Red Walker

by Scott Allen

  Dana’s intuition had been right. When they were fifty meters behind the “line of death,” several booby-trapped bodies exploded, scattering bloody body parts around the forest. The men were speculating that the enemy soldiers had been drugged, because they had continued to fight when badly wounded.

  Dana saw one of the medics and got the tear in his side glued together, and some local pain medication injected. He was getting cold from the rip in his ‘suit. He used some repair tape while the men sat on fallen logs near the river and ate a cold supper. He detailed several men to walk back a kilometer and collect all their ‘cycles. He conferred with Blaine about the action, and then walked around the platoon, distributing praise and singling out men who had been especially brave or effective. He spoke with the wounded before they were carried to the rear on their ‘cycles. The man whose life he had saved thanked him. He thanked Brandon again for saving his. He sat down on a log and gave a sigh, and shook his head. He had lost five men, and he knew that three of them had died because he was not alert enough.

  They crossed the river on their ‘cycles and made camp. Everyone settled in for the night, except for pickets. His sleep that night was disturbed by nightmares of giant snakes stalking him through underbrush with their mouths open and large fangs protruding.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The First Rebellion Army had been moving east from Texas, had reached Georgia, and was turning north towards Washington DC. The Second Rebellion Army, the one Dana was with, was headed east across the Great Plains and Midwest, and would be in Illinois in a few days. The Third, and smaller, Rebellion Army had driven north from California, to hold down U.S. forces in the Northwest that might flank the Second R.A. The U.S. Army was continually falling back, sometimes in good order, still fighting. Intelligence said their reserves were committed.

  Over a million men had been freed and about half were being trained for the Rebellion Army. Raptor drones with hardware-disabling electronics were flying through American cities, permanently disabling men’s hardware. This meant that U.S. soldiers had to be pulled away from battle and detailed to round up men and either kill them or lock them up until functioning hardware could be found. In almost every city, some men had obtained weapons and were causing havoc.

  This was the situation explained by General Estevez to the Second Commando Division, twenty-five thousand of them, assembled in a covered stadium. He said their plan was now to win the war with one bold stroke, using the First and Second Commando Divisions and the Airborne Division, about seventy-five thousand men altogether. They were going to drop them all on top of Washington DC and decapitate the military and political leadership of the United States.

  Estevez continued, “We will be using stealth drop craft, but we will also be using intelligent missiles to take out any missile batteries or aircraft that might possibly pose a threat along the way, along with critical bridges. The flights for the First Commando will originate in north Georgia, the Second Commando will originate in Illinois, and the Airborne will originate in Missouri,” said Estevez. The First Commando and the Airborne will take out the Pentagon and the MacKinnon airbase, and the Second Commando will occupy the White House and the Capitol buildings, along with associated office buildings and communications facilities, and defend them.

  “You will kill all military personnel, politicians, or civilians that offer resistance. Higher-level enemy officers, politicians, and bureaucrats who surrender you will hold securely, and then send into captivity, where they will be tried for their crimes against humanity. You will collect the evidence for their trials. We will continue to airdrop supplies to you, including heavy weapons, so that you can defend your positions until the rest of the Army overwhelms the enemy and reaches Washington. Each unit will receive specific instructions for its specific targets.

  “Let us get this over with, gentlemen and ladies, let us get this over with. We have much work to do once we have won. In between now and then, you will probably have to fight like demons. You have done well so far, and we are all counting on you to put this war away!”

  The stadium erupted in cheers, although Dana noticed the more thoughtful officers he could see were only applauding politely. They had reservations. So did Dana.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Carrying nearly 25 kilograms of gear and their ‘chutes, the men walked out onto the tarmac of the airport in the low dawn light and were stunned by what they didn’t see. There was a line of dozens of mobile steps that reached up about 3 meters into thin air. Men in stealthsuits, burdened by gear, were walking up the steps and disappearing.

  Dana and his men realized that what they could not see was a line of large stealth aircraft that used some sort of technology that produced an effect like their ‘suits, making them blend into the background. Visually, the aircraft they were headed for looked like it wasn’t there, although the tree line and clouds above the craft didn’t perfectly match the ones on the surface of the craft. As they walked down the line of steps, Dana realized that he could vaguely make out the outline of an aircraft, because there was a slight blur to the snow piles, trees, and sky behind it as he walked. It made his eyes water a bit to try to focus on it.

  As they approached the stairs they were supposed to climb, they could see the interior of the craft at the top of the steps through a door that appeared to be suspended in space. Curiously, this bizarre sight gave Dana some confidence. He knew the aircraft was virtually undetectable by radar or heat signature, and was even hard to detect visually. The man behind him in the platoon was a bit nervous, and said, “Sir, how does that work? Are these things safe?”

  “If I knew how the invisibility stuff worked, Sawyer, I would be a lot smarter than I am. But, of course they’re safe,” Dana replied with what he hoped was total confidence. “The enemy can’t detect them with any kind of instruments. The first thing they’ll know about it is when we start demanding their surrender on the ground.” The man seemed to perk up a bit.

