Distance, Chapter 49

49

Saturday morning,

September Second

4:04 a.m.

Doug had volunteered for the two to six a.m. watch, but had been overruled from perimeter watch until Roeland, Peter and Hendrik could train him on procedures and the lay of the land.  Instead, he was tasked with listening to overnight patrol reports from the main farm and seven other adjacent farms in the alliance.  Each had their own frequencies; each had their own base station monitoring all of the others as well as numerous other pre-programmed frequencies in the region. Between the seven farms, nearly a thousand frequencies were scanned, covering many of the active ham radio bands; police, fire and emergency services from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids, into Illinois and well into Missouri.  Should any trouble arise on any of the local farms everyone on watch would know about it immediately.  If one farm needed assistance, all other farms stood ready to send reinforcements, while still maintaining their own defenses.

The system had been set up after an attack on a distant relatives’ farm outside of Monona, in northeastern Iowa.  A similar setup with communications had been in place, and when the call went out for aid, nearly all of the watchmen and reserves responded. The three other farms were then hit with multiple attacks—the first had been diversionary to assess defenses and to pin down those defenders while brute force overwhelmed the rest of the farms, stripped of defenses as part of the mutual aid response.  The survivors estimated the attacking force at more than a hundred men. The attackers then retreated in an orderly manner into Wisconsin.

The seven farms in the Segher alliance though, were just one cell of many. Word of any attack from any direction on any of the rural properties would rapidly spread. Relationships built between neighbors over generations of farming and marriage and business created the quilt of common bond throughout the region. 

An old, stained map had been pinned to the corkboard above the bank of radios in the equipment shed, not far from where Doug’s Jeep was parked.  The map had been marked with a bright orange highlighter, identifying areas that were ‘claimed’ by the New Republic. Most of Illinois lay within their claim, and it was possible that the raiding party from Wisconsin was part of this new threat. There were few States that agreed with—in public—the New Republic Declaration of Independence, but reports on shortwave spread like wildfire.  Many of the Northeastern states were supporting—covertly—this New Republic organization.  Already, refugees from these states were beginning to move West, and running low on fuel well short of their destinations.

Family farm operations across the region were a fraction of pre-Collapse in size, but diversity had increased dramatically.  With many of the corporate farms lying fallow for lack of fuel, seed and fertilizer, the smaller subsistence farms were wrapping up their summer harvests. Temperatures over the average Labor Day weekend were normally in the high seventies or eighties, with lows in the fifties at night.  This year however, the highs barely hit seventy, and nighttime temperatures hovered around forty degrees. The Federal weather prediction system had no explanation for the cooler temperatures, and no meaningful outlook for the coming fall and winter.

Arie however, knew early in the year that something was dramatically different, and doubled the production of cool-weather crops, while tightly minding the inventories of grains for both human and animal use, buying or trading for more as the season went on.

The extended family had been canning and dehydrating food from early June on, filling the storerooms at the main farm, Catharina and Tom’s new home, Peter and Molly’s place, and the rest of the families storerooms.  Root crops would be coming out of the ground within the next few weeks, and would again be distributed to various root cellars of the family. Winter squash would be stored intact; pressure canned, and dehydrated, Doug learned from Julie. Doug had little doubt that the Segher clan would make it through the winter in good shape, missing little in the way of store-bought foods.

Jake Segher’s workbench held the pile of electronics retrieved from the police station, and several neatly organized stations where the electronics that were transmitting were opened up for inspection. After opening up the shortwave transceiver case, a trip wire of some kind attached to the case shorted out the transmitting feature of the modified radio, Jake discovered to his irritation. He removed the non-factory parts and placed them in their own little copper box.  Using what he’d learned from the shortwave transceiver, Jake carefully examined the cable television box before cracking the case open.  The cable box, Jake discovered, had an independent power supply, RFID chip, wi-fi transmitter, a video feed, and a substantial flash-memory storage card—none of it factory installed, and none of the technology had anything in common with the parts removed from the shortwave. Additionally the cable box additions were completely hidden under the main cable TV circuit board, out of view of casual inspection.

After dinner the previous evening, Jake and Doug talked about Jake’s discoveries, as Doug removed the United States Government stickers from the Jeep with a heat gun and a razor blade.  Doug concluded that the equipment was all put in by Regent.  Jake however, concluded that the cable gear was too sophisticated for a private sector corporation, unless it was engaged in industrial espionage in a hostile location. 

