Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 4): Gathering Storms

by Wohlrab, Jeff

  “Awesome! I’m from Boulder. Small world, huh?” Strenke replied. “I know what you mean about Californians. They roll in from Berkley and start demanding equal rights for their purse dogs. If they want that, they should have stayed in California.” He grinned before he added, “And the women are just as bad.”

  Jensen snorted as he laughed, “You have a point. The cultures of the Rockies and the West Coast are very, very different.” He mused “I can’t say I’m a fan of California, but millions of people seem to like it. It was the most populous state by a fair margin. That said, if it fell off into the ocean, I wouldn’t be a bit sad.”

  “You and me both,” Strenke told him. “You and me both.” He clapped the younger man on the shoulder, “Anyway, we have more pressing concerns. We need to set up in Junaluska and get society moving again. We have to get some more CO2 into the air, or we’ll never manage to get Florida underwater.”

  The comment made Jensen laugh again. Although they were moving from a seemingly safe place to one he didn’t know, the jokes made him feel a little bit more at ease. One constant throughout history was the military’s ability to joke about terrible things. He enjoyed the banter.

  “How long do you think it’s going to take to get up there?” Jensen asked.

  Before he replied, the Colonel scanned the long line of vehicles. “It’s only about forty miles, but I think it’s going to take us at least a couple hours, and that’s if we don’t run into any problems along the way.”

  Jensen was instantly attentive. “Are you expecting trouble?”

  “Not likely. We’ve had some pushback from the locals up in Lake Junaluska, but nothing really concerning. I’m more worried about all of these vehicles making it up those mountain roads. If one stalls out, we might not be able to get everyone else past.” He pointed toward an RV near the back, which appeared to have been converted to LP using redneck engineering, “Especially that one. It’s like a VBIED.”

  The old RV he was indicating looked like a long-wheelbase van from the late 90s. In addition to the rough exterior, there was a clearly homemade wooden addition protruding an additional five or six feet off the back of the vehicle. It was tempting to believe the modifications had been done recently, but the bevy of state and national park stickers seemed to indicate otherwise.

  Immediately above the windshield was a row of white LP tanks like those used in gas grills. They were rigged together with a hose which ran down the driver’s side A-pillar and disappeared under the hood. The owner had rigged side curtains for the driver and passenger windows and covered over the windows in the back using plywood. The only thing missing was ‘free candy’ spray-painted on the side for it to be featured in some sort of crime documentary.

  Jensen faked a shudder. “Can we just leave that one behind? It feels like Deliverance and Jihad at the same time.”

  Strenke shook his head. “Nope, that’s one of our engineers.”

  Jensen took another look at the white and gray van, hoping to see something which would make him think ‘engineer’ rather than ‘child molester.’ Nothing. “Is he allowed to live within five hundred feet of a school zone?”

  The older man smiled. “She. She is allowed to live within five hundred feet of a school zone, unless there’s some local ordinance about cats.”

  Jensen looked down the line for the MRAPs they had brought from Highlands but didn’t see the tan-colored vehicles anywhere. He scanned a second time, just to be sure. “Did Colonel Simmons take the MRAPs?”

  Colonel Strenke nodded. “Yeah, he took them up with the advanced group. I apologize, but you and your crew will be in the box truck at the rear.” He pointed toward a blocky shape painted in a familiar brown color. “There should be plenty of room for all of you.”

  Jensen’s heart sank. The last time his group had been in a UPS truck, they had been ambushed in a small town called Elberton back in Georgia. During the ambush, they had lost Ed and Jerry to an unprovoked attack by National Guard Soldiers. At least, they had appeared to be soldiers; there was no way of knowing these days.

  The older man saw the look on Jensen’s face. “Something wrong?”

  He nodded slightly. “We had one of those trucks when we left Appling and ran into some trouble on the way to the mountains. Lost a couple of men in an ambush.”

