“Sure you don’t need a break?” Carr asked. “You seem a little tense. I don’t want it to hamper our work.”
“Nothing hampers my work.” Kate tossed a set of goggles to him and put some on herself.
“Well do not let me hold us back then,” Carr said. “Please, lead on, Doctor Lovato.”
***
“Gather round, boys!” Fischer yelled.
He stroked the sides of his freshly trimmed mustache as his security guards and hired hunters approached. Over fifty men dressed in camouflaged fatigues with automatic weapons and high-powered hunting rifles stood on his property this morning.
Another group had just parked in a gravel lot full of pickup trucks and dust-covered SUVs. Every security guard on the Fischer Fields payroll was here tonight, plus the hired help they had brought in to hunt.
There were also the ten soldiers President Ringgold had sent to help secure the oil fields. The men had arrived yesterday in a pair of rusting Humvees, led by a man named Sergeant Ken Sharp. He and his boys had seen plenty of action, and Sharp was a Native Texan, which Fischer appreciated.
But just ten men and some shitty equipment that looked like it had come from an Army surplus store?
It just reaffirmed the fact her administration wasn’t serious about protecting his fields. And if the government wasn’t going to take care of the Variants in the area, he was going to do it the way they used to in the Wild West—with blood and bullets.
Word had spread fast across the Allied States, and the men were all talking about what was going on: raiders and mysterious Variant tunnels popping up across the Midwest.
Texas was a long way from the heart of the trouble, but everyone here knew it was just a matter of time before the Variants and their human collaborators hit the Lone Star State.
Fischer had no doubt, the increased Variant activity was a sign of a growing threat. Something more dangerous than anyone in the government was letting on. While he wasn’t sure what sinister Alpha or Alphas were behind it, he wasn’t going to stand idly by and wait for their attack.
There was one old adage that had always proven true in matters of personal and business interest: the best defense was a good offense. Dealing with Variants was no exception.
His most trusted soldiers, Tran and Chase, agreed with his decision to hunt the diseased monsters on his property.
Now it was time to break it to everyone else.
“That’s the last of them,” said Tran.
Chase swept his gaze over the crowd from under the bill of his Fischer Fields baseball cap. The two lead security agents flanked Fischer on the deck overlooking his backyard where the men had gathered.
Blazing sunlight bore down on the hardened faces of men that in some cases had been fighting the monsters for eight years or more now.
Fischer may have been standing over them, but he felt like he was one of them.
He instinctively put his hands on his chrome belt buckle holding up his fatigues and filled his lungs with the dry breeze.
“As many of you have heard, the Allied States are under attack,” Fischer bellowed. “The Variants are going after the outposts, taking those homesteaders underground into God only knows what kind of hell on Earth.”
The men all seemed to stiffen, their gazes locked on Fischer.
“Several outposts in the east got hit by raiders that some suspect might be human collaborators,” he continued. “With human enemies and the monsters fighting on all fronts, I’m afraid we can’t count on someone over a thousand-and-a-half miles away to save us.”
Hushed conversations broke out in the crowd, but the ten soldiers present remained quiet, not reacting to his words at all.
“That’s why we’re all here,” Fischer said. “I’ve got my own backup plans.”
He looked at part of those plans in the distance. Multiple industrial barns that housed his cattle sat in rows about a quarter mile away on the eastern edge of his property. Electrical fences surrounded the metal buildings. The only way in was a gate guarded by two men at all times. More guards patrolled the inside. They were there now, walking with their shotguns and rifles.
The expensive redundancy had protected his livestock for years now, and it had worked for his oil derricks, until recently.
“We’re going to plan B today,” Fischer said. “We’re not waiting for the Variants to come to us anymore. Instead, we’ll find the holes they are hiding in and…”
Fischer reached for a bag Chase held and pulled out a stick of TNT.
“We will blow the dirty bastards out of their nests like the varmints they are.”
Several of the men in the crowd grunted their approval. But they weren’t all convinced. A former sheriff’s deputy that now worked for Fischer spat a blob of tobacco on the dirt and said, “How do we know where the devils sleep?”
“Our friends here helped with some of that,” Fischer said, gesturing to the Army soldiers. “I also paid good money for a private tracking team to dig up my own intel.”
He nodded in the direction of two men in the crowd. The older guy, a man named Aaron Galinsky, had short-cropped hair and was former Israeli military. His partner Eric Welling had hair to his shoulders and looked as if he had stepped straight out of the Australian outback.
“I got a pretty good idea where the demons sleep,” Fischer said. “And if we have our way, they’re never waking up.”
“You’re asking us to put our lives on the line,” said another man. “What’s in it for us?”
“I will be paying very well,” Fischer replied. “Every man that goes out with us will receive triple hazard pay. Bonuses will go to anyone that kills a Variant. Bag an Alpha and you get five grand.”
“Well what are we waiting for? Let’s get out there!” yelled Galinsky.
Welling laughed, and several men in the crowd joined in.
Fischer smiled at the change in enthusiasm. If there was one thing that could change a man’s heart real fast, it was a wheelbarrow full of cash.
