Eden's War (A Distant Eden) (6 page)

Chapter 9

A
t dawn the next morning, as Adrian was cooking breakfast, the Admiral pounded on Adrian’s door. “Come on in Admiral” Adrian said. “From the look on your face, I’m guessing we’ve spotted the first fleet coming from China.”

“We have, and they have several hundred ships coming at us. Probably more than that, but that’s what we can detect right now. ETA in the Hawaii area is three days, tops.”

Adrian calmly said, “I’ll wake Linda and we can all eat breakfast. Then we’ll fire up the chopper, go to Corpus and get a lift to Hawaii. You and I are going to be at the front line when this first battle goes down.”

Two and a half days later, Adrian and the Admiral were at Pearl Harbor boarding a Navy cruiser. As soon as they were on board the ship shoved off and headed for the enemy fleet. They would soon catch up to the explosive boat carriers that had launched two days before. The cruiser could easily attain thirty knots and was highly maneuverable.

“How soon will we be in range of the enemy Admiral?” Adrian asked. He was already a little queasy from the rolling of the ship. Adrian always got seasick, he’d had the experience more than once.

“A day-and-a-half to two days Adrian. You look a little green.” The Admiral said with a small smile. “Don’t tell me you’re going to have to carry a bucket around with you? Need some pills?”

“I’m sure I’ll provide plenty of amusement for you and the crew. I always get seasick and it never gets better with time either. No pills though, they don’t help and make me sleepy. And yeah, I’ll probably be needing a bucket pretty soon.”

“Let me take you on a tour of the boat and then show you to your quarters. You might as well lie low until we get closer.” With that the Admiral took Adrian for an extended tour of the ship, showing him everything from the engine room to the control room. “This” said the Admiral “is the control room, this is where we’ll be for most of this voyage. This is the heart of the combat operations.”

Adrian looked around at what to him was a smallish and crowded room. All of the walls were lined with instruments and large panels. The room was shrouded in soft blue light with the instruments lit up with their own individual lights. It was a meaningless and complicated array to Adrian. He knew that every single instrument meant something important to the men operating the room, but they were Greek to him. In the center of the room was a waist-high panel with a large round nearly horizontal display surrounded by toggles and switches. On the round display were various symbols. To Adrian this appeared to show ships’ locations in relation to each other, a kind of living map.

“Admiral, this is no doubt where you need to be, but I’ll just be in the way; I’m already afraid to be in here. I have no doubt that I’ll end up puking on something important, and I can’t tell hide from hair on what I’m seeing. I’ll be up on the bridge where I can see and be in communication with you. I’ll have a bit more room for my bucket up there.”

“As you wish, Mr. President.”

Adrian laughed, “I know you don’t approve, but trust me on this. You don’t want me down here getting in your way. I’ll know as much as I need to from your reports. We’ll both be a lot happier if I am not under your feet in here. When the time comes to start sinking the Chinese ships, I want to be out there in one of the helicopters to see the engagement with my own eyes anyway. I need to see how the explosive boats work out in real time.”

“We’ve had this conversation, Adrian,” the Admiral said with a grave tone. “It’s extremely risky. The helicopters are too vulnerable.”

“You’re going to send at least one out anyway to get a visual report, aren’t you?” Adrian asked.

“Of course. But losing a helicopter and crew isn’t on the same level as losing our Commander In Chief! Jesus, Adrian, how many times do we have to talk about this?”

“Look Admiral” Adrian replied with sudden steel in his voice. “I won’t lead from behind. I need to see the action for myself, see if there are problems or improvements to be made. I can’t do that sitting and watching radar screens. I won’t stay out there for the whole battle, but I have to be out there at the beginning of it in case I see something I haven’t considered. I need to know what the actual work of this operation looks like, how fast the boats can move and turn, what positions they’re best arrayed in. For ninety-eight percent of this war I’ll be out of harm’s way – after all, I can’t be everywhere at once. But in order to understand
what
needs to be done and
how
it needs to be done, I have to see this for myself. It’s also good for the morale of the fighting sailors to know they’re leader isn’t afraid to mix it up. They deserve the respect of a leader who takes the risks they’re taking. When it gets hard and tight out there, I want every sailor on every boat we have to know I am in that helicopter out in front of them. I want them to know they’re not sacrificial lambs. Remember Admiral, these are not naval warriors going out on the front line, their expertise isn’t combat, it was commerce. They don’t have the fighting background – they’ll need all the encouragement they can get.”

