A New World: Dissension (8 page)

“What’s up?” Lynn asks rolling down her window.

“I want to take a look before we cross. I’ll drive up to the middle and take a peek at the other side. I know there’s a residential area just over the other side and a small airport close by to the left. I just want to make sure it’s clear before we cross,” I answer.

“Yeah, I knew there was an airport close by,” she says.

“You did?” I ask. She merely points to the big green sign by the side of the road which says, ‘Tacoma Narrows Airport, 1 ¼ mile’.

“Yeah, I guess that would be a clue,” I say chuckling.

“Do you want me to come up with you on the second bridge?” She asks.

“Nah. Just hang back here and I’ll radio if it’s clear,” I reply.

She nods and rolls up her window. I walk back to my Humvee still rubbing my arms and looking at the gray clouds overhead. They aren’t moving and it seems as if the world is holding its breath. As I climb back in, I hear the radio crackle with Lynn radioing the others.

“We’re going to the top of the bridge and scope out the other side,” I tell the others with me as I pull into the lanes of the bridge on the right.

“Hooah, sir,” Gonzalez says beside me.

“Damn, do you just wait for the opportunity to say that?” I ask, looking over at her. She is staring straight ahead but I see the corners of her mouth crawl up in a smile.

“My day wouldn’t be complete without saying it to you at least once, sir,” she says. “I like to watch you roll your eyes.”

I hear Robert chuckle in the back seat. We pull onto the bridge and begin driving up the curved arch. The waters below are like the roads we’ve encountered – empty. This part of the waterway was always filled with white streaks of boats heading across the waves. Now, it’s almost glass smooth with the occasional ripple.

We climb higher and just crest the topmost part of the bridge. Crack! A spider web of fractured glass appears on the windshield just on my side of the middle post. In my peripheral, I see Gonzalez’s startled response as she ducks. My heart jumps and I crouch as well slamming on the brakes.

“Fuck! Is everyone around hostile?” I say, throwing the Humvee in reverse.

Adrenaline floods my system as I step on the accelerator and reverse quickly back down the slope of the bridge. My mind makes out that I saw a flash of light at the far end of the bridge just before the impact of the bullet on our windshield. I bring the Humvee to a stop when we are no longer visible over the top of the bridge.

“Everyone okay?” I ask quickly.

“Except for needing a new set of fatigues, I’m just fine, sir,” Gonzalez replies.

“I’m good here,” Robert says. “But I’ll second the needing new fatigues.”

“Good here, sir,” I hear McCafferty, manning the M-240, shout from the open hatch.

“Okay, good, wait here,” I say, grabbing a pair of binoculars, open the door, and step out onto the paved surface of the five-lane bridge.

There is a pedestrian walkway to the right side of the bridge and I run over to it making sure I am far below the line of sight from the far side of the bridge. I hop over the railing and slowly crouch up to a point just short of the top. Apparently seeing me back up hastily and run across the bridge, Lynn calls.

“Everything okay, Jack?” I hear her voice in my earpiece.

Hitting the push-to-talk, I answer, “Just peachy. Someone took a shot at us and I want to get eyes on the bastard.”

“Is there another way around?” She asks.

“Not unless you or anyone here knows how to drive a ferry,” I reply.

“African or European?” Lynn asks.

Great! I’m surrounded by comedians today
. “Bravo, Mike,” I respond.

“Awww…. you do care. What about just rolling the Strykers up?”

“We may just do that. Standby,” I answer.

I lie down and crawl the rest of the way on the hard surface. The cold seeps through my sleeves and pant legs as I make my way to the crest. Ready to slide back down the crest in case someone sees me and wants to take a shot, I bring the binoculars up.

Down the curved arched roadway, on the far side of the bridge, I see a line of cars and trucks spanning across the lanes of both bridges. The magnified view brings everything into a sharp focus. Behind the cars blocking the lanes, I count twelve people lined up across the hoods, roofs, and trunks. All of them have rifles of some sort aimed toward where we appeared. Seven are aiming across the vehicles toward the bridge I am on and five have their weapons pointed up the span adjacent to me on the left.

I watch as several more cars enter the highway from a nearby ramp and park. Ten more people exit the vehicles, extract rifles and join the others behind the roadblock. I’m thinking they must have some form of communication and have a fortification somewhere near to be alive with the night runners about. How many more may be there is open to question. However, they’ve shown their intentions and I don’t mean to stick around and jabber with them.

“Lynn, run a scan on the UHF frequencies. Pay particular attention to the four-sixty megahertz range,” I say using my throat mic. “Let me know what you hear.”

“Wilco, standby,” I hear her response.

I’m thinking if they are communicating with radios, they’ll be using the FRS channels common to most two-way radios. I am about to put the binoculars down and inch back when I spot another pickup truck appear from farther up the highway. It comes to a stop behind the blockade. A man exits and walks to the front of the truck. One of the people at the cars sees him and trots over. There’s a lot of hand pointing toward our position and an obvious conversation is taking place. I zoom in closer on the two.

The one who trotted over, holding his rifle casually in one hand, appears to be doing the most talking with more hand gesturing. The driver of the truck shakes his head and, although I can’t tell clearly from this distance, appears to start yelling at the other one. His body language indicates he is not happy. I don’t think I would be either if one of my guys just plinked a round at a military vehicle from behind a flimsy roadblock. The driver pushes the other one toward the line of vehicles. Shaking his head again, he then stomps back to the truck. Swinging the door open, he reaches inside and brings something to his mouth.

“Jack, Lynn, over,” I hear.

“Yeah, I’m here, go ahead,” I respond.

“I just picked something up on four sixty-two dot seventy-one twenty-five,” she says.

Bingo
. “What did you hear?” I ask.

