Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (3 page)

He explained
to them why powerful countries like America became dominant. It did not come
from being American, but rather the good luck of being born in a vast country
with a mild climate and fertile soil that made them a world power. Vast mineral
deposits and lush forest were part of the answer as well. He explained that the
barren, rocky ground of the Middle East, and the lack of water, doomed them to
be subservient and, once the virus passed, they could go anywhere with
impunity.

In the end, he
won them over. The money for the purchase of the virus was approved, and the
inexorable path to them obtaining a world where they were dominant appeared. He
was given the honor of being the instrument of death. He would be named a
Prophet and his name would be whispered in reverent tones for eternity. A
single tear inched down his cheek, and he took a deep breath.

Mohammed
opened the vial and walked through the airport. As he moved to the security
area, he let several drops fall from the vial that was now cupped in his hand,
hidden from view. He then went to the ticketing area and did the same. He
continued moving through the airport until the vial was dry. Over the next few
days, close to 500,000 people would be infected. They would travel through
other airports, infecting more people. These human vectors would end up in
almost every country in the world, and they would all be asymptomatic carriers
of the disease. Nobody would know they were infected until the virus’ countdown
clock expired and the entire world became ill at the same time. When the dying
started, it would start everywhere at roughly the same time, and countries
would not be in a position to help other countries. The infidels would not die
quickly or without suffering. The symptoms would start with sore throats and
fever. Then, they would begin to vomit and suffer from diarrhea. Eventually,
the kidneys and liver would begin to fail, and ultimately, they would die of
low blood pressure due to both external and internal bleeding. At the last
stage, doctors would know the cause of their illness, but it would be too late
for most of them. Some would survive. Those that received intensive medical intervention
might get through the acute state of the illness, but would be forever
weakened. A small percentage would be immune. And, those who lived in remote
areas that were cut off from the rest of humanity might live to see the wave of
illness pass and die out.

When the
plague passed, the 12,000 would emerge from the caves and build a new world
that would be comprised of only devout Muslims.

He moved to
the prayer room of the airport, spread his rug, and performed the required
rituals. Then, he got up, and extracted a pistol from his jacket pocket, placed
the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Nobody outside of the 12,000
in the caves now knew where the colony was located. Nobody ever would.

DIE OFF MINUS SIX YEARS

Stryker had never been more proud. He
was exhausted, filthy, thirsty, and sore. He had completed the thirteen-week
Marine Corps. Basic Training. They had just finished The Crucible, the
culmination of the course. It was the final test to become a Marine, and consisted
of a fifty-four-hour exercise with eight hours of sleep and very little food.
The tasks they completed during the exercise included marches, night
infiltration, and a host of other physical and intellectual challenges. Each
challenge was named after a heroic Marine or a famous Marine battle, and they
were referred to as “Warrior Stations.”

He stood at the bottom of a long sloping
hill with the other recruits, many of whom were squeezed in between two other
recruits so they wouldn’t fall from exhaustion. To do so was to fail the course
and they had all come too far and paid too high a price to wash out now The
recruits, who were about to be pinned with the Marine Corps insignia, were all
in varying stages of fatigue. Stryker glanced around and saw nothing but
exhaustion, drawn faces, heavy breathing, and slumped shoulders. It had been
brutal for everyone.

They lined up in two formations in front
of the half-sized replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial. The chaplain led them in prayer,
after the color guard raised the flag, and each new recruit accepted the
insignia. Then the first sergeant addressed the formation, and the drill
instructors passed through the ranks, shaking hands and addressing each of them
as “Marine” before they moved on to the next man. Several men leaked tears down
dirty faces.

Stryker was the last to receive his pin.
He shook hands with his drill instructor, a small wiry cracker from Georgia who
had singled Stryker out for additional scorn and abuse. He grew to hate the
sergeant with a ferocity he had never known and the entire thing had been hell
on earth because of the small man who stood in front of him. During the
training, Stryker wanted to twist the man’s skinny neck off his body almost
daily, and he still felt a smoldering resentment toward the drill instructor.

As the men broke ranks, family members
and other loved ones crowded around the new Marines, backslapping, shaking
hands, embracing, and otherwise expressing their happiness for the young men.
Stryker stood next to his DI. Sergeant Keynes said to him, “get cleaned up and
I’ll meet you after breakfast at the front gate. We’re going to get a beer.”
Keynes turned and stalked off with that menacing stride Stryker knew so well.

