Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2)

by R. E. McDermott

  “You got that right,” Luke said. “We need to get this stuff back to Fort Box ASAP, but I’ve been thinking, we need to know what the hell is happening over at that nuke plant too.”

  Butler shook his head. “Sounds like mission creep.”

  “You know I’m right,” Luke said. “As soon as they know we’ve been here and gone, they’re going to put more troops into this place. And for sure they’ll probably be more chopper overflights. If we’re gonna find out what’s going on next door, now is the time.”

  “All right. I can see that, but what do you have in mind? We have to get this stuff back to Fort Box.”

  “Maybe we can do both.” Luke looked at Hill. “Are those patrol boats we saw tied up down at the wharf operational?”

  “Absolutely,” Hill said. “And both have full tanks of gas. That’s standard operating procedure. Not that we had anybody to run them.”

  Luke nodded and turned back to Butler. “All right then. I think Long, Abrams, and Sergeant Hill here should load all of this gear and our three prisoners in those two boats and return to base. The rest of us will recon the nuke plant.”

  “I should go with y’all. I know the area,” Hill said.

  Luke shook his head. “Negative. I’d love to have you, but you’re far too valuable. I think we’ll be making some more trips to the terminal, and having someone who knows it inside and out will be a tremendous advantage. We can’t risk you on a recon like this.”

  Hill scowled, then grinned. “Well, what do you know? For the first time in my military career, I’m too valuable to be expendable.”

  Everyone grinned, then Butler spoke. “Actually, there’s a small tributary of the river that runs by the north side of the power plant. There are homes along that stretch with boat docks. That’s how I know about it; I’ve towed a few disabled boaters back to their home docks. We can get pretty close. My only concern is the engine noise.”

  Hill shook his head. “I don’t think you have to worry about that, at least during the day. A lot of folks on this end of the river have been using their boats for transportation. We been hearing boat motors for some time. Less, of course, since gasoline started running low, but we still hear one now and again. I doubt these boys will come looking for you even if they hear the motor.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Luke said.

  Cape Fear River (Tributary)

  Near Brunswick Nuclear Plant

  Same Day, 5:35 p.m.

  Butler eased the boat along, running dead slow on only one of the two engines and oversteering to compensate for the slight uneven thrust. They crept through the ever-narrowing tributary, looking across the marsh bordering the stream to the tree line and solid ground beyond. Ahead of them in the distance, high-voltage wires stretched through the air from left to right.

  Butler pointed at the power lines. “We’re almost to the power plant now. We should probably nose her in somewhere along here.”

  “Try to find a place where the channel gets as close as possible to the tree line,” Luke said. “That marsh looks like cottonmouth central, and I’d like to minimize the amount of muck and marsh we have to wade through.”

  Beside him in the open door of the little cabin, Washington visibly shuddered. “Amen to that, brother. I do hate snakes.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Butler said, “but we don’t have a lot of options here. I pretty much have to go where—”

  “There!” They rounded a bend, and Luke pointed out a narrow inlet, barely wider than the boat, running through the thick marsh grass toward the tree line marking firmer ground.

  Butler stopped the boat and studied the inlet. “Okay. I’ll try it, but I’m gonna back her in. If we have to leave in a hurry, I sure as hell don’t want to be backing out.”

  His companions nodded and watched as he turned the boat expertly and maneuvered stern first up the narrow inlet. The inlet dead-ended at the tree line, but Butler killed the engine thirty feet short.

  “We’ll paddle her back the rest of the way,” he said. “I don’t want to take a chance on damaging the propeller on a submerged stump.”

  Three minutes later, and to Washington’s obvious relief, they only had to walk a few steps through mud and muck to solid ground.

  “What now, LT … I mean Major?” Washington asked.

  Luke shrugged. “We play it by ear, I guess. We’ll work our way through the woods to the power plant, then take it from there depending on what we see.”

  The others nodded and followed Luke through the woods, maintaining their intervals. As the trees thinned, they moved more carefully from tree to tree until the power plant came into view.