  Strenke grew concerned. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”

  “It was a National Guard roadblock of some sort. They had three machine guns trained on the road and opened fire while we were trying to reverse away. Ed and Jerry got killed trying to get the UPS truck out of the engagement zone,” Jensen explained.

  “Why in the world would they fire on a delivery truck?” Strenke asked.

  Jensen shrugged. “No idea.”

  The Colonel looked puzzled. “They didn’t tell you?”

  Jensen’s face grew cold as he responded. “There wasn’t anyone left alive to explain why.”

  Strenke thought of something Jessica had said during their dinner. “This was Elberton?”

  Jensen nodded as he studied the delivery truck. It was the worst possible thing for combat: big, slow, unarmored, and with terrible visibility. Anyone inside would be almost defenseless. It was only forty miles, but it was unknown territory and could be dangerous, particularly for the first and last vehicles in the convoy.

  Those were usually the first to be engaged. If an enemy could take out the ends of a convoy, particularly on narrow mountain roads, the rest of the vehicles could be trapped in a kill box. Even worse, the roads in this part of the country rarely ran along the crest of the mountains, meaning any attacker could have an elevation advantage. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  There wasn’t enough time to modify the vehicle before they moved out. Given enough time, Jensen would have turned it into an armored gun truck of some sort. The heavy-duty chassis, made to haul tons of consumer goods, was similar to that used by military transport vehicles. It would easily support armored plates.

  Unfortunately, they were due to roll out later that same day. He sighed; you go into battle with the army you have, not the army you want. It certainly wasn’t ideal, but it was no worse than walking over the mountains on foot.

  He wished Simmons would have left one of those MRAPs behind. Jensen had been in enough convoys that he felt a lot safer with armor around him and heavy weapons available to fight off any sort of attack. The combination tended to keep a lot of potential attackers away, which was why many of them had turned to landmines and remotely detonated charges instead.

  A package truck just didn’t provide the same feeling of safety. It didn’t provide protection from gunfire nor from explosions. With all of the attacks over the past few months, it was becoming increasingly difficult to separate his experiences in his home country from those overseas locations where he’d been in combat.

  Even there, most of his convoys and patrols had been uneventful. It was the rare eventful one which could make the difference between coming home alive, damaged, or under a flag.

  Jensen thanked the Colonel, who moved down along the line of vehicles, and walked over to his designated vehicle. As he approached, he scanned the UPS truck as closely as possible. The driver’s seat was the most dangerous place, as they’d already learned. It was up several steps and sat entirely above the engine.

  In most vehicles, parts of the engine could provide at least some protection against fire from the front. In this thing, it would protect the ankles and shins at best. The driver would be clearly visible behind the tall, almost vertical windshield. To each side, the doors were open, leaving the driver in plain view.

  He climbed up into the tall vehicle to check rear visibility. Jensen didn’t know why he was surprised, but there was no rearview mirror high up on the windshield like there was in most vehicles. It made sense; the rear doors didn’t have windows, but the lack of visibility could be an issue. The large side mirrors resembled those on a semi, but the view out the back was compl
etely occluded.

  Jensen hopped down and moved to the rear of the vehicle. He pulled the doors open and looked inside. There were boxes and packages already stored on some type of shelf in the interior of the cargo compartment. Others were stacked on the floor of the vehicle. For seven people, it wasn’t going to be exactly comfortable.

  With the doors open, there was a clear line of sight from the front of the vehicle straight back. That was an improvement. He examined the hinges to see if there was any way to lock the doors open, but it appeared that wasn’t a standard feature. The only way he could see to keep those doors locked open was to run a rope from the handles to the small vertical braces attached to the bumpers.

  The fastest way to improve the safety of the people inside would be to improve the visibility of the occupants, especially to the rear. The thin metal of the cargo box wouldn’t protect them from anything except bugs, and then only if the bugs weren’t truly committed.

  Jensen sighed again as he scanned the interior and decided how he was going to rearrange the cargo. This was going to suck, and if the convoy was stopped because of a breakdown, he was more than willing to push that vehicle over the side of the mountain in order to keep going.

