Sic Semper Tyrannis (44 page)

As the general relayed orders over his radio, Malcolm looked up the street behind them, down the long canyon of concrete towers on the southern end of Manhattan.  Halfway down the deserted street he could see floodlights in the smoky gloom.  He had asked about all the commotion and Kristanoff had explained it was the location of the Russian secret radar weapon.  Truck-sized generators that belched black smoke into the air had been parked in the street.  Thick cables snaked out from the generators and disappeared into the closest building. 

He couldn't see it through the smoke, but he knew that at the top of that building was a huge radar structure that the Russians had hauled up there over the course of the last 24 hours.  He'd never seen such industrious activity.  It'd been a remarkable feat, he thought, just flying the damn thing across the ocean.   He’d watched as Russian engineers used an intricate cable system to pull the massive structure up the side of the 20-story skyscraper.  He shook his head in wonder. 

It is amazing
, he thought,
the lengths that man will go to destroy himself.  If only we could apply ourselves equally to the task of making peace.

Another
boom
thundered across the water.  He turned and looked up at the sky and saw an explosion fade into a puff of smoke.  This one had a white trail that led back down to the deck of one of the Russian ships.

The general laughed again.  "Ha ha!  There!  You see?  Not bad, for Navy." 

Malcolm was about to ask about a bright spot high above the Russian fleet when the General’s radio broke squelch and an excited voice spoke Russian.  The General froze mid-laugh.   As Malcolm tried to train his binoculars on the point of light, the Russian general shouted into his radio.  The man was clearly agitated about something, but Malcolm could not figure out what—

"We have to leave. 
Now!
" he said.  Kristanoff grabbed Malcolm's arm and dragged him away from the edge of the dock.

"What?  Why?" Malcolm stuttered.  Another explosion echoed in the distance and as much as Malcolm wanted to turn and look, something about the way the General tried to get away from the dock made Malcolm nervous.

Kristanoff let go of Malcolm's arm and began to jog toward his command vehicle.  He screamed orders into his radio as he ran.  Malcolm could see in the distance up the street that the soldiers who’d operated the generators for the radar weapon had begun to head for cover.

That's not a good sign
, Malcolm thought as he raced to catch up the frantic Russian general.

"What is it?"  Malcolm shouted.

Kristanoff reached the side of his armored personnel carrier—Malcolm had thought it quite arrogant that the Russian had deemed himself so important that he only traveled away from LaGuardia in a tank, but now he was beginning to understand why the high-ranking officer did so.  The general opened the hatch and urged Malcolm forward.

"The Americans!  They have launched missiles!"

Malcolm reach the hatch as Kristanoff disappeared inside.  He took one last look at the radar weapon site and saw boxy Russian trucks swerve across the intersection as their drivers tried to flee.

"I thought you said that machine of yours would stop them from being able to do things like launch missiles?"

"Get inside!  Yes," the general said.  He sat down in his command chair and motioned for Malcolm to take a seat as the large ramp at the rear of the vehicle lifted off the ground.

"BTG-3 will stop fighter planes, scramble targeting computers, fry electronics—if within range.  Missiles fired outside range—like cruise missiles my men detected—will still fly toward target, but instead of pin-point accuracy, they will be…close."

Malcolm peered out the shrinking view of the outside world as the ramp continued its process of closing up and sealing off the armored vehicle.  "
How
close?"

Malcolm gasped as the office building across the street from the Russian radar installation exploded in a cloud of fire and debris.  He could actually see a ring of disturbed air expand outward from the explosion—the overpressure shockwave.  The sound, even through 4 inches of armor plating, was loud.  The big vehicle shook and as the shockwave passed over, Malcolm gripped the edges of his seat in terror.

The armored personnel carrier lurched forward as the general relayed directions for the driver to get them out of the danger area.  Malcolm reached onto his seat to grab the seatbelt and fumbled with shaking hands for a few moments.  He looked down and realized that there was no seat belt.

The Russian general laughed again.  "This is military vehicle,
nyet?
  We have no seatbelts!"

