Kyle was reluctant to switch to long guns.
These kids shouldn’t have to suffer a lifetime with debilitating injuries because of one stupid mistake.
Then a ricocheting bullet struck a deputy in the neck.
“Damn it, Governor, I’m losing men!” Turner shouted. “It’s our lives or theirs! Make the call!”
100
Off the Coast of District Three
Washington, D.C.
AFTER A TAXING HOUR spent tacking into the wind and bucking waves, the RORO car carrier managed to dodge the brunt of Hurricane Anna. The winds still rated an eight on the Beaufort Wind Scale, breaking spindrift from the twenty-foot wave crests and generating streaks of blowing foam. But J. Anthony Walker no longer feared that 20,000 tons of military assets would plummet to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Although he hated to admit it, the reversal of fortune was largely due to Night Sector’s climate warfare division, which had acted swiftly to steer the gargantuan storm inland, toward the District of Columbia. The eye of the hurricane had taken a sharp jog to the west, enabling its most powerful winds to drive the storm surge into Chesapeake Bay.
Our bombers and tanks may not be able to batter the capital city today, Walker thought, but the hurricane certainly can, reeking greater havoc with esteemed efficiency. The curse has become a blessing!
Now that the Faux Ulga had found safer waters, his concern reverted to his underwater demolition teams. How were they faring in those tiny rigid-hulled inflatable boats?
The Potomac River would not be as riled as the Atlantic, he knew, but the men had no idea that a category three hurricane was bearing down on them.
“Lieutenant? Any luck?” Walker demanded.
“Negative, sir,” replied the communications officer, who had been stubbornly hailing the twelve-boat flotilla. “Radios are out of range and sat comms have been degraded by the storm.”
The underwater demolition teams had been tasked with eliminating Potomac bridge crossings to prevent American ground forces from countering their siege of Washington. The bridges over the Anacostia River, however, were to remain intact for the benefit of the mechanized units aboard Walker’s ship. It was the secondary mission of those teams to secure those crossings until Night Sector forces swept inland.
The bow of the RORO was suddenly thrust upward by a rogue wave. The vessel creaked and moaned, tipping laterally in a series of fifty-degree rolls, then plunged. Walker slammed into the navigator’s console, and a corporal’s imperative tone rose above a medley of curses.
“An Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer just appeared on radar. Twenty nautical miles to the north-northeast. Relative bearing three-one-five.”
Is this another cyber bluff? Walker wondered. Did the Americans hack into our defensive radar as well as weather radar?
He shrugged away the corporal’s concern. “Most likely a digital decoy intended to herd us back into the fury of the storm,” he said calmly. “And if the destroyer is not a figment of the cyber realm, the Eule des Meeres will promptly torpedo it.”
101
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
FOR MAJOR RYAN ANDREWS, the timing could not have been worse. He was still contending with the C-130 crash and the ensuing firefight when he’d received word that Grace Murray had been abducted.
Volkov planned it that way, he thought, a two-pronged assault to retrieve the critical information through possession of the hard drive or the Rear Admiral.
Unlike Franny, who had been captured to facilitate a trade, Grace was the ultimate prize. She was a Cyber Commander with a near photographic memory and a top secret security clearance—essentially a 2,500 terabyte human hard drive of sensitive information—and the crazy general wouldn’t need teams of decryption experts or software engineers to access it.
How long will a sixty-five-year-old woman be able to withstand the brutal torture? Ryan asked himself.
He needed to find her. Fast.
According to General Quenten, radios, phones, and power at Ansley had been knocked out at the time of her abduction. Initially, those outages had been attributed to a feeder band of squalls from Hurricane Anna. Once the drones and satellites were jammed into virtual blindness, everyone realized it was an electronic attack. The downtime had barely lasted fifteen minutes—more than sufficient for the bastards to disappear with Grace.
