Power Play- America's Fate
Page 30
“See you back at the vehicle.” CJ smirked, adding, “But probably not in the literal sense.”
Bradley strode into the street and followed the double yellow line, unsure of the portal’s precise location. Leery of tripping the pressure sensors, he extended both arms in front of him, mummy walking, groping for the strip curtains that marked the entryway.
A torridly oppressive 400 yards later, he felt something against his fingertips. The image of the industrial complex blurred, and a miniature lightning bolt zapped his hand, minus the sting of the shock.
The first crossbar was directly overhead, and he tested it to be sure it could support his weight before beginning his advance. The bars were two feet apart, a challenging distance that required tremendous upper-body strength, and Bradley had to draw his feet upward to avoid the pressure sensors.
If a truck comes through here, I’ll be roadkill, he thought.
As he neared the middle of the twenty-foot span, exertion and adrenaline were boosting his body temperature. Then, right arm outstretched toward the next bar, his left hand slipped.
Both feet landed at the same time.
An alarm began to wail, and Bradley pressed his back against the side of a steel cargo container.
They won’t be able to see me, he told himself. They’ll chalk it up to a false alarm.
He gazed down at his lower body to validate his invisibility and gaped in horror.
109
District Six, Texas
GOVERNOR KYLE MURPHY saw the girl’s arm move. She had been shot once in the thigh and shrapnel protruded from her stomach.
“This one’s alive!” he shouted, drawing the attention of two deputies who were trained paramedics. “It’s Lydia ... Carl Dorset’s daughter.”
The man had served as a deputy for nearly a year before being felled by a Chinese grenade. Kyle knew that Lydia blamed him for her father’s death; and in truth, he blamed himself. He had inadvertently provoked the peacekeepers that day, prompting a retaliatory attack on the former sheriff’s station, which claimed the lives of six deputies and his good friend, Sheriff Montanez.
His gaze returned to the teen. “Lydia, honey, you’re going to be o—”
The word coagulated in his throat.
A pistol was clenched in her left hand, its barrel swinging toward him.
The crack of a solitary gunshot boomed, and Kyle’s head jerked westward.
A hazy red cloud blossomed, and for a second, particles of blood seemed to hang in midair, then they slowly diffused into the wind.
Deputies drew their weapons, and he heard Peter shout, “Don’t shoot!”
The youngest member of the District Six security forces was lying zombielike, cheek resting against the butt stock of a rifle. His facial expression was gnarled with an ache that transcended physical pain, and a steady stream of tears was dripping onto the road surface, commingling with the crimson ribbon emanating from beneath him.
“Oh God!” Kyle scrambled toward the boy, who had been shot in the leg and lost a substantial amount of blood.
“It’s not Lydia’s f-f-fault,” Peter stammered. “They ... they drugged her.”
Kyle gripped the boy’s hand. “I know. And it’s going to be okay. I promise.”
As the paramedics applied a tourniquet, Peter winced. Then through gritted teeth, he said, “I-I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hur ... hurt Lydia, but she was gonna shoot you ... I couldn’t let her kill you.”
Kyle bowed his head, realizing that his veritable One-Man Army had saved his life—again. Then a pair of loathsome thoughts barged into the forefront of his mind.
Another member of the Dorset family is dead ... because of me.
And now Peter will have to endure the guilt of taking a loved one’s life.
110
Off the Coast of District Three
Washington, D.C.
J. ANTHONY WALKER watched a rigid-hulled inflatable boat being deployed from the U.S.S. Clay Hunt. The landing craft looked like a gray cork bobbing on the riled sea. Through the magnification of binoculars, he counted three crew members and eight heavily armed men aboard.
Walker was well acquainted with the tactics of the U.S. Navy and keenly aware that he would lose a conventional fight. In order to prevail, he would need to employ an asymmetric strategy—a euphemistic term for irregular warfare or terrorism.
The first American detachment would encounter a welcoming contingent of sailors with thick Polish accents. En route to the bridge, they would become trapped inside a watertight chamber along with the pseudo Poles, where a release of ether would render them all unconscious. Subsequent teams would encounter a similar fate on their way to the cargo hold; affording Walker several high-value bargaining chips.
I’ll string the enemy along, he thought, releasing a few hostages to buy enough time for our aircraft carriers to sink the destroyer. And at that point, any remaining captives will become expendable.
It was a long shot, he knew, a last-ditch effort to salvage the assault on Washington.
Eleven members of the U.S. Navy had boarded the RHIB when a rogue wave hit the U.S.S. Clay Hunt.
A massive hole opened in the sea like a rabid mouth, then a three-story wall of water reared up.
Walker watched the American destroyer pitch.
Water crashed over her decks sweeping Sailors overboard.
The RHIB smashed against the listing destroyer, the ropes tethering it snapped, then the wave obscured his view.
He sank down onto the deck and ordered his crew to brace for impact.
The RORO plunged, accelerated into a barrel roll, and a mournful metallic moan bellowed through the vessel. Walker and his crew were tossed, tumbling like balls inside a spinning bingo cage, ultimately coming to rest on the overhead.
Floating upside down, with glass ports submerged beneath the waterline, seawater began gushing into the bridge.
