Six Miles Northeast of Hot Springs, South Dakota
Simultaneous to the planned attack on Black Hills Army Depot, twenty-four Tiltrotor Osprey MV-22s were landing on a strip of South Dakota highway. Colonel Artan Mota had all but assured Executive Commander Abdul Muhaimin that the US resistance in South Dakota would be destroyed. Muhaimin’s plans were to overwhelm the Americans and defeat them with superior numbers. He was counting on NORAD’s forces to provide the backbone and the majority of the military strength to bring about the end of the Marines that were taking sanctuary at the foot of the Black Hills. His overconfidence might have got the best of him.
The envoy Muhaimin sent to NORAD was laid waste by US forces, and the military strength of both NORAD and USNORTHCOM was not at the disposal of the executive commander as he had assumed. The trap Muhaimin believed he had set for the Americans was about to be sprung, and the numbers weren’t in his favor.
UN soldiers began flowing out of the Ospreys as they landed. Each of the twenty-four troop carriers unloaded twenty-four fighters. They were a combination of American, Russian, Iranian, and French troops. The Ospreys would unload their troops and then return to their point of origin, leaving them to their mission.
Once the troops unloaded, they fell into platoon formations and two company-sized units. Each platoon had a lieutenant over them, and each company had a captain. The captains called the lieutenants out of their platoons and gave them one final briefing before they returned to their respective platoons and began their march towards Hot Springs.
The arrival of the Ospreys did not go unnoticed. The township of Hot Springs sat elevated 3,448 feet above sea level and had a brood of angry Americans feeding information to its inhabitants using a complicated communication system developed right after the Flip. There was no electricity, because then president Adalyn Baker invoked Executive Order 10997, seizing all electric power, petroleum and gas, solid fuels, and minerals. They used a system of generators and old-fashioned underground copper lines to give functional ability to their telephones.
When the Ospreys were heard, this system went into effect. Several people assigned by the town’s board had been positioned at key points around the old veteran’s town, as it had been called in the early 2000s. They dialed in the number and notified the town that there were incoming aircraft. They, in turn, notified Lieutenant Colonel Howard. He advised General John James of the impending attack. His orders were clear.
“Maintain radio silence. Backup is on the way.”
General John James contacted Lieutenant Colonel Cox and ordered his troops to Hot Springs to locate and destroy the UN ground forces. Cox, in turn, ordered his battalion to gear up. He had a captain set over each company under his battalion. 3rd Battalion, 21st Marines consisted of infantry companies Golf, Hotel, and India. For support, they had a weapons company, but it wasn’t likely they’d be used for the lack of armor the enemy was bringing. Weapons Company was given the task of securing the highway that offered up a safe LZ (landing zone), but not until the UN ground unit had been dismantled.
Lieutenant Colonel Cox and his men had entered Hot Springs from the east. It was expected that the UN troops would be advancing into town from Highway 385, which fed into Hot Springs’ southeastern tip. That highway was nestled in a ravine with high mountainous terrain on either side. It was ideal for an ambush.
Cox assigned his men to the west side of the highway, where they had a prime position overlooking the roadway. From the time the UN troops had unloaded until they were spotted just minutes from town, they had estimated the time frame to be about two hours. Approximately 360 UN soldiers were marching in staggered columns up Highway 385 towards Hot Springs. It was Cox’s mission to destroy the advancing troops before they learned of the Super Stallion Helicopters and reported them back to their command.
Sliding into a position that overlooked the ravine, Cox used his binoculars to inspect the troops’ gear. Cox was in a facedown prone position with his elbows supporting his upper body. He held the binos close to his eyes and carefully scanned the formation of enemy troops from front to back. To his right, he had a captain by the name of Roderick.
When Cox had completed his scan, he passed the binos to Captain Roderick.
“Captain, are your men in place?”
“Yes, sir,” he responded.
The captain looked to his right and made eye contact with his staff sergeant.
