Land of Tomorrow (Book 1): Glimmer of Hope

by Ryan King

  Joshua again checked the cell phone and saw there still wasn’t a signal. They had a hand crank generator to keep the phone charged, but the dam must still be down which meant the cell towers weren't functioning. Luke Carter called him nearly a week ago and told him the situation before the signal went dead, but neither really had a good answer for how to communicate the information the team gathered. Joshua hoped the power would come back up soon. Someone needed to know what they had discovered.

  It was easy for Joshua to see what was planned below. Everyone was expecting an attack from the south, but no one was looking for an attack along the Cumberland River up through Barkley Lake. They could land anywhere along the park. Hell, they could land right at the dam.

  Joshua’s mind raced quickly and he thought back over his conclusion again. It made sense. The dam was the key. They were conducting a sneak attack on the dam either to take it or possibly even destroy it.

  He wondered, Could they really be crazy enough to want to destroy the one source of electricity? Maybe…people did crazy things when they couldn’t get what they wanted. If it was a surprise attack, they would want to maintain secrecy as long as possible which means they would probably only travel at night.

  Joshua wasn’t familiar with the lakes or boating, but figured that it would take them several days at least to travel that far north.

  Joshua made up his mind and called his two team leaders together. His recon squad was made up of two four man teams each with a team leader, sniper, medic, and automatic rifleman. He now addressed Billy, the better of his two team leaders, a teenager only a few months younger than himself.

  “Leave me your sniper, but take the rest of your team back as fast as you can and warn them of what is going on here,” said Joshua quickly. “If you can get to Captain Green in time, maybe he can try to stop them from getting too far north. At a minimum, we have to do what we can to warn everyone, I think they’re going to try to take or destroy the dam.”

  “Holy crap!” said Billy with his eyes a little wide.

  Joshua grabbed his arm the way his father did to focus his attention. “You’re going to have to move as fast as you can. Steal the first car, bikes, horses, or whatever you come across. I know we’re not supposed to do that, but we have no choice. Be very careful. Only rest when you have to and never for very long. And for God’s sake, don’t get caught!”

  “I understand,” said Billy while pulling out his map to study the return route.

  “You’re also going to have to get a boat at some point to cross over to warn Captain Green,” said Joshua. “You won’t have time to get up to the Route 68 bridge and then come back down. As a matter of fact you might make better time on the water overall if you can get a boat early enough.”

  “Won’t those motor boats catch up with them?” asked Henry, his second team chief, who had come near them.

  “That’s going to be our job,” said Joshua. “We’re going to delay them as long as we can. With any luck, they’re not going to try to depart for another day, maybe two.” Another thought came to Joshua. “Also warn them that another such group could be coming up the Tennessee River into Kentucky Lake, they might be trying to attack the dam from two sides.”

  “Got it,” said Billy putting away his map and looking around for his team members.

  Joshua was nervous, “And Billy, be careful.”

  The team leader smiled back. “You already said that. See you in a few days.” He took off down the hill at a run to gather his remaining two men and get going.

  *******

  Joshua lay on the top of the hill with his binoculars, looking at the boats. He figured the best time to slow them down was right before they loaded the transports to depart. If the men were already loaded, they might just push ahead despite what Joshua and his team were doing. He also didn’t want to start messing with them too soon and cause them to speed up their own timeline. He sensed it would be soon though. The men had stopped working on the small boats and there was a flurry of activity in the camp.

  A sniper lay to each side of Joshua. Each shouldered the large, and somehow beautiful, Barrett M83 .50 caliber sniper rifle. Joshua was in love with the rifles and wanted to fire one, but the ammo was too scarce. As a matter of fact, none of them had fired the weapons since they were taken from Fort Campbell. They had been checked for functionality and cleaned, but not yet zeroed to the individual shooters who had trained with other, more plentiful, calibers. Joshua decided to use this opportunity to do exactly that. Accuracy was not necessarily important to accomplish what he had in mind, anyway.

  He looked back down the hill to his rear, but could not see Henry and the other two men who were providing them security. They had laid out claymore mines and prepared an escape route. There wasn’t much more they could do to prepare and were as ready as they would probably ever be.

  Joshua looked back though the binoculars and saw men lining up in front of the boats in formations. “Alright boys, get ready. On my command, right gun first, then left, then alternate so we can adjust fire. Aim for the nearest two gangplanks to start off. Understood?”

  Both men answered that they did.

  “Okay then,” said Joshua slowly. “Make sure you have earplugs in. I bet these babies are wicked loud.” He looked again and decided the time had come. He had a moment’s hesitation wondering if he was doing the right thing. Was he doing what his father wanted him to do? He didn’t have any way to talk to anyone, but this seemed best. He would roll with it.

  “Right gun,” said Joshua, “fire, when ready.”

  A second later the Barrett to Joshua’s right boomed and he saw a splash of water near the gangplank. “Three feet to the right and two feet down,” Joshua said and the sniper began making the adjustments on his scope. Joshua looked down at the men along the shore and surprisingly nothing seemed to have happened. He imagined it from their point of view and they likely only heard a splash like someone throwing a rock into the water followed several seconds later by a boom in the distance.

