Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 60
They had just finished taking a small water break and eating a snack when Tyler realized they hadn’t talked to the others for at least forty-five minutes. “Major League, this is Bull Durham, over.” He tried again and shot Gene a look.
Gene took a turn. “Major League, comms and status report. Over,” Gene said into his radio. “Might just be the batteries,” he said to the team leader. “These things are dying faster every day.”
“Could be,” Tyler agreed. “Or our signals just aren’t getting around in these hills.” He did some thinking while he put away the remnants from the snack. He decided to stow the notes from the intel and scavenging, too. “Get the wagon ready, please. I think we should head back to the truck and look for them along the way. I’d rather get back too early than discover they needed help and we dropped the ball.”
“I agree,” Gene said.
The two started making their way back up the two miles of winding, hilly road. A while later, they rounded a curve and saw their two comrades sitting on the tailgate, rifles leaning against the truck about forty meters ahead. Tyler saw an older white van rise up out of a small dip in the road about two hundred meters beyond the other teammates. It slowed and pulled left at an angle. The sliding door on the right side opened, but all he could make out was the dark of the interior space and the motion of a body or two inside.
“There you guys are!” they heard Kendell call out gleefully. “Have any lu—”
“Move!” Tyler yelled at the other teammates just a bit too late as his brain caught up to his eyes. He raised his rifle, flipping off the safety as he levelled his sites.
ZZoooowooosh—Ka-Boooooommmmm! The swooshing noise and fiery tail of the RPG round were nothing compared to the explosion that sent the bodies—all thirty-seven pieces of their two teammates—flying in every direction. The fireball and shockwave from the exploding truck pushed out a concussion that knocked Gene unconscious and sent both men flying backwards several meters. Tyler was woozy, but he could tell there were now people running toward him.
He slowly pulled his shoulders off the ground, ears bleeding and ringing loudly. He was still dizzy and couldn’t focus on the figures before him. The van drove up to within twenty meters of the burning wreckage. Six battle-hardened men jumped out and two of them held security, while the other four retrieved the fallen duo. They dragged them both back to the van, throwing them in and taking off without hesitation.
Epilogue
“If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.”
—Eugene Sledge
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 33 Days.
“Morning, Sir. What can I do for you?” asked Sergeant Major Greg Piercy.
“Thanks for coming right over, Sergeant Major. I know how busy you are,” Colonel Isiah Franklin stated. “I thought I’d bring you up to speed on some new intelligence that just came in. It shouldn’t wait until tomorrow’s daily threat report.
The senior NCO for the 5th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division scanned the room. The XO and all three Battalion CO’s. Must be big. The 5th was at Submarine Base Bogdon, shoring up the base’s smaller security detachment while “special toys” were removed from Washington State for National Security reasons. “Sir.”
“Yesterday, sonic sensors on the south end of the base picked up a transient noise somewhere very close to the fenceline. The computers say it was an RPG.”
“Sir?” I’m being ‘punked’, aren’t I?” The Sergeant Major looked around and realized he was not being toyed with.
“Wish I was kidding, Sergeant. We phoned it in with a time stamp to Division and they were able to verify with satellite photos. They found what could only be described as the tail-smoke of a rocket blowing up a truck.”
The sergeant looked past the colonel’s shoulder as he was trying to recall anything in the prior intel briefings that would provide a clue “The cartel thing in Seattle?”
“That’s our best guess, too,” the colonel said, looking around at the three lieutenant colonels who were seated.
“This is certainly unexpected, sir,” Greg said. “Orders?”
“For now, keep this contained to the Battalion Sergeant Major level. Pendleton is seeing what they can do to get us a permanent drone. We’re also going to hold on to the Raiders and Delta operators a bit longer than originally thought.”
“Understood, Sir.” And here I thought starving civilians were our biggest threat.
“Could that really be you, you little twerp?” Sticky asked his rifle scope. He had taken a lesson from his hunter, opting to lay in wait. Most of the homes on this road had been long abandoned. There was little activity at the ones that still had occupants. Shotgun’s pirates had seen to that. As the off-loading vessels started to get boarded and robbed more frequently, the relief ships started travelling all the way around Vancouver Island and entering the Strait much farther east. As supplies dwindled, people began to huddle together in numbers. The Ford Expedition with blacked-out windows was the first sign of human activity he’d seen in two days.
The metallic gold vehicle was idling in front of the driveway to Stuart’s parents’ house. It sat there doing nothing for two minutes, driving Sticky mad in the process. C’Mon! What’s the hold up? He could see a hooded figure in the near-side driver’s seat, but there was no way of knowing if it was his target. He’s talking to someone. Probably in the back seat. C’mon. Step on out. Nothing to see here. Sticky had set himself up on the covered deck of the house uphill from where he thought his target would appear. He figured it to be about a two-hundred-meter shot.
