The chatter abruptly fell silent.
Rationally, Bradley knew he had done nothing wrong, yet a peculiar strain of guilt was settling into his gut. If he’d been outside when the mortars started falling, could he have detected the attack sooner? Would it have made a difference?
Gaze sifting through the valley of blue spruce, Douglas fir, and lodgepole pine, he spotted a patch of white. Peering through his scope, he grimaced at the UW pickup truck, its bed loaded with six peacekeepers, two more in the cab.
Bradley counted the trucks then hailed Captain Andrews. “We’ve got twenty-five vehicles on approach. Repeat, two-five. Approximately two hundred armed tangos. Two-zero-zero.”
“Any chance you’ve double counted the same vehicles on the switchbacks?”
“Negative. How long until that Apache gets here?”
“Six minutes. We have to hold them off.”
“Roger that,” Bradley said, knowing it was bound to feel like six hours. He exchanged a series of hand signals with Abby. Her vehicle and force estimates jibed with his, and the austere set of her lips confirmed that she understood: they were outnumbered twenty-to-one.
He sighted his rifle on a tight ninety-degree bend in the road six hundred yards away, a natural choke point with a steep slope of craggy rocks above it, a sheer cliff beneath it.
If the vehicles progress beyond that point ...
Bradley evicted the possibility from his mind.
The other seven TEradS members, including Captain Andrews, had branched into a line at ten-yard intervals along the dirt road. The Snipers would be primarily responsible for halting the vehicular advance, while the others engaged targets of opportunity.
Bradley aligned his scope on the driver of the first truck. Before he could squeeze the trigger, a red spray spattered the windshield, and he smirked. Abby had beaten him to it.
The pickup smacked into the mountainside, the driver’s door opened, and the dead soldier was shoved out. His body tumbled down the cliff face, then another man took his place behind the wheel. Bradley fired, his shot chipping away at the existing hole, adding a second coat of blood to the windshield. Then he sent a .308 caliber round into the engine block.
Peacekeepers leapt from the disabled truck. Scores more stormed toward it, half dying in transit. A few survivors managed to tilt the vehicle like a crowd of drunken soccer fans and roll it off the cliff. A shower of lead immediately cut them down.
Bradley took aim at another driver, then the hillside above the vehicles crackled and erupted.
Boulders somersaulted, bounding downward. They smashed into majestic pines and snapped them like toothpicks, interring six pickup trucks beneath a black avalanche. Two hundred feet of roadway had become impassable.
Bradley mumbled, “Thank you, Terror Fox!”
Another wave of peacekeepers began scaling the pile of loose rock. Those that didn’t fall to their deaths were felled by bullets, each body becoming yet another obstacle.
Bradley burned through all ninety rounds of .308; and as he transitioned to the M4, he heard a foreboding sound, one that could potentially reverse the momentum of the battle.
76
District Six, Texas
SERGEANT JIANG FROWNED, watching the governor smooth his shirtsleeve.
“This just doesn’t seem right,” Murphy said. “My deputies should be protected first.” Clutching the executive order and the list of names, he crossed the room with three strides and yanked open the wooden door. “Come on downstairs. We’ll get you set up in the conference room.”
Murphy paused, introducing the pretty secretary as his wife, Jessie; then he handed the list to a deputy now standing post outside his office. “I need all law enforcement downstairs. ASAP.”
“ASAP?” Jiang repeated. He had been charged with this mission due to his exceptional command of English, and he was concerned that the unfamiliar word could be a coded warning for the well-armed deputy.
“It’s short for as soon as possible,” Murphy explained.
The journey downstairs digressed into an impromptu tour of the sheriff’s station, with the governor inventorying all the equipment that had been damaged by the electromagnetic pulse as well as the new radios and phones provided by China.
Is this genuine gratitude? Or a clever stall technique?
Jiang offered a polite bow, reminding himself to be patient. Although all thirty-six people on his list could be summoned instantly via text message, it could take upwards of an hour for them all to arrive.
