Jensen stood with his arms still crossed. Sure, they could have hideout weapons, but he was depending on Brent to take them out if one of the two made a move toward a gun. He wanted to project a vision of strength to further break their will. They had to know none of their agents were responding to radio calls; they were all dead. Their mobile armored fortress was broken and burning.
“Get down on your knees,” he called out when he thought they were close enough. He could feel the heat of the flames on his chest and knew they had to be uncomfortable that close to the fire. Jensen wanted them to be uncomfortable. He wanted to break them.
They had made the decision to surrender, hoping their captors would abide by the Geneva Conventions, or the laws of war. Jensen knew them well. He’d been trained on them extensively, including before each of his deployments. They didn’t apply within a single nation state, and mercenaries were expressly mentioned as people who were not considered prisoners of war.
Internationally, mercenaries were loathed. The use of Russian mercenaries in the battles of Crimea and the Baltic States back in the early 20’s had brought criticism from the United Nations. When Russia re-patriated Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia after thirty years of independence, they had done so with the extensive use of mercenaries in order to evade international laws about military use. They did the same in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan a year later.
The Russian government had claimed the mercenaries were simply citizens of those countries who wished to become part of the great nation of Russia again. Some had been, but the majority of the fighters had been Russian mercenaries. The United States had claimed the annexations were a joint plan with China to extend their national boundaries.
China had taken Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Nepal while Russia ‘re-patriated’ the Baltic states and Caucasus states. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan had remained independent as a buffer between the two superpowers. It was too much to be considered a coincidence, but the world nations had been unwilling to take on the combined superpowers, and the United States had been unable, exhausted as it was from decades of fighting insurgents.
Jensen looked at the two black-clad men kneeling on the ground in front of him. They had placed their hands on their heads without being asked. One was large and looked like the typical image of a mercenary. The other was much smaller. He looked more like an accountant than anything. They had trained to be in his place, the victors, but they both knew the standard operating procedure. They wore no name tags or identification, only the black patches with red eyes and white fangs.
The man on Jensen’s left peered intently at his vest and spoke. “Captain Carlson? You’re American?”
Jensen realized his plate carrier still had his name and rank on the front. “I’ll ask the questions. Why did the Vampirgruppe attack us? Who are you working for?”
The two men turned to each other, as if hesitant to answer. The larger man turned back to him and spoke again. “We work for Senator Snead. We were told you were Russians who had taken virus samples from a CDC lab. We were sent to recover them.”
Jensen was stunned. Senator Bob Snead had run as an independent from Georgia in the 2028 election, winning by a narrow margin after the incumbent, Jeb Daniels, had retired from public service citing health reasons. The leading candidate had been in a tragic accident during the election, and Snead’s hard line on national defense and limiting spending had won him enough votes to succeed Daniels.
Jensen took a step back and gripped his weapon. “Why would you think we were Russians?”
The second man spoke up. “We had intel that you were Russian agents who had stolen the Mallon virus that started this whole thing and were taking it back to your country to refine it. To kill everyone that was left. We had no idea you were Americans.”
He was referring to the initial samples of the vaccine, which national media had taken to calling the Mallon Virus after Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. It didn’t matter that typhoid fever was caused by a bacteria and the flu virus was a … virus. One reporter called the source of the initial outbreak the Mallon Virus and the name caught on.
Jensen didn’t want to believe them. He wanted to believe they were marauders like the rednecks with the cattle trailer. He didn’t want to believe they could have noble intentions attacking his small group in the dark, but his curiosity was piqued. He wanted to hear more. He still wanted to kill them. That rage hadn’t yet left his body. He wanted to destroy them for killing Sheila and hurting his friends.
He also wasn’t a monster. He’d killed innocents in the past based on poor intelligence. It was a plausible explanation. Jensen took several steps back to gain distance from the two men, who were leaning uncomfortably away from the flames behind them. “Move forward, away from the fire. Keep your hands on your heads.”
Jensen watched carefully as they moved away from the heat of the fire and knelt again without being instructed. The second man spoke again. “Look, we don’t fight Americans. We don’t mean you any harm. Let me prove it to you. There is a pistol on the inside of my vest. I can take it off or you can. Our orders are in a red folder in the cab of the Canid.”
After considering carefully, Jensen called over his shoulder. “Brent! Can you look for a red folder in the cab?” He raised his rifle and pointed it at the head of the man who claimed to have a pistol in his vest. If he tried something when Brent went by him, he’d be a dead man. He ignored Brent as the man battled through the heat and returned with a red folder. “What’s in it?”
Brent paged through the files. “It’s a bunch of maps, overhead pictures of the cabin, and instructions to retrieve virus samples and computers stolen from the CDC by—” he paused, and looked at Jensen, “by Russian agents. And to eliminate them.”
Jensen came to a quick conclusion. He indicated the man with the pistol. “Take your vest off slowly and throw it over here. Get on the radio and tell your people that we’re Americans, not Russians.”
