Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 3): Escape and Evade

by Wohlrab, Jeff

  Doug and all his men had been given a vaccine, and not a single one of them had contracted the Mallon Virus. They’d had a 100% success rate, completely unlike the 30% rate nationwide. He credited their physical regimen and iron will. They were the best. He’d recruited from some of the finest military organizations on the planet, not just in the United States, and then, he made them better.

  Now thirty-two of them were dead. He didn’t even have video of the battle to see what happened, only some radio transmissions from Rob and Nate that they’d been ambushed when they reached the top of the mountain. He listened again as Rob yelled that the ambushers were Americans. One of them was an Army officer.

  That didn’t make sense to Doug. Why the hell was there an Army officer with virus samples hiding out in a cabin in the mountains? They’d tracked the signal back. There was no doubt they’d taken one of the computers from the tech school. But why? What the hell were they planning to do with it?

  Doug had a drone on the way to the site. He didn’t expect to see much. Neither of the armored vehicles were transmitting their locations any longer, but he had to see what happened. He had directed the pilot to take it directly to Pine Mountain, where Nathan and Rob had last been heard.

  Nathan was the only thing he had left of his daughter. The man had been strong and smart, and kind. It was a kindness Emilee had fallen in love with. It was a kindness that remained and helped her through after a hit-and-run accident which had cost her an eye and limited motion on her left side.

  It took a dozen surgeries before the doctors announced there was nothing more they could do. The accident left her with a lurching gait and a propensity to run into things. She had called him crying one day when Nathan was at work. She had spilled her coffee on the floor because she misjudged where the cup would be.

  Nathan had taken a leave of absence to take care of her while she healed. Physically, she was as sound as she would ever be, but the emotional trauma and the loss of her self-confidence never fully healed. She had been seeing a specialist in Dallas the day the bombs went off.

  Nathan was her anchor. When she fell apart, he was there to help put her back together again. His love never faded. When she was self-conscious about her eye, he told her she was beautiful. When she dropped their dinner on the floor, he went to the grocery store for more chicken, then helped her put the meal together again. He didn’t try to do everything for her, but he was there for her.

  It was exactly what she needed. She was beginning to seem like her old self again. When she died, Nathan was destroyed. He spent almost a month alone in their house, drinking and crying. He had refused to see anyone, even Doug. Then Doug had gone to him with a proposition; he wanted him on the teams.

  His son-in-law had approached him about it in the past, but Doug had refused. His men had to be unattached while they worked for him. No marriages, no kids, no steady girlfriends. He didn’t want them distracted from their work, and to be honest, he didn’t relish the idea of telling a sobbing wife her husband was dead after one of their missions. Particularly if that wife was his daughter.

  Nathan had seized on the opportunity and trained as hard as some of the former SEALS. Already strong, he’d become toned and hardened. He had looked for a chance to prove himself, and specifically requested this mission. Doug had deferred at first, but finally agreed on one condition. Nathan would be the gunner and stay inside the vehicle.

  Now his drone was over the site where the vehicle had last transmitted. Doug played the camera over the scene. He was wired to the control van, and the normal camera operator had relinquished control as Doug took over. He could only describe the scene as devastation.

  The west side of the mountain was charred and dark from fire. Trees on the ground were smoldering, throwing thin smoke up into the air. There was no sign of the Canid or anything moving on the ground. Doug instructed the pilot to slowly orbit in a steadily widening circle. As the hours passed, he switched between the views the camera could provide. Optical, infrared, and thermal.

  The orbit had reached about five miles from the impact site when he suddenly zoomed in and had the pilot hold position over a target. On his screen was an armored vehicle with the hatch open. It had to be the same one Nathan had referenced during the ambush.

  He picked up his phone and called over to the helipad. “Buck, call in a team and start getting the helo ready. We’re going to the mountains.”

  Chapter 13

  Jensen was having trouble walking. They had started north along a stream, but the rising elevation and terrain made difficult by fallen trees had sapped his little remaining strength. If he looked back, he could still see the road below them off in the distance. They hadn’t gone far, certainly not far enough.

  His boots were still squishing from where he had tried to wash them in the stream, and his wet shirt clung to his sunburned back like a huge scratchy leech. He moved his shoulders a bit to ease the pain and immediately wished he hadn’t. It felt like his top layer of skin had been ripped off as the wet shirt pulled away from his back.

  He pushed his shoulder blades together, as if to push them away from the shirt, and looked up toward the sky. That put the center of his back, which was the most badly burned, away from the clinging T-shirt for just an instant. He couldn’t wear his armored vest; it was too painful. Instead, he carried it in his left hand. His right he kept free for his Ruger pistol, which had been reunited with its barrel before they moved off into what used to be a forest.

  As he looked up, he noticed a strange gleam high in the sky. There were no clouds, and there was no contrail suggesting a jet of any sort. Jensen stopped and focused on a place in the sky a little way away from where he thought he’d seen something. He had heard looking directly at something was the best way to not see it. He wasn’t sure how true that was, but it could be legit. At the very least he was resting his legs.

