Midnight Skills

by William Allen

  “Gather up, people!” the man called, gesturing for the groups of fighters to join him at a section of folding chairs. “We are short on time here!”

  Reacting to the command in the man’s voice, the new arrivals hustled over to the simple metal chairs and grabbed seats. Luke selected a spot midway between Second Squad and his father’s men, only realizing after the fact what he’d thought. He was still a member of their tribe, the Ripley crew, but his new position as a leader of men required him to also consider the care and feeding of his own small war band.

  Sitting up on the edge of his seat, so as to accommodate the heavy pack, Luke hunched forward and withdrew the small, three-by-five notebook from one of his zippered jacket pockets and fished out the stub of a pencil. Luke learned the hard way to take notes. He’d heard some armchair warriors talk about not leaving the enemy an intelligence source and committing everything to memory, but those guys didn’t have to deal with Lieutenant Fisher or Master Sergeant Knolls. A quick glance around showed Luke, almost everybody else was doing the same thing.

  “All right, folks, you can call me Bishop,” the soldier said. “I’m here to give you the straight skinny for your upcoming mission. For the last ten days, my outfit has been scouting your objectives in Kansas City. We’ve been able to get some photographs, but most of what I’ve been cleared to give you are line drawings.”

  Well, Luke thought, that sounds ominous. That phrase ‘cleared for’ made Luke wonder what exactly was being held back, and who decided. Exchanging a look with his father, Luke saw Sam Messner likewise showed a few tell-tale signs of concern.

  “Who do you work for, Mr. Bishop?” Major Keller asked, jumping right in to pose the question many were no doubt thinking.

  “General McMillan asked a few of us to drift up this way and take a look,” came the response, which for Luke, at least filled in some of the blanks. He didn’t recognize Bishop from Captain Marino’s team, but Luke thought he remembered hearing there were one or two more Special Forces teams at Fort Polk when the lights went out. Looking at the other men standing behind the seated group, Luke decided this was exactly what they were dealing with here.

  “So, if that answers your question,” Bishop continued, his voice showing an edge this time. “I’d like to get on with my briefing. With your permission, Major?”

  When Keller offered a curt nod, Bishop took up where he’d left off. The objectives turned out to be a pair of grain elevator complexes situated on the Missouri River, connected by a quarter mile of railroad track. This time, Bishop offered up a huge photograph on four-foot-by-six-foot cardboard stock, produced somewhere on a carefully hoarded landscape printer. The board hung precariously off both ends of the much smaller easel, but Bishop used a collapsible metal pointer to indicate key locations. Guard towers, barracks, and the paths taken by roving security teams, all appeared in circles or arrows of black marker over the clear acetate sheet.

  The plan called for two teams. Bishop and his ‘boys’ would form one, and Major Keller would be in charge of the second, created from the two groups of mixed Arkansas and Texas troops. A quick headcount by Luke confirmed his initial guess of thirty effectives for the Major’s team. Call it a platoon, Luke decided. As a major, Keller would nominally retain overall command, but Luke could sense Bishop hedging on that point. More Regular Army versus the Guard, Luke noted, and he filed away the information.

  After ten days of observation, Bishop could not only give them numbers on the opposition, but also details about procedures and patterns. For Luke, the information also provided a real eye-opener for the size and complexity of the Chambers’ regime. Kansas City, for example, came under the control of Homeland Security on Day Four of the pulse, and Chambers and his goons never let go of the reins.

  “Colonel Bart Santee assumed the military governor position in early June of last year, and he only answers to Chambers and General Collins, the CO out at Fort Riley,” Bishop said, then continued with a sour look on his face. “Some people say Collins was a stooge for Chambers going back to his days with the DoD, while others have the opinion he legitimately bought Chambers’ line about carrying out the orders of the president. The old one, of course.”

  When Bishop spoke, Luke could tell the man knew a lot more than just the disposition of the defenders of the food reserves being held hostage in Kansas City. Luke wanted to pick his brain but doubted he would ever be allowed the opportunity. Bishop, if not an officer, had to at least be a master sergeant, if not more. Fat chance.

