Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 71
On this day, Reynaldo Hernandez’s observation teams had been built with several extra people to carry out an operation. Rey’s men had carried with them up the two towers a total of ten six-bladed drones, each capable of carrying a payload of up to eight pounds. They were able to add a little additional weight by removing the drones’ skin, lights, and cameras. As entertaining as Rey would have found it to watch the action from the delivery vehicle, they didn’t actually need the cameras. These drones had been programmed just a few hours earlier in the same command vehicle Rey was sitting in. They had been given an independent GPS point to fly to and ignite an electric squib when they were about twenty feet off the ground.
The view from the tower cameras will have to suffice, he told his command team. Be safe, amigos, he told the departing field team.
At five minutes after three in the afternoon, all ten of his pre-programmed drones took off from the two derelict skyscrapers and started flying south, almost immediately descending to an altitude of four hundred feet. Let’s toy with them a bit, he’d told the programmers that morning.
Rey watched in amusement as the drones began to buzz over the heads of various security points belonging to the Washington National Guard and last remnants of the various police agencies. The loud, buzzing, man-made insects were following pre-selected routes and turning at their waypoints to change directions and altitudes suddenly. Care had been used to select altitudes and durations to ensure that the drones missed each other.
The programmers couldn’t account for variables, however. As the buzzers started the final descent, one Guardswoman made a lucky shot with a specially modified shotgun that had launched a drone-capturing net, dragging the device down before it reached its final destination. Another drone flew straight into a flag mast hanging off the side of a building, something Rey’s programmers couldn’t see on their satellite photos. But ultimately the mission was a success, as eight drones, each laden with eight pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, caused several seconds of chaos and confusion before hovering over several security checkpoints around the FEMA camps and detonating themselves.
10
Critical Decisions.
Tahoma’s hammer Plus 28 Days.
Throughout the intense fight, Natalie continued to squeeze the woman’s throat. The other woman had watched everything unfold and had dropped her gun to scoop up her own child.
“Get in here, Larry!” Earl yelled into the little mic and earbud. “When he gets there, come up, Jack!” he ordered.
He scanned all of the room again, keeping his rifle up. He knew Conner was down, but that wasn’t the moment to help him. He wanted to throw a second round into the man he’d shot in the throat, but he didn’t trust that he wouldn’t shoot right through the floor. He squatted just a bit, and with the looseness of his sling, had the capacity to send his rifle straight down muzzle first with a hard-striking blow to the gurgling and grasping man’s forehead.
Insurance, he called it. At least he gets to die asleep, now.
Earl could hear his sister wildly screaming as she continued to choke a dead woman. Clear the other rooms, he commanded himself. He managed to verify the two rooms were vacant about the time that Jack had finally arrived up the stairs.
“Help Conner!” he yelled. He walked over to his sister slowly, eyeing the last woman and children who were all scared, sniveling and shaking with fear. “Don’t move!” he commanded them with an angry, pointed finger. At 6’ 2” tall, Earl Garren could be quite intimidating when angry. He took a knee next to his sister. “Nat.”
She was sobbing, flushed in the face with rage. She’s gonna make herself pass out if she keeps it up, Earl realized.
“Nat. It’s over. She’s dead.”
As he put his hand on her shoulder, two of the quivering children began to cry for their mother, screaming and bawling. Awwww, hell! Earl thought as he looked at them. This is a real goat-screw if I ever saw one… Earl slowly slid his gloved hand down Natalie’s arm and placed it on her hand, coaxing her to let go.
“Nat. It’s me.”
His sobbing, enslaved sister was now forced to accept that the ordeal was real and hope hadn’t died after all. She relaxed her grip, looking up at Earl. That’s when the real emotion showed up. “B-Bu-B-B –” She couldn’t even call out for Bubby, as the weeks of fear and rage overtook her. She fell into her big brother’s arms, bawling in a combined state of stress and relief that only people freed from human trafficking could ever truly understand.
Earl held his sister while glancing over at Jack and Conner. Jack had Conner lying on his back while he used a knife to try and cut enough of his coat away to expose the wound. Because Conner had made his way directly to Earl’s after the disasters, he was only outfitted with Earl’s spare gear. He had a backpack out in the snow that he’d ditched as part of this battle plan. Earl yanked his own first-aid gear, called an IFAK, out of a pouch on his plate carrier. He threw it at Jack. “What do you see?”
“Just an ass-ton of blood,” Jack said. The software developer had never dealt with this kind of thing before.
“Take a dressing out of that pouch and apply pressure. Fast!” Earl commanded. “Listen to that wound! Do you hear air?”
After Jack fumbled with a vacuum-sealed pouch and pulled out a thick dressing, he pushed it onto the wound. He bent and slowly lifted it, though his ears were still ringing from the gunfight. “I-I don’t think I hear air!”
“Good,” Earl said, trying to calm down a bit. “That dressing unravels like a Z. Start packing it into the wound.” He swiveled his head toward the stair-hole. “Larry, you okay down there?” Earl yelled, ignoring the radio.
“All good! Got these two tied up!” he heard back.
