by John Chapman
Manny made eye contact with his team and said, “I’m pushing. Stay Frosty.” They all nodded, and Jerry said, “We’re all we need Boss.” Manny nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was only a few hours into this thing and he was already proud of his team. He went back out the door, then pointed to Troy and quietly said, “Delta team. Assault through.”
Chapter 15
Walmart
Alliance, OH
Despite all the cold weather gear she had on, Kasey was getting chilled. Lying in the icy grass at the edge of the southeast corner of the lot, forced by her mission to stay completely immobile, she could feel the heat being sapped from her body. Her Kestrel 5700 told her it was 24 degrees, but the temperature was dropping fast and it felt much colder. She struggled to maintain her focus, knowing the teams were relying on her for information, and cover if the fight came her way.
Kasey took her eye off the scope for a second to relax her neck and eyes, and when she got back on the gun something had changed. It took her a few seconds to figure it out. The Black Knight M113 had moved up to the north-east corner of the parking lot when Bravo team breached, and was covering the front of the building. The M240 on the armored vehicle was not equipped with a thermal sight, so the gunner was using his helmet mounted NVGs and the IR laser and illuminator on his MAWL to see and aim. As the IR beam moved around, it created some great contrast for Kasey as she looked through the PVS 22 clip-on night vision device on her Sako M10 rifle.
Kasey realized there was now a head in a ball cap and the upper shoulders of a man silhouetted in the IR illuminator from the M113. He was poking up from the top of a vehicle that was stalled in the driveway just to the east of the garden center. The man was on her side of the vehicle looking at the M113, and the M240 gunner had not seen him. Kasey activated the B.E. Meyers IZLID IR illuminator on her Sako and the man’s image virtually jumped out at her. Now that he was illuminated from her position, she saw him clearly. He was a white guy wearing a tactical vest and a ball cap, and had an SKS rifle with a long magazine held low behind the vehicle. As she decided, given this guy’s clothing and weapon, that he was indeed a dong, Kasey saw the M240 gunner in the M113 stop moving and focus his laser and illuminator on the subject. She got on the radio and said, “Delta Seven, Delta Sniper. That subject is a dong. I can see his entire body, and he is armed.” The gunner replied, “Roger. On you.”
Kasey centered the reticle on the dong’s head, but as she prepped the trigger the guy broke cover and sprinted west towards the still running pickup in front of the east doors to the store. Kasey quickly led him and fired, but his full body flinch and continued running told her she had missed. The dong passed behind the northeast corner of the building before she could get another round off, and she got back on the radio, “Delta Sniper, negative hit.” The M240 gunner replied, “OK. I’ve got him.”
The Black Knight assaulter on the M240, Jared Venton, had retired from the Alliance SWAT Team 3 years ago, and now worked patrol on the midnight shift; but he had continued to help teach at the range when he had time. In addition to the years of experience Venton had with the M240 as an Ohio Air National Guard Security Policeman, he had been one of the original APD officers who helped spin the rest of the team up on the belt fed machineguns when Kyle had first acquired them. He didn’t like to brag, but Venton was a surgeon with a 240. He saw the dong was sprinting for the running pickup, and decided to take that option away from him. Besides, it was easier to hit and disable a stationary pickup than a running dude from 150 yards away with a belt fed while shooting under NVGs.
Venton lit into the truck, sending short streams of 7.62 love into the Dodge pickup’s engine compartment, driver side tires and wheels, and where he thought the gas tank should be. The truck was reduced to a burning heap by the time the dong could arrest his run and make a decision on where to go, now that his getaway ride was a useless hulk. Venton saw the dong make the turn towards the east doors into the store, but couldn’t fire; his rounds would enter the store and probably hit one of his team mates. That’s fine, Venton thought. I’ll just kill him with my radio. “Knight Six, Delta Seven, one dong squirter coming to you through the east doors. I say again, a squirter is running INTO the store through the east doors.”
When David and Kyle heard Kasey’s initial radio traffic, they’d just finished clearing the shopping cart storage area inside the interior set of east doors. They stayed in place, not wanting to be in the exposed east doorway if a Black Knight machinegunner needed to engage the dong outside. They didn’t hear Kasey’s suppressed shot, but they heard her next radio call and Venton’s response. Unsure of Venton’s angle of attack with the 240, they continued to hunker down in case he engaged into the north wall of the store.
