Kat adjusted the gain on her Night Optical/Observation Device and panned back and forth. The runway and aprons were simply dark green in her night vision scope, but a few of the hangars glowed white-hot. The airfield had backup generators, which implied someone kept them fueled.
The pilot of the second Osprey whistled from his back ramp. He shined an infrared spotlight, invisible to the naked eye, at the only other aircraft still on the landing apron. Through her grainy green vision, Kat spotted a civilian Land Rover with headlights off flash past the C-130 five hundred yards away.
The Special Operations Command operators took a knee as one and lit up the vehicle with their own invisible PEQ-2 infrared lasers. In this part of the world, even on a friendly military base, you treated every unknown vehicle like a car bomb. Anything less than complete paranoia guaranteed you’d be coming home in a closed, leak-proof casket.
The Land Rover’s driver gambled with his life as he raced towards the troops without touching his brakes. Twenty safeties flicked off in unison as the stranger breached a hundred yards. Captain Dore tapped his throat mike. “Open fi—”
The Rover squealed to a halt fifty yards short of their deadline. Two older men hopped out and raised their empty hands.
“Hells ya! Glad you made it.” Some US Air Force officer in blue utilities strode forward. He pumped everyone’s hands like a politician on election eve. “I’m Major Lyons, in charge of the US maintenance support team. This is Colonel Al-Raeesi with the Royal Omani Air Force. He’s the base commander. So, when are the rest of the Marines getting here?”
Lyons cut his eyes at Kat as she snorted. Dore hooked his rifle to a chest pouch and draped both arms over the stock. “We’re Army, actually. As far as I know, both the Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Ford carrier battle group were lost at sea. I’m afraid we’re all that’s left of the flotilla. How many troops can you muster here?”
Lyons’s eyelids fluttered on full automatic. “That can’t.... I mean… a dozen ships? Fifteen thousand men and women gone that fast! Damn…We’d heard the same rumor, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Shit. All I have available is a small maintenance and security detachment. Fifty personnel, armed only with wrenches and a few rifles…” Lyons peered over Captain Dore’s shoulder and gawked at the haggard faces staring back from the helicopter.
The Omani Colonel extended his own shaking hand. “Why, in Allah’s blessed name, are you bringing civilians into a warzone?”
Dore gripped Al-Raeesi’s sweating hand. “Doesn’t look like much fighting is going on around here. Where’s everyone? Don’t you have any jets? Why aren’t you providing air cover?”
Major Lyons’s khaki-clad companion squeezed Dore’s hand far too long. Kat could have sworn a tear trickled down and disappeared inside Al-Raeesi’s tangled beard.
“I sortied everything we had as soon as the attacks began. Ten brand-new Euro Typhoon fighters, crewed by our best UK-trained pilots. None were ever heard from again.”
He finally dropped Dore’s hand and went back to clacking his misbaḥah prayer beads. “After that slaughter, I released the ground crews. They were beginning to desert anyway. You have to understand, there wasn’t anything left for them to do. So why not let them go home and defend their families? What would you have done?”
Major Lyons clapped Al-Raeesi’s shivering shoulder and pushed him towards the Land Rover. “Relax. These people aren’t inspectors. No one is questioning your judgment.” Lyons turned back to Dore.
“Why don’t we get out of the open? I’m sure those civilians could use some chow. Let’s move everyone inside the admin building.”
Dore jerked his head at Sergeant Michaels. He and the other soldiers hustled their charges out of the choppers and across the tarmac. Kat started to join, but hung back. “Gentlemen, what’s the plan? How are we going to pay those sneaky Iranians back?”
Captain Dore grunted. “Iran? No way. They couldn’t pull off a surprise attack like this. This thing is too widespread and sophisticated. Whatever’s going on, it’s got Russia written all over it. Probably making their big move to control the Middle East.”
Major Lyons sighed and tapped the rear window of his SUV. Dore and Kat spun around as a third figure climbed out of the Rover’s backseat. The civilian’s polo shirt and slacks were far from intimidating, but his cheery voice boomed authority.
“You two really have no idea what’s going on, do you? Major, I think it’s time for a briefing. Please take our guests to the bunker.”
Kat planted her feet and cocked her head at the civilian. “And who exactly are you, Mr…”
“Call me John Smith. I’m just a lowly government contractor working for some boring agency you’ve never heard of.”
Major Lyons stepped between them and took Kat’s elbow. “Trust me. You’re going to want to see his communications getup. It’s better than anything we have.”
***
Five minutes later, Dore, Kat and the other senior staff of the Special Operations Command team crowded into a dank basement under a nondescript aluminum shack. Major Lyons dived into his briefing without preamble.
“We received a vague War Orders alert several hours before this shit began. Command was worried about something, but gave us no details. Two hours later, the lights went out. Most of the Arabian Peninsula lost power at the same time that our satellite communications went down. We’re assuming it was some type of EMP burst. Shortly afterwards, we began receiving conflicting reports of strange attacks around the world. Either nuclear detonations or meteorite impacts, but the effect seems to be the same: total annihilation. Now, this is all coming from fragmentary relay reports and not all of them in English, but what’s clear is at least a hundred national capitals have been leveled. Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing… well, you get the idea. Another hundred or so large military bases and major population centers are gone as well, but the strikes appear highly selective.”
