Worst Case Scenario - Book 5: Militia (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Former Senator Payne’s personal helicopter circled over the farm.  The shells of Chinese built helicopters littered the field; and where a house once stood, there was a smoldering remains of a life. “It looks like your forces were defeated, Colonel.”

Colonel Xu shifted nervously in his seat in the executive helicopter.  He was the leader of the State’s forces pushing up from the Gulf of Mexico.  Rising out of cargo ships from the port city of Mobile, his troops had swarmed over the confused and disorganized American military on their march to Birmingham. 

“Yes, sir, it does,” Xu allowed.

Today was the day that the new PNA was supposed to make an example out of one of the US states.  Xu though that the honor was going to fall to him and his troops to inflict chaos on Alabama, but, once the Senator, now Provincial Governor arrived, all he talked about was making sure that a certain CIA agent was dead.  The Governor handed Xu coordinates and ordered him to kill everyone in the area.  It was a fluke that his headquarters received intelligence from a soldier in the field who had been attacked by people at the same location.  Xu had dispatched three helicopter gun ships to deal with the Governor’s pet project, and the results were scattered in the field below.

“Take us down,” Xu commanded the pilot.

“Sir, our back up platoon is…is, delayed.  It might not be safe, sir, ” the pilot warned.  He kept eyeing the destroyed birds on the ground and did not want to be the next sacrifice.

“You mean they are lost, Captain,” the colonel scolded.  “Take us down, and you two need to be prepared to fight,” Xu cautioned, pointing two fingers at the pilots. He then un-holstered his personal side arm, chambered a round, and slammed it back in his holster.

“I feel safer already,” Payne sneered.  “Honestly, Colonel, I wonder how your men made it this far?”

“We have fought America’s Army!” Xu protested.  “And we have won!”

Payne shook his head and watched out the window as the helo descended.  “You fought a neutered ghost of our military. Without the chaos of the EMP and the nuked cities, you would not have stood a chance!”  Payne did not give him a chance to respond.  “And tell me, Colonel, how can a modern fighting force with an edge in technology get lost trying to protect their commander?”

Xu bit his tongue and debated whether to resound but declined, thinking it would just be wasted words.  He made a mental note that the man had slipped in his phraseology, and said, ‘You fought a neutered ghost of
our
military,’ instead of
their
military.  People had been sentenced to death for lesser slips of the tongue.

The helicopter touched down, and the co-pilot hopped out and opened the side door for the VIPs.  He then pulled his seldom-used side arm and followed behind the two men as they walked towards the burned structure of the house.

“What are you looking for, sir?” Xu asked, his eyes scanning the area continuously.  He couldn’t believe that this politician was allowing them to be exposed in such a way.  But then, he had been around long enough to know that most politicians thought about the needs of themselves first, regardless of which country they represented.

Payne walked to the edge of the smoldering structure.  “Evidence,” Payne simply responded.  He had been a district attorney earlier in his career and knew that being able to visit a crime scene was golden to his understanding of what really happened.

“What kind of evidence, sir?  It looks like everyone died in the fire.”

Payne smiled. He was about to school his military friend in looking at the details and the assumptions that lead to fact.  “So, Colonel, if everyone died in the fire, why is there three burning helicopters in that field? Where are the horses?  The gate is closed. Why are we standing in mud?  Why are two hose pipes still running water on the ground?”

Xu looked down at his combat boots. A pool of moving water glimmered around the rubber of his sole.

  Payne continued, “Why is there an American flag sticking out of the ground on a mound of fresh dirt under that oak tree over there?”  Payne lazily waved his arm towards the shade tree before turning to face the officer.  “And why, Colonel, are there no vehicles here?”

Xu opened his mouth to say something when a nearby explosion rocked the peacefulness of the farm.  The co-pilot moved in front of the men, his weapon out and ready to protect his passengers.

“Put that away!” Payne ordered. “They’re long gone, but not before finding and destroying your
lost
platoon!”  The Governor turned his back on the scene and headed back to the helicopter.

A plume of black smoke floated up above the trees from a forested area about a mile away.

CHAPTER 5

One hour after receiving the transmission from his daughter, Ian approached the rally point, an abandoned farmhouse on the other side of the hill from Talladega Super Speedway.

He pulled the Jeep off the road and through an open gate to a field.  Mary followed in the El Camino.

“You don’t want to go down to the track?” Leah asked, but she knew that it was not a good idea too.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go down to the track, its just I want to scope out what’s at the track first,” Ian responded in a casual Rangers lead the way protocol.

“Roger that.”

Mary pulled up beside the parked Jeep.  “Is this the pit-stop?” she asked.

“Looks that way,” Leah answered.

“Good, ‘cause I had to pee, like, 30 minutes ago,” she said, leaping out of the vintage Chevrolet and walking quickly for the woods.

Ian and Leah watched her walk to the woods in front of the vehicles.  “You really know how to pick’em,” Leah said, her mouth turning into a smile with the sarcastic comment.

Ian’s mouth did the same.  “That I do, babe.  That I do.”  He lovingly smacked her on the knee as she keyed the radio.  “Tardis Blue, Iron Horse is at rally point, over.”

Grace stretched her shoulders and tried to pop her neck before answering.  She had forgotten how tough it was to ride a horse for an extended period of time.  “Momma B, that’s affirmative.  Trojan Horse is still making way via alternate routes.  They haven’t dogged us since the troop carrier, so we still expect to be at rally point by tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Leah said, repeating her daughter’s voice on the radio.  “Roger that, T-Blue, we’re here for you.  Over and out.”