"That was
one
missile?"

The Russian’s smile faded.  "
Da
, one of eight headed our way.  They appear out of nowhere—which tells me there must be submarines out there somewhere."

Malcolm would never be sure, but he swore at the time that he felt the massive BTR jump off the ground as another explosion erupted nearby.  It sounded to him like it was right on top of them.  Kristanoff turned a small black-and-white monitor around so Malcolm could see through the external cameras.

Mostly he saw a lot of smoke, and fire.  A building up the street had been immolated by a cruise missile.  The missile struck toward the lower part of the building and vaporized a corner.  The driver slowed and turned up a side street as the camera focused on the partially destroyed building. 

“Hang on!” yelled Kristanoff. 

Malcolm watched, mouth open in surprise as the building collapsed across the road and into the bay.  The little screen went white as a wall of sea-spray fell out of the sky and blanketed the BTR.

RIGGS SWORE INTO HIS oxygen mask.  His F-35 fought every move he made as if the damn thing
wanted
to be blasted out of the sky.  Half his squadron had already been shot down and he would be too, if he couldn’t get his plane either under control.  He had to get out of range of that jamming device.

His F-35 shuddered and Riggs grimaced as another flare ejected itself to port and sailed off to a useless death.  The damn plane was going completely apeshit and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

He could see Russian missiles claw their way up into the sky from the surface vessels below.  His plane was having a conniption fit over all the threats—real and imagined—but he had to ignore everything and focus on controlling the bucking aircraft.

A missile streaked just in front of his plane and he swore again as he flew through the smoke trail.  He followed the missile over his shoulder and saw an F-18 disappear into a flower of fire and smoke.  That marked three Hammers he’d seen buy the farm.  The chatter over the garbled radio was a lot quieter now than it had been a few moments earlier.

“Goddammit!” he yelled in frustration. 

A huge pillar of smoke suddenly erupted out of the mass of skyscrapers on the southern tip of Manhattan.  One of the cruise missiles he’d been warned about must have found its mark.  The alarms suddenly silenced and the plane woke up—his lightest touch on the stick was all it took to send the fighter into a graceful dive out of the path of an oncoming missile.  The HUD flickered in his helmet and normalized.  Accurate targets appeared and the computer tracked and identified them in a split-second. 

His plane was back and ready to fight.  The targeting computer locked on to an Su-33 that had just blasted an one of the Hammers out of the sky.

“About time!  Hawk flight, Hawk Lead, I got my controls back.  Let’s clear the road, boys!”

“
I got tone—Fox three!
” called out Jonesy, his voice loud and clear over Riggs’ helmet.

Riggs waited patiently as he slipped in behind a fleeing Su-33.  Like a cheetah running down a gazelle, every move the Russian made, Riggs countered and stayed right on his six. When the tone buzzed in his ear signifying he had missile lock, Riggs squeezed the thumb button on the joystick in his right hand and saw an AMRAAM missile streak away from his plane.  He flipped over into a starboard roll and looked for a new target.  As he circled, he glanced up and saw with satisfaction that his missile had done its job.  The Su-33 disappeared into a ball of smoke and fire. 

His targeting computer chirped to indicate it had another Russian in its sights and was ready to fire.  “My turn,” Riggs muttered as he locked on to the weaving fighter. 

The radio erupted with missile launch calls and whoops as the Americans turned the tide and Russian planes vanished from the sky in inky blots of smoke and fire.  Riggs led the charge and in minutes, had exhausted his supply of air-to-air missiles.

“
Okay, Hawk One, step aside
,” grumbled the voice of the XO of Hammer flight.  “
Hammer flight is starting attack run.
”

“Have at it, Hammer.”  Riggs pulled off his oxygen mask and basked in the cool air on his face.  He grimaced as what was left of his squadron formed up around him in a loose diamond pattern.  His interceptors had done their job—
Roosevelt
now owned the skies over Manhattan.  He glanced at the scarred, chewed up F-35s.

