Forgotten Forbidden America | Book 8 | Sin Consumed, page 3
part #8 of Forgotten Forbidden America Series
Death suddenly looked off because that was the first time the actual name ‘Nelson’ had entered his mind since he’d donned the mask. “Nothing,” Death told Q because he wasn’t aware of War’s and Famine’s plan. They were captains and could do it, but that didn’t mean Reaper wouldn’t come down on them.
Reaper had informed everyone before they returned to Hades, each team out had to bring back bodies, human or large animal, to feed the Lard Barn. At the moment, Death didn’t care because the body would freeze very fast. It wasn’t that he or any Sin Eater cared about the bodies. It was just disgusting handling corpses and hauling them back, but they needed fat to run the Lard Barn hard because Reaper said they didn’t have enough explosives.
All the Sin Eaters, captains included, thought Reaper was a bit insane. When they had pulled out after Christmas, Death knew there were over one hundred and fifty TONS of explosives stored around Hades from what they had made and taken from the feds. Since the Sin Eaters had started operating, Death knew for a fact they had used nearly a hundred tons of explosives but more than once, Reaper had toned down an attack that used explosives so as to not impact their stockpile too hard. All the captains knew this because Reaper had told them.
What attack he was saving that much for, no one had any idea. It was only during the long break when Reaper had started on the ten semi box trailers that anyone realized what the explosives were to be used for, each trailer was being turned into a fifty-thousand-pound thermobaric bomb. Death was sure if any captain had asked, Reaper would’ve told them, but none ever did. Death concluded the Sin Eaters liked guessing because he damn sure did.
“Should we check on the spotting team?” Q asked as he nervously shuffled his feet.
Shaking his head, “No, trust your troops,” Death told him. “They know what needs to be done and will notify us if they have problems.”
Nodding, “I knew that, but just wanted to make sure,” Q stammered.
Grinning under his mask, “You’re doing a great job,” Death told him, “except springing the drone request during an attack.”
“I know Sin Eaters don’t like to repeat, but having an armed drone to use opens some options,” Q countered, still trying to convince himself his and Wizard’s plan was worth it.
Tapping his keyboard to change the screen to a camera view miles away, “I never said it didn’t, but coming up and asking me to text Oracle during an attack isn’t the best time. If I’m not mistaken, you have a texting pager as acting second-in-command,” Death told him.
Dropping his eyes to his feet as he kicked at the frozen ground, “Oracle said unless you agreed, I could forget it. She’d already faced a pissed-off Reaper and didn’t want to do it again so soon,” Q admitted.
Hearing that made a lot fall into place and Death could completely understand, a pissed-off Reaper wasn’t something anyone wanted to deal with. The fact Oracle had wanted his approval did relax Death some because at the very least, he wouldn’t be the only one in trouble. “It’s done,” Death said staring at the screen.
The camera overlooked a stretch of Interstate 77 eighteen miles away, just to the west of Whipple, Ohio. Marietta, which was only ten miles away on the Ohio River had a functioning water system and a port where oil and natural gas were brought in by barges. Trucks came in during the day to load up and deliver supplies to cities, towns, bases, and troops in the field. Because the Sin Eaters had destroyed so many railway lines by taking the rails, moving supplies by freight had become impossible by the end of summer. There were a few lines operating and the feds were guarding them closely, but those were only near DC and in New York running into Canada. Death felt certain the Sin Eaters would eventually get to those. He just hoped they wouldn’t take the rails back to Hades anymore.
Many of the rails they had taken were used in the construction of Hades, mainly roofs over the valley work areas, but there were other things they were used for. When Reaper had them cut and pull rails, many couldn’t believe it because each rail weighed nearly a ton and was thirty-nine feet long. When Sin Eaters hit railway lines, they took miles out in the middle of nowhere. They did take spikes as well, but the spikes were used in many attacks to stake feds down. When Reaper informed everyone he wanted the rails back in Hades, many thought he was joking but knew better. All the captains thought about objecting because hauling the rails back would put the Sin Eaters at risk. They were long and heavy, not a good combination when moving cross-country.