  Jensen was starting to wonder if he’d actually seen anything when he caught sight of a dot in the sky again. He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked intently at that patch of sky. There! He saw it again. What the hell could it be? UFO? What were the chances Earth could be decimated by a virus, scoured by nuclear weapons, and then visited by aliens?

  Actually, that seemed plausible under the current circumstances. Then realization hit him. It was probably a drone of some sort doing battle damage assessment. Someone was looking at the site of the blasts to determine whether it had been effective. Whoever it was seemed to be inexperienced. The drone should be high enough where it couldn’t be seen.

  “Hey!” Jensen called out to the group in front of him, which consisted of everyone. Only Jessica stayed back near him. “There’s a drone!” He pointed at the shallow stream to their left. “Get into the water! Try to get under a tree if you can! We need to mask our heat signature!”

  For some reason, all five of the others looked to the sky for themselves, as if to check whether he was trying to get them all wet like he was or if there really was an eye in the sky above them. Jensen made his way to the streambank while the others craned their necks toward the sky.

  Finally, Rob confirmed his assertion. “There’s something … right there.” He pointed at the same area of the sky where Jensen had seen the reflection.

  By then, Jensen was already in the water underneath a tree trunk. It was far, far colder than he’d expected. Why the hell didn’t the sun warm up the water the way it superheated his cockpit? He did his best to disguise and block his heat signature. If they zoomed in on this exact spot, they might be able to see his legs sticking out from under the tree, but in the chaotic mess of fallen trees he’d be difficult to spot.

  After a brief discussion with Daniel, the others followed one by one into the water. They were spread out over about fifty yards in the stream. Jensen had watched drone videos before many of his missions, sometimes during his missions. He knew they were capable of several different types of view. He was most worried about thermal.

  None of them
were wearing anything brightly colored, and their clothes were further disguised with dirt stains. Among the fallen trees, they’d be almost invisible to optical scans. No, their biggest threat was heat. There wasn’t much out here in the mountains that could be mistaken for a person, unless Sasquatch was real.

  It was a ridiculous thought, but it made him smile. Maybe the drone would find a family of bigfoots. Bigfeet? Bigfoots. And leave them alone. That was about as likely as a UFO. Then again, he wouldn’t have expected to survive a nuclear strike either, so he was open to the possibility.

  From upstream, he could hear Daniel cursing loudly. Jensen cringed a little bit, but that drone couldn’t hear them. It was only dangerous if it saw them. So he yelled back, “Quit being a little bitch! It’s not that cold!”

  Daniel called back, “I don’t have first degree burns! So I can feel how cold it is!” Everyone was quiet until Daniel called out again, “Wait. Which one is worse, first degree or third degree? I don’t remember.”

  Jensen couldn’t either, so he stayed silent.

  Marcy was the one who answered. “Third degree is the worst, but his aren’t that bad.”

  Jensen didn’t hear her response over the burbling of the small stream, but he heard Daniel again when he called out, “Second degree burns!”

  Jensen thought he might have a point. The chilled water actually felt good on his back, as long as he didn’t bump into anything. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold his position under the log though. The rush of the water past him was already tiring him out, and it had been what, two—maybe three minutes? He knew that drone could stay in the air for at least a day, depending on which one it was. Maybe two days if it was one of the larger ones.

  He sincerely hoped it would go on past. He had a thought more chilling than the water though. What if it saw the tub? He couldn’t remember if they left the hatch open, but if someone saw the chopped tree, they would know someone had survived the attack.

  If they were concerned enough to send a drone to do recon, then they were probably concerned enough to come after them again. If they dropped another nuke, they would have no chance. They couldn’t physically move fast enough to get away from the blast this time. With no vehicles and rough terrain, they were sitting ducks.

  Jensen’s stomach rumbled. Man, he was hungry. Duck. He was hungry enough to eat duck confit, which he’d had once and didn’t particularly like. Now he thought he could eat the entire duck by himself. No, he could eat an entire turkey. An injected, deep-fried turkey. And then a second one for cold turkey sandwiches. With salt, pepper, and mayo.

  He was interrupted by his thoughts of food by Jessica drifting over to him and holding onto him. Her teeth were chattering from cold. She mumbled, “So cold,” and put her arms around him to share heat, which was rapidly being sucked away by the chilled water. Her wet shirt didn’t hide anything. Jensen’s thoughts turned from food to other things.

  He wanted to put his arms around her as well, but the added force of the water acting on two bodies made him dig in deeper to stay in place. His arms were already burned out and sore from trying to chip his way out of the tub. They weren’t going to be able to stay there much longer.

  How long had it been? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? It was impossible to tell. It felt like days, but the force of the water and the sound of it burbling over rocks made all time seem to flow together. It could have been longer. The audible clicking of Jessica’s teeth let him know they needed to get out of the water though. Hypothermia was a distinct possibility.

  Jensen looked upstream toward the other four. He could see Marcy clinging to Daniel like Jessica was to him. He had second thoughts about getting out of the water. He liked the attention. He also wanted them all to live. “We need to get out of the water and find somewhere to hide.” He frantically searched the sky for the dot which would let him know if the drone was still there.