“Hawks, sound off,” he called.  “Radio check.”

“Two, five-by-five,
” replied Jonesy.

“Seven, standing by.”

“Eight, good to go.”

“Four, five-by.”

Silence followed the last transmission.  Riggs counted to thirty before he closed his eyes.  He had seven letters to write. 
My God…we own the skies, but at what price?

CHAPTER 30

Aftermath

LANCE COULD FEEL A heavy pressure on his chest.  Opening his eyes, he saw only darkness.  For a terrifying moment, he thought he’d gone blind. 

Last thing he remembered, there'd been an explosion near his location.  He heard an incredible roar and the world went orange–white.  Then black.  He remembered saying a quiet prayer as he stepped under the cover of the trees and entered the open space in a sprint to reach the burned-out rubble of the nearest house.  He remembered a vicious firefight—the crack of hunting rifles and M4s contrasted mightily with the bark of Chinese AK-47s.

He remembered how the rubble on the ground had abused his knees as he’d crawled around the corner of a demolished house.  He’d seen one of the Chinese APCs down the street.  Two regulators had rushed from the house across the street—or what was left of it—out into the open and froze when they spotted the APC.  Lance had shouted for them to take cover and they ran toward him.

The last thing he remembered was the muzzle flash from the main gun on the APC.

Lance became acutely aware of searing pain on the right side of his face.   He tried to move his arm to touch his face, but he was pinned to the ground.  He tried instead to maneuver his hands until he found the edge of what used to be a wall.  The crushing weight on his chest was forcing him to hyperventilate.  He had to do something fast.  Ignoring the panic that threatened to paralyze him, he pushed up with his shoulders.  The wall barely moved. 

Lance clenched his jaw and put all his strength into the effort and felt the debris on top of his chest shift just enough for a lungful of air.  He noticed when he lifted the chunk of wall from his chest he could see daylight at the edges.  He didn't have time to wonder how long he’d been unconscious as the wall was threatened to overwhelm his burning muscles. 

Lance shifted his hips through a white-hot stab of pain and forced his left knee to prop up the wall.  It was just enough for him to wiggle his right leg free.  He pushed with every ounce of strength he had and lifted the debris just enough so he could wriggle out.  The wall collapsed after he moved, showering him with dust and ash.

He lay there on his side, facing what was left of someone’s house.  When he’d arrived in town, the house had already been burned to a crisp.  Now it was just an ugly pile of rock, bits of drywall, and charred studs sticking up like the ribs of some mythical beast.

He coughed and wiped the grime from his eyes, then tested the skin on his face with the fingertips of his right hand.  He winced and imagined that he must look like a half-roasted chicken.  He slowly got to his knees but ended up back on his heels, panting with the effort.  As his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the midmorning sun, he glanced around the landscape of Hell itself.

He tried to call out and found his throat clogged with dust.  After a painful cough or two, he staggered to his feet and looked around the desolate landscape once more. 

Several homes in the subdivision still smoldered.  Black smoke obscured the sun like passing rain clouds.  He brushed some of the dust off his chest.  From the feel of it, he’d have some real impressive bruises the next day. 

He turned an ankle after a few hesitant steps in the loose rubble and nearly went down again.  After he caught his balance, Lance muttered a curse under his breath and staggered away from the charred house into the street.

"Hello?" he asked shouted.  Still no answer.  That was bad.  He had no idea where his rifle had gone.  He remembered the feel of it in his hands when the APC had fired—after the explosion, there had been nothing.  It was like someone had switched off a chunk of his memory.

Try as he might, Lance could see no other living soul in the charred wasteland that had been Pine Bluff, Arizona.  He limped forward down the street and called out survivors.  No one answered.  Lance clenched his jaw and hobbled forward, determined to reach the courthouse.

As he approached the ruined building, still two blocks in the distance, he could see thick black smoke pouring from what was left of the roof.  His pace quickened and he ignored the pain from his right leg.

Where the hell
is
everybody?