True to form, Reaper already had a plan and they gathered the stuff for the plan. When Havoc realized what the plan was, he did pull Reaper to the side to question the intelligence of the risk. Death and the other captains had wanted to say something, but didn’t even know where to start. To prove a point, Reaper had Havoc and his team run the plan the first time.
Sin Eaters spread out collecting four contractor SUVs, ten semi-trucks with flatbed trailers, and loaded the rails up on the trailers. Havoc and some in his section then took off the masks to pose as contractors and used actual roads through the rear area of the feds. Because all the military knew about Sin Eaters destroying railways, checkpoints never questioned the fake orders of a group of contractors hauling rails on trucks. They hauled the rails to an abandoned farm three miles from Hades and off-loaded, then took off for more while those dropped off were moved to Hades.
Then in July, and Death knew Reaper was just being an asshole, Reaper had started sending the trucks to railyards and taking the stockpile of rails the feds were using to try and replace what the Sin Eaters had taken. It was September when Reaper had finally stopped bringing rails back to Hades. Construction was still going on, but they had more than they needed and there were still piles of rails among the trees around the farm. Now if they took rails, they just tossed them in the water. The semi-trucks stayed and more trailers were added and now, nobody ever bothered to ask why they were gathering a fleet of vehicles to hide around Hades.
So with rail more or less out, the only option the feds had to move supplies was by truck and barge. Barges operated day and night because the Sin Eaters had never taken the time to hit them. That couldn’t be said of convoys or vehicles moving about in the rear. Sniper attacks, setting up fake checkpoints and killing all those who stopped, explosives, and ambushes really made the feds nervous moving about in the rear, but nearly all Sin Eater attacks on roadways occurred at night so now, convoys didn’t move at night and units moved in company strength. Sin Eaters still attacked, but never pushed the attacks. They would hit and vanish, leaving a card if one was called for, but any attack Oracle requested they never left a card and it seemed she loved hitting convoys, especially near the front. Since they had started, Sin Eaters had destroyed many vehicles. Not enough to have a supply impact, but they damn sure had a morale impact.
Feeling his cellphone vibrate, Death dug under his jacket to tap the screen. Anything with a battery had to be moved closer to the body to stay warm because the cold drained the batteries. “Death,” he answered.
“Death, it’s Moccasin. Convoy heading north is loaded and moving out,” Moccasin paused, “There are twenty-six haulers. Security still the same, one Stryker in lead and one Humvee at rear.”
Cursing under his breath because that was double the size of what the convoy usually ran, “Copy, what are the numbers?” Death called out.
“Four, seven, eleven, sixteen, seventeen, and twenty-four,” Moccasin answered as Death and Q made notes.
“Copy, pull back. Death out,” he said, tapping his phone off and looking at the numbers. He didn’t mind more, but they didn’t have R/Cs out for a convoy that size.
Pulling out the map, “With what we have out, hitting the front and back and then going after the numbers, I think we can still wipe it all out,” Q said studying the map.
Looking at the attack site from the camera overlooking the area Death had to agree, unless the convoy spread too far out which wouldn’t surprise him with that many. “Give the numbers to the drivers and have sentries pull back to crank up all vehicles and just let them idle,” Death said. On their first attack last night when they’d gone to leave, three of the ATVs hadn’t started. Sitting in the cold had drained the batteries too low to crank the engine. Now, they cranked the engines up every few hours to avoid that again. It wasn’t like someone could hear the quiet machines, and that’s why they’d put extra camouflage and heat shields on the vehicles.
As Q walked off, Death tapped the keyboard and saw the radio relay links were still strong. Each relay had four car batteries to power it. With all the abandoned cars, getting batteries was easy. The relays had been set up last week and they’d just hooked the batteries up last night before crossing the river. Like most of the electronic gear the Sin Eaters used, the relays had been designed by Q and Wizard and then built by the Sin Eaters. Everyone agreed Q and Wizard were true computer geeks, but still kicked ass as Sin Eaters.
