by D. J. Molles
“No shit,” Lee agreed, his eyes glancing about into the shadows.
The Butler Safe Zone had high voltage wires around it just like Fort Bragg—that’s what made it a Safe Zone—but there was always the sense that you were only slightly removed from the primeval hazards outside the gates.
No one liked being alone in the dark.
Lee and his team, perhaps, had more reason to fear it than most.
Abe made a motion ahead, and looked at Lee.
“What?” Lee asked.
“You and Jules okay?” Abe questioned, keeping his voice down so that Julia couldn’t hear them.
“Of course. Why?”
Abe shrugged. “Seem a little distant, that’s all.”
Lee waved it off. “You know how it is in the field, Abe. That’s all.”
Lee and Julia had an unspoken agreement. Everyone knew that Lee and Julia had a relationship, but they tried to let them have their privacy about it. And Lee and Julia reinforced this by keeping things as professional as possible when in the field. They rolled their beds out next to each other, but that was pretty much it.
At the end of the day, they had a job to do, and they realized that the job would be easier if they didn’t see each other in the light of their relationship, but as teammates.
There would be time enough for their personal relationship when they were back in the Fort Bragg Safe Zone.
Abe was silent on the matter for a few strides. And then: “Well, we are still technically in a Safe Zone, so…is it really the field?”
“Questionable.”
“Just sayin’. You know. If you guys want some privacy…”
Lee smiled, but didn’t answer Abe.
“Well, anyways,” Abe said. “I’m gonna catch up with Tomlin and set that ratfuck bastard straight.”
Abe jogged ahead, and Lee knew exactly what Abe was doing, and he appreciated it. In years past, he would have felt a little embarrassed, but there weren’t many secrets around here, and no real way to keep them even if you had them.
Lee quickened his pace and caught up with Julia. He knew enough not to give it too much thought. It would be what it would be, and he wasn’t going to apply pressure in any particular direction. If he got the greenlight, then fantastic. If not, that was okay too.
Both of them approached each other without expectations, and that seemed to be what made it work.
He did take the opportunity to take her hand, and she took his.
They walked around a building and onto a sidewalk. A block ahead was the Sheriff’s Office where they would sleep for the night. Off to the right, a guard station, with a bored-looking twenty-something, staring out into the darkness beyond the high voltage wires.
“Abe’s whisper carries a surprisingly long distance,” Julia observed.
Lee chuckled. “Well, shit, I guess we’re not that sneaky.”
“How on earth have you two survived?”
“We have a good medic.”
“Flatterer.”
“Strategy.”
“You know just what to say to a girl,” she said, but he could see she was smiling. And it was a good smile. It was a green-light smile.
He smiled now himself.
“Take a detour with me?” she suggested.
“Absolutely.”
***
The water was cold. The rain coming down felt even colder.
The days in Texas might’ve gotten hot, but it hadn’t been spring long enough to warm a large body of water like the Squaw Creek Reservoir.
Lee slid through the black waters, keeping his eyes and nose above water. Ahead of him, he could see almost nothing but the faint glow of dim, battery-operated lights, coming from Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant. Everything else was black, run through with rain as dark as charcoal.
If he’d stood up, he would’ve been in knee-deep water. He was in a crawling position, propelling himself along in an alligator crawl over a jumble of head-sized rocks.
To his left, the rocks rose up in an enormous pile. They created a land bridge that extended from a peninsula to the south of the power plant, across the lake to the power plant itself. A single lane, dirt road ran across the top of the rocky land bridge.
What in the hell the land bridge had been used for was a mystery to Lee. But right now it was being used to hide their incursion from the eyes of the guards in the watchtowers.
Lee stopped, his hands and knees braced on the large rocks beneath him, and slowly turned his head to look behind him. He couldn’t see the shore that they’d come from. It must be at least a hundred yards behind them by now. The rocky slope of the land bridge was visible for a few yards, and then disappeared into the darkness and rain.
Two heads, barely visible, bobbed in the shallows behind him.
Abe and Tex.
Their painted faces blended with the dark water. Just the hints of the whites of their eyes showed that they were human.
Just the three of them.
Lee turned forward and continued on through the cold waters as the rain washed all around them, making them invisible, and erasing the sound of any splashes they might make.
It was only an hour after dark. Normally they would choose to do an assault in the wee hours of the morning. But sometimes you don’t have a choice. And in this case, it was out of their hands. According to the intel from Bellamy, their window of opportunity might be closed if they waited until the early morning. By then, Cornerstone operatives might be on site, and the target would be too dangerous to hit.
A mile or so east of the peninsula on which the power plant sat, an Abrams tank and three up-armored Humvees were waiting.
Out in the waters of Squaw Creek Reservoir, a dozen boats floated in the darkness and obscuring rainfall.
And here on a rocky land bridge, three operators crept through the water, closer to their objective, about to kick off one of the strangest attacks that Lee had ever planned—or even heard of.
It took him another twenty minutes in the chilling water before he saw the first, dark building peering down at him from the gloom. It was not part of the fortified section of the power plant, but an outlying building, long since abandoned. Ivy had begun to creep up the wall that faced them.
