by Carr, Jack
As part of their classified mission set, the Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, was put on alert. Tasked with continental United States unconventional responses, they notified component commands and began to consolidate forces at predetermined staging locations across the country. The United States Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs activated the unified-action layered defense strategy OPLAN federalizing the troops of Special Operations Command–North. This brought special operations personnel, trained to fight an enemy overseas, under the control of a command focused on maintaining peace and security within the borders of the continental United States.
While the commander in chief was addressing the nation from the Oval Office, the First Special Forces Command, established in 2014 at Fort Bragg, was activating the recall of intelligence, psychological operations, civil affairs, and sustainment assets for follow-on movement to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas. Black Hawks and Little Birds from the Special Operations Aviation Regiment in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, were loaded into C-130s and lifted off to stage within striking distance of the affected areas. They had been flying in major U.S. cities and population centers for years as part of exercises termed “Realistic Urban Training” with Special Mission Units out of Virginia Beach and Fort Bragg. In Florida, C-130J transports were wheels-up from Eglin Air Force Base en route for Dyess and Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado. As the president closed out his address, local news outlets were already broadcasting videos of tanks, Bradleys, helicopters, and troop transports staging for what looked like an invasion, giving rise to a number of conspiracy theories across the new media. A crisis was always good for news outlets and their advertisers.
Dyess and Buckley Air Force Bases were converted to military command centers. By the time the president approved the order to contain the outbreak, forces were already in place to respond. All flights in and out of Dallas, Denver, and surrounding areas, to include private aviation, were grounded while restricted airspace designations were immediately put in place via NOTAMs, notices to airmen.
Though the president never mentioned martial law in his address, it became the topic of the day. Never mentioned in the Constitution, not clearly defined by an act of Congress or by Supreme Court ruling, martial law has been enacted more than sixty times since 1776, perhaps most infamously by General Andrew Jackson in New Orleans during and after the War of 1812. Lawyers, pundits, and military analysts debated the merits of the Insurrection Act, posse comitatus, along with Title 10, Title 32, and Title 50 of the U.S. Code. As they talked, argued, and cycled through commercial breaks, the United States military took up positions outside Richardson and Aurora.
CHAPTER 32
RICHARDSON, TEXAS, WAS A small, affluent suburb east of Dallas with a population of 121,323. Home to the University of Texas at Dallas, the idyllic suburban community also hosts a high concentration of telecommunication industries. AT&T, Cisco, Samsung, and Texas Instruments headquartered there due to the quality of life and the ability to recruit a highly educated and motivated workforce. It was the regional hub of Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare, boasted an outstanding public education system, and was a short distance from Dallas via DART, the Dallas Rapid Transit System. It was consistently ranked by Forbes as one of the top suburban areas to live in the United States. It was about to be isolated from the rest of the world.
The drive from Dyess air base to Richardson was just over three hours. The military’s experience on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan suggested that three hours could be an eternity. Dallas Love Field airport was less than twenty minutes away.
The call came in just after 8:00 a.m. Central time. Having already suspended all air traffic an hour earlier, the director of operations at Love Field listened in disbelief as he was ordered to sequester all nonessential personnel and all civilians waiting on what were now canceled flights.
Troops in full combat gear were posted at every entrance and exit. Checkpoints were set up on roads leading to and from the airport. Psyops vehicles announced the immediate evacuation via loudspeakers as soldiers cleared and locked down terminals. Essential air traffic controllers were co-opted by the Department of Homeland Security as HMMWV gun trucks secured the runways. Fifteen minutes after ground forces had commandeered the airport, C-130s and C-17s began landing and unloading Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Stryker Infantry Carry Vehicles, helicopters, and additional troops.
The now-federalized troops began separating the travelers into groups based on cell phone locational data. The group who had been in Richardson were separated from those who had not. They were loaded onto buses for transport to isolation facilities for treatment.
The airport director stood in the tower overlooking the terminals, apron, taxiway, and runways in a state of shock. He had just relinquished control to a man in a camouflage uniform with a silver eagle rank insignia on his chest. Love Field was now the forward operating base for a complete martial takeover of Richardson.
* * *
Dr. Jay closed his office door and took a seat at his desk. Cases continued to mount in the emergency center and ICU at Richardson Methodist Medical Center. He picked up the phone and hit the direct connect to the nurse’s station.
“Nancy, please get me the latest numbers and results from BioFire.”
He then dialed his wife’s cell from his office phone, only to hear a busy signal. He tried his eldest son with the same result. Fishing his cell phone from his backpack, he noted it was connected to the hospital Wi-Fi and tried his family again: no luck. He attempted to connect to a news website with no success, even with a full-strength Internet connection.
Having had significant exposure to medical contingency operations in the military, Dr. Jay knew what was happening. The hospital was being isolated.
