Solar Storm: Homeward Bound

by Vincent Keith

“Sorry,” she said while rubbing her nose.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said in a distracted tone.

  Jack nodded. He’d done it himself often enough when confronted with too much that was unfamiliar, his thoughts on one path and his feet on another.

  “Sir, you’re Mr. Donovan?” asked the Private.

  “That would be me.”

  “The Captain is expecting you…” the private paused, not sure if he was supposed to allow everyone to pass.

  “That’s fine, Lexi has an appointment with Lieutenant Morgan. Rachael is going to be working with your medics.”

  The private looked at the two women—or woman and girl. Damn, I wish they’d tell me these things, he thought.

  “Okay, Ma’am, you’ll find the LT in the tent with the big tower next to it right over there. And miss, that big tent next to it is where you’ll find the medical personnel.”

  Lexi giggled.

  “Close,” said Rachael. “I’m the Nurse Practitioner, and my daughter is the radio operator.”

  “Sorry Ma’am, Miss.”

  Jack looked at the private with some sympathy. He wasn’t sure how often they had to deal with this many civilians, but he was pretty sure they’d never had to deal with a situation like this.

  “Right, well, ladies why don’t we plan to meet up at the chow tent. Oh, and Lexi, try to be thorough. Let them figure out what’s important and what’s not. If you’re giving them too much information, they’ll let you know.”

  Lexi nodded, spun on her heel and started for the radio tent, “Bye Mom, Bye Jack!”

  Jack shook his head. He was impressed by how well Lexi had adapted to the new reality. They would occasionally slip into a mope party around the campfire, talking about what they missed most. But, mostly they’d managed to stay positive and to keep moving forward.

  Rachael interrupted Jack’s musing when she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, patted his shoulder and headed toward the med tent to offer her help. When Jack looked back to the private, the man was staring at the girls with a grin.

  “Private?”

  “Makes you feel like maybe things are going to be okay sir.”

  “It does, doesn’t it.”

  “Hooah! Sir. Go on in, the Captain’s expecting you.”

  Jack entered the tent and let his eyes adjust to the lower level of light.

  “Jack.”

  He tracked the voice to the far end of the tent and spotted Brian at a borrowed desk. Jack waved and headed over.

  “So, how can I help?” asked Jack.

  “Information first, then we need to get you guys out of here, preferably before the shooting starts, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”

  “I told the girls you wouldn’t want to have a bunch of civilians to worry about while you were on an operation.”

  “That’s mostly accurate. Unfortunately, the intel we’ve gathered so far leads me to believe we will be significantly under-manned for this op.”

  “Oh? That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not the shooting so much as the number of locations where they’re keeping people. The roving patrols are another problem we’ll have to deal with.”

  “I thought they’d put everyone in the high school.”

  “It’s a big town. I’m not sure how many folks we’re talking about, but if the only refugees are the one’s Eli spoke of, then there are still over ten thousand people there. Unless a lot of them are dead.”

  “Oh hell, they can’t possibly be keeping a watch on that many people.”

  “No, I don’t think so either. And the scouts have seen no sign of anything like that many. Our working assumption is that the group that came this way was just one of many. Which means we’ve got no real idea who’s where. I’ve got Lieutenant Tanaka arranging for a UAV surveillance flyover with his Air Force pals.”

  “He’s one of your borrowed medics?”

  “No, he’s my borrowed Air Combat Controller.”

  “Oh. Please tell me we don’t need air support for this.”

  “Doubtful, and not available in any case. Well, I’ve got access to two recon drones if we need them. We’re still doing recon to identify every location where there are hostages or bad guys. We have preliminary IDs on the Sheriff’s home and one motel that seems to be a barracks for his troops. We know there are hostages in the High school, and work crews bunking in the gym of the middle school.”

  “That’s not good.”

