Power Play- America's Fate

by Diane Matousek Schnabel

  Kyle strode toward Ivans, anger simmering inside him. “Thanks to the sheriff and his deputies, ninety-nine percent of our livestock emerged unscathed. And an advance warning would not have helped the crops. They couldn’t be corralled inside a barn or covered. So why don’t you put down your sign and pick up a broom? Instead of fearmongering, start helping your neighbors.”

  The residents who had gathered behind him began to applaud. In response, jeering protestors scooped up handfuls of dust and launched them into the wind, silencing and scattering their opposition.

  “Enjoy your moment, Governor,” Ivans said softly enough that only Kyle could hear him. “Because those people will eventually recognize that you are nothing but a weak, inept tyrant. They will rise up against you and the immoral military regime that brought you to power.”

  “Alex, I was democratically elected to this post.”

  “Yeah? Saddam Hussein was elected too. And like you, no one dared to run against him, or even vote against him for that matter. He had secret police to protect his power; Hitler had the Gestapo; and you have the TEradS.”

  Kyle walked away, knowing it was pointless to reason with an unreasonable man.

  Turner followed, grumbling, “What a prick.”

  “Have you heard the latest news from Europe, Governor?” Ivans shouted after him. “Of course not! Because you have no link to the outside world. Well, I know what’s happening; and I promise you, the TEradS you worship as heroes will soon be disbanded. And your daughter, Abby ... ? She and that husband of hers will be facing a UW war crimes tribunal!”

  27

  Scoville Air Force Base

  District Five, Illinois

  BRADLEY WEBBER sat inside the briefing room, eyes fused to the European news feed.

  The video had been shot from inside the “sanctuary zone” and edited by a professional. First, viewers saw the hostages, American women and children cowering with fear; fade to the front door being kicked in. Screams escalated; slow motion clips showed two flash bangs, one gliding through the open doorway, a second piercing a rear window. Cut to an explosion of flames, hostages burning alive, and a crescendo of bloodcurdling shrieks.

  The broadcast reverted to a pale female news anchor, with long black hair and doleful brown eyes.

  “Was it an accident? Were incendiary grenades mistaken for so-called stun grenades? Or is America’s Terrorist Eradication Squad guilty of depraved indifference to human life? WLIB has a special guest to help us answer that crucial question, a witness who was inside that ‘sanctuary zone’ just minutes before it was torched. Please welcome Leigh Winer, joining us via teleconference.”

  Bradley exchanged a sidelong glance of disbelief with Norwyn. The last he’d heard, the rescued woman was still on base being debriefed.

  “Leigh, why don’t you take us through the harrowing events of that fateful night?”

  “Well ... I was there, at the ‘sanctuary zone,’ with a few of my neighbors and their kids. We all opposed the wholesale slaughter of Chinese nationals.” She paused to blot away nonexistent tears then sniffled for effect. “When the TEradS showed up, I went outside to talk to them. I had my hands up, but one of their Snipers started shooting at me ...”

  Bradley folded his arms across his chest. His head shook slightly.

  Lady, he thought, if I was shooting AT YOU, you wouldn’t be alive.

  “... My neighbor and her daughter came out to help me, and they were shot dead, right there on the front porch. I—I told the TEradS that there were more women and children in that foyer, and they stormed the house anyway. I watched them throw the grenades. I watched the fire devour my neighbors and those poor Chinese workers.”

  Heat radiated from Bradley’s face. Anger was pulsing through his muscles, making his jaw ache and his hands tremble. He was on the verge of losing control, of slamming his fist through the nearest wall. Did his teammates notice his emotional reaction? He surveyed the men gathered around the conference table. Brows were furrowed; lips were pursed, most likely to keep expletives from escaping. Fists were clamped so tight they appeared bloodlessly white; and eyes were glowing with outrage, an almost palpable desire for retribution.

  Ten powder kegs of indignation, Bradley thought.