He got up and maneuvered through the throng of sick patients crowding the hallways, the smell of blood and vomit even heavier in the air than when he’d arrived. He passed through the waiting room and noticed that the televisions mounted strategically in the corners were dark. He exited the hospital, pulling his mask to the side to inhale air not tainted with the infection inside. The dying leaned on the side of the building, against cars, and sat at the base of the few trees that grew outside. He turned off Wi-Fi and looked at the cell service bars. Nothing. He usually had full bars at the front of the hospital.
Hearing the familiar sound of rotors, he held his hand up to block the sun, still low in the sky.
Black Hawks.
Containment.
Even though he knew it was useless, he tried to call his wife again, his heart in his throat.
Take the kids and get the hell out!
His phone would not connect.
All cell, Internet, landlines, TV, and radio were down. No text messages or ways to connect on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. It was a complete blackout. Full electronic isolation had already been initiated.
God help us all.
CHAPTER 33
BY 8:30 A.M., RICHARDSON, Texas, had become a prison. Military and law enforcement personnel had sealed the city from 635 to the south, 380 to north, Route 75 Addison to the west, and Route 78 to the east, creating a noose with a three-mile radius. A soft boundary was set at the two-mile mark with no entry or exit permitted. No one, for any purpose, could exit the one-mile containment zone. Wire mesh barricades and twelve-foot walls had been assembled and installed around the hard one-mile perimeter. Only authorized personnel with full credentials and hazmat gear were allowed between the one- and two-mile rings. Armed Little Birds from TF-160 patrolled the perimeter of the lockdown area. Communications were now via secure channels only. More than eighty thousand people were restricted to the central core of the city.
An evacuation area was set up to the south on the University Park Field, manned by personnel in full hazmat gear. A fifty-thousand-square-foot tent was erected with massive air filtration systems sealing
it off from the outside world, the internal section bathed in UV light for sterilization. Patients were transported into the facility and escorted to a predesignated cot. Each man, woman, and child was heavily sedated with morphine and then restrained to their beds. Fingerprints, pictures, and DNA swabs were taken. Wallets, phones, and personal effects were confiscated, sealed in clear storage bags, and labeled. In an ominous prelude to the expected body count, refrigerated trucks and trailers were positioned on the streets behind the field.
By the end of the day, 457 people had been transported to the holding facility; 108 of those were now in body bags and stored in refrigerated trucks.
Outside the three-mile perimeter, news trucks, media, and family members with loved ones trapped inside the containment zone were met with harsh orders to return home and await further notifications.
The president’s address was thus far the only official statement given to the nation. A second address was planned for 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. In the meantime, the White House press secretary did the best she could to field questions from a hostile press, each reporter looking to get their thirty-second sound bite in the hopes it would go viral and increase their personal follower profile. Representatives of both parties called press conferences looking for much the same results as the reporters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sensational video and photographs coming in from the outskirts of Richardson and Aurora were played on cable channels as commentators bloviated to fill the news cycle. The rumor mill was in full swing as shock jocks, trolls, and far-right and far-left conspiracy theorists spread conjecture as fact, adding to the hysteria.
When a Channel 4 Fox News Skycopter from Dallas attempted to penetrate restricted airspace for exclusive video, the pilot was intercepted by two black A/MH-6M Little Birds. The mounted machine guns and snipers on platforms on either side of the fuselage were enough to turn him around.
Other rotary-wing aircraft with high-power loudspeakers instructed residents to stay in their homes. If anyone in the house experienced flu-like symptoms, they were to wave a white shirt from a window, roof, or front yard. An ambulance would be dispatched to transport the infected individual to the field hospital.
Those who took to their cars or trucks in an attempt to escape the containment barrier were met with a show of force and in some cases warning shots from .50-caliber machine guns.
The first complete containment of a U.S. city in the twenty-first century had been accomplished.
CHAPTER 34
U.S. 50 West
Maryland
THE LAND CRUISER’S OLD yellow plastic headlight coverings had been replaced with clear lenses and modern LED bulbs that cast a bright whitish-blue light across the dark road ahead. The truck barreled down U.S. 50 West toward the CIA safe house in Maryland that Reece currently called home. With the country on the verge of another lockdown due to the emerging threat of a new pandemic, coupled with the peculiar death of the first target on the kill list, Reece’s mission was on hold. The president wanted him to stand down while they got a handle on the situation.
“This is just too eerie,” Katie said from the passenger seat. “There are hardly any other cars on the road. It’s a Friday night. We are not even in a mandatory lockdown here. There have been no cases in D.C., Virginia, or Maryland.”
“COVID made us all gun-shy and ultrasensitive to any sort of virus,” Reece said. “Even though the outbreak seems to be isolated in Denver and Richardson, locking down en masse has become the norm. What does your friend Haley at the CDC have to say?”
“You can ask her yourself. She’s going to stop by for a drink tonight. She wants to talk with me about a story. She’s at the forefront of this and hasn’t slept since the first cases appeared. Just like the president said, it appears that it’s a new strain of Ebola originating in Angola. They are still looking for the index case, but it looks like one of the people who died in the Angola outbreak a few weeks ago infected a traveler who then boarded a plane to the U.S. We’ve never had a strain of hemorrhagic fever go airborne, so this is something new.”