  As for their plan to seize these two complexes, Bishop doled out pieces but wisely withheld the bigger picture. No reason for somebody going on this job to know what Higher Command intended to do with two brigades of what Luke strongly suspected were all Regular Army, after all. They were going after the head of the snake, and that was all well and good. However, Luke wanted everything he could find out about their specific objectives. This might be a sideshow, or side mission as David called it, but Luke knew this was important too.

  Their complex consisted of ten connected elevators or silos, all tied together via a series of augers and belt-driven lifting systems. Power to drive the complex came from a pair of massive diesel generators, situated inside the fenced-in area running between the two. Also, the two complexes shared a grinding mill located in the same cluster of buildings, which Luke quickly decided was no coincidence. Where else were these guys going to get the power to grind the grain and corn into flour and cornmeal?

  Each complex housed approximately twenty guards on duty at any one time. In addition, the two elevator complexes shared a common rapid reaction force within the fenced-in area. This force was housed in a barracks situated next to the power plant, and Bishop estimated another fifty defenders. Bishop suspected they might be mercenaries or Homeland paramilitaries, since none of the men wore unit designations other than the standard DHS shield on their right shoulders. Nothing else, not even rank insignia.

  “Fifty is a lot,” Angel murmured, cutting his eyes to Luke. Yeah, that could be a problem. Taking out the barracks quickly would be critical. Then, Eddie threw in a question that set the brakes on the whole briefing.

  “Sir, how are you planning to deal with the dust?”

  Silence reigned for a full second before Bishop took a step forward, and his face took on a dangerous hue of red. Behind them, Luke heard the dozen or so waiting soldiers shuffle their feet as well.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Who said that?”

  At the end of the aisle, Eddie Castillo stood. He wasn’t tall, but his calm demeanor gave him an added gravity.

  “That was me. Corporal Castillo. And all I asked was how you intended to carry out this attack without setting off one of these complexes like a Roman candle?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The dust, Mr. Bishop. Running these elevators stirs up grain dust, and when there’s a spark, the whole thing blows up.” Castillo shrugged. “There’s a whole network of spark arrestors and other devices in modern elevators to keep this from happening, but if the Commies don’t have enough juice or if the pulse fried the sensors, then the dust will accumulate, and these things are like bombs waiting to go off.”

  Luke wanted to do a facepalm when Eddie’s words brought back a memory. He’d seen this before, on YouTube. It’d been a grain elevator in Louisiana, but the flash and explosion went off just like Eddie said.

  “And do you know how to tell if these devices are working?” Bishop asked, his voice once again under control.

  “No, sir. I might be from Kansas, but I never worked in the silos. I just know they blow up.”

  From the back of the room, one of the waiting soldiers summed up things nicely.

  “Well, shit.”

  CHAPTER 59

  “Out! Out! Out!”

  The sergeant in charge of organizing the Chinook’s passengers knew his business, and to have the soldiers lined up in two files well before the ungainly helicopte
r’s rear ramp fell. The first few off managed a short jump to the ground, absorbing the shock with bent knees before charging out into the night. They formed a rough perimeter around the shrieking, gyrating beast of a machine, and as soon as the last booted foot exited the ramp, the twin-engined behemoth shot back into the air. Luke lay in the dark and watched their ride home, winging it out of hostile airspace.

  The Chinooks hadn’t arrived over Kansas City unaccompanied. No, when the trio of massive transport helicopters came in low over the eastern side of the city, their pilots had taken advantage of an airstrike, carried out by a wave of refurbished Cobra attack helicopters. Luke knew the Cobras were old technology, dating from the war in Vietnam. Like the Chinooks and a whole fleet of Hueys, the Cobras had been packed away and forgotten in various storage facilities from Fort Rucker to Fort Campbell.

