Hope Of The World

by Boyd Craven III

  “Got a little whoopsie feeling,” Sandra said. “I can survive the morning sickness fine, but I didn’t know being pregnant would make me feel faint.”

  “Horse puckey,” Lisa said, coming up the stairs in a rush. “All this stress isn’t good for you or the baby.”

  “I’m okay, Mom, really,” Sandra told her, a smile breaking the frown she’d been wearing, “I just got a little nauseous then my legs felt a little bit rubbery. I’m sitting.” Sandra pointed to the bench to prove the point.

  “Um, Sandra,” David said, holding one ear of his headset he almost wore religiously now, “we’ve got John Norton on the horn.”

  “Is there any problems with the DHS facility? I guess there’s no rush to get that computer data to the President now.”

  “You know, I hadn’t thought about that… No, it seems that somebody John knows has recently surfaced. John said he doesn’t play well with others, but he’s a mad dog type of unconventional warfare expert. He sent this man to our contacts in El Paso.”

  “Who is it?” Sandra asked.

  She waited while David talked back and forth with John, “He goes by Mike, was friends with Dick Pershing and—”

  “Oh shit, I thought he was dead,” Sandra said, then put her hand over her mouth and looked to where Chris was sleeping.

  Blake rubbed her arms as her whole body broke out in goose flesh.

  “Who is he, hun?” Blake asked.

  “King knows him better than me,” Sandra said, “he trained him. Mike… is a complicated guy. He’s definitely somebody you want on your side, as long as there are sides to draw.”

  “What do you mean complicated?” Lisa asked, sitting next to her, fully intending to make sure Sandra wasn’t overly stressing herself out.

  “He worked with small teams. He was the lone survivor of an ambush that killed his best friend. After healing, he wasn’t the same. Some people say he had severe PTSD, some said he was a functioning psychopath, and a lot of people thought that if there was something impossible to do, you called in Mike. Hell, I don’t even know if Mike is his real name. It changed over the years like mine did, but you can always tell by his face. He never changed that. I don’t even know how much I know about him is real, rumor, or misinformation.”

  “What’s complicated about that? Besides the last part?” Lisa asked, knowing it was important.

  “He was later captured by the Taliban and tortured for almost six weeks when he went UNORDIR and—”

  “What’s UNORDIR?” Blake interrupted.

  “Unless Otherwise Directed, basically saying I’m going here to kill bad guys, have the message delivered while the mission is in progress, and radio silence is absolute. A tricky way to cover his butt… but the torture… we found out about him because there was a large fire in a village on the edge of Pakistan that our intelligence folks were alarmed about. They sent in some spy drones and, walking out of the village, mostly dead, was Mike. They tried to debrief him, but his mind… he snapped. They say everybody has a breaking point under torture and, as far as they could tell, Mike hadn’t hit that point yet, but instead he went insane with the drugs and brainwashing they’d tried on him.”

  “What happened to the people in the village?” Lisa asked, fearing the worst.

  “The women and children had fled long before the Taliban took over, but everybody we found had a knife or gun in hand. There were no survivors. I think they said it took six months to get him stable. He was discharged and put on watch, but we all knew that he should have stayed longer. I heard through the grapevine he died of an overdose.”

  “He’s a druggie?” Blake asked.

  “Was,” Sandra said, “I don’t know if he is now. They got him hooked on some pretty rough stuff in ‘stan when they were torturing and trying to brainwash him.”

  “How are you sure this Mike is the same man?” Blake asked.

  “If it’s Dick Pershing's friend Mike, I heard about him from King between missions. He’s one of those ghosts of the special ops world that you hope to never meet in a dark alley.”

  “How much of a badass does he have to be to scare you?” Patty asked.

  “It’s not so much he’s a badass, but more like he’s a force of nature. He has luck in bucket loads and has no problems throwing himself in harm's way. The missions almost always look like suicide runs, but he kept not dying… I don’t know how much of his mind is left, but if he’s back in the picture, we could use him, just… not here. Not in Kentucky.”

  Blake shifted uneasily. He knew how scary and revered his wife was, just by what was said by other people. Knowing there was somebody out there who gave her the willies… he almost broke out into goose bumps himself. He knew she was one of the most respected and feared in the spec ops community, but this Mike guy sounded unhinged and like a loose cannon. Blake wasn’t going to disagree with his wife’s word. Not here in Kentucky.

  “Well, he’s heading to El Paso,” David said. “John wanted to know how much you want to read him in on, and if it was fine to get him secure comms. He told Mike he would, but now he’s having some second thoughts.”

  “Mike would never betray the country or a friend,” Sandra said immediately. “I’m not worried about him having access to our network of people. Tell him to go ahead and give Mike whatever it is he needs.”

  “What target do you want him to focus on? That’s the second part of John’s question,” David said, and then mumbled ‘wait one,’ into the handset mic.

  “I’d love for him to take out the cartel that’s keeping the central supply lines somewhat working.”

  “The cartel? One man?” Blake asked.

  “I don’t know whether or not he’s alone, but he graduated King’s school of dirty tricks in making things go boom. I would imagine he knows a thing or two about traps and force multipliers…” A grin broke out on her face.