There was no sign of the Chinese other than the destruction they had left in their wake.  The comms van that Jerry had been shooting at the previous night was nowhere to be seen.  Lance spotted blood stains in the street and on the sidewalk.  Lance smirked through the pain in his leg.  Jerry had done his job well.  Bits of glass and broken metal covered the street like a dusting of hail.   He could see skid marks leading away from the ruined courthouse—someone had left in a hurry. 

Across the street, Lance could see that every window in the front of the courthouse had been blown out.  The question remained, did the explosion happen outside or inside?  The black column of smoke that reached up from the roof into the sky appeared like an accusing finger, the smoke thick and acrid.  He wrinkled his nose and sniffed involuntarily as he reached the wide, charred marble steps.

"Hello?" Lance shouted once more.  His voice echoed off the front of the building, but there was still no answer.  Down the street he could see bodies in the road—some looked like soldiers, some like Regulators, and more than a few were clearly civilians.  He began to climb the steps to the blasted entrance to the courthouse and then noticed part of the facade of the building had collapsed, effectively sealing off the front.  Cursing again, he hobbled around to the north side and stopped in his tracks.

A Border Patrol SUV, its doors wide open had been parked on the grass next to an emergency exit.  It idled a little rough, but proved s
omeone
was still alive.   Lance swallowed and hoped they were the good guys.

Lance picked up his pace again and made for the emergency exit.  The door had been propped open with a discarded AR-15.   He ducked into the dark interior and could feel the residual heat inside the building.  A dull, crackling roar seemed to emanate through the walls wherever he turned.  He saw no flames, but the heat was oppressive and smoke writhed along on the ceiling like a living thing.

"Hello!  Regulators?  Border patrol?  Anybody?"

Voices.  He heard voices.  They came from up ahead and down a corridor.  He staggered in the smoke-filled darkness and turned when he saw light flicker off of a marble wall.  A flashlight.  He approached the corner and his fingers twitched.  He desperately wished he had his rifle with him.  He peered around the corner and saw flashlights cast eerie silhouettes in the smoke.

"—see anyone else?"

A second person coughed.  "This is hopeless…" More coughing.

"Hey!"  Lance called out in relief.  "Are there any other survivors?"

Lance blinked as two flashlights lit up his face.  He held up a hand to block the light. 

"Who's there?" a harsh voice called out.

"Lance Bryton—who the hell are you?"

The flashlights dropped to the floor and illuminated a clear path for him to reach the two speakers.  "Glad to see you made it, Mr. Bryton," said a familiar voice.

"This is the second time I can say I'm glad to see you, Agent Levine," Lance said.

"It's a God-awful mess in here.  I've got my boys looking outside, but so far we haven't found any survivors.  Just bodies."

"Where are they?" asked Lance, trying to keep hold of his voice.

Agent Levine sighed.  "Down there, in the basement.”   He shined his light down a rubble-strewn staircase.  “We cleared a path through the debris but it's pretty bad…"

Lance didn't bother listening to the rest of the man's words—he was already on his way over the rubble pile.  At the bottom of the stairs, a green glow stick lit a corner of the smoke-filled basement.

“You sure you want to go down there?” asked Agent Levine.

Lance ignored him and kept going.  "Rob?  Rob, you down here, buddy?"

Lance took two steps and tripped on something in the darkness, landing flat on his face.  He grunted in pain and rolled off the body of Ed Franks.  He didn't look dead.  Ed looked peaceful, like he was resting.

Smoke inhalation
, Lance thought as he suppressed a cough.  The smoke in the basement was even thicker than it was on the main floor.  He figured there must be a vent or something that had funneled smoke into the room and suffocated his brothers.  The last stand of the Regulators.

Lance searched Ed's body.  Through the tears threatening to spill from his eyes, he found a working flashlight.  He turned it on despite the tremor in his hands and swung the beam around the darkness.  He recoiled in horror.  There were bodies everywhere.  Part of the ceiling had collapsed in the far corner, and feet and arms stuck out underneath the rubble pile.