  “And the evidence continues to mount against the TEradS,” the glassy-eyed news anchor continued. “First, we learned of Saturday’s cold-blooded execution of thirty-seven Chinese POWs; then yesterday’s heinous firebombing which took the lives of a dozen Americans and an unknown number of Chinese workers. And just moments ago, WLIB acquired exclusive footage of a yet another incident.”

  On the new video, viewers saw a TEradS team advancing through a heavy downpour. Another group of hostages sat huddled on the floor, yet more terrified American women and children. The front door was kicked in; another slow-motion segment emphasized the arc of a flash bang; more panicked howls resonated. Cut to the image of two grenades landing amidst the hostages; then a final slow-motion sequence that maximized the carnage.

  “The pattern is indisputable,” the anchor declared through quivering lips. “These atrocities are not mere accidents. Therefore, WLIB has decided to publish the identities of those responsible on our website. And along with the international community, we are demanding that the United States turn over these murderers to the United World Court to stand trial for war crimes.”

  Bradley could feel involuntary tremors snaking through his body. His mind was a redlining engine. That bitch of a reporter didn’t even bother to investigate the producers of those videos. She just eagerly accepted one side of the story, a cobbled together crock of bullshit. What happened to confirming an allegation using multiple sources? What happened to presenting both sides?

  Major Andrews’ pissed off image returned to the monitor, flanked by two equally irate Captains, Fitzgerald and Canter.

  “I don’t think anyone is surprised that we’re being set up,” Ryan said. “The Chinese have been ambushing our teams for weeks; and now they’re like cornered animals, more desperate and dangerous than ever. These lies will not go unanswered. I have the raw footage from the California raid which will unequivocally prove that the WLIB video is a maliciously edited piece of propaganda ...”

  So what? Bradley thought, limbs trembling again. There’s no way the real footage will get equal airtime.

  “... One of the conspirators was caught with a laptop, and Cyber Command is working to trace the satellite upload back to the producer. In the interim, everybody wears a helmet camera.” Ryan hesitated, drawing in a breath, and his facial expression transitioned from furious defiance to grief. “Regretfully, there’s more bad news. Another tragedy within our TEradS community. Rick Lahey from Team 9A was found with his wrists slashed. An apparent suicide.”

  Bradley’s anger resurged along with his body temperature, and beads of perspiration began to trickle along his back. Lahey was one of Abby’s new teammates. Did he really kill himself? Or did Volkov’s men make it look that way?

  Chapter 7

  ><>< DAY 463 ><><

  Monday, May 23rd

  28

  Edgar Air Force Base

  District Nine, California

  ABBY WEBBER’S INSOMNIA was worsening, and morale on base continued to deteriorate with each subsequent newscast.

  I can’t believe President Quenten isn’t defending the TEradS, she thought. We uncovered an assassination plot that saved his life. And Bradley and I risked everything to find those four traitors—his political appointees—and “render them harmless.”

  Another dose of betrayal agitated her riled emotions, diminishing any chance of sleep.

  Abby gave a resigned sigh then tried to focus on the cadence of the rain. Using a bucket, Cozart had calculated a rainfall rate of nearly four inches per hour, intense enough to rival the Florida hurricanes of her childhood.

  This deluge makes Sunday’s cloudburst seem like a drizzle, she thought.

  Abby rolled over, fluffed her pillow, wh
ich felt like a block of cement, and gazed at the waterfall gushing from the eaves of the apartment building. Three blackbirds were roosting on the window ledge.

  Is the incessant lousy weather taking a toll on wildlife? Or are people the only creatures turning suicidal?

  Memories of Rick Lahey’s gruesome death—and the ensuing dissension—sent her mood into free fall. Teams 9A and 9B were divided, half insisting that Lahey had been murdered in an attack similar to the one that had killed Gallagher; but with daily suicides averaging double digits, the base commander was unwilling to entertain their conjecture.

  The creak of a floorboard prompted Abby to sit upright. Her right hand dove toward the tactical knife stowed between the mattress and box spring. The muted sound repeated, this time louder.

  Footsteps?

  Adrenaline and fear blitzed her nervous system.

