Worst Case Scenario - Book 5: Militia (8 page)

CHAPTER 15

Reed was leading the convoy of two vehicles east on I-20.  Like before, he was using the median, the emergency lane, and the wrong side of the highway to pick the best route back to the racetrack.

The distress call shot through the group like electricity.

“What does that mean?” Reed questioned.

“That was Adam!”  Joshua said at the same time of Reed’s question.  Both men were cut off by Ian holding up his finger.

“Acknowledge War Dawg 911, over.” Ian spoke into his microphone.  He then dialed in a new frequency on his two-way radio.   Joshua did the same; he had to think about what the new frequency was…it was something that had been discussed before leaving the farm.  He hoped his brother remembered.

“Shit!” Grace said and pounded the steering wheel of the Rover.

“What?” Amy asked, startled by Grace’s spontaneous action.

“Something’s wrong back at camp.  It’s where Mom is,” she added.  “Can you change this to channel 39?”  She unhooked the radio from her belt and handed the base unit to Amy, leaving the earpiece in her ear.

Amy handed the radio back.  Adam and her father were already talking.

“I have counted about 15 armed men between the tent and where they took them.  Over.”

“Were they hurt?  Over.”

“Didn’t look like it.  Over.”

“What about the tent and the supplies?  Over.”

“They haven’t touched the tent, but they are hauling out supplies as fast as they can.  I’m going to see if I can get closer to where they took them and give you a report.  Will Daisy stay with me?  Over.”

“Roger that.  Command her, ‘on me’ and she will stay by your side.  Get me that intel ASAP.  We are fifteen minutes out.  Over.”

“Yes, sir.  Over and out.”

“Gracie, did you catch all of that?  Over,” Ian asked her daughter, driving the vehicle behind them.

“I did.  Is Mom okay?  Over.”

“For right now, it sounds like it.  How is Mr. Rivers?  Over.”  He didn’t need her worrying about her mother and loosing sight of driving.  He thought texting and driving was dangerous, but it was nothing compared to what she and Reed were doing with the vehicles.

“Doctor Cadet, how is he?” Grace yelled to the back of the vehicle.

The doctor looked up to answer but never got a chance to.  The bridge and the abutment they were about to drive under exploded, showering the windshield and hood with concrete fragments.

Reed yanked his vehicle to the right and smashed along a stalled car under the bridge.  Fragments of concrete peppered the hummer like bullets from a machine gun.  Bouncing off of the car, he fought to keep the vehicle upright and instead let it cross the concrete and grass median, where he was able to get control and skid to a stop.

The Humvee had shielded Grace’s Rover from the worst of the explosion.  She, too, took the stalled car down the side of the Rover with a metallic scrape and jarring.

“Shit!!” she yelled, making corrections to the vehicle.  The Rover was designed to navigate off road and at slower speeds. It didn’t respond well to choppy maneuvers, asphalt, and highway speeds.  Grace could hear her passengers screaming and the tire squealing sound of her vehicle as it danced along the road.  “Don’t flip!  Don’t flip!  Don’t flip!”  Grace fought to hold on to the thin English steering wheel.  She saw the hummer veer across the median and stop. She tried to nudge her vehicle to do the same thing.  Thankfully, the tires held, and they zipped across the grassy median.  Once the vehicle found the soft mud and grass, she was able to get total control and pulled up next to the hummer.  They were facing different directions.  Reed and Grace were only able to exchange a look of ‘holy shit’ before Ian started yelling.

“GO!  GO!  GO!” 

A black helicopter zipped over the bridge and right over their position.

“Tell her to follow me,” Reed yelled.  He gunned the diesel engine, spinning the tires and slinging the mud from his treads.

Grace heard her father relay the order through her earpiece and spun her vehicle around.  Her passengers started screaming again as she threw them from side to side in the vehicle.

“It’s turning!” Joshua yelled.  He had his rifle out the window and popped off a few shots before Reed hit the dirt at the side of the road.  Joshua pulled his arms and the barrel of his rifle in just as Reed smashed through the DOT fence at the side of the highway, and into a trailer park.

The second rocket struck one of the mobile homes and exploded the structure.