“You’ve all trained for this,” Fischer said. “Going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
He nodded at Tran and Chase who both dispersed into the crowd to hand out maps and assignments. An hour later the sixty plus group had split into six teams of ten. They loaded up into their pickup trucks and SUVs with their weapons slung and spirits high.
Three of the teams would head thirty miles to the hills in the southwest, and the other three would head with Fischer to the hills in the southeast. All signs pointed at those areas being potential nest locations, from tracks to the direction of most attacks.
Fischer got into his pickup truck, riding shotgun with Chase behind the wheel. Tran hopped in the back of the dual cab with Sergeant Sharp and, soon as the door shut, they were off.
The convoy took the road past the barns of cattle, chickens, and pigs on the way out. Fischer Fields provided almost five percent of the nation’s meat, something else he was damn proud of. But that was a small contribution compared to how much oil he was producing for the country.
As of now, his fields were supplying over 25 percent of the nation’s refined petroleum products.
The fact he couldn’t get more government help in protecting them was maddening. It was also the reason he was leaning toward supporting General Cornelius in the general election.
Chase raised a hand out the window to several guards patrolling the interior of the electric fences as they passed the barns.
“How many men did you pull off sentry duty?” Fischer asked.
“Half, but don’t worry, there are still plenty,” Chase said.
Fischer looked at the blazing sun. The Variants were far more likely to attack when the sun had sunk beyond the horizon, just about now, but he still worried about leaving so few men to guard his livestock.
He tried to relax on the ride to the foothills. The beauty of the open fields and blue skies helped. The ride took them through the flat country, past several of the oil derric
ks, where more of his workers monitored the extraction and others guarded the precious resource.
Fischer pulled out his map and then put on his reading glasses. He studied the potential nesting areas for a few moments before turning to Sharp.
“Sergeant, which site do you think is the most likely to be an active nest?” he asked.
Sharp seemed to tense at the question, which gave Fischer his answer.
The Army soldiers had no idea.
“Hard to say,” Sharp replied, hoping to sound confident.
“Did you or did you not confirm the presence of Variants at these locations?”
“We did,” Sharp said. “But we did not confirm numbers.”
“In other words, you didn’t get close enough.”
Sharp said nothing.
Fischer turned back to the front seat, suddenly questioning how useful these maps would be. The other teams were heading to the location marked by Welling and Galinsky. Now he wondered if he should head to the location the two professional trackers were going.
“So we don’t know if any of these are live tunnels?” Fischer asked.
“We confirmed the presence of bones just outside several,” Sharp replied. “However, since we didn’t get close, we couldn’t see how fresh the kills were. It’s always hard to say with bones anyways, because the Variants don’t leave much behind.”
Fischer gave the Sergeant that. The beasts stripped everything clean. The best way to tell if a tunnel or hole was active was their feces.
Dust billowed up ahead as the convoy of vehicles hit a gravel road. Chase eased off the gas to give them some room. The next road was paved and took them past several more derricks. Over the next hill, they got their first view of their target.
“Here we go,” Chase said. He followed the other vehicles to a staging area off the road where he parked next to one of the Army Humvees.
Fischer jumped out and went to the back bed of the truck to pull out his M4A1. Tran grabbed his SR-25, and Chase slung his carbine.
Sergeant Sharp spoke to his men while they charged their weapons.
In total, thirty men gathered outside the vehicles, including the ten soldiers. Sharp told a Corporal and PFC to take point, and they set off toward the clumps of hills a quarter mile away, fanning out into the grass.
Tran and Chase remained close to Fischer, but let him lead the way. He kept behind Sharp, eyeing the foothills. The mounds of brown earth were covered in vegetation and trees unlike a lot of the surrounding area. Plenty of places for Variants to hide.
The soldiers fanned out ahead into two teams, weapons up and roving.
Fischer followed his team across the field, heart thumping with excitement. Being out here, with these men, made him nostalgic for the hunts he had gone on as a kid.
Only this hunt was far more dangerous than going after wild boars.
The two groups peeled off, filing down separate tracks. Fischer kept behind Sharp.
Underbrush scraped across his fatigues, and his boots crunched over small rocks. Fischer spotted the first evidence of Variant tracks in the dirt ahead.
Sharp pointed them out, but then continued on up a hill and through the spindly vegetation. Skeletal limbs from dead trees reached out like grasping fingers.
Most of the vegetation on the other side of the hill was dry and brown. The lack of leaves and underbrush made the tunnels easier to spot.
Sharp stopped to look at his map, and then pointed to the next hill on their right. The group peeled off into two smaller teams and moved toward the holes.
Fischer was one of the first to reach it and stopped about ten feet away. He aimed his barrel at the entrance of the shadowed cavern.
Sure enough, several animal bones were scattered just inside the lip of the dirt hole. He bent down with Sharp and they directed their lights inside, revealing more bones scattered on the dirt floor. Raking his light, Fischer saw no sign of fresh Variant feces.
“This must be an old one,” Fischer said.
