The Gauntlet

by Mike Kraus

  “On it, sir!” The private ran back to his bike and slid his helmet back on before gunning the engine, turning the bike with a quick squeal and dashing off down the road.

  “All right, listen up!” Jackson raised his voice as he addressed the group. “Everybody back to the vehicles now! We’re heading out! Everyone load up and follow me!” He had considered informing everyone of what was going on, but if they were wrong about the location and the terrorists were in the vicinity then they’d be tipped off. Not that they wouldn’t already be tipped off by the fast arrival and departure of the motorcycle, though, he thought.

  Jackson ran back the way the group had been walking, heading for the Humvees that were following a short distance behind, providing both cover and extra security for those on foot. Linda and Frank, who had been close enough to Jackson to hear what the private said, jumped into one of the Humvees with him as the soldier who was driving slipped into the back seat next to Frank.

  “Sir, where are we going?”

  Jackson glanced at the young man in the rearview mirror as he waited for the rest of the soldiers to get into their vehicles. “To stop this before it gets out of hand. I hope.”

  ***

  Ten minutes later, after traveling to the far southwestern edge of the city, Jackson’s group slowed to a halt as they encountered a pair of soldiers standing by the edge of the road. The soldiers ran up to Jackson’s vehicle and saluted as he rolled down the window.

  “Sir! You’re the first units to arrive.”

  “What’s going on? Which building are they in?”

  One of the soldiers turned and pointed at a large grey building a couple blocks down the street. “It’s a building that’s under construction. A library or something, sir. It’s mostly finished on the outside, but apparently there’s a lot left unfinished on the interior. We’ve encircled it as discreetly as possible and have all the exits covered.”

  “Any movement inside?”

  “We caught a glimpse of two men walking by a window a while back, but nothing since then. They still have to be inside, though.”

  Jackson nodded and turned off the Humvee’s engine before glancing at the soldier sitting behind him. “Spread the word down the line; I want everyone getting into supporting positions, ready to breach the entrances. Hand signals until we go in, got it?” The soldier nodded, his eyes wide, and Jackson turned to look at Frank and Linda. “You two come with me.”

  Jackson, Frank and Linda followed one of the two soldiers that had greeted him, slipping away down a side street and entering a small storefront across from the library. Construction on the southwestern edge of the city had been ongoing for several months and was part of an attempt to revitalize the area. Residents who worked in the city proper but couldn’t afford to live there were moving in droves to nearby housing that was far less expensive, but the city officials could see that things were going to take a turn for the worse unless the area had some major upkeep. New parks, streetlights and public works—such as the library—were all investments in the area that were providing employment and leisure activities to residents in their local neighborhood.

  The library was a massive, gray monolith that was nearly constructed. Tall pillars stood out front at the top of a wide staircase while long, stained-glass windows were still being installed on the other three sides. A side entrance to the lower floor of the library was visible from the storefront, and though it appeared boarded up a quick glance at the building with a pair of binoculars told Jackson what was really going on.

  “Somebody broke in through there, eh?” He whispered to the soldier they had followed, Private Faulks, as all four of them crouched in the shadows behind the shop counters to stay out of sight.

  Faulks nodded and gestured at the door. “We haven’t been any closer to the building than this, but we have soldiers in place all around the perimeter. The entrances on all sides look like that one. Clearly broken into and sloppily fixed up to look like they weren’t.”

  “Any signs of IEDs behind the doors?”

  “No, sir. Scans with the wall imagers showed nothing around the door or frame.”

  Jackson nodded approvingly. “Good. Do you have orders yet from command on what to do?”

  Faulks gulped and shook his head. “No, sir. You’re the ranking officer here.”

  Jackson hissed an inaudible curse and Linda gave him a half-grin and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Time to step up, eh, Lieutenant?”