Grace screamed as pieces of aluminum flew at them like aerial buzz saws.  The blue metal awning of the structure impacted the high roof of the Rover and bounced off.  Grace turned to follow the hummer; a burning piece of debris had lodged into the side of the sand colored vehicle.

The helicopter came around again.  It was having a hard time finding a firing angle on the two moving targets as they laced their way among the tall pine trees and trailers.  Bullets from the chopper chewed along their path, striking indiscriminately.

“Pool!” Ian shouted, and Reed swerved hard right to avoid the gated community amenity.

“Josh, there is a LAW in the back.”

“A what?”

“A LAW!  It’s like an RPG! Get the RPG!!” Reed screamed as he drove the hummer like a go-cart on rails.  Joshua released the handhold that had been keeping him relatively locked down to the center of the back seat area, and tried to dive into the back.

“There!” Ian pointed to a concrete community center at the entrance of the trailer park.

Bullets streaked across the space between the two vehicles, and Grace hit the brakes long enough for them to pass.  She gunned the Rover again, trying to catch up.

“Grace,” Ian yelled into his radio.  “We’re going behind that building.  Get ready to dive out.”

“Shit!” she didn’t have time to respond.  “We’re stopping behind the building.  Unbuckle and get the kids down into the floorboard.”

A small propane refilling station, located next to the community center, exploded, sending a fireball hundreds of feet into the air.  A piece of shrapnel pierced the windshield and grazed Grace’s shoulder, sending searing pain down her arm.  “Awe, Shit!”  She gritted her teeth and turned the opposite way as Reed. A bullet clanged off of the back bumper, and Grace swerved again. Another bullet pierced the roof and exited through the floorboard, passing between the two children.  Grace pulled the wheel in the opposite direction, sending the Rover around the building.

Amy unbuckled and dove into the back seat.  She braced herself with her legs against the floorboard and held onto the car seats.  Her children were screaming at the top of their lungs.  She tried to look in the back, where

Doctor Cadet was being pummeled by flying prepper equipment and his medical supplies.  He was still holding on.  She couldn’t see how Mr. Rivers was doing.

Reed spun the hummer around the other side of the explosion and accelerated down the opposite side of the community center from Grace. “Get ready, Josh!”  At the back corner, he cut the wheel hard, sending a massive rooster tail of dirt into the air.

“Ready!”  Joshua cradled the RPG and was as ready as he could be to dive out.  That is when he saw people spilling out of the main doors of the community center. “We have civilians coming out of the front door!” he yelled.

The helicopter buzzed over the building once the vehicles split up.  He was going to set up for another rocket attack on the hummer, when he opened fire from his side door.  The pilot tilted his head back to see that there were new targets in play.   He spun the bird around the back of the building, setting itself up for another pass.  Several people were already on the ground, dead or dying.

Grace’s Rover wheeled around the back of the building, just at the helo passed over.  The gunner tried to pivot around from shooting at the people to shoot at the Rover, but he was working against the spin of the helicopter and ended up shooting the wall behind the English SUV.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Ian yelled.  “Go Joshua!”  Ian jumped out, armed with his 7.62 rifle.  He ran past the Rover, casting a quick glance at his daughter and the occupants before putting his shoulder against the corner of the building.  Joshua was right behind him.

“Take the shot when he turns towards me,” Ian yelled, and he ran away from the building and into the open.

The helo took the bait and spun towards the new target.  The pilot nosed down to accelerate.

“Dad!  NO!” Grace yelled and jumped out of the Rover.  She pulled her rifle up and started unloading at the side of the beast.  She saw the gunner’s head whip around to see the girl shooting at him.  He pivoted the machine gun towards her, pulling the trigger as he did.  The bullets pierced the ground in a random pattern, clawing their way to where she stood.

Joshua squeezed the trigger, launching the rocket-propelled grenade towards the helicopter.

Grace fired her last round and dove to her left as the bullets from the machine gun grated the spot where she had been standing.

The RPG found the engine compartment of the helicopter in less than two seconds and exploded upon impact.

The last bullet from the helo zinged past Grace’s leg and punctured the front left tire of the Rover.