When the hellish bursts of M240 fire stopped, and Venton radioed that the dong was headed back into the building, David and Kyle exchanged feral grins. They were perfectly positioned to ambush this dude as he ran into the door. They stood up, shoulder to shoulder, took perfect combat carbine stances, and waited. In less than five seconds the sound of falling glass and the running crunch of boots announced the guy was bumbling through the east doors. Then he was in their lasers, sprinting into the store but looking back at the parking lot. He never realized death was waiting with a smile in the other direction.
Both Kyle and David saw the SKS at the same time and started burning the dong to the ground with a broadside of 5.56 rounds, tracking and filling him in as his momentum carried him a couple feet past their position. “Knight Seven, splash one,” David said over the radio. Kyle couldn’t resist the chance to mess with Kasey. He pushed his PTT and said, “Delta Sniper, Knight Six. We wiped up your squirter. You’re welcome.” Kasey could hear David chuckling in the background on the radio, and couldn’t help but laugh. Kyle was the king of lame tactical puns. After a quick fist bump David and Kyle tac loaded their carbines and went to find work.
*
It took over an hour for the assault elements to search the entire building. The multitude of small rooms, cubbies and nooks, and nightmarish angles of exposure on the retail floor forced the teams to spend a lot of time communicating to de-conflict their movements. These delays, while necessary, caused Mark some gray hairs in his beard. Momentum is life in CQB, and Mark and Manny were constantly forced to sacrifice momentum for angle coverage. With the hostages recovered, nothing else in the store was worth accidently shooting one another over, so they sucked it up and did what they had to do.
Delta team found one more dong while searching the infant supplies section in the southwest part of the store. He was found on his knees with his hands up, and a blowgun, an SKS rifle, and an XD .45 pistol lying on the deck, out of reach. After Delta team got him in Cobra Cuffs they removed his tactical vest, shoes, and hat. While searching him, they found three throwing stars in an ankle holster and a knife hanging down his back from some paracord around his neck. When they questioned him, Manny and Troy didn’t even bother asking his name, they just called him ‘Ninja’.
It seemed Ninja came to Walmart prepared to ‘lay some hate’, but had lost all his enthusiasm when he saw all his buddies get a mudhole stomped in their ass near the registers. He ran and hid in the infant care section and waited to surrender. Ninja denied even firing his weapon; and a quick check of the SKS told Manny he was probably telling the truth on that front. Manny had a Delta assaulter take Ninja to the employee break room, and their search continued.
Alpha team found the store manager, Harold, hiding inside one of the women’s fitting rooms; and after a quick tactical questioning session to confirm his identity, they took him to the CCP to get checked out by the medic. Shepard knew Harold, and spent some time getting him calmed down. It turned out Harold was most worried about getting fired for shooting at the dongs. Shepard assured him that not only did he do the right thing, but that Walmart most likely no longer existed as an organization. Shepard knew Harold would be a critical resource as they tried to use the supplies
in Walmart to keep the city from falling apart.
*
By the time the two elements linked up at the northwest and southeast corners of the store, everyone was smoked. Mark, Manny, Kyle, David, and Bones spent the next hour organizing their asses off. They set security, made sure the assaulters got some water and tac loaded their carbines, documented the scene (just in case the lights came back on), and got the Walmart employees sorted out.
Echo and Delta teams were tasked with searching the parking lot and sorting out the victims who had been gunned down there as the raiders had arrived. Troy and Trent reported back to Kyle that 34 adults and three children were down in the parking lot. Trent told Kyle 29 of the adults and one of the children had perished, and that the survivors had been moved to the CCP at the west doors, where Doc Zimmerman was working on them.
Kyle asked Trent and Troy, “How are the guys handling the carnage out there?” The two team leaders shared a look. Trent responded, “They are mad bro. Several of those people could have been saved if we had gotten to them earlier.” Kyle took the comment as a criticism and said, “What the f**k could we do? We had to handle the threat before we could help them.” Troy quickly replied, “No one is questioning that brother. We are upset because we wish we had the emergency medical resources that could have been treating them while we were in here working.” Kyle nodded and said, “Me too brothers. Me too.”
