Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga

by Marcus Richardson

  “Nest! Nest, come in…” Cooper said. He looked at Swede who shook his head sadly. Sierra-Sierra. Hmph, thought Cooper. Shit-storm doesn’t begin to describe it.

  “—eat: proceed to your objective post-haste. No contact with Slipknot. Repeat: WE HAVE LOST CONTACT WITH SLIPKNOT. You are weapons-free to engage any enemy encountered. Just get to that hospital!”

  “Copy that, Nest. Striker One, Actual, out.” Cooper switched back to his command frequency.

  “Let’s get down to the street. Go, go, go!” he said, pumping his arm for the men on the adjacent building to see.

  “I got a fire escape, east side,” said Mike, already running across the roof.

  Once on the ground, Cooper’s squad took a knee, weapons up and covering all sectors as he consulted the map attached his arm guard. “All right, we’re two blocks south of the objective. Charlie—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get set up. We’ll leapfrog to the annex building across the alley from the objective, south side.”

  “Hooyah,” was Charlie’s whispered reply from the opposite side of the building.

  “Let’s go,” Cooper said. He flashed a hand gesture and led his fireteam across the dark alley. He noticed the absence of normal civilian traffic. There were a few cars, driving by, but nothing like what he had expected for Los Angeles at sunset. It should be packed with civvies. It looked liked the general population was heeding the government’s call to stay home and avoid contact with people to try and stem the spread of the flu. Or maybe the reports that people were starting to die weren’t just media hype. Either way, Cooper didn’t like what he saw.

  “Awful quiet,” Charlie whispered from a block away.

  “Where the hell is everybody?” asked Tank.

  “Coop, I got a body in the street. Civvie,” whispered Tank. A second later, “No wounds. He’s cold. Think it was the flu?”

  “Damn if I know. Just keep your eyes open and try not to touch anything. No one gets infected. Team 1 moving.” Cooper paused at the corner of a building, covering the forward advance of the rest of his fireteam. In the distance, he could hear an ambulance siren echo. He checked his frequency. “Striker One to Slipknot Support, do you read me?”

  Static.

  Switching back to his command frequency, he whispered, “Still can’t raise the Secret Service. Something ain’t right, boys. Stay frosty,” he warned.

  “Team 2 in position,” Charlie reported in a whisper.

  Cooper waited until he could see Mike, Jax, and Swede at the emergency exit of the parking garage across the street—three shadows waiting for him. Suddenly the world around him was plunged into darkness.

  “Wait one,” he hissed. The ground started to rumble, then a dull, deep booooom echoed between the buildings around them. Car alarms went off and in the distance he heard glass shattering from what must have been dozens of plate glass windows.

  “The hell was that?” hissed Charlie.

  “Earthquake?” asked Jax.

  “Go dark!” whispered Cooper. Now that the street lights and shop signs were extinguished, he flipped down the state-of-the art wide-view night-vision goggles attached to his helmet and turned them on. The world went black, then glowed green and came into clear focus. The six tube design gave him the widest possible view with the best clarity and definition available. He could see the blinking IR markers on his team across the street as they crouched, weapons out, scanning for threats. Textbook. He grinned.

  “Nest, Striker One, Actual, how copy?” he whispered. Getting no response he gritted his teeth and sprinted across the street. As he took his place next to Mike, he tried again. “I say again, Nest, come in. This is Striker One, Actual.”

  Static.

  “I got a bad feeling about this,” whispered Charlie’s voice. “All clear from our side. Comm net totally deserted.”

  “Well, if that was a ‘quake, our job just got a little harder. Hey, I got a visual on the main entrance. We’re a hundred yards out. Moving now,” warned Cooper. He used hand signals to direct his squad. One by one they filed out and ran for the annex building, staying as close to walls as they could.

  “No movement from the rooftops. I don’t think our tangos hung around,” reported Charlie.

  Cooper paused at the corner of the Annex building to catch his breath and scan the rooftops once more. “Team 1 in position. Rooftops clear. Bring it home, 2.”

  “Moving.”