  “Left gunner, fire when ready,” said Joshua.

  The second gun boomed and Joshua called out adjustments. He now saw several men yelling and seeking cover as understanding dawned, but the vast majority still stood dumbly in formation. They took several more shots until they were zeroed and then Joshua decided to bring it home to them.

  “Target any leaders. Fire when ready, fire at will,” said Joshua.

  He looked through the binoculars as the guns boomed repeatedly beside him and saw officers and NCO’s falling to the ground with horrific wounds. Chaos ensued as the soldiers scrambled into the cover of the wood line.

  “That’s enough for now, save the ammo,” said Joshua, stopping them for the moment. “Let’s wait and see what they do.” Joshua again looked through his binoculars and smiled.

  It appears to be working for now, he thought. Will it be enough?

  Chapter 13 – Tornados

  Lieutenant Beau Myers was more than a little overwhelmed by the mission General Anderson had so suddenly thrust upon him. It was not just the obvious importance of the mission, but also the near complete lack of means to accomplish it. Thankfully, he had thought of his cousin Teddy just in time.

  Teddy had taken just enough flying lessons to crop-dust his father’s various large corn, soybean, and tobacco fields. He loved flying, hunting deer, drinking whiskey and not much else. He and Beau had gotten in lots of trouble over the years, but nothing too serious.

  When Beau pulled up to Teddy’s house with the two soldiers, Teddy was thrilled at the idea of flying, and they immediately drove over to the small county airfield. No one was around, so they broke into the flight office to get the keys for a nice little Cessna Teddy liked and then hit the fuel shed. After fueling up the plane, they left the soldiers behind and lifted off without a flight plan, or any other real plan for that matter.

  Beau initially felt some concern about the dark clouds that seemed to hang over everything, b
ut Teddy wasn’t worried so Beau deferred to his superior experience in such matters. It was not until later that Beau suspected Teddy’s lack of concern was related to the fact he had been drinking heavily since noon.

  Beau had never flown before and was mesmerized by the sight below him, but probably not as much as those individuals on the ground. They looked up at the low flying plane in total amazement while Teddy whooped and yelled and Beau waved. Beau’s sense of responsibility eventually asserted itself. He directed Teddy to fly south while he consulted maps and a list of notes he had made on the way over of information he thought Anderson would want.

  His biggest fear, other than crashing, was crossing over into Tennessee. On the map there was a very clear line, but he knew he would not have that benefit from the air and after vainly looking for landmarks decided to err on the side of caution. They changed their course from dead south to due east several miles from the border. He also told Beau to get some altitude so he could get a better look at the forces to the south.

  Beau was just starting to get a good look to the south when he heard Teddy say, “Uh oh.”

  “Uh oh, what?” said Beau.

  “Uh oh, those clouds,” said Teddy. “Those are tornado clouds. We need to get either some distance or some altitude.”

  “Well give me a few minutes. I just saw something,” said Beau. He refocused his binoculars and saw what he was afraid he had seen. There to the south, directly adjacent to the Purchase Parkway behind some barns and farm buildings, Beau saw three tanks. He had always been fascinated by tanks and recognized these as M1 Abrams. They must have cost a fortune in fuel to move them at all, much less get them north. If Beau remembered correctly, those monsters burned something like 30 gallons of fuel per hour simply idling. He had also heard they actually had a jet engine and therefore required special aviation jet fuel.

  Teddy interrupted his thoughts. “Uh…Beau, we gotta go, buddy.”

  “Okay, okay, just give me a minute,” responded Beau.

  “No, now!” yelled Teddy and Beau noticed that he sounded completely sober all of the sudden.

  Turbulence threw the small plane about like a cork on the water. Beau looked from the ground to see Teddy’s eyes were wide to the front and following his gaze he saw a large black funnel cloud descending towards the ground in the distance and three more further ahead. Teddy was leaning forward to look up through the windscreen to see if any funnel clouds were descending on them from above as he quietly said under his breath over and over “ohshitohshitohshitohshit.”

  Teddy pulled the plane in a tight turn and headed back north where the skies looked clearer while Beau gazed out the back. After flying a few minutes north, he convinced Teddy to turn around so they could see what was happening. When they did resume their course it was like a scene from a nightmare.

  The sky looked like it was literally boiling and there were at least six large tornados over miles of ground each cutting wide swathes of destruction hundreds of feet wide. Beau saw debris thrown high and people running in every direction, some of whom were suddenly sucked right off their feet into the center of one of the angry tornados. Teddy and Beau watched the scene mesmerized for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. Eventually, the tornados receded back up into the clouds where they had formed, and the sky quickly cleared up as if nothing had ever happened.

  “That…was…awesome!” said Teddy suddenly breaking the silence. “I mean like really awesome! Can you believe that? I ain’t ever seen nothing like that!”