Murphy unlocked a door and ushered Jiang, Huang, and Fu into a tiled hallway, flanked with iron cells that reeked of body odor and urine. Six deputies strolled in behind them, each with a sidearm strapped to his belt and a long gun dangling from his shoulder. He counted two shotguns and four rifles.
Did the governor grow skeptical?
Seeing two Chinese prisoners, Jiang squelched his outrage, and speaking in Mandarin, he said, “Your captor will be dead within days, and you will be free.”
The men overreacted with cheers, and Jiang could feel Murphy’s questioning stare. “I updated them regarding the Chinese Football Association,” he lied, knowing the former baseball shortstop would not question it. “I believe you Americans call it soccer.”
The governor dragged a hand across his stubbly chin and turned toward the prisoners. “Since you are guests,” he said. “You should receive the first inoculations for Alameda fever.”
“No, no, no,” a prisoner named Kang chanted, palms thrusting as if he were beating an invisible wall.
“Stop!” Jiang commanded in Mandarin. “You will arouse suspicion.” Then to the governor he said, “These men have already been inoculated.”
Murphy nodded to his sheriff, then the deputies drew their weapons and surrounded Huang, Fu, and Jiang—frisking and disarming, confiscating the vaccines.
The governor opened the cooler and removed a syringe. Its red label seemed to glow under the LED lighting. “Lock up the doctors and cuff Sergeant Jiang.” He glanced at Kang, who immediately backtracked across his cell, his eyes telegraphing his fear.
Jiang felt the handcuffs bite into his wrists. Two deputies pinned his shoulders against the iron bars of a cell then they each lodged a heavy boot atop his foot.
“When you commit a crime, you have a trial,” Murphy told him. “First, we notify you of the charges. In this case, thirty-six counts of attempted murder. Do you plead innocent or guilty?”
“This is a waste of time. I am exempt from American law.”
“This is more like Murphy’s Law. Ever heard of it?” the governor asked with a crooked grin. “I’ll assume you intend to plead innocent, and we’ve already heard from a witness.” He pointed toward Kang. “And we’ve entered three items into evidence—the executive order, the target list, and of course the syringes.”
Jiang forced a gaping-mouthed, prolonged yawn to illustrate his boredom with the proceeding, drawing chuckles from Huang and Fu.
“Stay awake,” Murphy said, patting his cheek. “Now you get to testify. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do not believe in God.”
“Your loss—divine guidance would be pretty handy right now. Anyway, at this point in the trial, you answer questions.” He displayed the syringe in front of Jiang’s face. “Does this contain a toxic substance?”
“No, Governor. You are paranoid. And crazy.”
“Then why was your comrade so afraid of it?”
“He is a coward, frightened of needles.” Jiang shared a laugh with Huang and Fu. He was making a mockery of American justice, and the governor was too stupid to realize it.
“Okay, now here’s the important part. If you’re telling the truth, you’ll be acquitted. If you lie, however, you’ll be convicted. And in your case, that’s the death penalty.”
Murphy tore open an antiseptic packet and swabbed the fleshy part of Jiang’s arm, just below the shoulder.<
br />
Huang and Fu called to him in Mandarin.
“Be courageous!”
“Sacrifice yourself for the Chinese Century!”
The needle punctured his skin. “Last chance,” Murphy said. “Is the vaccine deadly?”
Sweat beaded over Jiang’s face, his chest, his back, as if his entire body were crying. Involuntary tremors zapped his strength. If not for the deputies, he would’ve melted into a puddle.
“No, Governor! And you are still paranoid and crazy!”
Lips pinching, Murphy depressed the plunger. “Now we await the verdict.”
77
District Eight, Colorado
THE MOUNTAINSIDE HAD fractured and sank onto the roadway, just as Franny planned. She had engineered the landslide and rigged the explosives a week ago, a fact she had withheld from Ryan Andrews.
