Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller
Page 1
Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Trackers
Copyright July 2016 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design by Elizabeth Mackey
Edited by Erin Elizabeth Long
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
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Books by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
The Extinction Cycle Series (Offered by Orbit)
Extinction Horizon
Extinction Edge
Extinction Age
Extinction Evolution
Extinction End
Extinction Aftermath
Extinction War (Coming Fall 2017)
Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller Series
Trackers 1
Trackers 2: The Hunted (Coming Spring 2017/Pre-order here)
The Hell Divers Trilogy (Offered by Blackstone Publishing)
Hell Divers 1
Hell Divers 2: Ghosts (Coming July 18th, 2017/Pre-order here)
Hell Divers 3: Deliverance (Coming 2018)
The Orbs Series (Offered by Simon and Schuster)
Solar Storms (An Orbs Prequel 1)
White Sands (An Orbs Prequel 2)
Red Sands (An Orbs Prequel 3)
Orbs
Orbs II: Stranded
Orbs III: Redemption
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements
Many people have a hand in the creation of this story. I’m grateful for all their help, criticism, and time. I’d like to start with the people that I wrote this book for—the readers. You are the reason I always try to write something fresh, and the reason I strive to always make each story better than—and different from—its predecessors. For those of you waiting on my other books, I thank you for your patience, and hope you enjoy Trackers.
Before you dive in, here’s a little background on how this story came to be. In 2016 I was finishing up book five of the Extinction Cycle, and at that time, I thought Extinction End would be the “end” of the series. I decided to write a new type of story—a story without monsters, zombies, or aliens—about a different type of threat to our national security.
Rewind ten years. I’m sitting at my desk as a planner with the State of Iowa. It was there that I learned a good deal about a terrifying weapon known as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). During a meeting with several agencies, I was shocked to learn there wasn’t much being done to harden our utilities and critical facilities to protect against such a threat.
A few years later, I started working for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management. I had several duties as a project officer, but my primary focus was on protecting infrastructure and working on the state hazard mitigation plan. During my tenure, I helped multiple communities apply for grants to build safe rooms in their schools or municipal buildings to protect from tornadoes. A few years later, I started working on grants that strengthened and hardened power lines in rural communities.
After several years of working in the disaster mitigation field, I learned of countless threats from natural disasters to manmade weapons, but the EMP, in my opinion, is the greatest of them all.
That brings us to today. We’re living in tumultuous times, and our enemies are constantly looking for ways to harm us, both domestically and abroad. We already know that cyber security is a major concern for the United States. North Korea, China, and Russia have all been caught hacking into our systems. We also know other countries are experimenting with technology that can shut down portions of our grid. But imagine a weapon that could shut down our entire grid. The perfectly strategized EMP attack gives our enemies an opportunity to do just that.
Before you start reading, I would like to take time to thank everyone that helped make this book a reality, starting with the Estes Park Police Department.
In the spring of 2016, my fiancée and I spent a week in Estes Park, Colorado, a place I had visited many times growing up. I wanted to show her this gorgeous tourist town that borders Rocky Mountain National Park, and I decided it would also make a good setting for a portion of Trackers.
The police department very graciously allowed me to tour their facilities and ride along with Officer Corey Richards. Department officers and staff explained police procedure for tracking lost people and their operations and response to natural disasters. Captain Eric Rose, who is in charge of the Emergency Operations Center, described what they went through in the flood of 2013, when Estes Park was quite literally cut off from surrounding communities.
I’ve spent time with many law enforcement departments over my career in government, and I can tell you Estes Park has one of the finest and most professional staffs I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Thank you to every officer for serving Estes Park and assisting with Trackers. I hope you find I did your community justice.
I’d also like to thank my literary agent, David Fugate, who has provided valuable feedback on each of my novels. The version you are reading today is much different than the manuscript I submitted, partly because of David’s excellent feedback.
Next up is my editor, Erin Elizabeth Long. She has had a hand in every book I’ve written thus far. I won’t lie—Trackers was a challenge for both of us, and Erin really encouraged me to continue pushing until I got the story right. Thanks, E. I appreciate you more than you know.
I also had a great group of beta readers that helped bring this story to life. You all know who you are. Thanks again for your assistance.
Trackers is more than just a post-apocalyptic thriller about the aftermath of an attack on American soil. It’s meant to be a mystery as much as it is a thriller. There are a lot of EMP stories out there, but I wanted to write one that included new themes and incorporated elements of Cherokee and Sioux folk stories, which I encountered when obtaining a degree in American Indian Studies.