  Chapter 24

  South Carolina wasn’t going to get on board, that much was clear. Bobby swore under his breath, “Fucking uppity bitch.” Janet Howe was a nobody, yet she was keeping the rest of the southeastern seaboard from him.

  Rich Mathis had utterly failed to convince Governor Howe to become a part of the new CSS. “The Confederacy died a century and a half ago,” she had told him, “and I’m not going to be part of trying to revive it. It will be the United States or nothing, not some neurotic idea to revive the old south.”

  President Snead had hoped Janet would become a part of his vision for a country with renewed faith and vigor, a return to the roots of a great nation. At worst, he’d anticipated South Carolina remaining neutral for the time being, until the success of the Coalition of Southern States became apparent, even to someone as dense as Governor Howe.

  Instead, she’d been openly hostile during her meeting with Rich, even accusing him of being behind the attacks in the northwestern part of her state. She wasn’t wrong, but how could she even know? Snead’s strike teams had moved in and out of the state quickly, entering from Georgia and falling back into North Carolina within a few hours.

  Luckily, Rich didn’t know they had been behind those attacks. He still believed it was the insurgents operating out of North Carolina. His ignorance might have helped to convince Governor Howe, but she had still insinuated that her state would be willing to fight if it came to light that Georgia had been behind the murder and destruction.

  If it wasn’t enough to have to worry about getting the pipelines back online and keeping a watchful eye on the militant forces in North Carolina, now he was facing a real possibility of resistance from his neighboring state.

  This threw many of his plans into turmoil. He hadn’t really doubted that South Carolina would eventually come on board. The population overall was very similar to that of Georgia—a few large cities and a lot of farmland. The people tended to be conservative Baptists, though the percentage of the population claiming no religion had been growing, just as it had throughout the rest of the country.

  Now he felt himself losing his grasp, all because Janet Howe thought she was smarter than him. It was a personal affront. She was a Lt. Governor, nothing but a non-voting member of a state senate. She had ridden the coattails of Ben Rodgers, the real governor, who had died during the wave of sickness last year. Now she thought she was something.

  She wasn’t. As far as Bobby was concerned, she was just a stupid bitch who wanted to fight because she knew, deep down, that he was better than she was. Otherwise, why would she accuse them of attacking her cities? She couldn’t know, it was just a defense mechanism.

  Bobby would make sure she wasn’t in power for long. She could die just like anybody else. At forty-seven years old, it was unlikely he could make it look like her death was due to a health issue, but accidents happened. The world was a dangerous place these days.

  The good news was that the Savannah River provided a good border between her state and his, and there were only about a dozen bridges left connecting the two. Most of them were in either Savannah near Interstate 95 or around Interstate 20 through Augusta.

  Surprisingly enough, most of those bridges had survived the nuclear attacks. Only the road over Clarks Hill Lake was gone, victim of the destruction of the large dam there. South Carolinians knew the lake as Lake J. Strom Thurmond, named after a long-serving congressman who was best known for his opposition to civil rights.

  However, Georgians refused to accept the federal decision to rename the reservoir after a South Carolina Senator. Even now it was called Clarks Hill Lake on state maps and tourism sites. For whatever reason, it wasn’t spelled Clarke after its namesake, Elijah Clarke, who was a Revolutionary War hero in Georgia.

  Bobby Snead refocused his attention on the map in front of him on the computer screen. It was surprising just how few crossings there were between the neighboring states. There were long stretches of river with no access between the two at all.

  In the north, there wasn’t much he could do. Even without bridges, it was possible to simply walk across the Chattooga River. Further south, river crossings were much more difficult. If he concentrated his forces along Interstate 85, Interstate 20, and Interstate 95, it would be much easier to repel any attacks from the South Carolina side of the river.

  Bobby pressed a key next to the monitor. “Trevor, I need to see you in the control room.” Trevor Davis was the head of security and had taken over the day-to-day operations of the Sentry Group after Bobby had the previous leader’s helicopter shot down over northern Georgia.

