by Td Barnes
“Done. Regarding the team leader for the extraction, Tom, our junior officers are combat trained, but I do not think any of them have the combat experience for the job. Our sergeants do. I believe we should consider this if you or I am not going to be there.
####
Four hours later
Railroad Pass Hotel and Casino
There were 15 of them chosen. Fifteen young men, a mixture from Central America, Mexico, and the United States with most of the latter being former prison inmates released after the EMP. All of them converted to Islam after the 9–11 attacks that drew their attention to and piqued their interest in the religion.
They gathered at the Railroad Pass Hotel Casino between Boulder City and Henderson overlooking the Eldorado Valley. The hotel-casino was not much to look at; a once gambling spot for locals and truck drivers were now a looted hull of a building overlooking a barren desert almost devoid of living creatures.
Like an apparition from the devil, these Jihadist warriors come with their strict religious beliefs to conduct jihad warfare on the infidels. Under the guidance of Allah, they took the water, the land, and now planned to take the cities of Boulder City, Henderson, Las Vegas, and North Las Vegas. With control of Hoover Dam, they controlled the Colorado River and its water flowing into Arizona, California, and into Mexico.
The team disguised to blend in with the local survivors of the EMP. They dribbled into Tucson, Arizona from across the Mexican border the moment the radiation levels allowed. There they found the unattended American military planes that brought them to Nevada. Now they assembled to prepare for their first mission to do the will of Allah—to begin jihad against the infidels in their new country.
Earlier, in preparation for tomorrow’s mission, they donned their Islamic jihad uniforms complete with headgear and ski face masks. Now they faced a video camera before their leader standing in the center of the hotel lobby with a Koran in one hand and an AK47 assault rifle in the other. It was early evening, the desert air cooling with the coming of night.
Sitting to the side was two who knew each other, but were not on speaking terms. Each wore a US Army Desert ACU. One, a Hispanic man, unlike the others, was clean-shaven; however, he carried a weapon and wore the headgear of his Jihadist brothers. His US Army uniform bore no rank insignia; however, that of the other one the insignia of a staff sergeant. The staff sergeant was wounded, a head wound with a considerable indication of bleeding beneath his Kevlar helmet. He appeared to be slipping in and out of consciousness.
Standing to the side and observing the others were two Arab men, bearded, dressed in the besht, Arabian robes, and carrying AK-47 assault rifles.
Ensuring that the battery was good and the camera recording, he said in broken, memorized English. “I am Mohammed Abu Nadeem, the leader of this mission. In the name of Almighty Allah, who is king of the kings.”
He was a little older than the rest of them, a big man with ham-hock arms, his beard fuller but still short-trimmed, his face calm and confident. “I want to give this message to the Americans, crusaders, and other non-Muslims. You Americans guilt all Muslims under the name of terrorism. It is not terrorism. We are not terrorists.”
The Mexican on his right—not much more than a boy in a Mexican army cap, square-rimmed glasses, and displaying a weak excuse for a beard—tried not to giggle at his leader’s English. “You come to our country to rain bombs on Muslims,” he said. “Next, you insult our Muslim sisters. Next, to destroy our mosques and madrassas. These are those actions, which makes us ready to sacrifice ourselves in the way of Almighty Allah. We are not suicide bombers. We have morals. Your once great country is now ours.”
Mohammed finished his recording and walked to stand beside the two in soldier uniforms. The camera operator turned the camera tripod to aim it at Mohammed and the others. When it resumed recording, he laid his arm on the one displaying no rank. “I introduce to you to our latest brother to join us. Please welcome Juan Carlos, who yesterday brought us this Infidel American soldier. Allah brought us Carlos to bring us the one thing that we need to survive the approaching winter. Carlos knows where there is enough food to feed our army for many years.”
Mohammed hugged Carlos with his massive arms. “Carlos was not in the military of the Infidels. However yesterday he did much more than an army can do. Yesterday, he dynamited the impregnable fort of the US military that has kept this food for themselves and denied it to the starving people for whom they served. Because of the deeds of our brother, we will be able to enter this mountain fortress that no one else has been able to penetrate. The Americans are weak. They will not oppose us if we trade them this soldier.” He grabbed the front of Sergeant Harper’s helmet and lifted his face to the camera using the straps of the helmet.
“Allah is great.”
####
The next morning.
Bradley did not give the Mount Charleston mission his usual send-off. He has been with the squad the previous evening when they loaded the supplies needed for the job. He still a soldier in harm's way and recovering him held top priority. When Callahan popped in to let him know the detail got off okay, he was poring over a stack of information from the archives about Hoover Dam, known as Boulder Dam. Callahan did not linger as he too was preparing his troops to go to war.
Bradley could not resist periodically glancing at the weather display on the big screens through the expected return of the jet stream at this stage and its accompanying nuclear winter were not evident. The external monitor showed a bright sunrise with the barren mountainside glinting with sun rays beaming from a crystalline sky.
He went to the War Room entrance and called to the security guard manning his station in the central tunnel. “Sergeant, have someone summon Oquendo.”
“Under guard, sir?”
