripped of every overseas asset and possession within the month if not weeks. For god sake!"

  "That's an order, General," The President shot back, miffed that a mere General would take such a harsh tone with him, "sit tight and do nothing. That is an order from your Commander-in-Chief, do you understand!" He shouted back, hoping it sounded strong and commanding.

  In fact, he sounded like a Chihuahua yipping at the face of a wolf, a very angry wolf. Sit tight and do nothing was something Scott Drake hadn't done. At first, he'd just asked a few senior officers if they would be willing to help him balance the scales, and it simply snowballed. He imagined taking a small force across the border into Iraq, then head for Iran and kick the shit out of anyone who got in his way. He had sufficient men on hand willing to go, plus tanks and a few helicopter gunships to do the job. Then coded messages began flashing back and forth around the world, and the word spread like wildfire. Giant Star-lifter transport aircraft started arriving in the dead of night unloading men and equipment at out of the way desert airstrips. Carriers in the Med and the Gulf off loaded fighters to hastily constructed landing strip, while the Marine Corps landing ship disgorged a fully equipped army. Even the 10,000 or so Marines from Guantanamo were here, airlifted out of Cuba, and diverted while in flight, and now willing to die to remove the shame, and the stain they had placed on their beloved Corps. For all that, the plans remain the same, a simple one-way trip through Iraq into Iran and if need be, onto Syria; destroying anything that got in their way and punish the perpetrators of this nightmare. They were going to avenge the destruction of those American cities, blood for blood, and death for death no matter what the cost. This would, Scott hoped, take the pressure off Israel's military, and give them a fighting chance. At any other moment in history this whole mad scheme probably wouldn’t have worked. There were a thousand things that could go wrong, messages intercepted, orders not obeyed, or ‘Murphy’ sticking his nose in at the wrong moment to bringing the whole endeavor to a screeching halt, but he didn’t. Like some well-oiled and practiced military maneuver, and against all odds, Scott Drake’s plan worked.

  Tanks and Helicopters re-fueled on the move as gunships swept ahead to seek out and destroy targets. Overhead they heard the distant thunder of jets as they cruised deep into Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and Syria, hitting critical targets in an aerial bombing campaign that put the first and second Mid-East wars to shame in their fury. The laughter was gone from the pilot’s eyes this time, and they hit all military targets with no thought to collateral damage, or waiting for some limp dick lawyer to them their interpretation on the rules of war. This time there were no rules. General Scott Drake had declared the Mideast a free fire zone. If it moved and wasn't on their side, destroy it and civilian casualties be damned. The aircraft would complete their sortie or bombing mission and streak back to refuel and rearm for another run. At the high point of the initial air campaign, the skies over the Mid-East started to look like the San Diego Freeway at rush hour. Three AWAC and a fleet of aerial tankers kept everyone filled up with fuel and from flying into one another. Ahead of the main battle forces, the British Long Range Desert Group, Green Berets, US Army Rang
ers, and the SAS, swept across the desert in their pink and cammo painted Humvees and Land Rovers, seeking out targets, and radioing back vital information for air or ground attack. By midnight, Drake's attack force was half way to Baghdad without meeting any serious opposition, which was a surprise.

  Scott expected to meet stiff resistance seeing how the new Iraqi army had rearmed under another strongman. The transplanted democracy that America tried to export had failed miserably. In the end, with pressure from Congress on the new President, all American and Allied forced were withdrawn from the country, but even then, not without cost. The new Dictator was just as bad as ‘Sodom Insane’ if Intel reports were anything to go by and, at least on paper, this army was something to take notice of. Could it be they had caught the enemy by surprise? Scott wondered. With the stupid moves the Iraqi's pulled during Desert Storm and later, it wouldn't surprise him. Even after they'd re-trained their military they were so badly led it didn't make much difference. This time instead of trying to build sand fortification and trench-work they made the equally stupid blunder by massing the Republican guard at strategic location as a rapid reaction force. It was a good strategy in the face of a single thrust, or to guard a bottleneck. It was clear from their deployment their thinking was to move against any point of direct attack and crush it. Surrounded as they were by mobile SAM batteries, on paper at least, the Iraqi military felt they could fend off any air attack. What they hadn't expected was a mass attack along the entire length of the border from the air and land at the same time.