  “Bite me, Rollins.” Jackson rolled his eyes and turned to Faulks. “Got your watch?” The private held up his wrist and nodded. “Good,” Jackson continued. “We go in in seven minutes from my mark. That’ll give you just enough time to inform everyone. I want a few more with us on this side, just to bolster our numbers. When everyone goes in, we’re going to use standard breaching formations. Shoot to kill anything that moves and isn’t wearing a uniform. Our sole priority is the device. Once we secure it then we can worry about whatever else these assholes might throw our way. Got it?” Private Faulks nodded and Jackson stared at his watch. “And… mark. Go!”

  Faulks dashed out of the back of the storefront, heading out to give verbal instructions to anyone he could reach and hand signals to those he couldn’t. Jackson groaned quietly as he sat back from his squat, taking the weight off of his legs and ankles so he could sit down on the ground for a couple of minutes. Next to him, Linda double-checked that her rifle had a round in the chamber and that there were a trio of spare mags in her vest ready for easy access.

  “What do you two want me to do?” Frank was looking over the counter at the library as he spoke, trying to keep any hint of nervousness out of his voice.

  “Stay—” Jackson started to speak, but Linda cut him off.

  “Stay behind me.” She glanced at Jackson as he opened his mouth to argue, her expression making it clear that it wasn’t a subject up for debate. “You and I are going in last, after Jackson. We don’t have uniforms on and we’re not going to get into a potential friendly fire situation. If something goes wrong, just shoot at anyone except me who’s not wearing a uniform.”

  Frank took a deep breath and nodded. Hearing that he and Linda would be going in last made him feel somewhat better, though there was a twinge of regret over not being part of the group that was going to storm in and—hopefully—save the city. The sound of footsteps in the back room of the store distracted Frank from his thoughts and he turned to see a pair of soldiers he recognized walking in.

  “Sir.” The soldiers knelt down next to Jackson, looking at him intently as they took deep breaths to recover from their run over.

  “You get the word on what we’re doing?” Jackson asked.

  “Yes, sir. Ready to rock and roll.”

  “Good.” Jackson checked his watch and rolled his head around, cracking the tendons in his neck. “Thirty seconds, people. Everyone get ready. I’ll go in first, you two after, Linda and Frank to follow.” He glanced at the pair and gave Linda the same mischievous grin she had given him just moments earlier.

  “Time to step up, eh, Rollins?”

  ***

  For the dozen terrorists sitting, lying and walking aimlessly throughout the interior of the library, life had never been more dull. After slipping the crate into the city and getting it inside the target building without a hitch, they had set to work on rigging the structure with explosives tied to the device to create an explosion that would be guaranteed to spread the radioactive material inside as far and as wide as possible. Once this setup was complete, though, there was nothing left to do except guard the building. The predictions provided to them by their leader turned out to be accurate, though, and the building and surrounding area had been left largely alone by the soldiers and civilians inhabiting the city, though that also meant that boredom was left to grow at an ever-increasing pace.

  They never got a chance to be bored again.

  Four teams—one at each entrance on each side of the library—went in with b
reaching charges and flashbangs at the exact same time. Five terrorists who happened to be in the general vicinity of the entrances went down without being able to even reach for their weapons. Two terrorists who were in the bottom floor of the building trying to sleep were able to get up, get their rifles in hand and start moving toward the noise when they were gunned down in a hail of rifle fire from Jackson’s team.

  The remaining five terrorists, on the top floor of the library, were able to get into cover before the team that went in through the main entrance of the library could get to them. Two soldiers from the front team were dropped in the initial gunfight and the rest had to back off as the group of terrorists dug themselves in to a makeshift barricade they had constructed around the device. The other three teams, upon clearing the bottom floors of the library and hearing the gunfire from above, raced to the top as they followed Jackson’s bellowed orders. As he shouted them, though, he realized that they were likely too late.