  Chambers and his Commies relied on a relatively small number of state-of-the-art aircraft and helicopters squirreled away in their bunkers, while the surviving Army and National Guard commands went to cleaning out their attics for the old standbys that could still be made to function. Turns out, the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Navy had lots of interesting antiques stored away, and all that hard labor was beginning to bear fruit.

  With all the ruckus being stirred up by this air raid, aimed at taking out the Committee’s own air assets, the attack also served to cover the insertion of Major Keller’s ad hoc platoon, as well as the return of Bishop, who turned out to be a captain in charge the Special Forces team charged with surveilling the city. With the air attack sweeping in from the south, the plan called for the simultaneous approach from the east by the three Chinooks. One for Major Keller and the mixed Arkansas/Texas team, the other for the rest of Captain Bishop’s group. The third acted as escort and served as backup, if one of the old helos faltered.

  While Luke lay in the dark, straining his eyes to pierce the swirling eddies of windblown ice and snow, he again thought about the last two frantic days. Bishop’s briefing, and the ensuing chaos when further research confirmed Castillo’s observations, was simply the first step. Yes, the observers reported explosions at two other grain elevators along the Missouri River, and now, they had a likely cause.

  The plan needed to be revised, with the emphasis turned to seizing the elevators and attached structures first, and doing so while avoiding gunfire. Luke and his band of night-fighters received the nod for this part of the plan, supplemented by David, Angel, and two of Major Keller’s better scouts. Luke reluctantly peeled Kenzie out, deciding to leave their medic with the rest of the squad for this run.

  Luke attached Corporal Castillo and the rest of the squad, really just a fireteam now, to his father’s squad. Sam Messner, or Gunny, as everybody got to calling him, was tasked with rolling up the outer ring of security around their half of the shared perimeter. These soldiers needed to be stealthy as well, but at least they could rely on suppressed firearms. Not so for Luke’s men.

  “When we hit this target, get ready to get wet,” Luke warned when he’d brought his newly reconstituted squad together. They were eight in number, and Luke had worked with all of them, except the major’s two men. Frank Cermak and Gus Pappas were recent graduates of Major Keller’s advanced scouting class and proved to be both mentally quick and physically agile. It was Frank who laughed first at Luke’s comment, but David was the one to provide an answer.

  “He means, when we start cutting throats,” David explained, “then you are going to be covered in blood. Don’t let it freak you out but take precautions to avoid bloodborne pathogens. Which means, keep the face masks and goggles on.”

  “So, don’t puke,” Angel added helpfully.

  “You’ve done this before?” Gus asked politely. He knew the kid must be something, the way the major acted around him. After the battle at War Eagle, Scott Keller commanded a lot of respect from the troops, and if the major treated Sergeant Messner like an equal, or even a little brother, then the sergeant must have earned that respect in some way.

  “Yeah. Me and my guys have gotten some experience in around Joplin, and David here,” he gestured at the older soldier, “worked with me some before I went off and joined the Army. A lot of skills though, I either picked up from my dad,” Luke gestured again to the Gunny, “or from your Major Keller.”

  With that, Luke took some time to inspect weapons. He didn’t bother with finetoothing their rifles or sidearms, but he demanded to see and test the knives of every man going with him. Then, handing out whetstones, he ordered the men to work on their edges while he did the same with his kukri.

  “We don’t need razor sharp, gentlemen,” he’d said, “just sharp enough to part the skin without tugging on it. I want your blades to cut smooth, like butter.”

  Gus shivered at the way Luke described it, and the teen made a note to himself to watch the man. He might be a ninja on the stalk, but if he couldn’t deliver with the knife work, Luke would need to cover for him. Luke would have gladly switched the two newcomers out for Major Keller and Sarah Trimble, but they had their own part to play in the upcoming mission.

  So, they’d spent the next forty-eight hours prepping, and Luke spent some of that time catching up with his father and hearing all the happenings from back home. He’d also exchanged news with Scott and Sarah, hearing about the cannibal invasion in full detail. That was definitely the things of which nightmares were made.

