Warriors from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  He smiled at her as he put on the helmet that would allow him to breathe during the upcoming HALO drop. HALO stood for High Altitude, Low Opening, and was one of the most dangerous of all parachute drops. They would bail out at twenty thousand feet, encased in a full body suit similar to the ones worn by scuba divers, with self-contained oxygen masks and altitude gauges strapped to their wrists. They wouldn’t open their specially designed chutes until they were under five thousand feet, at which time they’d be falling at over 120 miles an hour toward the earth.

  HALO flights were designed to drop combatants behind enemy lines, where the hang time in chutes had to be minimized so as to get the men on the ground before the enemy knew they were there.

  Tiger gave Jackie a small nod, his grin magnified behind the Plexiglas of his oxygen helmet, indicating the men were ready for the drop.

  Two hundred men were crammed into the cargo bay, and on the jump master’s signal, they would all walk out the back of the plane and jump off a specially designed ramp that was to be lowered just before the jump.

  Jackie tried to smile back, but her face wouldn’t cooperate. She’d received a crash course in HALO jumps, but she’d never done one before and the truth was, she was scared shitless. The idea of jumping out into the darkness, into air that was several degrees below freezing, and falling like a stone for what was surely going to seem an eternity, just didn’t appeal to her at all.

  Jackie was a control freak, and didn’t like any situation in which she wasn’t in complete control of her destiny. It was going to be hard to put her faith in the small altitude gauge on her wrist. If she was off in opening her chute by even twenty seconds, she’d end up splattered all over the countryside below.

  The jump master stood beneath a red light at the end of the cargo bay, an intercom to his ear. When he got the word from the pilot, he flipped a switch turning the light from red to green, and the ramp at the rear of the ship lowered.

  He gave Jackie a thumbs-up, and she took a deep breath and stepped out into the darkness.

  As she fell, she put her hands at her sides and her feet together and shot downward like an arrow toward the ground below. She counted to herself so as to know when to start looking at her altitude gauge, hoping she wouldn’t wait too long.

  Finally, she pulled her right arm up against the resistance of the air and glanced at the gauge . . . time to do it!

  Grasping the D-ring on her chest, she gave a yank. At first nothing happened, and she had time to think, “Oh, shit! My chute didn’t open.”

  Just as she was reaching for her backup chute cord, she felt as if she’d hit a wall as her chute opened and slowed her from 120 miles an hour down to ten in a couple of seconds. “Damn, it’s a good thing I double-tied my boots, or they’d have been jerked off,” she thought, her heart hammering with relief as she slowed to what seemed like a crawl after the speed of her initial fall.

  After discussion with Otis Warner and General Joe Winter, Ben Raines and Jackie had decided her group should parachute into eastern Iowa, between Cedar Rapids and Davenport. The area was mostly rural, with large expanses of rolling hills, few towns, and no Army bases of any size. Best of all, it was only a few hundred miles from Indianapolis, where Claire Osterman had her headquarters.

  Ben and Jackie felt they could sow the seeds of hate and discontent best, as well as be a major embarrassment to Osterman, if they struck close to her main base.

  Jackie hit the ground, and immediately curled into a ball and rolled, as the jump instructor had told her to. She ended up in a large field of some sort of maize, with plants growing to four feet in height. She rolled up her chute and kept her eye on the sky above her, as one of the main dangers with this many troops dropping was that one would land on your head if you didn’t keep an eye out.

  Slipping out of her jump suit and helmet, she immediately keyed a signal device on her shirt that would lead the others to her, so they could rendezvous in the dark.

  As usual, Tiger Tanaka was the first to reach her. He had a Mini-Uzi on a strap around his neck, and held it at port arms as he turned in a small circle, making sure no one was around to give them any trouble.

  Within an hour the entire force had congregated in the middle of the field.

  “Injury report,” Jackie said to Tiger.

  “We lost six men, three whose chutes malfunctioned, two who didn’t open soon enough, and one who landed on a fence post,” Tiger said in a calm voice.

  “Damn!” Jackie said with feeling.

  “That is a very acceptable ratio for a HALO drop, Miss Jackie,” Tiger said.

  She glanced at him. “Try telling that to the poor bastards who hit the ground at over a hundred miles an hour,” she said. Jackie hated nothing more than losing any of her troops.

  She knelt in the field and pulled out her map and compass. After studying them for a couple of minutes, she stood up. “All right, men, we head out south by southwest. We’re only a couple of miles from Cedar Rapids. I expect us to be in control of the town by daylight.”

  Jackie sent squads out in a circular ring around the town. The first objective was to cut the town off from the outside world.

  All telephone lines coming into the city were cut, and transformers were blown off their poles so that merely splicing the wires back together wouldn’t resume service.

  Next, the cellular microwave transmitting towers were dynamited, destroying the usefulness of any cell phones that might still be in use in the town.

  After all communications, other than shortwave or CB radio, were halted, Jackie led a squad to take over the town’s authority figures. Separate squads were sent to each police station as well as the mayor’s and city council’s offices.

  Most of the police, when faced with commandos carrying Uzis and/or M-16’s, gave up quietly. A couple who tried to resist were shot, but only one had to be killed.

