Rise of the Liberators (Terrafide Book 1)

by Ryan Hyatt

  While in the restroom, Ray received a text message from Dee. She and Sara just arrived safely at her parents’ ranch in Flagstaff. When Ray returned to the bar, the Rocket & Gamble staff cleared, but his glass was refilled.

  Humphrey crept onto the stool next to him.

  “Don’t look so sullen,” he said. “You can’t miss your family that much already. You haven’t left yet.”

  “That’s not it, exactly,” Ray said. “They already left, staying with my in-laws until things cool off.”

  Ray glanced at Humphrey’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar, to see if he knew the dangers service family members faced, but Humphrey was no mind reader after all. At that moment he seemed oblivious to everything except his own thoughts, and they didn’t concern quantum physics or the human condition, only his margarita. Humphrey stirred it with straw.

  “Besides an occasional mishap, it sounds like you and your men have gotten a decent handle on your machines,” Humphrey said.

  “I think so.”

  Again Ray glanced at Humphrey’s reflection in the bar mirror. A huge welt suddenly appeared on the center of his forehead. He must have been hit by a golf ball, Ray thought, strange he didn’t notice until that moment, and then he tried to block it out of his mind entirely and suppress his prickling paranoia.

  The old engineer seemed tired with brain drain. He stirred his drink in circles, and Ray thought he either didn’t know what to say to next, or how to say it.

  So, Ray sipped his beer and turned his attention to a basketball game on the Telenet as other Rocket & Gamble staff trickled out of the restaurant.

  “Are you aware of the other unit?” Humphrey asked.

  “What other unit?” Ray said, and he tried to keep his eyes fixed on the Telenet, but he couldn’t.

  “I didn’t think so,” Humphrey said, and the face in the mirror contorted into a painful frown. “They’re a prototype outfit, based in Florida, in case anything goes wrong with the squads.”

  “I’m not sure why I wasn’t told,” Ray said, “but it’s always good to have reinforcements.”

  “Maybe, and maybe not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s an AI unit,” Humphrey said, his voice low, conspiratorial, staring at Ray through the mirror. “There are no pilots for these kinds of Liberators. All of them are run by ACE, and they are programmed to follow any orders they are given. If for any reason you fail to fulfill your mission, this unit will be sent in to replace you.”

  “Then I guess we better not fail,” Ray said, “unless, of course, Iran turns out to be hell, and my men are eager to leave.”

  “They will be.”

  The reflection of Humphrey’s face filled with apocalyptic dread, and his words drifted song-like to whatever nightmarish tune he envisioned in his mind. Ray noticed the welt on his forehead shifting rapidly, like a closed eye dreaming, while the lump in his own throat became agonizing. All the while Ray felt boozy, sleepy, and unable to end the hallucination.

  “The Marines have a motto, ‘God, Country, and Corps,’

  “The war campaign you are about to embark on will be the first stages in the ultimate test for humanity,” Humphrey said, his eyes shifting rapidly in sync with the welt on his forehead, his voice deep, transcendent, unlike his own. “The Marine motto ‘God, Country, and Corps’ means your moral obligation supersedes not just any given religion, nationality or sect, but your entire species. Remember that, Ray. You and your men will regret it the rest of your lives if you don’t listen to your conscience.”

  “How do you know?” Ray said, clasping his throat, gazing at the frightful image of the possessed man in the mirror.

  “Because I designed this system that will test you,” Humphrey, or whoever controlled him said, “and I assure you, Captain, it’s a system rigged against you. You and your men have been set up to fail.”

  “Then how can we win?” Ray said, and he was unable to breathe, losing consciousness.

  “Prove me wrong.”

  CHAPTER 2

  When Ray woke, the lump in his throat was gone, and the last he remembered was being at Outer Chowder Steakhouse with Humphrey, who told him about his recent hole-in-one. It was a golf story which, regaining consciousness, Ray found hard to believe, since Humphrey walked with a cane, and it was difficult imagining the geriatric swinging a club, let alone hitting a ball so far and so precisely to earn him golf’s finest score.

  But it wasn’t Humphrey, or his stories, that concerned Ray as he glanced at the clock next to his nightstand. He realized following lunch at Outer Chowder he spent the entirety of Saturday afternoon and evening in a drunken blackout. I just hope I didn’t embarrass myself, he said to himself, as he groped for pills in the medicine cabinet to relieve his hangover.

  Unable to find any, Ray stumbled into the shower. While he could afford to take a long one, even at current water prices, he usually preferred not to do so. However, he felt so sufficiently out of sorts that Sunday morning before his mission that, lacking any other relief, he permitted himself the indulgence, and stood naked and stupefied for several minutes as soothing hot liquid blasted his face.

  Feeling better, Ray donned clean sweats and entered the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. That’s when he noticed the red light blinking on the Telenet. Since Dee and Sara safely reached Flagstaff, and his work obligations had been met, Ray didn’t expect to be contacted for the rest of the weekend. He anticipated spending his last day stateside quietly to himself, packing his bags and preparing psychologically for war.

