by Lund, Dave
“Holy shit Jones, holy fucking shit.”
“I know man, the shit they don’t teach you at fucking Perris Island.”
“Oh God, you know we’d get brought before the man if we did this back then.”
“Before the man? Shit, we’d be in Kansas before the day was out, breaking big rocks into little rocks!”
Simmons used more finesse than before and backed the M-ATV out of the piled mess of lumber and shelving, running over a Christmas decoration display in the middle of the main aisle before turning to point the nose of the truck towards the gaping hole in the wall where the big glass doors once stood. Their NVGs turned off, the interior of the truck and the store were dark; they saw the sky beginning to lighten with the coming sunrise.
“And now we wait.”
Jones nodded in agreement, turning the turret towards the opening as well. Their only chance at this point was to wait the daylight out and use the night to get back home. Movement in the shadows out of the side windows caught their attention. They flipped the night vision goggles down and turned them back on, only to be greeted with the face of death wearing an orange apron. Another appeared and another. In moments, surrounding the idling truck were dozens of dead, all pawing at the armored exterior.
“What are we going to do about that?”
“Nothing Jones, there’s nothing we can do.”
“You can turn the engine off, maybe they’ll get bored and move on?”
“Maybe, but shit, man, what if the truck doesn’t start again?”
“Simmons, you know this thing as well as I do; it’s a roll but the secret squirrel commandos can come get us tonight if need be.”
Simmons frowned and turned the truck off, the rattling hum of the diesel motor ceasing. They could now hear the muffled moans of the dead, fingernails clawing at the truck.
“Well if that isn’t the suck, I don’t know what is. I’m going to call it in,” Jones keyed the mic for the radio mounted in the truck. “Dagger-Actual, Switchblade-One, copy SITREP, over.”
MSOT Compound, Coronado, CA
“Switchblade, you let them name their call sign Switchblade? That’s racist.”
“Shut up Kirk, I’ll fucking cut you, mang.”
“Gonzo, eat shit and bark at the moon.”
“Gentlemen, enough.”
Kirk and Gonzo grinned but stopped talking at Aymond’s order.
“Switchblade-One, Dagger-Actual, go ‘head, over.”
Aymond sat at the table taking notes, the room lightening with the coming day beginning to stream through the windows. Five minutes of back and forth later, Aymond had his questions answered, his notes scrawled across two pages of paper. “Switchblade-One, good copy, Dagger-Actual out.”
“Chief, want me to go kick the team loose?”
“Not yet Gonzo, we’re not going to roll until sunset, but I do have a project for you two … remember the Shkin Firebase?”
“Shit, fucking Fort Apache, how could we forget, Chief?”
“Well Gonzo, it’s time for you and Kirk to use what you all learned there for the forces of something other than screwing off.”
“Fucking ‘rah, Chief!”
Groom Lake, NV
“I don’t know Jake, two women, one of them pregnant, and a teen?”
“You should have seen her, Bill, holy cow. I mean she nearly lit Brit on fire with nothing more than a look and some stern words.”
“Still, what will they know?”
“Talk to them, Bill. Well I wouldn’t talk to Erin, that’s the teenager, unless she speaks first, but her mother Sarah, and Jessie, they’ve been out fighting and surviving since day one.”
“So have we, Jake.”
“Not like they did. We had the Chosen Tribe crazies, our losses were great, but still Cliff plucked us out of there. Sarah and Erin have fought their way across the country since the beginning, and after piecing together the details with that Special Forces group that went to Cortez … Jessie was left for dead by a biker gang in Texas.”
“And she’s pregnant!”
“Yes Bill, I know that, and in a few weeks or another month or two I’m not going to want to let her topside at all, but for now I think this is the right thing to do. Besides, we need to get the rest of our fellow survivors ready.”
Bill nodded.
“How has the exploration gone?”
“Interesting, no, interesting isn’t the right word, it’s borderline creepy and amazing all at the same time.”
Jake poured more coffee from the carafe into their cups, anxiously waiting to hear what Bill had found.
“The facilities are basically separated into two separate areas. There isn’t one but two closed-loop reactors. At least that’s what Hal explained it as.”
Jake furrowed his brow. “Who is Hal again?”
“Older guy from Kansas, ex-Navy. He was on subs, a senior enlisted guy. It was around the time The Hunt For Red October hit the theaters before he got out.”
“Why Kansas?”
“Said he had enough ocean water for two lifetimes.”
“Heh, OK, if he says so. So what did Hal tell you?”
“His explanation is that there are two power plants; one is running, the other is in standby, except that it’s not really standby, there is no such thing as standby with a nuke.”
Jake shook his head slightly. “Then what is it doing?”
“It’s in standby. I mean to say that it’s throttled all the way down.”
“Is that why we keep having outages? Are we pulling too much power from the single nuke?”
“No, not from what Hal says at least. According to him, the two nukes together should be able to power Las Vegas and keep the neon signs glowing.” Bill shrugged.
“How do we control it?”
“We don’t. There is a complete computer system sectioned off, the whole thing is sectioned off like a giant lead bank vault. It’s possible to shut the door and save everyone from the radiation if something goes wrong.”