Dore rubbed his neck. “So if it wasn’t the Russians or Chinese, then who attacked us?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Major Lyons leaned his head against the map board. “You have to understand, because of this weird EMP stuff, we’re blind, deaf and dumb. Every satellite is offline, all microwave-band systems are fried and the ionosphere is shot to shit. Most of our radio communications are now only line of sight, which requires a network of airborne repeater stations to reach anyone over the horizon. As you can imagine, with thousands of enemy fighter craft popping up all over the place, they don’t survive long. Whoever the enemy is sure knows exactly what they’re doing.”
Kat sauntered over to the stack of exotic communications gear on a side table. “Wait, most communications are line of sight?”
Mr. Smith laced his fingers behind his head and spoke for the first time. “Show them, Major. I don’t think security clearances matter any longer.”
The Major reached into an open safe and tossed a sheaf of loose papers on the table. “The only thing working, at least most of the time, is the Extremely Low Frequency radio. The network was designed specifically to function in a post-nuclear war environment. Problem is, the damn system is a Cold War-era relic with limited functionality. We can receive messages, but not transmit. Actually, ‘receive’ is being charitable. There’s only enough bandwidth to decode about a dozen characters a minute.”
Kat nudged past Dore and peeked at some of the short memos.
“Strategic launch Command… Holy shit! Have we gone nuclear already?”
“Several times, in fact. The first counterattack came seconds after Washington was annihilated. POTUS managed to get out a strike order just before enemy aircraft intercepted Air Force One. NORAD fired off the
remainder of our ICBM’s a few minutes later, right before their own destruction. From what we can gather, Cheyenne Mountain withstood three meteorite impacts before the bunker complex was breached. We haven’t heard a thing from any of the backup ‘Looking Glass’ Command aircraft. Hell, I don’t know if they even made it off the ground.”
The Major puffed out his cheeks and unclenched his fist. “Anyway, about twenty minutes ago, some Navy admiral I’ve never heard of claims he’s now commander-in-chief and ordered yet another launch from the ballistic missile subs. I guess he had the proper codes, because the subs complied. And that’s only America’s response. The rest of the world is tossing everything they have into the nuclear free-for-all. Everyone who’s got a nuke is squirting them off. Still, despite all the atomic firepower we’ve unleashed, I haven’t heard successful confirmation from any strike.”
Lyons slid over a ruggedized military laptop. “You know what’s screwy though? Check it out.”
A terribly rendered, 3-D map of the globe covered the screen. Hundreds of green trajectories curved out from the US and merged on six red X’s hovering well above the equator.
“We have no details on the targets other than their x, y, z altitude and velocity. Even more curious, the coordinates aren’t anywhere on Earth. The whole world’s aiming at these six somethings in space. In low geosynchronous orbits, to be exact. One of the targets is about 600 miles directly above us right now.”
Dore spun the global view. Thousands of multi-colored trajectories lanced out from around the planet at the same targets. White from America, blue from England and France, yellow from Russia and pink from China.
“What’s this single red line?”
“North Korea. I bet whoever’s still in charge freaked out when they joined the party, but after Pyongyang went up in smoke, we should be thankful the nuts didn’t aim at the West Coast. I sure hope that’s their only ICBM.”
Kat butted into the powwow around the laptop. “What’s with this bullshit? If we’ve launched so many missiles, why aren’t there six new suns glowing in the sky?”
The Air Force officer rubbed his temples. “That’s the big question. After the EMP, there simply aren’t many radars left operational. Not just here, but in any country. I don’t think anyone truly knows what’s going on up there.”
He collapsed in his folding chair. “Of course, it’s not hard to guess the general picture. I did a cross-training stint at a Minuteman ICBM silo back in my junior lieutenant days. The sad truth is these missiles aren’t designed to kill… well, whatever’s up there. Spaceships, I’m assuming.”
Kat shook her head. “UFO’s? We don’t have time for this shit.”
“Call them whatever you want, but there’s no way to guide our missiles once they leave the atmosphere. ICBM’s are little more than long-range artillery. They don’t have maneuvering thrusters or anything like that. In essence, we’re just throwing darts into space and hoping to get lucky. Even if the enemy isn’t intercepting our rockets, which wouldn’t be difficult, it would still take a miracle to hit anything smaller than the moon.”
He looked the skeptical female warrior up and down. “Here, try to visualize how complicated such an intercept is. I bet you’re a good shot with that rifle. Well, imagine firing at a target moving faster than your bullet, in four dimensions, and that’s so far away your shot needs ten minutes to get there. Even if you’ve led the target perfectly, all they need to do is make the tiniest orbital tweak in any direction and your round would miss by hundreds of miles.”
While Kat struggled to find a flaw in his logic, Sergeant Michaels broke the contemplative silence. “What about New York? I’ve got family…did they get… is it still there?”
