Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “I have the commanding officer of the Kazaks on another line, patched over from secure HF radio. You might want to take this one.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Our liaison to the Kazak Battalion is missing. Special Agent Martin Zuberovsky. The Kazaks know him as Major Zinovsky. I had to check the alias file to find that out, but I’m cleared for it.”

  “You woke me up to tell me somebody’s missing? Call me when they find him.” Bullard began to put the phone down, yawned deeply, but then started to pull the fragments of his mind together. “Wait a minute. Tell me that again.” Bullard’s groggy brain was throbbing, one of the aftereffects of half of a bottle of Canadian whisky mixed with a bad imitation of Coca-Cola. What was the security level of this red phone over to the operations center? Andretti had just used a real name and an operational cover name in the same telephone call, a serious breach even on a supposedly secure line. There was no point in making the security lapse worse than it was already during this phone call, but Andretti would get a royal reaming out in person, come Monday morning.

  “There was a fire, something like that. Zuberovsky is missing. I have the new commanding officer of the Kazak battalion on the horn. His name is Colonel Burgut. He sounds kind of excited, but it’s hard to understand him. His English isn’t so great.”

  “Okay, I’ll take it.” The phone clicked in his ear, and the Kazak was on the line. “Colonel, who is missing? A fire, you say? I don’t understand… Listen, I’ll fly down in the morning. Radford County? Give the location to my duty officer. Yes, yes, all right, I’ll see you in the morning. Seven o’clock. Good night.” He set the red phone back in its cradle. Zuberovsky was missing after a house fire, in Radford County. Bullard did not want to hear anything from that place, not after what he had seen today in the UAV flight center. What could this call mean? Zuberovsky was missing? Parts of his brain were still not working at full speed, the cylinders were not all firing, but he was filled with a sense of foreboding. He remembered watching another house fire at night, years before, near the Potomac River in Virginia. Colleagues had died in that fire. He flopped back into his bed and tried to sleep again, but he could not find rest. Instead, he got up and microwaved a cup of yesterday’s leftover coffee. Radford County. He tried to put the place out of his mind.

  ****

  Zack had been in a few caves before, but none like this. He was in the biggest room of any cave he’d ever seen. It was irregular and oblong, about forty by twenty feet at the bottom, its craggy roof arching above them. The rocky floor was sloped at an angle, not exactly difficult to walk on, but you had to watch your step or you could slip. The floor of the cave consisted mostly of jumbled boulders, from shoebox size to mailbox size. It looked like someone had moved a lot of the smaller stones, filling gaps between the larger ones. This made the surface a little more usable. Planks and pieces of plywood filled other spaces. The ceiling was more than fifteen feet above them, and it was not hard to imagine more boulders falling loose and crashing down. Zack reckoned that short of another major earthquake, the ones still overhead would stay up there for a few million more years. It smelled of rock dust, but otherwise the air was fresh.

  This big room was nothing like the narrow tunnels they had crept through to get to it. In some of them, you had to hold onto the yellow guide rope and walk along a narrow ledge. His flashlight had showed that water was running in a slot ten or twelve feet below them. If you fell into one of those cracks, you might not get out. A string of miniature Christmas lights hung below the yellow hand rope, illuminating the way. Moving deep into the cavern was a little frightening, but also, somehow, exhilarating.

  The main room felt safe and secure. It was cool but not cold, and as silent as a tomb. A level area had been built of scrap lumber, mostly from wood pallets and pieces of plywood. This floored area was about the size of a large living room, maybe fifteen by twenty feet. There was a dome-shaped two-man tent set up at the far end. Most of the area was stacked with metal and plastic boxes and crates. Four folding chairs were set up around a folding card table. A bare electric bulb hanging above the table provided the primary illumination in the room. A stationary bicycle and some heavy dumbbells and free weights could be seen just off the wooden floor.

  Doug Dolan addressed them, once they were all inside the main room. “Okay, this is it, the end of the line. This is going to be our home for the next few days at least. It won’t get any hotter or colder. It’s about 60 degrees, and it stays like this pretty much all the time. We can’t build a fire big enough to heat this place. We’d just smoke ourselves out anyway, so instead, we’ll heat ourselves from the inside out. I’ll get a pot of water boiling. After the baby is fed, then we’ll get something warm inside us. We’ve got some instant coffee, instant hot chocolate, instant soup, and instant freeze-dried meal packs. Civilian stuff, and military MREs. I’ll boil the water, and you guys can decide what you want to have. I’ll show you where everything is.

  “Once you’ve had your fill, you can sleep if you want to. Day and night don’t have any meaning in here, so rest whenever you can. I’ll set up a watch rotation; somebody has to be awake all the time. Jenny and the baby can take the tent. There’s already a foam mattress in there, and a sleeping bag. It’s a lot cleaner in the tent, and you can have some privacy. The rest of us will sleep on the wood floor, on camping mats. They’re rolled up over there. Sleeping bags too. Oh—there are some spare uniforms and some other clothes in that metal bin. They’re not exactly the cleanest but they should be dry. Take your pick, whatever fits you. The house batteries are at full charge, but with the lights on, somebody will have to ride the bike later on. That’s how we make electricity: we ride the bike. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” asked Zack. “Are there bats in here?”