This story, like many works of fiction, will require some suspension of belief, but hopefully not as much as my other science fiction stories. Any errors in this book rest solely with me, as the author is always the gatekeeper of the work.
In an interview several years ago, I was asked why I write. My response was that while my stories are meant to entertain, they are also meant to be a warning. Trackers could be a true story, and I hope our government continues to prepare and protect us from such a threat.
Captain Eric Rose of the Estes Park Police Department told me that he wasn’t sure he was ready for a post-apocalyptic Estes Park. I’m not either. Let’s all hope this story remains fiction.
With that said, I hope you enjoy the read, and as always, feel free to reach out to me on social media if you have questions or comments.
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bsp; Best wishes,
Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Foreword
Dr. Arthur Bradley
Author of Disaster Preparedness for EMP Attacks and Solar Storms and The Survivalist.
When used conventionally, a nuclear warhead could destroy a city and cover the surrounding region in deadly radiation. Horrible to be sure, but at least it would be localized. When detonated in the atmosphere at the right altitude, however, that same warhead could generate an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would cause almost unimaginable harm to our nation.
The most significant effect of such an attack would be damage to the nation’s electrical grid. Due to the interdependency of systems, the loss of electricity would result in a cascade of failures promulgating through every major infrastructure, including telecommunications, financial, petroleum and natural gas, transportation, food, water, emergency services, space operations, and government. Businesses, including banks, grocery stores, restaurants, and gas stations, would all close. Critical services such as the distribution of water, fuel, and food would fail. Emergency services, including hospitals, police, and fire departments, would perhaps remain operable a little longer using generators and backup systems, but they too would collapse due to limited fuel distribution, as well as the loss of key personnel abandoning their posts.
In addition to the collapse of national infrastructures, an EMP could cause widespread damage to transportation systems, such as aircraft, automobiles, trucks, and boats, as well as supervisory control and data acquisition hardware used in telecommunications, fuel processing, and water purification systems. Such an attack could also damage in-space satellites and significantly hamper the government’s ability to provide a unified emergency response or even maintain civil order. Finally, many personal electronics could also be damaged, including our beloved computers and cell phones, as well as important health monitoring devices.
With the collapse of infrastructures, loss of commerce, and widespread damage to property, an EMP attack would introduce terrible financial ruin on the nation. Consider that it is estimated that even a modest 1-2 megaton warhead detonated over the Eastern Seaboard could cause in excess of a trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) dollars in damage.
Testing done in the 1960s, such as Starfish Prime and the Soviet’s Test 184, provided some idea of the potential damage, but weapons have become even more powerful and our world more technologically susceptible. No one really knows with certainty the extent of the damage that would be felt, but expert predictions range from catastrophic to apocalyptic. What is universally agreed upon is that the EMP attack allows for an almost unimaginable amount of damage to be done with nothing more than a single nuclear warhead and a missile capable of deploying it to the right altitude. Given that there are more than 128,000 such warheads and 10,000 such missiles in existence, it seems prudent to better understand and prepare for this very real and present danger.
What many do not know is that the U.S. has been openly threatened with an EMP strike by Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Leaderships of these countries have come to appreciate the truly asymmetric nature of such an attack. Consider that an EMP strike would be largely independent of weather, result in long-lasting infrastructure damage, and inflict a damage-to-cost ratio far greater than any conventional weapon, including a nuclear “dirty bomb.” Worse yet is that our enemies would not limit themselves to a single EMP strike. Rather, they would detonate several warheads, carefully timed and positioned across the nation to achieve maximum damage.
Author Nicholas Sansbury Smith understands how an attack could cripple the United States. I first spoke with him when he was working for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management in the disaster preparedness field. He reached out when he was writing a science fiction story about solar storms with some questions about my book, Disaster Preparedness for EMP Attacks and Solar Storms. Since then, Nicholas has also spent a great deal of time researching EMPs.
Trackers is a work of fiction, but many of the places in the story are real. Utilizing his background in emergency management and disaster mitigation, Nicholas has done an excellent job of describing a realistic geopolitical crisis that sets the stage for an EMP attack. The following story is a terrifying scenario in which brave men and women must adapt to a challenging new world—a world that we could see ourselves being thrust into. Part of me wishes Nicholas had continued writing purely science fiction stories about aliens and government designed bio-weapons because Trackers is a novel that could become non-fiction.
For Chloe, Gerber, Bella, Ace, and all of my faithful furry companions that are always on a mission tracking down treats.