  As four of the terrorists crouched behind cover and fired blindly at the soldiers pinned down near the main entrance to the library, shards of glass and plaster and marble rained down from the walls and ceiling. The fifth terrorist, meanwhile, worked feverishly on the device as he tried to remember the sequence for arming and detonating it. He wasn’t the man who was supposed to manually trigger it; he was merely the third backup. The one who spent the least amount of time learning about the device. His lack of knowledge and the delay that ensued was the only reason that Phoenix was not consumed by fire and radiation.

  Jackson’s boots thundered up the steps as he lead the teams forward and they emerged from two lazily spiraling staircases, one on each side of the library. He spotted the soldiers first, pinned down near the front and reduced to taking potshots at their attackers. With a quick shout he directed the team across from him to move forward and engage, laying down suppressing fire on the attackers while he and the group with him moved around to the side in a flanking maneuver.

  “Miss me?” A voice from behind Jackson startled him and he glanced back to see Linda running alongside him and Frank just a few steps behind.

  “I told you two to come in after us!”

  “For the record, we did.”

  Jackson shook his head and waved her off, having neither the time nor the patience to deal with her. He spoke to his unit as they ascended a small staircase on the side of the library, gaining elevation over their targets and providing a perfect line of sight. “Take them out, but don’t hit that device!”

  Linda was the first to fire, bringing her rifle to bear and squeezing the trigger with a practiced hand that had sent tens of thousands of rounds downrange. The head of the man fiddling with the device flopped to the side as a pink mist consisting of blood and brain matter sprayed across the device. Jackson and the other soldiers with him took aim next, quickly dispatching the remaining four terrorists before they could figure out where the new fire was coming from.

  “Cease fire!” Jackson bellowed out as he stood up, before turning his attention to the unit that was pinned down near the door. “Get a medic over there, now! The rest of you, secure this area!” As the soldiers scrambled to obey the orders, Frank and Linda raced back down the short staircase and headed toward the device.

  “You got this, Rollins?” Jackson looked at her expectantly, knowing that she and Frank had been listening in on the debriefing given to him by the techs who had dismantled the device in the warehouse. He would have preferred to have one of the techs who had performed the original dismantling perform this one, too, but one of the soldiers being tended to by the medics was that same man.

  “Hell no.” Linda shook her head firmly and pointed at Frank. “He does, though.”

  “Richards?” Jackson looked at Frank and raised an eyebrow. Frank nodded and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I can handle it.” He gingerly stepped over the dead man lying in front of the device and opened a small panel on the side. As he worked, Jackson stepped close to Linda, hardly believing the sight before him.

  “How is it he knows what he’s doing better than you do?” He whispered to her, trying to keep Frank from overhearing.

  “You saw him with that drone. He may have been an accountant but he’s good with this kind of stuff. Way better than you or me.” She glanced over at the wounded soldiers near the front entrance and grimaced. “And way better than him, at least in his current state.”

  Before Jackson could answer, Frank stood up and put his hands into the air. “Done!” He stepped back from the device as the small screen on the front slowly faded and shut off as the capacitors discharged.

  “Already?” Jackson asked, stepping up to look at the side of the device.

  “Yeah, it’s actually pretty basic to disarm. They never put any sort of failsafe mechanisms on them to protect them from tampering.”

  “So if they turn off the signal blocker this thing won’t explode in our faces?”

  Frank kicked at a small part on the floor. “Unless that receiver hops back onto the device by itself… no. We should be good.”

  “Nice work, Frank.” Linda patted him on the shoulder. “You just kept us from being nuked.”

  As the adrenaline started to fade and Frank realized what he had just done, he felt his body shake and he sat down on the edge of the barricade. Linda crouched near him while Jackson headed over to check on the wounded soldiers.

  “You okay there?” She asked.

  “Yeah… yeah, I think so.” He nodded and gave a weak smile. “That was… intense. I didn’t really expect to step up and do that.”

  Linda shrugged. “You got put on the spot and you didn’t crack under pressure. Can’t ask for any better than that.” She watched as he trembled again before standing up and helping him off of the barricade. “Come on, sit on the floor. Don’t need you passing out from all this excitement and cracking your head open on the floor.”

