Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (24 page)

Mosley nodded again, then asked, “But what if they don’t? Shoot, I mean.”

“Then we do it for them. Have some of our boys hid nearby, and you give them the signal to shoot,” Banks said.

“At the soldiers?”

Banks exploded. “NO, FOOL! THE ’FUGEES!”

Mosley nodded his head vigorously. “Oh yeah. I get it now. That smart, Kwintell. Real smart.”

Banks sighed. “All right. Get your ass outta here and go take care of it.”

Mosley bobbed his head again and scurried out of the conference room.

“Real crack team, Banks,” scoffed a low voice from the end of the table.

Banks’ heart raced. He swallowed the lump in his throat and did his best to hide his fear. “He all right. He just need supervision sometime. You know what I mean.”

The man stared unblinking. He stood six feet six, and even sitting at the conference table he towered over Banks. His African DNA was clearly undiluted, and he was the blackest black man Banks had ever seen. It was almost impossible to tell where the black tee shirt stretched over his massive chest stopped and his bulging biceps started. His shaved head bore many scars, and there was a small gold ring in one earlobe. His only earlobe actually, the other was cut off in a straight line. If Rorke was pirate scary, this guy was insane-serial-killer-under-the-bed scary. Banks had difficulty keeping his composure in the man’s presence. Rorke called him Reaper.

Reaper snorted. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. He’s a frigging idiot.”

Banks changed the subject. “This is all good. All the ’fugees bein’ pissed at the soldiers, I mean. That can help us out a lot, we play it right. We got lucky on that one.”

Reaper snorted again. “Only fools need luck. You do what I told you?”

“Yeah, but what you need—”

“I hope you’re not about to ask me a question. You know I hate questions. As a matter of fact…” Reaper smiled and produced a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife seemingly out of thin air and buried the point in the wooden conference table. He released it, and as it stood quivering, upright in the table, Reaper pointed at the leather-wrapped grip. “Know what kind of leather that is, Banks?”

Banks looked at the knife handle and shook his head.

“It’s the nut sack of the last fool to ask me a question without my permission,” Reaper said. “I ask the questions. You give the answers. We clear on that, fool?”

Banks nodded, cowed, as he had been since Reaper and his small contingent had arrived the morning before. Like Banks and his gang, all the newcomers were African-American, but there the similarity stopped. The SRF troopers were hard men and openly disdainful of the gangbangers posturing as badasses. They arrived in Humvees laden with crates, which disgorged their cargoes then disappeared. The newcomers set to work immediately, confiscating pickup trucks from the UBN thugs or nearby parking lots. They brought an ample supply of gasoline in jerry cans, and by nightfall they had converted over a dozen pickups into ‘tacticals’ with the addition of machine guns and improvised armor. Banks had seen rocket-propelled grenades among the gear, and he was eager to know when his men would get access. Now he was afraid to ask.

“How many of these fools you got?” Reaper asked.

“Almost fifteen hundred, if you count the baby ganstas—”

“I’m not wasting an M4 on a third grader,” Reaper said. “How many man-sized fools you have smart enough to tie their own shoes?”

Banks ignored the insult. “’Bout a thousand, give or take.”

Reaper nodded. “I got four hundred M4s. Pick out your four hundred best men, and divide them into groups of twenty. One of my men will be in charge of each group, to teach them how to use—”

Banks bristled, terror momentarily forgotten at this affront to his authority. “These my men. I’m in charge. And the M4s just like the ARs, ain’t they? We know—”

Reaper glared and looked pointedly at the knife still upright in the table.

“Course, we can always use some pointers,” Banks finished lamely.

“You can use more than pointers. ’Cause every one of you fools is gonna be blasting away on full auto if I don’t nip that in the bud. We gonna teach you to fire single shots or three-round bursts, no more. I see one fool firing on full auto, I’m gonna waste him myself. You got that, Banks?”

Banks nodded.