“Staff Sergeant Jones,” he said in an inquisitive tone.
He had the staff sergeant’s undivided attention.
“On my command, engage the enemy and take no prisoners.”
“Yes, sir.”
The binoculars had passed down from Cox to Roderick, who was now in full battle mode. He used the binos to carefully watch the positioning of the soldiers and to calculate the exact moment of the ambush. If he were to wait too long, the soldiers could flee into Hot Springs and take hostages and refuge in the buildings. If he were to wait too short a period, then the troops could flee back into the open and forcefully draw out his own men from the cover of the hillside.
Every Marine was trained for this moment, but it was no time to play coy. This was real combat, and real losses and gains were at stake. The possibility of loss of life was a real factor. Many of the men were young and had not seen combat, but when they were operating under their commanders’ watchful eyes, they knew it was all business. Their training was about to be tested.
“Staff Sergeant,” the captain said, looking through his binos.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Open fire.”
A tired and hungry nineteen-year-old American was decked out from head to toe in blue digital camouflage. His trip from Independence, Iowa, where Muhaimin had made an earlier appearance, offered none of the first-class travel amenities he had read about in the brochures. His name was Ryan Lee. He was from Portland, Oregon, and joined the Army because secular job hunting was too cumbersome in the failing economy and he knew he would be provided with three squares a day, lodging, and pay. Those were the pros. The cons were that Ryan’s company commander had been solicited by Headquarters Battalion to produce a certain amount of volunteers for full-time service with the United Nations. Ryan, and others like him, who were not married, had no children, and had no obligations to anything but the government, were volunteered by the company commander. This was a practice they had been doing for years on a smaller scale. Brown baggers, as they called the married soldiers, were given more on-base assignments because they were not sent abroad as the unmarried soldiers were.
His flak jacket, a dense bullet-resistant piece of body armor, was manufactured at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, along the border of Davenport, Iowa. The arsenal served as a treasure trove of necessary equipment to Executive Commander Muhaimin, who ordered the 360 UN soldiers to join forces with the NORAD and USNORTHCOM units to put an end to an insurgency of US Marines who were instigating war against the will of the global community.
Ryan didn’t care much for his orders to serve in the United Nations Peacekeeping Army. Most of the people in his unit were not English speaking. Occasionally he would run into a member that knew a little broken English, but by and far, the American service members were tallied up and separated into different units. More frustrating than serving with people you couldn’t understand was following shady orders. On more than one occasion, Ryan thought about going AWOL, but the opportunity never presented itself until now.
Ryan was no longer feeling his toes. His thoughts went to a warmer climate where he was getting paid for work he actually enjoyed doing. That was his state of mind when the man in front of him took off his helmet to wipe his brow. The man’s head exploded as a pink mist filled the air, and the man went limp to the ground at the same time the sound of gunfire was heard coming from the mountain face to his left. Many of the men in his unit hesitated and came to a dead stop. He jumped out of formation and took cover behind a rock on the opposing side of the road. The ro
ck sat at the base of a rocky cliff, which blocked the passage of any soldier attempting to escape.
Ryan kept his head low and listened to the sounds of .50-caliber machine guns as they unloaded their cache of projectiles at the unsuspecting Peacekeeping Army.
Aforetime, the use of antiarmor weaponry against foot soldiers was forbidden, per the Geneva convention. General John James no longer saw the purpose of honoring a treaty that was so one-sided. “ Why should a civilized military be barred from such actions while the savage uses our women and children as human shields and fights from churches and mosques to avoid the possibility of returning fire?” was his logic. This was a new era, and nothing was the same. Indeed, all things had been changed.
Just down the road from Ryan’s position, there were a few homes and places he could conceal himself, but that thought was only fleeting. He couldn’t move because he didn’t know anything about his enemy: not who it was that was shooting at them, why they were being shot at, how many of them there were—nothing. No information was very bad, and to be pinned down under such heavy fire was by far the most terrifying thing that could have happened to young Ryan Lee.