  By 0800, the town was in Jackie’s hands. Roadblocks were set up on all roads leading into or out of the town, with her troops dressed as local policemen. The story used to turn away travelers was that there was a plague of unknown origin in the town and it had been placed in quarantine for the time being.

  Interrogation squads began their work, ferreting out citizens who were sympathetic to the SUSA’s aim to prevent another war with the U.S. These men and women were issued guns and allowed to resume some of the governmental functions of the city.

  Jackie’s plan was to delay face-to-face confrontation with the Army of the U.S. as long as she could. She wanted to take as many small towns and villages as possible before Osterman and her cronies knew they were under siege.

  Once Cedar Rapids was secure, she left a token force to hold the town while she and the rest of her troops moved on to Davenport, a hundred miles closer to Indianapolis and Claire Osterman’s home grounds.

  The guerrilla war had begun.

  TWENTY-THREE

  After Captain Matt Stryker and his men picked Dr. Larry Buck out of the ocean in a Zodiac, along with a large waterproof bag containing his equipment, they took him to the ship.

  Thirty minutes later, dressed in a state-of-the-art Racal suit to prevent contamination, he was examining Jersey and Coop in the cabin used as a medical ward.

  He had Jersey sit up in bed, her back propped up against pillows, and raised her gown. He put a stethoscope to her chest, just under her left breast.

  “Breathe in and out slowly,” he said, his voice muffled inside the self-contained helmet of the orange Racal suit.

  Jersey looked much better after her course of antibiotics, but she was still having fever and chills and still coughing frequently.

  After listening for a few moments, Buck nodded and stepped back from the bed. “Your lungs are sounding better, Jersey. Some of the pneumonia is clearing.”

  “They don’t feel much better,” she complained. “I still feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest.”

  He nodded. “That’s typical of respiratory anthrax, but if Cap
tain Stryker’s medic hadn’t pumped you full of antibiotics, you’d be dead by now.”

  From the next bed, Coop, who’d turned his head when Jersey’s chest was bared, spoke up. “I always said Jerse was too damned tough for any bug to kill.”

  Coop, who hadn’t been as far along in the sickness when the antibiotics were started, was looking almost well.

  Buck examined him by listening to his lungs and poking around on his stomach to see if the swelling in his liver had gone down, and pronounced him cured of the infection.

  “Jersey, however, is going to have to stay in quarantine for a few more days.”

  Coop bounded out of bed and began to put his clothes on. “Looks like you’re going to lose your roommate, Jerse,” he said with a grin.

  She turned her pale face toward him and tried to smile. “I never thought I’d say this, Coop, but I’m gonna miss you.”

  He stepped to her bedside and leaned down to plant a gentle kiss on her cheek. “I’m gonna miss you too.” He stood up and smiled. “But I’m sure as hell not going to miss those blasted needles the medic has been sticking in me every hour.”

  Buck smiled and shook his head. “No, I don’t believe you are going to miss those, Coop. Now that you’re cured, your blood is full of antibodies to the bacteria. We’re going to need to get lots of it to try and use it to make a vaccine against this new strain of anthrax.”

  Jersey gave a short laugh. “Poor Coop. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  “You mean I’m gonna have to be stuck some more?” he cried, a look of horror on his face.

  “Lots more, I’m afraid,” Buck.

  Coop held out his arms, showing the doctor the myriad black and blue spots where needles had penetrated. “I don’t think I have any veins left in my arms to get blood out of, Doc,” he said.

  Buck shrugged and winked at Jersey so Coop couldn’t see. “Well, if that’s the case, we can always draw it from your femoral vein.”

  “My femoral vein? Where in the hell is that?” Coop asked, a look of disbelief on his face.

  Buck pointed at his groin. “Right there, next to your pubic bone.”

  Coop covered himself with both hands. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m sure you can still find a small vein or two in my arms,” he said, nodding his head.

  “I hope so,” Buck said, “’cause a femoral stick is very painful.”

  “Shit,” Coop said, putting his hand on his forehead. “I think I feel a relapse comin’ on, Doc. Maybe my antibodies aren’t quite ready yet.”

  Buck laughed and said, “Get the hell out of here, Coop. I need to talk to Jersey for a while. Tell the cook to fix you a couple of steaks. We need to build your blood up for the upcoming tests.”

  “Yeah, I already feel like I’m a quart low,” Coop said dejectedly as he walked out of the room.

  Jersey looked at Buck as he sat on the edge of her bed. “Any progress with the cultures so far?” she asked.

  He nodded “It looks like the scientists took a regular strain of anthrax and played with it until they got the mutation they wanted. Normal respiratory anthrax is only caught by inhaling spores, and isn’t capable of being passed person to person. This strain, however, in addition to being much more virulent, can evidently be caught from anyone who is infected.”

  “That’s right,” Jersey said. “I was the only one who was in actual contact with the liquid sample I took from the lab. Coop caught the bug from me.”

  “That’s what I feared,” Buck said, a serious look on his face.

  “But why didn’t our previous vaccine work against this strain?” she asked.

