The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse

by Keith T Jenkins

  “Let her go.”

  “I don’t get it,” he says to her, showing her his phone.

  “I’m under presidential orders. The patch indicates a very high-level SpecOps, and if I were to tell you my mission . . .”

  “You’d have to kill me?”

  “Exactly! All I can say,” emphasis on can, “is that I have to keep those two safe.”

  “Why them?”

  “Do you really want to ask that question, sergeant?”

  “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  One stop at the ATM and they are headed down the turnpike, disappearing into history, so to speak. Something similar, but somehow better, happens to Mark when he goes to retrieve his bike.

  Stopping in at the Marion Reserve post, he finds, by asking at the motorpool, that his bike was taken to the National Guard post outside of Belfast Mills, about an hour and a half away, no matter how you go. So, he drives over there, and when he arrives, he is held up at the gate, pending some information.

  “Some information is exactly what you are not allowed to have.”

  “And why is that, sergeant?”

  “Because you don’t have clearance, and the best I can do is give you a peek, if you take me to the bike.”

  After some discussion, and the gate guard understandings the sum of the meaning of the patch on his shoulder, it is decided that someone should escort SSgt Schwarz to the bike.

  “This bike may be licensed to me, but it is actually a military asset, intended for some very specific purposes. It allows someone with my particular skillset to place myself in plain sight, through ordinary civilian environs, and do some seriously covert military shit.” At this point he presses the release button on the back of the sidecar and the drawer for his Big Ass Gun extends a couple of inches. He slides it back enough for them to see the butt and trigger assembly, as well as the operator’s end of the scope. Slowly, gently, and almost silently, he slides it back in place, with only a single click to indicate that it is fully closed.

  “I still don’t know if I can clear you to take this bike,” is the word of the motorpool chief mechanic. He looks at the patch on his shoulder and admits he has seen something similar, but not exactly the same before. A few years ago, before losing the lower portion of his leg, he was Master Chief Darrin Woolsley. He was a Special Operator in MarSOC, and wore a similar patch back when. He asks a fellow Sergeant mechanic what he thinks, and he’s told that he could get patch confirmation from Ops Comm with a shot from the phone. The Chief tells him to do so, and, much like the case with Mike, a reply is swift.

  “Give him whatever he wants. Get out of his way.”

  The sergeant shows the message to the Chief, who gives a nod to Mark, saying, “Is there anything else we can get you?

  “Since you asked; can I get a quarter cup of Oxy7Z in each of my cans, a complete fill up, and I’m going to need a collection of ammo. Can I make you a list?”

  The Chief snaps his fingers to get the Oxy7Z and fuel in the bike. Oxy7Z is an additive that drastically improves the burn of the fuel. Most fuel-injected motors only get to use about 37% of the explosive power of gasoline in an engine. The Oxy7Z boosts the burn ratio to over 60%, makes it burn cooler, and each explosion in an engine burns quicker, with added oxygen. This means that, with little more than the addition of the fluid to the gas, the bike gets nearly twice the mileage, and much better acceleration.

  As the bike is rolled to the pumps, he offers Mark his pen and pad for his ammo list. Once the list is complete, the Chief passes it to his sergeant, saying, “Can you have the armorer bring this over?”

  “Sure thing, boss,” and he makes the call. As that is happening, Mark scans his bike for the tracer that helped the government find him before, and once found, Mark uses his Schrade pocket tool to crush it in place. No one needs to see what he has done, and he can clean the components out whenever convenient. If he is right, no one will ever find him again . . . not that way.

  The armorer asks a few questions, the sergeant explains what has happened, the patch, the messages, the requests, and the armorer decides to bring the ammo, personally. In about twenty minutes, Mark has the ammo stuffed into the sidecar, having waved everyone away, so as to not allow them to see his stash, and in another minute, he is shaking everyone’s hands, saying, “Thank you,” to everyone. He has three new mags for his M4, three for his MP5, three more for his Sig P226 Tac-Ops, and two hundred specialized rounds for the Barrett. All the mags are full, and he has an additional can for each of the weapons. That’s three thousand NATO for the 9mm and the MP5, and five hundred for the M4. Along with this, Mark also has a couple months of MRE’s, a med kit, a nav-sat system, a replacement Google based, octa-core, Android phone, and much more.

