by Rod Carstens
He was ready. They had found that Matos’s radio had some charge left. Cat’s was dead, so he called Matos.
“Ready,” Tanner whispered.
“Roger that. We are too.”
“Check, stand by.” Tanner pulled his helmet on but put his mask in his thigh pocket. He flipped off his safety. He doubled-checked the small breaching charge he had set on the door. He didn’t want to hurt anybody; he just wanted to surprise them.
“On my count.”
“Roger.”
Tanner took a deep breath. He had no idea how this was going to go, but it was their only chance.
“Three, two, one.”
The charge blew the door wide open. Tanner stepped into the room and sidestepped to his right, away from the door now hanging on its hinges, his back to the wall facing a large open room. Cat and Matos appeared almost at the same instant at the far side of the room.
It was as if they had stepped into another world. A world that wasn’t covered in dust and dirt. A normal world. The room had been a large space for storage and other organizational uses for the hotel. It was spotlessly clean. Now it was a gathering room for the settlers. The floors were swept and there was even a worn rug on the floor. Old building shelves lined the walls, filled with books and equipment. Large, mismatched stuffed chairs and a couple of old-but-clean sofas had been placed around the room. There was even a colorful painting on one wall. The room was lit with a combination of candles and LED lights running off batteries. He had never seen a settlement so well organized and clean.
Several men and women were gathered around a long table that stood in the center of the room. They seem to have been listening to a teenage boy and a girl who were obviously telling them something important. When the charges blew and Tanner, Cat, and Matos moved into the room, everyone froze. There was no screaming or yelling, only silence. The men stared at them, hard-eyed. They all appeared tough and competent. They were dressed in various kinds of military or civilian clothes that would be practical for a Wild Zone. Cargo pants of various colors and types. Dark T-shirts under well-worn military and civilian coats. They all had knives on their belts, some had pistols, and all had long rifles nearby. One started to move toward his. Tanner jerked his rifle over to cover him.
“No!” he roared.
The women seemed to be of a kind too. Some were pretty and some plain but they stared at the three intruders unafraid. Their hair was either cut very short or pulled back out of their faces. Several of them also had weapons nearby. The women held themselves with the same competence and toughness as the men did. They too stared silently, waiting. Suddenly the teenaged boy said, “That’s them. Those are the people that shot those guys.”
Tanner immediately recognized Johnson—the one who was the leader of the kids they saved earlier. The girl called Morgan looked at Cat and smiled. She was standing next to a woman with tattoos on both arms and short black hair. There was something about her that Tanner felt more than noticed. She was somebody he had to watch.
“She’s the one. The one that gave me the ’16 and showed me how to hold my rifle and how to walk Tail-End Charlie.”
The woman put her arm around the girl. She stared at Tanner with no fear in her face. None of the other adults said anything either. They just looked from the teenagers to Tanner, Cat, and Matos. They were waiting for what would happen next.
“Alright, you have our attention,” a giant bearded man said, his hand only inches from a military-style automatic rifle. His eyes were skeptical. “What do you want?”
“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Tanner said.
“They saved us,” Morgan said. “They saved us.”
“Did you follow them here?” the bearded man asked.
“No,” Tanner said.
“How did you find us?”
“I was in an OP on the top floor of this building for the past week. I’ve been watching you the whole time.”
“Goddamnit! I told you, Mike, that we couldn’t assume the whole building was clear just because we made an initial sweep,” the woman with the short hair said.
A man at the table looked down sheepishly. The big man with the beard looked back at Tanner and said, “Like I said before: What do you want with us?”
Tanner pulled off his helmet and lowered his rifle. Cat did the same. Matos pulled off his mask and lowered his weapon. It was as if that was the very last of Matos’s energy. He took a couple of steps and collapsed on the floor. Cat knelt beside him and began checking his leg. When she exposed the bandage one of the women rushed over to them.
“Danielle!” the bearded man yelled.
“Be quiet, Peter,” she snapped. “If they had wanted to hurt us they certainly could have by now, and they saved the kids.” She knelt on the other side of Matos and looked at his leg. “It’s bad, but you did a good job with what you had. We have more medical supplies. I’m a doctor. I can help.”
Cat looked at Tanner, and he nodded. She stood to let the doctor examine Matos.
“Look, we’re not here to hurt anyone…” Tanner began again.
Cat had been scanning the room, watching the men and women. Tanner saw a look of real surprise cross her face. “Shit, that’s it!” she exclaimed suddenly. “He’s the reason for this whole mess. He’s the one they’re after.”
Cat was pointing to a man sitting at the large table with the others. He was considerably older than the rest of the settlers, with a white fringe of hair over a smooth bland face and hard, piercing black eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Tanner said.