“Negative. We don’t think he is a threat.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bradley resumed studying the blueprint of the dam when interrupted again. “Sir, is this a good time?” It was Ray and Sammie, both covered with dust, enough that he could see tear trails on both their faces. A jolt of emotion surged through his body at sight and thought of them having to work at the location where Sammie’s mother and so many others died only two days earlier.
“Sure, come on in.”
“Dad, we recovered the Grizzly. It was damaged, but fixable. It is back online. We cannot return it to its original location because of all the clean up going on at the portal entrance. We decided to mount it as a mobile unit since we may want to use it at the dam anyway. That way, we can still be operational even with the loaders and such doing clean up. Another of the injured cows died during the night. The people are combing the desert to recover all the chickens and hogs escaping since the explosion. It’s been impossible to keep them all contained with all the clean-up equipment running in and out of the mountain.”
“How are you holding up?”
“We have our moments. It helps to stay busy.”
“Me too. Where will you set up the mobile Grizzly?”
“Until they get the south portal door closable, I think we’ll park it near the greenhouses and cover it with a tarp. We should be able to close the portal door by tomorrow. The reason for the visit is that we thought you might like to see us test the Grizzly to ensure it is still operational. We thought we’d take it out on the dry lake bed and run it up to power a couple of times.”
Bradley pointed to the stack of documents about Hoover Dam. “I’d like to, but I have Oquendo coming to help me go through these and understand the setup at the dam. I’m not familiar with the Boulder City area, so I’ll be depending on some of you locals to provide advice when it comes to plotting the actual mission layout.”
“Understood, sir.”
Ray, Sammie, and their two enlisted assistants been gone from the mountain almost two hours when Ray declared the Grizzly being operational. They conducted the tests on a small dry lake bed about three miles from the south portal. Not ha
ving a living or liquid target, they saw no physical results. However, the unit powered up as it should and nothing overheated.
“Lieutenant, do we have any vehicles on the road?” the driver asked with concern reflected in the tone of his voice.
Sammie and Ray were sitting in the back seat. Both followed his gaze and saw five JLTVs racing towards the mountain on the road from Lathrop Wells.
“Captain Callahan has a detail out, but they took only two vehicles.” They could see the north portal from their location and saw a sudden increase in human activity as the sentries detected the approaching vehicles and started rushing everyone inside the mountain.
Sammie screamed, “They’re not ours, Hurry! The south portal is open and unprotected.”
It became a race between them and the approaching vehicles as they both headed for the south portal.
“Ma’am, they blew by the north portal. They are hauling ass for the south portal.”
She shouted, “When you get to the paved road, stop so Ray, and I can get in the back.” Racing across the desert made it too rough for them to do anything in the back at this point.
The vehicle stopped just long enough for Ray and Sammie to jump out of the vehicle and climb into the rear with the Grizzly. She started the generator while he ripped the protective covers off the control panel and the emitter tube. With this done, they could only watch, the wind blowing in their faces while the race for the portal continued.
The race continued. By now, it was evident that the incoming party saw the vehicle carrying the Grizzly. It was also evident that the Grizzly vehicle was winning the race.
“Heads up, Lieutenant. We’re about to take on fire,” the driver screamed back to them, screaming loud enough to be heard in the rear of the vehicle.
“We see them,” Sammie shouted back at him. “We are locking and loading. When we reach the portal, spin this puppy around to give us a cab overshot. Get out of the cab ASAP and behind the vehicle for protection.”
She no more than spoken when the Jihadist invaders fired at them from the windows of their vehicles. The driver spun the vehicle around just outside the portal door as instructed by Sammie.
“Cook’m Ray,” Sammie ordered.
Ray not waited. He already turned up the power and started a sweep of the vehicles, starting with the lead vehicles as they slid to a stop, and armed men spilled out of them with weapons firing.
The first pass of the Grizzly decreased the gunfire as those exposed to the ray beam felt the heat and stopped shooting in confusion. Those protected by their vehicle felt nothing and continued firing.
“Crank it up, Ray,” Sammie yelled her order to overcome the loud sound of gunfire by the sergeants shooting from the rear of the vehicle.
Ray did not reply as he turned the rheostat to increase the power. The target could not see or smell the microwaves hitting their bodies, but felt it as the liquid in the pores of their skin heated up. Bewildered about what was happening to them, they forgot their target and started ripping off their clothing, not knowing what might be the cause of their pain.
Ray systematically swept the line of vehicles. He stopped when Sammie shoved him aside and took the control. She aimed the emitter tube and cranked the power to full before firing. Almost, one of the invaders hiding beside one of the vehicles with only his head showing jumped up screaming. He stumbled a few feet, holding his head and then crumbled to the ground as his head exploded, spewing superheated gore in all directions.
Sammie turned the power back to Ray’s setting and relinquished the control back to him.
“Carlos, you son-of-a-bitch. That was for my mother and all the others you killed. I hope you are with Allah and that all of your 72 virgins are big, horny, hairy-asses men.”