  He’d also learned about the attack that’d nearly cost Leslie her life, and the fate of the woman who’d mounted the attack.

  “You sent her to the Army?” Luke asked, surprised at Scott’s lenience.

  “Well, Colonel Hotchkins sent her with a bunch of prisoners to excavate the trenches around our position in Joplin. Don’t know what happened to her after that. She’s dead, if I ever see her again, though. We needed her information, or I would have cut her down right there.”

  “Well, that makes more sense,” Luke agreed. Then, sensing the topic was still a sore spot for his friend, Luke changed to something more mission oriented. “How are your guys with sneaking in the snow?”

  “We’ve had a lot of practice lately, but I’ve seen what you do with the boot wrapping. Does that really work? First, I thought you guys just needed new boots.”

  “Like a muffler,” Luke conceded. “Nothing really kills that crunch, crunch sound, but it helps if you stagger your steps and walk on the sides of your feet. We make it work.” With a shrug, Luke continued. “So far, nobody’s heard us coming until it was too late for them.”

  Luke demonstrated with a few steps, and David, standing nearby, pointed out helpfully that Luke was waddling like a ruptured duck.

  “Hey,” Scott interjected, “if it works, I’m all in. Most of my experience has been with woodland settings, and jungle.”

  “And you still don’t want to talk about where you got those mad skills, Mr. Helicopter Mechanic, sir?” Luke chided, trying to bring a little humor to the conversation, and Scott gave him a small smile.

  “After this mission. I’ll tell you all about it,” he promised.

  Luke intended to hold the older Marine to his promise.

  As the chopper lifted off with a spray of ice and snow, Luke was drawn back to the present and he heard a familiar voice.

  “Up!” shouted Gunny Messner, and Luke followed his father’s voice as the scattered troop of raiders staggered to their feet in the snow. They still had over two miles to cover in a little less than two hours, all the while avoiding patrols and keeping their presence a secret.

  The short platoon moved easily despite their heavy packs, and Luke was pleased to lead the troops with his scout fireteam. He used the heavily annotated map strapped to his forearm and he followed the suggested route highlighted by the earlier observers. They’d split from Captain Bishop’s group almost immediately, since the Special Forces officer needed to angle further north to reach his objective on time. They would mount their assaults as near to simultaneously as possible, aimed at suppress
ing the elevator buildings first, without alerting the defenders. Then, the two groups would merge to take on the barracks.

  Under the quarter moon, Luke found he still had enough light from the cloudless sky to make out the landmarks. Luke also caught sight of a few chimneys leaking smoke in the distance, but the high percentage of blackened and abandoned homes drove home for him, the death toll in this Kansas City neighborhood.

  “So many gone,” Luke whispered to himself. He thought about all the dead concealed under the white drape of the snow, and the thought threatened to empty the graves of his own dead. Leave it be, he demanded, almost missing his step as he struggled with the pain inside. Lock it down, repeated the words in his mind like a mantra. With the war to draw all his attention, Luke realized he’d been able to function with the grief still partitioned off. Now, as he approached what might be the most desperate fight of his life, Luke sensed his control over his emotions beginning to fray. Murmuring a curse under his breath, then watching the vapor of his exhalation turn to smoke in the dark, Luke forced his thoughts to go elsewhere while his body continued forward.

  All of the men and women in the unit now wore a gray camouflage smock, and helmets fitted with mounts for their NVGs. Luke, like most of the newer troops, hated the weight, but appreciated the new mounts, which allowed the night vision units to be flipped up when not in use. Luke ignored the grousing about sore spots on their heads and neck pain, now knowing it was a soldier’s right to bitch if they so pleased. He’d done that plenty of times himself, now.

  Bishop hadn’t lied about getting them tooled up, either, and every member of the force received upgraded equipment. For Luke and most of his old squad, just receiving new batteries for their NVGs brought them up to speed, but several took advantage of the chance to trade in worn-out bits of gear for fresh replacements.