“Nat. I need to check on my friend.” He held onto his sister, forcing her to stand up as he stood. She slowly composed herself, showing signs that she would be able to walk on her own. “C’mon,” Earl nudged as he tried to hold her around the shoulders with one arm and move toward his buddy at the same time.
Natalie nodded that she understood, not quite ready to try using words yet.
Earl moved to Conner and Jack gladly slid over. He bent close, putting his eyes and ears into play, trying to lift the dressing Jack had stuffed into the hole just enough to see where the wound was.
“I think it missed the lung,” Conner said in a slightly shocked tone. “Did we get her?”
Earl looked up with moist eyes. “We got her, brother. We saved her.” He kept pressure on the bandage with one hand and put the other one around his buddy’s neck, cupping the side of his head. “You saved her.”
Just then Earl felt a nudging. It was Natalie – the former triage nurse was kneeling next to her brother, gently bumping him as a way of saying move. Earl gave her a surprised look. “Move over,” she softly commanded. “Let me look.” With a hard-to-hide look of surprise, Earl scooted away, clearing the room for his sister. “What’s your name, soldier?” Natalie asked.
“Conner,” he grunted through the pain.
“Conner?” she repeated. “As in, The Conner? The one who was such an idiot in all of my brother’s war stories?”
Conner would’ve laughed if he wasn’t in such immense pain. “The same. Owwww!” he yelled when Natalie started feeling around both sides of the shoulder.
She was looking down the chest as best as she could with all of the clothing still there. “Cut a little more there,” she instructed Jack, who had moved to Conner’s other side. She continued to look, listen, and feel. “I agree. I’m not seeing or hearing any air or frothy blood. Looks like it destroyed your clavicle, though.”
“Well that sucks,” Conner said.
Earl laughed a bit. “That’s your takeaway, brother?”
“Just trying not to cuss in front of the lady,” Conner joked with a wince. “But I sure could go for some mother-lovin’ morphine.”
Earl, Jack, and even Conner all chuckled a bit. Natalie was still way too emotional. If not for an intrinsic need to treat her would-be savior, she would still be a wreck.
“W-what are you gonna do with us?” stammered one of the remaining female prisoners. All of them were down in the dining area on the first floor, though Earl had left the one tending the children unrestrained.
He looked at his sister. “Your call. Either of these women show you any mercy?”
Natalie had been sitting in one of the old worn out dining chairs, thinking about what she wanted for several minutes. She had been staring down at her father’s .357 revolver, taken from the still-warm, dead hand of the old patriarch. She finally stood up. With cold, hard eyes, she looked at Earl and said, “I don’t care what you do with them. But I want my goats back!”
Earl wasn’t worried about that. He’d ensure that all of Natalie’s stuff was reclaimed before they left. She stormed out of the cabin to check on Jack and Larry. They were reinforcing the now-real stretcher that Conner had made and tethering it to the yellow Cub. Conner was laying on the front porch, wrapped in the decoy mylar blanket and a pair of crocheted afghans they’d taken from the cabin.
In the cabin, Earl looked at his seven captives—three adults and four children. “Look, I don’t want to kill ya…but I will. But since you two were running, and you dropped her weapon and tended to the kids, I think I’ll let you live.” An open sigh of relief crossed their faces as they all started to bark their thanks.
Earl held a powerful hand up. “Just…just stop. Save it. Here’s how this is going to work.” He looked at the kids and addressed the oldest looking one. “How old are you, kid?”
“Eig-eight,” the scared boy answered.
“That’ll do. Name?”
“B-Billy!” The kid started to cry.
“Billy, calm down. You’re going to be fine. You’re just going to walk with me for a bit, so that you can bring one of the hunting rifles back to your tribe when we’re on our way. Get it?”
“C-Can’t ya’ just leave one?” the scared boy asked earnestly.
Earl laughed. “Uh—no. That’s not how it works, Billy.”
The woman from the pantry chimed in. “Billy…sweetie. If he wanted to hurt us, he’d already gone an’ done it. Just do what he says, an’ come back,” she ordered.
Earl’s reasoning had been to let the kid bring back one hunting rifle for the starving family. He would set the scope’s sights off as far as he could, just in case the lone male got a wild hair to come after them. His real reasoning, though, was a bit more nefarious. He knew they’d all be freed within a couple of minute of leaving. He wanted one kid with him as leverage. You follow us, the kid gets it. His face made that perfectly clear to the adults.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Natalie said, eyes swelling with tears once more, “but…my boys?”
“They’re fine, Earl said, which made his sister start crying with joy. They had tracked back down to the spot where they’d hidden the quads, probably a full two miles from the cabin. They’d just let the boy take the rifle with him to start heading back.
Natalie was overjoyed to hear that, but her face creased with worry once more. “They took my baby, Earl!” She only used her brother’s real name when she was desperate.
“What do you know? What’d they tell you?”
“Nothing!” she exclaimed. “The day they took us, the day they shot Roy—” She stopped, flooded with emotion.
“Anything, Nat. Any tidbit. Did they trade her? Did they—”
“Trade!” she exclaimed. “Yes!” her eyes darted back and forth, searching the foggy memory of the nightmare. “F-fuel! Something about having fuel for winter!”