  Mark tells the Chief how he got the other bike, handing him the lanyard and thumb, that it is now his, and he will drive it until . . . well, the word will never come about the owner being dead, and by the time the plates need to be replaced, there won’t be any DMV to worry about.

  Mark is driving out, on his own hardware, leaving the impression that he is on some sort of kill mission that may take a long time, may have a long list, and no one even bothered to see if they are on that list. After all, most of the military has little kind to say about the current president.

  It’ll be about a half hour before the motorpool guys will update their inventory, feeding the computers the info that the bike is gone. The simple click of “delete” sets off an automated alarm that reaches all the way to the White House. “What do you mean, ‘he took it’?” echoes all the way down the chain of command, ‘til it reaches the Chief, who cannot explain, except to say that Ops Comm had told him, even messaged back via his underling, “Give him whatever he wants. Get out of his way.” Too bad there is so much going on right now, so that the Chief can’t be properly disciplined for doing what he was told, or for the folks at Ops Comm to receive an adjustment.

  “He could want to kill me!” says a terrified President.

  “I doubt he has that in mind, Mr. President,” says Walid.

  “God dammit! Don’t give me doubts. Give me facts! Find out what he has in mind and get him back, if you can.”

  “We can do pretty much anything we want, Mr. President.”

  “Really! You think so? Even after that man and his family disappeared right in front of us?” He is shouting and gyrating in a frenetic motion of random gestures, pointing across the room and back. “We couldn’t do anything about that!” He runs his fingers through his seeming tattered hair, saying in a calmer voice, “Get him back.”

  The following morning, one of the suits from Langley show up, flashing some creds to the Chief, asking about the bike. The Chief show him the message his sergeant got on his phone, purely as a defensive measure. “What’s so important about that bike?” asks the agent. “Why would he travel from New York to Mayberry to get it?”

  “Maybe it’s not the bike,” says the sergeant, passing by when the Chief is asked. “Maybe it’s what the bike holds.”

  “Come here! Talk to me.”

  “Well, when he arrived, he had an M4 on his back, and he showed us a drawer in the back of the sidecar, which held a Barrett, 50 caliber, anti-materials weapon. It has a scope on it as big around as my ankle. He had the armorer bring him a butt-load of ammo too.”

  “What’s a butt-load?”

  “You know?” he says waving his hands to signify large amounts – palms facing each other, circling to show expanding size – followed by, “a whole lot.”

  “I know what you mean by ‘butt-loads,’ but what I wanted was a list, or an idea of the contents.”

  The sergeant takes his phone from the Chief, goes to the gallery, bringing up the picture he took of the list that Mark had written.

  “Oh, shit!” says the agent. “Butt-loads!”

  He pulls out his own phone and calls Langley, holding on to the sergeant’s phone for reference. He walks away from the rest, conveying the info at
hand, and he is told what to do. “Which way did he go?”

  “He was seen going toward the south gate. You could check with them,” is the word of the Chief.

  The agent does that, and he learns that Mark headed down the 19 toward Rosedale. As the agent drives in that direction, he gets updates that say someone will be meeting him in Gate City, “Take 19 to 613 to 71” is his directions. As he gets closer more directions specify, “Grogan Park – by the baseball diamond” – so he gets out his map program and finds the location, using that to get him to the exact spot.