  “Son of a bitch,” Luke said. He glanced over his shoulder as Butler and Washington moved up beside him. “What’s that look like to you?”

  They stared past him at a large area in the middle of an open field, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with coils of razor wire running along its top. The area was rectangular, and each corner was topped with a tower, complete with the searchlight and machine gun. They could make out two figures standing in the nearest tower.

  Inside the fence were row on row of large tents, obviously communal shelters. They heard shouts of children playing and saw an open area at the far end of the enclosure. People moved listlessly from tent to tent.

  “It’s a frigging concentration camp,” Washington said as Butler nodded agreement.

  “So much for a volunteer effort,” Luke said.

  He pulled a monocular from his pocket and looked beyond the fenced area toward the plant itself. There was a long row of tents outside the fenced area, and here and there civilians moved among them. He judged the SRF presence to be at least company strength, if not greater. Several choppers sat in the asphalt parking lot, and on the far side of the parking lot, tents were arranged in the orderly rows of an advance military base.

  Luke passed the monocular to Butler, who looked, nodded, and gave the instrument to Washington.

  “Looks like some civilians in the concentration camp and more in the tents outside. What do you make of that?” Butler asked.

  Luke shrugged. “I don’t know, but my guess is anyone outside the wire is cooperating with them, and those inside are less enthusiastic.”

  Butler nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Yeah, and it looks like they plan to stay a while,” Washington said.

  Butler nodded again. “And between here and the military terminal next door, I expect there will soon be a whole lot more of them. Which makes the likelihood of them leaving us alone—”

  “Somewhere between slim and none,” Luke finished.

  Washington looked thoughtful. “Maybe it ain’t a bad thing, if they get the power back on, I mean.”

  “I got no problem with that,” Luke said. “My problem is the way they’re doing it, and what they intend to do with it after they restore it. They seem much more inclined to take things for themselves and toward consolidating control than helping others. Somehow I get the feeling if they get the power back, it’s not going to help anyone but them.”

  “But what are they really up to?” Washington asked. “I mean, all we can tell is they’re holding a bunch of prisoners.”

  “We got the three prisoners. Maybe we can get some intel out of them,” Butler said. “I’m thinkin’ we shouldn’t push our luck.”

  Washington shook his head. “We’re not going to learn too much from those SRF fools. Maybe how many troops and where they’re from, things like that. But they’re not likely to have a clue what’s going on inside the power plant. They’re not exactly geniuses.”

  Luke nodded. “Washington’s right. If we want good intel, we’re going to have to talk to one of those civilian ‘volunteers.’”

  “And how the hell we gonna do that?” Butler asked.

  Luke checked his watch. “It’ll be midnight or maybe a bit later before they change shifts at the terminal and figure out anything is wrong. We’ve got the night-vision gear we
kept from the armory, so I say we wait until after dark and grab one of the civilians. It won’t be full dark until nine or a little after, but if we grab him at ten, we can be almost back to Fort Box by midnight.”

  “Kidnap him? Are you nuts, Kinsey?” Butler asked.

  “Think about it. It’s probably our only shot at finding out what they’re up to. I mean, do those people behind the wire look happy to you?”

  Butler shook his head. “No. Of course not. But if we go around friggin’ kidnapping people, how does that make us any better?”

  Luke grinned. “Because we’re the good guys.” Washington grinned too and Luke continued. “Look, we keep him blindfolded until we get to Fort Box and make sure he doesn’t see anything while he’s there. We question him, learn what we can learn, and give him the choice of staying or coming back here. If he wants to come back, we just blindfold him and bring him partway down the river, then put him in a small boat and let him make his own way back here. No harm. No foul.”

  Butler shook his head. “All right. I guess it will work. But how did an honest Coastie end up running around with a couple of criminals like you.”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” Luke said, and Washington grinned.