A UN soldier ran to him, but was gunned down as he reached Ryan’s hiding spot. His limp body was now lying over the hiding position of Senior Private Lee.
He remained motionless underneath the moaning man, who was dying and breathing his last breaths. The man began to slide backwards off the cliff face, but Ryan grabbed his uniform shirt and pulled him in towards him to hold him in place. The man’s body provided more cover and helped conceal his position.
He kept hearing the sounds of rifle fire from unknown positions in the hills. There was some mild return fire, but for the most part, his unit died trying to find cover.
When Cox had witnessed the total annihilation of the UN ground forces, he gave the order to clear off the roadway. The victory was reported back to General James, who made a regimental announcement and turned the radio over to Colonel Charles S. Buchanan.
An Undisclosed Location Near Provo, South Dakota
Charles Buchanan took the microphone.
“Marines, somewhere between tyranny and liberty, you’ll find two defining forces, control and patriots. The one takes and the other gives. The reason our nation was great wasn’t because of superior numbers. It was because at the heart of each American patriot was an overwhelming desire to lay down the ultimate sacrifice—their lives in exchange for liberty. Liberty to possess our own homes, our own property, and our own selves; to reap what we sow and to enjoy the fruits of our labors. That has been taken from us, and the time is at hand to do as our forefathers did so that their sons and daughters could be free. Gentlemen, we owe it to our ancestors, who fought and died for this liberty, to return it to the cause for which they died.”
CHAPTER IV
Northwest of South Holland, Illinois
Nathan and his men had spent the last two hours weighing the pros and cons of assaulting the FEMA Region Five compound versus joining back up with Buchanan to assist in the formation of an effective insurgency against the current hostile takeover. Nathan was dead set on taking out the FEMA compound because it was the mission they had set out to accomplish from the beginning. Jessica, Denny, and Rory were with him, and they had made that clear. Sergeant Banks sideswiped Nathan by suggesting they go with Captain Richards to join forces with the Marines in South Dakota. Nathan reminded Banks that it was Buchanan who had assigned him and the rest of the Marines to stay with him until they had reached Chicago, but Banks countered by reminding Nathan that that was before Buchanan’s mission had changed, not to mention the fact that they were practically at Chicago’s doorstep.
The disagreement continued until Rory reminded them what was happening at the crematorium.
“Goose Island can wait! There are thousands of those shipping containers sitting on the banks and on the train tracks. They’re on the lakeshore being unloaded as we speak. Inside each of them are people. Those people are our brothers and our sisters; they’re our daughters, our sons, our mothers, our fathers, our friends, and they’re being euthanized like rabid dogs.”
Rory clearly had everybody’s attention. He would pause for a second as he spoke just to look into their eyes while he said what was in his heart. He was clearly very passionate about what he was saying. He was also a gifted preacher and knew exactly how to tug on the cords of their hearts. He would watch their facial expressions, their body language, and any telltale signs that they were showing human emotion. Rory knew he had to appeal to their humanity and to remind them that they were not animals, not yet.
“If we shut down that kill zone—” he started to say.
“Then we can rejoin Buchanan and come back for the headquarters,” Nathan interrupted, his thoughts on his deceased sister, Katie, and Denny’s deceased sister, Heather, both killed by raiders months earlier.
“Exactly!”
Nathan looked to Banks for approval.
Banks nodded.
“Okay then, it’s settled. We take out that kill zone then rally on Buchanan.”