  Frank managed a slight laugh as he sat on the ground and put his head back. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and staring up at the half-finished skylight above. Outside, in the street, the roar of diesel engines echoed faintly as the next sets of reinforcements arrived. Drawn by both the messenger on the motorcycle and the flare, they arrived expecting a fight but were overjoyed when Jackson’s unit described the quick and decisive way in which they had been able to take out the enemy.

  Over the next hour, after more techs arrived and confirmed that the device was indeed disarmed and enough officers higher up on the food chain were satisfied that it wasn’t going to explode, the signal jammers across the city were switched off. Signals of all types flooded into the former dead zone, both military and civilian alike. Some were standard communication channels giving updates and keepalive codes, but the majority were talking about something else. A city that hadn’t been as fortunate. A city whose operation hadn’t gone quite as smoothly.

  As Frank and Linda milled around in the library, watching the soldiers go back and forth on their assignments, they spotted Jackson walking toward them. Instead of the cheerful, celebratory expression he wore earlier, there was only anger and pain in his eyes. Linda recognized the cause by instinct and her gut twisted in fear.

  “Jackson? What happened?”

  He swallowed hard and fought to keep his voice steady, though all he wanted to do was scream to the heavens above. “Chicago’s gone.”

  The announcement was simple and silence followed in its wake as Linda and Frank digested the news.

  “What do you mean by ‘gone,’ Jackson?” Linda finally asked.

  “They had a nuke go off. Dirty bomb. Whatever. Initial causalities are in the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands. Millions more’ll die before too long. They had the device planted in the perfect place to do the maximum amount of harm.” He looked at the device sitting on the ground next to them, partially dismantled by the techs. “Just like this one.”

  There was silence again for a moment until Frank finally worked up the courage to ask the questio
n that was on the tip of his tongue. “What do we do?”

  Jackson glanced at him before staring Linda dead in the eyes. Her expression had turned as ice cold as his and she nodded at him in agreement, knowing what he was going to say before he said it.

  “We’re going to find that son of a bitch you’ve been chasing and take him down.”

  Chapter 10

  “I just heard we lost Miami, too.”

  “Chicago and Miami? How is that possible?”

  “Don’t know; they’re not telling us anything.”

  “But we got the one here, right?”

  “Hell yeah. And they killed all the assholes guarding it, too.”

  The whispered conversation between a group of soldiers surrounded Frank and Linda as they waited for Jackson. Frank tried to ignore the whispers, dismissing them as rumors and hearsay but a quick glance at Jackson as he jogged back toward them confirmed that everything was true.

  “Sorry about that, you two. Took a hot second to get in touch with D.C. You’re both confirmed, though. Nobody’ll question you again.”

  Linda nodded and took back her ID, as did Frank. “Thanks, Jackson. Is it true what they’re saying about Miami?”

  “I’m afraid so. I haven’t been briefed but Miami and Chicago are all everyone’s talking about.” He looked around, trying to see through the crowd of people and makeshift buildings before motioning at a large structure a short distance away. “Come on, let’s get to the command post so we can try to get Sarah on the line.”

  The celebration over the location and disarmament of the device in Phoenix had been short-lived once the news about Chicago came over the radio. With the device gone, units were being redeployed both through Phoenix and to other portions of the country. Jackson’s unit, as the ones who spearheaded the attack against the group at the library, were summoned to the local command post to undergo a debriefing before being reassigned.

  After all of the traveling with the convoy and working on the fringes of cities for the last few days, Frank and Linda received a shocking reminder of just how bad things really were as they drove toward the more populated section of the city, near the command post. People sat in droves along the sidewalks with jackets zipped and blankets pulled tightly around themselves. They were largely quiet as they watched the soldiers driving and marching back and forth, having lost most sense of self after being stuck in the city for so long. In some areas, where relief supplies were being distributed, there were disagreements, shouting and even a few minor fistfights, though those were quickly clamped down on by nearby soldiers.