“Oh my God,” Gabe whispered beside me.
I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stare.
“Alpha, Wolf, do you copy?”
Silence.
“Alpha, Wolf, are you still there?”
Nothing.
He tried again. Same result.
“They’re gone, Gabe.”
He looked at me.
“They’re gone, man. No one could have survived that.”
Down below us, the factory had gone flat, as though stomped down by a giant foot. Heaping tons of rubble tumbled and rolled. Steel I-beams stretched up toward the sky like dead fingers.
“What the hell?” Gabe breathed.
“Lucian.”
“What?”
“Lucian,” I said again. “He fooled us. That son of a bitch. He set us up, and we fell for it.”
Gabe looked at me again, and as understanding took hold, his face went blank. The fire raged on unabated, glowing orange behind a thick veil of black smoke. It surrounded the factory, came together like a lava flow on the other side, and moved on, consuming everything in its path.
Gabe and I watched, stunned into silence.
*****
Whoever had built the water tower, however long ago, had cleared away the trees around it in a circle that stretched over a hundred yards in all directions. Only tall grass stood below, growing scruffy and thinning out near the hilltop.
It was the only thing that saved us.
As the fire surrounded the tower, Gabe and I had to tie our headscarves around our faces and pull our shirts up over our mouths. The smoke was all-pervading, smothering and choking us. Even from more than a hundred yards away, the heat was intense, blown by its own wind. It was like standing in the maw of a giant hair dryer on its highest setting.
Our goggles warded off the worst of the smoke, but some still made it through. We huddled against the metal tank breathing as shallowly as we could and squeezing tears out of bloodshot eyes. Even if I could have opened them, I wouldn’t have seen anything. Smoke had turned the world black.
Distantly, I heard a Chinook approaching. Faint at first, then louder and louder. It circled the wreckage of the warehouse a few times, and then came to hover over our heads. A cable came down, and harnessed to that cable was Great Hawk. He retrieved Gabe first, then came back for me. Before the winch had even drawn us up to the door, the pilot wheeled around, gained altitude, and flew us away from the blaze.
Once inside, I leaned my head against the bulkhead and forced my hurtling thoughts into order. I pushed my grief and anger back as far as I could, put them in a box, and closed the lid. Slow and steady, I breathed. One breath, then another.
Just keep breathing, I told myself. Just keep breathing.
Below the chopper, smoke swirled and rose. The fire feasted greedily upon the dry forest. Eventually, we outran it, but it was close on our heels. Headed north.
Headed toward Hollow Rock.
Chapter 29
The Journal of Gabriel Garrett
Embers
General Jacobs came to see us at the clinic.
Eric and I had a room to ourselves. We were just down the hall from where Doc Laroux was keeping some women we had rescued from Legion Central.
Everyone on the Chinook had disembarked with the exception of Great Hawk and Marshall. They’d wanted to go back and make sure all of their troops got home safely. I wished them luck, and then Eric and I propped each other up on the walk across the parking lot.
Doc told us we were lucky. The smoke inhalation wasn’t too bad, and covering our faces had kept the ashes out of our lungs. She made us stick around for a little while to make sure no other symptoms developed. She said she was worried we might have inhaled toxic fumes.
I think she just wanted to keep Eric close by.
I debriefed with Jacobs and two of his staff. They came in armed with notebooks and digital recorders. They took a statement from me, but Eric didn’t have anything to say. When one of the staffers tried to tell Eric that giving a statement wasn’t optional, he gave the man a sharp look and drew his pistol. Jacobs stepped between them and told his man to go wait in the hallway.
Later, after they had finished with me, Jacobs decided to give it another try with Eric. My friend had sat still on his bunk during the debrief, staring down at his hands. When the old soldier started talking to him, Eric had raised his head and blasted him with a desolate glare. The general’s words died on his lips, and I understood why. The look on Eric’s face was the same one I’ve seen on hundreds of other people. Soldiers, Marines, et cetera. It’s the look of a man who has hit the wall. Who has given all he has to give, and has no more reserves to call upon. The general looked down, nodded a few times, and got up to leave. I had a feeling he knew that look, too. Maybe he’d even been there himself.
On the way out, he said, “For what it’s worth, men, I’m sorry about Captain McCray. He was a good man. A good soldier. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. We lost a lot of people today.”
I didn’t say anything. Jacobs looked old, and pale, and damn near used up. I knew the feeling. He shot me one final, broken glance, and left.
The next day, the first winter storm came in, and it couldn’t have picked a better time. The forest fire that started at Legion South had grown and spread until it was only a few miles away from Hollow Rock. On the morning the snow blew in, the sun emerged red and angry over the horizon, and a steady rain of ashes had turned the town an ugly shade of charcoal. By noon, the first gunmetal leviathans had invaded the northern sky. By sundown, they hung fat and heavy over most of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. By nightfall, the drifts had piled up nearly a foot high, and a freezing wind was sweeping southward. I shivered in its cutting onslaught, and thanked my lucky stars it had shown up. By the next morning, most of the fire was out. Smothered under three feet of snow.
