“That’s underway,” Griffith said. “Once we get some intel back, we’ll take to the field ourselves.”
“Roger that. I’m going out. Have your people open the gate. I’m presuming I can just open the path through the razor wire?”
Griffith nodded. “Look for the pull handles. Lift them up, then you can move the wire frames to the right.”
Mulligan nodded and headed for the stairs on the other side of the container. Andrews moved to follow him.
“Master Guns, you’d better get off the wall,” he said to Griffith.
“Once you’re back inside, I will.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The two heavy gates were pulled open just wide enough for Andrews and Mulligan to pass through, then were promptly closed. Mulligan took the lead, motioning Andrews to stay behind him.
“Just in case someone opens up,” he said. “I’m armored, you’re not. You made some poor wardrobe choices this morning, sir.”
“You go ahead and open the wire, Sarmajor. I’ll keep you covered.” Andrews shouldered his rifle and kept it oriented on the two men who now stood only a hundred or so feet away. The small man fidgeted a bit and started to raise his own weapon, but the bald man said something out of the side of his mouth. The small man reluctantly kept the barrel of his rifle pointed at the road before his feet.
“Easy on the trigger there, Captain!” the bald man in sunglasses said.
Andrews lined him up in the sights and said nothing as Mulligan bent over and pulled the handle that kept the razor wire in place. It was mounted to a rolling barrier frame, and when Mulligan lifted up the handle, he pulled the post out of the road. He was able to pull it to the right, opening a gap big enough for him and Andrews to push through without getting slashed.
“Careful, some of the blades are a bit rusty,” he said as he advanced to the next barricade to repeat the process. Andrews followed him, keeping his rifle shouldered. It took a few minutes for the barricades to be opened, but soon he and Mulligan were facing the two men with nothing more than a few dozen feet of open road between them.
Mulligan raised his rifle. “Okay. Here we are. Say your piece.”
The bald man looked at the rifle. “Nice one. Seven-six-two, right? Bore looks too big to be a six-five Creedmoor.”
Andrews drifted to his right, trying to ensure at least someone on the wall had a clear shot in case things went sideways. He kept his rifle trained on the little man, and was surprised to find that up close, he was even smaller than he’d looked from on top of the wall. “How do you know who we are?” Even though he kept his eyes on his target, he was addressing the bald man.
“A little bit of intel here, a little bit of intel there,” the bald man said. “Captain, I really don’t have much to say to you right yet, so if you don’t mind? I’ll just talk with my old pal Gandhi here.”
“What did you just say?” There was a note of surprise to Mulligan’s voice. Andrews wanted to cut his eyes over to try and figure out what was going on, but he kept rooted to his target. The small man with the blond beard and missing front tooth looked back at him from behind his aviator-style sunglasses, his own M416 still held low.
The bald man took a step forward and slowly removed his sunglasses. His face was scarred, and his beard was shot through with white where the disfigurements intersected the facial hair. His eyes were clear and free of any sign of jaundice from what little Andrews could see through his peripheral vision. The man folded up his sunglasses and casually slipped them into one of the front pockets on his uniform blouse. When he smiled, his teeth were all present and seemed to be in good shape.
“I called you by your old nickname. Gandhi,” the man said.
Mulligan was quiet for a long moment. “Mister, do I fucking know you?”
“What, you don’t recognize me?” The bald man seemed let down. “Crap, I’d hoped this could be a fun little reunion here. But I know I look a bit different from the last time we saw each other. All the scars, radiation burns, yadda yadda yadda.”
Andrews searched his memory. Mulligan had mentioned a nickname of Gandhi before. Did the bald man actually know him?
Shit’s getting weird ...
The bald man sighed. “Operational Detachment Alpha One Four Six,” he said finally. “You might recall we served together during Pacific Sentinel?”
“Pacific Sentinel ...”
“You worked for me,” the bald man said.
“Fox? Captain Eugene Fox?” Mulligan’s voice was quiet and subdued.