  Out of the green-tinted shadows displayed in his night-vision goggles, Cooper watched his second in command lead the last remaining fireteam. Each man sprinted forward and dropped to one knee, covering everything in front and above him. The next man ran past and found a spot farther along and like clockwork, they leapfrogged past each other..

  Cooper couldn’t shake a feeling that they were being watched. Something was wrong, very wrong. First they had been ambushed by men on rooftops directly along their flight path with shoulder-fired missiles that took out half his SEAL Team. There were attackers scattered everywhere along their possible evasion routes, then nothing. Communications with Coronado just went down the toilet. Now, just as they approach their objective, power goes out to this part of Los Angeles. He could see in the distance the high-rise buildings were still lit-up like Christmas trees. So, the rumbling they’d felt wasn’t an earthquake.

  Someone had selectively taken out power to the area just around hospital and nowhere else. That was not the result of a minor earthquake. That showed planning, resources, and purpose. It was a trap – a well-executed one, but a trap, nonetheless. He could feel it in his bones.

  Static tickled Cooper’s ear. He checked his frequency. “—in, Striker One!”

  Relief washed over him. “Go ahead, Nest, Striker One, Actual. What the hell is going on?” he whispered.

  “—attack, say again, comms failing—”

  Cooper frowned. “Say again, Nest?”

  “—blind, GPS, and our satellites are being—”

  “Nest!” said Cooper. “Come in!”

  “—Korean strike force! Hostiles in your—”

  “Nest!” hissed Cooper. No response. He looked around. The familiar look of a major American city suddenly looked like Tehran to him.

  “Coop, what the fuck was that about?” asked Charlie.

  Cooper checked the main, and auxiliary command frequencies. Nothing. Switching back to his squad, he sighed. “All right guys, I think we’re on our own. Last I could tell, it sounded like HQ said our satellites have been taken out by the North Koreans. I’ll bet you a case of beer those tangos on the rooftops were NKors, too.”

  Automatic weapons fire echoed in the distance. It was joined with more, closer it seemed, to the west. Now they could hear multiple sirens and people screaming at the edge of their hearing. Horns started to honk at intersections where the stoplights were out. The panicked voices of civilians filtered in between the darkened buildings.

  “I got tangos firing on the hospital’s north entrance!” called out Mike from the south corner of the annex building.

  “—units this net, repeat, all units this net: Apache Dawn is in effect. This is not a drill! I repeat, all units this net, Apache−” the link went dead in a painful burst of high pitched static.

  The sound of a gun battle rattled all around them. A louder bang signaled someone’s use of a grenade. Single pop-pops. It sounded like pistols firing in-between all the rat-a-tat-a-tat’s of AK fire. The screams of wounded, frightened civilians penetrated the night. Cooper could also detect the sharp popping of M4s. It sounded to him like the Secret Service had enough sense at least to bring a few real guns.

  Civilians appeared in ones and twos, dragging and pulling each other away from the fighting. Some were yelling for help and calling on God. Most just ran, crashing into each other and anything that got in their way. Fear, Cooper observed, was a powerful motivator.

  “What the hell is Apache Dawn?” asked Tank. The sound of his voice drew Cooper’s attentio
n back to the mission. He ignored the civvies and activated his mic.

  “That means we’re in some deep, deep yogurt.” Cooper paused as a man shoved an elderly woman out of his way. The old woman angrily shook off Cooper’s hand when he tried to steady her.

  “Let go of me!” she hissed. She tottered off, clutching her tattered dress tightly.

  Cooper shook his head. “Listen up, Striker. Our President is across the street, under siege in that hospital. All that stands between him and those NKors over there are a handful of Secret Service agents. It is up to us to reach and secure him. That, gentlemen, we will do, AT ALL COSTS.”

  An explosion echoed across the street and the number of screaming civilians diminished. Smoke drifted across into their positions. Cooper could see a man trying to half-drag, half-support a woman with blood covering most of her lower body.

  Doctors, nurses, patients – some in hospital gowns flowing in the wind – people caught on the street all streamed out of the hospital. The surrounding buildings were emptying as well, contributing to the growing river of screaming, shoving, panicked humanity spreading in all directions away from the invaders.