The man locked his eyes on Jensen’s and moved with exaggerated slowness. He carefully unzipped his vest and shrugged out of it, keeping his hands clearly visible near the shoulders of the armored garment. He carefully spread it open to show Jensen the small black pistol strapped inside and then raised one hand back to his head as he threw it toward Jensen with the other. “Our other weapons are on the dashboard. You can remove them before I get back inside if it will make you feel better.”
Jensen remembered them placing the weapons on the dash before they exited. “Brent?” The older man slipped back into the Canid and returned holding two rifles and two pistols hugged to his chest. “Go. Go call them. Call this thing off.” Jensen turned his rifle toward the larger man. “If you try anything, he will die.”
The smaller man hurried to the armored vehicle and began talking. He quickly became agitated and started shouting, which was clearly audible through the open door of the Canid. “God damn it! I’m telling you, they’re Americans!” The person on the other end said something inaudible. “One of them is an Army Captain. They speak English!” He shouted even louder, “They’re not Russians! Call it off!”
He received an answer he didn’t like and quickly hurried out of the cab. “Captain, there’s a drone strike inbound. If you want to live, we have maybe thirty minutes to clear out.” He put his hands back on the top of his head and spoke to his partner. “Rob, we’ve been burned.”
The second man, Rob, quietly muttered, “Aww, fuck. I knew this seemed fishy. Why would Russians sit in a cabin on the mountains for days after they steal a virus?” He turned his eyes toward Jensen, pleading. “Captain, we’ve been burned. We’ve got to get out of here or we’re all going to die.”
The first man added, “We’ve been disavowed. As of a minute ago, the group doesn’t consider us employees anymore. We’re targets, too.”
This was a lot for the former Army man to take in. Less than an hour before, he’d been sound asleep in the cabin behind him. In that time, they’d
been attacked by the Vampirgruppe, killed fourteen of them, lost a friend, and found out the junior Senator for Georgia had marked them for death using false intelligence. He didn’t know whether to trust the men or not. Only his own experience with bad intel and his exposure to other members of this PMC in the past convinced him to let them live.
“Rob,” he spoke to the second man. “Take off your vest. Slowly.” As he complied, Jensen said, “Now both of you keep your hands up and spin around slowly so I can see you’re not carrying any other weapons.”
The men hesitantly complied, as though taking the vests off made them even more vulnerable, as though they expected to be shot in the back as they turned.
“Brent, you see anything?” Jensen spoke to the older man for confirmation. They didn’t appear to be armed.
“No, but I’ll check them.” Brent moved behind the men, who were once again facing Jensen and checked their waists and ankles for weapons. Jensen kept his rifle trained on their faces as Brent continued. If they so much as flinched, he would kill them.
Neither made a move. They stood there calmly. When Brent moved away and said, “Clean.”
Rob asked, “Nate, which bird did they send?”
The first man, Nate, said, “It was the Peregrine.”
Rob’s face went pale. “Captain, we need to leave now. We don’t have thirty minutes.”
Jensen asked, “Why?”
He knew about the Peregrine; it was a heavy drone used for precision bombing. The unmanned combat aerial vehicle, or UCAV, could carry a payload of four 500-pound bombs and drop them anywhere in the world without endangering the pilots, who were in a room somewhere in the United States guiding them. “Captain, our Peregrine can carry nukes. Two of ‘em.”
Jensen was stunned. “Is it?” Rob looked at Nate, who nodded. “Fuck! If they were planning to nuke us, why didn’t they just do it from the start?”
This time, Rob answered. “The senator wanted one of you alive.” He looked at Nate again. “Now it seems they don’t.”
As if that statement had been a trigger, a white flash burned across the sky, searing Jensen’s eyes in the dim morning light. As he blinked away the blindness, he noted neither of the mercenaries had moved. They were putting their trust in him.
Nate told him, “That was the CDC site at the college. We don’t have much time.”
Chapter 3
“Brent, get Daniel and Marcy. We need them in a car. Now.” Jensen thought quickly. They certainly wouldn’t have enough time to get a safe distance from the impact area. The dirt path up to the mountaintop and the surrounding roads were narrow and twisty. The best course of action would be to try to get to one of the nearby peaks between them and the mushroom cloud.
The area to the east dropped off into the Chattooga River. The roads in that direction weren’t as full of switchbacks, but he didn’t know just what lay on the other side of the river. He hadn’t gone any further than the bridge into South Carolina. On the other hand, they would have to go much further in order to escape the blast radius. There weren’t any nearby peaks in that direction to help shield them.
Jensen knew the road to his east also forked north, further into the mountains, and cursed himself for not investigating it further. His attention had been on threats from the west, where he knew there were towns. The road going north, probably into North Carolina, was as much a mystery to him at that moment as women when they said, “Fine.”
There were no roads south along the river. They didn’t have a boat or any way to utilize the rushing water. Trying to walk out, especially with wounded, was certain suicide. Daniel and Marcy would slow them down. Even if they managed to escape the initial blast, the radiation was sure to kill them.
To the north was a winding gravel road which appeared to follow a creek further up into the mountains. Jensen had gone partway up the road after exploring some old campsites at West Fork Campgrounds at the bottom of the mountain, but he’d encountered several fallen trees less than a half a mile away. Now, he cursed himself for not clearing them, but at the time, had considered them added defense.