“Why would they monitor their own staff with such sophistication?” he asked Doug.

“Because they trust no one,” Doug replied.

“Nonsense. You’re proof that you’re wrong. If they didn’t trust you, you’d be dead in a ditch someplace or fed to the pigs.”

“Point made,” Doug said with no small amount of shock. “Let me clarify. I believe there are factions within Regent that don’t trust anyone—that use whatever means necessary to get leverage over others.”

“OK. That does make sense, but I’m still not buying it. I think this stuff is Big Brother,” Jake replied.  “One way or the other, you’ll probably find out soon enough.  I seriously doubt they’ll like having this equipment out in the wild all on its lonesome.”

“They’ll come for it?”

“Pretty good chance of it, once you get back to civilization, assuming they still have assets afield.”

“I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Doug said.  Jake looked at Doug with unblinking eyes.

“Doug, you ever shoot anyone?”

Doug flinched a little involuntarily. “Yeah, actually. Several.”

“OK. Advice: Do not, if confronted by someone that could be Fed, get in the way--especially for something like this.  Assuming you go on this road trip for the FDA next week, do yourself a favor and just leave this thing in the Jeep. If you see someone breaking in to get it, let ‘em have it. I have no idea what’s on that flash card, or if there’s anything of value at all. But I do know that once that thing is in proximity to any one of a number of innocent-looking pieces of hardware on any number of telephone poles, it will receive a query from Someone, Somewhere, and it will answer.”

“Telephone poles?” Doug asked.

“You ever see a grey box on a telephone pole? Or maybe a drum-shaped thing on a post along a road? Or just one of those green or tan phone junction boxes at the side of some road?”

“Yeah, of course,” Doug replied.

“Those don’t just provide convenient places to connect wire ‘A’ to wire ‘B’; they haven’t for many years.”

“Oh,” Doug said, feeling stupid. “I had no idea.”

“Nearly no one does,” Jake said chuckling.  “All this talk about the Government adding cameras and watching people and all that over the past couple of years just makes me laugh. They’ve known for forty years everything you’ve said on the phone, every page you load on the internet, anyone you talk to, anything you write. People are up in arms two generations too late.”

As the stars in the eastern sky began to fade with the coming dawn, Doug’s quiet contemplation was destroyed with bursts of radio traffic from radio transmissions in the east.

Eighty miles away, between Peoria and Galesburg, Illinois, a probable raiding party was spotted by a deputy sheriff.  Word was immediately broadcast in that area to adjacent properties and their respective protection cells. Moments after that, the radio transmissions were jammed with reports of attacks from Springfield, Illinois to Moline, just across the Mississippi from Davenport, Iowa.

Doug was monitoring two frequencies in that area, and getting reports from the six other base stations in the Segher group on the dozen or so frequencies they were listening to.  Nothing was happening nearby, but protocol called for Doug to provide warning to those on watch, from references in a book that he was not exactly well versed in. He referred to his cheat-sheet, instead.

“One Peter Five Eight.  Repeat, One Peter Five Eight,” Doug said quietly into the microphone.

“One Six One Eight,” was the singular reply a few moments later.

Doug’s warning referred to the Bible verse, ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’   The reply was from the book of Matthew chapter sixteen, verse eighteen, ‘And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’

The distance from the raiders to the Segher Farm and allied farms was not important at the moment.  All watchmen were on a heightened level of awareness for any potential raid from any direction. Should potential raiders be in the area, the watchmen would report back with the first part of Samuel, chapter seventeen, verse one, ‘Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle,’ at which point, Doug and the others manning the radios would relay for a general call-up of all armed men and women in the area.

The cheat sheet had a dozen numbers and their usage guidelines.  Doug would come to memorize them all.

The string of attacks in Illinois stayed on the east side of the Mississippi, but from what Doug could determine, there were at least twenty separate raids taking place simultaneously. It was impossible to tell though, how successful they were.

At the end of their shift, Doug gathered with Peter, Roeland and Hendrik, as the half-strength day shift, including Catharina’s husband Tom and his oldest, Colin, took up the rifles and fresh radios, and headed out to their observation posts.  Cath settled into the listener’s seat in front of the radios, and reviewed the notes that Doug had compiled. 