  “Part of you wants in on that fight,” Blake stated.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “but the operations part. I’m… not the same woman I was a few years ago.”

  She got up and headed toward the bedroom and Blake followed. David got busy talking with John, knowing enough about coordinating things to not need to bug Sandra. As the militia was activated and organized, each unit operated much like an independent cell with Sandra and regional commanders as the organizing point of contact.

  “What do you think?” Lisa whispered to Patty.

  “I think Sandra is right, not in Kentucky,” Patty whispered back before turning to put on her headphones.

  Lisa walked over to Chris and made him a little more comfortable. She was pulling a throw blanket down to cover him when Blake walked out.

  “I was just coming to get him, Mom,” Blake said.

  “Oh, I was just going to let him sleep there,” Lisa said. “I can stay out here and watch him.”

  Blake hesitated a second and then nodded. “I’m going to sit with Sandra. She has one more radio call to make, and then I’m making her take a break and get some rest. I’m… Mom… she’s…”

  “She’ll be fine,” Lisa told him.

  “Thanks,” Blake said and hugged her hard.

  8

  Somewhere on the far side of Van Horn, in a run-down gas station that had been abandoned long before the EMP, Mike and Courtney found a US road atlas they could work with. They weren’t far from the location when they were able to zero in on the GPS coordinates more accurately. They drove, knowing they were getting close. Fort Hancock, Texas. The GPS coordinates matched the area right on the Mexico/USA border.

  The map showed the Mexican side of the border built up like the American side, across the Rio Grande. Once they’d left the major city area, the highways had been very clear. West Texas was hot and very, very lonely. They had passed survivors on I-10, some working on gardens in the ripped up lawns, some herding by hand various cattle. One of the things Mike and Courtney noticed, though, that once out of the big cities, there were more survivors.

&nb
sp; Courtney had been driving, and grinned when Mike complained for the thousandth time about her hitting every pothole on the highway. She swerved to hit another one, and Mike cursed while looking at the map.

  “Come on,” he told her, “we’re less than an hour out, and I’m trying to figure out—”

  “Dick - Mike!” Courtney shouted.

  Mike looked up sharply at her tone. Three men holding AK-47s to their shoulders were blocking the highway.

  “Over, under, around or through?” Courtney asked.

  “This thing is armored with solid rubber tires. It’s half the reason why you haven’t busted an…”

  Courtney swerved and hit another bump, but this time it was because of muzzle flashes and the sparks that kicked up from the hood.

  “Over and through!” Courtney yelled, stomping on the gas pedal.

  The diesel engine roared, and the Hummer lurched forward as it rolled even faster. Both of them could hear the gunfire as they roared past the first man in a staggered line. The second jumped out of the way, and the third tried but was clipped by the fender and thrown almost boneless to the side.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Courtney asked, looking over her shoulder, and already hitting the brakes.

  “It’s not the smartest thing in the world, but yeah,” Mike panted, reaching for the M4 carbine instead of his beloved KSG.

  “Good, cuz I’m gonna… hey, that’s my gun,” she complained.

  She rolled the Hummer to a stop, angling the driver’s side toward the left lane sharply so Mike would have cover as he got out. He rolled out as gunfire lessened for a second. Looking through the glass, he saw two of the three performing magazine changes, and the third was motionless on the ground. He laid his M4 over the hood and let off three bursts, hitting both before they had finished their reload.

  Courtney barreled out of Mike’s side and took a low position behind the passenger side tire, holding Mike’s KSG 12 gauge in a low ready position.

  “Three down,” Mike told her, “cover right as we move up on them. I want to see if these are run of the mill dirt bags or who they're with. Cartels or Jihadis…”

  “We could just go,” Courtney suggested, before raising the shotgun up to her shoulder and rounding the front grill of the Hummer.

  “That’d be the smart choice,” Mike replied, following half a heartbeat later.

  One of the men they had downed was groaning and rolling around a bit. His AK had fallen several feet out of his reach, and he was a mass of crimson where a burst had taken him low in the torso.

  “You’re getting old,” Courtney teased, picking up on the same jibe she’d used previously.

  “Hit him,” Mike told her.

  “Hey,” Mike said, kicking the man’s boots when he got close.

  He was wearing earth tone pants and a checkered shirt, black work boots, and had shockingly pale skin. His dead companion was dressed similarly but was obviously of Latino descent. The third man… Mike didn’t look at him long. He was very dead and not a pleasant sight, with bones sticking out of his leg where he was hit by the armored hummer.

  The man spoke between gasps and groans. Mike waited, listening to the rapid-fire Spanish.

  “What’s he saying?” Courtney asked.

  “He wants us to take him to a US medic,” Mike answered her and then started speaking to him.

  Courtney was patient, but she hadn’t used her Spanish in years and years and was beyond rusty. She could make out one word in ten if she were lucky.

  “Cartel… violence… girls… movement… food…”

  The man pressed his stomach, to hold in his insides in, and started crying and shook his head no. Mike spoke again, this time anger in his voice.

  “What did you just say?” Courtney asked.