  Brian nodded. “We’ve also got eyes on the Walmart. It looks like there are close to forty escaped convicts camped out in there. Initially, we couldn’t understand why the Sheriff let that happen. It turns out they’re working for the bastard. That got us thinking, so my top sniper team infiltrated the correctional facility to see if there was anyone still alive. We’re still going over records, but it looks like nearly three hundred convicts were released. What we don’t understand is why nearly that many were still behind bars.”

  “Crap, how many guys does he have?”

  “We still haven’t identified where everyone is staying so we don’t know. Our best guess at the moment is more than forty. Only a few with body armor, and as near as we can tell, no heavy weapons. Some of the big hunting rifles are giving me ulcers. Even with the plates installed, our armor may not stop a 300 Winchester Magnum.”

  “It’s going to take a day or two before we understand what’s going on. But Morgan tells me he’s fairly confident that the Sheriff and his men executed several hundred civilians, possibly more.”

  “Dammit.”

  “We’ll keep at it. We still have a lot of refugees to debrief. I’m going to have my guys snatch one of their patrols if it looks like we can get away with it. I think we can. Things are pretty chaotic over there.

  “Is this going to spread you out too much?”

  “Yes, it will. One of my guys got into the planning office last night and brought back blueprints for all the buildings we knew we’d be hitting. If we find any new sites, we'll try to get blueprints for those as well. I’m only slightly concerned about the number of bad guys. I guarantee they’ve got no idea what’s about to hit them. My problem is I need more men than I’ve got simply to secure the hostages.”

  “That’s going to be messy, but I suspect we’ll have no shortage of volunteers,” said Jack.

  “We’ve got to keep an eye on six locations total, assuming we don’t find more, and I’ve only got four platoons. Granted there are ten men in each. Plus, I’ve got two sniper teams. We also have four PJs we borrowed from the Twenty-Second Special Tactics Squadron that we’re using for our medics. Oh, and Lieutenant Tanaka of course.”

  Jack was looking at a map of the town on Brian’s desk. It wasn’t much of a map, but it highlighted the known target buildings.

  “PJs?” he asked, still looking at the map.

  “Pararescue Jumpers, Air Force Spec Ops.”

  “Huh, kind of a special operations medic?”

  “A bit more than that, but close enough. They get nearly two full years of special training, including Airborn, Combat Dive School, and Army Free Fall Parachute, school. The PJs I brought are all Paramedics. I don’t think there’s a single SOF group they don’t work with.”

  “Wow, okay.” Jack nodded, then looked at the map again. “It sounds like you’re thinking about having some of us follow you in and sit on the hostages to free up your men to move on to the next target?”

  “It’s shaping up that way, and I want to hit them all at the same time. If we have to take the buildings one at a time, we’re going to lose hostages. But I gotta tell you. I’m really uncomfortable even thinking about involving civilians in this.”

  “Don’t Rangers do that in foreign countries? Help train locals?”

  “Not normally. We’re primarily a quick reaction force, or a first strike force. We’re operating well outside our normal mission here. Also, we don’t have time to do much in the way of training, w
hich makes it that much worse.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. So what is it that you’re considering?”

  “How well do you know the locals?”

  “I know a few of them pretty well, but most I’ve never met.”

  “What I’d like is for you to put together a small team to evaluate the available resources. If we have some additional sniper support, and secondary teams to sit on the hostages once we’ve taken out the opposition, then we can move those teams forward.”

  Jack sipped his coffee and then nodded. “Okay…”

  “I’m not fond of it either, but we can’t hit all the targets hard enough to solve the problem. I just don’t have enough men.”

  “Can you get more men from Fort Lewis?”

  “I could if we had the time. The longer we wait, the more people they kill or chase out of town. Which likely amounts to the same thing.”

  “I’m not in any shape to follow you guys in, but I can provide sniper support. I don’t have any night vision gear, but they don’t seem to have light discipline from what I’ve heard so I might not need it. Unless you’re thinking about killing their power to start off.”