Major Lyons worked his jaw, but lost his voice as he met the young man’s bloodshot eyes. Mr. Smith answered for him. “I’m sorry. Times Square was ground zero. The meteorite leveled everything within thirty miles.”
Kat grabbed Michaels as he collapsed to his knees. The bunker erupted in pandemonium as soldiers shouted above each other.
“What about Atlanta?”
“Is Los Angeles okay?”
“Do you have a way to call home?”
“Shut the fuck up everyone!” Captain Dore kicked the nearest folding chair across the room.
“All right. There’s not a damn thing we can do for them right now. If you want a chance to get home, then we have to stay focused. This is the wrong time to lose your shit. First things first, we’ve got twenty-five civilians to worry about right here. We need to link up with the regular military. Major, is Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain still there?”
Lyons lowered his eyes. “Doubt it. They were one of the first installations to go off the air when the enemy’s space planes fanned out around the globe.”
“Ok, what about Kuwait? There were thousands of American and NATO troops scattered in bases around the country. Have you heard anything from them?”
“We were in contact until our last relay plane went down about half an hour ago. No idea what’s going on up north now.”
Captain Dore turned and studied his senior NCO’s. They all nodded, except for Michaels. He was too busy hyperventilating while Kat held his head up. “Well, let’s quit wasting time. Warrant Officer Sims?”
The senior Osprey pilot already huddled over his map, a protractor and calculator in hand. He puffed out his cheeks. “Well, if Major Lyons has some auxiliary fuel tanks we can borrow, we should be able to make it to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. The big problem, since I’m assuming we’ll be flying nape of the Earth to avoid detection, is that we have zilch for wiggle room. Even with the extra tanks, it wouldn’t take much to strand us in the desert. A strong headwind or even a few minutes of excess maneuvering will tap out our fuel reserves. Of course, without the unnecessary mass from the civilians…”
“Negative. Figure out another way.”
Major Lyons cleared his throat. “You could leave them with us, Captain. We have plenty of food and space. They’ll be safe and we aren’t going anywhere. As far as I can tell, we’re the last surviving American outpost in five hundred miles. So I’m not going to abandon this base unless ordered to.”
Lyons wilted under Dore’s cold gaze. “I respect what you’re doing, but let’s be honest. You don’t have a single real soldier. I have two dozen though. I also have a duty to get these people to a safe zone. And this base is far from fucking safe.” He spun around to the Osprey pilot.
“Ditch the ramp and door guns if you have to save weight, but the civvies are coming with us. We didn’t pull them out of one hellhole just to abandon them in another.” Sims and Kat exchanged exasperated glances, but neither had the courage to test their commander.
Mr. Smith ignored the details. The spook stashed a computer and some papers into his rucksack. Then he neatly arranged the remaining cartons of paperwork around the elaborate communications gear. He shrugged into his ruck and flashed Dore a wide grin.
“Make sure you save me a seat.”
Out of nowhere, Smith produced an incendiary grenade and rested it on top of the stack of electronics.
“Take the Extremely Low Frequency radio, Major, but the rest is too sensitive. Now, I suggest we all get out of here real soon.”
Captain Dore stuck out his arm. “I don’t care who you think you are, but you’re sure as hell not coming with us. I’ve got enough non-combatants to watch over.”
The spook patted down his pockets and eyed the room one last time. Satisfied, he somehow grew his smile even wider.
“Uh huh. So what’s your plan, Captain? You thinking of riding up there like a hero and hooking up with some official chain of Command? Sure, maybe they’ll give you a medal for saving the hos
tages, but then they’ll just throw you right back in the fight somewhere else. On the other hand, if you show up with me in tow, I can guarantee you and your team a seat on the next ride back to the States. If you have to fight, why not for your families and on your home turf?”
Captain Dore avoided Kat’s pleading eyes and focused on the smirking spy in front of him.
“You sure a ‘lowly contractor’ has the authority to order my unit around?”
The spook chuckled and pulled the thermite grenade’s pin. “Who do you think sent you into Al Mukalla in the first place? I am sorry about the additional hostages. The Al Qaeda courier I water boarded assured me there were only two Westerners there. It’s like you just can’t trust anyone nowadays. Oh well. I’ll see you on the plane.”
West Palatka, Florida
30 miles southwest of Jacksonville
Rachel spotted their target first. She quit fiddling with the dead radio and pointed out the window. “About time! There’s an open one. Wait, where are you going?”
Dixon slowed, but didn’t stop. “There’s no rush. We still have a gallon or so left. I’d like to know what we’re getting into before we get out.”
Despite long lines at the pumps, the gas station on the edge of Palatka was calm. The source of order became clear as he circled around. Dixon pulled into the lot and parked behind some Florida Power and Light service van. A dark-skinned teenaged boy stood guard over the pumps twenty yards ahead of them. Hard to imagine how anyone could be intimidated by the jittery kid, even with the revolver at his side. Dixon almost laughed, until he caught sight of a hawk-eyed grandmother keeping watch over the boy and the crowd. The double-barreled shotgun in her slender arms never quivered.
Dixon pocketed his keys. “All right. Come with me and stay close.”
Kat and Die Wolfsschanze Page 31