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
—Ernest Hemingway
-Prologue-
A six-man Marine force recon team boarded the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk just after midnight. Staff Sergeant Sam “Raven” Spears sat inside the belly of the bird, smearing camouflage paint across his tan skin. After a ten-year career with the Marines, he was accustomed to slipping his combat gear over his muscular frame for missions at the ass-crack of dawn, but he wasn’t used to the Predators receiving orders directly from the President of the United States.
Raven turned to look out the window as the Black Hawk flew away from base under the cover of darkness. The pilots swooped low over flat fields on approach to the North Korean border.
His current enlistment with the Marines was over in a few weeks. He had hoped to buy land, start a business, and make a home in Estes Park, Colorado after over a decade of war, but the sight of the mine-studded fields and the presence of the Korean civilian in the troop hold made him question if that would happen now.
The Black Hawk was closing in on the demilitarized zone, and Raven could see why it was known as the most dangerous border in the world. To the north was one of the most oppressive and violent regimes on the planet. Barbed wire fences, landmines, and guard posts seemed like flimsy defenses against the totalitarian nation. Troops were stationed on both sides of the border, so close they could practically hit each other with hand grenades. The whole area was a tinderbox—and the Predators were being dropped right into the middle of it.
Shit was about to get very real, very fast.
The Marines with Raven all specialized in deep reconnaissance and were trained in search, seizure, and raid missions. He had a feeling the thin Korean man dressed in black sitting across the troop hold was going to help them track a target. Sad eyes framed by crow’s feet met his gaze for a moment before Raven looked away to the members of his team.
The men were all dressed in black-clad armor, fatigues, and helmets mounted with “four eyes” night vision optics. They carried suppressed M4s as well as M9s. Gunnery Sergeant Rodney Black, the middle-aged team lead, had been studying a map as the rotors thumped nearly silently overhead. He folded it and met the eyes of each man in turn with the cold gaze of a Marine that had seen the horrors of war for too long. He had a hard-on for rules and respect, which made Raven the least popular Marine on Team Predator.
“All right. Listen up, everyone, because we don’t have much time,” Black said in a firm, authoritative voice. “Our orders come from the Commander in Chief himself.”
He reached into his vest and pulled out two pictures. The first showed a dark-haired young woman in a party dress smiling happily at the camera.
“This is Hannah Sarcone, or Lima 1,” Black said. He passed the photo around for the men to look at. As the picture circulated, Black held up the other photo of a redhead wearing a peace sign t-shirt.
“This is Sarah Baker, or Lima 2. Both girls are being held at a small prison camp near the border. The best map we have of the area is shit, which is why Mr. Lee is here.”
The photos reached Raven, and he studied the faces of the young women. They looked…nice. Sweet. How the hell had two pretty girls ended up in a North Korean prison?
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bsp; Black pointed at the Korean man across from Raven. “Lee here used to work at the prison before he defected to South Korea.”
Every helmeted head turned to Lee. Raven wasn’t one to judge; his own past wasn’t all roses and daffodils. But he could tell the rest of his team was unhappy about having a traitor in their midst, regardless of who he’d betrayed.
“What’s so special about these girls?” asked Staff Sergeant Billy Franks.
Black scowled, even though the question was a good one. “They’re American citizens and college students who went to Seoul for some human rights protest. They must’ve taken a wrong turn at the border, because Miss Baker and Miss Sarcone are now being held in a North Korea detention facility.”
“Hang on just a sec, Gunny,” Franks said. “Sarcone? Not any relation to Senator Mack Sarcone, is she?”
Black’s hesitation was answer enough, but he admitted, “She’s Senator Sarcone’s granddaughter.”
Raven could guess how the rest of the story went. Sarcone had pulled some strings, and now President Brandon Drake had authorized the Predators to drop in behind enemy lines to bring Sarcone’s granddaughter home.
There was a skeptical snort from the other end of the troop hold, and Black held up a gloved hand to silence his men.
“I know what you’re all thinking. But we’re Marines, and our job isn’t to question orders. Our job—our duty—is to extract our targets and bring them safely back to base. Got it?”
The Predators answered “Yes, Gunny!” in one voice.
Black held up the map he’d been studying earlier. “We believe Lima 1 and 2 are both being held here,” he said, stabbing the laminated paper. “There are three buildings in the compound, but our intel points to this one.”
“If we storm the wrong building, Senator Sarcone’s going to be really pissed,” Billy whispered.