It was the first time I could remember being grateful for a blizzard.
*****
It was two weeks before the dust settled.
General Jacobs sent his men around to gather Eric and me. He wanted to have a sit-down with us. Explain everything that happened. I went. Eric stayed home. I didn’t blame him.
Jacobs chased his staff out of the office and motioned for me to sit down in a chair. He had made tea on a hotplate in the corner, and offered me a cup. I took it, and nodded toward a report on his desk.
“That for me?”
He sat down and stared at it for a moment. “Yes. I assume I can trust you to keep this information confidential? This is still a federal matter.”
I nodded, and held out an impatient hand.
The militia, and all of the troops Central Command had sent us, had spent the last two weeks out in the field retrieving the supplies and equipment we’d seized from the Legion, and trying to figure out what the hell happened at the factory. To that end, some of Jacobs’s men had found a heavy equipment rental facility, requisitioned a fuel shipment from Pope AFB, and had gotten some excavation equipment up and running.
It took several days of working around the clock to clear enough rubble to investigate and, along the way, they discovered the bodies of Captain McCray, the Rangers with him, and about two dozen Legion troops. They also discovered not just one, but two tunnel entrances. One of them, the Haven section of the connector loop, was still intact. A search of the tunnel had revealed nothing but dirt, mud, and a trail of objects that the people fleeing from Haven had decided weren’t worth carrying anymore. The other had been blown, sealed at the entrance with explosives. It took another couple of days of digging to get the tunnel open again, but by then, the last remnant of the Free Legion was long gone.
Everything that happened at Legion South, the sentries, the Stinger missiles, the RPGs, the staunch resistance, the bombs, all of it had been a front. A ruse to keep us occupied while they got the women and children away safely. Something close to a hundred troops had stayed behind to cover their retreat. Th
ey had sacrificed themselves to ensure that the others would have enough time to escape. They knew what was coming their way. They had to have known what the Army was going to do. But they stayed anyway. And as much as it galled me to admit it, they had acted bravely. They were still a bunch of thieving, murdering bastards, but I could no longer think of them as cowards. Not after what they had endured at our hands. Even criminals have families. Even marauders have people that they care about. People they love. Wives. Children.
I wasn’t sure where that left me.
As I read on, it became clear to me that Eric was right. Lucian had fucked us over something fierce.
The bastard had fed us enough good intel to string us along. He knew someone was going to get back to Haven. He knew what their worst-case scenario procedures were. He knew what they would do once their location was compromised. He knew how we would deal with Legion South. He knew, and he had used it against us. And now there were more than three hundred enemy combatants floating in the breeze. We had no clue where they were, and all of our air assets had been called away by Central Command. Without the helicopters, and their FLIR imagers, we had no way to search for them.
Probably, they had fled. Probably, they were headed north to join up with the Midwestern Alliance. Probably, they were running with their tails between their legs, terrified that we were going to catch up to them. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Although I wasn’t happy that so many Legion troops had escaped, I couldn’t help but think about their women and children. I finished reading the report and tossed it back onto Jacobs’s desk.
“What about Lucian? What are we going to do with him?”
General Jacobs paused, and put his cup down. “Officially, he’s in federal custody at an undisclosed location. That’s the word, if anyone asks you. Understood?”
I nodded. “And what’s the unofficial story?”
“I can’t make a statement about that. But if I did, I would mention that Lucian was diabolically clever.”
“Was?”
“Was. If I were to make an unofficial statement, it would include some mention of how one of our interrogators got sloppy. It would mention that after a round of questioning, he couldn’t remember what he’d done with his glasses, but didn’t say anything to anyone. It would also mention that Lucian sharpened one of the lenses from those glasses on the floor of his cell, and used it to cut his own throat. But of course, none of that happened. Officially.”
I met his eyes, and it was a long time before I looked away. I thought about everything that had happened over the past few months. All the people killed on both sides. How many resources had been used up. How much effort the Legion had gone through just to harass one little town. None of it made sense.
“So what was the Legion’s end game here, Phil? What were they trying to accomplish with all this? They didn’t need Hollow Rock. It doesn’t add up.”
General Jacobs shook his head and sat back in his chair. His chin sank to his chest, and he rubbed at his eyes. “I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I think you deserve to know.”
I stayed quiet and waited.
“We don’t know the whole story, but here’s what we do know. The Midwest Alliance has declared itself an independent nation, and it is claiming territory. Out west, the Republic of California is doing the same thing. Until about four months ago, the leadership back in the Springs wasn’t too worried about it. We had our hands full just getting Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas under control. Restoring food production, getting an oil refinery online down on the Gulf Coast, that sort of thing.”
“So what changed?”
Jacobs opened a drawer on his desk and removed a file folder. He shuffled through it, pulled out a glossy 8x10 aerial photo, and handed it to me. It showed a massive flotilla of ships approaching a harbor.
“Where is this?” I asked.