“We can’t actually shoot; otherwise they’ll hear it inside the fort. We’re just going to have to do weapons familiarization by dry firing and hope these idiots of yours learn enough to keep from shooting each other when it’s for real. As I said, each twenty-man group will be under one of my men, and the rest of us will man the tacticals and carry the RPGs. I want all fifteen hundred of your men on the front line with whatever they’ve got, and the four hundred men with the M4s will be evenly spread among them. The tacticals will be spread in the line along the front behind them, out of sight until they’re needed and then coming out to provide suppressing fire against the crew-served weapons on the wall. Is that clear?”

Banks nodded again.

“Good,” Reaper said. “You may now ask a question if you have one.”

“Ahh … where you want me?”

“With me, of course. You’re a fool, but you’re not completely stupid. Riling up the ’fugees wasn’t a bad idea, and it’s going to make things a whole lot easier.”

Wilmington Refugee Camp

(Formerly Pine Valley Country Club)

Pine Valley Drive

Wilmington, North Carolina

Same Day, 1:45 p.m.

Corporal Jerry Miles looked at the road ahead and cursed. Why did this crap always seem to happen on his patrols? First they stumbled across the gang rape, and Lieutenant Wright chewed his butt to hamburger even though he’d done the right thing, and now this. Three cars were across the road ahead, blocking the western entrance to the camp. They were surrounded by what looked like a far from friendly mob of refugees.

Miles sighed. “Slow down,” he said to the driver. “We don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

“How we gonna get into the camp?” asked the driver.

“Well, not through there, that’s for sure,” Miles said. “This is shaping up to be a shit show, and we’re not playing. Stop the vehicle.”

The driver did as told, stopping well back from the crowd. But not far enough. The angry mob surged forward and encircled the Humvee. Curses filled the air and angry faces pressed against the windows. Miles reach for the radio.

“Box Base, this is Rover One. Do you copy? Over.”

“Rover One, this is Box Base. We copy. Over.”

“Box Base, be advised we have a situation. Our vehicle is surrounded by hostile civilians. Repeat. We are at the west entrance to the refugee camp, and our vehicle is surrounded by hostile civilians. Please advise. Over.”

“Rover One, we copy. Stand by. Over.”

Miles cursed under his breath again and looked out at the crowd, noise rising as they began to beat on the vehicle with their fists. The driver flinched as a large black man with gang tattoos hammered at his window with a fist-sized rock.

“We can’t stand by too long,” the driver said, wide-eyed.

The radio squawked. “Rover One, this is Box Base. Can you disengage without casualties? Repeat, can you disengage without casualties? Over.”

“Box Base, unknown. Repeat, unknown.”

There was a long pause before the radio squawked again. “Rover One, we copy. Do your best. You are clear for RTB. Repeat. You are clear for return to base. Advise when you have disengaged from civilians. Do you copy? Over.”

“Box Base, we copy. Rover One out.”

Miles snorted. “Yeah, assholes. I copy just fine. I just don’t have a clue how to ‘disengage without casualties,’” he muttered and turned to the driver.

“All right, back her out of here slow before they get the bright idea to start trying to rock the vehicle, and we have to hurt ’em to get loose. When we start backing up, hopefully the ones behind us will get out of the way and stack up around the other three sides of the Hummer. Keep gradually increasing speed backwards until you have a clear opening; then floor it, and get us the hell out of here.”

The driver nodded, and the crowd behaved as Miles anticipated. At the first sight of an opening to the rear, the driver gunned it and they shot backwards, free from the mob. They barely cleared the crowd when the interior of the Humvee began to ring with clangs and bangs as the thwarted mob showered the vehicle with rocks and bottles.

“Don’t stop!” Miles yelled as he glanced at the open street behind them. Then he jerked around at the sound of gunfire. In the space they’d just vacated, civilians at the front of the mob jerked in a macabre dance as bullets impacted them, and the crowd evaporated almost instantaneously, leaving a dozen bloody bodies on the street.

“I think we’re about to have a very bad day,” Miles said.

Fort Box

Wilmington Container Terminal

Wilmington, North Carolina

Same Day, Same Time

“Does he have a clue what’s going on?” Hunnicutt asked.