  Most people seemed not to notice the squad of dark-clad heavily armed SEALs wearing night-vision goggles as Cooper tried to lead his team through the roiling wave of civvies. “Keep moving forward!” he yelled, pushing a screaming man out of his way.

  “Help us!” someone shouted.

  “Run! Move!”

  “My baby−“

  The voices rose into a cacophony of sound that fought for dominance with the explosions that shook the ground. In all his years of training and fighting around the world, Cooper had never experienced anything so chaotic.

  A break in the mass of fleeing civvies let him throw his back against the corner of a building adjacent to the hospital. It was forward progress, but not much.

  This is taking too long−there’s so many people!

  “From what I can tell, comms are down net-wide—we are cut off from reinforcements. That means it’s time for us to drop the hammer and do what we do best, SEALs.”

  “Hooyah, Master Chief!” was the chorused response.

  “All right then,” said Cooper, checking his weapon one more time. “Let’s show these cocky little fuckers what happens when you show up uninvited at our house. Team 2, flank right. Team 1, left.”

  “They’ve gained entrance to the hospital,” warned Mike, standing on a parked car’s hood to see over the mob of running civilians.

  “All right. I want controlled bursts, and keep it accurate. We got a lot of wounded civvies on the ground, so watch your step and keep your footing. If you go down you’re going to have a hard time getting back up.”

  “Hooyah,” someone grunted.

  “Like a cattle drive back home,” observed Tank.

  The ground shook violently as they started to move forward. Most of SEALs were thrown to the ground, along with the civilians. It was like a giant hand had just come along and toppled everyone in one swipe down the street. Cooper could see through the flailing arms and legs, a huge explosion erupted, lighting up the sky briefly – he guessed it was somewhere downtown. The shockwave blew out windows and set off car alarms in the wave that rolled toward them. Bits of flaming paper floated on the breeze. Debris rained down on the surrounding buildings and the screaming throngs of panicked civilians.

  “What the hell?” someone yelled.

  Another explosion shook the ground like a small earthquake. Cooper found himself on his back on the sidewalk, under a woman in a hospital gown. She screamed hysterically and clawed at his face, begging for help. His mind had enough time to register that she reminded him of Allie, before he shoved her roughly aside.

  Thunder rolled through the sky from the north. Bits of glass fell from above—busted out of windows overlooking the street. The ground trembled again and Cooper glanced up and shielded his eyes. It was like some sort of nightmarish rain.

  “Coop!” said Mike, struggling to his feet on the other side of the street. He pointed up into the evening sky. “We got some big fuckin’ missiles inbound!”

  Cooper rolled to his side and fought the urge to hold onto the ground as it shook again. He could feel hands grabbing his legs and feet, voices screaming for help and crying out in pain. He risked a glance up where Mike had pointed and his heart froze in his chest

  Holy shit.

  His training kicked in and the cold rationalization hit him that if the missiles were nuclear, then nothing would make a difference in the next fifteen seconds and everyone around him – his brothers in arms, all the civilians—would be burned to a crisp and obliterated in a ball of fire and radiation.

  If they were conventional missiles, though…

  “Stay on target!” Cooper said as he knocked a man away from his rifle. He picked himself up off the street and elbowed through the crowd. A hand slapped his face and he had to pause and adjust his night-vision goggles.

  “Mission first—we have to get into that hospital!” he yelled. “Weapons-free!” Cooper roared as he raced forward and fired his carbine in three-round, tightly controlled bursts. The wall of civilians parted in front of him as they tried to escape the gunfire.

  He could see muzzle flashes out of the corner of his eyes—his SEALs were advancing in step with him. He smiled. If this was going to be the end of their world, if they were going to die in a nuclear holocaust, then by God, they were going to go out like SEALs: teeth bared, guns blazing, advancing on the enemy, and taking no prisoners.

  Cooper ignored the shrieks and screams of the enemy soldiers as they fell under the hail of bullets unleashed by his Team. He was surprised to see that despite the hot-leaded hell he and his men had created in their rear, the mass of soldiers seemed to surge forward, hell-bent on gaining entrance to the besieged hospital.