Depending on traffic, the drive from D.C. to the house on the Severn River was between twenty minutes and an hour. Reece had picked Katie up at the Washington bureau, where she was part of a panel on the constitutionality of government-mandated lockdowns and using active-duty troops to quarantine cities without congressional approval in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. The president’s actions in Richardson and Denver had brought up serious legal issues about the power of the federal government in dealing with pandemics. It was her last live show of the workweek, and Katie was not scheduled to appear again until Sunday morning. They planned to pick up a pizza from Neo’s before it closed and enjoy a lazy Saturday morning together in a house in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the country. Maybe they would even get out on the Chesapeake in the Agency sailboat docked across the lawn.
* * *
“What the fuck was that?” Woody asked as their minivan swerved slightly to the right.
“Asshole,” Crimmins said.
“What?”
“Not you, asshole. These other assholes,” Crimmins said, nodding ahead toward the two vehicles that had just sped past them.
“Oh,” Woody said from his captain’s chair in the backseat, where he continued to monitor the Land Cruiser. “When the fuck are we going to do something other than monitor this guy? This shit is boring. I signed up for the action. So far all we’ve done is follow him around the country and sit outside while he bangs his chick.”
“Our mission is to surveil him, record his movements, take notes, and send reports to higher. That’s it. If you want something more, I can tell Sawyer you are unhappy with the assignment. I am sure he will have absolutely no trouble replacing you.”
“Fuck you, Crimmins. I’m good. Just miss the ’Stan.”
Crimmins shook his head as he watched the van and the mid-nineties Chrysler speed out of sight.
* * *
“What do you want on your pizza?” Katie asked, pulling her phone from her purse.
“What do you think? Neo’s, right? How about a Great White or Florentine?”
“Florentine it is. How are we on wine?”
“Luckily we already worked our way through the CIA’s stash.”
“A truly horrid experience,” Katie confirmed.
“Ha! That it was. Vic told me the last person they had sequestered in there was a Venezuelan intelligence officer who had an affinity for Two Buck Chuck. I had Raife raid Jonathan’s wine cellar for us. It only took two reminders that I saved his life in Russia. He shipped out a box of assorted selections, which should get us through the night. He included a few from Beckstoffer.”
“Don’t tease me, Reece,” she said, giving him a mischievous look.
As she hit the number for Neo’s on her phone, Reece looked at her and smiled. The diamond he’d given her at Landini Brothers still graced her neck. She hadn’t taken it off.
As soon as it’s done, Katie. As soon as I finish what I started, then it will be time for us.
Reece’s eyes caught a reflection in the rearview mirror and he intuitively inched farther to the edge of the right-hand lane.
Probably nothing. Relax, Reece. Only someone rushing to get home from D.C., just like you.
As Katie placed their pizza order, Reece switched his attention from the rearview to the side-view mirror.
It was tough to tell in the dark, but the approaching vehicle looked like a sedan, the dim yellow lights giving it away as an older model.
Reece glanced in the rearview mirror again, noting a larger vehicle following it a few car lengths behind.
The violent impact to the left rear section of the Land Cruiser sent the off-road vehicle into an immediate spin.
Katie dropped her phone, desperately grasping the dashboard and reaching for the handle on her door.
Reece attempted to counter-steer out of the spin when the sedan accelerated and hit them between the driver’s and
rear driver’s-side doors. The large all-terrain tires caught the pavement and sent the Toyota into a sideways roll. Reece’s head smashed into the side window as it disintegrated in an explosion of glass fragments, Katie’s screams mixing with the violent impacts of steel and glass meeting road.
The car rolled again, cartwheeled to the right, and plunged down the embankment.
CHAPTER 35
“WHOA!” WOODY YELLED FROM the back where he monitored the tracking device.
“What?”
“The fucking thing just went off the road!”
“Speak English. What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. He was driving along, and the tracker just flew off the road.”
“Could he have found it earlier and thrown it out the window now?” Crimmins asked.
“Maybe. Let’s find out. You want the rifle?”
“Just stay cool.”
Crimmins and Woody had been monitoring from a few miles back so as not to spook their prey. They hadn’t thought about what to do if their target had an accident.
“As hard as it is, try not to do anything stupid,” Crimmins told his partner. “We are going to roll up, assess the situation, and make a report. Is it still pinging in the same location?”
“Yeah. It hasn’t moved. From the satellite map I think it’s down in a ravine or something. Two miles ahead.”
As much as he wanted to find out what was happening, Crimmins maintained the speed limit as he approached.
“Pass me the NODs,” he said to Woody, who passed up a bump helmet with PVS-31s attached.
Woody watched the night-vision-capable monitors as Crimmins switched off the headlights and activated the IR beams, which allowed him to see clearly through the white phosphor image-intensifying tubes of the NODs.