  “Undecided. We have enough NVG that we can equip a few civilian sniper teams with it. My current thinking is to start off with my men removing the roaming patrols. Set up locals at the motel and the Walmart just to keep a lid on them. Then we can move to deal with the buildings with the known hostages...or we can once we've identified them all. We’re a lot shorter on intel than I’d like for a hostage situation, and frankly, we’re not the best group for this job. But we are the only group here.

  “We’ll have the snipers take out the known guards around the targets, then go dark. That’s my working plan, but it’s changing as we gather intel.”

  “Okay, well I’m ready to help when you need it.”

  “Jack, Dad wants you and your friends out of harm’s way.”

  “Good for him. He’s not here, and I’ve already armed the town with some heavy weapons. If you’re going to drag them into this, then there’s no way I’m going to abandon them now. Hopefully we won’t have any friendly casualties, but honestly, do you really expect me to sit this out?”

  Brian smiled. "Yeah, I knew that would be your response, but I had to try. Anyway, I think you're going to be surprised at how fast this is going to go down. There's usually some breakage on an op this size. Then again, we’re usually going in against people expecting trouble. I guess we’ll see.”

  “I’m not worried. I won’t be close enough to get myself in trouble, and the girls will be here. And aside from you guys, I have the only suppressed sniper rifle in town.”

  “Suppressed?”

  “Yeah, I was working on getting my manufacturing license for suppressors and SBRs.”

  “SBRs?”

  “Short-barreled rifles — they’re legal in Washington now, with a tax stamp, same as suppressors.”

  “I’ll be damned. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not like this is California. Do you have the equipment and materials to build a few more suppressors?”

  "Yeah, we have enough power to run either the milling machine or the lathe. I can't use more than one tool at a time anyway, so it's fine. It's a pretty well-stocked shop. What are you thinking?”

  “I’ll have our armorer switch our Mark Sixteens to short barrels with suppressors for the op. If you can equip a half dozen of the best local shooters with suppressed hunting rifles that’ll give us more flexibility. I heard you guys had several functioning medium and heavy guns. What’s the story there?”

  “Short version? A guy named Aaron purchased the inventory of a couple of World War Two museums and was storing it while he was finding a location to build a new one. We brought a lot of his inventory up to working order.”

  “Damn, what is he, some wealthy rancher?”

  Jack laughed, “No, a rich ex-Microsoft programmer.”

  “Really? Way out here?”

  “Yep, he was getting ready to invest in agriculture, and he grew up around here, I think Pullman. So he moved back when he retired.”

  “Kind of a long way from Pullman to call it going home.”

  “Maybe he wanted to live someplace where he could have his machine guns.”

  “Right, I’m getting off track. Man, I hope when this is over we can catch up.”

  “If it’s ever over.”

  “True…”

  JACK AND ELI spent most of the afternoon locating men to volunteer for sniper positions. It was made clear they would have to kill at least one man and possibly more. If anyone failed, they’d put the entire operation at risk.

  The men who volunteered had all lost family to the Sheriff and his thugs. Eli spent the rest of his day working to be sure they'd keep themselves under control. Meanwhile, Jack collected enough rifles to arm each man with a suppressed rifle equipped with a high-quality scope. As soon as Jack had the first conversion done, Aaron went to work loading hundreds of rounds of subsonic 30-06 ammo. There was a fair amount of trial and error, but after a few dozen attempts he had a load that was accurate and didn’t create the loud crack typical of a rifle round.

  While Jack and Aaron worked at arming the civilians, Eli continued to build his Volunteer Army.

  30

  VOLUNTEER ARMY

  There weren’t enough M4 or AR15 rifles in town, so Eli had given Corporal Doug Hoffman a choice between the M1 Garand or the M2 carbines. Hoffman didn’t even think twice.

  “M2 for sure. Less chance of over penetration, easier to work, better in confined spaces.”

  “Kinda figured you’d say that. So sixteen M2 carbines, I know we have that many available. What are you thinking, maybe five magazines each?”