  ***

  The sun set around eight, and thirty minutes later they heard the whine of an electric starter as a generator rumbled to life somewhere on the other side of the concentration camp. The reason became apparent as the searchlights on all four corner guard towers winked to life. Luke felt a momentary concern until it became clear the lights were focused on the camp, sweeping over the tents and playing over the fence lines. One by one, lights came on inside the tents, glowing through the fabric and setting shadows dancing on the tent walls. Individual lights bobbed through the gathering darkness here and there as people walked with flashlights, but there was no general outside lighting. Better and better, Luke thought.

  They passed the time talking quietly, waiting for ten o’clock. Like the tents in the concentration camp, the tents outside the wire seemed to be shared facilities, which meant they had to catch a civilian alone, outside the tents.

  Their ‘collection point’ was obvious, a row of portable toilets serving, but set some distance away from, the row of civilian tents.

  At nine o’clock, lights began to wink off inside the tents, and Luke’s concern grew. What if the bastards all went to sleep before ten? They couldn’t hang around indefinitely, waiting for someone to wake up and come out to make a piss call. Fewer and fewer flashlights were bobbing between the tents or back and forth between the portable toilets. Then all the tents were dark except two. Then one.

  Luke glanced up at the sky still dimly lit on the far western horizon. Close enough.

  “Come on,” he said, folding down his night-vision goggles as his two companions followed suit.

  He led them in a crouching run over the open field to the row of toilets a hundred yards away. Since they couldn’t know which toilet their quarry would choose, the plan was to wait until the man selected his toilet, then creep up behind the unit and grab him as he exited.

  Washington was by far the strongest of the three, and by consensus, he was to grab the victim and clamp a hand over his mouth while Luke shoved a gun in the man’s face to convince him not to struggle. Butler was to quickly duct-tape his mouth and zip-tie his hands before they hustled their captive back to the tree line and the boat beyond. It was going to go like clockwork.

  Except it didn’t.

  They waited impatiently, staring at the last lighted tent, willing someone to come out and come their way. They heard voices through the still air, audible in the distance.

  “Dempsey, will you put that book away and turn off the friggin’ light! You know what time we have to get up in the morning.”

  “All right, all right. Keep your shirt on, Goodman. I’m gonna go take a piss and then I’ll turn the light out.”

  Relieved, Luke saw the beam of the flashlight bobbing toward them. The first hint of trouble came when the bobbing flashlight got halfway to them, then stopped.

  What the hell? Luke watched in his night-vision goggles as their mark shoved the flashlight under his arm and fumbled with his fly. He wasn’t coming to the toilets. He was just going to take a leak on the ground.

  Plan B. Luke got up and started running, circling wide off the gravel path so the grass muffled his footsteps as he approached the man from the rear. Twenty feet from the man, he had to step back on the path, and gravel crunched underfoot. Startled, the man whirled, and Luke’s world went supernova as the piercing beam of the halogen flashlight hit him full in the night-vision goggles. Too late, he flipped up the goggles and closed his eyes.

  He heard gravel crunch as the man backed away from him. “What the hell—”

  The question was cut off with an emphatic oomph, and Luke felt a strong hand on his upper arm and heard Butler whispering in his ear.

  “Washington cold-cocked him. Looks like he’s down for the count, but be quiet. His buddy’s moving around in the tent. I can see the shadows on the tent wall.”

  “Dempsey? What the hell you doing out there, talking to yourself? Come on, man. Get a frigging move on. I want to go to bed,” came the voice from the tent.

  They all kept their positions frozen in place, unsure what to do.

  “Dempsey, God dammit! Answer me, you turd.”

  Butler whispered in Luke’s ear again. “Get ready to run if this doesn’t work out. I’ll hold your arm to keep you from running into anything. Just follow my lead and run like hell.”

  Luke whispered back, confused, “If what doesn’t—”

  Butler called toward the tent, “Gotta take a dump. You can turn out the light. I got my flashlight.”

  “You catching a cold, Dempsey? You sound like hell. And you better not give it to me, you asshole.”