The relays were staying in place and were considered disposable because they didn’t give any information. They had never used them for R/Cs before, but had used the directional relays many times. Unless it was easy and didn’t expose a Sin Eater, relays were nearly always left behind because they could make another. So far, none of the ones they had left behind had been reported found, but Reaper didn’t want to take a chance to collect disposable gear.
Hearing the soft crunch of frozen grass under boots, Death glanced up to see the sentries cranking the ATVs. The crunching of frozen grass was louder than the dampened engines idling. “Done,” Q said coming back up.
“Go to the tent and direct the attack,” Death told him, and Q nearly fainted as blood drained from his brain in shock.
Refusing an order was punishable by a Sin Eater vote of reprimand. There had only been two so far, and both had been nailed to the Rock of Woe. “Um… Are you coming to make sure I don’t fuck up?” Q panted.
“Huh,” Death huffed. “You fuck up, and you won’t make it back to Hades for judgement,” Death warned, then looked up at Q. “Do what you know and have trained for. Don’t get extravagant. If you can’t react to deal with a problem, break off and fade away.”
Nodding slowly, Q walked off to the tent setup where the ten drivers were. Death knew what Q was feeling because he’d felt the same way more than once when Reaper had given him command. Now he would get a little nervous, but knew he would do what he knew how to and was trained to do.
When Q went in the tent, Death looked back at his laptop and tapped the keyboard to change cameras to another five miles south of the ambush site that would spot the convoy first. The Stryker came around the bend first and Death leaned closer to make sure he was seeing correctly. It seemed the Stryker was going much slower than normal. They had monitored convoys from this area. Like most military convoys without armor, they traveled at fifty miles per hour, but looking at the Stryker, Death knew it couldn’t even be traveling forty.
Zooming the camera in and using mile markers, Death confirmed the speed was just over thirty miles per hour. “What the hell?” he grumbled, not liking this change. He could see the rest of the convoy of semi-trucks and heavy haulers (HEMETTs) coming around the bend and was about to get out of the Flyer and head to the tent. He froze seeing one of the semi-truck’s tanker trailer skid a bit sideways coming around the bend.
“Oh, Death, you are so fucking stupid,” he grumbled, realizing there was ice on the roadway. There wasn’t traffic, so the roadway was still very cold despite it being 1000. “We’re moving around in a freezer and you forget about ice?” he snarled at himself and got out, carrying his laptop to the tent.
When he walked in, Q looked back and gave a sigh of relief. “You’ve taken the ice on the roadway into account, right?” Death asked.
Caught off-guard by the question, Q blinked rapidly. “Um… yeah. I had the drivers pull the R/Cs out and do a test on the roadway before the sun came up. They didn’t have any trouble,” Q answered, wondering if this was a special Sin Eater test.
Giving a nod, “Good job,” Death said spinning around and leaving, heading back to his Flyer. Watching Death leave, Q again felt lightheaded and turned back to his computer, but stayed standing in the middle of the tent because that’s how Death did it.
“He’s thinking more than I did,” Death admitted to himself softly, climbing back in the Flyer. The R/Cs were set up thirty feet from the interstate in tall grass. They didn’t have to go far to find the roadway, so he didn’t see a problem. Using car batteries of course, Q and Wizard had built a recharging station for the R/Cs in October. Once they proved it worked, Sin Eaters had built more. To use the station, each vehicle had two probes out the back and just backed up until the probes touched the thick wires on the station. It wasn’t ideal, but it kept the batteries charged so the vehicles could be left on and alone for a long time.
Getting comfortable, Death looked at the numbers he’d written down and then back at the screen as the convoy drove on. All the trucks were tankers, but the numbers were those hauling fuel. Death realized sixteen and seventeen were hauling natural gas or propane. “That’s new,” he nodded, then ran the charges they were using and realized it wouldn’t have any trouble punching through steel tanks.
Tapping the keyboard to split his screen and bring up the camera on the other side, or west side, of the road, then Death hit record. From the primary camera, he saw the Stryker leading the convoy, but the convoy was now clearly moving at fifty miles an hour. Since this part of the interstate was much straighter, Death could see the reason to speed up because the faster you move, the harder it is to get hit.