Luke shook his head. “No, sir. Washington hit him pretty hard; then we duct-taped his mouth and eyes and flex-cuffed him. He didn’t start moving around until we were well up the river on the way back, and we were careful not to say anything he could overhear. He’s been blindfolded and restrained ever since. I had Dr. Jennings check his vital signs last night, but I didn’t allow her to talk to him—”

“As well I know, Major,” Hunnicutt said, “because immediately thereafter I got the good doctor’s ‘I won’t be party to barbarism’ speech, so thank you. I don’t suppose you could have just grabbed one of the nurses instead?”

“I tried, sir. Dr. Jennings caught me and demanded to know what was going on. I figured it would be worse if I didn’t tell her,” Luke said.

Hunnicutt nodded, and Luke continued.

“Anyway, we’ve kept him disoriented, and I want to try to learn as much as I can from him without giving up anything. That way we can let him go without being too concerned he might leave with any usable intel.”

“And you’re sure he’s voluntarily working for them?”

Luke shrugged. “He wasn’t behind the wire in the concentration camp and he seemed to have the run of the place. So yeah, I’d say he was cooperating.”

Luke gestured down to his SRF uniform. “He has no clue where he is or why he’s here. He saw me for less than five seconds last night, but it was dark and I was in Coastie coveralls with night-vision gear hiding my face, so I doubt he recognizes me. I’m going to go in there in this uniform with food and water, and we’ll just see what he says.”

Hunnicutt sighed. “Do the best you can, Major. What we got from the SRF prisoners was vague at best; maybe understanding exactly what their plan is for the power plant will shed some light on things.”

Luke nodded and glanced over at Hunnicutt’s weary face. The man had aged visibly in just the short time Luke had known him. He stood now, a look of dejection on his face as he studied the floor.

“Problem, sir?” Luke asked.

Hunnicutt shook his head. “Nothing new, Major. I was just thinking how different our lives have become in a few short weeks. We were all just going our own merry ways, and now we’re worried about ‘enemy forces’ and ‘collaborators’ and who the hell knows what else we never even thought about except maybe when watching an old war movie. Now it’s all happening right in my hometown. It just all seems so unreal.”

Luke said nothing for a long moment. “What did you do in civilian life, sir? If I might ask.”

Hunnicutt smiled wanly. “Well, you might say I wasn’t without combat experience. I was a high school principal.”

Luke chuckled. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

“Well, we all have our stories, Major.” Hunnicutt nodded at the door. “And right now, I’d say you need to see how much of Mr. Dempsey’s you can pry out of him.”

“Yes, sir,” Luke said, and Hunnicutt nodded and set off down the hall.

Luke opened the door quietly and slipped into the room. It was formerly a large storeroom, a windowless cube in the middle of the building, recently turned into a makeshift isolation cell. There was a small table with two metal chairs, and a single bare light bulb. The prisoner lay on a cot on the opposite wall, zip-tied hand and foot, with duct tape over his mouth and eyes.

Luke set a paper bag and a bottle of water on the table, and the prisoner raised his head at the sound. Luke walked over to the cot.

“I’m going to slip a knife blade under the duct tape around your eyes and mouth to cut the tape, but I’m not going to hurt you. Nod if you understand.”

The man nodded, and Luke cut the tape. As he tried to remove it, it was obvious the hair was going to be a problem.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said, “but it’s stuck in your hair pretty good, so I’m just going to jerk it off fast. This might hurt a bit.”

The man nodded again, then flinched as Luke snatched the tape off first his eyes, then his mouth. He blinked at the light, then squeezed his eyes shut as Luke cut the plastic flex cuffs off his wrists and ankles and helped him sit up on the cot.

“I have some water, and there’s a sandwich in the bag on the table, Mr. Dempsey,” Luke said.

“Wh-where am I?”

Luke ignored the question and gently tugged the man to his feet and helped him walk unsteadily across the short distance to the table and sit. The man twisted the top off the bottle and chugged the water. Luke pulled another bottle from the leg pocket of his pants, and the man nodded gratefully before downing half of the second bottle, then pulled the sandwich from the bag and began to eat, barely chewing before swallowing.

The guy’s half-starved
, thought Luke as Dempsey attacked the sandwich. He was in his late thirties or early forties, with the red hair and fair skin of his Irish heritage. Half his face was covered by a purple and yellow bruise from Washington’s fist. To Luke’s relief, the man finished both the sandwich and the water without choking.