Suddenly, there was a loud bass thumping that caught Sticky’s attention. He pulled his eye off the scope, looking to the right. At the crest of the road where it dropped back down the next slope, he could see a tricked out red Dodge Challenger stopped, almost as if it had been stalking the Expedition and found it accidentally. It obviously had a very customized sound system. He could hear rap music blaring loud enough to make the windows behind him vibrate a little. What the actual hell! I should shoot you just for playin’ that junk! An uneasy feeling suddenly came over him.
He looked back in his scope and moved the rifle enough to reacquire the driver of the Expedition. It took a second as he steadied the eye-relief in the scope to realize that the passenger window rear of the driver was down. He made the micro adjustment and started to stare in, but since it was daylight hours, it was hard to see inside the vehicle through the scope. Is that—? Is that a rifle?! Sticky saw a flash of bright light as he pulled his own trigger.
Prologue
On A Wing and a Prayer.
About Fifteen Years Before Tahoma’s Hammer
“How's Tucker taking it?” thirty-nine-year-old John Cronin asked his wife, Maria, from his intensive care hospital bed. The Seattle police officer had just endured an entire night of emergency spinal and pelvic surgery, the result of an off duty paramotor crash.
It had been a cool and breezy September evening, nearing the end of the Pacific Northwest’s short parasports season. Like most powered-parachute pilots, John had made a beeline straight up to his normal flying spot after his shift was over. For the Army truck-driver turned police officer, the freeing feeling of flying in the open wind had become the drug that helped him decompress from his job. Taking up paramotor six years earlier had taken a serious investment in both the gear and the training. Strapping a motor on one’s back and flying around like a seated Superman wasn’t something people should just go and do.
The small local Arlington Airport north of Marysville, Washington, was friendly to the alternative flying sports. John had noticed only one other para-pilot that early evening, a guy named Travis that he knew to be a newer but ‘coming-along’ pilot. They had discussed a plan to film each other from behind to get some footage. Before take-off, John had made a mental note of the graying system building to the north. We should be on the ground long before that gets near.
The pair were both wearing action cameras on their helmets but were trying to shoot with handheld, higher-resolution cameras for the trailing footage of each other.
It all happened in a split-second. Turbulence. John re-grabbed his brake handles and applied a slight pressure to the trailing edge of his wing, ensuring the front edge would keep a high angle-of-attack through the rough patch of wind. He was flying about fifty feet below and behind Travis.
“Brakes!” John yelled at the younger pilot as he noticed the tell-tale signs of a wing-collapse forming.
Travis’ wing started to surge forward from the buffeting winds. His failure to recognize that crucial one or two seconds of warning sign was the deciding factor in the coming catastrophe. As the wing moved forward in relation to his body position, the winds started hitting the top, closing off the foils.
John screamed at the top of his lungs once more as he saw Travis’ wing start to collapse. “Brakes!”
By the time Travis yanked on the brake cables, the wing had folded over on itself, causing him to drop suddenly and violently—right into John, who was desperately trying to veer to his left. It was too late, as Travis’ motor and body, cords, and collapsed airfoil caught the edge of John’s wing with enough force to yank him down and follow them in a tangled, straight-down descent.
As John was reaching the red pull handle on his reserve chute, a packed black pouch in his lap, he hit the kill switch in the throttle control tethered to his left hand. He was starting to spin upside down and clockwise, part of the mess of paracord and fabric trailing Travis. His flying partner was on his own—sheer adrenaline was forcing John to worry about himself. They were maybe six hundred feet above ground level. Time was critical.
John’s right hand found the big, red loop and yanked. The reserve was now out of its container, retaining the pack-shape that it had ever since John did his annual practice throw and re-pack back in March. He cocked his right arm into his chest until he felt the chute hit him and then flung it straight out to his right as hard as he could.
The reserve chute did its job—mostly. John’s next action was to try to pull on his brakes all the way and finish collapsing his own wing. The tangled mess of loose cords and cables, combined with the spinning of being entangled with Travis’ kite, made it so that John couldn’t find his brakes. It was a bittersweet result—the extra drag was helping catch some speed, but not nearly as well as the reserve would have done on its own. Travis failed to get his chute deployed until they were a mere eighty feet up, which was at least a hundred feet too late.
The pair landed in a field just off the greenbelt of trees behind a country home in a sparsely populated area.
Fourteen hours and a helicopter ride later, John was in ICU at Harborview Trauma Center on the hill overlooking Seattle. A few moments earlier, John had learned that Travis had perished. His concern, now, was for his own ten-year-old son. His other children were in his thoughts, too, but they were only three and four years old. He knew they wouldn’t retain the long-term memory of almost losing their father like Tucker would.
“He's taking it okay,” Maria said. “He can't wait to see you.”
Maria wore a concerned look on her face but was hesitant to mention what was on her mind. Like most husbands, John could read his wife's face and knew something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked. “I can tell something's bothering you.”
Her face cracked a small smile as she tried to hide her emotion. “Don't worry about it, babe,” she said. “There's always time to worry about things later.”
John closed his eyes, less as an escape from the conversation and more as a way of trying to control pain. The post-surgical meds were obviously good, but being restricted from movement was starting to make his skin itch. He opened his eyes again, looking around the ICU room, taking in the array of instruments and hoses managing his vital signs for the nurses.