  I wish I had my rifle, she thought, resenting the 1992 Department of Defense directive that prohibited Soldiers from carrying firearms on base.

  Gripping her knife, Abby soundlessly climbed from the bed and skulked toward the open bedroom door. She paused to identify a faint rustling noise. Shoes scuffing against carpet? Pant legs rubbing? Someone breathing? She wasn’t sure.

  Back pressed to the wall, she strained to listen, then a raspy voice whispered, “Cut yourself.”

  A flash of irritation supplanted her fear.

  Is this another stupid hazing stunt? This attempt to scare me is sick, revolting, and in exceptionally poor taste, she thought, given that Lahey had slashed his wrists—vertically.

  Infuriated, Abby marched into the empty family room. She cleared the efficiency kitchen and the stairwell, then inspected the sole bathroom. It, too, was empty.

  “I must’ve imagined it,” she mumbled as though spoken words carried more credibility.

  Confident that her apartment was secure and that exhaustion was obscuring the boundary between reality and imagination, she retreated to the bedroom.

  The blackbirds were sitting motionless like creepy statues. During daylight hours, they were perched atop the electrical wires despite the rain. Why did they move to the window ledges every night? To evade nocturnal predators?

  Abby returned her knife to its convenient hiding place and crawled back into bed. Her eyes had barely shut when she heard the voice again, hoarse, yet stronger: Cut yourself.

  She leapt from the bed, irritation blooming into anger, and dropped onto the floor, searching for a cellphone, a voice recorder, anything the guys could be using to spook her. She stripped the bedding, tossed the contents of her footlocker, and frisked every piece of furniture, finding nothing. And that failure heightened the overwhelming, irrational feeling that someone was watching her, toying with her.

  Acutely aware of her blackbird audience, Abby stalked toward them, fist balled. The macabre buzzards scattered and she pounded the window with more force than intended. A spider web of cracks sprawled over the brittle, single-pane of glass, shards flew outward, and she felt a warm, wet rush of blood.

  Shit! I broke the freaking window.

  Retracting her injured hand, she hurried toward the bathroom.

  I can’t believe I cut myself.

  Every nerve ending along her spine turned to ice.

  That gravely voice replayed: Cut yourself.

  “Coincidence,” she muttered, swatting the light switch; then she turned on the faucet and rinsed her wound. The gash was an inch long, stretching between her pinky and wrist, not as deep as she’d initially thought. An antiseptic wipe and a Band-Aid would’ve handled it.

  Having neither, she blotted it with a piece of toilet tissue.

  The bleeding didn’t slow down, and Abby hurled the soaked paper into the toilet bowl.

  She yanked another segment from the roll and applied pressure to the wound, then she padded back to her disheveled footlocker to retrieve a roll of duct tape. Her thoughts were racing.

  I can plug the hole in my window with the tape, temporarily sealing out the rain, but what am I going to tell Cozart and Captain Fitzgerald? I was hearing voices and punched the window to scare away some birds because they were watching me?

  That would get her a psych evaluation, and at the moment, Abby wasn’t so sure that was a bad idea.

  Returning to the bathroom, she pitched the bloody toilet paper into the bowl and tore off another foot-long length. She folded it until it resembled a stick of chewing gum, placed it over the cut, and applied a three-inch strip of tape, a homemade Band-Aid. Then Abby slapped the pitted silver handle on the toilet tank to flush away the mess. The hunk of metal moved without resistance and made a clunking sound.

  Annoyed, she jiggled the handle.

  The chain must’ve detached.

  Abby lifted the lid from the ceramic tank.

  It slipped through her fingers, bounded off the plastic seat, then shattered against the tiled floor.

  She stood there, paralyzed, her gaze locked on the tank’s interior.

  29

  District Ten, Washington State

  AT THE TIME OF the electromagnetic pulse, Luann Libman was twelve years old, an only child with dirty-blonde hair and an easygoing disposition. Her mother had been visiting relatives in New York State on that fateful Valentine’s Day, and though her father presumed she had died, Luann refused to abandon hope. She awoke every morning believing that God would bring her mother home; and she got down on her knees each night, thankful that she was a day closer to that miraculous reunion.