The helo exploded and tumbled to the ground in the direction of Ian, but he was already moving and dove behind a metal trash dumpster.  The fireball washed over the dumpster, igniting the contents.

Grace felt a hand grab her arm to help her up.  It was Joshua.  He pulled her into a hug.  She didn’t resist.

“I thought you were hit,” he whispered into the embrace.

“No, I’m okay.”  The wound on her shoulder was nothing to worry about now.  She felt another hand on the small of her back.  It was her father.  He leaned over and kissed her head, lingering there for a second with his eyes closed.

“Nice shooting, son,” Ian slapped Joshua’s back and then looked inside of the Rover.  “Amy, are you and the kids alright?”

Amy was teary eyed but nodded that she thought they were unhurt.  Grace moved around to help her get the kids out.

Next, Ian popped open the back of the Rover.  Blood was all over the bed of the classic vehicle.  “Seth?”

Seth was pumping his hands on the old man’s chest.  “Help me get him to the ground.”

Both Ian and Joshua reached in to move the man.  “One, two, three, now,” Dr. Cadet ordered.  The three men gently placed Mr. Rivers’ lifeless body on the ground, and Seth immediately started CPR again.  Joshua moved to the man’s head and started blowing on the doctor’s count.

Grace watched from the front of the truck, not wanting to see the last minute of the kind man’s life end at the back of a trailer park.

“Grace!” Reed called from the other side of his hummer.  She raised her weapon and moved around the other corner of the building.  She stopped.  Her knees felt weak, and she turned her head and threw-up behind the corner of the building.

“Oh, God!” she breathed.  “Oh, God, no!”

“Grace, get my med kit out of the hummer,” Reed said, he had his hands covering a gunshot wound on a lady.  Between where the lady was on the ground and the front door to the community center, there were body parts and fragments of people that had been mowed down by the helicopter’s machine gun.  She didn’t know how many people made up the horror scene.  She puked again.  “Grace, hurry!”

Grace heard him that time and wiped her sleeve across her mouth.  She stumbled back to Reed’s vehicle and found the medical kit.  “Dad!  Dad!”  She could see Ian standing beside the Rover.  He was looking down at the scene behind the vehicle when he heard her voice.  Before he reached her, she knew that he knew what was around the corner.  He took the kit from her without saying a word and walked around the corner.  She followed but could not make herself walk past the corner.

“How many?” he asked Reed, taking a gauze pad and handing it to him.

There were several people crying and trying to help the wounded that were still alive.

“Five still alive, and…” he shrugged.  “Maybe eight killed.  I guess they were scared the place would burn when the propane tank exploded?”

“Are you the Army?” an elderly woman asked.  She slowly knelt down to help tend to the lady that Reed was working on.  “Here, let me,” she said, taking the bandage, and applying pressure.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Reed said.  He looked to Ian to answer.

“Some of us are…,” he stumbled for words, as he studied the shocked faces of the people that were spilling out of the community center.  Most of them were elderly.  “We’re the good guys,” he said.  “We’re a militia.”

CHAPTER 16

Captain Cho listened to the broadcast of his helicopter pilot.  They were about to engage an old model Range Rover and a military Humvee after an attack at one of the city’s eastern roadblocks.  Cho was certain that Agent Burrows was among the group leading the attack.

Twenty-four hours earlier Cho had personally run the surveillance on the house belonging to Ian Burrows.  With very little risk, he was able to determine that Agent Burrows was not in the house and that Governor Payne’s intelligence about him being spotted on the farm was plausible.  He needed a way to flush Burrows out into the open, and he knew that the people in the house had a connection.  He just needed to find a way to apply pressure to the situation.

Captain Cho was a student of human nature.  He had degrees in psychology, sociology, and philosophy, all from esteemed American universities.  His government trusted him to know the enemies of the State and to protect his motherland at all costs.  As one of the State’s premier counterintelligence officers, it was his job to be able to think like his enemies and ultimately kill his enemies.

Colonel Xu wanted the Governor off of his back while he managed a war, so he gave Cho access to use whatever he needed to accomplish the wish of the new PNA Governor and eliminate Ian Burrows.