Banks looked back to the Marines then held up a hand signal for them to rally on his position. Once the Marines were gathered on him, he got a head count, and then everybody returned to their vehicles. Banks was comfortable knowing they had a battalion-sized unit full of US and UN equipment that had been seized from conquered UN forces on their trek from southern Illinois. Along the way they had accrued a great number of civilians that supported their efforts and accepted the challenge to restore the constitutional law of the land. Among them, he had strong leaders like Nathan Roeh and what was left of his Southern Illinois Home Guard group. Together, they jokingly called themselves the posse. Most recently, they had accepted Troy and his three-percenters group into the posse. With all the militia members, Marines, and unclassified men and women that wanted to join the fight, Sergeant Banks was estimating three hundred fighters and a total of forty HMMWVs. The HMMWVs were a mixed batch of M998 troop carriers, M1043 hard tops, for heavy gun and TOW mounts, and the UN-captured Hummers that nobody but the civilians wanted to drive.
Captain Richards, Nathan, Troy, and Sergeant Banks pulled their thoughts together to briefly come to a consensus that it would be wise to get more organized before any type of assault would be initiated. Each agreed that it would be prudent to call their groups together before they regrouped to inform them one last time of the upcoming and imminent loss of life. This would allow for a better idea of who they could count on and exactly what numbers they had to work with when the operation began.
Captain Richards was the ranking officer, so naturally they all agreed to give him the floor. After everybody was gathered together in a place where they could hear, the group silenced themselves so Captain Richards could speak.
“I don’t find it ironic that I met this preacher not long ago.” Captain Richards paused to point to Rory Price. “He’s been a valuable piece of the equation, and I’m sure his prayers have been influential for God’s protection of our efforts. Since we picked him up, we’ve learned of at least two living Joint Chiefs of Staff and their location. We also met these men—” Captain Richards leaned forward and motioned towards Nathan, Troy, and Banks, who were all standing near one another “—who have brought with them much-needed weapons, ammo, and … oh yeah, they saved our lives,” he joked.
The group lightly chuckled.
“Listen, here’s the bottom line. Just a few miles from here, there’s a FEMA/UN-controlled Human Handling Center and some kind of incinerator that they’re using to help control the population. The goal is to close in on this incinerator, destroy it, then move on towards South Dakota, where we have learned of a very large group of Marines, at least five times the size of this one, that has dared to challenge the tyranny of this government. There will be blood and loss of lives, but there will also be liberty. Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots
and tyrants. Now, I’m paraphrasing that, but I need all of you to understand that that tree may be heavily fertilized this evening. If we are successful, we will have saved thousands and perhaps even reunite some of you with loved ones that were taken and have been missing for some time now. We’re running out of time, and we need to know which of you plan on seeing this through until the end?”
Richards waited and watched the crowd. Prominent members of the posse also took a moment to look about. To their amazement, nobody left, but a couple people put their hands in the air.
“Do you have a question, sir?” Richards asked.
A rough-looking man with long gray hair and matching full beard said, “Yes.” He was wearing an olive drab coat with old-style woodland camouflage trousers. His jacket had subdued US flag patches and the Roman numeral III with thirteen stars encircling it. In the days leading up to the Flip, this man would have been considered by the government as a hostile, an antagonizing member of the patriot movement hell-bent on abusing his First Amendment Right to free speech for the purpose of toppling the government. He would have been listed in government watch lists as a domestic terrorist.
“Yeah, let’s stop this jaw jabbering and get back in the fight,” he exclaimed.
“We will, sir, but first we have to iron out some details.” Richards pointed to the other man with a raised hand. “You, sir, with the gray hoodie.”
“What are our assets? Do we even know what we’re up against?”
“Excellent question. We will send scouts into the area to determine what we’re up against. Whatever it is, I am sure we have superior training.”
The man in the gray hoodie interrupted. “I have been here since day one. I have a horse in this race, as do most of the people here. I’ve been with Nathan for a long time, and I know he’s a capable leader, but our equipment is old—it’s failing. I have a Colt rifle that hasn’t been cleaned in weeks. I’m out of gun lube, and not just me, but others are too. One of these guys recently had to dump his rifle because his gas rings broke.”
Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) Page 61
