Brother, Frank

by Michael Bunker

  As if to emphasize the point, an AWACS up from Wright-Patt, flying at high altitude, still tiny in the distance but distinctive with its giant radar dome, skybursts into a glowing fireball. Black-gray smoke and flames trail the wreckage in its dying arc toward the ground.

  That had to be six to eight miles away!

  He turns his head just as two A-10 Warthogs, tank killers, approach fast and low from the south. The pilots get the message to pull back and wait, but the order comes too late. The closest one to Dresser is hit by laser fire that shears off a wing, jerking the plane hard to its right, and it clips the other A-10. The second Warthog spins and plows into an Amish house, and both house and plane disappear behind a massive, nightmarish mushroom cloud.

  Dresser barks a command into his mic, and from behind his vehicle men stream forth from the back of a truck. Four of them carry a device that they rapidly mount on a steel stand.

  “As soon as it’s heated up,” Dresser screams, “flip the switch!”

  “Three minutes!” a technician shouts.

  Dresser nods his head slowly, then, “Everyone else hold your positions! Repeat, hold positions!”

  * * *

  As I reach the buried door to the root cellar, or at least where I think it used to be, I look up and notice that the government forces closing in on the farm from the west and north—mostly unscathed thus far in the battle as they move across pristine fields, crushing green crops as they crawl—are slowing their advance. More men and equipment are flowing in behind them, but for some reason the line is stopping.

  I hear a crackle of static and smell ozone as a piercing red beam, bright and vibrant in the broad daylight, cuts through the air above me. Armored vehicles begin exploding and crumbling as the whole line grinds to a halt.

  What have you wrought? What have you done?

  I’d like to blame my thoughts on Cruella, but she’s not here. It’s just me and the hellish destruction I’ve unleashed on these innocent Amish people.

  A silent drone bursts into flames in the air over the pumpkin field. It falls to the ground somewhere between me and the retreating forces.

  I shake my head to regain some sense of time and place. Reaching into the piles of wreckage at my feet, too carelessly, I feel my hand slice open on a nail and watch as blood flows freely from the wound. Ignoring the injury, I grasp a portion of what used to be the Shetlers’ house and drag it clear of the buried portal.

  Without pausing. Without praying. Without hope. I dig.

  * * *

  “What’ll it do?” the aide asks.

  “No clue,” Dresser says. “It’s an HPW—a harmonic pulse weapon. Some kind of ultra-high frequency vibration bomb that the geeks at DARPA dreamed up in the last week or so.” Dresser raises his nocs and scopes the horizon, looking for clues to the whereabouts of the HADroid. “They don’t even know if it’ll work. It’s never been tested, and we only get one shot at it because we don’t have the juice to fire this thing twice. They just figure there might be a vulnerability, and by bombarding the HADroid with the specific wavelength they’ve selected in their nerd-ass brains, they hope to overpower his system and fry his circuits.”

  “Like an EMP weapon?”

  “Nah,” Dresser says, “an EMP would probably toast all our own equipment.”

  “I thought most modern weapons of war are shielded from EMP, sir. That’s what we were taught in basic.”

  Dresser looks at his aide, his face twisted in mocking contempt. “Yeah, right... they’re shielded. But shielding is like having a radar detector in your car. The same company that sells the detector manufactures the next gen of cop radar. It chases itself. Once we shield our equipment, the race is on to beat it. And frankly, nothing we have is shielded well enough against a weapon built by a determined enemy with top-flight technology. And this guy—this scientist, Alexander—he had access to anything in the world. Anything he wanted. There was no accounting for it. No paper trail. Alexander just called and ordered whatever he wanted with a special code, price be damned. He never saw a bill. Neither did the black-bagger bean counters paying those bills. No one knew anything, and it was a federal felony for the material providers to keep records on anything shipped to him. Freakin’ lunacy!”

  The aide mumbles and turns away.

  “Say it, soldier!” Dresser shouts. “If you have something to say, let’s hear it out loud.”