“Colonel Fox, now. Or at least, I was before the freaking Russians destroyed the country.” He shook his head. “Tough times, right?”
“What are you doing here, Fox?” Mulligan asked. His voice was full of disgust. “You’re Special Forces. What the hell are you doing out here, blowing up American kids?”
“I guess I should understand your confusion. I was on the team that did all the security assessments on Harmony as part of the initial operational readiness phase.”
“The Mad Hatters,” Andrews said.
Fox nodded. “Oh, you know about us? Yeah, I commanded that element for a year. Interesting work, trying to find ways to break into Harmony and its external sites.”
“Fox, skip the memory lane shit,” Mulligan said. “What the fuck are you doing to the people around here?”
Fox reached into his pocket and removed his sunglasses. He slipped them on and regarded Mulligan for a long moment. “You have any idea what I’ve been through over the past eleven, twelve years, Gandhi?”
“I don’t give a fuck about any of it. You’re killing Americans. You’re killing kids. You took an oath, you piece of garbage!”
“Oh, please—kiss my ass. When did you become such a liberal crybaby, Mulligan? Take a good look around you, asshole. The country you and I both swore to defend is gone. You know where I was when the war happened? Chicago. That place is a fucking crater full of cinders. Got sick there, bad sick, the kind where all I wanted to do was die, but I stuck it out for almost a year trying to help people. Get them organized, get them squared away so they could get through the next year. Fuckers took everything I had, then turned on each other and started killing themselves off. Local and federal government was no help. Illinois National Guard were one of the key perpetrators of all sorts of atrocities. Then they got sick too, so maybe there’s a little silver lining in there.” Fox glared at Mulligan. “So don’t think you can lecture me about a God damned thing, you big, stupid prick.”
“This big stupid prick has a rifle pointed right at your head, asshole.”
Fox smiled. “And this asshole has First Lieutenant Leona Rowena Eklund under his control, so don’t get any ideas.”
Andrews’s heart skipped a beat. “Where is she?” he snapped.
“Like I’m going to tell you, kid? Shut up now, the adults in the room are talking.” Fox kept his gaze on Mulligan who hadn’t moved one iota. “I know all about you and her, Mulligan. Cute girl with a tight ass. You did well for an old fucker. Sorry about your family, though. If it helps, mine were incinerated in Seattle. Trust me, I went up there to check.”
“What is Eklund’s condition?” Mulligan asked.
“Still above room temperature. That’s all I’ll say.” He paused. “I have some proof of possession. I’m going to reach into my right pocket. If you shoot me, it’s lights out for her ... so don’t get touchy.”
“Do whatever you have to do,” Mulligan said.
Fox slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out ID tags and another necklace that glittered in the sunlight. Andrews recognized it immediately, and he knew Mulligan did as well. He felt the fury building in his chest, and he clenched his teeth together. The little man in his sights sensed the change in Andrews’s disposition, and he looked at him with a frown.
“Hey, don’t get feisty there, Captain,” he said.
“Runt, the less you say right now, the better things will be,” Fox told him. “Captain? No shooting
, now. Seriously.”
“So you have Leona,” Andrews said. “What do you want from us?”
“Leave Sherwood. Don’t come back.”
“Why should we do that?” Mulligan said. There was a snarl in his voice.
“You probably don’t know this, but Sherwood is the largest community in the vicinity. Well laid out, well provisioned, full of a lot of smart people. This is where things can be restarted. It’ll take a lot of elbow grease and a lot of necks will have to be broken, but it can happen.”
“Yeah, for real? That’s why we’re here ... Colonel.” Mulligan spat out the rank like it was a curse.