At David’s suggestion, they armed the Walmart employees from the stock of rifles in the sporting goods section, and set up a camp inside the store for them to live temporarily. David explained to them that the Squadron did not have the resources to get them all home right that minute, but they would work out a plan over the next several days to get them where they needed to be. The little girl was the child of one of the female employees, who had been in the store with her mom for some reason when the lights went out.
After speaking with the elderly couple, David tasked Charlie team with taking them home to gather up some belongings and their medications then return them to the store. The couple had decided that they wanted to help the community during the crisis, not hide at home; and thought they could contribute by staying at Walmart and helping however they could.
As the team was bringing some order from this chaos, Kyle was silently praying, asking for guidance on what to do with the two prisoners. It would be simplest to just execute them. That would be simple to justify, given the situation and what the dongs had done out in the parking lot. Mark walked up to Kyle and asked, “What are we going to do with these dirtbags we caught?” Kyle let out a long breath and said, “I’m not sure brother. I was just praying about that.” Mark nodded and said, “Well, as far as I’m concerned the Constitution wasn’t nullified by this EMP. How did they handle murderers before electricity?”
Kyle nodded his agreement and thought for a second. “We know where Judge Morris lives. We could go find him and make it his problem. We have a prosecutor, I suppose we could put them on trial.” Kyle thought for a second before continuing, “I hate to waste what are sure to be limited resources feeding and guarding them, but doing anything else makes us tyrants.” Mark replied, “I couldn’t agree more brother. This event, whatever it is, only means the end of civilization if we let it.”
They stood in silence together for a moment before Mark continued, “I am going to use Ninja as labor to get these bodies moved.” Kyle nodded and said, “Task a team for security. We will turn both of them over to Foxtrot once we get back to the FOB. They can guard them.” Mark squeezed Kyle’s shoulder and walked away to organize things.
Mark assigned Bravo team to guard the prisoners and supervise the work that needed done. Manny immediately grabbed Ninja, gave him a casualty litter from the M113, and put him to work. Manny then got together with the store employees and organized a watch schedule for them. Mark had told Manny they weren’t leaving any assaulters behind to guard the store for the night, so Manny spent a lot of time helping them get organized to defend themselves and the store’s resources until tomorrow. It took until well after midnight, but Ninja eventually got all of the bodies moved to the west side of the parking lot. Tomorrow they would bring a backhoe from the FOB and bury everyone.
David approached Kyle and Mark as they stood in the CCP, and said, “Hey brothers. I need to go to the house and check on my family.” David’s home in Alliance was less than a mile from Walmart. He wasn’t too worried about his family yet, but he needed to check in. “You should just stay the night there.” Kyle replied, “No sense sleeping on the ground when you’ve got a perfectly good bed there. Take one of the unarmored HMWWVs.” David said, “Thank you brothers. I’ll be at the FOB before sunup.” Mark said, “Please be careful brother. Why don’t you take one of the single guys with you to watch your back while you travel?” David thought for a minute and said, “Sounds like a plan, I’ll take Lee.” He bro-hugged David and Mark, and took off to find Lee.
Mark found Bones and helped him organize getting the store’s main doors, and the door Trent had blown up, boarded up for the night. By one a.m. they had everyone loaded up in the vehicles and heading back to the FOB. Everyone was exhausted and emotionally wrung out. There was so much that needed to be done in town, but they couldn’t push the teams past the breaking point. This was only day one of what was almost sure to be a permanent situation.
By the time all the teams pulled back into the FOB, unloaded, got the casualties situated, and the prisoners turned over to Foxtrot team, the guys were asleep on their feet. Several of the wives got up from their make-shift sleeping areas in the classroom and made a hot meal for the guys. After resetting their gear and loading mags, everyone flaked out where they could and ate, then found a warm place to curl up and sleep. To a man, the guys with families that made it to the FOB said a quiet prayer of thanks for the safety of their loved ones.