  He didn’t see anything, but it didn’t mean the drone wasn’t there, or that it couldn’t see them. For all he knew, it was zoomed in right on his face at that moment watching him as he looked for it. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He was used to being on the other side, watching those who couldn’t see him. He had a new appreciation for those unmanned drones as weapons. They were fucking scary.

  Jensen felt a huge shiver run this his body, but it wasn’t from him. It was his sign it was time to get out of the water. He couldn’t take the chance of keeping Jessica in the water any longer. He let go with one hand to grab her arm and they moved slightly downstream. It was enough to make her eyes widen slightly. “It’s time to move, okay? We’re going to get out of the water now.”

  She nodded very quickly. Jess was more than ready to get the hell out of the cold water.

  Chapter 14

  “No, the Senator doesn’t need to know about this.” Doug glared at Ricky, the lead for the team which was going out with him. “The Senator fucking dropped nuclear bombs on two of our teams.”

  Ricky looked shocked. “What?! Why the fuck would he do that?”

  “That’s my question, too.” He looked at the men assembled in front of him in a loose half-circle. “The Senator asked us to send out two teams to destroy the medical facility at the tech school and bring back the samples stolen by Russian agents.”

  They nodded; they’d been briefed as a backup insertion team if something had happened to one of the first two. They knew the mission. “We got a call from Team 2 saying the people on the mountain were U.S. military, not Russian agents.” That caught them by surprise. Their intel brief was clear; the targets were Russian. The briefer had even played them an audio recording from the targets. None of them spoke Russian, but it certainly sounded like Russian to them.

  The Senator had been controlling the mission from his bunker at Andersonville. Doug had clearly been cut out of the loop at his training facility north of Macon. He had been surprised as anyone when the order to nuke the sites came through. When he protested, his comms link had been cut. It was intentional. Then, two of his teams were killed.

  Doug was still seething. His men had been sacrificed and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. He would have words with Snead, but first he needed to verify whether or not any of his men had survived. Someone had. The drone spotted a military vehicle and several cars along the road. The military vehicle looked like what Rob and Nathan had described during the ambush.

  There was a chance his son-in-law was still alive. He owed it to himself—he owed it to Emilee—to make sure. Doug pointed at a map of the area, which was blown up to show a narrow section of road along the foothills. Next to it were some blurry images of an armored vehicle. Doug pointed at a spot where the road curved. “This armored vehicle was found right here.

  “As you can see, someone cut the tree from the top of the vehicle, probably to free someone inside.” Doug pointed at a different area of the map further to the west. One Humvee is situated here, and two more cars are a couple hundred yards in front of it. Some folks managed to escape before the blast.

  “There are certainly survivors. This tree appears to have come down as a result of the blast wave, meaning the vehicle was heading west when the detonation occurred. It appears at least the Humvee was also damaged by the blast, probably from the EMP.

  “Someone returned to the armored vehicle and cut the tree off of it.” He turned to look his men in the eye. “There are survivors out there. I want to know what happened.” Doug swung back to the map. “This is a very rural area. They don’t appear to have power back on yet. There are very few places to land.” He indicated a spot near where the road curved. “This is the front of a fire station; it will be our primary landing spot.”

  To the west, he indicated a second spot. “This church will be our secondary landing spot in case the first one is untenable for some reason. If we need to divert, we’ll land in this field south of the road. I’d prefer a hard surface for this landing. I don’t want to get the landing gear stuck in the slop.
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br />   “Ricky, you will take your team around this curve to the east. Check out the armored vehicle and look for survivors. Don, you take your team to the west. Check out the Humvee and those cars.” He turned back to the group once again. “These folks have just escaped a nuclear blast and MAY have members of our group. I want tight trigger discipline. Do not engage unless you are engaged. Am I clear?”

  The grim men in front of him nodded as one.

  “Ok, let’s move out.”

  Chapter 15

  Jensen’s group had arrived at some sort of road along the mountainside. The fallen trees were less prevalent here. It also meant they could see the dissipating mushroom cloud to the east. It was all that remained of their former home, and their friends. Except for Rob, who didn’t know her, all of them thought of Sheila. Rob mourned the loss of his team instead. Fourteen men. All gone. The 15th one was back in the fire station.

  They paused at the top, feeling suddenly even more exposed a couple hundred feet higher, closer to the airspace controlled by their enemy, and on a road. Eyes were naturally drawn to roads. It was the first place analysts looked when they were scouting enemy territory. They had choices. That was clear.

  The obvious choice was to stay off the roads and continue to head north, further into the mountains. To the west, the dirt road wound up the slope. To the east, down. The quickest way to get some distance between them and the radiation would be to head west, further up the mountain. It was also the most likely way for them to get caught.

  Jensen and Daniel wanted to head north and avoid the roads. Jessica, Marcy, and Rob wanted to head west up the mountain path to get some distance between them and the vehicles. Only Brent wanted to head east, back toward the radiation from the nuclear attack.

  “We have to stay off the roads,” Jensen began. “The higher we go and the longer we stay out in the open, the more likely it is we’re going to be seen from the air.” Jensen and Daniel knew what happened when targets were located by a force with superior air power. Those targets were ‘eliminated from the battlefield’ in current terminology.