Even if it hadn’t been abandoned, Lee doubted anyone could have seen them. With just half of their heads above the water, moving through the shallows at the base of the land bridge, they blended in with all the other stones jutting out of the water.
Lee stopped once more and looked behind him, keeping his movements slow. Abe and Tex were still with him.
Lee eased himself into something of a sitting position, nestled in with the boulders. Rising out of the waters, he felt the weight of his gear bear down on him again. In addition to their normal battle gear—armor, rifle, pistol, and a full load of ammunition—they each carried one of the M320 grenade launchers they’d appropriated from Tex’s bunker, and ten 40mm grenades each.
They’d stuck to the shallows because they had no floatation devices, and would have otherwise drowned under the weight of their gear.
The upside was that the effort of crawling along with all that gear kept them warm.
Laying with his back to the rocks, Lee pulled a thermal imaging optic from a pouch on his armor—one more piece of weight—and held it up to his left eye. He scanned the building that faced them, and the ground that he could see from his low perspective. It was all shades of dark gray, the structures standing out like ghosts in otherwise pitch black.
No heat signatures.
Lee slipped the thermal optic back into its place, and looked at Abe and Tex. He nodded and pointed up over the top of the land bridge, in the direction of the power plant.
The other two eased out of the water, moving with the same tense stealth that Lee had.
Lee situated his rifle in his arms—his old M4 variant tonight—then checked the action, and switched the sling from two points to one. He waited for the others to settle into place,
and then he began to climb his way up the slope of rocks to the top of the land bridge.
It was tough and uncomfortable movement. Sharp angles, and hidden holes, and doing it all so that his gear didn’t clatter on anything. It took almost five minutes to reach the top.
The rain started to ease.
Good, because he would be able to see the power plant from here.
Bad, because if the rain let up too much, the watchtowers might catch a glimpse of the improvised flotilla out in the middle of the lake.
Lee needed to pick up the pace.
At the top of the land bridge, Lee lay with his chest on the rocks, looking out at the structures of the power plant. These were more visible, not only because of the slowing rainfall, but because the occupants had lights.
A generator hummed somewhere in there.
Work lights flooded various areas, and several of them were oriented outward.
One rack of work lights pointed right at Lee. He kept from looking straight at it, but even peripherally it would ruin his night vision.
Nothing to be done for it. His night vision would be ruined in a few minutes anyways.
Abe slid up to Lee’s left, and Tex to his right. Rifles addressed towards the power plant.
“How’s it look?” Abe whispered.
Between the gloom, and the bright work lights in his eyes, Lee couldn’t see much detail with the naked eye.
He drew out the thermal optic again, and gave the power plant a slow scan.
Several heat signatures popped.
The work lights, and what was possibly the generator. But also three guards, moving about inside the compound. Lee could see three of the four watchtowers from his current vantage point, and each was occupied by what looked like a single sentry. Only two of those watchtowers were within range of their current position—the other was in the distance, its occupant a small white blob.
“As expected,” Lee replied to Abe in a whisper. “Three good targets for us. Well within range. Two watchtowers that cover this southern section, and what I think is the generator that’s powering all those lights.” Lee passed the thermal imager to Tex. “I’m gonna go for that generator. Tex, can you ID the watchtower that’s closest to us, on our right?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Lee took the thermal imager from him, and passed it to Abe. “You got the closest watchtower on the left.”
Abe gazed through the optic for a moment, then passed it back. “Alright. I’m good.”
“You guys ready?” Lee asked them.
“Ready.”
“Good to go.”
The three of them slung their rifles around to their backs, and from their backs retrieved the M320 they carried. It was a single shot launcher, and it could be mounted under their rifles, but they’d agreed that it would be easier to handle them as a separate weapon platform. At least for what they had in mind.
They weren’t as fancy as Mitch’s multi-shot M32, but they would still do the trick.
Lee shucked his first 40mm round from the belt of ten around his waist. Slipped it into the M320’s breach, and snapped it shut.
To his left and right, identical sounds indicated that Abe and Tex were also loading up.
Lee reached up and keyed the comms, which had remained dead quiet up to now. “Red Rover and Yacht Club, Fire and Light is in position and ready.”
The armored group answered first: “Red Rover, we’re good to go when everyone check’s ready.”
Cheech responded for the flotilla of civilian water craft: “Yacht Club, we’re about a thousand meters off the objective, and ready to head in on your mark. Rain’s starting to clear, so the sooner the better.”
“Fire and Light to Red Rover,” Lee transmitted. “Everyone’s checked in and ready. It’s on you.”
“Red Rover copies. We’re oscar-mike.”
***
Julia had always wanted a pontoon boat.
This desire had grown into a fantasy of hers that started in the eleventh grade, peaked the summer before college, and died down after that. But throughout her adult life, the image of her sunning herself on the floating patio of a pontoon boat still brought a smile to her lips and a wistful feeling to her chest.