“That was Carlos?” Ray asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s get this over with.” He returned the power to full and scanned the line of vehicles from front to back and then back to the front. All firing stopped, as did the screaming after that. “Isn’t Allah great?” he called to the dead Jihadist soldiers.
“Lieutenant, when you say you want to test the system, you do test the system, don’t you,” one of the sergeants said with joking admiration as he slung his weapon over his shoulder and reached up to help her dismount.
In the War Room, Bradley and Oquendo were recording what Oquendo could recall about the occupied layout of the dam. At the time, neither identified the occupiers as Jihadists. In Bradley’s mind, the enemy that he was dealing with was a carpetbagger or an opportunist who was using Islamic converts to serve his purpose. He found Oquendo intelligent, respectful, and cooperative, labeling him as a young man surviving the only way he could and bailing out when he realized his current benefactor being intent on harming Americans. At this point, he was calling Oquendo by his first name, Cesar.
They were finishing when the sentries raised the alarm about incoming vehicles. The duty officer shut down the mountain, excluding the south portal where the clean up from the explosion was still in process.
The first responder situation could not have been worse. The north portal was secure, but not the south portal, yet most of the first responders and military were at the more densely populated north portal. They could not race out of the north portal and run three miles with no protection to defend an unknown aggressor hitting the open south portal. All they could do was rush through five miles of the tunnel as they after the explosion. Thanks to the Grizzly team, rescue arrived in time to save the mountain from enemy penetration. The battle was over long before the initial wave of soldiers and first responders reached the south portal. Bradley and Cesar were among the first to arrive.
Two hours later, with the threat on the mountain neutralized, a somber group was arriving at the command post for officers’ call by Colonel Barlow. The gathering was all staff and command officers inside the mountain. Barlow made the call at the request of Bradley, who also suggested that they use the Command Center rather than the War Room. He did not say why.
The group was stunned after having the joy of their getting to exit the mountain after four years turn into unimaginable sorrow with the loss of their first lady, the innocent farmers, and children. Making it harder to comprehend was the attack on the squad in Las Vegas that wounded the squad leader and resulted in the capture of SSG Harper. Now, to experience an armed attack on the mountain two days later was almost unbelievable.
Bradley looked like a man who been to hell and back. The burden of protecting the mountain compounded by the loss of his wife was taking its toll. He and Barlow stood together watching as the officers drifted in. Both saw Sammie whisper something to Major Callahan. First, he frowned, and then he looked excited as he whispered something back and gave her a brief hug before walking up to Bradley and Barlow to whisper something to them.
When it became obvious that everyone arrived, Bradley nudged Barlow to speak. She could be seen arguing back but gave in when he insisted.
“Everyone, before we start, we have an announcement to make. I am sad to inform you that we found Sergeant Harper’s body in one of the aggressor vehicles. He has been dead for a while before arriving here. The bastards executed him.”
She waited until the muted sounds of sorry and disgust ceased before continuing.
“You will be happy to know that Carlos is dead. Lieutenant Bronson blew the son-of-a-bitch to hell and back. Congratulations, Lieutenant.”
Again, she to wait for the reactions in the room to subside. This time they were cheering and congratulations extended to Sammie.
“Colonel Bradley,” she said to turn the meeting over to him.
“I don’t have much,” he whispered. He looked at Sammie. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Bronson.” His eyes spoke his fatherly thanks to her for what she did to avenge Stacey’s death.
“You heard my pledge to our dead at the funeral. It still stands. The scum lying outside of the mountain is the foot soldiers. They did not fly the planes that h
ave been surveilling us, nor did they order the planes flown. I only want to say that we are at war. They brought the war to us, and we are taking it back to them, whomever, and wherever they are. I do not know if we will get to act before the winter hits or if it will be afterward, but we damn well assure you that we are going to put some major hurt on the bad guys who chose us as their target. I repeat my pledge to our dead.”
“Do we know who the enemy is?”
“We are aware.” He said. His voice turned to sarcasm. “Everybody knows that good Muslims never do the things they do. That is because Allah does it for them, Quran 8:12. And we know that only our misperceptions, ignorance and stereotyping of Islam make Muslims chop off heads, kill and rape women and children, bomb subways, buses, nightclubs and fly jets into buildings. We will know our enemy when we see it, and we do not need the media to tell us.
He turned to Barlow to let her know that this was all that he wanted to say.
She looked at the group and said, “Dismissed.” She turned to Bradley. “Sir, get some rest. The war can wait until tomorrow.”
Bradley glanced around the alcove at those leaving. “I’ll in a moment. Knowing that his weak voice would not carry, he ordered Barlow to stop Callahan and the Bronsons before they got away.
He waited until the Command Center emptied except for Barlow, the Sergeant Major, and those he held back.
“We have less than two weeks before the radiation shuts us in again. This does not leave us enough time to identify all the bad guys are remaining. Cesar and I have talked, and thus, we know they holed up inside the Hoover Dam to escape the radiation. We are aware that they have been scrounging for supplies the same as us and that the one thing that they are lacking is food. That is what the scum bags were after this morning.”
Bradley felt dead tired, and it showed in his voice. He could barely speak above a whisper, so the others crowded closer to hear.