The trucks in the convoy were about sixty feet from each other, but that was normal from what they had seen. Death thought that with the ice, the trucks should’ve put a bit more distance between each other, but was glad the feds hadn’t.
The R/Cs were in two groups off the side of the road in the ditch. All were Regular or the 1/10th size. There were ten in the main group and the convoy would pass them first. The second group had two R/Cs. When the Stryker neared the ambush point passing the first group, Death zoomed with the primary to capture the killing zone.
With a hundred-yard gap between the Stryker and the first truck, it blew past the first group and three quarters of a mile later, passed the second group. Keeping his eyes on the second spot, Death got a little worried when he didn’t see an R/C pulling out on the shoulder as the first truck blocked his view.
In the blink of an eye the truck was past, and Death saw a streak shooting out of the ditch, hit the pavement, and take off after the first truck. The second semi in the convoy clearly saw the small object and jerked the steering wheel, but didn’t know what to think of it.
The R/C drove under the rear of the trailer and streaked to the front. All the R/Cs could do forty miles per hour, but one of the first group and both in the second were speed demons and could hit eighty. Yeah, eighty miles per hour.
When the R/C went under the rear axle of the semi, Death lost sight of it but a second later, the shaped charge on top of the R/C detonated, killing those in the cab instantly. It seemed like Death was watching the event in slow motion as the front wheels jerked to the left sharply, but the truck slid forward as the trailer started to jackknife.
Nearing a bridge that ran over the interstate, the rear tires of the trailer went off the shoulder as it jackknifed and the rig flipped over on its side, continuing to slide along the road but slowing down rapidly. All the vehicles in the convoy had hit the brakes and the only one that did stop was the Humvee at the very end. The semis and HEMETTs were fully loaded and the roadway seemed slicker than owl shit Death reasoned, then wondered just how slick owl shit really was.
All the semis were starting to jackknife as semi number two ran into number one with a loud bang. Still processing the scene in slow motion, Death realized this was going to be a traffic jam from hell as the next semi slammed into the forming pileup. The HEMETTs were hauling twenty-five hundred gallons of fuel but were rigid bodies and did come to a stop before joining the pileup.
That was, until the semis behind them shoved them into the pileup with a gut-wrenching screech of metal.
Turning back to where the first group of R/Cs were, Death saw a form vault out of the ditch, hitting the pavement and fishtailing as it streaked toward the Humvee that had come to a stop a hundred yards away. Those in the Humvee never saw the object zoom under or the explosion that killed everyone inside.
Another object flew out of the ditch and when it hit the ground and took off, Death knew it was the other speed demon. It was with the first group, in case both of the speedsters in the second failed. It was there to chase the convoy down and blow up the lead truck. The other R/C in the second group was supposed to already be out and going after the Stryker, but it wasn’t.
Since the first rig was already out and the convoy stopped, the small four-wheeled rocket shot down the interstate as the other R/Cs leaped out of the ditch heading for the pileup nearly three quarters of a mile away. “Damn, Siren can drive those remote cars,” Death sang out, watching the speedster weave off the road onto the shoulder and under a trailer, then back on the road.
When Siren’s R/C popped out from the side of the pileup, someone in the Stryker had spotted her because the remote gun station was moving. Before it even swung over, Death watched the car streak under the Stryker and then heard a sharp ‘boom’ as the shaped charge went off, killing those inside.
Turning back, he saw the other nine R/Cs weaving among the pileup, searching for their targets. “Don’t think you all have to pull under your target,” Death mumbled as all the R/Cs disappeared under the mass of rigs.
One second later, Death found out he had been right. The explosion whited out both cameras and then both went to static as the shockwave hit. Feeling the ground shake, Death leaned out to look at the ground like there would be something there, then a concussive crack of the explosion eighteen miles away reached them. “Damn, the neighbors are going to hear that,” he chuckled and saw some of the drivers carrying out their folding desks and laptop bags.
