Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  Confusion and fear bordering on panic swirled through the market crowd. Men grabbed wives and children, and then glanced at one another, unsure what to do. They had learned to drive off gangs of marauding bandits, but they were not prepared for this new situation. The noisy Chinooks continued circling above them, beating the air while lifting to a higher altitude. Eyes darted between the helicopters, the armored cars, the military trucks and the platoons of soldiers standing by them—and then they saw the horse troops.

  A company of cavalry appeared from the thick woods behind the Hope Baptist Church, horses in two columns that divided into separate lines, hooves clattering, mist steaming from flaring nostrils. The columns diverged, right and left, until the street outside the fenced market was lined with mounted soldiers, Kalashnikov rifles across their chests, attached to the soldiers with slings. The mounted troops wore brown-speckled camouflage uniforms and brown berets. The two columns of horses left an open space in front of the truck with the raised black screen.

  Nobody moved back to the fence, as they had been ordered to do. Children cried and women wailed as families and friends drew into tight clusters amid the market tables.

  The disembodied voice boomed out again. “Place all weapons on the ground, including knives, and move back to the fence. Spread out in a line. You now have thirty seconds to comply. Move back to the fence now. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

  A few began to walk backward, some guns appeared on the ground, but most of the crowd remained frozen in place, huddled in trembling groups as stragglers hurried to rejoin their families.

  “Your time is up,” declared the voice. A second later Jenny felt her skin burning; it was as if she had been thrown naked into a bonfire. All of her body felt the searing burn but especially her face and bare hands. She screamed in agony along with the rest, and after an indeterminate time the pain suddenly lessened to something like very bad sunburn. Around her, the screaming and crying continued as the people began to move back in a body, falling down and overturning some tables in their haste.

  The voice came again, slow and deliberate. “Because you did not follow my instructions, we have been forced to apply a non-lethal crowd control measure to ensure your compliance. If you follow instructions and move to the fence, we will not be forced to use it again. Now, put down your weapons and move to the fence. Move now!”

  The high school parking lot’s chain link fence had provided welcome security to the swap market, and it had formerly been considered a great advantage. Now it turned the same parking lot into an instant holding pen. The people almost ran back to the fence to avoid another blast of the invisible burning rays, which they now understood had come from the black panel on the last truck.

  Most of the local men were with their families, and they were afraid to resist for fear of another shot from the heat gun hitting their wives and children. The invisible rays had partly blinded the people who had been looking directly at the speaker truck, and these people needed to be led by those whose eyes had not been affected. The crowd subsided from among the tables like an ebbing tide, until it caught up along the ten-foot-high chain link fence.

  “Put all weapons on the ground! Spread out, spread out along the fence!” came the voice again. Men quietly cursed and groaned, miserable at having been taken so easily, but what else could they have done? Not a thing—not mixed among a crowd of unarmed women and children.

  “Weapons on the ground, all weapons on the ground. Pistols, knives, all weapons on the ground, or you will feel the heat again!” This time the citizens did as they were ordered. Even Sue Bledsoe placed her revolver at her feet. With the tall fence behind and the heat ray in front, they already were effectively imprisoned. The people backed up to the gray steel fence and spread along it until they were in a hundred-yard-long line only a few persons deep, facing the trucks.

  “Good. Now, all men: take ten steps forward. All men and teenage boys, walk ten steps forward, away from the fence. Do it now!”

  The crying and wailing was universal. A few boys began to walk forward but were pulled back by their families. Then they were all blasted again by the heat ray that sent out an instantaneous wave of burning agony. It seemed incredible that their clothes didn’t burst into flames. As Jenny again writhed in pain against the fence she wondered, what was this horrible black device that burned like fire, without light or sound?

  “Now—let’s try again, people,” boomed the amplified voice. “All men: take ten steps forward, away from the fence. Move now!”

  The hopelessness of their situation became clear. The crying and moaning continued. A few men, then most of them, walked forward forming a rough line, individuals turning back to their families imploringly and then looking again at the truck containing the black burning machine, at the horsemen, at the soldiers, and up at the still circling Chinook helicopters.

  When the men were divided from the rest, a column of about fifty horse troops cantered their mounts through the vehicle gate, their steel horseshoes clattering on the asphalt. Most of them had an Asian appearance, or Eurasian. Many of them were unshaven, with hair much longer than would ever be tolerated on any American soldiers. They approached the left end of the fence and turned their horses to ride between the line of men and boys and the line of women and children still along the fence.

  “Okay, that’s better,” came the slow, deliberate voice again, pausing between each phrase. “I think we understand each other now. The Mannville area should have been evacuated several months ago, with the rest of Radford County. I’m sorry that your actions forced us to take these measures. Soon you will understand that it’s for the best. You will be moved now to a relocation center, where you will be fed and provided with free medical care. School is open there for your children. Reconstruction jobs are available, for those who can work. You will be reunited in your family groups after you are in-processed at the relocation center. Okay now, men: turn left, and walk forward.”