  Ray clapped his hands and reviewed the Telenet message, shocked to discover the war already started and had come to him. The video call from Dee came at three in the morning, while Ray was passed out. She was seated outdoors on a bench surrounded by snow with a blanket draped over her and Sara. Red and blue emergency lights flickered across panic-stricken faces.

  “Something horrible happened,” Dee said. “Mom and Dad are dead. I just want you to know, Sara and I are scared, very scared, but we’re all right. My phone’s gone, and we’ve been told by a military representative we’re going to be transferred to a safe location immediately. We’ll be in contact with you when we can.”

  The message ended. Ray’s jaw dropped, and the fear he felt of leaving his wife and daughter to fend for themselves at such a dangerous time came back to him in a fresh, harsh wave of guilt. Ray turned his Telenet to the news as several reports began to emerge nationwide of a spate of murders that occurred throughout the night, believed to have been committed by Iranian agents or those working with them.

  On every channel Ray turned to, the images were the same. In New York, Washington, D.C., Miami, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, body bags were being carried out of homes. While several assassinations were successful, many were not, and the body bags included agents of death as well as the men and women Liberator pilots who tried to stave off the perpetrators. The executions sometimes included ghastly video messages from masked assassins decrying American imperialism and calling for a jihad against the West.

  While such acts of terrorism were clearly intended to postpone or derail American battle plans, Ray realized they also sealed the fate of the Iranian government and its allies by ensuring the war moved forward, now with broad public support. The response would be similar to how the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor united Americans and ushered forth their involvement in World War II, or how the destruction of the Twin Towers prompted a similarly absolute response: the complete uprooting of Afghanistan across the world. Americans were able to maintain isolationism amid atrocities inflicted by the world’s uncivilized peoples, but never when such wrongful acts were committed on their own soil.

  Already vigils were set to be held throughout America’s major cities that Sunday evening, and while the start date for Operation Park Walk was officially classified, Americans would be eager for a swift and thorough response, and Ray knew they would ge
t one. The mood throughout the nation was of shock, to be sure, but also unprecedented anger. Some hawks interviewed on the major news Telenetworks already were calling for a nuclear strike on Iran, which Ray knew was an over-reaching and unnecessary bluff. The Liberators would manage to inflict enough mass destruction on Iran and any meddling allies.

  As Ray sat at his table, sipping coffee and digesting the magnitude of the news images, he received a call. Fearful of more grim news, he preferred not to take it, but there was the possibility it might have been his wife trying to reach him. Instead, it was Specialist David Kim, in tears, at his Los Angeles apartment.

  “They tried to get my brother and sister, but my aunt and uncle managed to fend them off and were killed,” Kim said. “What kind of animals would go after innocent people?”

  “The kind of animals we’re going to exterminate.”

  “Damn right, Captain!” Kim said. “I’m going to crush those fucking…”

  What followed from Kim was a torrent of hate unlike any Ray heard spewed from a person’s lips. It was a shame, Ray thought, listening to his bereaved comrade’s genocidal rant. The weakest link of the Eagle Scouts wasn’t a killer when he signed up for the Liberator program, which was part of the reason why Ray criticized him. Kim seemed too soft. Staring into the Telenet at the young man’s bloodshot eyes, however, Ray knew that time had passed. His innocence was gone. If it was a merciless war the Iranian regime wanted, it was a merciless war they were going to get. Marines like Kim, for the sake of their loved ones, would see to it.

  “I’ll be in Phoenix this afternoon, sir, ready for action,” he said at last, wiping the tears from his face.

  “Hold off, Specialist,” Ray said.

  “Why, sir?”

  You’re out of your head, too full of rage to remember to mourn…

  “There will be services for our dead,” Ray said, “probably a national memorial ceremony for something of this magnitude. I suspect it will delay battle plans, at least for a week.”

  “How’s your family?” Kim said.

  “They made it. Hurt, but okay.”

  “Lucky you.”

  After the conversation, Ray wandered his home aimlessly until he found himself in the garage. There was a ringing in his ears. The sensation occurred before, in combat, whenever his helicopter was hit. A doctor explained the ringing was caused by heightened blood pressure and a rush of adrenaline, and he again was overwhelmed by that feeling of powerless rage.

  Ray held on to the punching bag, striving to orient himself, until finally the ringing subsided and all he heard was his heartbeat. Had it not been for his family surviving the massacre, Ray at that moment probably would have destroyed everything in his sight. Since his wife and daughter merely endured some awful trauma, the details of which Ray knew nothing, he had no choice but to be grateful. As for the rest of his men, the losses they suffered, Ray was incensed, and he channeled his anger into the punching bag, jabbing first, then kicking it, and then finally drowning his body in the timeless motions and rhythms of violence as he beat an imaginary foe.

  At some point during his assault against the punching bag, it occurred to Ray the last time he was so upset in his garage was when Sara’s grandparents missed her birthday. He stopped beating the bag for a moment and leaned on it, crying. He would never have the chance to be upset at them again, he thought, with a wry sort of nostalgia. How easy it was to despise Jared and Kylee for what Ray condidered their silly religious beliefs, although the consequences of their differences weren’t silly at all, but debilitating to their relationship to the bitter end.