The Black Knight Squadron command team, minus David, met up with Chief Stone in the TOC and gave him a full report. He agreed with the idea to find Judge Morris, and put it on his list for the next day. The group decided to get some sleep and meet up before the sun came up for a serious planning session. By the time Mark found Kasey sound asleep, wrapped up in the sleeping bag from her rucksack, he was as tired as he’d ever been. He noticed Kasey had already set up his blow-up ground mat and laid out his bag next to her, and said a prayer of thanks for his wonderful wife. Mark fell asleep thinking of how lucky he and Kasey were to be in this place, with these wonderful people, when the lights went out.
Chapter 16
Stark Towers Apartments
Canton, OH
Nicholas “Bookie” Lincoln wasn’t your average drug lord. His 5’7”, 140-pound stature, thick glasses, buck teeth, sunken chest, and slight limp, all conspired to create the impression of a thoroughly unimpressive and harmless handicapped man. Based on appearances, Bookie was absolutely the last guy you would peg as a dope kingpin. Bookie not only liked it that way, he worked hard to further that impression.
Bookie, now 29 years old, had grown up in these same projects were he now stood. The son of a crack addict mother, he had never learned his father’s name; his mother couldn’t remember it. He’d gotten his nickname young in life, the result of the boys who hung around this very project making fun of him for always having an arm-full of books in tow whenever he walked past them. They were learning to sell dope and pull robberies, while he spent all his time with his nose in a book. Most of those losers work for me now, Bookie thought. At least the ones who aren’t dead or in jail.
Growing up in a truly desperate kind of poverty, driven by his mother’s addiction, Bookie had never known when he was going to eat again. The only constant in his early life was books. Canton’s public library system gave him an outlet to immerse himself in other worlds, helping him ignore his crappy life. Never a great student, mostly because he was bored, he stopped going to school when he was 12; choosing instead to educate himself. His mother never noticed he’d stopped going to school.
Bookie’s studies were deep and wide-ranging. By the time he was 16, he understood his stature and physical abnormalities were the result of his mother’s drug use while pregnant, and the severe malnourishment he’d endured as a small child. After deep thought and contemplation, he decided he would never be hungry again. As Bookie looked around his world for a way to make money to eat, he couldn’t help but notice the only people who had lots of money were drug dealers and preachers. While he had read the Bible, being a preacher didn’t appeal to him.
Having made his decision on a career, Bookie looked for a way in the door. One of his many interests was accounting, and by 16 he’d read and understood enough to be a good bookkeeper. His break came one night as he sat on the dirty floor of an apartment in the Stark Towers. His Mother’s crack dealer, another young ghetto rat named Jigsaw, had engaged him in conversation. Bookie had impressed Jigsaw with his obvious intellectualism and knowledge of handling money.
Jigsaw recalled a conversation he’d overheard several weeks earlier with the kingpin of Canton’s dope trade, Big Mook. Big Mook had been complaining to Jigsaw’s boss, Ray-Ray, that he had been forced to ‘fire’ his accountant, because he thought the guy was stealing from him. After busting a cap in his account’s ass, Big Mook was faced with a mounting pile of cash he didn’t know how to get rid of.
The day after his conversation with Bookie, Jigsaw mentioned Bookie to Ray-Ray, suggesting Big Mook might be able to use the scrawny kid. The next time Ray-Ray went to drop off cash, he mentioned the kid to Big Mook, who said, “Bring that little nigga to me. Anything is better than trying to keep track of all this cash myself.” The next day Jigsaw tracked Bookie down at the library and took him to see Big Mook.
It took Big Mook less than five minutes to realize Bookie was special. He had never met anyone as intelligent, well-spoken or street smart in his entire life. He hired Bookie on the spot, making him part of his posse. Bookie went to work immediately, and within a week had all of Big Mook’s cash safely distributed, and much of it smartly invested. Within two months, Big Mook realized Bookie was not only making him rich, but his money was no longer visible to the cops. From then on Big Mook began asking the now 17-year-old advice on all sorts of subjects, and found Bookie’s counsel invaluable. With Bookie’s help, Big Mook expanded his operation into Akron. Things had never been better for Big Mook’s organization. Over the next 10 years, Bookie and Big Mook built an illicit business empire, until one of the Mexican cartels decided Big Mook had shorted them on a payment.