“It's the job, isn't it?” he asked his wife. “You're wondering how I'm going to be able to work like this…”
Maria looked down at her folded hands in her lap and then slowly looked back up at her husband with a slight tear in her eye. “Yes,” she admitted with needless shame. “I'm sorry, honey, but it does worry me now that I know you're going to be okay.”
John turned his head to look at his wife, eyes flushed with emotion. “I'm so sorry, sweetness,” he pleaded with his wife, choking ever so slightly with sorrow. “I was in denial that this could ever happen, and now I've jeopardized everything!” He was burying the desire to tear up, which caused his face to flush in the losing fight.
Maria edged her seat closer to his bed and took his hand into hers. “We will get through this, babe,” she said. “We always do.” She rose from her chair to grab a tissue so she could wipe his eyes for him.
John turned his head once more, letting his gaze drift to the grey clouds over Seattle, staring at the buildings next to the hospital, wondering when his life would be somewhat normal again. “Never again,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Come again?” Maria queried.
The thought had ingrained itself in John's mind in the time since he had come out of surgery. He looked back at his wife. “Never again,” he said with newfound resolution, despite the pain medication. “I'm going to fix that thing and sell it. I will never put you through this again.”
Maria sat silently, wishing there was a way she could tell her husband that he will one day regret not getting back on the horse. “Babe,” she finally said, “you can't make a decision like that just for me.”
“It's not,” he reassured her. “I'm done. Done. I will never fly a paramotor again.”
1
The Face of Evil.
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 32 Days.
The cartel motorcade pulled into the parking area of Seattle Volunteer Park Conservatory with a roaring thunder. Not only were they using their technicals—trucks that had machine guns and grenade launchers mounted on them—but they were now using captured police and National Guard vehicles, too. In the middle of the motorcade was an armored truck, the type that would have been used to escort cash and other valuables in the days before Tahoma’s hammer. On this great day, it was filled with prisoners—captured police and guard members who were being brought to the park to send a message.
Most days, the park was filled with people using the pond in the south end to gather their drinking water. Residents from Capitol Hill, Stevens, and even as far away as Miller Park made the daily trek to get water from the pond. Reynaldo Hernandez knew this would be the perfect place to find an audience for relaying a message—a message to the rest of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.
The motorcade navigated the round circular drive around the park’s statue of William Henry Seward to turn around and reposition themselves for a quick exit. The statue—of the man who was Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln—seemed to Reynaldo like a fitting place to send a message of liberation and hope. I’m surprised this statue still stands, Reynaldo thought, half-surprised that the stone monolith withstood Seattle’s dabble in anarchy in recent years.
He hopped out of the passenger seat in the second vehicle with a powered megaphone in his hand and immediately started giving orders to his cartel soldiers. There were seven vehicles in all, which seemed like a safe minimum number to Rey. While not a full-sized army, the cartel had done a good job of invading and taking over entire sectors of the city. This was a direct result of Reynaldo’s two-pronged invasion strategy. Part One had been to liberate the mostly ethnic-minority prisoners from the Monroe Correctional Facility and unify them under one leadership. Part Two had been his various plants into all of the local gangs, who used a variety of tactics from subterfuge to sniper attacks to infiltrate the gangs and assassinate their leadership. The police and National Guard staffing levels had fallen to less than thirty percent at this point in the crisis. They just could not maintain control of Seattle. After Rey’s hostile takeover of all the rival gangs, taking over an entire neighborhood in Seattle seemed like a walk in the park—now, quite literally.
“Jefe,” one foot-soldier said as he approached Rey, “where do you want us to line them up?”
“I think Bruce Lee's grave site might be a good location,” Reynaldo decided. He scanned the park to the south. There were just too many pop-up markets being used for trade and barter in the way there. He watched most of his soldiers take quick control of the park. The people would follow them out of curiosity, he realized. “Yes,” he decided aloud. “That is where you should take them.”
The cartel soldier acknowledged the order and retreated to go follow it through. Reynaldo continued to stroll along the vehicles, looking at the crowd before him. Almost everyone was looking at him, not quite understanding if they should be afraid or not. Don't be afraid, he thought to himself. I'm here to save you, not hurt you. But you will see that soon enough.
“Hector,” he called over to one of his lieutenants. “After this business is finished, I want to add this location as one of our welfare distribution sites,” Rey said. “Get it on the list as soon as we get back. I want these people fed by tonight.”
“Si, Jefe.” He caught himself. “Oh, sorry boss,” the man said, reverting to English. “I am try remember use English a-as my first language, now.” The Spanish pigeon dialect was slowly improving for Hector and most of the men.
“It’s okay, Hector,” Reynaldo said. “Go on, my friend, I know you're trying.”
Reynaldo turned to the crowd that had slowly returned to their bartering despite the interruption by the cartel convoy. He looked through the light drizzle under the gray skies and pulled the megaphone up to his mouth.