  “Thirty round?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure five mags each is way more than they’ll need.”

  “Okay, we can do that. I was worried we wouldn’t have enough ammo, but we can make that work.”

  “Do we have enough to cover the support teams?” asked Corporal Hoffman.

  “Maybe…Eli, how many are we sending out to cover the roads?”

  “Eight teams, ten guys in each.”

  “Ouch, we can’t do that many.”

  “Crap. Maybe I’ll give the hostage teams the M2s and give the other support teams the Garands…”

  “That would be better,” said Jack. “We’ve prepped a hundred and twenty of the M1s.”

  “Right, do we have anyone else familiar with the Garand or the M2 carbine?”

  “Start with Jim Ellis and Noel Marquette,” said Jack. “They’re the guys who built the M2s and they both have a lot of experience. Granted, it was a long time ago.”

  “Ah, how long?”

  “Korea.”

  “Oh,” said the Corporal. He kicked at a rock embedded in the dirt, then shrugged. “Well, it’s better than nothing.”

  “Once you have them up and running, you and I can take over training on the Garands. Assuming you want the help,” said Eli.

  “Yeah, given you know everyone already. Shit, we should have a couple of months for this, not a couple of days.”

  “There’s never enough time,” said Eli.

  “Hooah!” Doug replied.

  Ultimately, each hostage security team leader received a Thompson sub-machine gun. The rest of the team members got M2 carbines. The support teams worked with Garands as did the remaining men who were not part of the direct assault. Jack had modified a dozen 30-06 hunting rifles to accept suppressors. A mile further up the road, a second group was training on the belt-fed machine guns.

  Most of the training with the M2 carbines was done with empty weapons. They simply didn’t have enough ammo for a lot of range time. The first class was on clearing, field-stripping, cleaning and loading the weapons. Training proceeded without a hitch until they started small unit maneuvers. The instructors spent days correcting bad habits formed over a lifetime, with shame proving to be the most useful motivato
r. The men hated having their failures called out for everyone to see. A few men quit rather than face ridicule in front of everyone, but most bit their tongues and worked harder.

  Training went on for three days while the Rangers continued their surveillance and intelligence gathering. Eli took his thirty volunteers three miles south to an area he knew they could sight-in rifles and work on tactics. Another group was getting training on machine guns a few miles to the southwest. Captain O’Neil had sent Master Sergeant Miguel Hernandez, Corporal Doug Hoffman, and four Specialists to help train the men who would be directly helping the Rangers.

  Hernandez and Hoffman were both Graduates of the Army Sniper School, a qualification held by only a handful of Rangers, and both had extensive experience in Afghanistan. All the other Rangers had qualified as Expert Riflemen and most Expert Pistol.

  They spent an hour just looking for safety issues and correcting offenders. The corrections continued throughout the day. Jack wasn’t terribly surprised. People who grew up hunting learned from their fathers, and if you went back far enough, people were careless compared to current standards.

  “It is what it is,” said Eli.

  “Hooah!, sir.”

  CAPTAIN O'NEAL CALLED a staff meeting on the morning of what was to be the fourth day of training. He invited Jack, Rachael, and Eli. Their most recent piece of intel made it imperative they move now. The waiting was over.

  “Okay people, we’ve nailed down what we think are all the active locations. There don’t appear to be more than a few hundred residents left. We’ve found evidence of mass graves, but we can’t know how many people the enemy has killed. Even if we’ve missed something, I don’t think we can in good conscience wait any longer. Lieutenant Morgan.”

  “Sir.” Lieutenant Morgan stepped up next to the board holding a large hand-drawn map of the town.

  “Our timetable has been pushed up because we found the Sheriff and his people are not simply holding hostages. The recon teams have been tracking building use since we arrived and we believe we’ve got a reasonable handle on it. Two hours ago, Sergeant Hernandez reported three bodies were removed from this building. All young women, and all showing evidence of extreme abuse.”