  “I think, actually, it did to a small degree,” Buck said. “Otherwise you would never have made it as long as you did without treatment.”

  “How long will it take the new vaccine to do its job?”

  “In most cases, we need to vaccinate troops at least two weeks before they’re exposed, or the new vaccine won’t have time to build up the antibodies necessary for full protection.”

  “But what if the mercs use it before we’re ready?”

  “What I plan to do is to give all of our troops shots of gamma globulin now, to kick their immune systems into high gear while we’re making the new vaccine. That may buy us a little time until the vaccine takes effect. And it should cut the response time down to one week instead of two.”

  “I’m afraid that’s still gonna be cutting it close,” Jersey said. “The mercs were all ready to move out last week.”

  Buck nodded. “Yeah. We just heard from Ben on the radio that the attacks have already begun in Mexico.”

  Jersey held out her arms. “Then take all the blood you need, Larry. We need to get that vaccine ready as soon as possible.”

  “I’m already working on it, Jersey.” He walked toward the door to her cabin. “With any luck, we’ll have the first vials of vaccine coming out in less than a week, thanks to yours and Coop’s blood.”

  General Bradley Stevens, Jr., walked into Claire’s office and threw a sheaf of papers onto her desk.

  “What are those?” she asked.

  “Reports from our radar installations. There was an unidentified plane flying over our airspace last night.”

  “How high?”

  “It never got below twenty thousand feet.”

  “You think it was a bomber?”

  He shook his head. “No. If it had planned to drop bombs, it would have dropped to ten thousand feet or less for a night drop.”

  She leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrowed. “Parachute troops?”

  He shrugged. “I just don’t know. If they were going to parachute troops in, I’d think there would have been many more planes. And I don’t see how they’d be able to drop troops from that altitude.”

  “Where did the flight originate?” she asked, knowing somehow Ben Raines had some dirty trick or another up his sleeve.

  “Looks like it came from Louisiana, curved over the panhandle of Texas, then straight up toward Iowa.”

  “Iowa? What the hell would they want with Iowa? You think maybe the SUSA’s short of corn or grain?” she asked with a sarcastic smile on her face.

  “No, but Iowa’s one of the few places where we don’t have a strong military presence. It also happens to be the state with a populace more sympathetic to Raines and his brand of government than most of our other ones are.”

  “Well, General,” she said, leaning forward to put her elbows on her desk, “if Raines wants Iowa, he’s welcome to it As far as I can see, the state is practically worthless.”

  “Except it produces almost a third of our foodstuffs, Madame President. And I don’t know if the people are going to put up with much more rationing.”

  She slammed her hand down on the desk. “The people will do what I damn well tell them to do, and don’t you forget that for a moment, General Stevens.”

  He clamped his jaw shut. He’d forgotten how resistant Claire was to anything she didn’t agree with. It was her worst failing as an administrator. She continually surrounded herself with yes-men who didn’t dare to tell her the truth, unless it was favorable to her beliefs. She reminded him of Adolf Hitler in a lot of ways, and, he reminded himself, Hitler had managed to lose a war that he should have won.

  “What would you like me to do about these reports?” he asked.

  She thought for a moment, then said, “Send a platoon of troops from the nearest base we have over there to check it out Make sure they carry some radios that can contact us with what they find. If Ben Raines is trying something sneaky, I want to know about it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stevens said, saluting and leaving the room before he got himself in further trouble by speaking his mind. That was one of the worst sins you could commit in Claire’s presence, speaking the truth.

  When he got to his office, he called his aide and said, “Send a squad of troops to Iowa, the Cedar Rapids area. Check ’em out a helicopter and tell ’em to report any suspicious sightings o
r happenings in the area.”

  After he gave the order, he went back to his battle plans. Claire had ordered him to step up the activity on the southern border with the SUSA, and he needed to make sure it was done right.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lieutenant Tommy Bell sat in the rear compartment of the Huey helicopter with the rest of the eight men that had been sent to check out a radar sighting over Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

  He was plenty pissed off. The rest of his battalion was moving south to confront Ben Raines’s Rebel forces, and here he was playing nursemaid to a squad of men doing police duties.

  Damn, he thought, I’ll never get promoted unless I get to see some action. Both of his brothers, neither of which had graduated from Officers’ Candidate School with grades as high as his, were a full rank ahead of him. Due mainly to their luck in being in the right place at the right time and seeing heavy action in the last war.

  As the Huey circled lower and lower over Cedar Rapids, Bell leaned out the hatchway and took a close look at the town. Nothing seemed amiss. People were moving about on the street; traffic, what little there was of it due to stringent gasoline rationing, seemed to be moving normally; and except for the roadblocks on the highway leading into town, all was as it should be for a sleepy little farming town.

  Bell grabbed the intercom mike and said, “Put her down in the town square, there near the police station.”

  As the big, ungainly chopper settled to the ground on its skids, Bell jumped from the hatch, his M-16 cradled in his arms, and jogged across the grass-covered square toward the main police station. He intended to ask the officer in charge if anything strange had been reported the night before and to get him to explain the purpose of the roadblocks.