Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) (72 page)

“Like I said … your fate will be no different.”

One by one, she walked up to the remaining FEMA workers and cut off their gas masks and sent them away, with their hands still tied behind their backs.

Disillusioned, she took another moment to collect herself before she turned to speak to the platoon.

“I’m just a specialist. I haven’t been endued by the Army with leadership abilities, and I’m not in a commissioned or even a noncommissioned position, for that matter, but I am headstrong and resolute. I intend to do what I can to resist what our government has brought to our shores. Nobody’s making you tag along. You’re free to go if you like, but if we choose not to fight, then we have no hope.”

Edwards was having a moment of clarity in what otherwise felt like a great fog that had descended upon America. There were still more questions than answers. The biggest of all of them was
what will become of us?
Nobody knew the answer to the question that was on everybody’s mind, but no one dared to ask. The answer was rhetorical.
To do nothing is to die.
That pretty much left one option. To the warrior, it meant to press onward, to spit in the face of adversity and to destroy the enemy, whatever it might be, foreign or domestic.

With their families missing and nowhere to go, the decision was unanimous. Specialist Felicia Edwards put her knife away then reached up to her collar and unfastened the rank insignias that symbolized her position in the Army. She never had to utter a word to speak the volumes that that gesture had just uttered. There was no more Army, no more ranks, no more superiors. Now it was survival of the fittest, kill or be killed.

Each member of the platoon followed her example. She didn’t have to attend special leadership classes to gain their respect. What she was missing, had she been a corporal, was noncommissioned officer status. Now, they had chosen to reintegrate into a broken system and to fight for what was left. They had chosen to remain together as a team, a family. All they had was each other, and though the future looked grim, they made the choice to face it together, whatever might come, be it pandemic, FEMA security forces, UN soldiers, or US government turncoats.

Black Hills Army Depot, South Dakota

Thirty attack choppers had closed in on the formerly abandoned army depot. The data NORAD had recovered showed that they had flown in from somewhere in the Midwestern United States. They were heavily armed and given one mission: soften Black Hills Army Depot and draw out the Marines. What they did not know was that NORAD and USNORTHCOM were not aligned with the executive commander’s orders. NORAD launched a Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advance Missile, or CHAMP, to defend the American Marine regiment.

The CHAMP missile was locked onto its target, a formation of hi-tech enemy choppers, and was flying at an altitude higher than that of the helicopters. When the stealthy CHAMP missile unleashed its technology upon the unsuspecting pilots, it did so without making a sound. There was no detonation, no carnage, no shrapnel, not a single hint of what was ordinarily associated with modern warfare. The electronic systems on the choppers shut down. The engines maintained their momentum and they executed an uneventful fly-by.

The choppers
continued on their course
, no doubt confused as to why they couldn’t communicate and why their equipment was not working. The only thing that kept them airborne was the analogue backup controls. They flew roughly a mile before turning around to begin their return flight home. Without electronics, they could not engage targets or even release their payload.

When the choppers had made a complete 180-degree turn, they were met with swift and immediate retaliation. Several CH-53E Super Stallions, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Howard, unleashed the Hellstorm missile system upon the would-be attackers. The wreckage, fused together with the sinew of the human pilots, fell to the ground and landed just outside the exterior perimeter of Black Hills Depot. The victors returned to their landing zone in Hot Springs and celebrated the outcome.

Six Miles Northeast of Hot Springs, South Dakota

Simultaneous to the planned attack on Black Hills Army Depot, twenty-four Tiltrotor Osprey MV-22s were landing on a strip of South Dakota highway. Colonel Artan Mota had all but assured Executive Commander Abdul Muhaimin that the US resistance in South Dakota would be destroyed. Muhaimin’s plans were to overwhelm the Americans and defeat them with superior numbers. He was counting on NORAD’s forces to provide the backbone and the majority of the military strength to bring about the end of the Marines that were taking sanctuary at the foot of the Black Hills. His overconfidence might have got the best of him.

The envoy Muhaimin sent to NORAD was laid waste by US forces, and the military strength of both NORAD and USNORTHCOM was not at the disposal of the executive commander as he had assumed. The trap Muhaimin believed he had set for the Americans was about to be sprung, and the numbers weren’t in his favor.

UN soldiers began flowing out of the Ospreys as they landed. Each of the twenty-four troop carriers unloaded twenty-four fighters. They were a combination of American, Russian, Iranian, and French troops. The Ospreys would unload their troops and then return to their point of origin, leaving them to their mission.

Once the troops unloaded, they fell into platoon formations and two company-sized units. Each platoon had a lieutenant over them, and each company had a captain. The captains called the lieutenants out of their platoons and gave them one final briefing before they returned to their respective platoons and began their march towards Hot Springs.

The arrival of the Ospreys did not go unnoticed. The township of Hot Springs sat elevated 3,448 feet above sea level and had a brood of angry Americans feeding information to its inhabitants using a complicated communication system developed right after the Flip. There was no electricity, because then president Adalyn Baker invoked Executive Order 10997, seizing all electric power, petroleum and gas, solid fuels, and minerals. They used a system of generators and old-fashioned underground copper lines to give functional ability to their telephones.

When the Ospreys were heard, this system went into effect. Several people assigned by the town’s board had been positioned at key points around the old
veteran’s town
, as it had been called in the early 2000s. They dialed in the number and notified the town that there were incoming aircraft. They, in turn, notified Lieutenant Colonel Howard. He advised General John James of the impending attack. His orders were clear.

“Maintain radio silence. Backup is on the way.”