  “Screw you, Goodman,” Butler called.

  There was a muffled curse, and the light blinked off in the tent. Luke’s sight was mostly recovered, and he flipped down his night-vision goggles to find Washington zip-tying their victim’s hands. The man was out cold, and there was already duct tape across his mouth. I hope like hell he’s still alive, Luke thought.

  Luke helped Butler, and they split up Washington’s gear so the big man could carry the prisoner. Washington reached down and picked up their prisoner effortlessly, throwing him over his shoulder as they all set off for the boat.

  Chapter Twelve

  Intracoastal Waterway/Calcasieu River

  East End of Calcasieu Lock

  Lake Charles, Louisiana

  One Day Earlier

  Day 28, 2:45 p.m.

  “That’s a lotta gear, Lucius,” Dave Hitchcock said, staring at the massive pile of boxes and assorted loose gear heaped on the deck of the Miss Martha.

  Lucius Wellesley nodded. “And there’s a pile that big or bigger on every one of the boats on this side. It’s gonna be a bear to ferry it all to the lock wall in the skiffs then haul it all the way to the other end of the dock, then down the other end of the lock wall and back into more skiffs to spread it out among our boats.” He sighed. “But I can’t bring myself to leave it. We ain’t likely to see any more spares or supplies from now on. We’re gonna NEED this stuff, sooner or later.”

  Hitchcock nodded soberly, overwhelmed by the task in front of them. Then he smiled. “Why don’t we do what those Coast Guard guys did?”

  Wellesley cocked an eye. “What do you mean?”

  “We could load the stuff into the skiffs on this side,” Hitchcock said, “then move the loaded skiffs to shore at that narrow place the Coasties brought their boat over. They needed the boat ramp to pull out, but there’s a much narrower place where it can’t be more than twelve or fifteen feet across. After we nose the loaded skiffs into the bank, we set up like a bucket brigade to pass the stuff across that narrow neck of land to skiffs from the other boats. That would save us a lot of handling, to say nothing of hauling it up and down the lock wall.
”

  Wellesley stroked his chin. “That’s a good idea, Dave. And I think it may have given me a better one.”

  ***

  Wellesley eased the blunt nose of the Miss Martha into the massive concrete piling of the highway bridge. He touched it lightly, then slowly worked the boat’s stern around until the towboat fit snugly in the narrow channel between the bridge piling and the slender neck of land separating the Intracoastal Waterway and the Calcasieu River. He looked up as Hitchcock stepped to the open door of the wheelhouse.

  “How we lookin’?” Wellesley asked.

  Hitchcock nodded. “The stern’s about twenty feet off the bank, and we’re dead on perpendicular, so we couldn’t ask for a better setup.” Hitchcock hesitated. “But you sure we should be doing this, Lucius?”

  Wellesley shrugged. “I can’t see as it’s gonna make much difference. The only reason for the lock in the first place is to keep saltwater out of supposedly agricultural land, and depending on conditions, it’s wide open more than half the time anyway. And the way things are going, I don’t see anybody planting that land anytime soon, if they ever did in the first place. I been runnin’ this stretch goin’ on twenty years and never saw nothin’ but swamp. Besides, it’ll be a little hole, and if they want to fill it in later, it won’t take more than a few truckloads of dirt.”

  “Well, if you say so. I guess you might as well let ’er rip,” Hitchcock said.

  Wellesley eased the twin throttles forward, and the Miss Martha pushed against the concrete piling holding her immobile. A powerful wash jetted aft from her flailing twin propellers, striking the canal bank and sending a boiling mass of muddy water over the narrow neck of dirt and marsh grass into the waters of the inlet beyond. The volume of water slowly increased as Wellesley went to full throttle, and the powerful prop wash from twenty feet away made short work of the dirt bank, opening a shallow channel in less than a minute. But he kept at it, and when he shut the engines down fifteen minutes later, there was a clear passage through the dirt bank almost as wide as the Miss Martha.