Sharp gestured toward the group that had veered off to check another cavern. Two of his soldiers had crouched down in front of it for a better look.
By the time Fischer got there, they had ducked inside. The rest of the group waited outside, weapons angled at the entrance.
A radio crackled, and Tran pulled it out from his pouch.
“FF1, this is FF2, do you copy?” came a voice.
Fischer waited anxiously for the report from his team at the other location.
“Copy FF2, this is FF1 what you got?” Tran replied.
“Nothing, FF1, we’ve got dead tunnels. You have better luck than us?”
“Standby FF2,” Tran said. He put the radio back in his pouch and moved over with Fischer to get a better look inside the tunnel.
The soldiers were already returning, and they were carrying something.
Fischer didn’t need his flashlight to see one of the items was a helmet with the FF logo. The men crawled out of the hole with gear and several bones of the final missing derrick engineer.
“Looks like an old nest,” said the soldier. He looked down at the helmet. “At least we finally found his remains.”
Fischer nodded, happy that the family would have some closure now, but disappointed he wasn’t going to get to use any of his TNT.
He spat on the ground and turned his back to look at the dead terrain.
“Where the hell did you bastards go?” Fischer muttered.
— 15 —
Beckham hated getting dressed up almost as much as Horn did, but today he found himself in a sharp navy-blue suit with a red tie. Suits were for businessmen and politicians, he had been told as a young man.
You’re going to be a politician, he thought. You’re going to have to get used to this.
He wasn’t the only one that didn’t like what he was wearing. President Ringgold had complained about the bulletproof vest Beckham had insisted she wore today.
She sat in a chair next to the Vice President for an interview with a reporter across the lobby in a hotel in Outpost New Boston, not far from the site of the raider attack. The President had insisted on moving the rally here.
Ringgold was probably telling the reporter the same thing she had said to Beckham.
“I will not be intimidated,” she had said. “I will not be scared off by these cowards.”
Beckham waited by a window near the hotel’s entrance. Outside, hundreds had gathered in the street. Most held New America Coalition signs, but not everyone seemed so enthusiastic.
He scanned the faces with his normal paranoid mindset.
Any of them could be enemies.
Raiders and collaborators.
The assholes had penetrated several outposts, including this one, and he feared they would try again.
Beckham let the drape fall over the window and made his way back into the lobby. President Ringgold and Vice President Lemke were still talking to a female reporter from the New Boston Globe paper.
The Globe was one of several institutions of journalism that had made a comeback over the past few years. With television and civilian cell phone service still a thing of the past, printed news was one of the only ways for average citizens to get their information.
Which made this interview very important.
He waited patiently for it to conclude and then walked over.
“There you are, Captain,” Ringgold said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
Beckham stepped over. The middle-aged reporter seemed to measure him up with a sweeping gaze before she finally walked away with her bag.
Ringgold got out of her chair and motioned for Lemke and Beckham to follow her to a conference room off the lobby. Two Secret Service agents shadowed them to the door where they stood sentry.
“Close that, please,” Ringgold said.
Beckham closed the door, anticipating more bad news.
“Team Ghost reported in late last night,” Lemke said. “They think they know the epicenter
of the Variant activity.”
“Minneapolis, Minnesota,” Ringgold said.
“Really?” Beckham said. “That’s a heck of a long ways away from some of the outposts the Variants attacked.”
He paused to think a moment and then said, “What does SOCOM think about this?”
“Honestly, we’re not sure yet, but we’re going to find out,” Lemke said.
“Operation Shadow is continuing with the deployment of six teams, including Team Ghost to figure out what we’re dealing with,” Ringgold said. “All the teams so far have reported similar findings around the attacked outposts. Variants used tunnels to get under the defenses.”
“When our teams followed the tunnels out, they eventually disappeared, and they were left only with the remnants of webbing to follow,” Lemke added.
“Now we’re sending Team Ghost to Minneapolis, and the other teams to five other targets where the webbing seems to lead,” Ringgold continued.
Lemke handed Beckham a folder.
Inside were the names of the targets: Minneapolis, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; Lincoln, Nebraska; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Columbus, Ohio.
“These are the other likely locations of the civilians abducted from outposts,” Lemke said. “If these people were taken to any of these locations, there could be hundreds of others under these cities.”
“The teams are heading out shortly, and I wanted you to know,” Ringgold said. “But I won’t be mentioning this to anyone out there. For now, the mission stays under wraps. I don’t want there to be any chance of it leaking to collaborators.”
The suggestion made Beckham tense up even more. In the past, rival campaigns might have sent spies to listen to speeches. Now they had to worry about traitorous human collaborators working with the Variants.
“I’m just waiting for a leak to happen though,” Ringgold said. “I’m sure Cornelius will find out, and push even more for nuking these sites, regardless of the potential innocent lives we could lose.”
“Nuking the city might not even destroy the nests anyways,” Beckham added. “The creatures are resilient. More so than cockroaches. I wouldn’t be surprised if those tunnels go pretty deep under the cities.”
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 19