The many farms on the informal radio network had learned over the weeks and months that raiding parties had never attacked any farm in the few hours after sunrise. The admittedly-prejudiced consensus among many of the farm leaders was that the raiders were mostly city people, and it was just ‘too early’ for them.  As a result of these defined patterns, the Seghers and any of a hundred other farms reduced their guards and proceeded back to the business of farm operations in the early hours of the day. 

The clear, cold night had given way to increasing clouds moving in from the northwest and steady winds.  The four men coming off of the nightwatch all felt the first raindrops, softly at first, but steady by the time they reached the porch.

Doug ate a light breakfast without coffee, and planned to head to bed for a few minutes with Julie before she arose. Before he was able to leave the breakfast table though, Cath called to the house on one of the UHF radios used around the Farm.   Immediately it became clear that the ‘night raids’ weren’t following the predictable pattern. The ‘night shift’ hurried back to the equipment shed to get more information.

“What’s going on, Cath?” Roeland asked of his older sister as soon as they’d closed the door.

“Three more raids. Smaller attacking groups,” she replied, listening to the continuing reports while taking notes.

“Distance?” Peter asked.

“Salem. Hillsboro. Bonaparte,” Catharina replied.

Roeland explained the significance to Doug: Salem was less than ten miles from the Farm; Hillsboro eight miles; and Bonaparte a spare six miles away. They were too far from each other to be a single raiding party. All were small villages without permanent police presence.

“Size of the raiding parties?”  Hendrik asked.

“No more than a dozen. These are different though,” Cath said. “They’re taking people too, not just food or supplies.”

“What? Human trafficking?” Doug asked.

“They’re taking women,” Cath said flatly. “Use your imagination. Doug, would you take over these two?” she said, handing a slip of paper with two scanner ranges scrawled down. “I thought I heard another call, but it went dead before I could hear it. Then these came up.”

“Are all the other farms already on alert?” Hendrik asked.

“Yes,” Cath replied.

Doug picked up another headset and quickly set up the frequency ranges, and was instantly hit with the sound of gunfire. “Another one here,” Doug told them. “Not sure where yet.”

“Keep us informed. We’re going back out,” Peter said.  “Roel, aren’t you on duty today?” he asked, referring to Roeland’s deputy sheriff’s responsibilities.

“Not until noon. Twelve shift tonight,” he replied, meaning a twelve hour shift.

Doug waved to them to stop as he listened to the frantic voices.

“Charlie’s. They’re still at Charlie’s! We’ve got to get back across the bridge!” a very scared man yelled into the radio. Doug heard multiple rifles firing in the background.

“Too many! They’re flanking us!” another voice yelled.

“We’re coming. We’re on River Road one mile west,” a third voice said, trying to calm the first two.

“More on the River Road, half mile from the Eldon bridge,” a deep male voice reported, quietly. “Four vehicles. Two pickup trucks with men in the back, two light pickups with shooters in the back.”

“All right, that’s thirty plus,” another calm voice replied. “We can all see what they’ve got. Take out the drivers before they hit that bridge. First unit, push their dismounts from Seventh back to Ninth.  Second unit, push them back to the river. And get our people back.”

“They mentioned ‘Eldon’,” Doug said.  Hendrik walked up to the map and pointed to a river crossing and a small town, ten or twelve miles west and a little north of the Farm. He placed a red pin at that location, and at the towns that Cath had mentioned.

The radios went silent for a moment before several agonizing screams forced Doug to turn down the volume on what he’d determined to be the attackers’ radio frequency.  One of the attackers radios either had an open mic or he was activated by his voice.

“I’ve got both sides of this fight. Attackers and defenders!”  Doug flipped the speakers on both of the broadcasts. Catharina listened as well.

“Jesus, I’m hit! Someone help me! I…can’t breathe….” A man shrieked, before his voice transitioned to a wet, choking gurgle.

“Unit one, mop up on the west of the bridge,” one of the defending commanders directed.

“We’ve got dismounts fleeing to the south from the trucks. Pursue?”

“Wound them if they run and kill them if they shoot back, Unit Two,” the commander said with ice in his voice. “They’ve killed our people,” the man spat. “They killed them all.”

A few more minutes of gunfire was heard on the ‘attackers’ radio, with the panting of several men.

“Four prisoners,” one of the defenders said to his commander.

“Count of enemy dead,” the commander asked without inflection.