“Oh shit, you really believe Harmony’s going to be able to do anything? Don’t kid yourself, Mulligan—there’s never going to be a United States of America again. That corpse is old and moldy and not improving with age. Harmony’s just an echo, guy. A fond memory of happier times. No chance in succeeding in its mission. Eventually, your command group will figure that out, and they’ll start looking for communities like Sherwood, but not to implement stability and support operations. See, things will start to run dry down there in Kansas. Machinery will break down. Food will start running short. People will start getting pissed at having to live their entire lives in a fucking bunker, doing shit they don’t want to do for reasons they don’t understand, just because people they don’t like are telling them to do it. They’ll rebel, order will break down, and then those fancy rigs of yours will just become battle wagons driving across the land, raiding and pillaging. You know it’ll happen. It always does.”
“I don’t know what the hell that has to do with anything,” Mulligan said.
“Right. Back to Sherwood. No chance this place will survive with Harmony helping out, all you guys’ll do is create a bunch of dependents. It’ll become just a fat target for some other group to take over. But with me calling the shots? Not so much, because I’m going to do what Harmony can’t. I’ll to do it my way, and I’m smart and brutal enough to make it happen. That’s why I’m here.”
“You could try it someplace else,” Andrews said.
“Did try it. Why do you think I hiked my ass down to the supply site in California? I tried it all diplomatically at first, in Idaho. Hooked up with a decent group of people, played nice with them, and we were making a solid go of it. But then things started falling apart. Rivalries formed, old intolerances popped up. Me and a few of my inner circle were ejected.” Fox smiled at the memory. “Yeah, they were sure surprised when I came back six months later with an SCEV and blew them to shit by shooting Hellfires up their collective ass.”
“So why didn’t you stay there?” Andrews asked.
“A little unforeseen circumstance. One of the Hellfires got damaged in flight, and struck the fuel pond,” Fox said. “You know, high-energy explosion, exposed fuel source, nice secondary explosions. All resulted in a fire that spread and pretty much gutted the entire community. By the time I got everything back under control, it was too late. There just wasn’t enough left to start over with. So like you guys, I set my eyes on the west and moved out this way. This is the Goldilocks zone, right?”
“Colonel Fox, maybe you should spell all of this out for us,” Andrews said.
Fox held the dog tags and necklace out to Mulligan. “You want these?”
“Drop them,” Mulligan said. “I’ll pick them up later.”
“Fine. Have it your way.” Fox let the items fall to the cement. “So Gandhi, how about throwing in with us? Between the two of us here, we could pull this operation off lickety-split. You guys on the inside, us on the outside. We could crack Sherwood open like an egg.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Mulligan said, “only about your bald head.”
Fox smiled at that. “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d want to come over the fence and join the winning team. Okay, here’s what I recommend instead. I know your rig is in there, and if I find it, I’ll destroy it. I’ll kill everyone on it—you, Captain Andrews, your little crew chief. And I know that your Lieutenant Eklund was going to attempt to meet up with a second rig, coming up from the supply depot in California I hit. We’re going to be setting up a little welcoming party for them, just to make sure they don’t get too close. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to capture the rig. If not, well then, we’ll at least capture some of the crew. Then I’ll head back to Cali and do what I should have done in the first place—empty out that replenishment site and take all the remaining rigs. Then I’ll hit site two down in Texas. By this time next year, I’ll have all the rigs I’ll need.”
“So this must be the scene where the bad guy tells the good guys his plan while thinking he has everything in the bag and it’s all going to work out his way,” Mulligan said. “Are you that dumb?”
Fox cocked his head to one side and smiled. “I have a clarity of vision, Gandhi. I’m almost fucking clairvoyant about these things. Trust me.” The smile fled from his face. “You guys can fight and die, or you can pack up and leave Sherwood to me. Don’t come back. You won’t survive the next encounter—trust me.” He checked his watch, a casual motion that was incongruous given the circumstances. “Yeah, it’s getting late. You guys pull out of Sherwood and wait south of Bend. Once you’re there, I’ll bring Eklund to you, and you guys can have your happy reunion. How’s that sound?”
“How about you hand her over today and save me the trouble of hunting down your people one by one?” Mulligan asked.