Earl’s face was stoic. He looked at the makeshift gurney behind the Cub, then at the others and the quads, deep in thought. He stayed silent.
“What?” Natalie demanded.
He looked in her eyes, still thinking. Finally, “Alright. But what I say, goes. Got it?”
“Whatever! What are you thinking?”
“Not whatever, Nat. Say it. Say ‘deal’,” he said, taking her back to their childhood.
“Fine. Deal. Whatever! Now—what are you thinking?!”
“Feel how the temp has dropped?” he said, looking up. “Snow’s comin’. These vehicles have only been working because this snow is packed and frozen. We need to get as much traveling done as we can while we can use them. Larry and I are heading down to Snoqualmie Pass on one quad. You and Jack will take the Cub and one quad back to my cabin.”
“No! Earl! If my daughter is—”
“You said deal, Natalie. You’re in no shape to go on a snipe hunt. She might not even be there. And Conner needs to get back down there. There’s a team of people down by the river that’ll be able to pull those bone fragments out.” Earl was in NCO mode.
Natalie had tears flowing, but she knew her brother was right. The small rescue team disbanded, with the rescuee now in charge of getting the wounded Conner home before they froze in the mountains.
Tahoma’s Hammer plus 29 Days.
Josh, Jeff, and Stu didn’t have too much difficulty getting a ride across Hood Canal. During the disasters a month earlier, the structure that had been the fourth longest floating bridge in the world broke loose when the residual effect of the massive Strait of Juan de Fuca tsunami shot south-southwest and smashed into it. The two fixed ends hadn’t fared much better, one of them barely standing and the other crumpled over into the tidal zone. It hadn’t taken long for people whose boats had been up on trailers to be put into the water for providing rides. After a couple of days, fuel had become an obvious concern. As they’d heard what had happened down in Bartlett, people were required to provide fuel as part of their payment for one-way transport.
Charlie had long ago learned about the bartering system from the north end deputies and had pre-warned the three gun-club residents to bring some, along with some sort of food to barter with. Payton had provided some of the apples from Phil’s tree, as they were starting to go mushy. The three travelers had barely made it the three miles up the long, steep hill in Jefferson County when they ran into their first checkpoint.
“Hold up,” Josh ordered the trio as he pulled his small monocular neck-strap, retrieving it from his coat’s interior.
“Fine…”—huff-huff—“by me!” said a panting Stu, who put his hands on his knees. Jeff just turned away and rolled his eyes.
Josh scanned the checkpoint. “They’ve already seen us, so it’s a moot point to try and dodge them.” He stared through the one-sided optic for a few more seconds. “Seems legit.” He tucked the device back into the front of his coat and started walking again.
All three of them had rifles slung on their backs, a posture Josh had ordered to keep a nervous Nelly from shooting first and asking questions later. There was a slight uphill, and it took another ten minutes to cover the five hundred meters. They were all travelling at Stu’s pace.
At a month into the disaster, anybody alive had either been through checkpoints or knew somebody who had. They took their place in line. Josh surveyed what he was seeing from the east-bound pedestrians. People were bundled, dirty, and keeping their distance from each other. Like pack animals afraid to make eye contact, Josh realized. He knew there was a delicate balance in the art of eye-contact—too much would get you attacked…but so would too little.
They went through the process of providing their names and destination for the first of several times. It gave Josh an uneasy feeling. Like we’re being tracked. But his experience in Iraq had prepared him for this. He understood exactly why these points existed. He guided his nephew and precious cargo in the form of a doctor through their first checkpoint experience.
As they continued west on Highway 101, he said, “We need to get off-road by two hours before dusk. I want to get at least a full klick off this road to whichever side is the high ground.”
“The high ground…” Stu repeated. “Just like in the movies. What is it about the high ground? What makes it so darn special?” Stu was trying to be funny, not fully comprehending Josh’s experience with loss in Iraq and the demons he’d fought over it in the years since.
“Words won’t do it,” he said coldly. “Let’s see if you still need to ask that after the first time you’re ambushed.”
John Cronin was at the main gate, taking his turn on watch and deep in thought. Something had been nagging in the back of his mind for the entire two days since his conversation with Vince and Alex. The idea had warranted enough merit that John solicited some volunteers to escort the pair of men on a mission for parts. The team, four men and two women, had gone with Vince and his grandson back into Redmond, risking exposure to the threats to fulfill two equally important shopping lists. Every mission carried risks at a minimum, and ‘travel tolls’ were guaranteed.
One half of the mission had been to take Alex to the site of his former employer, which was a multifaceted electronics firm. Alex’s department modified circuit cards for aircraft communication and navigation systems for Boeing. They had a large warehouse of the parts and tools needed for a variety of tasks. Getting in had been a challenge, though it was one that the team had been ready for. Vince had grilled his grandson about the facility, and the team brought a variety of abnormal tools with them for forced entry. They wound up using a sledgehammer, a Haligan pry-bar, and a pneumatic driver operated by a scuba tank, to blow through heavy locks and doors. The vacant building’s shipping roll-up doors had been forced open by starving people, but the heavier and more secure personnel doors leading into the test bench area had required the specialty tools.