“Fourteen this side of the bridge.  Twenty six on the south side.”

“You find a leader?” the commander asked.

“Sorry sir, he took three rounds to the head.”

“Load them up and bring them all in,” was the reply. “Reserve Unit, police up the vehicles, weapons, ammunition and equipment.  Stage it as discussed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damned efficient,” Roeland said. “I’m not sure who that is but I’d like to find out.”

“We need to get out to our positions,” Hendrik said. “Cath, are your radios…” she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“Yes. Still going,” she said, not raising her head.

Arie, Maria and Julie entered the equipment shed as Hendrik reached for the door.

“What’s going on?” Julie asked. Doug stopped for a moment and smiled at her, thinking to himself just how lucky he was to have found her.  Hendrik filled them in as Roeland and Peter picked up two matching AR-15’s and vests.  The Farm had eight identical rifles of the type, along with load-bearing vests with extra magazines, a pocket for one of the small tactical radios, and a chest-mounted holster for a .45 caliber handgun. Other contents of each vest included a map of the area, a pocket for a small first aid kit, and a packet of beef jerky, dried fruit and nuts.   Other watch equipment was contained in a small pack that each watchman took out to their assigned observation point.

The frequencies that Doug had been monitoring went quiet as the minutes passed. He assumed that the defenders in Eldon had completed their work, and were tending to their wounded and dead.

“Father, we need to talk with the Weerstand,” Cath told Arie.

“Why, child? What do you find?” he replied.

“These attackers. They come from nowhere. They come from within. They are already among these places. They did not travel from the east or the south, they sprung up from within.”

“How do you know this?”

“There were no vehicles involved until the attacks were well underway.  They came in afoot. Only after they had attacked did the vehicles arrive. The vehicles were used for retreat—to take what they had stolen.”

“They did this where?” Arie asked as Maria looked on sternly.

“Salem, Hillsboro and Bonaparte,” Cath replied.

“And probably Eldon. Same pattern,” Doug added, realizing what Cath was saying. “They must be moving in at night, or only moving at night.”

“There is something I do not understand though,” Catharina said, making marks on a small folded map. “In Bonaparte and Hillsboro, the trucks. They left behind some of their people. They left them to fight for themselves.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Julie said. “You don’t leave your people behind.”

Doug wondered. “Unless those people don’t matter to you.”

“What?” Julie asked.

“Were those men worth less than what or who they took?” Doug asked.

No one replied for many seconds. Maria finally answered. “People don’t do that. You bring your people home.”

“You are applying your belief system to people that do not necessarily believe in the same things, Maria,” Doug said, before turning to Cath. “Cath, was there heavy fighting in those cases?”

“No. That is what I found disturbing. There was little fighting at the end.  They just drove off. The people in Hillsboro then hunted down the stragglers. The others in Bonaparte are still chasing them.”

“Why this? Why now?” Julie asked.

“Something bigger’s going on,” Doug answered.  “Maybe part of this New Republic business. I don’t know.”

“We call the Weerstand immediately. Catharina, make the call,” Arie said with resignation.  “We will meet today. Here, for luncheon.”

Maria nodded and tugged Julie along back to the house. “We’ve work to do, now.”

“Arie, what can the Weerstand do?” Doug asked.

“We go hunting, Douglas. We do not wait to be preyed upon. The fight will come to them, and we will bring it.”

Doug leaned back in the chair for a moment before responding, considering what Arie had just said.  “Arie, the men I met…”

“Are far more capable than they might appear,” Arie replied before Doug could finish. “Do not underestimate their abilities based on your eyes, for they deceive you.”

“The men I met are farmers. Business owners…”

“Yes. They fight for their homes, their wives and children and brothers and sisters. There are men in the Weerstand that have fought for the United States, but remember there are also men who have fought in South Africa to defend their farms, and lost family and property and generations of heritage and ended up leaving that place. In the words of one, this is but a tactical challenge that can be met, matched, and defeated. Come now. There is much work to do,” Arie said, turning to the door.

“Cath, are you OK on the radios now?” Doug asked.

“Yes. Elisabeth will be here soon. She can help if things get busy.” 

“Catharina, please provide estimates on the locations of these raiders and where you think they’re heading, ja?”

“Yes, papa. Soon now.”

Doug and Arie walked on the brick pathway to the house as the rain picked up. “You good with a rifle, Douglas?”