Fox chuckled. “Gandhi, I know how good you are out in the field. I respect your warrior ethic, and your dedication. But you’ve spent more than a decade living in an underground bunker, dude ... while I’ve been out here in the world refining my skill set with practical experience. You think you have what it takes to get me to roll over?”
“Seems like we’re going to find out,” Mulligan said. “You’re well off the reservation now, sir. Sorry for everything you’ve gone through, but this is not where you want to make your stand. Trust me.”
Fox spread his hands. “We’ll see about that, Sergeant Major. We’ll see.” He took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay, guess we’re done here. When you’re lying on the ground bleeding out, remember ... I gave you a chance.”
“Same,” Mulligan replied.
“It really was a pleasure to serve with you, Mulligan. Seriously.”
“The man I served with was an officer and a Green Beret who took his oath and responsibilities as a quiet professional to heart. You’re a ...” Mulligan shook his head as he searched for the words. “Now you’re a fucking mockery.”
“Sorry you feel that way. Going to retrograde now. Remember—no shooting, or your girlfriend’s gonna feel the heat.”
“You’re free to go, since we’re going to meet again,” Mulligan said. “Unlike you, I’ll keep my word ... this time.”
“Aw, a little butt-hurt about the missile strike?” Fox smiled and shot Mulligan a decidedly non-military salute. “Sergeant Major. Captain.” With that he grabbed a hold of his rifle and began walking away. “Remember ... if you’re not parked down south of Bend by this time tomorrow? Your girl’s not going to need a rescue. She’ll need a burial.”
“Stop pushing your luck, Fox,” Mulligan said.
Fox waved a hand then turned his back on Andrews and Mulligan. He walked down the road, whistling an aimless tune. The small man with the blond beard and missing tooth scurried after him, and to Andrews, he looked like a faithful lap dog following its owner. He and Mulligan held their positions while the two men walked on, and didn’t relax until they were out of sight.
Mulligan bent over and swept up the necklaces on the road. He sighed as he inspected them for a moment, then slipped the eagle pendant into one of his pockets. He handed the ID tags to Andrews.
“We’ll need to bring that back to Harmony with us,” he said.
“We’ll get her back, Mulligan.”
Mulligan looked at him, his eyes hard and cold behind his curved visor. “Sir? She’s a
lready dead.”
Andrews was stunned by the statement. It took a moment for him to find his voice, and when he did speak, it was barely more than a choked whisper. “What ...? How do you ...?”
Mulligan looked at him for a moment longer, then shook his head and started walking back toward the maze of razor wire. “We have to get behind the wall, sir.”
Andrews stood rooted to the spot for another moment. He looked down at the ID tags in his left hand. They were Leona’s, there was no doubt. And as he looked more closely, he saw a couple of tiny, rust-colored spots on the aluminum surface.
Blood ...
“Captain.” Mulligan was inside the first tier of razor wire now, looking back at Andrews. His big rifle was still in his hands. Andrews snapped out of it and walked through the gap in the barrier. Mulligan yanked it closed behind him.
“Keep going, sir.”
“Mulligan, she’s not dead.”
“Walk all the way to the container wall, sir.”
“Mulligan—”
Mulligan reached out and gave him a hard shove toward the gap in the next barricade. “Standing out here in the open isn’t the place to have this discussion, boy. Now get to the wall!”
Andrews stumbled and had to pay immediate attention to his footing, lest he fall into the razor wire’s cold, rusty embrace. Mulligan reached out and steadied him. Andrews slapped his hand away and pushed on, pressing through the barricades until he was at the tall metal door that separated Sherwood from the outside world. Mulligan followed, pausing only long enough to pull the barricades closed behind him and lock them in place. The metal door was pulled open just enough for both men to step through, and then it slammed shut once they were inside the small containment area inside. Andrews didn’t look at Mulligan as they stood beside each other, waiting for the interior door to open. It took a few moments, but finally it slid open and Andrews pushed through the gap. Mulligan followed him through.
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 40