As the helicopter lifted off, Adrian was immediately relieved of the sea sickness he’d been suffering since boarding the cruiser. Flying didn’t bother him in the least, even though the helicopter flight had more motion in more directions than the cruiser had. Moments after the naval chopper had reached altitude Adrian could see the layout of the explosive boat carriers, and only a mile away he saw the fleet of oil tankers. Between the two fleets he could see dozens of small boats moving rapidly towards the tankers. The war had started.

“Fly over close to the tankers, I want to get a look at them up close.” Adrian instructed the pilot.

“How close do you want to get sir?”

“Close enough to make out faces.”

“Yes sir, I’ll get you close enough to count pimples.” And so he did. Within minutes the chopper was circling around the foremost tanker close enough to clearly see startled faces. When several soldiers suddenly popped up on deck and began firing at the chopper with rifles the pilot calmly asked “Close enough sir?” He smiled. A bullet snipped through the aluminum skin on the chopper making a loud ping, punctuating his question.

“Yep, I think that will do, go ahead and back off a bit, son. And move around to the stern of this boat, I want a good look at the rudder.”

Adrian flipped a switch on the radio and was then able to broadcast to the American fleet on an open frequency. “Captains, I’ve been looking at the rudders of a couple of these ships. Because the ships are not carrying the weight they were designed for, they are riding high in the water. As the waves recede from below the stern, part of the rudder is temporarily exposed, and the propellers are near the surface. If you bring your torpedo boats around from behind and time the hit with the waves you may be able to disable their rudders, possibly even damage the props.

“From directly behind though, the rudders will be a difficult target to hit, but if you come at them from the side you stand a better chance. Disabling their ability to steer is as good as, or maybe better than, sinking them. If we’re lucky, other ships will come to the rescue of a disabled ship to off-load their soldiers. On the other hand they may just sail on by; in either case a rudderless ship isn’t a threat to us.”

“If you can’t get to the rudder you’ll have to try and breach the hull. Most of these tankers have double hulls. To sink one, you’ll have to not only flood the inner hull, but at least two of the inner tanks.

“That means that you’ll have to breach the outer hull and then run another boat in through that breach to hit the inner hull and tank in at least two separate places, say about at quarter points along the length of the ship. Now, let’s see what you can do to their rudders.”

Adrian watched closely as the first of the radio-controlled explosive packed boats rapidly approached the foremost tanker. The little boat looked like a mosquito next to an elephant. For the first time Adrian had deep doubts about the effectiveness of his strategy. It didn’t seem possible that his tiny little boats could even cause a paint chip on the behemoths, much less stop or sink them.

As the tiny craft approached he saw men with small arms swarm the deck. He watched as the soldiers fired on the approaching boat with rifles and rocket propelled grenades. The water was pocked around the boat from the rifle bullets. The two RPGs missed by yards. Adrian held his breath –if one of those bullets hit the boat in the right place, the whole thing would go up prematurely.

The closer the boat came, the more bullets poured into it, but the outboard engines had been shielded, and the boat kept on. Finally the little boat was nearly to the stern of the big ship and made a sudden turn towards it. The little boat disappeared momentarily beneath the behemoth’s bulk and then there was a large gout of flames. The shock wave could be seen spreading across the ocean’s surface for a hundred yards.

For several long moments it appeared that the explosion had had no impact on the ship’s operation. But slowly it began to lose speed and then coasted to a sudden stop. Adrian had the pilot bring the chopper in directly behind the tanker, come up close and then swerve off quickly taking defensive maneuvers to avoid the small arms fire.

Adrian flipped the broadcast switch again and announced, “The first tanker is stopped dead in the water, rudder is in shreds and I think the propeller was damaged as well. Great shooting whoever that was!” Adrian could hear cheering from open mikes aboard several of the ships in the fleet. “Now go get them!” Adrian shouted. He looked down and saw scores and scores of the small boats making their way towards the fleet of giant ships.

“Sir, we’ve taken a hit to the hydraulics and have to return to the cruiser immediately. We may not make it all the way.” The pilot said to Adrian with no more stress in his voice than if he was ordering a ham sandwich.

“Well, get us as close as you can.” The pilot was able to get them within a quarter mile of the cruiser. He made a good landing, shutting off the rotors in time to keep them from becoming shrapnel when they hit the water. They bailed out and were floating in their life preservers while waiting to be picked up.

Adrian wiped seawater from his eyes, then looked at the pilot and said “Sorry about that. We wouldn’t have lost the chopper if I hadn’t ordered you to fly in close. I’ll tell the Admiral you did a top-notch job of flying and that it was strictly my fault. And that
was
top notch flying, the very best.”

The pilot smiled and said , “I’d be proud to be your pilot anytime and anywhere, sir. I haven’t had that much fun since I first started flying. Damn, but what a story this will make, I’ve got bragging rights for the rest of my life – thank you sir, thank you very much!”