Captain Clueless, you are one lucky son of a bitch, she thought, imaging his reaction. Surprise would register in those cunning, warm brown eyes. His virile jaw would relax into a cocky grin to hide his embarrassment; then he would plunge into some bullshit lecture about battlefield etiquette. Franny caught herself smiling at the prospect of another verbal duel. A tingle of energy jangled through her, and she quickly doused it with thoughts of Ty.
I didn’t have to knock him to the ground, she told herself—yet again. I already had possession of the gun.
Adrenaline and anger had distorted her judgment and caused her to use excessive force.
Although the rational part of Franny understood that if the incident had occurred prior to the EMP, law enforcement would have dispatched Ty to save Gwen’s life; her emotional side continued second-guessing.
If only I’d stopped after kneeing his wounded leg.
The whistle of an incoming mortar drew her attention to the east. It struck a tree two hundred yards beyond the TEradS’ line and exploded into a booming ball of light. Splintered wood and shrapnel slashed and thudded, shredding trees and battering rock.
Fuck ...! Mortars could cost us the initiative.
Another blast hammered the mountain, kicking up a hundred-foot cloud of dirt. Franny ran south, paralleling the one-lane road, scanning the maze of pine trees, then skidded to a stop. She dropped onto her belly, raised the barrel of her rifle, and fired off several quick bursts, taking out one of the Chinese mortar teams.
Bullets pelted the ground thirty feet below her.
Angry peacekeepers charged the hillside like a swarm of blue-helmeted hornets, and Franny scurried between the trees.
A mortar landed in the parking area between two pickup trucks, setting them ablaze and gouging divots into the tiny cinder-block building. Once the echo subsided, a beautiful sound filled the air—the thwump of an Apache attack helicopter.
Thirty-millimeter rounds from its chain gun strafed the ground, pruning trees and peacekeepers alike.
“Hell yeah!” Franny crouched behind a lodgepole pine to enjoy the show. The Apache acted like a giant rake, sweeping the Chinese down the mountain. It evaded a shoulder-launched missile then returned fire with three Hellfire missiles.
The anti-aircraft fire and mortars ceased. The parade of pickup trucks began a slow retreat, backing along the narrow dirt road. A sprinkling of Hydra 70 rockets converted half the vehicles into twisted, flaming wrecks. Sooty black smoke rose through the pines. Chinese soldiers abandoned the remaining pickup trucks and fled into the forest.
Ears ringing from the bombardment, Franny never heard the approaching footsteps.
78
District Eight, Colorado
CAPTAIN RYAN ANDREWS returned to the cinder-block building with Donnelly and Becker to check on his prisoner. Gwen Ling was exactly where he had left her, shackled and tucked beneath the desk.
“She’s got a GPS transmitter on her somewhere. Find it.”
“Yes, sir,” they answered in unison.
Ryan placed another call using his satellite phone, eager to inform Kyle that his daughter was alive. He grew more irritated with each unsuccessful attempt.
This doesn’t make sense, he thought. My calls to Barclay and Langden went right through.
The implication struck like a sucker punch. The Chinese had probably constructed a similar cellular tower in District Six, capable of intercepting and jamming signals. Silently, he mulled over the sequence of ambushes. In each instance, they’d lost communications first. Does every district have a predatory cellular network?
“Captain, she doesn’t have a cellphone, and we can’t find a transmitter,” Becker told him.
Gwen was on her feet, arms still bound in front of her. “I told you, I don’t have a transmitter.”
Anger rising, Ryan roused the laptop, clicked on the green dot atop Mount Wheatly, and held the monitor in front of Gwen’s face. “Then explain this!”
Seeing her own photograph, a soft gasp escaped her. Astonishment drained the color from her indignant expression. “But ... But that ... that can’t be.”
“You lured two hundred peacekeepers right to us!” Ryan shouted. “You’re a fucking traitor!”
“No, I-I-I didn’t! I would never. I-I love my country just as much as you do—”
“Really?” He gave a derisive snort. “Just for the record, which country would that be?”