“I’d regard myself as ‘adequate’. No more than that.”

“Jacob will spend some time with you in the small barn. He can hone your skills, ja?”

“That would be a good idea.”

“’Time grows short, along with our days’, my father once told me,” Arie said as they reached the house. “We must make good of them.” 

Remnant, Chapter 49

49

Sunday,

December Twenty-Fourth

18:00 Hours

Lincoln, Nebraska

Within the space of a few hours, Lincoln Municipal Airport became again, Lincoln Air Force Base.  I wasn’t aware that it had ever been an Air Force installation, until I’d seen an old-timer who’d worked on Atlas ICBM’s when they were stationed here in the Sixties. It had been home to both Army and Air Guard units before the War. They’d been reassigned to Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.

True to his word, General Rowe’s C-17’s delivered men and equipment that transformed the wrecked airport to a forward operating base for every type of close air support aircraft in the inventory, no matter what branch.

By seventeen-hundred, Air Traffic Control was up and running, not far from the wrecked Nebraska ANG buildings, despite the forward air controllers not having a place to sleep that night.  Crews from both the Washington and Idaho brigades were assembling housing for the aircrews and controllers, from rail-mounted units nearly identical to ours.  Two off-load cranes systematically unloaded the converted containers and shifted to flat-beds towed by semi-tractors, moved them to the airport, and then offloaded each unit with another pair of cranes.  The creation of the Air Force village would probably take a full twenty-four hours, especially getting the utility hookups made. There was plenty of work to go around.  I toured the operations of the Gem State and Third Washington in a very old, but low mileage Chevy Blazer that at one time had belonged to a missile complex up in North Dakota.  I’d never seen as many heaters in anything painted olive drab. It was nice to be warm.

At seventeen oh-five I was headed back up to the airport with Jim Schaefer for a last look before I sequestered myself. I didn’t hear them until they were nearly upon us: three KC 135’s in quick succession, perhaps thirty seconds apart, landed and immediately dispersed on the fair-sized apron of the base.

“Nice to see they’re starting to get some aircraft in the fight,” Jim said. “Really packing them in close.

“They’ve probably been in the fight all along, just not where it would do any good,” I replied. “Or at least, any good for us.”

Right after the KC’s, the familiar ‘hum’ of the A-10 Warthog.  I gave up counting them after twenty.

“Shee-it,” I said, pulling up to the Air Force security policeman for the second time in an hour.

“Good evening, Colonel. Where you headed this time?”

“Off to see your C.O. with Lieutenant Colonel Schaefer here,” I said.

“One moment, sir, let me locate him,” he said, then stepped away from the truck and spoke into his headset mike. “Should be in Thirty One Oh Seven, sir.”

“Thanks, Sergeant,” I said with a nod, and drove off.  “They’ve got their Command and ATC in those six containers behind the three layers of fence.”

“Anti-RPG fencing?” Jim asked.

“You got it.”

“So, Colonel, how long you think you’ll be down?”

“I’ve got a two week supply of antibiotics and the Doc will be checking on me as often as he thinks is prudent. He’s not messing around.  Just consider me an office-bot for the duration. Which, by the way, I will hate.”

“I’ll bet.  You’re not the kind of guy to sit on your ass, sir.”

“Not so much, no,” I said looking over at the runway. “Fairchild Thunderbolt II’s. Those have to be one of my favorite aircraft, period.”

“The Warthog is one of the best things flying, sir.  Every time I meet one of their pilots, I buy them a drink.”

“I hope we have a lot of them left…pilots and Hogs.”

Colonel Mike Kazmer was a bundle of nervous energy in a five-foot nine frame, simultaneously listening to three different attack missions in mid-execution, giving orders to his command staff, and listening to our situation report. He seemed to take it all in, and asked pointed questions that were relevant to air operations. Transport and converted civilian airliners would begin to evac civilians on Christmas morning.

“OK, Colonel Schaefer, that covers the basics: Fuel, food and bullets. How’s security on our approach and departure?  How many people with long-guns picking for us?”

I responded for Jim. “Colonel Kazmer, the S.A. disarmed most everyone here. There is no Resistance movement to speak of. There is no civilian presence within two miles of the airport in any direction. There wasn’t before the City was re-taken, it’s been maintained that way.  There are no habitable homes from Interstate Eighty north and west of Highway One Eighty.”