Adrian smiled and shook his head.
How can we lose with men like this on our side?

Chapter 10

R
ace had completed her rounds of ham operators and then been assigned to escort duty for groups of volunteers moving supplies to Corpus Christi for the war effort. In Adrian’s absence, Linda, the commander of the Fort Brazos Militia, had also taken command of the Texas Rangers. This particular group that Race was escorting had located hundreds of artillery shells in the warehouses at Fort Hood. These shells were carefully stored in eighteen-wheeler trucks that other volunteers had been gathering and returning to operating condition. Race was continually amazed at the scope and breadth of the war effort, and how many Texans had turned out to volunteer. She knew that operations like this were taking place all across the country.

On a previous escort mission, she had gathered a group of Rangers and Militia to guard a tanker truck of diesel fuel from Corpus Christi to Fort Hood, to fill the trucks that would be carrying the artillery rounds back. She couldn’t see how artillery rounds would be useful to raiders, but then raiders didn’t always act with logic – and wouldn’t know the trucks cargo anyway. Raiders spying trucks moving cross country with an armed escort would assume that the contents of the trucks were worth stealing, whatever the contents might be, and would definitely want a tanker. So Race kept a sharp look-out for trouble.

It was a three-day trip, mainly because Race wouldn’t allow the convoy to travel after dark. Darkness made a road ambush of the convoy an almost certainty. Instead she picked out a wide open area each evening and had the trucks parked. If they came under fire, being near trucks filled with artillery and diesel wasn’t where she wanted to be. Instead she had the drivers and passengers camp nearby, and mounted a constant patrol around the vehicles. There was no campfire, and no smoking allowed. They kept a dark camp and a quiet camp. Every man and woman with the trucks was armed and participated. All together they were a formidable force to contend with.

The second evening out, they came under attack. Race was patrolling to the south side of the parked trucks when she heard a rifle shot from the west side. The convoy’s people knew what to do; they had drilled on this several times. The perimeter guards were scattered out fairly thinly, their job wasn’t to mount a counter-attack, but to alert the reserve contingent to danger. Half of the reserve contingent would rush to where the action appeared to be – the other half waited where they were in case the first action was a diversion.

This one was a diversion. Each guard remained where they were. Race rushed towards where the gunshot had come from. Before she got there she heard three more shots. She joined the reserves as she arrived, all of them taking cover.

Race quickly warned everyone to be ready to move, this was possibly just a distraction so that the attackers could surprise them from a different spot. She then trotted over to the rest of the reserves just as rapid shots were fired from the east. She led the reserves to that point, and found three of the guards in a heated fire fight with an unknown number of attackers.

Assessing the situation, Race sent a runner to bring over half of the other reserves, leaving half where they were just in case. When the rest of them arrived, she gave quick instructions to spread out, find cover, and fire at anything suspicious outside of the line. Five minutes later there came a rush of feet and rapid gunfire from multiple locations. The defenders returned fire. The shooting was over in less than two minutes, with the attacker’s fire petering out to nothing. Race suspected that a small group of raiders had attacked, taken too much fire to suit them, and retreated. She didn’t think they would be back.

With the morning sun up Race scouted the area of the action. She found one dead man and a wounded boy, about fifteen with a through and through leg wound that Race cleaned and bandaged while she questioned him.

The boy, seeing that Race had no intention of hurting him, and was in fact solicitous of his wound, was a bit smitten, and talked freely.

He described the band he had been with as ten men and three teenage boys. They had seen the trucks after pulling over for the evening and hadn’t realized how many defenders there were, or how well armed. They thought that truck drivers would be easy to take. They had discounted the escort vehicles when they realized the occupants were mostly female. He said, “They’ll be miles away by now, afraid of being trailed and attacked. They figured out at the last minute that those women were Rangers and know they stirred up a hornet’s nest. They won’t be back.”

“What about you?” Race asked. “Are you going to join up with them again?”

“No way. The bastards left me here to die. I was about to quit them anyway, taking from people turns out to be something I didn’t feel good about. I just want to go home and do my best at farming. I’ve had enough of the outlaw life. Besides, the Rangers are catching and killing more and more outlaws every day, it’s gotten to be a damned dangerous business to be in.”

Race and the boy talked on about things in general when something the boy said got her full attention. She was finishing up the bandage and getting ready to move the trucks out when he said “We traded with some Chinese men a few days back, down south of here a ways. They were too well-armed for us to try to take them, but they gave us food just for information.”

“Tell me all about this.” Race said with barely a show of interest, although she was on high alert inside.