That’s it, he thought. Fate has stolen the battle from my hands.
“Permission to transmit a Mayday, sir?” his XO asked, his practiced Polish accent undermined by alarm.
Surely, the Clay Hunt will intervene, but the rescue of Night Sector soldiers off the East Coast will prematurely expose the surprise attack. The Americans might even preemptively neutralize our recommissioned aircraft carrier.
“No,” he told his XO. “For the greater good of our mission, it is best for the truth to sink into the depths of the Atlantic.”
111
District Three, Washington, D.C.
ABBY WEBBER CRINGED. Her body tensed, anticipating the detonation.
“Granate!”
She heard the dull thump of a body flopping onto the mezzanine’s tiled floor.
Barely fifty feet from her, a man in black tactical gear dove onto the grenade, selflessly shielding his comrades. His eyes widened, registering her presence. His jaw flexed as if to speak, then the metal ball exploded with a muffled roar. Abby felt intense heat. The man’s torso convulsed, lifting a few inches off the ground. The pressure wave sent the trash can into a spin, and everything sounded distorted, as if she’d been immersed in water.
Frail tendrils of smoke curled upward from the man’s body, and the smell of burning flesh overpowered the stench of rotting garbage.
Two additional balaclava-veiled gunmen darted past their fallen friend.
“Danke, mein freund!”
Sounds German, she thought.
They charged up the stairs in pursuit of the men who had killed their teammate.
Dazed, Abby stared at the stranger who had heroically saved her life and whispered the phrase she’d overheard.
“Danke, mein freund!”
She lingered, holding her position to be sure no reinforcements would spill forth from the bowels of the metro station, and tried to digest what she’d witnessed.
Is that the team tasked with extracting General Sun from Washington, D.C.?
If so, why were they speaking German?
A loud rumble overpowered the gush of water streaming down the steps; and for a moment, she swore a metro train was speeding through the obsolete station. A gust of air howled against the waffled coffers of the vaulted cement ceiling. The pressure changed, and Abby’s ears popped. Wet papers, loose trash, and broken glass were suddenly airborne, flying toward the stairway.
Then the trash can began to roll, sucked toward the steps as if by a giant vacuum. Abby wedged her elbows and legs against the plastic receptacle to prevent herself from falling like clothing in a dryer; and the barrel of her rifle clanged, all noise lost to the raging storm.
After two revolutions, the trash can collided with a dead Chinaman and halted her momentum. Craning toward the street-level exit, she glimpsed a vortex of debris silhouetted against a faint patch of daylight. Abby rapidly retracted her head into her synthetic turtle shell.
Then the barrel spin resumed, steamrolling up and over the corpse as if it were a speed bump.
Oh shit! she thought. The storm spawned a tornado!
112
Basic Training
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
SYBIL LUDINGTON had been assigned to the 321st Training Squadron; and for the second time this week, a clique of sixteen-year-old females had rebelled against military discipline and physical fitness drills, condemning the entire class of recruits to a severe punishment.
The ruck march was a five-mile journey through hell, loaded down with a backpack of gear equal to one-third her body weight, not including a nonfiring M16 with a blue handguard and butt stock.
The two-column formation plodded forward, tunneling through clouds of gnats and kicking up dust particles that clung to her sweat-dampened face. Scrub pine and Chinese tallow trees on either side of the dirt road did little to blunt the midafternoon sun.
Sybil’s Drill Instructor was six feet ahead, barking out an unintelligible cadence of left, right; and she discharged another glare at the whiners responsible for her current misery. None of them had come from the districts; and although they had lived through the horrors of the electromagnetic pulse, they didn’t grasp the seriousness of the subsequent Chinese invasion. Sybil had shared her experiences—the executions, the Alameda fever vaccines, the smallpox capsules—but they continued to discount those atrocities.
“That was before Shanghai and Beijing were flattened,” they’d argued. “The Chinese aren’t a threat anymore. The government should just let us go home.”
They won’t give a damn until it happens to them ... or someone they love, Sybil thought, clamping a hand on her side to mitigate a cramp.
Her Drill Instructor appeared to melt into a puddle.
What the—
A rifle shot crackled, and shrill screams cut through the humid afternoon air.
Then a lone Asian gunman stationed just beyond the razor-wire fence fired a fully automatic barrage into the column.
A handful of sixteen-year-olds were hit, a tangled mass of bleeding limbs and chest wounds. Several stood frozen, shrieking, while others bolted toward the barracks, shedding rifles and rucksacks.
“Get off the road!” Sybil shouted. “Run into the woods where there’s concealment!”
While the gunman targeted the escapees, Sybil ran to her Drill Instructor, dragged him across the dirt road into a shallow gully, and checked for a pulse. He was dead, shot first by design to maximize the chaos. She patted him down, searching for a firearm, finding only a folding tactical knife.
“Take cover!” Sybil barked, pocketing the inadequate weapon.
Unable to penetrate the teens’ mental paralysis with mere words, she shoved them toward the ditch. To the south, the road was littered with bodies. Sybil grabbed onto the backpack straps of two injured recruits and hauled them toward her cowering peers. She dragged four more victims to relative safety and began packing bullet wounds with dirt.