“That’s good, I think, but the computer?”
“Yeah Jake, you should see it. The computer system down there is like something out of a dammed sci-fi movie. Impressive, absolutely impressive.”
“And that controls the nukes?”
“No, I think it controls everything.”
“What do you mean everything?”
“Jake, I mean everything, from the water, to the power, to the HVAC, to the lights, to which side the toilet paper goes on the roll, I mean it controls everything.”
“Wow. So what happens if that computer system fails?”
“I don’t know, there’s not exactly a manual on this sitting around collecting dust … at least none that we’ve found.”
“Then we worry about that later. What about the other section, you said there were two sections?”
“Yeah, sorry, the other section is everything else, water, waste and air.”
“Air? What waste and how much water, I mean, well … Bill explain it to me, use small words; the coffee hadn’t really kicked in yet.”
“OK, Hal helped me with this too; it’s like the cross between a big damn RV, a sub and the space shuttle. The cistern is massive, like epic, Great-Lakes-sized. If the readout on the terminal down there is right, we’re sitting on roughly four billion gallons of water.”
“Billion, with a b?”
“Yeah, billion, four billion gallons of water.”
“How did they get that much water down there, in ten years or twenty years or whatever, and how will we refill it?”
“We don’t.”
“We can’t?”
“No Jake, not we can’t, just we don’t refill it, the systems take care of that for us.”
“Some sort of spring or something?”
“Yeah, something is right. The water is piped in.”
“Piped in from where? We’re in a dry lake bed, that’s why this place exists is because it’s dry and sucks so bad that it’s in the
middle of nowhere.”
“I don’t know where from yet, but I think it might be Lake Mead.”
“Seriously? No … Lake Mead as in the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River?”
“One and the same.”
Jake shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know, Bill, I mean I might have an easier time believing you found alien bodies or something.”
“Well we found those too.”
Jake choked on his mouthful of coffee, turning red and coughing, trying to keep from spitting it out on the table.
“Seriously? I was joking.”
“I am too, Jake,” Bill said, his rotund stomach jiggling as he laughed. “Besides the water, the waste treatment is incredible, like the largest septic tank you’ve ever seen. I mean someone ran machines to dig all of this out, they built supports, it’s like you’re in a giant warehouse lit by glowing overhead gym lights. I don’t know how they kept all of this a secret.”
“Did they?”
“Yeah they did, Jake, people thought they really did have aliens or it was all just black aircraft and such. If for nothing else the facility itself is absolutely amazing.”
“What about the air?”
“Scrubbers and generators. Like I said, it’s like the Space Shuttle. Right now our air is exchanged and filtered with the air topside, but if we put the facility into lockdown, all the vents seal, all the doors seal, everything seals up tighter than a nun’s habit and we breathe our own air.”
“For how long?”
“That I haven’t figured out yet. I say I haven’t, Hal hasn’t. He knows more about these systems than I do, so I passed the job along to him. He rounded up a couple of helpers of his own and they’re systematically going through each area. He suspects there is much more that we don’t know of yet. He thinks there might be tunnels.”
“Tunnels where?”
“I have no idea, but if you believe the tinfoil crowd on the interwebs the country is crisscrossed with huge underground highways in giant tunnels bored by nuclear-powered TBMs.”
“TBMs?”
“Tunnel Boring Machines, the big round rotating cutting snakes that make a tunnel as they creep along through the dirt; these were supposedly larger than what we know of and nuclear-powered, but I don’t know if I believe that.”
“Sure, and the SSC was dug by four guys and a shovel, while another couple of guys with a pickaxe took care of our home underground here. There has to be some technology at work that we’re not aware of.”
“Touché friend, but Jake, do we want to know?”
“I do.”
The lights flickered and shut off for a few moments before blinking back on.
“All of this is neat, Bill, but why is that happening?”
“That we don’t know, but I really do suspect it has to do with the computer system controlling the facility.”
CHAPTER 13
MSOT Compound, Coronado, CA
March 16, Year 1
Night was quickly approaching with the falling sun. Thus far, Simmons and Jones had yet to miss any of the two-hour-interval quiet check-ins with two clicks of the transmitter, which was returned with a single click. The seven Marines and Aymond had their personal gear packed, checked and ready, and their M4s clean and oiled—not that their gear and weapons ever were in any condition but dialed in, but as part of the pre-operation ritual every piece of gear is checked, every weapon cleaned, oiled and checked, every place on their gear had a critical component and everything they carried had a purpose.
The gear was piled neatly in eight orderly stacks; the men knelt on the floor around a clutter of trash. At least that was what the clutter looked like. Trash from the dumpster at the back of the courtyard contained the biggest treasure trove of needed material, but some other gear scavenged out of the mission lockers and offices in the building rounded out their needs.
They sorted out aluminum foil, packing materials, soda cans, fuel cans, nails, bolts, nuts, screws, and they had a series of car batteries charging, linked with jumper cables from the M-ATVs. The time had come to bring the ways of the jihadist to the invading communists.