  “Nope, no bats, but there are some bugs. Some beetles, and centipedes sometimes. You can’t rule out snakes either. I haven’t seen any, but Boone said he has. Shake your shoes out before you put them on, and try not to drop any crumbs or we’ll get rats. That’s one of the reasons Boone built this wooden floor: the bugs and rats.”

  ****

  The maze of erosion channels at the bottom of the ravine hid him perfectly from every direction except directly overhead. Boone moved only a few steps each minute, then stopped and sank down, listening and watching. He intentionally dragged his feet to obscure his footprints, trying to cause his tracks to appear to be the product of natural snowmelt running down the gully. He reached the bodies just as dawn was beginning to lighten the sky in the east. After a few minutes spent looking at the killing field from below, he stripped off his night goggles and placed them into his vest’s big left side cargo pocket. It was sleeting by then, terrible weather, but perfect for him. Nobody in his right mind would be out in such icy rain. Ninety-nine out of a hundred soldiers ordered to stand watch in these conditions would find a way to hide in vehicles, or would at least crouch under improvised lean-to poncho shelters. Only with officers or NCOs right behind them would soldiers even pretend to stand watch in such weather. In his long experience, this was true even of well-trained and disciplined troops. Some might consider his outlook cynical, others would call it realistic.

  Trust did not come easily to Boone Vikersun. He had come to this isolated ravine based on the barely credible story of a girl he had met just a few hours before. He knew that his actions over the past six months had hurt the foreign invaders, and they had more than sufficient reason to concoct a ruse to lead him into a trap. Boone could not shake the lingering suspicion that he was being lured into some kind of an ambush—until he saw the bodies. Jenny McClure had told the truth. Where it widened out, the bottom of the ravine was full of intertwined layers of bodies, from one side of the gully to the other. It was obvious that they had been shot while standing up on the west rim of the ravine, to his left as he looked up it. The snow did not cover them evenly; here and there torsos, arms, legs and some faces were partially visible.

&nb
sp; It was still too dark to take decent non-flash pictures with the digital cameras. Meanwhile the cold rain was making millions of tiny craters in the snow, melting it away. Crazy temperature swings were typical in Tennessee, and he wasn’t surprised by this rain at dawn. There were still a few inches of slushy snow. It could be washed away entirely, or the temperature could plunge again and leave a frozen crust of ice on the bodies. He knew that if he tried to collect physical evidence from the bodies right away he would have to disturb the snow. Fresh tracks among the corpses would make his presence obvious, if guards examined the area after daylight. He would wait a little longer, until there was more daylight for the cameras and, he hoped, less snow left on the ground for leaving footprints.

  The temperature was hovering right around freezing. He was well hidden in the bottom of a narrow erosion gully, his gore-tex parka and pants and boots keeping him dry enough and relatively warm. Warm enough. He’d live. It seemed like he’d spent half his life shivering on the edge of hypothermia. The other half he’d spent broiling in the Middle East. A professional soldier did not choose an easy or a comfortable life.

  Nobody could see him in this spot, unless they literally stumbled over him. Only an eye in the sky could find him. He could wait a while longer; it would be worth it to take sharp photos in natural light just after dawn. A thick coil of root protruded from the mud bank for him to perch his butt on, and he settled down to wait, his arms folded across his chest, gloved hands buried under opposite armpits. Cold rain trickled off the front of his hood and down his face, so he pulled the drawstring tighter. Inside theoretically waterproof and insulated boots, his feet ached.

  Discomfort was an old acquaintance he knew all too well. He mentally subdivided and compartmentalized the various regions of cold and hunger his body felt, and pushed them away from consciousness. This allowed his thoughts to roam free of his physical constraints. If he stayed in this position for too long, he’d begin shivering uncontrollably, an early sign of hypothermia. He calculated that he would be okay for another half hour, until full light. At least his head was warm, inside of his thickly knitted wool hat and beneath his parka’s waterproof hood.

  Not too many people had his knack for isolating and ignoring pain. The past year of widespread deprivation had proven this true. The vast majority of Tennesseans had demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with anybody who would promise to bring them gasoline, home heating oil and electricity. Many of his fellow soldiers had stayed on active duty, even if it meant collaborating with the foreign enemies. Special Forces NCOs were being recruited to serve with the foreign units as guides and liaisons. To their credit none willingly volunteered, at least not before Boone had slipped away from Fort Campbell. The president himself had invited in the so-called foreign volunteers. Jamal Tambor gave collaboration with the foreigners his official blessing, and most of America’s soldiers and police stayed on for the ride, and the guaranteed paycheck.

  It wasn’t hard to understand their motives. Most of them were married and had families to worry about. Boone’s wife had divorced him a decade before, finding the long separations caused by his constant deployments too much to endure. Thankfully, this had happened before they had children, and he had never remarried. It was easy to understand why soldiers with families did not go AWOL, the way he had done six months before, when the first foreign battalions were sent into Tennessee. Even in the midst of the Greater Depression, soldiers and police were paid regularly, and they received top priority for food and gasoline coupons, housing permits and medical care. Instead of shivering in a rainy ditch, they could retain most of their old lifestyle, put food on their families’ tables, and sustain the illusory promise of an eventual government pension. It was easy to understand how they could rationalize their decision to work alongside the foreign occupiers, or at least to tolerate their presence.