“Well, someone named Sam talking to Roger and he didn’t sound too pleased. He told Roger to round up the troops and then get aloft to report what he sees because, and I quote, ‘Numbnuts here just fired on a military vehicle’,” Lynn answers.

“Okay, lock in that freq and monitor it,” I say.

“Will do,” Lynn responds.

Well, that’s enough for me. We don’t have time to play ‘let’s get to know one another’ as we have to get up to Bangor. I also don’t know what type of aircraft they have that they’re sending aloft. I’m guessing some single-engine civilian type but I really don’t want to find out they have an A-10 stashed away or some World War Two fighter that’s armed. I’ll give the communication with them one shot but I’m not dilly-dallying around. If they want to play games, we’ll roll through them and be on our merry way. I take another quick look around to see if they have mines or some IED’s on the ground. I don’t see any and inch backwards out of the line of sight, rise, and trot to the Humvee. Turning the vehicle around, I drive back to the end of the bridge and pull up next to Lynn. I gather the team leaders around detailing what waits for us over the rise of the bridge.

“So, what’s the plan?” Lynn asks, stomping one boot on the ground to shake out the chill.

“Well, let’s try this communication thing once and see if they won’t open the pearly gates for us. If we get ‘entrance denied’, then we’ll roll up and over them,” I answer. I reach in the Humvee and grab the mic.

“Sam, this is Captain Walker on channel seven,” I say. Silence.

“Sam, I know you can hear me and it’s in your best interest to respond,” I say, staring at the empty bridge ahead.

“This is Sam,” I finally hear his words crackle over the speaker in the cab.

“Would you like to explain why I have a broken windshield?” I ask.

“Sorry for firing on you, Captain. The boys are a little trigger happy,” Sam answers.

“Yeah, you might want to get a handle on that,” I say.

“Are you with the military?” He asks.

“Is that a serious question?” I ask in response. “And you shot without provocation.”

“I do apologize but we can’t just have anyone coming through,” he replies.

“Look, we just want to pass through. We’re not looking for anything other than that and we’re not just anybody,” I say, getting irritated. Time is elapsing and we need to be moving on.

“I’d like to do that, Captain, but we can’t let you just go through. If we did that, then others would see and think they could try as well. They’d come in and try to take our supplies,” Sam says.

“What others?” I ask.

“There are others in the area looking for any weakness and we can’t afford for that to happen,” he answers.

“Look, we have a safe place and you and your group can join under us,” I say as a way or reconciling this situation.

“Thanks, Captain, but we have our own safe place here,” he responds.

“Well, Sam, this is the only route and we’re coming through,” I say.

“Sorry, sir. We can’t let you do that military or not,” Sam replies.

I hear the sound of a prop engine revving up across the water.
At least it’s a prop
, I think getting more irritated by the minute. I don’t really want to unleash the .50 cals on them as they are only trying to protect their own as well but we need to push through. I look up at the unmoving gray clouds overhead seeking an answer. They have none to give. I’m getting tired of this little tete-a-tete. It’s getting us nowhere and I can’t for the life of me figure out why they would want to stop us. Surely they know they have little chance. If that aircraft gets aloft, they’ll know for sure. I ponder over whether to just let it describe what we have on this side but I’m not a fan of just letting an aircraft roam overhead.

“Last chance, Sam,” I say.

“I’m sorry, sir. You can go around to the south. There’s a route to the north from there,” he responds.

“Yeah, that’s not happening. You either let us through or we’re coming through,” I say.

“Again, sorry, sir,” Sam responds.

“It’s your funeral, Sam,” I reply, sighing and shaking my head in resignation.

Stubbornness is going to get him and lot of others killed. We could radio the sub to let them know that we’re running late but to go all of the way around would take us a couple of additional hours each way. Who knows how long our meeting is going to take and we just don’t have that kind of time before the sun hits the western horizon. I look again to the empty lanes of the bridge stretching across, sigh, and reach into the Humvee to replace the mic. I look over at Lynn who gives me a shrug of her shoulders as if to say ‘we tried’.

“That could have gone better,” I say in response to Lynn’s shrug.

“It’s not like we didn’t give them a chance,” Lynn says.

I still don’t get it. We are on the very brink and need to pull together rather than play games. I can understand Sam’s position though. I’m not certain I would let anyone roll through our area at will but neither would I jeopardize our group with stubbornness. But given the option of strengthening our group with numbers to give us a better chance at survival, I would take it provided our safety and cohesiveness remained. But here we are, facing yet another group of people that we’ll have to fight our way through.

This is different from out other situations though. This isn’t a group of marauders or bandits. This group across the span from us is just trying to protect their people and resources. Much like we are.
If we roll through them, are we any better than marauders seeking their own gain regardless of others?
I mean, we could radio Captain Leonard and head on the other route around the Puget Sound tomorrow. That will take us through a few small towns which could be blockaded as well. Either solution doesn’t sit well with me.
Well, fuck. We did give them a chance and we are pressed for time. And they did fire upon us without provocation, accident or not.
I’m not happy with it but we’re proceeding along our route as planned.

“Jack, are you with us?” Lynn asks. I shake out of my thoughts and look at the others gathered around in the chill under the gray skies.

“Yeah, I’m here. Okay, here’s what I’m thinking but I’m open to suggestions. We take two Strykers in parallel up the bridge on the right with the other Stryker and the two Humvees astride on the left. We’ll crest and fire into the road block creating a lane to pass through. Our field of fire will be limited due to the bridge superstructure. Make sure to keep our rounds away from the suspension wires. I’m not all that keen on bringing the bridge down with us parked on it. That belongs on the unfavorable situation list. You dump me in the water and I’m going to be a little upset. We open a lane through on each side and push through. Any questions?” I ask.