  “I was really talking to myself,” the aide says. “But even if what you’re saying is true, we still might be able to stop the HADroid with an EMP burst. Even if it does fry our own equipment. We’re not accomplishing anything anyway. Other than killing and making homeless hundreds of Amish people.”

  Dresser spits. “These are not Amish people. These are extremists. Just another wacky cult that can’t play by the same rules the rest of us obey. Besides, the doc had a limitless supply of black bag cash. This is the guy who beats the radar detector for a while. If anything electronic in our AO can survive an EMP, it’s the HADroid. And this way,” Dresser jerks a thumb toward the HPW, “we have a shot at taking the robot out. Your way, we almost certainly take ourselves out, but there’s no telling if the HADroid would be affected at all.”

  The aide stares into Dresser’s face. The dead-blue eyes are hidden behind his boss’s combat shades, but the aide knows they’re back there, calculating odds and absorbing the death he’s unleashing.

  “Please tell me the harmonic pulse weapon has been tested on humans,” the aide says.

  Dresser’s lips turn up in contempt again. “Nah.”

  “Yes, sir,” the aide says.

  “Two minutes!” the technician manning the harmonic weapon shouts.

  * * *

  In a safe house, a cabin really, just over the Ohio River in the Daniel Boone National Forest in northern Kentucky, Carlos Luna sits next to Paula and types on his laptop. Other BDD members, some decked out in police and FBI HRT gear, are standing and watching Carlos work. Outside the cabin, deep in the heart of the forest, other operators, pros with years of experience overseas, guard the compound.

  “You sure the RV isn’t too far away?” Paula asks.

  Carlos turns and looks at his friend. He’s glad to have her back in the fold. He needs her now, needs someone familiar he can trust. Even surrounded by the rest of the BDD team, he would feel rudderless and friendless without Paula watching over him.

  “Doc and the kid are at the twenty-five-mile mark from the RV,” Carlos says. “We can reach that if need be, but most of Dresser’s forces are closer to town. And if they’re anywhere in the vicinity, we’ll hit them.”

  “And this thing’ll breach the military EMP shielding?”

  “Easily.”

  Paula smiles. Just the fact that she’s here with him makes him smile back. Maybe the first time he’s smiled since... well, since Brenda.

  He wasn’t even able to go to Brenda’s funeral. Something his real friends understood, but her family would never understand. They thought he was some low-level government programmer. And they buried her without her husband there to say goodbye.

  Carlos feels his breath catch for a second, but then he wills himself to get his mind back on the task in front of him.

  Paula showed up at the safe house in Middle Tennessee just over a week ago. She told Carlos that she’d suspected Patrick was a mole for some time, but didn’t know for sure until Atlanta. After that, she was certain.

  She said she’d tried to warn Carlos. She’d called him that once, not long after Atlanta, but she’d had only seconds to tell him she was free and in the wind. No time to go into it. In fact, she’d whispered “Patrick” into the phone at the end of that call, but Carlos had already clicked off the line. She’d attempted again to get word to him while he was in New Orleans, but the only reason the feds had released her was so they could follow her. If they didn’t believe she’d eventually hook up with Carlos again, she’d be dead now—or in some deep hole at Gitmo, or maybe in some off-the-books ja
il cell at TA headquarters in Pennsylvania.

  So they’d intended to use her to get to Carlos. And it had taken her weeks to lose her tail. To disappear so completely that they wouldn’t know where to search for her.

  After that, she made her way to Tennessee. Hoping Carlos would be there.

  He was.

  And now they were initiating Operation Deluge from deep in the Kentucky forest. Things had obviously escalated while she was hiding out.

  “You all ready to do this thing?” Carlos asks the room.

  There is cheering and shouting in the cabin as he looks around.

  “Time to make it rain,” Carlos says. He moves the cursor to the “Initiate” button. He clicks it, and waits.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Forty-five seconds!”