  It takes him an hour thirty to make the trip with a sandwich pickup on the way, and when he arrives, there is nothing going on. He sits a few minutes, enjoying his Double Thickburger from Hardee’s and a shake. No fries this time ‘cause he is up a few pounds from his last physical. In a few minutes’ time, he hears the approaching sound of propellers. Over the ridge to the east comes an Osprey – a plane with Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) capability. It finds a spot in the sky, just over the ball field and lowers slowly to the ground. The cargo door opens and out rolls a small, up-armoured, big-wheeled truck of some sort. There is a machine gun – a big one – mounted on a swivel on the roof. Four men are in the truck and three more are walking to the agent’s car. Two of the three men walking share the load of a case that is two feet by two feet by four and a half feet, heavy plastic, with padlocks, open, dangling from the latches. The agent opens his trunk for the box.

  “Someone thinks this sergeant is a real dangerous man, eh?” asks the agent.

  “I’ve worked with him before. I’m not so sure we are sending enough men. What we should probably do is find him and call down some artillery.” The man speaking is a Navy Seal operator named, Otto Herbert Lundt, from Fredericksburg, VA. He had been on a few – well, more than a few – assignments with Mark, and knew him rather well.

  “If he’s so good, after so many years in service, why doesn’t he have rank?”

  “Schwarz has a real sense of right and wrong, instead of just focusing on the mission.”

  “What does that mean?” asks the agent.

  “It means that he can punch a CO, knowing it is the right thing to do, and he has, a couple times. Otherwise, he would likely be a major, or even a lite colonel.” He puts the mag in his M4, pulls the charging handle, pressing the thumb release to chamber a round, asking the agent, “How do we plan to find him?”

  “We have a few drones looking for him.” Right then a ping, like a Facebook message, rings on the agent’s phone. He pulls it out and finds that there is a message from the Company, saying Mark is found. Showing the message to Lundt, the agent says, “I guess we know where to go, eh?” After getting all the men to message him, the agent is able to push the info out to their phones as well, creating a comm circle.

  Lundt tells him, “I don’t think things are going to go as easily as you do.”

  “How hard can it be? He was captured by a bunch of soon-to-be rangers a month or so ago. We can do the same thing again.”

  Lundt is certain that the agent is not going to listen to his non-spook voice, thinking that Langley has all the answers. So, he will be along for the ride as needed, and he will do what he does in these situations, shoot who needs shooting, snatch who needs grabbing. “What is it that Langley thinks he is going to do?”

  “The White House is worried that he may make a play for the President.”

  “Nope!”

  “What do you mean, ‘nope’?”

  “Look, your drone info says he is in Shawnee National Forest, a million miles from DC. Your drone shows him setting up camp for the night, so what makes you think of the President?”

  “I didn’t say I thought it. This is a presidential concern, so we take action. Besides, we did rendition him a while ago. Don’t you think he could hold a grudge for that?”

  “If he wanted the President dead, he would already be dead.”

  “What makes you so certain of that?”

  “I have seen him use a Barrett, load a single round, in an Afghan city, reach out and touch someone at well over a mile and a half, at night, through a window, as the guy passed by a door between his room and the bathroom of an apartment. That means he had to shoot nearly three seconds in advance, knowing where the target was going to be when the bullet landed. He was breaking down his bi-pod when the target’s chest exploded all over the hallway.” He let that sink in a moment, then he said, “If Schwarz wanted to, all he has to do is setup near the Washington Monument in a van, facing away from the White House, using a thermal detecting scope, wait for a heat signature to sit in the big chair and shoot him right through the walls.”

  “No one can shoot through those walls.”

  “I know. In the last remodel, there were three-inch stucco walls put up, under the three-quarter inch thick Hardie-board, wood looking, exteriors, to keep things looking original, but things change. For example, the scope that he uses can sense the heat signature right through 10 inches of cement – far more than those walls. Also, did you look at the ammo the armorer gave him?”

  “No, what’s the point?”

  “Well, Skippy, that ammo is Teflon washed, steel jacketed, and depleted uranium filled, with a double +P charge.” Commander Lundt is trying to be extra informative.

  “I don’t get it,” is the word of the agent.

  “The Teflon helps it not get stuck to anything it is passing through. The steel jacket means the metal of the outside of the bullet won’t fold upon impact, like copper. And the uranium is much heavier than lead.”