  In her mother’s absence, Luann had taken on adult responsibilities—cooking and laundry, along with collecting firewood, purifying water, and checking the snares for small game. With her father hunting and fishing all day, she’d had a difficult time adjusting to this lonely, wilderness lifestyle.

  The hunting cabin, now called home, had been in her family for generations and was miles from the town of Orting where she had grown up. Mount Rainier loomed even larger here. Its beautiful snow-covered peak was the jewel of the Cascade Range, rising above fourteen thousand feet, an anchor to cling to after the rest of her world had been routed by an epidemic of civil unrest.

  Luann approached the first snare, situated between two red alder trees on the bank of the Puyallup River, and her empty stomach gurgled. The vacant trap had been cleverly robbed of its bait.

  Discouraging thoughts began murmuring inside her mind. What if there are no animals left? How will we survive?

  Once prevalent trout and bass were now scarce, and her father hadn’t seen a deer in months.

  “Dear God,” she whispered. “You promised to provide for us. You said You would never, never, never forsake us ...”

  A fluttering sound disrupted Luann’s prayer and her gaze tracked toward Mount Rainier. A large flock of black-bellied plover were skimming above the treetops like an airborne river of feathers. Two bald eagles soared high above them, the likely cause of the exodus.

  I guess we can always switch to trapping birds, she thought, bending over to bait the trap with a rancid rabbit’s foot. Just ‘cause I don’t see a way, doesn’t mean that God can’t make a way.

  A great rumbling noise thundered through the valley. The land beneath her feet reared up, tossing Luann onto her backside, then sank, creating a weird falling sensation she associated with roller coasters. A second later the truth registered.

  It was an earthquake.

  A big one.

  Jumping back to her feet, she turned toward Mount Rainier. A dismal plume of ash was spewing from its icy peak.

  Get to high ground!

  The danger posed by the stratovolcano had been drilled into her, year after year at school; and Luann attempted to sprint up the steep hillside on worn-out sneakers that provided little traction. Trees were swaying; branches, snapping. The earth beneath her was pulsing, rising and falling, bouncing her like a beach ball on the ocean.

  Luann fell four times, then she opted to crawl on hands and knees. The badly eroded trail gave way and she began slid
ing backward down the hill.

  Desperation and fear sapped her strength.

  Evacuation drills were never like this at school, she thought. What am I supposed to do?

  “God, I can’t do this without You!” She screamed the words, and was barely able to hear her voice above the growl of the fracturing earth.

  Instinctively, she scrambled off the path, advancing through a sea of brush. Mature trees rocked like metronomes. Trunks were crashing around her, then the violent thrusting suddenly ceased. Luann dashed for the cabin, vaulting over foliage and newly opened crevices, feeling as if she were running in place, then the deep panting breaths of the volcano were overpowered by a loud slooshing sound.

  Thirty feet below her, viscous gray water was flowing along the river bed, and she squinted at the surreal sight.

  It’s a lahar, she thought, grateful for all those boring lessons on the subject, part of the Orting School District’s Living-with-a-Volcano-in-Your-Backyard curriculum. Mount Rainier’s eruption was ejecting 2,000-degree ash, rock, and gas miles into the atmosphere; and as that column collapsed, pyroclastic material was whisking away the cubic mile of glacial ice that crowned the volcano.

  “Oh no ... Dad ...”

  He fished in the river valley and hunted game trails that led to the water; and the resulting mudflow could travel fifty miles per hour, too fast to outrun, which is why Luann had been taught to seek higher ground.

  Did the lahar bury him alive? Am I completely on my own?

  Terrified, she watched the hellish river of slurry effortlessly sweep away trees and boulders, weapons it would use to batter everything in its path. Despite its speed, the deadly sludge had the consistency of wet concrete, fluid while in motion, but once momentum was lost, it would quickly solidify.