Tammy Lundt had had a pontoon boat—or at least her family did. Tammy drove a red Mazda Miata, had platinum blonde hair of the shade that Julia wished hers would be, and had been the popular girl since the first week of ninth grade.
When everyone came back to class in the fall of their junior year in high school, Tammy regaled her friends—which didn’t include Julia, but she heard about it anyway—with tales of floating out in the middle of the lake on warm summer days, sunbathing and flirting with boys on water skis.
Thus began Julia’s own obsession with the fantasy of the pontoon boat.
She’d half convinced her dad to buy the frame of one for $1200 and fix it up.
But that never happened. And life did. And we move on.
Julia had never been on a pontoon boat in her entire life.
Until tonight.
Julia looked up into the sky and saw only blackness as cold rain speckled her face.
The universe must be a bitter old man with a spiteful sense of humor.
There was no warm, summer sun. There was only a chilly, rainy spring night.
Instead of a bikini, she wore sodden combat fatigues, body armor, rifle, and medical pack. Helmet listing sideways on her head, picking today to decide that it no longer wanted to sit properly.
Instead of cute boys water skiing, she was surrounded by hard men in painted faces, staring ahead through the gloom, at the distant glow from the lights of their objective.
Julia wiped the rain out of her eyes, then adjusted her helmet for the tenth time, swearing at it. Yesterday it had fit her head fine. Now it wobbled toward her right ear. Had she messed with one of the straps? Had the suspension system gotten wonky somehow?
She wanted to take it off and inspect it, but she knew that the second it left her head, the bullets would start flying. So she shoved it back into place and grit her teeth.
Fuck this shit.
And fuck pontoon boats.
There were three of them, and they’d been ripped down to the frames as much as could be managed without tools. Cushions gone. Most of the seating gone. Just two pontoons and a floor between them.
Soldiers on either side, straddling the pontoons with their legs in the water, holding oars that they’d swiped from the canoe and kayak shop at the park on the other side of the lake. With their stolen oars ready, they waited to row like mad for the shore.
There were two other pontoon boats in their “armada,” as Cheech called it. On each pontoon boat, a squad of ten huddled, shoulder to shoulder, along with the paddlers on the pontoons, and one guy laying prone up front behind a tripod-mounted M2.
Barely visible in the gloom, about a hundred yards ahead of them, were the ten canoes, each with three soldiers. Two riflemen and one machine gunner, either with an M249 or an M240.
The canoes crept closer to their landing spot on the north shore of the target peninsula, the front rifleman in the boat paddling them gently—not making noise, but enough to keep them drifting forward.
The thought was that the canoes were lower profile and less likely to be seen on their approach. As Red Rover smashed through the barricades of the main road into the power plant, and attacked the main gate, the soldiers in the canoes would land—hopefully not yet under fire, as the tank would be drawing all the agro—and set up a beach head and base of fire.
Lee’s Fire and Light team, meanwhile, would start blowing up everything they could on the south side of the peninsula, to further distract the defenders from the north shore.
Then the three squads on the pontoons would land, the tank would obliterate the main gate, and the infantry would storm the power plant.
Easy-peasy-lemon-squeazy.
Right?
For some reason, Julia’s heart pumped at a
normal, steady rate. Which surprised her. Usually it was elevated before an operation.
But her stomach felt hollow and sick.
Greasy and heavy.
Kneeling beside her, Cheech shifted and eyed her. “You think they’ll do a painting of us in the future sometime? Like they did with George Washington Crossing the Delaware?” Cheech nodded and looked out. “Julia and Cheech Crossing the Squaw Creek Reservoir.”
Julia tried to think of something funny to say back. She knew he was just trying to lighten her mood. But she came up blank, and all she could offer him was a weak smile that wafted away from her lips with the next cold breeze.
The comms in her ear spoke, and it was Lee’s voice.
They were ready. In position.
The tank sounded off.
Then Cheech.
Then Lee told the tank that it could roll when it was ready, and the tank said that it was rolling.
And then the comms were silent again.
For a painful moment, Julia wished she were anywhere else but here.
But here was where she was.
No going back.
Only forward.
She sucked in a deep breath and held it, quelling nausea.
Cheech stood up taller on his knees. “We’re on!” he whisper-shouted. “Let’s move!”
The paddlers on the pontoons began rowing.
The pontoon boat pulled itself forward, and a moment later, the other two pontoons followed suit, moving steadily towards the northern shore.
In the cold distance, Julia thought she could hear the growl of the Abrams tank.
***
Lee had never used an M320 in combat.
This fact nagged at him.
He’d used the M203, and had had one on his rifle when he’d first come out of his bunker into this world gone to shit. But he’d heard that the M320s were more accurate.
He was going to test that.
He estimated he was about three hundred yards from the generator. He chose the appropriate notch on the simple, flip-up leaf sight, and lay there, waiting.
Shoot, then move.
Quickly.
Then shoot again.
He needed to move enough to stay alive, but he had to balance that with the need to send his ten 40mm grenades into that compound as fast as possible to draw attention from the north shore.