  Anyway, for the most part the Special Forces had been sidelined during the present low-intensity civil war. The A-teams had been benched. The Green Berets were considered “unreliable” by Washington. If they were sent into the so-called unpacified areas, it was an open question as to whether they would fight for the government or for the rebels. But if these unpredictable specops warriors were forced out of the military, they might put their skills to use in ways that ran counter to Washington’s aims. So the Green Berets and other special operations units were parked on base in garrison, paid on time in almost worthless currency, and asked to do nothing.

  Last summer Boone had been in North Carolina, at Fort Bragg’s Special Warfare Center for a three-week leadership course, which was in reality a mandatory political correctness indoctrination class. The course title was “Special Forces in the New Global Cooperation Structure.” The class gave him an ulcer; it was almost the last straw, and it helped him to make his decision. After the course, he returned to his home in Clarksville, Tennessee, outside Fort Campbell. He quietly began to put his plan into action, stealthily accumulating needed equipment, telling no one. He departed Bragg after he had seen the televised images of Pakistanis, Kazaks and other foreign soldiers being trucked and bused into Tennessee. The mainstream media television programs showed these “peacekeeping volunteers” rebuilding bridges and schools, operating health clinics and passing out food supplies.

  This was propaganda, meant for the naïve masses outside the earthquake zone. Boone knew from his web of active and reserve military contacts that the foreign troops were sent in because American soldiers would not fire on their fellow Americans, not with enough gusto to bring Tennessee and Kentucky back under solid government control. American soldiers wanted nothing to do with searching for illegal firearms and rounding up fellow citizens for internal exile away from their home counties. Half of the National Guard and active duty forces ordered into Tennessee either had failed to muster for the deployment, or had deserted soon after.

  Boone misinterpreted this reluctance among American soldiers to obey the president’s orders as the beginning of an active resistance movement. He had naïvely believed that after the introduction of foreign soldiers into Tennessee, he would soon be leading his own guerrilla band of patriots. He thought that by this point in the war he would be leading a rebel operational detachment consisting of at least a dozen former specops troops, one of many similar groups of freedom fighters taking on the foreign enemies. But he had never mustered more than four semi-qualified troops at any one time, troops who were willing to take part in offensive direct-action missions. His tiny pick-up squads had conducted successful sniper attacks, set roadside bombs, and made a few snatches of foreign troops and American traitors. He knew that other American patriots had been sniping at foreign targets of opportunity. He heard the echoes of their high-powered rifles, and later he heard the rumors of foreign soldiers and domestic traitors who had been shot from afar.

  This unorganized resistance had faded away when the revenge attacks began in the early autumn of last year. Now sniper attacks brought immediate harsh reprisals, which alienated the local population against the few remaining resistance fighters. The Cossacks and other foreign units were not restricted by genteel American rules of engagement. When a foreign soldier was shot, his mates went into the nearest occupied dwelling and dragged out its inhabitants. Sometimes these unfortunates were executed on the spot as suspected terrorists or as terrorist sympathizers, and sometimes they simply disappeared. Five Americans killed in reprisal for every dead Cossack, Nigerian or Pakistani was too high a price to pay. If an insurgent fired a shot from near his own property, he risked the lives of his family. If he took a shot from somewhere else, he only transferred the danger to the innocent inhabitants of the nearest dwellings. The undeclared policy of reprisals led to terrible moral and ethical dilemmas for the few active insurgents. Most of them gave up the fight rather than see their neighbors murdered in reprisal attacks.

  In the end, Boone’s guerrilla strikes were merely a series of uncoordinated pinpricks, largely because there was no way for different re
bel groups to communicate effectively, or even to know of each other’s existence. Their enemies, both the foreign occupiers and the domestic collaborators, owned the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Hand-delivered messages and dead drops were too slow and unreliable a method of communication. The problem of establishing timely and effective communications between insurgent groups was a nut he had failed to crack. Without secure communications, Boone had not been able to mount more than isolated nuisance attacks. This was a factor he had been unprepared to deal with. During his military career, he had taken the ready availability of secure communications for granted. It was a very different ball game to operate as an insurgent without logistics, resupply or secure radio communications.

  Six months after deserting the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Boone was down to leading one drafted Army private, one old Vietnam veteran, and a couple of teenage civilians. He laughed, scattering sleet from his beard. When crunch time had come, most Tennesseans had been content to wait in long lines for a booklet of government ration cards. Apparently, fighting for freedom was not high on many people’s lists of priorities, compared to assuring themselves a supply of food and electricity. Maybe this should not have come as a surprise.

  Radford County and the surrounding area had been among the few exceptions. After the earthquakes the federal government had put the region dead last on the list for recovery assistance, and the locals had said screw you right back, and gone on living without government help. And now look what their stubborn independent streak had brought them: death in a ravine. The proud nails that had stood up to the government…had been hammered down flat.