  “What about the ‘plus p’ part.”

  “Well, double +P means that it has nearly three times the blast to the powder as a regular bullet, so it travels much faster and farther. With that ammo, and just a couple of rounds to get used to it, Schwarz should be able to reach out and touch someone, through cement walls, at up to three miles, if they are sitting still . . . like at a desk, in a chair, ensconced in his own pomposity and arrogance.” He has the agent’s attention. “But he’s headed the wrong way.”

  The agent’s phone gets a ping, with a short video attached.

  Mark had stopped at Back Yard Burgers in Paducah, Kentucky, before heading into the forest. He suspected that he would be sought, and figured that it would be drones used to search. He found a nice clearing to setup camp, so to speak, where he had lunch and then relaxed on a knoll to digest. He lay there on his back, M4 on his chest, Fosters on his face, and waits for what he knows will be coming. Soon enough, he sees a drone flying at about 3000 feet. He lay there, perfectly still, with his M4 to his shoulder, ‘til he gets it well inside his scope, breathe in, release, stop, slow squeeze, and the drone is a goner. It glides to the ground, about a quarter mile away, so Mark humps over to get it. He only needs the front section, with the camera and controls, along with the battery.

  Taking it all back to his camp in a bag, he packs his gear on the bike, and then he makes a video.

  The Message

  The veterans dream of the fight - fast asleep at the traffic light.[21]

  E-Day Minus 7 Years

  Mark Schwarz, onetime captain, many times a sergeant of various ranks, has been SpecOps of many kinds. He has been trained in tons of tech for many types of missions; even being put on presidential protection detail a few times, educated in how to protect the person in the office, in all manner of circumstances. He has been trained in how to use a vast collection of equipment that the rest of the world doesn’t even know exists, and he knows how to make some of it work, and some of it not work. Today, with no more than a pocketknife and a small screwdriver, he will disable the transmission encryption equipment on the drone, making all of its signals available to the world. Plenty of nerds within a few hundred miles will capture and record his message, and it will become internet fodder for a few days.

  “I want to be left alone!” This is the first, and most repeated line of his transmission. The sun is nearly down and Mark is on screen in silhouett
e, speaking into the camera. “I have served my country with distinction on nearly fifty missions, and a few days ago, I was tasked with killing an innocent journalist who had disappeared into forced retirement and obscurity. His name was Jeremiah. When the dirty deed was to be done, a friend of mine rescued him, and rescued me from killing him, and then, like thousands, maybe millions of others, Jeremiah just disappeared, right before my eyes. I haven’t been up on the news . . . I’ve been running from our government. I have no ill intentions; I just want to be left alone. I have done things I am not proud of, and I have taken things that didn’t belong to me, but the government made them mine, in service to my country for a long time, and I am willing to consider these things as my retirement package. I know that, in a very little while, all money will be worth nothing. Jeremiah told me this. He also told me what all this is about, and though I am uncertain if I should fully believe him, all his data points seem to track in the right direction to say, ‘he’s onto something’ – so I do. Jeremiah predicted the events of the past few days, over a month ago, including the financial collapse, and the visitations, but the government and the big news agencies decided that the people needed to know nothing about it. I just want to be left alone!” Mark glances to the right and left, checking to see if anyone is approaching, which they are not. “I have set the broadcast of this video to repeat about every ten minutes, and I have removed the encryption, so that anyone can see it if they are connected. My plan is to stay at least a hundred miles from DC for the rest of my life – which according to Jeremiah will be somewhere between seven years and forever. He said that was up to me and he gave me some personal insights which I have to consider. Most of you have to consider it too. But for now, for all those listening in, from the White House to Second Street in Nowhereville, I just want to be left alone. Do that, and all is forgiven.” He sets the delay on the broadcast for an hour, and rebroadcast is set for every ten minutes. By the time the signal gets out, Mark is across the Mississippi, into Missouri, headed nowhere in particular.