Two hours later, the men were sitting in
a booth in one of the many bars that surrounds military installations. They
were all pretty much the same, with cheap beer, flimsy furnishings, and servers
who couldn’t make the cut at the more expensive places. Keynes, true to his word,
had picked up Stryker at the front gate, and they drove to the bar in a brand
new F-150 that had every option. Stryker was uneasy with the silence, and
unsure what the entire thing was about but decided to match silence with
silence. As they stared at each other over two beer mugs, Keynes sighed and
said, “You like my truck?”

“Yes,” Stryker answered, still wondering
what this was all about.

“That’s my retirement present to myself.
I’m putting in my papers after twenty years of service. Do you want to know why?”

“I don’t really care.” He was growing
tired of whatever game the sergeant was playing.

“I get that you’re angry with me because
I treated you harshly,” he said, holding one hand up when Stryker was forming a
reply. “Just hear me out. I’ve only known two men who didn’t break down in some
way or another over the course of basic. I’m looking at one of them right now.”

“Who was the other one?”

“You’re looking at him right now.”

“Is this supposed to be a compliment?”

“It’s a statement of fact. You’re the
first recruit I wasn’t able to break and remake, and I’ve seen a lot of
recruits. To tell you the truth, I love making Marines. It’s a noble thing to
do; but it takes a lot of energy and I guess meeting you convinced me that it’s
time to go. I’m close to mandatory anyway, so I’m leaving.”

“Look at me,” Stryker said. “Do I look
breakable to you? I’ve not met three people in my life that I might be afraid
of. I’m not breakable.”

“That’s why we’re here. I want to talk to
you about your future in the Corps. I want you to consider applying for Force
Recon. Just look at me. It has nothing to do with strength or size. It’s that
you have the two qualities a Recon Marine has to have. You don’t have an ounce
of quit in you, and you’re smart.”

Stryker looked away for a moment but
felt a surge of excitement at the idea of joining the most elite fighting force
in the world. He had long wanted to be Recon, but thought he had to complete a
tour in the Corps before he could apply.

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“It is.” Keynes pulled an envelope from
his back pocket and laid it on the table between them. Stryker opened it and
unfolded the document. After reading carefully, he looked up and said, “These
are orders for assignment to Recon.”

“They are.”

“How did you get them?”

“I made some calls. As former Force
Recon, I still have many friends over there; so I called in some favors. If you
want in, you’re in. If not, tear up the orders. You’ve got some leave now so
use the time to study up on Recon and don’t let yourself get out of shape.
Right now, you’re a pretty well-honed knife. If you join, you’ll become a razor
blade. The problem is, even though you got through basic, it didn’t do what it
should have done for you. You should have been challenged by it and you
weren’t. You breezed through it without even straining yourself and you’ll
never know what kind of man you can be if you don’t find something that
pressures you to your limits. But think it over and let me know next week.” He
raised his mug in a toast, and they both emptied their mugs and ordered
another.

“Okay, and thanks for doing what you
did.” Stryker felt odd; he suddenly liked a man he gladly would have beaten to
death a few minutes earlier.

“I didn’t decide to give you the orders
until this morning.”

“Why? This must have taken weeks to get
through.”

“I saw you stop and pick up two recruits
that had given up at the end of the Crucible. You held them up as you ran until
they found the will to finish.”

“Other guys did that too.”

“They did. But they did it because the
guy who was struggling was their friend. They were people they enlisted with,
or guys they hung out with. You didn’t hang out with anybody.”

“I’m sort of a loner. And I guess I’m honored
by the idea that you went to this much trouble to get me in.” Stryker shrugged,
then added, “thank you.”

“You helped men because they were trying
to become fellow Marines. They helped their friends. We have a word for that
around here: leadership. I’ve never had this conversation with any other Marine
and I’ve never recommended anyone for Force Recon.”

Two weeks later, Stryker reported for
training and began the Ascension Pipeline, the individual training part of the
larger program. There were five phases to the training, and he spent the next
year and a half drinking water from a fire hose and traveling all over the
country attending different sessions that led to achieving qualifications as
Reconnaissance Man/Parachutist/Combatant Diver Qualified.
He had never been happier. The training pushed him to the limits of his
abilities. The instructors were more interested in passing along knowledge than
bending him to their will, and insisted that he become perfect at one skill
before they moved him to the next assignment.