“Well…it must’ve been two weeks ago. We stumble-bumped into them on accident. It was a bit scary there for a few minutes, all of them armed and pointing military weapons at us, and all of us exposed and pointing military weapons at them. If anyone fired a shot, most everyone was going to die right there. Their leader and ours shouted at each other for a while, then calmed down and started to just talk. Man it was intense though, everyone on edge like that.

“Then this guy offered us food for information. That turned the trick and everyone settled down.”

“What did they want to know?” Race asked.

“It seems silly but they just wanted to know about the conditions from San Antonio to Lubbock. Said they were going that way to find some friends in Lubbock and wanted to know about traveling conditions, how many people along the route, that sort of thing.”

“How many were there, how were they dressed, what kind of guns did they have?”

“There were ten of them, in regular clothes like everyone else, with rifles that looked kind of like a bull-pup assault rifle. They gave us food… kind of like MRE’s… only they had weird food in them. One of the foods was a pickled root-like thing. Not bad, but weird.”

“Did they all speak English?”

“Couldn’t say for sure, only the head guy did any talking. But he gave orders in English and they seemed to understand him well enough. Told them to lower their rifles, then later for each man to get out one ration pack. After a bit we left, walking backwards, and they watched us go. That was kind of scary, too, ’cause they might have changed their minds. Still, it would have been a bloody business for them as well.”

“Where did you bump into them? I mean tell me
exactly
where.” Race said. The boy looked at her hard now, realizing for the first time that this was more than just a casual conversation. He explained where, giving her landmarks that she could easily find.

Race continued to question the boy, but didn’t learn anything else interesting. She said, “Look kid. I’ve patched you up and letting you go. But it’s only because I have other things to do right now. When I’m back on patrol, I better not find you raiding again, because I’ll kill you if I do.”

“Yes Ma’am, I mean, no Ma’am. I’m done with that I promise.”

Race mulled over the boy’s story. Later that morning after they were back on the road, Race called Corpus Christi on the encrypted radio, asked for the intelligence office, and then relayed the story. “Pass it along to President Hunter, too.” She said. “This sounds like a recon patrol; but of what I can’t figure out. Maybe he’ll know.”

Adrian and the Admiral were on the bridge. Adrian had a bucket handy and was as sick as he could ever remember being.

“Adrian, why don’t we send you back to land now? You look like hell and you have to feel worse than you look.”

“Soon Admiral. I want to see this particular action finished. We’re learning a lot as we go and I want to be right here to learn it. The Chinese figured out that they could use tracer rounds to blow up the explosive boats damn fast. Switching to night operations has helped, but we’ve now got to get all of our torpedo boats fitted with infra-red cameras. These guys are smart and adapt rapidly. I need to see what they’ll come up with next. I intend to stay until we’ve come up with a method of destroying them that they can’t counter.”

The Admiral nodded. “Thought you’d say something like that,” he mumbled

“What was that Admiral? You were mumbling.”

“I said, what did you make of Race’s report?”

Adrian smiled; he’d heard what the Admiral said. The smile made Adrian look even more ghastly than he already did, his white teeth contrasting with his green pallor. “It’s damned odd. She’s right, it sounds just like a recon… but of what? There’s nothing out there but mesquite and rattlesnakes. Lubbock doesn’t have anything of military value.”

“Let’s assume that it’s a Chinese Army recon. How did they get where they are?” the Admiral asked.

“My guess is through Mexico. They could have landed anywhere along Mexico’s east coast and walked in. No problem really. But
how
isn’t nearly as interesting as
why
. I’ve been racking my brains, and can’t come up with any reason for it – but it isn’t just something random, they have a reason… and it will be a damn good reason, too. We need to know what that reason is. Which means we have to capture and interrogate the patrol.”

“Hell, Adrian, they could be anywhere out there. How in the world are you going to find them?”

“Admiral, they’re not just anywhere out there. We have a specific location for them as of two weeks ago. And, if they didn’t use Lubbock as a diversion – which maybe they did – then we know where they’re going. They are somewhere between those two points, closer to Lubbock by two weeks. That gives us a fairly specific area to look in. I’ve already sent orders for Race to put together a hunting party. She’ll find them, she’s damn good at hunting men. I also ordered a special ops team to be on standby and ready to chopper in when she locates them.”

Adrian turned his back to the Admiral and retched into the bucket, then turned back. “From the sound of it they’ll be special ops soldiers. Well trained, skilled, and well-armed. They won’t be captured easily, it’ll take a team better trained and better skilled to do that. I’ve explained that to Race…I have confidence she’ll find them, but I’m worried that she may exceed her orders and try to capture them. Trouble is we need them alive…and Race…well Race has more experience at killing than capturing.”