Since then, a fuel tanker from Ansley had been found abandoned on Route 4 near Upper Marlboro, and Ryan deployed TEradS Teams 3A and 3B to canvas nearby neighborhoods. The homes were spread out amongst mature trees and individually gated minimansions that were time-consuming to clear.
Precious minutes ticked past, and square miles of infrared scans showed no heat signature large enough to be human. Adjacent monitors displayed two helmet-camera feeds as both squads cleared a half dozen homes with disappointing results.
Team 3A approached a brick, two-story house with grand double doors that had been wrenched open. Overgrown trees were swaying in the wind, slapping against mold-covered brick.
“Anybody else hear that low, rumbling noise?” Jacoby asked.
Over the tactical headset, Ryan heard the other members of 3A concur with their team leader, and he watched as they configured themselves into a tactical conga line and edged inside.
“Smells like diesel exhaust,” Jacoby mumbled.
They cleared the first and second floors without incident, then tracked the elusive sound to the basement. Sandwiched between mildewed boxes and rusting gym equipment, a black electric cord stretched from a small generator to a hole just below the floor joists. Jacoby slapped the on-off switch to silence it. “Someone was here recently,” he grumbled, making his way up the stairs.
“Yo, Jacko, check this out.”
Ryan’s eyes toggled between the footage from the helmet camera and the overhead drone. “Where the fuck did that come from?”
A ten-by-ten tent had materialized alongside the garage. Its woven fabric appeared rigid, unmoved by the gusting winds, and it shimmered like metal.
“Heat signatures?” Ryan demanded.
A Corporal responded, “Six. And one is decidedly smaller than the others, sir.”
The last syllable faded into a barrage of gunfire. Three men dressed in civvies fled the tent, a point man, another with Grace slung over his shoulder, and a rear guard. The TEradS Sniper dispatched two in quick succession, unable to get a clean shot at the man carrying Grace.
Two additional fighters were laying down suppressing fire, one from behind an air conditioning unit, another behind a landscape retaining wall. They were disciplined and well positioned, not to defeat the TEradS, but to delay their exit from the house, affording their comrade time to escape.
Ryan ordered the drone to shadow the Rear Admiral, then the video image immediately cut out.
“Electronic warfare is jamming our drones and satellites, sir.”
Ryan balled his hand into a fist and slammed it against the chair handle, certain that they had just squandered their best chance to rescue Grace.
“What the hell was with that tent?” Captain Canter asked.
“Some kind of advanced electronic camouflage,” Ryan said. “A fucking digital mirage capable of defeating our drones, satellites, and even FLIR.”
His head snapped toward Canter. “When comms come back up, have 3A find a way to disassemble ... whatever-that-shit-is ... without damaging it.”
His thoughts boomeranged to the disappearing truck in District Five.
Oh fuck! Volkov’s forward operating base is cloaked with it!
102
District Three, Washington, D.C.
CAUTIOUSLY, ABBY WEBBER ascended the Metro Center stairs that led to the street-level exit. The storm had intensified since she’d entered the tunnel. Fierce winds were whipping sheets of water, obscuring her vision, and transforming the steps into a raging waterfall.
PLA soldiers were advancing west along G Street, and although she knew General Sun was somewhere within the pack, s
he couldn’t pinpoint him due to poor visibility.
They’re headed toward the White House, she concluded, barely able to think above the hissing drum of rain. Wind-driven horizontal droplets stung Abby’s face and foiled efforts to shield her eyes. Ankle-deep puddles were forming everywhere, and she trudged on, lamenting that weather conditions could not be worse for a Sniper. Rain would knock down the bullet’s range, and unpredictable winds would shove it off course—assuming that she could even get “eyes on” her target.
I should’ve taken the shot, Abby thought. It couldn’t have been more than a half mile back to Federal Triangle Station. And there was bound to be an emergency exit or a ventilation shaft. Damn it, why didn’t I think of that before?
Head shaking, she mumbled, “Because I’m from the Sunshine State, and the only subways in Florida sold sandwiches.”