  “Here we go.” Dresser who was leaning out the window of the G-Wagen, rocks back in and bangs another cigarette out of the pack. He stuffs the pack into one of the front pockets of his tac vest, then lights the cigarette with a lighter produced from a pocket on his right thigh. His aide—he still doesn’t know the man’s name and he doesn’t care to—has joined him in the vehicle. Dresser gives the younger man a snide grin.

  “Do we have any clue what this’ll do?” the aide asks. He ducks, instinctively, as a massive explosion rains dirt and debris on the vehicle.

  Dresser doesn’t react, but he’s amused that the aide ducked. “None at all,” he says.

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “We hightail it outta here and come up with a better plan. Live to kill another day.”

  The aide cocks his head and pulls off his shades. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously. It’s easy math. If the plan tanks, it’s because of DARPA and the failure of their harmonic weapon. And after all, they boogered this whole mess to begin with. That’s their weapon out there we’re trying to put back in the can. They’re the ones that put a retard kid inside a deadly weapon we can’t even fight. And if we fall back, more heads’ll roll over there, believe me. But if DARPA’s new geek-box works and we happen to kill that thing... well, that’ll be because of me. Classic win-win.”

  “Is that what this is all about? Winning?”

  An explosion, closer and more violent, shakes the G-Wagen, and this time Dresser grunts. “Ain’t nothin’ to it but to win it.”

  “What if that geek-box fries all our stuff?”

  “I already told you: it’s not an EMP. It’s a harmonic weapon. It works on such a high frequency that nothing we have could even pick it up. Maybe hummingbirds or some crap like that. The DARPA nerds are just gambling that the doc used some very particular advanced technology—supposedly theoretical stuff—on his death robot. But either way, I win. Because if those assholes damage a couple billion dollars of equipment we have on site here, well... more crap on their faces. And if I have to come back here, I’ll be authorized to use a tac nuke against that little bastard.”

  The aide’s head raises and then drops, but only barely. A slow but half-hearted acceptance. It’s becoming harder for him to disguise his absolute disdain for his commander, but he works at it and keeps the derision from showing on his face. “Should I get the men ready to fall back? Just in case? We have more men and equipment flowing in from the south and north. We’re in a bottleneck here.”

  Dresser’s head moves ever so slightly. “Yeah. Maybe do that.”

  The aide opens the door and steps out of the vehicle, and Dresser steps out on his side, too. He wants to know exactly when the box goes live.

  The tech manning the harmonic weapon stares at the gauge. He looks over at Dresser and counts down, his thumb poised over the button. “Ten... nine... eight...”

  Dresser turns and sees a formation of helos hovering in a line that stretches westward from Drury Falls. Ready to engage.

  Damn it. I told all air cover to fall back.

  “... six... five...”

  Just then there is a sharp clap and a loud electronic buzz. Dresser hears the G-Wagen die behind him, and he jerks his head to the right defensively when he hears a loud pop followed by an unearthly whine. The helos begin falling from the sky like rain. Every truck, Humvee, and tank grinds to a stop.

  “What the hell happened?” Dresser yells.

  The tech manning the harmonic pulse weapon is shaking his head and flipping switches. He turns back to Dresser. “It died!”

  The last of the choppers plows in, and an eerie silence overtakes the soldiers on the line.

  Dresser takes a puff on his cigarette. Only one thought flashes brightly across his mind like a marquee in Times Square.

  Carlos. Brazos de Dios. The Deluge. Who else could’ve done this?

  “Give me a prognosis!” Dresser turns and yells at the tech who is busy sliding open a panel on the HPW.

  “EMP!” the tech shouts back as he’s momentarily silhouetted by an explosion far behind him. “It’s shielded, but it took a helluva blast. Everything did.”

  Dresser scowls. Not everything, he thinks. Not the HADroid. “That’s not a prognosis, soldier! Can it be fixed?”

  “Yeah. I can fix it.” The tech frowns and furrows his brow, but his head is nodding. “Give me two to five. I have parts in my big damn toolbox... which just happens to also be a Faraday cage.”