Lance shuffled deeper into the nightmare.  He felt the cool moisture of tears on his cheeks as he saw body after body, friend after friend.  He could see a cluster of forms in the opposite corner.  Lance closed his eyes—he knew what he would find there, but he limped forward anyway.

Rob lay against the corner of the building, his AR clutched to his chest, eyes closed as if asleep.

Lance fell to his knees and wept.

CAPTAIN ENLAI JAN ADJUSTED his helmet.  He felt uncomfortable preening like this, but there was no alternative.  After all, when one takes a video teleconference with the Ministry of Defense, one must look his best.

One of the command staff conscripts snapped a salute and then flashed a wry smile.  "Ready, sir?" the young man asked.

Jan tried to ignore the rising taste of bile at the back of his throat.  He was not sure his career would survive the failure at Pine Bluff.  No less than the Undersecretary for the Great Leader
and
the Minister of Defense had ordered Colonel Chun to hold the town.  And then the Regulators—those deceitful American terrorists—had holed up in the basement of the courthouse.   The terrorists had mounted a counterattack and the Colonel had been killed—which, in his mind, had been the one bright spot in the whole situation.  Jan believed his response had been perfect and had been instrument in the successful repulsion of that attack.  He took a deep breath and looked at the camera.

Regrettably, certain orders had been misunderstood in the confusion after Colonel Chun’s death and the courthouse had been destroyed.   Jan frowned.  On top of that, what had been left of the local civilian population had been killed when a psychopathic conscript had torched that church.  Just another casualty of a non-volunteer army, to Jan’s mind.

Jan knew Chun’s orders to round up the civilians into one spot had placed them in such a precarious situation.  Even though he was not himself a Christian, destroying a house of worship—of any religion—was anathema to the young captain.  It just went against all his training to kill unarmed civilians in such a disgraceful manner.

He swallowed audibly.  He was doomed.

"The feed is coming online now, sir," said the newly promoted communications chief.  He had been fourth in line for his current position.

Jan straightened his back and squared his shoulders.  Whatever happened, he would accept it with honor intact.  "I'm ready."

He sat inside what was left of the drone van after some hasty patch jobs.  The large screen built into the side of the van also contained an embedded camera.  It was from this location that Chun had delivered his briefings to the politicians back in Beijing.  And now that onerous job had fallen on Jan’s shoulders.

The screen flickered and came to life as the image focused from thousands of miles away.  A heavyset man in a smartly tailored business suit sat behind a wide desk top of glossy wood.  The man smoked a cigarette and a gray haze floated over his head.  He had sleepy, half-closed eyes that gave the distinct impression of a dragon guarding its horde of gold.

"Greetings Honorable Minister," said Jan with the slightest of bows.

The Minister’s eyes snapped open and the cigarette paused halfway to his mouth.  A thin tendril of smoke emanated from the tip of the glowing cigarette.  The Minister looked at a paper on his desk before he glanced up at the camera.  "
Where is Colonel Chun?
"

Jan cleared his throat.  "I regret to inform you, Honorable Minister, sir, that Colonel Chun is dead."

Now he had the politician's full attention.  His eyes opened wide and the cigarette unceremoniously dumped into a full ashtray.   He leaned forward, elbows on the table and peered into the camera.  It looked as if he wanted to climb through the lens.  "
What is the meaning of this?  What happened?  Quickly, man, tell me!
"

Jan tried to ignore the fear that swelled in his soul at the urgent tone of the Minister.  Surely his fate had been sealed.  "The terrorists attacked us in the middle of the night—there were snipers.  We lost many brave men, including the Colonel."

"What is your name?"

The young captain stiffened.  "Captain Enlai Jan, Honorable Minister, sir."

"Very well, Captain Jan.  Tell me what happened."
  The man paused to light up another cigarette and darted his eyes at the camera. 
"Mind you, give me the brief rundown—I want to know what happened, when, and how it was handled.  Give me the full detailed report later.  I have a meeting with the Undersecretary soon."