  The line of cavalry was between the men and boys and their families. It didn’t occur to them that the heat ray couldn’t be used now without also roasting the soldiers and horses. Two searing blasts from the heat ray had taught them to follow orders immediately and without question. The line of disarmed males, more than a hundred of them, walked forward while calling and waving back to their wives, girlfriends, mothers, and children.

  The men were not marched out to the street; instead, they were herded toward the double doors of the high school gymnasium. As they approached, the gym doors were opened from within, where more camouflage-clad troops were already waiting inside. An order was given to the men that their women couldn’t hear. The men as a group put their arms straight up in the air as they marched out of sight into the gym, and the doors closed behind them.

  The amplified voice spoke again, slightly more gently this time. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have enough buses to take you all in one trip. For everyone’s security, your men will wait here while you ladies will take your children on ahead to the relocation center. Now, ladies, everybody turn around to your right and walk out to the street in single file. Come on, ladies—the sooner we go, the sooner you will arrive at your new temporary home. Warm showers and hot meals are waiting for you. Warm showers and hot meals.”

  Jenny and Sue were near the head of this line, once they had been turned to face the other way from where the men had gone. The fifty cavalry troops inside the fenced parking lot, having returned from herding the men into the gym, formed a column alongside the women and escorted them out. Once outside the parking lot, the line of women and children was turned to march down the sidewalk, the equestrians riding parallel to them on the street. The fence was now on her left side as Jenny walked on the cement sidewalk. The cavalry moved between the line of women and children and the half-dozen Army trucks. A yellow school bus drove slow-ly up the street and parked near the truck at the head of the column. The armored cars moved back and forth nervously, their crewmen keeping watch on t
he proceedings.

  More squads of these Eurasian-looking soldiers wearing brown berets stood by each truck. The front of the line of women and children approached a separate group of soldiers, who seemed to Jenny to be in charge. These five men were clean-shaven except for dark mustaches. They were older and somewhat more intelligent looking than the rest. Jenny had no idea where they were from, or what their alien rank insignias meant. They were smiling and chatting away in a language she could not understand. All the other foreign troops carried AK-47-type rifles, but this nearest group had only holstered pistols. Were they officers? One of them raised his arm and pointed at her as she was passing by only a yard away. Unexpectedly, he spoke to her in perfect American English. “You—the blond—get in the first truck.” He was dressed identically to the others, in the same uniform. The foreign camouflage pattern was distinctive, with jagged black zigzags over brown, tan and green, the brown predominating. He held a slender black wireless microphone in his hand and used it almost as a pointer.

  Jenny stopped to face him, causing the line of women and children to pile up behind her. “You’re an American?” She had recognized his unaccented voice at once. “That was you on the loudspeaker, wasn’t it? My God, an American, doing this to other Americans! I can’t believe it!” She glared at him, her chest heaving, nostrils flaring, a surge of anger overriding her fear.

  “Believe it, blondie. Just get in the first truck. Right now—I won’t ask you again.” He pointed with his microphone behind him to the street.

  “It was you on the loudspeaker. An American—a traitor!” Her mouth was almost dry from fear, but without thinking, she managed to spit a fleck of saliva directly onto his face. Then she froze and stared at him, shocked at what she had done, cringing to await the blow. The American stood equally frozen, glaring back at the tall girl eye to eye. He slowly wiped the spit from his reddening cheek with the back of his sleeve. His comrades stared at both of them, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, hands moving to their holstered pistols.

  “Shut up, you bitch!” The American in the foreign uniform struck her backhanded across the face, knocking her nearly to the ground. Then he grabbed her by her shoulders, pulled her back up, spun her around and kicked her hard in the backside, propelling her forward. “First truck—and I’ll see you later, blondie!”

  Young soldiers, their Kalashnikov rifles slung on their backs, stood by the lowered rear tailgate of the truck. A wooden crate had been set behind the truck for a first step. Steel rungs on the hanging tailgate served as other steps. Her mind still reeling, Jenny climbed up into the open back of the truck, “helped” along by hands that grabbed and squeezed at her rear end and breasts. Wooden benches ran along both sides of the truck’s cargo area, beneath the heavy fabric roof. She immediately found a place at the very front, behind the cab. A dot of light caught her attention, and she peeked out of a rip in the tightly stretched canvas. Across the road from the high school, she noticed that another troop of cavalry had surrounded Hope Baptist. She shrank down into her corner in horror, trying to absorb the events of the fifteen minutes since the arrival of the helicopters, piled on top of the horror that had been her life for a year since the earthquake.

  More girls were forced up into the truck, perhaps a dozen or fifteen in all. Then a squad of the foreign soldiers climbed up after them, and the giant tailgate was raised and latched into place with a metallic bang. The engine was started with a rattle of noise and a burst of black diesel smoke from the exhaust pipe above the cab. The truck lurched forward, the gears grinding audibly. Jenny dared to turn to look behind her at the other girls, and the soldiers, and gradually a new reality came into focus. She was not in a truck with a random assortment of toddlers, old women, and small boys. She was in a truck loaded exclusively with young women and teenage girls. She looked from crying face to crying face and tried to picture them in happier times. Even underfed and unwashed, they were all at least attractive—or so it seemed to Jenny after a quick assessment. The soldiers sitting behind them grabbed at the closest girls, laughing and smiling, semi-Asiatic eyes narrowed to slits. Who were these troops, and what was this relocation camp they were going to?