“SAM’s? Find any?”

“No, Colonel Kazmer.  Spent SA-7’s manufactured twenty years ago, -14’s and -18’s. Hundreds. No live weapons.”

“Common manufacture?”

“Not hardly.  Russian, Egyptian, Chinese, Pakistani. Manufacture dates of Nineteen Seventy-Nine to three months ago,” Jim said. That raised Kazmer’s eyebrows.

“What’d you find for fixed installations?” he asked.

“Wreckage,” I said.

“Can’t I.D?” Kazmer asked.

“Six radar locations with six launchers each. There really wasn’t enough left of any of them to identify what they were or where they were from, but three Intel officers said they didn’t recognize any of it. Secondary detonations at all locations. It appeared they stored spare missiles well within blast radii of the missiles on the launchers.”

“Amateurs,” Kazmer said, listening to us and his controllers in contact with ‘Gunfighter Six’ who was engaged over Omaha. ‘Six’ was an A-10 that had been hit during a run through the SAM umbrella over the city. I’d overheard that the plane had engine damage and had lost both hydraulic systems and had reverted to manual—meaning cable operated—controls.

“Colonel, it’s clear you’ve got work to do. We’ll let you get to it,” I said as I stood. I was getting tired. Jim stood as well.

“Busy night in a long line of busy nights. Thanks to you both and your men. Good having juice to run these systems, food for our men and a supply line for gas and shells.”

“Merry Christmas, Colonel.”

“And to you as well,” he said, shaking our hands, still listening to ‘Gunfighter Six’ and ‘One’, the stricken crafts’ flight leader.  

Jim and I put our parkas back on, and headed outside.   Air Force emergency response crews were ready to respond to ‘Gunfighter’.

“This could get interesting,” I said to Jim.

“Yeah, at least.  Here he comes,” he said, pointing north- northeast.

We watched as the anti-collision lights flashed and a single landing light wavered on approach, and touched down without incident.

“Uneventful is good,” I said.

“Yeah it is.  I’m thinking that pilot’s gonna kiss the ground.”

“At least,” I said as we looked to the northeast, thirty-five or forty miles over to Omaha, where we could hear artillery and see the flashes of explosions.

For the first time ever, I spent Christmas Eve alone. Six chaplains from the Brigade were at several refugee locations for makeshift church services.  I’d have been there too, but for doctor’s orders. There was little in the way of traditional Christmas celebrations in Lincoln.  I read my well worn Bible, and listened to carols being broadcast through our train, Dog Six, and Lincoln Air Force Base.  I wrote letters to Karen, Carl and Kelly; Ron and Libby; Alan and Mary.

I reviewed in my mind the previous year, and how different it turned out to be. 

Karen and I had planned on a family trip to San Francisco for Spring Break, staying at our favorite hotel off of Columbus, not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. I didn’t tell her but I’d also planned a nice quiet dinner for the two of us at the Mark Hopkins. I’d made reservations six months in advance. Instead of San Francisco, we finished the roof on the house and slept inside the house and not the barn, for the first time in months.

Summer would have brought around another family reunion with my brothers, probably without Joe. We’d have golfed at Liberty Lake’s south course, water skied behind a friend’s boat up at Priest where we’d vacationed as kids, seen a Spokane Indians baseball game.  Instead, we farmed and split wood and built houses and worried a lot.

All the other plans were shelved as well.  Building a new deck in the back of the house, adding an above ground pool, finishing the Sixty-Six Mustang for Carl and Kelly to drive to school.

A little before midnight, I shut the lights off and listened as the A-10’s continued their sorties.

Christmas Morning

04:30 Hours

I rose early, tired of coughing, and not quite knowing where I was.  I didn’t sleep well, with the constant thrum of air traffic and all the noises associated with normal operations of Third Washington.

After showering, I flipped on the monitor and reviewed the imagery currently being viewed in the Command Car.  It made me fee like a teacher looking over the shoulders of students, to see if anyone was cheating. Two monitors were reviewing weather inbound to Lincoln, others were working on equipment manifests, personnel assignments, supply train schedules, and sorting through lists of civilians requesting transport out of the city.

The latter, in particular I found interesting, as the tech running that station was cross-referencing the photographs of civilians with known database information from before the War.  The database was quite extensive, more so than I’d ever realized.  We were weeding through the ‘civilians’, to see if there was a cross reference to any known S.A. 

