Eden's War (A Distant Eden) (4 page)

BOOK: Eden's War (A Distant Eden)
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Chapter 6

T
hree men jumped out of the brush in front of her. She wheeled the horse to a sideways stop with the horse’s right side to the men so that she had a clear field of fire. Race could hardly believe her eyes – this close to Fort Brazos and these yahoos thought they were going to take her horse, and no doubt a hell of a lot more. One had a shotgun, the other two rifles.

They’re confident they can handle a girl
. They held their weapons casually, only one was pointed in her direction.
He’ll be first,
she thought.
Then the shotgun on the right, and last the rifle on the left. Center, right, left.
She pictured this in her mind’s eye as one of the men told her to get off the horse. She was as cool as a pool hustler lining up shots.

Race had practiced and shot enough to know that she could kill all three men before they got off a shot. She had time on her side, yet she was in a hurry to get going again. As the man finished speaking she slid the pistol from the holster. She didn’t raise the pistol at arm’s length, nor even halfway. She fired just as Tim had taught her, gun just at the top of the holster, arm slightly back and elbow bent. The tiny adjustments needed to put the bullet into the target were automatic, drilled in to her by Tim’s training and lots of practice. They required absolutely no thought at all. She fired center, the hammer seeming to fall in slow motion. As soon as the hammer struck she was moving on to the next target while pulling back smoothly on the trigger. She reached the intuitive point of aim at exactly the moment the hammer dropped again. She saw Bear as a brown blur rocketing out of the brush at the man on the left.

Now her biggest traverse, from all the way right to all the way left. It seemed to take forever, but she didn’t rush it, she knew she had all the time in the world. Smoothly she moved the barrel into line with the third target, and as before the hammer dropped exactly when she knew she was on target. Only the third man, the one on the left, had had time to begin to bring his rifle up, but Bear had launched into the air and ripped at the man’s arm. Race could have beaten him from a standstill, but Bear made it easy for her. She sat there a second, listening to the echo of the gunshots roll off into the trees. She reloaded the three spent shells, carefully keeping the brass.

The horse had been trained for this, and had stood dead still at the first gunshot. Race clucked her tongue and ticked it with her heels and they took off again at that gut-wrenching gait. Race didn’t look back, she didn’t need to. Every minute was precious, and she had lost time that she had to make up now. It never occurred to her that she hadn’t spoken a single word to the three men.

She rode late into the night before stopping to rest the horse. She unsaddled and rubbed it down, feeding it a hat full of corn that she had brought along, then walked it to the spring and watered it. When it was finished, she hobbled it so that it could graze and drink freely while she slept. Unrolling her bedroll she lay down with the saddle under her head and chewed a piece of jerky with occasional sips of water. She fed Bear two pieces of the jerky – although he was adept at keeping himself well fed, she enjoyed sharing her meals with him.

She slept until just before grey streaks of sunrise began to show. One thing about having Bear in the camp, she could sleep soundly knowing he would give her plenty of notice if someone approached. On waking she stood and then did a dozen deep knee bends to unkink her muscles, saddled the horse and was on the trail again within minutes. Breakfast was another piece of jerky eaten in the saddle. Chewing jerky while riding in the jolting horse’s gait took talent to keep from biting her tongue.

Within three hours she arrived at her first ham station. A querulous old man with long gray hair and a huge matted beard appeared at the door. She gave him a quick rundown on the situation then handed over the documents he would need. They talked for a few moments then Race was ready to move on to the next station. “What you mean you can’t stay to explain? I’m just supposed to take your word for all this?”

“Chuck,” Race replied patiently, “I’ve gone over it twice and I know you understand. You just want company. And while I’d love to sit and talk, I have to get going. Spread the word as fast as you can. Don’t radio ahead to let Stan know I’m on my way, too many ears and too many chances to set up an ambush if they know where I’ll be. There’s a ton of people out there that want me dead, don’t help them any please.” With a quick smile that melted the old man’s resistance she whirled the horse and was off at a gallop. As soon as she was out of sight she returned the horse to his infernal gait.

Adrian felt the jet’s wheels hit the runway and breathed a sigh of relief. He was far too big to be comfortable in the back seat of the F-16D, and hadn’t been able to so much as scratch for the last two hours. The ride had been tolerable other than that. The pilot had flown a smooth and stable flight from Corpus Christi to the submarine base at New London, Connecticut. Adrian was making a tour of the east coast staging points. This location was the first stop because it had already begun retro-fitting pleasure boats into guided surface torpedoes, and Adrian wanted to be on-hand to see the first test run.

As he inched his way out of the cockpit and climbed down to the runway surface a Navy Captain stood at attention waiting for him. “Welcome to Connecticut, Mr. President!” The Captain shouted over the subsiding sound of the jet’s engines. He snapped off a smart salute to Adrian.

Adrian smiled and returned the salute. “Thank you. Captain…?”

“Bryant sir. The Jeep will take us to the terminal where you can refresh, and then we’ll go straight to the test location, sir.”

“That’s thoughtful and much appreciated Captain Bryant. Let’s get rolling.”

Adrian and the Captain settled in the Jeep and the driver roared off, the pilot staying with his aircraft. A scant half-hour later, they were standing on a pier at the naval base looking down at what had once been a rather typical twenty-foot ski boat. Everything from the outboard motor forward had been stripped, and the hull packed with explosives. Mounted on the prow was a 105mm artillery shell with a contact detonator. Mounted on the shell was a video camera. The outboard was equipped with a set of levers, linkages and servo motors along with a radio receiver.