“California. Humboldt Bay.”
My stomach began to twist up.
“Where are these ships from?”
“We’re not exactly sure. Some of them are from China. A few others from Russia. But we believe most of them are North Korean.”
I let out a breath and dropped the photo in my lap. “How many of them are there?”
“That picture there, it’s just a fraction. There are hundreds, possibly over a thousand ships. Almost all of them freighters, but a few warships as well.”
I remembered Eric telling me about the Legion supply cache. The Chinese rifles. The Russian ammo. The Korean shipping manifests.
“This is a problem, Phil.”
“Yes, it is.”
The weight on my shoulders that had been lightening up the last couple of weeks suddenly grew heavy again. More pieces started falling into place.
“So the Midwest Alliance is in cahoots with the Republic of California. Enemy of my enemy, and such. They’re both making a land grab, with Colorado dead in the middle. This flotilla shows up with guns, and food, and ammo, and God knows what else, and they set up shop in Humboldt Bay. They’re sending weapons and munitions to the Alliance, and in exchange they’re getting …”
I held out a hand to Jacobs.
“Food,” he said. “The Alliance is in prime farming country. Much like Hollow Rock, they have more abundance than they know what to do with. On top of that, they’re slowly beginning to bring electricity and manufacturing capacity back online, however limited.”
“Aren’t we doing that as well?”
“We are, especially now that we’ve secured the Hoover Dam.”
I reached up to scratch my beard, only to find that it wasn’t there. I let my hand drop. “So what does all this have to do with Hollow Rock and the Legion?”
“It was a power play. War by proxy. The Alliance wanted us to know what they’re capable of. How far they’re willing to go. They wanted to capture Hollow Rock for no better reason than the federal government offered this community its support. Agents from the Alliance found an easy ally in the Free Legion and started helping them ramp up their operations. They wanted to cut this town’s head off, put it on a pike, and stand it up outside their gates. The subjugation of Hollow Rock was to be a warning to the President to stay off their doorstep, or suffer the consequences.”
“But it didn’t work out for them.”
“No, it didn’t. You played a big part in that.”
I dismissed the comment with a wave. “And what did it cost them? The Alliance, I mean.”
Jacobs didn’t answer. His gaze shifted away.
“They won, Phil. They didn’t get Hollow Rock, but they go an AC-130. They got Steve. They got quite a few soldiers. Every plane we lose is one we can’t use against them. Every bullet we shoot at cannon fodder like the Free Legion is one we can’t shoot at them. Every one of our soldiers that dies is a soldier we can’t send to fight them. That’s what they’re doing. They’re chipping away, bit by bit. You ever heard that old joke about how to eat an elephant?”
Jacobs chuckled, but it was bitter and without warmth. “One bite at a time.”
“Guess what, Phil. We’re the elephant.”
Jacobs stood up and walked to the window. The blinds were shut, and he reached out a hand to open them. Light filtered in through the slats and cast streaks of shadow over the old soldier’s face. His crow’s feet and frown lines stood out in stark relief.
“This is just the beginning, Mr. Garrett. The first salvo in what my gut tells me is going to be a long battle. The Alliance, the flotilla, the Republic of California, they’re not just going to go away. Sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with them.”
He turned and looked at me. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
The weight on my shoulders pressed down harder.
“So for now, where does that leave us?”
Jacobs straightened up and walked back to his desk. “For now, we finish mopping up. The Ranger company has been called north to Kentucky, and most of the First Expeditionary is going with them. I�
��m headed back to Colorado, and I’ll be taking Great Hawk, Grabovsky, and Wilkins with me. Marshall will stay behind to help you finish training the militia. I pulled a few strings with Central, and they’re letting me leave a few dozen men here to help see Hollow Rock through the winter. More importantly, now that the Legion is gone, this town will be getting a facilitator.”
I kept my poker face on. “What’s a facilitator?”
“Oh, that’s right, I haven’t told you about them yet.” He went over to a safe on top of a file cabinet, keyed in passcode, and took out a file folder. On the front, in bold black letters, it read: PHOENIX INITIATIVE: TOP SECRET.
“Phoenix Initiative?”
Jacobs brightened. “That’s right. You didn’t honestly think the federal government didn’t have a backup plan in case of a mass extinction event did you?”
He handed me the file, smiling. I spent a few minutes flipping through it and scanning the pages. As I read, for the first time in longer than I could remember, I started getting excited.
“Is this for real?”
The general laughed. “Of course. I couldn’t make that shit up if I tried.”
I handed the folder back to him. “You’re trusting me with an awful lot of classified information, General.”
He heard the suspicion in my voice, and held up a hand. “You’ve proven yourself, Gabriel. I have no reason not to trust you. And the way I figure it, if I want your help in the future, I’ll need to keep you in the loop.”
I stood up. “You figure right.”
Jacobs smiled again, got out of his chair, and held out a hand. I shook it.
“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done, Gabriel. Same goes for Eric. Let him know for me, will you?”
Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within Page 40