  It only took about ninety seconds for Trevor to quietly appear near his desk, and another few seconds after that for Snead to realize he was there. Bobby jumped a little bit as he sensed the other man in his peripheral vision. “Trevor, you almost gave me a heart attack. I’d swear you were part ninja.”

  The tall man grinned. “Twenty percent, on my mother’s side, boss.” He looked nothing like a ninja aside from possibly his thin frame. He indicated the computer screen. “Issues with South Carolina, sir?”

  Bobby nodded. He’d have to be careful with Trevor. The man didn’t miss much. “Yes, Vice President Mathis just returned from a meeting with Governor Howe.” Snead tried to keep his newly found distaste for the woman out of his voice. “She made some threatening comments which have me wondering whether we should minimize access routes across the river.”

  Trevor didn’t look surprised at all as he responded, “Excellent idea, sir.” He motioned slightly toward the computer screen, which showed a street view of a four-lane bridge. “I’d recommend staging forces at the two remaining reservoirs along the river and the three interstate crossings and destroying the rest of the bridges between the two states to prevent access.”

  The almost instantaneous response made Bobby raise his eyebrows in question. “You’ve already been looking at this?”

  Trevor moved toward the computer and asked, “If I may?”

  Bobby pushed his chair back from the monitor to allow Trevor access. “Go ahead.”

  The head of security leaned in and zoomed out from the bridge, which was near Hartwell, Georgia. He pointed at the screen. “This is Hartwell Dam. There are two crossings within three miles of the dam. I say we put units here to defend the dam and watch the river crossings.” He scrolled slightly south, “And we destroy the 368 bridge.”

  Bobby watched with interest.

  Trevor continued to scroll. “Here we take out the Highway 72 crossing and keep forces at the Russell Dam. Further south we neutralize the 378 crossing. The road over Clark’s Hill is already destroyed.” He scrolled past where Clark’s Hill Lake used to be. “Around Augusta, we hold Interstate 20 and destroy the remaining bridges through do
wntown.”

  The head of security zoomed way out after indicating the bridges around Augusta. “Then we just have to destroy these two.” He pointed at two points which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. “The bridges at Highways 301 and 119 are the only crossings in over a hundred miles between Augusta and Savannah.”

  Trevor scrolled back to the initial point near Hartwell. “Here we hold Interstate 85 and take out the bridges at 123 and 184.” He stood up straight and stretched out his lower back as he continued. “The South Carolina population is concentrated roughly east of those interstate crossings, and the remaining power generating dams are strategic objectives. Everything else is a potential threat.”

  Bobby scrutinized the wiry security professional. “It makes sense, but you recommend destroying existing infrastructure to prevent a possible attack from another state?”

  The taller man nodded wearily. “Yeah, boss. I came up with this plan in case there was some sort of foreign landing on the eastern seaboard, but it also makes sense if the enemy is already on our soil.”

  President Snead looked at Trevor searchingly. “And you think you can do this?”

  “I can have it done in a week,” was the reply.

  Snead sighed, he didn’t really relish destroying more infrastructure that he’d have to rebuild someday, but he was more worried about holding off any potential attacks from Governor Howe. “Do it.”

  Trevor bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement and left the room as silently as he’d entered.

  Chapter 25

  The six surviving members from the cabin near Pine Mountain and Analiz stood around the brown package truck. All except for Brent wore jeans or tactical pants and were loaded out with rifles and sidearms. Colonel Strenke had provided them with replacements for any weapons which had been lost or destroyed in their flight from northern Georgia into Franklin.

  In addition to the SIG P320 hanging in a thigh holster hugging her jeans, Analiz had been given a CZ Scorpion 9mm carbine. She had tried out the 5.56 rifles many of the others were using, but she wasn’t comfortable with it. It wasn’t the recoil, which was mild, but the sharp crack of it firing made her jump. The CZ was much milder. The Scorpion carbine didn’t have the same range as the rifles, but the simple red dot sight and compact dimensions made it seem like it was made just for her.