“As you can see Mr. President, the boat is a bomb with enormous explosive potential. We’ve added a video camera so the operator can see the target from the boat’s perspective. He steers the boat with a radio control device that has a range of about twenty miles, depending on conditions. It’s a simple but robust system made from components available in an almost endless supply. There must be millions of boats like these, the radio control devices are easy to find or make, and the steering linkage is so simple any teenager could make them from scratch. We’ve stacked the explosives as best we can into a more or less shape charge so that more of the explosive power surges forward towards the target, instead of just blowing up in a general fashion. The shape charge effect is crude given what we have to work with, but better than not doing it.”

“Why the det cord?” Adrian asked.

“We’re pretty sure we don’t need it, but to be on the safe side we’ve wrapped det cord around the artillery shell and then led it back to various points in the explosives. It’s just a precaution, but it only takes a few minutes to install and will assure complete detonation of all of the explosives. Ready to see it run?” Captain Bryant replied.

“Absolutely.”

“Tow it out!” Bryant shouted to the crew in the tow boat. The tow boat slowly pulled the explosives boat out into the bay, then untied the line from it and returned to the dock.

Turning to Adrian, Bryant said “The target is that old freighter across the bay. If we sink it, no harm done. We’re going to run the explosives boat from the tow boat, so you’ll be able to watch the operator, the explosive boat, and the target.”

As Adrian watched, a sailor on the tow boat opened an aluminum case. A video monitor was mounted in the top half and the bottom half contained a series of on/off switches, buttons, a rheostat like knob, and a simple, toggle-style directional controller. The sailor began flipping switches, first powering up the device, then turning on the explosives boat’s engine and beginning to maneuver it across the bay. Using his right hand on the toggle he moved the boat around in a series of maneuvers. Once he had completed the maneuvers to his satisfaction he turned the boat towards the target in a long arc, while simultaneously increasing the outboard’s speed to maximum.

The boat roared across the bay rising to a smooth plane, leaving a rooster tail and a white wake clearly visible against the blue water. Adrian watched with intense interest, his gaze switching back and forth from the boat itself to the image on the viewscreen, as the boat made short work of crossing the bay and slammed into the middle of the target freighter. There was a huge explosion as it made contact and water shot upwards, temporarily obscuring their view of the impact area. Slowly the water fell back down and they were able to see a twenty-foot hole in the freighter’s hull, and water rapidly pouring into the old freighter. Within minutes the freighter had settled into the mud below, less than half its topside showing above the small waves of the bay.

“Outstanding work gentlemen!” Adrian said with obvious pleasure. “Let’s go see the assembly process.”

Later that evening, Adrian was in Myrtle Beach South Carolina for the same kind of review. Adrian had decided to meet with the local militia leaders while making these inspections, and had a local ham operator call ahead and make the arrangements. He wanted them at the pier to see the demonstrations for themselves. The demonstrations, and the meetings, were both successful, and he continued a three week tour of each of the twelve rallying locations, meeting with everyone that cared to come. Each successive meeting drew larger crowds than the one before as word spread that he was making the tour. At his final stop, in Los Angeles, the crowd measured in the thousands. Adrian gave them the same speech he had given at the other locations.

Adrian was a natural orator. He had a deep booming voice that easily carried to the farthest reaches of the crowd. He spoke slowly, clearly enunciating each word so that listeners could easily keep up with the speech. He had a gift for knowing when to raise his volume and when to lower it. His unconscious talent for keeping an audience engaged was dramatically efficient.

“I’ll keep this short because no one likes a long speech. In a very short time, we will be under attack by the Chinese. Time is our first enemy, and the Chinese are the second. We have solid information that the Chinese need our oil and refineries and that they intend to take them by force. But they won’t stop there. Our once-great country still has an untold wealth of resources that they need. Iron, copper, oil, coal, natural gas, farmland, space, infrastructure that they can repair and operate… to them, we’re a strategic base for taking over the entire hemisphere. They’ll take the off-shore drilling platforms and coastal refineries first. But make no mistake, they won’t stop there. They’ll continue inland until they have taken everything. They’ll bring in millions and millions of soldiers, engineers and workers to permanently inhabit our land. From there, eventually, they’ll move north and south into the rest of the countries in this hemisphere. For the Chinese, this is a great opportunity, one they never dreamed of having. If they wait too long, they may not be able to get a foothold, so they’re moving now.

“Our best chance is to defeat them on the oceans. They are far more vulnerable out there than they will be if they establish beachheads. So we intend to stop them out there, and we need the help of every man and woman on this continent to do it. We have to be organized. Working hard isn’t enough by itself, we also have to work exceedingly
fast
. Please get yourselves organized into four basic groups. Group one is to find and bring boats, explosives, radio-controllers, closed circuit TV systems, and skilled workers to the assembly point. Group two will be the skilled workers that take those materials and produce the explosive boats. Group three will be a land-based militia ready to travel to wherever the Chinese might slip by the naval operation and fight them on land. Group four will be the commercial ships and the crews that take the fight to the enemy on the high seas.

“After we’ve won this war, we need to organize a nation again. I say this because
we will win this war
! And you will have become organized enough to create your own Republic. We have established a working Republic in Texas, complete with a new constitution. Any State that adopts a constitution like ours – establishing their own Republic with the same laws as ours – will be invited to join a mutual defense pact. This defense pact will be crafted by a joint resolution of all of the Republics into an alliance. Unlike the former federal government that ultimately failed us, we will utilize a set of agreements on mutual defense and trade. Each Republic will be independent, on its own; self-sufficient, and beholden only to its own citizens.”

BOOK: Eden's War (A Distant Eden)
9.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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