However, it wasn’t just Agent Burrows that he wanted to eliminate; it was the entire Burrows family.  After studying the files provided by the Governor’s contact in Washington, D.C., Cho learned that Leah Burrows also worked with the intelligence agency.  However, what surprised him the most was the discovery of one file in particular.  The file, tagged with the Top Secrete moniker, was about their daughter, Grace Burrows.

Captain Cho leaned over the shoulder of the communications officer in the mobile command center.  They were watching the erratic video from the cameras mounted on the helicopter and listening to the pilot bark out orders to his gunner.  He could clearly see that the vehicles he was pursuing had survived the surprise rocket attack from behind and were fleeing off of the highway.  What he wanted to see was the face of his enemy.

To
encourage
the residents of the house, Cho had sent a propaganda wagon down the Burrows’ street broadcasting the need for everyone to report to the new
security
camps.  As expected, the residents of the house evacuated within hours. He dispatched a drone to track their progress with hopes that they would lead him to the family.  With the occupants gone, he walked through the front door of their house.

“Captain Li Cho, entering the house of the State criminal, Ian Burrows,” he said, speaking into a personal camera he held at arms length.  He had ordered guards posted at the house with orders to shoot anyone that approached and to leave him alone for at least two hours.

Cho went into the living room first.  He set his eyes on the fireplace, as the center point of the room.  The stacked stone structure exuded power with the river rocks providing warmth to the room even though there was no fire.  His eyes were drawn to family photographs lining the mantel.

Sweeping his camera along the photos, he paused to look at the one in the center.  Picking it up, he noticed that the picture frame wasn’t as dusty as the others were and that it looked like other photos had been pushed aside to add this one.  He focused his camera on the picture of the blond girl in a blue cap and gown.  He then flipped it over; there was an inscription.

Grace Kathryn Burrows, High School Graduation.

Cho breathed in deeply, the CIA documents on the girl showed that she was a remarkable girl and that the Agency was keenly interested in her future development.  Her personnel evaluation showed that she was at the top of her class in school, excelled at linguistics, knew martial arts, and participated on the track, archery, and rifle teams.  She had received scholarship opportunities at all four universities that she had applied to, and would have attended William and Mary University in Virginia, had his country not have invaded.  He placed the picture back in its location and looked around the rest of the main level.

Cho noted that they had a dog, there was a non-working alarm system, and that Leah Burrows had a kitchen full of professional level equipment. 
She must enjoy cooking
.

His curiosity, or rather, his instinct, took him to the door leading down to the basement.  He pocketed the camera and drew his weapon before descended the stairs.  Within a minute, he had cleared the basement of anyone and found himself standing in a well-hidden room built under the stairs.  He flipped on a powerful LED flashlight and looked at what was in front of him.

“How could you be so lazy,” Cho said, looking at the walls detailing maps and plans for the Burrows family incase of disaster or invasion.  It was at that second that he thought he heard something coming from the garage.

Cho pointed his pistol towards the garage door and listened.  It was a sound that didn’t ebb and flow with distance; it was a sound that was constant and…muffled.  Cho opened the door and entered the garage.  There was only one vehicle in the garage, a blue luxury SUV.  Cho kept his pistol trained on the driver’s side of the vehicle as he approached and opened the door.

The sound was coming from the glove box. He reached across and opened the latch.  It was a personal two-way radio, and he could hear people talking.

“Captain!” the communications officer exclaimed as the helicopter swung around the building to finish off the two vehicles.

Cho was right there, watching. The image was a split screen, one side was the gunner’s view, and the other was that of the pilot’s.  He wasn’t surprised at what they were watching. Ian Burrows was the man running in the pilot’s point of view, and a girl, Grace Burrows, was crouching next to the Rover.  She was firing at the helicopter with a spray of bullets creeping towards her position; she wasn’t moving.  That is when he noticed the soldier fire the RPG, and the screen zapped to white static.

“Sir, should we launch another helicopter?” the communications officer asked, noting the failure of the first chopper.

“No,” Cho said, reaching down to reverse the feed back a few frames. He left the screen on a picture on the soldier firing her weapon at the helicopter.

“No, I have another idea.”