One of the difficulties with defense in depth was how much it could impede escape. The former officer hadn’t worried too much about escape. They were in a defensible position and could melt into the woods if they had to. Unfortunately, he hadn’t considered the possibility of an aerial bombardment on his position. It hadn’t even occurred to him.
Their only real option would be to head west, back toward Clayton. Jensen didn’t like that idea very much. They’d be exposed on the roads and easy to find from the air. He was generally aware of the Peregrine, but had no idea what sort of tracking capabilities it had. It was certainly capable of precision engagement, but nukes didn’t require precision, only proximity.
Jensen berated himself for not gathering the rifles and ammunition from the fallen men in the trees. At the time, he thought there would be an opportunity to gather them later. He had been more concerned with not getting shot as he moved through the trees. The added weight and noise of the extra rifles could have gotten him killed if someone had still been alive.
He wanted to get the grenades from the second tub, but even from where he stood, he could tell it was getting hotter. The flames had grown. Even now there was a danger the HE grenades inside could cook off. Jensen wasn’t going near it. He wanted the ammunition from the cans in the Humvee, but he knew the college was less than an hour away on the roads. It didn’t know how far it was by air.
“Get up, get one of the cars, and head west. If we survive this, we’ll meet up on the east side of Clayton. Leave your weapons. Just go.” He nodded toward them as though seeking confirmation of their understanding. Rob just nodded back. He didn’t need words; his actions had spoken for his real intent. An unspoken agreement passed between them at that moment. Jensen was going to trust them, and they were going to earn his trust.
He turned back to the Humvee and took one last look at Sheila. If there was an afterlife, all the good she’d done had to count for something. As for himself, he knew there wasn’t enough good in the world to balance the ledger if there was someone to answer to on the other side. The darkness had stained his soul, and he was certain if anyone wanted it, it wouldn’t be God. Jensen wasn’t religious, but just then, he hoped there was a God, for Sheila’s sake. He was damned anyway.
Behind him, he could hear shouts. Brent was helping Daniel cross from the cabin toward the other Humvee. For some reason, Daniel was barefoot. Jensen shook his head again: fucking intel. How could such smart people be such a pain in the ass all the time?
Jessica was covering Nate and Rob. They had half their gear on, and their hands raised. “Jess! They’re good. Just get everyone together and grab what you can. We have to move!”
She looked at him questioningly for just a second, then reached into the door to help support a wobbly Marcy as they staggered toward another car. A sense of relief hit Jensen. She was up and moving. She was going to be okay. At least for the next few minutes.
He turned one last time toward Sheila and kissed his fingertips before laying them on her bloody forehead and saying, “Thank you.”
Jensen ran toward his tub, stopping only to pick up Daniel’s rifle. His vehicle was slower than the cars, but it had kept him alive so far. He could see Brent moving the Humvee toward the opening in the trees and Jessica close behind. He watched as she paused slightly before departing, her concerned eyes on him. She was going to wait to make sure he got out as well.
He waved her forward and yelled, “I’m right behind you!”
Two more vehicles joined the convoy out. That would be Nate and Rob. Jensen had a terrible thought. What if one of the cars got stuck on the way down? They’d be screwed. He took one last look around their home, where they’d spent what seemed like years. The graves, the cabin, the abandoned cars, the shipping container. They’d worked so hard to start over, and it was being taken away again.
Jensen climbed into his t
ub, alone. The loss of their remaining possessions, food, and ammunition wouldn’t matter to them if they didn’t get far enough away from the explosion. He drove past the still burning Canid on the way down from the mountain. If the Peregrine dropped a nuke on the mountain, everything they’d had would be gone. If not, they could return for it later. He just hoped there would be a later.
The drive down the mountain, past the two pickup trucks pushed into the trees, seemed to take forever. At the bottom, he glanced across the road at the campground, imagining a normal life where people would voluntarily go sleep in tents without running water or electricity as an adventure, knowing they could go back home to air conditioning and overnight shipping any time they wanted.
It seemed like those days were from a previous century, not the previous year. So much had happened in the meantime. Jensen pushed the tub as fast as he dared on the gravel and dirt road toward the paved road below. Too fast and he’d end up in the trees or the water, dead from the crash or from the explosion.
When he reached the pavement, he tried to calculate how much time they had left, but he had no idea. Whatever it was wasn’t enough. Would the Peregrine even drop ordinance on their former home if they didn’t see movement? Would it instead turn west along the road and drop the nuke on their convoy? If it did, there would be no escape. The mountains would funnel the blast down the road, and they’d all be dead.
First, he had to get away. Immediately after he crossed the bridge to the west, the road began a swift incline with switchbacks all the way up. If he was caught on that when the nuke detonated, he would be a sitting duck. He would be exposed until he reached the gap at the top and partial shielding from the explosion. The heavy electric vehicle strained as he took the corners too fast, fighting both gravity and momentum with each turn and each uphill climb.
Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 3): Escape and Evade Page 2