I grabbed my parka and gloves, and headed to ‘work’, making my way through the slush-covered ice.

“Merry Christmas, everyone,” I said to the full Command Car.

“Good morning, Colonel. Fresh coffee?” Major Pat Morrissey asked.

“Absolutely, Pat. The real thing?”

“Courtesy of the United States Air Force,” he said, pouring me a big mug.

“Mighty nice of them,” I said.

“Considering they’re looking to requisition one of Third’s machine shops, permanent-like,” Pat said, “I’d consider this as part of a buttering-up process, sir.”

“When did the request come in?” I asked.

“Little after midnight, Colonel.”

“How high up the food chain?”

“Bird Colonel, sir.  Name of Harris.”

“Anybody from Third comment on this?”

“Charlie’s machine shops are running full steam, Colonel, three shifts.  Refits of equipment far and wide, mostly tanks. Dog’s a little slower.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong. They have four shops from ‘Able’ at their disposal, and they want ours as well?”

“Appears that way, sir.”

“Yeah. Not really feeling like Saint Nick today,” I said. “When they put a formal request in, send it, and the messenger, straight to me.”

“I’ll see to it, sir,” Pat said.

“OK, now, what’s the overnight sit rep?”

“Lost three water filtration systems on our train, two on Dog. Pump systems in the waste tanks are having issues, too.”

“I figured the honeymoon would wear off pretty quick.  Crews on repair?”

“Twenty-five men on rotation, Colonel. The cold is a bitch.”

“And the boys in blue? They’ve been busy overnight.”

“Flyboys have been hammering on the S.A. in Omaha. Lost one, an F-16.  Ground forces are closing in, should be entering the central core within the next six hours,” he said, pointing at a tactical display on one of the monitors. “They’ve basically got everything west of a line from the airport on the north side of town to Papillion on the south. Six more transports came in overnight from Arizona and California, men and gear. Planes are really stacking up at the airport, Air Force says that evac flights will start as soon as the civilian relief forces and ground workers offload—they’re inbound right now, probably an hour out. Most of Dog Six is standing down until eleven hundred, they had a freight come in around oh two hundred and were on alert to offload.  That one got shuttled straight up to the Air Force instead—munitions—including some new drones, and the boys in blue took care of the offload.  Next train’s not due until fourteen-hundred. Night shift of Charlie should be coming off duty at oh six-hundred. No news there, most of the men were up on campus in the civilian shelters and med centers.”

“Find any S.A. in this vetting process?” I asked, pointing to one of the tech’s working over on Suite Two.

“Five. They don’t know it yet. We have men there. They’ll be removed from the civilian population shortly. We planned on taking them at oh five-hundred.”

“Are they together, or separate?”

“Separate,” Morrissey said.

“If you do this, will you tip off any other S.A. in the lot?”

“Colonel, sir?” the Suite Two tech, ‘Jackson’ replied. “We’re done with the vetting process across the entire civilian population in the next fifteen minutes, sir. Facial recognition programs are running in every Command Car—all eight between the four trains—most on multiple suites.  This suite is reviewing some questionables raised by all other suites.”

“You’ve done this overnight?” I asked, quite surprised.  Thousands of civilians were photographed, names taken, and other identification given.

“Yes, sir. Captain McGowan’s orders, along with the intelligence officers from the Idaho Brigade.”

“Nice work,” I said. “Pat, proceed per your original schedule.” All civilians had been searched for weapons when they entered the civilian shelters. In the thousands of refugees, the most serious weapon were folding blade knives. No firearms whatsoever.

I reviewed the Christmas Day operational schedule as the time ticked toward five a.m.   The S.A. in hiding would be whisked out of the civilian shelters quickly, taken to a secure facility within the perimeter of the Air Force base, and would go through interrogation. Along the way, they’d be strip searched and zip tied.

Christmas breakfast for the civilians would be nothing out of the ordinary, unfortunately.  They’d be fed and warm though, and some would evac to warmer climates and safer places. Third Washington wouldn’t be ‘fixing’ much in the way of infrastructure in Lincoln, beyond keeping the University and hospital areas alive for military support.

One of the sergeants from Second Battalion served up breakfast for the Command Car, earlier than we’d expected.  Breakfast bagel, with sausage, egg and cheese.  Not bad, but not home. I missed Karen’s sausage, egg, bread and cheese breakfast casserole, and ambrosia in my great-grandmothers’ crystal bowl.