  Ray stepped back from the punching bag, suddenly realizing the folly of his cynical ways, the folly of letting his hate get the best of him. He cried and bent down and committed himself to never letting another person’s views, no matter how ignorant or asinine, stand between him his relationship with that person. He would do his best to respect all people no matter how peculiar their conception of truth, even when such people refused to respect his. Perhaps they would have their own awakening in time and realize the errors of their judgment.

  Ray returned to his living room, calm and exhausted, but the calls kept coming. Nearly a third of the Eagle Scouts suffered losses in the tragedy.

  Finally up was Joe Schnell, and Ray was annoyed to hear from this crucial individual so late in the day.

  “Your wife and daughter are at Camp Pendleton,” Schnell said. “As soon as they have been properly interviewed, you’ll hear from them.”

  “Any idea who the perpetrator was?” Ray said.

  “We used some pattern recognition software to analyze photos taken by the police security cameras during the Flagstaff incident,” Schnell said. “We believe it was Herio Atta, a Turkish national and hired hand. His first major job was a political assassination in Brazil three years ago, and you were right, Ray, he’s young. According to our records, the fucker’s only nineteen.”

  “Thanks for the info,” Ray said. “Let me know how the hunt goes. If you don’t get him, I will.”

  They disconnected. Little of the information Schnell relayed was helpful to Ray, save for his wife’s and daughter’s whereabouts. The rest, including details of their ordeal, was already available on the Telenet. The media was fixated on the Salvatore story, apparently, because of its uplifting twist in an otherwise horrific narrative.

  Ray sat on his couch and viewed images of the carnage in Flagstaff. The police station’s entire on-site force was wiped out, yet Dee and Sara lived, thanks to a fellow named Chuck Shaw, a tech blogger and lead actor in a traveling roadshow, who once wrote a famous children’s book. That’s how Ray recognized him, from his book photo. He was author of Charles the Chicken Crosses the Road, a book Sara loved. It was quite a coincidence.

  A news camera panned to the hero at the scene. For some reason he was dressed in a chicken suit.

  “What inspired you to attempt your brazen rescue?” the reporter said.

  “I am a father myself, and I thought about that poor little girl and her parents,” Chuck said. “She was too young to be a victim. I’m just extremely grateful she and the mother are safe and things turned out the way they did, because the odds were certainly not in our favor.”

  Ray froze the frame. He might not have been inspired by the prospect of dying for oil, but he was warmed by the notion decent people still occupied his country. If such people were willing to put themselves on the line for his family, Ray was willing to put himself on the line for them. All of those years in school Ray spent with classmates, all of those times they pledged allegiance to the flag, all of it in fact was an act of solidarity, a commitment to a common ideal that Chuck helped Ray to understand was still real.

  Decent Americans didn’t seek a limitless right to burn fossil fuels, lay siege to the environment or mindlessly serve the economy, nor did they seek a license to flaunt their superiority, ignorance or inadequacies on the world stage, all of which the media sometimes portrayed.

  Decent Americans simply wanted the right to try and live decently. They weren’t overly political or religious, but they were genuinely concerned with the welfare of themselves and others, which in that sense made the United States unlike any other nation on Earth. That was the United States Ray was willing to fight for, he realized. That was the United States he was willing to die for, he realized. Even if his nation’s greatest moment had come and gone, or was yet to materialize, that was the United States Ray decided to represent – a nation of people trying to live decently – when he boarded his Liberator for Iran.

  It was as if a weight lifted from Ray’s conscience, and although the time of crisis was great, the age as dark as ever, none of it bothered the captain too much. The world’s insanity wasn’t his problem, after all. Representing the world’s most powerful nation, it was just his job to help mitigate it.

  Ray saw his mission with renewed clarity. He was American, after all, among the brotherhood of humanity, and he would go forth, and as he
did, he would judge others only on the basis of what they also proved to value and hold dear.

  Ray shut off the Telenet, walked upstairs and crawled into bed. For the first time before a mission, he slept soundly.

  CHAPTER 3

  Iranian leaders denied responsibility for the terrorist attack, but American leaders refused to accept the claim, and their response to the massacre was dramatic and swift. While it was believed the Iranians lacked the ability to wholly organize such a successful, subversive military effort, they still received the brunt of the blame, and because of it, other American adversaries, such as the Chinese and Russians, also soon had reason for alarm.

  In a nearly unanimous vote, Congress championed war against Iran, and the Senate quickly ratified the decision. While media outlets decried the murder of innocents, in which six Marines and twenty-four of their loved ones had been killed, Operation Park Walk moved forward with huge public approval, as Ray predicted. The Liberators were called to action, and America’s enemies were put on notice.

  The national memorial service held a week following the massacre bereaved the dead while honoring the Liberator pilots who survived them. These six men and women remained stateside and mourned the losses of the pilots and two dozen loved ones during the televised event. They also provided an excellent decoy as millions around the world tuned into Washington, D.C. and other major American cities to witness the services for victims live on the Telenet. Meanwhile, the twenty-four pilots from the three active Liberator squadrons who didn’t lose their lives or their loved ones in the attacks arrived in Iran during the memorial services, along with an initial force of twenty thousand troops.