  The ground rumbled and Cooper looked down to see his feet above the ground. Then all he saw was empty sky, then concrete rushing up to meet his face. When the earth stopped vibrating, he coughed and pulled the night-vision goggles from his face. The smell of concrete dust filled his nose and made his eyes water.

  First thing he noticed, upon getting to his knees, was that the fleeing crowd was thinning out at last. Only the weak, the wounded, and the stragglers remained near the hospital now. And the dead. They were everywhere, covering the ground in twisted, broken shapes. Arms and legs stuck up at wrong angles where people had been trampled to death in the mad stampede to escape the North Koreans.

  His ears were ringing and everything seemed to moving a slow as the flaming paper drifting through the air. Cooper looked down at his hands; black gloves covered in fine gray powder. He brushed himself off and peered through the smoky darkness. The world had been transformed in a heartbeat.

  No longer could he see orderly buildings and streetlamps and parked cars. All he saw was a wall of smoke. Here and there in the grayness, a burning car or a fire in a building made a bright point, but otherwise, only things within about twenty feet were visible. He swallowed. He didn’t want to look at those things – the bodies of the civilians, the body parts, the faces, locked in horror-filled screams that would never be heard, the struggling forms of people still alive, still desperate to get up and get away…

  He heard one of his men coughing over the squad’s comm-net. Cooper blinked to clear his head and focus again on the mission. He slapped the side of his rifle to clear the dust.

  “Jesus…”

  “Guess it wasn’t a nuke,” said Tank’s deep voice.

  Someone else grunted a bitter laugh.

  “Swede, gimme a hand—I’m stuck over here…” gasped Mike.

  “On it,” was the reply.

  Cooper looked up at the sky. Only two more missiles were up there, falling like shooting stars to the north. He put them out of his mind and turned back to the task at hand. Before him, scattered among the dead civilians−and a growing number of dead Koreans−was the remaining mass of invaders, all struggli
ng to force their way into the hospital.

  “Lot of NKors got inside,” said Charlie, voice steady as steel.

  “Changing mags,” Cooper called out. He took a knee to quickly switch the empty magazine from his MP5 and slap in a fresh one. Jax staggered by, still shooting and tapped Cooper on the shoulder to let him know it was safe to stand again.

  “I’m out,” said Tank in a calm voice, taking a knee to switch magazines, exactly as Cooper had done it, ten feet to his left. Cooper watched out of the corner of his eye as Mike’s small form stepped up to signal Tank it was safe to rise again. He grinned. Precision. Deadly precision. He stepped over another North Korean body and moved forward.

  Over the constant staccato of his team’s gunfire, he could hear the roar of jets overhead. Explosions scorched the air in the distance and seemed to be getting closer. And on top of everything, the screams of civilians. He saw people racing up and down the streets in a wild, mob-like stampede, leaving buildings to witness or flee the gunfight. Some even had cell phones up, trying to record the movie-like violence.

  A jet streaked by overhead, turbine engines whining. Cooper looked up from the controlled carnage to see afterburners glowing in the night sky like twin stars. A building exploded with a tremendous roar down the street as the jet banked hard left and screamed west. In the distance, through the haze of smoke, he could see toy cars and tiny people tossed through the air from the shockwave as the building collapsed in a billowing plume of smoke and dust.

  “Damn civvies are everywhere,” said Sparky. “This is ridiculous−hey, get the hell out of here! Move!”

  “This is some serious shit, man,” yelled Jax over the din. “They got fast-movers past NORAD, ICBMs…how the hell is this possible?”

  “Stow it−we’ll worry about that later! Charlie, go,” ordered Cooper. Whatever North Koreans had pulled on America, his Team would respond after they secured the President.

  “Right flank that breach,” Cooper said as he raced forward over the bodies and dying enemies to secure the blasted-open north entrance. Smoke was billowing out of the hole, rendering his night-vision nearly useless. Charlie slammed against the wall on the other side of the gaping hole and nodded. Cooper looked to his right to see his fireteam spreading out and covering the entrance.