  The space above the tailgate was left open, to allow light and air into the cargo area. The military truck passed a pair of yellow school buses parked one behind the other in the middle of Main Street. A long line of women and children was being led to the waiting buses by soldiers forming a gantlet. Sudden shadow extinguished the day’s bright sunlight, and the temperature dropped as a line of iron-gray clouds moved in from the north.

  9

  Dwight Granger was a supervisor at the UAV Operations Center, located within a former fitness center on a closed part of Fort Campbell. With so many Army units decommissioned since the last election, almost half of the base was a ghost town, available for other uses. His retirement pay from twenty years in the Air Force should have been enough to live on, but now it wouldn’t even buy his groceries. Not after being “adjusted” and converted to North American Dollars at the new ten-to-one rate. So here he was at the age of fifty, back working for Uncle Sam.

  It wasn’t all bad. At least he wasn’t being paid in red TEDs, like the locals. The Temporary Emergency Dollars were not exchangeable and had no value outside the South. In addition, he was able to shop at the Army commissary on Fort Campbell, which at least had regular food deliveries. Not only that, but he also was eligible for free military health care on an “as available” basis. The government even paid for his eyeglasses, and he didn’t even mind their ugly black plastic frames: free was free. Dwight Granger was well beyond the years of caring about his style or appearance.

  On Saturday he was overseeing four Predator Bs on routine patrol over Middle Tennessee, the region around Nashville and south to Alabama. Once launched from the flight line two miles away on a secondary runway of Campbell Army Airfield, each Predator was controlled by a two-person crew, consisting of a pilot and an ISR technician. ISR for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Each Predator B filmed the earth below in both color and infrared video.

  They also soaked up the electromagnetic spectrum, listening for insurgent radio communications on walkie-talkies and CB radios. Outside the Nashville-Clarksville metro area, there was still practically no cell phone coverage, so any radio transmissions from the ground were immediately pounced upon, analyzed, recorded, and RDF’d. Radio Direction Finding was an automatic function. With this information, ground teams could be vectored to the site of any suspicious unauthorized transmissions. At the same time, paradoxically, the Predators provided a secure radio relay for the government forces on the ground.

  With no more low-earth-orbit satellites, the surveillance function provided by the Predators had become more critical than ever. Last year’s undeclared and practically unacknowledged space war with China and Russia had seen to that. It was still an open question as to which country had fired the first hostile shot into space. Most people believed the government line, that it was China, since they had less to lose through the destruction of their much smaller and less sophisticated satellite fleet. Many believed they had taken out America’s lumbering low-orbiting spy satellites to cloak their preparations for last year’s invasion of Taiwan. Whatever the reason, tit had led to tat, until everybody’s spy sats had been destroyed up to almost four hundred miles into space, and many had been rendered inoperable at much greater altitudes.

  “Open skies” for satellites, which had been the unofficial policy of both sides during the old Cold War, had fallen by the wayside with the advent of ground-based gigawatt chemical lasers and kinetic killers traveling at 18,000 miles per hour. The kinetic weapons took out the low satellites, and the lasers fried or blinded the ones further out. Only the GPS birds and commsats orbiting above 12,000 miles had been left intact. But those distant communication and navigation satellites could not stare down at the earth with an eagle’s all-seeing eye. Uncle Sam’s fleet of low-earth-orbiting spy satellites had been de
stroyed or rendered useless. Millions of pieces of satellite debris now littered low space, making their replacement a futile exercise. Even if new spy sats could somehow avoid the welter of hyper-velocity space debris, China or Russia would simply zap them the next time they flew above their territory.

  After the unexpected demise of most of America’s space fleet, the Predators and the other UAVs had surged to the position of primary importance for regional ISR. It also didn’t hurt that UAVs cost only a tiny fraction of the old spy satellites and their launch rockets, a key consideration during the Greater Depression. The USA could no longer rely on outspending its enemies in order to retain military supremacy, not with the dollar relegated to peso status. America was no longer the uncontested global superpower it had been for most of Dwight Granger’s life. In the new downsized America, UAVs were the affordable replacement for satellites, at least over American territory.

  Jam-proof encrypted broad-spectrum digital microwave beams sent the data collected by the Predators back to the ground data terminal, located on a tower a mile away from UAV Flight Ops. A fiber optic cable brought the data to the ops center, and then to the flight control teams operating each Predator and the other smaller UAVs. This Saturday the sky over Tennessee was clear, with visibility unlimited for a change, and the pictures coming in were unusually crisp. When the weather turned bad, as it often had this winter, the video quality was greatly reduced. Often the Predators were simply grounded, unable to record anything worthwhile. They were far too valuable to put at risk by flying them in extreme conditions. Predators lost to weather or system failures were not replaced. Even when they could fly above the weather, they could not see through thick cloud cover, at least not with video or infrared lenses. Their narrowaperture radar could sometimes detect large objects like moving trucks through cloud cover, but the radar could not see people.