Three weeks after
completing training, he deployed to Iraq as a member of the First Recon
Battalion, serving in a Direct Action Platoon. He arrived shortly after the
killing of the Blackwater contractors, and spent the first month in the area
around Fallujah, calling in artillery and air strikes on groups of insurgence
that surrounded the outskirts of the city. After several stalled attempts to
launch an offensive, the heat was on to take the city back. Stryker became a
member of a platoon of Recon Marines that were to infiltrate the city and
occupy a building close to the center of town. From there, they would direct
the fire missions and air strikes that would ultimately level the city.
Operation Vigilant Resolve was launched.

They entered the
city on November 7, 2004, at 4:00 a.m. They crept past dark buildings, many
reduced to rubble, hugging the walls of whatever they passed. Stryker was in
the middle of the column of Marines that moved silently through the city,
peering in all directions with their NVGs. It was ghostly quiet and dark. The
stench of rotting corpses, burning buildings, and garbage was overwhelming.

Stryker wondered
where the insurgents were. Their mission briefers told them there were still
more than 1,000 fighters in the city and they should expect stiff resistance.
This was a direct action mission and little attempt would be made to avoid
detection. The platoon members carried double loads of ammo and hand grenades,
as well as four SAWs. They passed stairwells that had been bricked up to deny
the invaders cover and force them into ambushes.

When they arrived
at the building they were to occupy, the captain wordlessly pointed to the four
corners of the five-story building and then pointed up. Stryker and three others
moved to the four corners and stood watch at the windows; four other men with
laser designators climbed up the stairway to the top floor. The rest of the men
took positions by shattered windows and holes in the brick walls. They stacked
mags and grenades next to their positions.

They waited.

When the sun rose
and targets became visible, the men on the roof would begin selecting targets
and rain hell on the enemy. The enemy would eventually find them, and they
would hold until the tanks entered the city.

At least that was
the plan.

The sun rose,
Stryker heard the distinctive wail of the call to prayer, then silence for a
half-hour. At 7:30, the spotters on the roof started calling for fire missions,
and explosions filled the air around them. Later, AC-130s arrived and added the
distinctive boom of the 105mm cannon. The Warthogs joined the fight and it
became impossible to distinguish the explosions. By the end of the day, still
undiscovered, they had directed so much fire on the city that they had flattened
much of the downtown area.

Their luck ran out
the following morning. After the call to prayer, a group of insurgents spotted
the men on the roof from a nearby rooftop. Stryker stood at his window when his
earbud crackled. “Fifty diaper heads approaching from the west.”

“Anyone else
approaching from other directions?” the captain asked.

“Negative.”

Captain Elgin
pointed at two SAW gunners. “West side.” The men moved to two ground-floor
windows, grabbed two chairs, and using them as crude bipods, sighted through
the windows from about five feet into the room. Stryker stood at the third
widow scanning for the enemy with his M-4. Elgin ordered two M203 grenade
launchers to the roof to join the spotters.

A group of the
insurgents rounded the corner and began firing at their position. Stryker saw
they were being supported by two snipers, one on each side of the street. He
moved to the other side of the window to get cover from the first sniper, aimed
at the window where he saw the second one, and waited for the man to reappear.
After a few seconds, he saw the man bring his rifle up and fired a burst into
his chest. The sniper fell forward and lay draped over the windowsill. Stryker
again changed sides, moving back to his original position, and waited for the first
sniper to appear. The SAWs opened up and cut down a wide swath of the
attackers. When the first sniper again appeared, Stryker fired, but his burst
went wide and puffs of dust erupted from the building wall. He heard the
whooshing sound of grenades leaving their launchers, and four more insurgents
went down. The firing was coming from all sides now and every Marine was fully
engaged in the fight.

Wave after wave of
insurgents attempted to storm the building, snipers were everywhere, and they
were taking multiple RPG hits every minute. The snipers focused on the spotters
on the rooftop to keep them from calling in strikes. It worked. After two were
wounded, Elgin pulled them off the rooftop and relocated them to the fourth
floor, where they would have cover from above.

The snipers were
firing down on them from a higher building. They were effectively blind with
regard to the enemy’s movements. The building was completely surrounded now and
was too close to use artillery or air strikes, even if they had spotters. They
were holding their own, but burning through ammo at an alarming rate. Captain
Elgin went down first, killed by a sniper, as he was requesting assistance on
the radio. By the end of the day, they had two dead and four wounded. When the
sun went down the call to prayer sounded again, and the day’s battle was over.
Not even the insurgents would risk a night fight with men equipped with NVGs.