by James Tarr
The narrow tunnel didn’t extend very far into the earth, six feet in he could see the wall of dirt where it had been collapsed by explosives. “You said you got some?” Parker asked the Toad Commander, still staring at the tunnel entrance with his hands on his hips.
“Yes sir,” the Commander replied. “In the parking garage next door. Four dead. Well, three, but the one still alive, I doubt he’s going to make it.”
When he emerged from the building he saw his S2, Major Paul Cooper, had walked over from the nearby Ops Center and joined the rest of his command staff in front of the IMP. Cooper looked like he’d eaten something sour. He had a tablet in his hands.
“What is it, Coop?”
“I’ve got the initial casualty reports, Sir, if you’d care to hear them.” Parker, in fact, didn’t want to hear them at all, but instead he nodded.
“Well,” Cooper began, but then there was pain and the ground wheeling around to hit him, the taste of blood, distance, echoes, light ebbing and flowing like a tide, and, very distantly, a woman screaming.
Renny cycled the bolt. He’d lazed the distance exactly—524 yards down from his perch on the 20th floor of the building across to the hangars. His Ventus doohickey had done the math for him and told him to dial in his elevation for 507 yards to adjust for the down angle, but it was the wind which was always the worry. He was inside an office, sheltered from the wind, so any device he had to measure it was useless. Luckily smoke was pouring heavily out of both hangars, and it told him both wind direction and speed. Five, maybe eight miles an hour, but at an angle, so it was only half value. Reading the wind was as much art as science, but as he got back on target he saw his aim had been true. The big 250-grain A-Tip had taken the taller officer through the neck and gone on to hit the other command officer, the one with the tablet but no body armor, somewhere in the upper chest. Both men were down.
A woman was standing there, hands to her face. Maybe screaming? He wasn’t sure, but what was clear to him was her uniform. She wasn’t just a Tab soldier, she was an officer. Not wearing armor, apparently, either. He fired his second shot less than four seconds after the first. The bullet took just over half a second to travel the distance from his muzzle to the woman’s upper back, entering at an angle. She spun around and hit the concrete with her arms spread and legs crossed and didn’t move.
The soldiers on the ground nearby were now running in all directions, diving behind cover. “Sniper!” he was sure they were yelling, but whether they had guessed his direction or even heard his shots was the question. He’d reloaded his suppressed Glock and blown out the window prior to getting on his rifle, but twenty floors up the noise hadn’t been loud. He’d been worried about the glass giving him away when it hit the ground far below, but no one, apparently, had heard it.
He peered back through the scope. Soldiers were crouched down behind the IMP, looking around, trying to spot him. But they were on the side of the vehicle facing him, so apparently they had no idea where he was. Not yet.
He fired again, worked the bolt, looked through the scope. Another hit.
Lots of soldiers down there. He could see everything between the apartment building where Eagle Eye had positioned themselves to the Army headquarters building and everything in-between, including the hangars and helipads. The only question was whether he would run out of ammo or die from blood loss before they pinpointed his position and rode up in the elevators to kill him.
Ed stared at the city sliding by outside the windows of the Growler. He hadn’t looked at the city through the window of a moving car since the start of the war, and it made him feel very odd. It took him a while to identify the sensation, but he finally had it—nostalgia. But there was something else, and that took him even longer to pin down.
Hope.
He studied the printout of satellite exposure times provided by LTC Morris, then looked at his watch. They were in blackout for another eight minutes. He peered out the windshield. Early was deftly maneuvering the Growler around massive potholes, windswept piles of garbage, and rusting vehicle hulks. The few noncombatants they saw scurried away at the sight of the Army vehicle. Early barely touched the brake, and inside the big vehicle they swayed from side to side.
“There!” Ed said, pointing. “Under there.” He checked his watch again. Seven more minutes of blackout.
Early slowed down and checked both directions out of lifelong habit, then powered across the intersection and into the gas station parking lot. He pulled between the pairs of vandalized pumps and the five men climbed out, guns up. Two people were walking along the street in the distance, but nothing else was moving.
Ed took the time to study the men with him. They’d automatically assumed a defensive perimeter around the vehicle. Early and Mark, while a bit battered and bloody, were as solid as they’d ever been. Seattle, Morris’ man, had proven himself time and again on the run north. And Jason…Jason…after a week with the dogsoldiers, patrolling and fighting behind enemy lines, he’d shown himself to be brave, smart, and motivated. The teen was covering his sector automatically, M4 shouldered, bloodied head scanning back and forth, hearing finally coming back. He’d fought as hard and as well as any of them. Ed knew he mostly had George to thank for that.
Ed looked up at the aluminum roof above their heads. It would hide the Growler from any satellite. “Leave the doors open, keys in it,” he told Early. With any luck the vehicle would be stolen by a local. He knew it was equipped with GPS, so it wouldn’t go missing for long. He hadn’t seen any sign of a drone since they’d holed up in the McDonald’s, but even if it was still up there, the Tabs didn’t seem to have any more forces available to send their way.
“How are we on time?” Mark asked, glancing at the paper in Ed’s hand.