  The ride was a bumpy, due to storms over Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some of the men were airsick. Dana was next to one of the few windows, trying to see the rest of the air fleet. Occasionally, he would see a blur against the clouds, but it would disappear. He wondered how the pilots kept from colliding.

  Dana and the other lieutenants had conferred with the Captain about their target – the White House. Looking at the viewscreen laid out on a table, saw a map of the building and the surrounding area. He asked, “What about these other buildings around the White House? Do they hold enemy troops?”

  “No,” said the Captain. “Just about all U.S. troops are on the front lines or handling logistics. Our Intelligence says that only the military installations in the city have substantial numbers of soldiers inside of them, rear-echelon troops at that. The enemy doesn’t expect us to leapfrog right into D.C. and attack a civilian installation like the White House.” Evans said that they expected to overwhelm the guards quickly, since there were 152 men in their company and allegedly only thirty to fifty guards, mostly civilian.

  Dana led the platoon in leaping out of the aircraft, deploying his ‘chute, and guiding it down onto the west side of the south lawn, near some trees. The objective of his platoon and one other was the West Wing, containing offices. Believing that the enemy would have the north and west entrances guarded, his platoon was to blow open the windows on the south side, where there were no doors except to the Oval Office. Fifth platoon would enter through doors on the corridor of offices that separated the warren of offices and meeting rooms in the west wing block from the residence, and through the Oval Office. Like all the other soldiers, Dana’s stealthsuit contained in its memory an interior map of the building, plus facial recognition technology for the thousands of target persons the Rebellion Army units were supposed to capture. His platoon landed without incident, and he spoke to them, “Drop ‘chutes and get inside quickly, men, we’re sitting ducks out here, even if they can’t see us well.”

  As soon as he ha
d spoken, he heard the sound of rifles being fired on automatic, saw them in the windows, and heard screams from several of his men. “Get some rockets on those windows!” he yelled, windows and brickwork around them were blown open, and Dana and his men poured through. “Drop your weapons and put up your hands!” Dana yelled through his microphone. There were a civilian guards standing in the hallways who immediately obeyed. Dana had divided his platoon into teams, one to take care of prisoners, two more to go through the offices and meeting rooms on the left and right hallways, one to handle the wounded, and one team, led by himself, to cover their backs and fronts.

  His men were well-trained, and cleared out the offices on the ground floor, turning over their prisoners to the first team to hold them in cleared offices. There wasn’t much shooting, probably because most of the guards were trying to fight off the rest of the company. Nonetheless, there were some US Army soldiers and civilian guards that fought back, and had to be killed. Dana and the men in his team sometimes had to shoot at soldiers appearing from upstairs or downstairs. Blaine took a team upstairs and cleared the offices there, while another team cleared the basement.

  His faceplate told him that an older woman in business clothes passing by under his men’s guard was the Secretary of the Interior, and another was the Under-Secretary for Womyn’s Affairs. But, what really gave him a start was a battered-looking woman in a pastel blue suit that his faceplate informed him was the Secretary for Male Control. Dana was surprised that he didn’t want to kill her immediately. He didn’t have time to ask if the men had roughed her up because she resisted arrest, or because they violently hated her. He decided there was no point in asking, but he did put out a reminder over the internal comm not to harm anyone who surrendered peacefully.

  They cleared out the basement and the second floor. They could hear explosions and firing coming from the areas of the building to the east of them, so Dana left Sergeant Blaine in charge and took ten men into the central parts of the White House, informing the other platoons they were coming on the internal comm. Carefully rounding a corner, they came upon a group of five armed women civilians shooting at their comrades from the rest of the company, and shot them all. The lieutenant of the second platoon came forward and thanked him, and said that, as far as he knew, the whole building was now secure.

  Captain Evan came on the internal comm and confirmed this. He told all platoons to take their prisoners to the basement and find holding rooms for them. He said, “I want the president and vice-president to be held in solitary windowless rooms, with no contact with anyone else, and five armed guards apiece. I’m trying to find out now how the rest of the DC attack is going. Lieutenants should detail several men to collect all memory devices from the offices and take them to the deep bunker below, to a lockable room. All other men not guarding prisoners or caring for wounded are to take up positions at windows facing all directions and watch for counter-attacks.”

  Dana and Sergeant Blaine walked through the west wing corridors making certain that their men were properly placed. Dana was pleased with their work and distributed praise liberally. They were functioning as an efficient team, who liked and trusted each other. Dana was particularly lavish with his kudos for Sergeant Blaine, whom he considered just as responsible as he was.

  They saw no threats from the windows. Dana went to the basement to check on prisoners. In one room, he found one of his corporals and two privates guarding the Secretary for Male Control and the two other Cabinet officers. The MC Secretary looked slightly more battered than he remembered, hands cuffed behind her, legs tied together, seated, and gagged. There were bruises all over her face.

  “Corporal,” said Dana, returning his salute, “has someone been hitting this woman?” She was staring at both of them with unmitigated hatred.