I put on the headset and microphone, and listened to the tactical frequency as the S.A. in hiding were taken, forgetting that there was probably headset video from each squad. None put up a fight, but exiting the group sleeping area was a little tense. The civilians wanted the S.A. for their own.  Within a few minutes, the S.A. were on their way to their new, limited future.

A second cup of coffee later, Pat placed in front of me a stack of recovered S.A. documents that were being scanned and transmitted up to Command. They were an interesting glimpse into the Other Side. Although cryptically written, the gist of the ‘Priority Directives’ included these choice thoughts:

Doctors, nurses, scientists and engineers were to be captured and shipped East to Pennsylvania, where the S.A. was establishing research and development centers for medically enhancing the soldiers of the S.A. and dramatically increasing the immune systems of the senior members of the S.A. hierarchy. Simultaneously, anyone deemed to be of inferior ‘stock’ would be conscripted into the S.A. ranks and ‘fully indoctrinated into the Sacred Mission of the State.’ The ‘inferior stock’ would be used as front-line soldiers, and were fully intended to be expendable. Those with ‘superior social value’ would of course be spared.

“Eugenics at it’s finest,” I said to myself, as I continued reading.

The capture of breeding-age females of course was part of the process, where either they would be selected for breeding based on ‘pre-determined genetic superiority’ (which seemed a contradiction in terms to me). Those with ‘acceptable prime factors’ would be directly bred; those without would be artificially inseminated.   The report was incomplete, only part of their ‘Statistically Superior Creation Effort’ was here for me to read. It was sickening.

“Pat, has Captain McGowan read this?”

“Yes, sir. I was reserving passing on his responses until you’ve read the documents.”

“These people are barking mad,” I said. “They’re getting soundly thrashed on all fronts and they’re talking about breeding the next generation from ‘genetically superior’ people?’”

“So it appears, Colonel.”

The rest of the documents paled in comparison to the ‘creation effort’.  Machinery and tooling, all identified by location, type, capability and capacity were present in a thick, three-ring bound document. Someone had put significant effort into inventorying, documenting, and locating all of this equipment.  All of it was to be seized intact, disassembled by ‘Relocation Teams’ and relocated to designated R&D centers, mostly in Pennsylvania and in northern Indiana.  There was no specific information on ‘what’ was to be created from the assembled equipment, only that it was ‘necessary to ensure the dominance of the State in the prosecution of the War against all enemies.’ Many of the directives were signed by their ‘president’, with the intended recipient being an S.A. General by the name of Arnold Slocum. I saw hand-written notes, I supposed in the hand of this general, outlining occupation and elimination of ‘resources not directly beneficial to the supremacy of the State.’  The document appeared to be a rough draft of orders to his army.

Any equipment that could not be removed was to be destroyed so that ‘enemy’ efforts could not ‘exploit the equipment for use against the State.’

For the first time, I saw in print, the specific instructions to destroy anything and anyone left behind in any ‘offensive’ that could be ‘used against the State and allow the enemy to mount a recovery. Recovery would be dictated by the State on the State’s terms, only after the destruction of enemy population centers.’

I sat there and thought about that for a long time. Only after a second request, did I respond to one of the duty officers requesting that I take a call on one of the secure channels.

“Colonel, you OK?” Major Morrissey asked.

“Yeah, thanks Major. Just thinking,” I said as I put the headset on.

“Colonel Drummond,” I said into the mic.

 “General Garcia, Colonel. Merry Christmas.”

“General, to you as well. What can we do for you?”

“You can get to Omaha, pronto. What kind of ETA can you give us?”

“Probably six hours to break down both trains for transit. After that, just best possible time to get to a terminal point, General. Clear tracks, an hour or so.”  I’d anticipated a move like this, and asked for realistic break-down and ready-to-move schedules from the entire Brigade.  These were updated daily. I didn’t like surprises.

“I’m putting in the request with Austin right now. I would expect an answer back within an hour.”

“Understood, General. We’ll be waiting.”

“Garcia out,” she said as the line went dead.

Morrissey let out a long, descending whistle. “Into the fire, Colonel.”

“Maybe so. Get the duty officers up to speed. Not really how I wanted to spend the day,” I said, thinking, ‘Americans. Killing each other on Christmas.’