The column of peacekeepers turned right onto Fifteenth Street and made a quick left onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Street signs were flapping violently. Trash skipped and tumbled along the road surface, and torn fabric awnings danced like cobras, their shredded tips snapping in the wind.
Buffeted by gusts now at her back, Abby passed a dotted line of barriers that restricted vehicular access. She staggered across Madison Place and took cover behind the Marquis de Lafayette Monument. The life-sized bronze statue had been cast in 1890 and erected atop a soaring marble base to acknowledge the Frenchman’s contribution to American independence.
Across Pennsylvania Avenue, peacekeepers were scaling the White House fence and charging along the circular driveway toward the square portico. Several chains that anchored the iconic wrought iron light had broken, and the massive fixture was swaying wildly, smashing against columns. The trees on the North Lawn were bowing and gyrating, shedding leaves and branches, adding to the airborne debris.
Abby heard a popping sound behind her, then something lashed her left arm. A white-hot, stinging ache raced down to her fingertips, and she instinctively gripped the superficial gash with her right hand until the pain crested. The culprit—an eight-by-ten street sign advising that Metropolitan Police were monitoring the area via closed-circuit television—was fluttering against the marble base of the statue with a tinny clatter as if mocking her.
When her attention returned to the White House, flames were frolicking behind the bulletproof windows, and wisps of smoke were whirling beneath the portico.
They’re incinerating our landmarks, she thought, trying to erase our history.
A tree branch stripped of leaves shot past her like a javelin.
It’s too dangerous to be out here, Abby decided.
She hurried back toward Fifteenth Street, battling against the wind, and took cover inside the entryway of a cement building, formerly a Bank of America. Its windows and doors had been destroyed shortly after the EMP, and its unlooted contents were being driven from the building, adding to the deadly swarm of projectiles.
None of the buildings will be safe, she thought. I have to get below ground.
Her injured arm aching, Abby crouched lower, trying to minimize the wind resistance against her body. Ghostly fingers of rain poked at her face, small pieces of plastic pelted her legs, and she pressed on, convinced that her gear was growing heavier with each stride.
She galumphed down the subway steps, splashing through a river of runoff, past ticket kiosks and cement benches, toward a second set of escalators that led to the lower platform. As the noisy rush of water faded, Abby froze.
She wasn’t alone.
Someone was moving along the lower platform.
Another band of peacekeepers? Reinforcements?
Discouraged and physically spent, she reversed course.
Then, through the curtain of rain, she saw shadows streaming down the steps.
Oh shit! I’m trapped!
103
North of Scoville Air Force Base
District Five, Illinois
DID THE RUSSIANS devise a way to defeat my magic green long johns? Bradley Webber wondered. Am I sweating my balls off for no reason?
The blackbird drone approached the invisible forward operating base, flying at minimum speed, three feet above the ground, following the cracked and buckled yellow lines of the roadway. Bradley held his breath as it neared the critical area. Would it bounce backward and crash, this time onto the street? Or would it pass through a doorway he couldn’t see, like the pickup truck?
When the bird contacted the fabric, the image blurred, then the drone’s camera revealed a vestibule, twenty-feet deep and slightly wider than the road. The tunnellike entrance was dimly lit by slivers of sunlight, and the pavement was covered by a thick rubber mat.
“Pressure sensors. Do not land,” Bradley told CJ.
The Pilot slowed the drone to a hover and coaxed it into a barely perceptible pirouette. Foot-wide overlapping flaps covered the entryway, reminding Bradley of the plastic strip curtains used in industrial warehouses, only these were not translucent. They were made of a strange material, a metallic fabric that was gradually settling back into position and decreasing the available light.
“Can you angle the camera toward the ceiling?” Bradley asked.
A sequence of steel ribs supported the tented roof at uniform intervals, spread wide enough to make a monkey-bars crossing extremely challenging.
Wingnut nudged the bird forward on a heading that followed the road; and as it pushed through a second set of curtains, the video image dissolved into static.