“Five minutes, plus or minus.” He folded the paper and put it away.
“You need help?”
“I’ll let you know.” And with that Ed set off quickly, limping badly, the stabbing pain in his foot making his heart race and sending flares of heat throughout his body now that the adrenaline of the not-quite-last-stand had worn off. Mark was at his side, his gait just as compromised. They made for the alley behind the gas station and spread out in patrol formation, Jason automatically taking point. Seattle and Early covered their rear, even walking backward able to easily keep up with Ed and Mark.
After a few minutes Ed began to grow worried they were running out of time, but he just didn’t have the energy to do more than a fast hobble-hop-step that had him gasping. Mark wasn’t doing much better.
“There, is that it?” Jason said.
Ed paused and it took him a few seconds to push through the pain and focus on the building. At first he didn’t recognize it, because the last time he’d seen it the sun hadn’t been up. But then he nodded. He recognized the splintered door frame opening onto the alley.
Early and Seattle jogged ahead and checked the building. Early reappeared in the empty door frame as Ed limped up. “It’s clear.”
“Use a flashlight, check the tunnel opening for any tripwires.” The Tabs should have been too busy in the Blue Zone to bother with anything out near Six Mile, but Ed didn’t want to take any chances. Early nodded and disappeared into the gloom again.
They’d take the tunnel west to the end of the section cleared by Morris’ men. By the time they crawled back up to the surface it would be dark. They’d have a long painful walk north to get out of the city, but they had Morris’ schedule to avoid the satellites, and Ed was pretty sure the Tabs no longer had the manpower to support random patrols of the city. They knew a doctor who worked with the ARF Underground Railroad who would patch up Mark’s wounds, and maybe could do a walking cast for Ed’s foot.
Jason stood next to Ed, his face streaked with sweat and blood, eyes moving constantly, scanning back the way they’d come for threats, carbine held casually in his hands. He looked old beyond his years. He looked like a veteran dogsoldier which, after the week they’d all had,
he was.
“I hate running away,” Jason said, staring down the alley.
“We’re not running away,” Ed assured him with a smile and a squeeze of his shoulder. “We’re not retreating. We’re just regrouping to get patched up and grab some more ammo.” Ed took one last look around. “Don’t worry,” he said confidently, to Jason, to himself, and to the city, “we’ll be back to finish the job.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The idea and reality of civil war.
It is, in the final equation, just the matter of a little math and a basic grasp of history.
The History part of the equation is this: every country, every empire, every nation-state or other government entity in the history of the world has, sooner or later, come to an end. It is both wishful thinking and a rejection of reality to think that, at some point, the same fate won’t befall the United States. We’ve had a great run, but it won’t last forever.
The three most common causes of a nation/country/empire coming to an end are 1. Invasion/conquest 2. Civil war and/or sociocultural collapse, and 3. Pandemic.
A civil war, in our modern era, could very well be that thing which ends our country. It would be catastrophic.
As for the chances of us experiencing a civil war, many people like to say “That could never happen here,” conveniently forgetting the fact that it has. Twice. The Revolutionary War (1775-1783) could be argued to be our nation’s first civil war as we were fighting our own government and many of our fellow citizens (the Tories). The American Civil War (1861-1865) was very much a conflict between two very different cultures, and slavery was just one of those differences. In many ways our country is just as divided—culturally, socially, religiously, politically—now as we were when the southern states tried to break off and form the Confederate States of America. The Civil War resulted in an estimated 750,000 Americans dead, more than all our other wars combined.
As for the chances of us experiencing another civil war? That’s just math, and somebody’s already done those calculations for you. That somebody is B. J. Campbell, who in 2018 worked out the figures in an article entitled The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case of the Tin Foil Hat Prepper at Medium.com. According to Mr. Campbell:
The average year for American colony establishment is 1678. If you factor in the two qualifying revolutionary events (Revolutionary War, Civil War) and the average life expectancy of the modern American, he found that there is a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience a nationwide violent revolution.
Thirty-seven percent.
Those are better odds than you get in half the casino games in Las Vegas. And yet everybody acts like it could never happen.
Hoping and wishing something won’t happen has no bearing on the chances that it might, or could. Considering how Orwellian our government has become in its power and desire to control every aspect of our lives, and how fractured modern American society is, I think the chance of some sort of civil war is higher now than it has been in quite some time.
If it does happen, I suspect the horrors it will visit upon this nation will make the events of this book pale in comparison.
Now, as for Detroit…
At one point the population of the city of Detroit was near two million, but it was dropping even before the famous 1967 riots. After decades of first “white flight” and then everyone else bailing from the city into the surrounding suburbs and states, the population dropped to below 700,000, a loss of two-thirds of its residents over a period of time when the population of every other large city in the country was growing, some hugely.
Many of these departing residents were renters, and the property owners could not find new tenants, and just left the houses/apartments vacant because of the plummeting property values in the city. The number of empty homes in the city was staggering, and they became home to all sorts of criminal activity.