  “Yes, sir,” responded the corporal. “She put up a fight when we arrested her. Whacking her in the face was the only way to get her down. Watch out if you take off the gag, sir. She spits and bites, and she yells obscenities as loud as she can.”

  “I see,” said Dana. He didn’t necessarily believe that no one had punched her just for revenge, but he knew he could never prove it. “Carry on, Corporal, and make sure that no one commits any unnecessary violence on the prisoners. Some of them may be animals, but we are not. I will hold you responsible.” He looked with satisfaction on the impotently furious MC Secretary, smiled at her, saluted his men, and left.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  The Captain had called for a meeting of lieutenants in the Oval Office. The five lieutenants sat on two plush couches with yellow rose patterns on them, facing each other, while the Captain sat in a chair at the head of the couches. Everyone had the head coverings of their stealthsuits off, and their ventilation systems running wide open. It was warm in the White house, now that the blown-in windows and doors had been covered up, and Sergeant Carroll had been sent to find the thermostats and turn them down. They didn’t dare take off their suits, in case of a counter-attack. The five lieutenants looked a bit like disembodied, sweaty heads sitting atop rosebushes.

  Captain Evan opened the meeting by asking for reports. First Platoon reported the old Executive Office Building to the west was empty, and they had taken no casualties. Second Platoon reported securing the President, Vice President, and 10 staff members, taking four casualties. The officers applauded. Dana reported he had taken three casualties securing the West Wing, but had the Secretaries of Interior, Womyn’s Affairs, and Male Control secure. More applause. The remaining platoons reported similar success. They were all feeling good. Evan said, “I know we’re all happy what we have achieved today, but I think what I have to say will sober you up.”

  The Captain reported that the Second Commando attacks had gone well at the Capitol and the congressional office buildings, but that the First Commando and the Airborne divisions were having some trouble at the Pentagon and the air force base southeast of DC. Resistance was stronger than expected, and progress was slower. Only about half of those two facilities had been taken so far. The good news was that units of the First Commando had occupied all of the communications facilities and were broadcasting over all viewscreens, including wristscreens, that civilians should stay indoors. Men, with their hardware now deactivated, would get messages on their wristbands to report to various points around the city to have their hardware removed. They would go to ground wherever they could until the Rebellion Army reached the city and could provide them with new life choices. Male Control officers were being disarmed and arrested where they were found.

  “When will the RA reach us, sir?” asked the Fourth Platoon Lieutenant.

  “No telling, exactly,” said the Captain. “The enemy is losing all their air cover, and we have destroyed most of their artillery and missile launchers, so it shouldn’t be long. I understand our two main armies are in western Pennsylvania and North Carolina, making good speed. They’ve rumbled along at 300 or 400 kilometers in a day, and then hit a pocket of resistance somewhere, and have to stop to mop it up.

  “Our main concern is that the enemy apparently detached four of their weakened divisions, about sixty thousand women, to march to DC to fight us. Luckily, they are short of working transport, and they have to move at night, blacked out, using electric engines, to try to avoid our intelligent missiles. We are apparently hitting them from the air every night and every day, nonetheless. They are barely ahead of our own army, with their own troops on the front acting more as a rearguard in a retreat rather than a defensive force.

  “The bridges over the Potomac have been blown. That leaves the enemy either trying to ferry soldiers across using a few riverine Navy craft, or circling around to the north through Maryland to attack D.C. We will have eyes in the sky to warn us.

  “What all this means is that the day after tomorrow, we will probably have to defend our positions from the enemy until the RA can get to us. I hope we will only have to defend them for a day or so. To help us out, the RA is going to airdro
p six hundred shoulder-fired intelligent missiles on our position here at the White House, and thousands more on the other positions. They will also have missile-firing drones hovering overhead that we can guide from viewscreens they will drop. The drop is scheduled in 90 minutes on the south lawn. Fifth Platoon,” he nodded at one of the lieutenants, “will collect and distribute the ordinance and other supplies, and Fourth Platoon will spread out across the lawn to cover them. We will also receive three mechanical killer dogs.

  “I don’t have to tell you battle-hardened but rose-covered gentlemen,” as everybody smiled, “that the White House will be a high-priority target. This building was not built to be defended. But, we will have to. The logistics of getting our prisoners to a more defensible place are just too difficult. The enemy knows that if they destroy the building, they will destroy their own leaders. So, we can expect an attack much like the one we mounted, using much the same tactics, but from the ground. They won’t succeed, but we can expect to be outnumbered five or ten to one, and we will have to use every weapon at our disposal.

  “From this point forward, every man is a rocketman as well as a rifleman.” The Captain spread a map of DC out on the table between the two couches. He pointed out the positions where each platoon would have teams of three rocketmen on the streets surrounding the White House. “Slow them down, make them hurt, then retreat back to the building. Each platoon will control three missile-firing drones and a series of camera drones to find and target enemy positions from the building. After that, we defend all entrances to the building from any cover we can find.

  “As before, if I fall, Lieutenant Dana will command. If he falls, Lieutenant Dylan, then Mickey, then Peyton, then Shannon. Good luck, gentlemen. Dismissed.”