  Dresser pulls off his shades and stomps over to the tech, stepping close so that their faces are mere inches apart. “Why would your stuff survive, while a couple billion dollars of our equipment is now useless?”

  The tech stands dead still and stares into Dresser’s blue eyes. He’s not afraid of his boss like the others. “Well I won’t give you the science lesson, chief, but I built my toolbox, not the U.S.-dot-gov-dot-money-dot-frickin’-com or their trillion-dollar contractors. Cost me about twenty-seven bucks and a trip to Home Depot.”

  A slow smile spreads across Dresser’s face. “What’s your name, nerd?”

  “Romanski.”

  Dresser turns to leave. “I like you, Romanski. And I usually hate geeks. Now fix that thing in two minutes or I’ll shoot you before I head out of here for a beer.” He turns to his aide. “Tell everyone to hold positions and to be prepared to either move in on foot, or retreat on my command.”

  * * *

  I finally get the last of the rubble and wreckage away from the door to the root cellar. Before I head in, I look over and past the smoking heap that used to be the Shetler house. I can barely see Frank now. He’s moving steadily southward down the road, firing at trucks and APCs and the soldiers around them. The air is punctuated with the sounds of war, and occasionally there’s an explosion around the HADroid—a hand grenade tossed by some panicked soldier. But the explosives have no evident effect on Frank. As he moves he’s engaging some forward-deployed forces, but the main line is farther down the road to the south.

  I turn and see that the army to the north and west of the farm are still stalled.

  Why aren’t they attacking?

  I inhale deeply, then throw open the cellar doors. What I see crushes what little is left of my dark and guilty heart.

  The rafters that were holding up the main floor of the house have collapsed into the cellar. Over near the bottom of the steps, I see a heap—and I recognize it as Mose. He is bloodied and his hips are cocked sideways as if he was tossed violently against the wall. Looking closer, I notice his chest moves with his breathing. There is a gasp from him, and then his eyes fly open. I realize that I’ve frozen on the steps, devastated by the carnage and destruction, so I rush down the steps and kneel next to Mose so I can check to see if he’s okay. His eyes are glassy and glazed, and he doesn’t react to my embrace. I see that his shoulder looks to be out of joint and his right leg is broken. I don’t see any open wounds or areas of profuse bleeding, so I move into triage mode.

  “Mose... where’s your wife? Where’s John?”

  He doesn’t respond immediately, but after a few seconds his eyes blink, slowly. They open again and focus. He blinks once more, and an arm
raises slowly. The hand unfurls and a crooked finger points across the cellar. I follow with my eyes, and that’s when I see it. See... him.

  Underneath a heavy beam I can see legs and shoes sticking out. The legs are bent upward at an impossible angle. Broken. Shattered. Past him, in a still intact part of the cellar, I see Sarah cowering against the far wall. She seems to be catatonic, frozen in fear and shock.

  Triage.

  Crawling my way over debris and ducking under collapsed joists, I make my way to Sarah. She’s definitely in shock. I check her quickly for serious injuries and find none. But she’s completely unresponsive. She just stares blankly at the legs jutting out from under the collapsed ceiling.

  Triage.

  So I leave Sarah and make my way carefully to the site of the massive collapse. I’m looking upward, wondering if some other beam, or a cabinet, or a propane freezer from above, might be poised to drop on my head. Mostly I just see a pile of ungodly wreckage, checkered here and there with glimpses of smoky sky.

  I push my way past the heavy section of upper flooring that has John Shetler pinned, and when I come around a large section of shattered lumber, I see his face. He’s alive and obviously in shock. After a few seconds, he notices me, and his eyes close and then reopen.

  “Mom?” he says. His voice is sparse and gravely. Like he’s speaking through wet rocks.

  “She’s here. She’s okay.”

  “Where... is she?”

  “She’s in shock, John. She can’t come over here.”

  In reality, even if she were conscious and responsive, I wouldn’t want her to see this. No mother should ever see her boy like this.