  “He’s with the cartels, but he won’t say if he’s been helping the New Caliphate. Since he’s got a one-way ticket to hell already, he says to just put him down and be done with it.”

  “Oh well, I can do more than that,” she said with a grin, and aimed the space age-looking shotgun in the man’s crotch.

  His pants immediately darkened as he lost control of bodily functions and screamed, before starting talking again. She waited for them both to finish.

  “And?” Courtney asked.

  “I know more than I did before,” Mike said with a grin and pulled the trigger, silencing the man’s moans and cries.

  Blood flew up, but Courtney had been standing back and was missed by the final spray. Mike wiped some off his face before putting a burst into the still man next to the one he’d been interrogating.

  “Just in case,” he said, and stripped the two men of their AKs and magazines before turning back toward the Hummer.

  Courtney ran ahead and jumped into the driver’s side. For once, Mike, the man formerly known as Dick, got in without a complaint as she fired up the engine.

  “Where to?” she asked, frustrated that he was so tight lipped.

  Mike pointed in the direction of the border.

  “What about our meeting?” she asked.

  “They are holding dozens of women and children as slaves,” Mike said, reloading his carbine, and then reached behind him for a gunny sack full of full magazines and ammo.

  He topped off his magazine as Courtney went bouncing over the desert and hills.

  “Mike, Norton’s on the radio,” Courtney whispered as they were getting out.

  She and Mike had traded spots after a half hours’ worth of driving, once they’d got over the makeshift bridge that had been erected since the EMP.

  “Tell him I’ll call him back. I need you to stay here—”

  “You’re not leaving me behind,” Courtney said.

  “You’re not going with me on this one,” Mike said. “This is one time I need you to stay out of this fight, unless they come running to you.”

  “Why?” Courtney asked, angry with her friend.

  “Do you remember how I rescued you?” he asked her.

  “Yeah, you bluffed your way in and… wait, you’re not going in there to kill all the bad guys, are you?”

  “No, but if the opportunity shows up, I will. After all the hostages are rescued. I need you to play ears for me on the handset. The cartel here is in tight with the Caliphate, I’m guessing. If I can get the folks out and leave some surprises… you might get a chance to get some more revenge. Probably more so than me.”

  “You’re taking all the risk,” Courtney said, still angry.

  “In this case, I’m a somewhat tanned, dark salt and pepper-haired guy. I could easily pass as Latino or gringo. You, on the other hand, are blonde haired and blue eyed. The color isn’t uncommon in Mexico, but your looks would make anybody suspicious.”

  “Why is that?” she asked, anger dripping with every word.

  “Because in the vacuum of power here, women became commodities, just like what happened to you in Chicago. You’re free. It’s safer—”

  “I don’t want to sit back while there are people out there who were like me and need help!” she yelled.

  Mike winced, glad the doors were closed, but the windows were down, and the sound could have carried.

  “There’s only two of us right now,” Mike said, “and I need a set of eyes. Yes, I can probably go to the rendezvous point and ask for help, but it’s people I don’t know and don’t trust. It’ll also add a few more hours, and neither of us would want to wait that long.”

  “This bullshit is ridiculous,” Courtney said in a softer voice.

  “And you’ve seen me pull off some ridiculous bullshit, haven’t you?” Mike asked.

  She was silent and then nodded.

  “Plus, there’s a third reason I want you to stay back.”

  “Why?” she asked after a moment's hesitation.

  “Because you’re my friend, and I wouldn’t trust anybody else to go back to Arkansas for me if I don’t make it back from this.”

  “Dammit, Dick… Mike… you don’t have
to—”

  “Yes, I do. We’re half a mile from the old church they are operating out of. When the time is right, I want you to contact Norton and his people and give them the heads up, in case I flush some bad guys north across the border.”

  Courtney pulled off the headset and lurched across the middle of the Hummer and pulled him into a tight hug. He held back a second and then hugged her back.

  “I’m keeping the KSG for now, and you’re taking extra goodies,” Courtney said.

  “Yes, ma’am. And… I’m taking all of the C4 we got from the mining office in Texarkana.

  “All of it?” Courtney asked.

  “Well, a lot of it,” he said with a grin. “I might want to leave some surprises and traps. First, though, I have to figure out if the guy was telling me the truth or not.”

  “I hope it was all a lie, I hope there are no hostages.”

  “I’ll be in touch every hour. You know which frequency to monitor. I’ll hit the transmit button every so often so you know I’m still kicking. Don’t transmit back unless it’s urgent.”

  “I can’t believe you’re making me stay back here,” Courtney said, her voice devoid of anger.

  “You’ll get your chance at revenge. After we’ve freed the hostages.”

  “How are you going to get them out of there?” she asked.

  “I’ll improvise,” he told her, and opened the door.

  9

  “How many are left?” King asked.

  “Missing three,” Michael said.

  “Is that including level three?”

  “Yes,” Tex said, wincing as he shifted to his left leg a bit.

  “Then I want pictures printed of those three, and we’re going to do a roll call of everyone. If we can’t find them that way, I want every parked piece of armor searched. Smith has to pull out and reposition for something Sandra has cooking, and I want the last of the regular DHS Jihadis found before we’re left short-handed.”