After Leah ended the transmission, Ian got out of the Jeep and scouted around as best as he could.  He didn’t see anyone around but knew that the view from the top of the wooded hill would be different from what he was seeing now.  He walked back to Leah and the Jeep to get his binoculars.

“I’m going to take Mary with me to the top of the hill.  See if you can get Violet onto a task…we need her, and her boys need her, in the now.”

Leah and Ian had talked about Mary and Violet’s role moving forward in the militia. They were important keys to the success, and they agreed to divide the responsibility of training each of them for the new reality.

“Got it.”

“Thanks, Hun.”

“You bet.”

“Mary,” Ian called, as he turned towards the El Camino. 

“Yeah?”

“Leah and Violet are going to pitch camp. Can you help me scout?”  It was a question, not an order.

Mary finished removing the box of ammunition from the back of the El Camino and nodded at Ian.  “Sure.”

Mary had found another hurdle in her new life as a newly widowed lesbian lawyer turned mad bitch with the enemy for screwing up her perfect life.  She fought the urge to charge out the door each day to find someone that was foreign to her, and kill them on the spot.  For the first time, unbelievably, she grasped the thought process behind those that hated gays.  She didn’t condone it, but somewhere deep inside, she seemed to get it…there were people that had changed everything about her life, without her consent, and against her will.  Some powerful minority of people, an invading force that didn’t believe the way she believed, had altered her and America’s way of life.  This change directly impacted her all the way down to her soul, and she had no say in it.  “But I have revenge,” she kept telling herself.  At every opportunity, she practiced shooting and learning how to kill more effectively.  She had turned into a very deadly sniper in a short amount of time and planned on using that new skill at the first opportunity.

Ten minutes later, she and Ian edged up to the ridge of the hill that backed up to the super speedway.

“Do you like NASCAR?” Ian asked.

“Never watched it.”

“Not your thing?” he asked, pulling his binoculars out of his pack and putting them to his eyes.

“No, it’s not that,” she said, and went quiet. 

Ian nodded, thinking that there was more coming, but she went silent.  He scanned the area looking at the hundreds of people among the infield.

“I just really liked Formula racing over Stock cars,” she said, surprising Ian.  He smiled under the cover of his binoculars.  “My dad was a mechanic when we were younger, and his dream was to work on one of the Formula teams.  He took my sister and me to every damn Indy 500 race for like ten years straight.

Ian lowered the binoculars and looked over at the woman.  “Did he ever get to work for a team?”

A tear fell down her cheek.  “Yea, they were doing a race out at Road Atlanta, and one of the big sponsors was one of the firm’s clients.  I pulled some strings and got my dad a pit pass and full access to the paddocks.  You’d think he had gone to Heaven once he started walking down the row of open garages.”

“What happened?”

“The sponsor had received a call from our senior partner, who called the owner of the team, who then met us at the garage.  He talked to my dad for nearly thirty minutes.”  She smiled, and looked at Ian.  “They were both old gear heads and had this love of engines and racing as a common background.  Ian, this guy was worth millions, and my dad was an auto mechanic his entire life, but they still, listening to them talk, you’d think they had grown up together as equals.”

Ian nodded, feeling his own eyes misting up.  “What happened next?”

“The owner asked him to assist the crew chief during the race.  They gave him a uniform, walked him through the entire car, he had his own headset, the works.  He told me that it was the fourth best day of his life after marrying my mother and the births of me and my sister.” 

“Wow,” Ian mused.  “That’s pretty awesome.”

“Yea, it was.” She wiped another tear from her eye.  “He had a stroke in my car on the way home, and could…and could never work on anything again.”

Ian looked at her for a second and then reached to pull her into a hug.  “I’m so sorry, Mary.”

Mary let him hold her for a few seconds before willing herself to snap back to reality, a reality that existed without her mother, her father, her sister, or her lover, as they were all vaporized by the nuclear attack on Atlanta.

“He was happy on that day,” she said, stepping back from Ian, smearing one last tear away, and effectively putting an end to the discussion.  “Now, what are we supposed to be looking for?”

Ian cleared his throat and turned back to the scene below them.  “I’m not really sure. I just want to see what is between us and where we are going.”

“Where are we going?  You never told us.”

“The Anniston Army Depot.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m hoping that soldiers heed the president’s advice and sought out their closest base to volunteer to help.”

“You really think people are going to do that?”  Mary shook her head.

“And you don’t?”

“No.  Not when I’m needed to protect my family first.  Think of how many people have died in America since the attack, Ian.”

He looked at her for more.

“All of the airplanes, the cars, the buses, the trains, they all stopped running and smashed into something.  Most of them just stopped, but a large portion of them exploded on impact or took out populated areas.  People have been without running water for almost two weeks.  Food is not being delivered to stores anymore, and the pathetic response from our government is, well…pathetic!  Ian, this is the new reality… People are separated from their families by hundreds if not thousands of miles, and there is no one to help them but themselves.”  She stopped talking long enough to think.  “The only reason I am alive is because of you and your skill and your stubbornness to not give up.  If you and Bob were serious about this militia working, then you will need to become an even bigger leader than you already are.”  She turned to look at the throngs that were below them.  “There are thousands, no, millions of people that need that kind of leadership right now.”

Ian absorbed the pep talk peppered with critique.  He smirked, thinking that he was the one that was supposed to be doing the training.  Not the other way around.