“What just happened?” Bradley asked.
“Signals can’t penetrate that fabric,” CJ said. “Which means I just lost control over the drone.”
“So, it probably just smacked into some soldier, giving away the element of surprise,” he grumbled, agitated that the mission was bogged down by all this high-tech gadgetry. Thus far, all it had done was waste his time—and sweat. With his left hand, he smeared perspiration from his forehead. Even in the shade, the temperature was sweltering, and he guzzled another bottle of water to rehydrate and cool his body.
A few seconds later, the video reconstituted. The drone had exited, apparently through another portal, and CJ regained control. The blackbird spiraled high above the operating base then landed on an earthquake-damaged building to the north.
“What are you doing?” Bradley demanded.
“If the Russians spotted the drone, I don’t want to lead them to our position,” CJ said. “Let’s see if it recorded anything while it was inside.”
Wingnut downloaded the video from the bird’s internal memory. He advanced the footage a few frames at a time. “No guards posted at the entrance,” he said. “They’re relying solely on electronic security.”
“Holy shit!” Bradley squinted at the laptop monitor, drinking in details. A massive tent was now visible, essentially a giant blanket covering the complex. No sunlight was filtering through the tarpaulin. Instead, the space was illuminated by a network of ground-based floodlights directed upward, and the strange fabric reflected enough of it to create a quasi twilight.
Two old industrial buildings flanked the space, each four stories tall. Entire sections of a brick wall had been shaken loose by the earthquake and were now shored up by a latticework of two-by-fours, most likely salvaged from residential homes. Gaping rectangular openings spanned the structure, marking the former locations of windows; and at ground level, a roll-up garage door was open, facing its sister building across the street, a near mirror image.
At the northern end of the tent, a line of steel cargo containers stretched between the buildings, a twenty-foot thick de facto wall with another curtained portal at the center.
“No one seemed to notice the blackbird’s intrusion,” CJ said as he uploaded the footage to a satellite.
Bradley retrieved the encrypted satphone from Wingnut’s backpack, dialed TEradS Headquarters, and asked for Captain Fitzgerald, but it was Major Andrews’ voice that came on the line.
“Sir, you are not going to believe—�
�
“Yeah, I know. Digital camouflage is rendering Volkov’s forward operating base invisible to the naked eye, FLIR, and electromagnetic sensors.”
Bradley hesitated, stunned and a little disappointed that his commanding officer already knew. “Can we get some A-10 Warthogs in here and level the place?”
“Negative. The President won’t allow an air strike without confirmation that no civilian hostages are present. Blowback from that Hellfire missile in District Six has fucking tied my hands ... Bradley, you have to find some way to sneak in there.”
104
District Six, Texas
PETER FRANCISCO’S stomach contracted and he vomited again, this time bringing up a frothy yellowish goo. His mouth and throat burned. From the acidic liquid? Or a side effect of whatever was in that syringe?
Am I going to die?
Is that why they didn’t bother to shoot me?
He rested his pounding head against a cement curb, and vicious cramps caused him to pull his legs into a fetal position. Peter blinked to focus his vision, and almost a minute elapsed before he recognized where he was—lying in a gutter on Liberty Street, a block from the sheriff’s station. Judging by the sun’s position overhead, he had been unconscious for several hours.
Ten yards ahead, teenagers were advancing toward the sheriff’s station. Dull pops reverberated as they fired on the retreating deputies.
Why isn’t the sheriff returning fire? Peter wondered, then a series of grim thoughts triggered a new bout of heaves.
Governor Murphy won’t let them fire on a bunch of kids. He doesn’t know the teens are pumped full of drugs; he doesn’t understand that he can’t reason with them. I have to warn the governor.
Peter crawled forward on hands and knees, each movement sending sharp pains through his abdomen. His limbs felt wobbly and weak; and it took a sheer force of will to keep inching forward.
Power Play- America's Fate Page 28