“That’s who the Special Action Team’s after. That’s the purpose of the Free Fire Zone declaration. It’s him. That’s Brandon Rule.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Special Action Team
Patrol Area Bravo
2356 hours
The tiltrotor landed in the middle of the street. The back ramp dropped and Anke Muller followed the rest of the team as they quickly rushed out. As soon as she was on the ground, the tiltrotor took off. Anke had asked the aircraft to insert them over four blocks away from the target. Before the craft was above the buildings, the teams had disappeared into the night. Each three-person team had already been assigned their positions prior to landing. Anke stopped to check the time. Just after midnight. That would give them plenty of time to move into their jumping-off positions for the 3:00 a.m. raid. The 3:00 a.m. raid—it was almost cliché, but it worked. Three in the morning was scientifically proven to be when the body was at its lowest ebb. If anyone was resting or sleeping, their reaction time—no matter how well trained or organized they were—would be at its slowest. She had seen it again and again over the years.
“Move out,” she said quietly over the radio.
“Moore, check,” the sergeant in charge of the squad on the west side of the target said.
They moved slowly toward an alley between two buildings. There was a small path, there a rat trail as they called it, where locals used to move around. It was safer than moving through the buildings. Anke didn’t want to run into any locals who might fire a civilian weapon and warn the Rule settlement they were in the area.
Her teams were good. They moved like ghosts through the deserted streets and buildings. Ahead she heard the soft cough of a silenced rifle.
“One down,” someone reported.
When Anke reached that point she found a man lying facedown, a large pool of blood spreading from his head. A can of beans was clutched in his hand. Sorry, buddy, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He would never get to eat his beans. She stepped over the body and moved on. The men and women around her silently stepped around the body, careful not to tread through the blood and leave a sign they had been there. All was quiet. They moved through an empty lot then through the next building. The back door was off, and there was a hall that led straight through to the street. Again they slipped through the night and across through the street to the building.
O
nce it opened onto the next street, the teams separated to move to their specific jumping-off points. Anke had studied the map before she assigned the teams. She had decided on rushing the front of the building through the large opening that used to be all glass. Teams on three sides would provide covering fire while the snatch team went straight through the lobby and into the building. The other teams would follow once the primary team was inside. Rule and the settlers would be on the ground floor or the basement. You got trapped too easily if you went up in the building. So a quick sweep, find Rule, kill the others, and they were out and back on the tiltrotors headed home.
She had spotted the best position to lead the raid from in the building directly across the street from the settler’s hotel. She halted and let her team clear the next building. As they cleared the building room by room, all she heard on her radio was the whispered reports of her team.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
Now it got a little tricky. The teams were close to their jumping-off points. According to the last report, the settlers had an outpost on this side of the street. The lead team carefully and silently moved through the building, searching each room on the first floor. The team leader began to go up the stairs. He had gone up three steps when he stopped and pointed. She could see a trip wire for a booby trap. He carefully traced the wire to the small homemade explosive and disarmed it. He handed it to Anke and continued up the stairs. She examined it closely. It was very well made. Whoever had done this had training.
Carefully she put it out of the way and followed the rest of her team up the stairs. The point man stopped, pointed to his ear, then pointed to a room. He looked back to Anke, and she pointed to herself and carefully crept up the stairs to step in front of the point man. She raised her rifle to her shoulder then stepped into the room. There was a man with a rifle there, intent on the street. Anke took careful aim and shot him in the head. He slumped over dead. She gave a thumbs-down signal and waved the rest of the team to finish the search of the second floor.
She walked over to the body. He was somewhere in his twenties. He looked well fed and his clothes were clean and useful. The rifle he carried was clean and well taken care of. She searched him and found nothing else of use. She glanced out of the window—it was a perfect place to put a lookout. He had a clear shot up and down the street. Whoever had chosen the place knew what they were doing. Well trained and disciplined—this had to be where Brandon Rule was hiding.
She glanced at the hotel across the street. The settlers had been careful not to give any sign that they were there. The street looked deserted, as if no one had been there in years. Yes, this was it. By three o’clock Rule and the rest of his friends should all be nicely tucked into bed, she thought, and the lookouts at their drowsiest. By four, at the latest, this would all be wrapped up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Resource Security Force
Team Sixteen
Rule Settlement
0015 hours
“Who in the fuck is Brandon Rule?” Tanner said.
“You know I was a professional girl before I joined the Security Force,” Cat said.
“So?”
“I was taken to parties with some of the most important people in the city. Rule was one of the four or five most powerful men up there. He was one of the directors. He and a few others ran the city.”
Tanner looked at the older man sitting quietly at the table. “Are you who she says you are?”
A young woman sitting next to him put her hand on his arm. He looked directly at Tanner, his dark eyes fierce, and said, “Yes, I am Brandon Rule.”
“Would they send a Special Action Team after you?”
“Yes. Yes they would,” he said as if considering it for the first time. He looked over at the large bearded man called Peter, and they exchanged a knowing glance.
“How do we know you’re not the Special Action Team?” Peter demanded.
“Because you’re not dead now,” Tanner said sharply.
“Why are you here? What do you want from us?” Peter said.
“The Spec Act Team is not only after your friend; they’re after us. That’s how Matos was wounded.”
“Why would they be after you?” Peter asked.
“Because I protested the Free Fire Zone declaration and said I would write up an investigative report about it. Apparently that was not the right thing to say. They’ve been after us ever since.”