  “It was definitely something,” said Beau feeling the adrenalin flooding through him. His mission reoccurred to him. “Let’s get a little closer and then turn east to see what we can see.”

  They turned east and flew for the next twenty minutes while Beau looked through the binoculars making notes on everything he saw while approximately every three seconds Teddy asked, “Wha cha see?”

  At Barkley Lake they turned around and went back west. He was tempted to have Teddy land at the airport so he could rush the information he had back to General Anderson. He would be shocked by what Beau had seen, but his orders were clear, so they continued on for another fifteen minutes past the airport to the Mississippi River before turning around and heading back toward the airport. This took some convincing on Beau’s part since for some strange reason Teddy was insistent that while up they just had to fly over the house of one of his old girlfriends up in Draffenville.

  They barely came to a stop before Beau jumped out and began racing toward the two soldiers laying on top of the General’s car. He yelled and waved frantically for them to get the car started.

  Teddy meanwhile followed Beau along in the plane, ignoring the taxiway. He yelled out “Hey buddy that was fun! Let’s do that again!” Beau had a moment of horror when he thought Teddy would accidently run him down and cut him up with the spinning propeller. He turned on an extra bit of speed.

  Beau made a mental note to come back and lock up the keys and the fuel. Neither would now be safe from Teddy’s drunken ideas on how to overcome boredom, but that would have to wait. He had to get to General Anderson right away and tell him what he had seen.

  He wasn't going to believe it.

  Chapter 14 – Race Against Time

  David, his platoon, and all their gear were crammed into three pick-up trucks, going north at a crazy pace. He prayed a deer or something didn’t jump into their path because his men would certainly all die. They were hanging on for dear life in those open vehicle beds.

  They had gotten Joshua’s message. Billy and his team were nearly dead on their feet by the time they reached Captain Jason Green at the southern portion of the park. Luckily, Harold decided after the electricity had gone out to run a single TA312 wire from north to south allowing them to communicate, at least on a rudimentary level.

  Captain Green reasoned he could not cover both the Lake Barkley and the Kentucky Lake approaches, and still have men left to cover the southern border. He recommended that he detach what troops he could to focus on the Lake Barkley approach while troops from the central region cover the Kentucky Lake side against any possible attack on that side.

  Nathan decided to take a different approach. He was skeptical of the ability of troops on the shore to impede a large armada of ships passing, due to the width of the lake which was nearly a quarter of a mile in most places. Nathan would be happy if Captain Green could only slow the armada and give them time.

  As far as guarding against an approach on the other lake, Nathan decided against it completely. They had too few troops to place them everywhere an enemy might attack. Since he reasonably believed the dam was their target, Nathan directed Captain Luke Carter to detach what troops he could to go reinforce the dam. The remainder of Carter’s troops, were to protect the headquarters and civilians in case the enemy decided to raid into the park south of the dam.

  So, David and his platoon volunteered to go north and Captain Carter accepted without another word. David admitted to himself that he was still a little raw over Joshua getting to lead the recon instead of him. It was possible Carter had allowed him to lead this mission to make up for the one he lost.

  When they arrived, David directed his men to unload while he went to seek out Captain Jim Meeks. He found the large man in the thick of frantic activity, and reported to him. David was glad to see Jim and thought the feeling was mutual.

  “Where do you want us?” asked David.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Jim. “We don’t have enough soldiers to cover every approach, and there are several possibilities, due to the way this whole thing is built. Both lakes come together at the dam and the locks at the top of the land between them. I’m going to take a risk and leave the water side approach thinly guarded since it will be hard for them to climb the dam walls. We’ve let some water out in order to make it even more difficult for them to get over. If they want to take the dam, they have to land troops and approach from land. My guys can co
ver the approach from the west and the top of the park, can you cover the east side approach over the locks?”

  “I can, but we could probably do more,” said David.

  “I’m not doing you any favors, you’ll have plenty to do,” said Jim. “You’re going to have those WTR boys on you first. I’d rather give you more help, but I can’t until I know they’re not coming up both lakes. Just hold them off for a while, and I’ll try to get you some help.”

  David nodded and ran off to gather his men taking them east along the road atop the dam towards the locks. After seeing their position, he had to admit that he really had no idea what he was talking about earlier with Jim Meeks. The area his men were covering was rather large. Their main threat was a landing on the east side to roll up their flank. He decided to put his heavy weapons there and focus his efforts initially on building a strong defense where the locks met the land.

  He looked out across the lake and was struck by how beautiful it was. The sun was on the still water and ducks flew in the distance. His father had spent most of his youth and weekends up here fishing with his own father or hanging out with friends once he was older. David thought that image seemed pretty nice and he had a moment of resentment towards his father for the ability to have had such wonderful carefree times.

  David’s thoughts were shattered by yelling and scrambling from the dam area. Within a few minutes, one of Jim’s runners came up out of breath, started to give David a salute, stopped halfway, and then went ahead and finished it. He seemed not quite certain what to do. David returned the salute and would have given the boy a hard tongue lashing as he had seen Captain Carter do, but doubted he had time for it.