“O-o-w-w,” the patient cried. “Don’t touch me!”
“I’m trying to stop the bleeding.” Using the DI’s folding knife, she cut the tail of her jacket, folded it into a bandage, then pressed it to the wound, guiding the girl’s hand toward the fabric. “You need to keep pressure—”
Sybil felt something slam into her body.
Light-headedness overwhelmed her; and suddenly, she was falling into a pit of darkness.
113
District Three, Washington, D.C.
GENERAL ZHENSHENG SUN opened his eyes, bewildered, unsure where he was.
The storm, he thought. It sired a tornado, and we sheltered inside a parking garage.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he crawled from the backseat of a battered SUV, previously assailed by waves of looters. PLA soldiers lucky enough to evade the wrathful winds were already excavating a path through a mountain of rubble clogging the exit ramp—their only known means of egress.
Above him, he could hear the structure creaking, and a powerful sense of dread burned in his veins.
I’m buried alive, he thought. It seemed no air was permeating his lungs, and he began to hyperventilate, fueling his panic. His pulse accelerated, his fingers began to tingle, and he felt light-headed.
I can’t breathe in here! And I can’t get out!
Sinking onto the pavement between vehicles, he retrieved a satellite phone from the pocket of his windbreaker. Hands trembling, fingers numb, it took three tries to power it on.
There’s no signal inside this cement coffin, he thought. This is where I will die, without honor, without fanfare, in abject anonymity.
He vomited up the bottle of water he’d consumed while his men had set fire to the White House. The destruction of that landmark, along with the Capitol Building and National Archives, was supposed to be a face-saving act of patriotism, a parting blow that would scar the American psyche—one that now seemed likely to cost him his life.
He felt a tightness in his chest. His vision began to contract into a narrow tunnel.
Am I having a heart attack?
Sun closed his eyes, awaiting death.
I never should’ve allowed the UW to set the time and place of my extraction, he thought.
In exchange for his safe return to his Motherland, he had delivered the coordinates for Volkov’s base of operations to Ryan Andrews. At the time, it appeared to be a fail-safe opportunity: a ticket home via the UW and a chance to exact vengeance on Volkov for using his troops as cannon fodder.
May the TEradS and Volkov annihilate each other! he thought.
Hearing his men applauding, Sun’s eyes snapped open.
A beam of natural light was squeezing above the rubble.
A way out!
He propped a hand on the SUV, climbed to his feet, and staggered toward freedom’s doorway.
Two sergeants escorted him over the shifting pile of stone, wood, and metal. He was surprised to see that the rain and wind had abated; and in its wake, a dazzling circle of blue sky seemed to be smiling down onto Thirteenth Street.
“The eye of the hurricane will not tarry,” a sergeant told him. “And most regrettably, we must complete our mission with twenty-one warriors.”
“The tornado claimed half our forces?” Sun asked, realizing that death had passed within a whisker.
“Yes, sir. But it has also neutralized the remainder of the TEradS team.” The sergeant pointed to a balaclava-clad face poking from beneath an overturned granite planter and a teepee of tree branches.
Sun felt an ominous chill roll along his spine. “Bring me that man’s weapon at once!”
For several minutes, the sergeants pitched aside debris then returned with an AK-74.
“Those were not TEradS Soldiers inside Metro Center Station!” he bellowed, infuriated by such gross incompetence. “The Terrorist Eradication Squad does NOT mask their identities and they do NOT wield Russian rifles!”
Then a dire question brought on a resurgence of his earlier symptoms, and he slumped down onto Thirteent
h Street.
What if that was my UW extraction team?
114
North of Scoville Air Force Base
District Five, Illinois
BRADLEY WEBBER’S BODY weight was creating two shoe-shaped impressions in the pressure sensor, giving away his presence. He didn’t have time to ponder his options. A sentry charged through the middle of the strip curtain, instigating a flurry of movement, and Bradley sidled through the leftmost edge, minimizing the disturbance in the flapping strands.
Inside the forward operating base, a dozen men were mobilizing, half moving toward him, half toward the other portal. That’s when he realized two distinct alarms were blaring.
Wingnut, Bradley thought. He heard me trip the pressure sensor and used the blackbird to create a distraction and split their forces.
He walked away from the portal, skirting the perimeter, listening for an audible swish of fabric, but the silky “hazmat suit” was surprisingly soundless. Armed soldiers raced past him, oblivious of his presence, and he scowled, noting that they were not dripping with sweat.
Why isn’t their collective body heat turning this tent into an oven? he wondered.
The underside of the Russian cloak resembled ancient chain mail, a densely woven metal impervious to blades.
That can’t be defensive, he thought. It must serve some other purpose ... But what?
His eyes swept its surface, tracing spaghettilike rubber cords to the upward-directed light fixtures producing the twilight.
Could it be a heat sink? Some kind of funky solar panel—a caloric panel that converts heat into energy?
The frenzy over the potential incursion abruptly died out. Did they write it off as a false alarm? Are they combing the surrounding area? Conducting thermal scans that would lead them to Wingnut?