Because of the Devil’s Night Fires in the 1980s where hundreds of vacant homes were set fire the night before Halloween (On Devil’s Night 1984 there were 810 fires in Detroit), the city made a huge push to tear down any and all abandoned and vacant structures in the city. As a result, by 2019 over half the land inside the city limits of Detroit was vacant, and the city could not afford to mow much of it. This was far from the only problem Detroit was having. Estimates put the number of wild dogs roaming the streets of the city at 10,000.
As I write this there are many areas of Detroit that look like it has endured a zombie apocalypse, and this is peace time, with a functioning economy. Imagine what Detroit would look like after a decade of civil war, and you’ll see I didn’t exaggerate anything.
I adhered exactly to actual Detroit geography, history, and the downtown buildings, except in the few places where I didn’t. I changed a few things to better suit the story. That’s called artistic license. As for the Detroit sewers…they are, for the most part, as I have described them. I know retired Detroit cops who went into the sewers during the ’67 riots, chasing after people.
I had a few technical advisors who helped me immeasurably with this book.
I write for a number of national magazines, and Harper Collins published my second book which did so well I found myself in the position to accidentally piss off John Stossel in the green room of The O’Reilly Factor (long story), but I have never had a better editor of my work than my son Barrett who, as I write this, is still a teenager. Whether it was spotting a missing period or a missing motivation for a character, Barrett, as usual, was on top of things. You may not be shocked to learn that he is also a bit of a smart-ass, as evidenced by his comment on something I wrote in my rough draft: “This sentence hurts to read. It may be broken.”
Yehuda Remer (The Pew Pew Jew) helped to school me on all things Jewish, and his contributions made this a better, more interesting novel. David Fortier made me think about the motivations for some of my characters, and gave me a quick primer on High Power shooting, as well as his colorful opinion of the M1A.
Dillard ‘CJ’ Johnson, whose autobiography Carnivore I helped write, did one tour in Kosovo, two tours in Iraq as the Commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, then worked as a private contractor for six years. He’s seen more combat than most of the other combat vets I know put together. CJ educated me (or tried to) on modern armor, guerrilla combat tactics when dealing with tanks, the horrors of war, and many other things. He is one of those vets who feels the experience of the infantryman in combat has never been accurately captured in a book or on film, and I’m sure this novel won’t change his mind on that, but I did my best.
As for “immediate-future” small arms, armored vehicles, and explosive munitions, I haven’t stretched reality at all when you know what’s out there and what next-gen weapons and grenades are likely to be capable of. How many people know that there is already airburst 40mm ammunition out there specifically designed to take down drones?
A former Green Beret I know likes to use the term Free Shit Army, and I stole it from him for this book. A wonderful gentleman I know who between the Navy SEALs and the CIA spent thirty years serving his country educated me on tricks the Taliban use to avoid FLIR.
And a quick aside on that—I’ve had many ignorant people tell me that “rednecks with their AR-15s” could never withstand the might of the U.S. military with all its drones and satellites and aircraft. The people who fight and train insurgents for a living will tell you a different tale. In Afghanistan we’ve spent twenty years fighting people living in caves, most of whom have never used toilet paper, armed with fifty-year-old rifles.
That knitted, heat-reflective material originally meant to wrap steam pipes I had the dogsoldiers using to hide themselves from the helicopters with thermal sensors? It exists, but its ability to defeat thermal scopes is just now being tested. I know somebody looking into patents for that usage, so I didn’t want to go into too much detail. But it looks like tightly-knit polyester burlap and if you take a 3000-degree torch to it…the material
discolors, slightly. That’s it.
Consider for a moment how many different experiences there were of World War II. Depending on whether you fought in the Pacific or Italy, Germany or North Africa, were stateside doing support work or in England doing intelligence work, there is no single story of that war. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific is as accurate a portrayal of what he experienced in the Pacific as The Young Lions is of what Irwin Shaw saw in the Army in England and Europe, but the two stories couldn’t be more different. Which leads me to this point—
If a civil war starts in America, there is no way to guess what will spark it, and as for what it will be like, all we can do is make educated guesses. I don’t think any of us can wrap our heads completely around that nightmare scenario. Even if that war becomes a reality, your story will be different than mine, even if we are fighting side by side. The scope of a modern American civil war would be massive, and the death toll horrific, easily into the millions. Because of that unimagined breadth of conflict I deliberately made the focus of this novel somewhat narrow. I have concocted what I think is a realistic scenario for what we’d see if such a modern civil war dragged on as long as the Revolutionary War did, told from the point of view of a small group of partisans, set in a city which would almost certainly see combat.
Trust me, it is the cities where most of the combat in America would occur.
Even before I finished this book I had people telling me how the next civil war would be, and that this or that idea I had was wrong. I honestly hope I never know. And this novel was written as 95% entertainment and only 5% warning. That said….
At least to me, a war would be preferable to losing our country. Our Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln felt the same way. Living in an Orwellian state where the government controls every aspect of the lives of its disarmed subjects is a prospect I, and millions of other Americans, find unacceptable. And yet many members of our government seem to be working hard to make that country a reality, with throngs of our fellow citizens, dazzled by the prospect of free bread and circuses, blindly cheering them on.