“Why did you protest the declaration?”
“Because this area doesn’t deserve it,” Tanner explained.
“Then why did they do it?”
“They have to be after Rule,” Tanner said.
“How did they know where he was? You didn’t.”
“In my last report I described your ambush of the gang this afternoon—how well organized you were, both when you ambushed and when you cleaned up the scene. I’ve never seen that before in any of the Wild Zones I’ve ever worked. I think it was enough evidence to warrant the Spec Act Team.”
The settlers all looked at Brandon Rule. He nodded and said, “That’s all the program would need. The one piece of data would close the loop, if I had to make a guess.”
“Since they’re after Rule with the declaration, we got in the way when I said I was going to demand an investigation,” Tanner said.
Again the settlers turned to Rule and he said, “Yes, they would not want anyone to look into this. His requesting an investigation could have led to some unwanted interest from various competing parties.”
“The way I see it, the declaration was supposed to cover the Spec Act Team’s mission,” the woman with the short dark hair said.
Tanner was surprised. She knew how things worked. Who was this woman? She almost looked familiar.
“So why are you here? What do you want?” Peter said.
“We can’t survive by ourselves. Like I said, I watched your handling of the gang attack earlier. You have your shit together. We can’t survive out there with just three of us and with one down. I figured you could use three more good hands.”
“Will one of you help me with this man?” Danielle said as she struggled to get Matos to his feet. Cat rushed over to help. She and the smaller woman helped Matos out of the room.
“Did the Spec Act Team follow you?” Peter asked.
“No, we lost them some time ago.”
Tanner looked at the older man sitting at the table. He didn’t look like someone worth all that was happening. He had to ask. “Why? Why are they coming for you?”
Rule remained silent.
“Why is all of this happening?” Tanner exploded. “What is so fucking important that they are willing to kill us and a whole lot of other people to keep things quiet?”
The old man and the young bearded giant exchanged glances.
“They’ve almost killed me more than once, and they’ve shot Matos and I’m in no mood for someone playing coy. One last time. Why?”
“Because I know the secret. The one they cannot let out.”
Tanner remained silent, his hand on his rifle. “You’ll have to do better than that. Why go to all of this trouble? What is the point?”
Cat stepped back into the room, walked over, and stood by Tanner. “Matos is well taken care of,” she said quietly.
“Father, go ahead and tell them. They have a right to know,” the young woman sitting next to Rule said.
“All right,” Rule began. “A number of years ago, when I was a young man, younger than you, I made a discovery. I was an expert in systems dynamic modeling. It’s a way to mathematically model nonlinear behavior. It had been used in business since the last century, but I came up with a way to use it to model human behavior at the societal level. I was able to mathematically model social trends by simulating large-scale population behaviors using a very carefully selected data. Given the right inputs and enough raw information, I was able to predict with some accuracy what was going to happen years ahead of time. I a
ccurately predicted mass human behaviors. Wars, major economic ups and downs, social unrest—anything having to do with large social changes.
“As I was able to identify the right data inputs with the right mathematical weights applied to them, the simulations became more accurate and would provide very specific timelines. These included political decisions and the responses of the public as well as the economic and social impacts years down the road. So I made millions running the simulations for various countries, states, politicians—you name it. Then I started noticing something. There was an outside factor that was beginning to affect my outcomes. I wasn’t including the climate, and it was having an effect I had not predicted.
“At first I let myself be drawn into the argument of whether it was man-made or just a natural cycle, so I could determine how much emphasis to give that data. Then I realized it didn’t matter—we had reached and then passed a tipping point. Whatever was causing the change it was not going to stop. We were headed in one direction and we were all just along for the ride. To put it simply, there were just three things that mattered. Increasing population, decreasing amounts of drinking water, and therefore a diminished ability to grow food. Too many people and not enough food or water. Earth has finite resources, which means there is a planetary carrying capacity, and the world’s economy was using it up faster than it could be replaced. We were using up the planet.”
The room was silent as Rule paused and took a sip of water from the glass in front of him on the table.
“At first they didn’t believe me, but I predicted the Water Wars out west as the climate affected areas like L.A. that were built in a desert and depended on the snowmelt for water. No snow. No snowmelt. Then the Midwestern aquifer. The farmers and cities had been pulling water out of it as if it hadn’t taken millions of years to accumulate. When the rainfall continued to decrease year after year, the aquifer eventually dried up to the point they could no longer pull enough water out. So now we have the Great Midwestern Desert. With the Greenland ice sheet melting and Antarctica losing more and more of its ice, the sea level began to rise enough to affect first-world countries’ cities. Many had to be evacuated. Because of these pressures the big migrations from the cities as well as from the Midwest began. As the populations were forced to move, looking for better places to live, the social disruption was destabilizing. And we weren’t the only country to experience these issues, everyone was. So there had to be an answer—a way to carry on. Those in power, both corporate and political, saw their survival first and everyone else’s second. A strategy needed to be developed to sustain the current social structure.”