Each man worked quickly but carefully, shaping the hard clay-like explosives into the device that they were building. Each was as individually crafted and different as each of the men, but singular in focus and plan. The eight of them had three vehicles left: two M-ATVs and the one soft-sided Humvee that Simmons and Jones had driven in from The Palms. Except that one of the M-ATVs was currently sitting in a store miles away. For the plan to work they would need all of the vehicles, and they had to be prepared to improvise a new FOB if they couldn’t break contact and escape back to the SEALs’ building undetected.
Returning from the vantage point on the roof, Happy walked into the room. “Chief, looks like the PANAMAX had the desired effect, and it’s planted in the harbor by the airport. Looks like it plowed through a bunch of yachts and royally fucked everything. Even seeing it from all the way on this side of the harbor I’m impressed. Looks like fuel oil is spread across the water pretty thick, it was shimmering against the sunset.”
“Roger, good idea on that one, guys. How about the other ships?”
“Looks like they toppled like dominos; some containers are floating in the water, others I assume sank, but all of them are listing really hard to port. They’re going to need some serious gear for recovery operations. Even if they had the ships and they sent them to sea today it will still be a couple of weeks for them just to get here, much less open the harbor for business again.”
“Outstanding!”
“Oh, the Coronado bridge is still fucked, Chief.”
“Thanks Happy, we’ll just have to ignore it. If it’s impassable for us it is for our new neighbors as well.”
“We could blow it, Chief.” Gonzo smiled, holding up a small block of explosives he had shaped into a badly formed rabbit. “Just your friendly neighborhood rabbit coming by to visit.”
Chief shook his head. “No, save your explosives for the golfers.”
“You mean gophers.”
“Whatever, the bridge doesn’t matter right now. Not for this run and gun op.” Aymond peeked through the blinds and then looked at his watch.
“Looks like we’re good to roll in ninety mikes; get it right, wrap it up, and meet back here in sixty. Remember gentlemen, be prepared to not come back.”
M-ATV One, Coronado, CA
Jones snored loudly in deference to the constant thumping on all sides of the armored truck from all the Zeds. Over the last few hours, Simmons had become accustomed to the gruesome faces peering in the armored windows and eventually came to terms with his safety in the big truck, although he still felt anxious and was ready to clear away from the undead.
The short radio transmission two hours ago only said to hang tight and the QRF would be en route. Simmons shook his head. They sure put the quick in Quick Reaction Force. Jesus, it’s been hours of this shit.
As per the radio message, he responded with a single click of the transmitter to acknowledge the reception of the message. He had no idea what the plan was. Come nightfall we could just drive over all of these dammed Zeds and out of here, if the fucking helicopters would leave.
The muffled sound of a helicopter roared overhead. So far, hiding in the home improvement store had worked to their advantage, but Simmons was worried that the Chinese would eventually put trucks out and find them.
Really though, a home improvement store is a good place to be if it can be secured. Plenty of materials to make sure nothing can get in, other stuff to make improvised weapons, a garden center with potting soil and seeds to grow. There’s even shit to keep the bugs out of the garden and help the tomatoes grow large. Shit, after this all settles down I’m going to talk to Chief about raiding some of these places and starting a garden. That would beat the hell out of these fucking MREs.
Simmons held the tackboard-like cracker in his hand, breaking off little pieces to chew on for a snack. The c
racker was one of the more worthless items in an MRE and Simmons hated them, but he was hungry.
MSOT Compound, Coronado, CA
Aymond stood by the dry erase board, the assignments listed out by name. “Alright guys, each of you know your job, each of you know the rally point. If you get fucked, call it out. If you get stranded, hunker down and get safe, we’ll come to you. This op has a lot of moving pieces; fucking Murphy will get you if you let him. Be smart, be fast, be accurate … swift, silent, deadly.”
The team gave a oorah in unison.
“Saddle up!”
The trucks were prepped with supplies: MREs, water, as much ammo and as many fuel cans as they could hold, the improvised explosives and some of the other combat gear scavenged from the SEAL Team’s mission lockers.
Aymond climbed into the first M-ATV, Snow with him, and started the truck. Chuck and Happy sat in the soft-bodied Humvee, the trailer holding the Zodiac hooked to the rear of the truck, Hammer and Gonzo ready for the water.
“Dagger-Actual, commo check.”
“Dagger-One.”
“Dagger-Two.”
“Dagger-Three.”
Aymond smiled slightly. Snow rotated the remote turret, using the IR to scan the horizon for any blacked-out helicopters.
“Looks clear for now, Chief.”
Aymond nodded and keyed the radio. “OK guys, go time.”
Chuck climbed out of the truck and ran ahead of the short convoy to the gate securing the installation from the highway, pushing the gate open just as Aymond nosed his truck in position. Once back inside, Aymond took a right and drove hard, the Humvee with the Zodiac heading straight across the intersection and through Glorietta Bay Park, past the playset, to the beach and into the water. Hammer and Gonzo bailed out of the truck, unhooked the trailer from the Humvee, and released the Zodiac, the trailer sinking to the sandy bottom. Happy gave his buddies the bird before driving through the park and back onto the highway, driving fast to catch back up to the convoy ahead.