“I am proud of my Chinese heritage, Captain, but I am a United States citizen. That’s where my loyalties lie.” Shock had given way to tears, and her head rocked side to side, blotting her eyes against her forearms. “Why else would I have stolen meds from the hospital for Ty?”
“To find the location of the mine for the Chinese!”
“No. You can ask—” Gwen’s thought seemed to truncate. “It’s the vaccine ... the blue vaccine!”
Ryan listened to her babble about Alameda fever, a rampant, deadly disease he had never heard of. She insisted the transmitter had been injected beneath her skin.
“As far as I’m concerned, she’s a terror suspect. Get her out of here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ryan used the laptop mouse to zoom out and began randomly clicking among the thousands of dots. All the names and faces were American; they couldn’t all be traitors.
Could Gwen be telling the truth? Did China create the problem—a phony epidemic ... provide the solution—a phony vaccine ... and gain control over the masses?
“Captain Andrews, I’ve taken a prisoner, sir,” Fitzgerald said.
He turned around, expecting to see an Asian soldier, and locked eyes with Franny Marion.
“This woman has knowledge of our sign and countersign, sir.”
“We found Ms. Marion inside the mine after you relieved Webber. Thank you, First Sergeant. You’re dismissed.”
Franny strode toward him, hands extended. “Aren’t you going to uncuff me?”
“Hell no! Inserting yourself into the battlefield was stupid, reckless, and in direct defiance of my orders!”
Her frosty aqua eyes darkened when she was angry, taking on the color of a glacial lake, while her cheeks glowed a soft pink. “You would’ve gotten your ass kicked if I didn’t blow that mountain—”
“And my teams could have shot you. Damn it, you—of all people, Major—are aware of protocol. Rules and regulations exist for a reason.” He paused, amused by the irony. That sentiment had never crossed his lips before and probably never would again. “So, I am—sure as fuck—glad that you know when to break them. Thank you.”
Her mouth fell open, her head cocked to the side in confusion, and a bewitching smile curled her lips.
Their eyes met, and an intense physical attraction raced through Ryan. His hands, seeming to move of their own volition, cupped the sides of her face. Then his mouth closed over hers in a passionate kiss that aroused him more than he would have thought possible.
Tidbit # 4: Francis Marion
Francis Marion was known for his use of Cherokee guerrilla tactics, which wreaked havoc on British operations. Using the cover of the South Carolina swamps, he successfully eng
aged British forces, inciting disruption and unrest among the locals. For these reasons, his capture became a high priority; and after a seven-hour, unfruitful chase through the swamp, British Colonel Tarleton said, “As for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him.” This inspired Marion’s well-known nickname: The Swamp Fox.
Source: American Patriots by Rick Santorum.
Frances “Franny” Marion is intended to embody the fighting spirit and cunning of an American hero. The Terror Fox was designed to mimic Marion’s guerilla tactics, evasive skills, and propensity to frustrate the enemy. Casting this character as a female Sapper was strictly a literary decision. All other sentiments expressed or actions taken by this character are purely fictional.
Chapter 7
—— DAY 447 ——
Saturday, May 7th
79
Barclay Air Force Base, Colorado
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Captain Andrews walked into Laurence Medical Center, a few miles west of Barclay Air Force Base. The facility had lost its equipment to the electromagnetic pulse and the majority of its employees to the aftermath. It was now operating with foreign-donated technologies, and staffed with personnel from the 460th Medical Group.
Bradley sat slumped against a set of green conjoined chairs. Eyes closed, head leaning against a vanilla-bland wall, his elbows dangled over the square oak armrests as if claiming the neighboring seats.
Ryan pushed Bradley’s arm aside and sat down. “Any word yet?”
His worried hazel eyes opened, and he snapped to attention. “Negative, sir.”
“As you were and lose the sir.”
During the helicopter flight to Barclay, Abby had begun vomiting. Ryan would never forget her words.
I feel like a jackhammer is splitting my skull in half.
Team 6A’s medical officer suspected the noise and pressure waves from the mortars had exacerbated her concussion.
EMPowered- America Re-Energized Page 16