General John James contacted Lieutenant Colonel Cox and ordered his troops to Hot Springs to locate and destroy the UN ground forces. Cox, in turn, ordered his battalion to gear up. He had a captain set over each company under his battalion. 3
^rd
Battalion, 21
^st
Marines consisted of infantry companies Golf, Hotel, and India. For support, they had a weapons company, but it wasn’t likely they’d be used for the lack of armor the enemy was bringing. Weapons Company was given the task of securing the highway that offered up a safe LZ (landing zone), but not until the UN ground unit had been dismantled.

Lieutenant Colonel Cox and his men had entered Hot Springs from the east. It was expected that the UN troops would be advancing into town from Highway 385, which fed into Hot Springs’ southeastern tip. That highway was nestled in a ravine with high mountainous terrain on either side. It was ideal for an ambush.

Cox assigned his men to the west side of the highway, where they had a prime position overlooking the roadway. From the time the UN troops had unloaded until they were spotted just minutes from town, they had estimated the time frame to be about two hours. Approximately 360 UN soldiers were marching in staggered columns up Highway 385 towards Hot Springs. It was Cox’s mission to destroy the advancing troops before they learned of the Super Stallion Helicopters and reported them back to their command.

Sliding into a position that overlooked the ravine, Cox used his binoculars to inspect the troops’ gear. Cox was in a facedown prone position with his elbows supporting his upper body. He held the binos close to his eyes and carefully scanned the formation of enemy troops from front to back. To his right, he had a captain by the name of Roderick.

When Cox had completed his scan, he passed the binos to Captain Roderick.

“Captain, are your men in place?”

“Yes, sir,” he responded.

The captain looked to his right and made eye contact with his staff sergeant.

“Staff Sergeant Jones,” he said in an inquisitive tone.

He had the staff sergeant’s undivided attention.

“On my command, engage the enemy and take no prisoners.”

“Yes, sir.”

The binoculars had passed down from Cox to Roderick, who was now in full battle mode. He used the binos to carefully watch the positioning of the soldiers and to calculate the exact moment of the ambush. If he were to wait too long, the soldiers could flee into Hot Springs and take hostages and refuge in the buildings. If he were to wait too short a period, then the troops could flee back into the open and forcefully draw out his own men from the cover of the hillside.

Every Marine was trained for this moment, but it was no time to play coy. This was real combat, and real losses and gains were at stake. The possibility of loss of life was a real factor. Many of the men were young and had not seen combat, but when they were operating under their commanders’ watchful eyes, they knew it was all business. Their training was about to be tested.

“Staff Sergeant,” the captain said, looking through his binos.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Open fire.”

A tired and hungry nineteen-year-old American was decked out from head to toe in blue digital camouflage. His trip from Independence, Iowa, where Muhaimin had made an earlier appearance, offered none of the first-class travel amenities he had read about in the brochures. His name was Ryan Lee. He was from Portland, Oregon, and joined the Army because secular job hunting was too cumbersome in the failing economy and he knew he would be provided with three squares a day, lodging, and pay. Those were the pros. The cons were that Ryan’s company commander had been solicited by Headquarters Battalion to produce a certain amount of volunteers for full-time service with the United Nations. Ryan, and others like him, who were not married, had no children, and had no obligations to anything but the government, were volunteered by the company commander. This was a practice they had been doing for years on a smaller scale.
Brown baggers
, as they called the married soldiers, were given more on-base assignments because they were not sent abroad as the unmarried soldiers were.

His flak jacket, a dense bullet-resistant piece of body armor, was manufactured at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, along the border of Davenport, Iowa. The arsenal served as a treasure trove of necessary equipment to Executive Commander Muhaimin, who ordered the 360 UN soldiers to join forces with the NORAD and USNORTHCOM units to put an end to an insurgency of US Marines who were instigating war against the will of the global community.

Ryan didn’t care much for his orders to serve in the United Nations Peacekeeping Army. Most of the people in his unit were not English speaking. Occasionally he would run into a member that knew a little broken English, but by and far, the American service members were tallied up and separated into different units. More frustrating than serving with people you couldn’t understand was following shady orders. On more than one occasion, Ryan thought about going AWOL, but the opportunity never presented itself until now.

Ryan was no longer feeling his toes. His thoughts went to a warmer climate where he was getting paid for work he actually enjoyed doing. That was his state of mind when the man in front of him took off his helmet to wipe his brow. The man’s head exploded as a pink mist filled the air, and the man went limp to the ground at the same time the sound of gunfire was heard coming from the mountain face to his left. Many of the men in his unit hesitated and came to a dead stop. He jumped out of formation and took cover behind a rock on the opposing side of the road. The rock sat at the base of a rocky cliff, which blocked the passage of any soldier attempting to escape.

Ryan kept his head low and listened to the sounds of .50-caliber machine guns as they unloaded their cache of projectiles at the unsuspecting Peacekeeping Army.

Aforetime, the use of antiarmor weaponry against foot soldiers was forbidden, per the Geneva convention. General John James no longer saw the purpose of honoring a treaty that was so one-sided. “
Why should a civilized military be barred from such actions while the savage uses our women and children as human shields and fights from churches and mosques to avoid the possibility of returning fire?”
was his logic. This was a new era, and nothing was the same. Indeed, all things had been changed.

Just down the road from Ryan’s position, there were a few homes and places he could conceal himself, but that thought was only fleeting. He couldn’t move because he didn’t know anything about his enemy: not who it was that was shooting at them, why they were being shot at, how many of them there were—nothing. No information was very bad, and to be pinned down under such heavy fire was by far the most terrifying thing that could have happened to young Ryan Lee.

A UN soldier ran to him, but was gunned down as he reached Ryan’s hiding spot. His limp body was now lying over the hiding position of Senior Private Lee.

He remained motionless underneath the moaning man, who was dying and breathing his last breaths. The man began to slide backwards off the cliff face, but Ryan grabbed his uniform shirt and pulled him in towards him to hold him in place. The man’s body provided more cover and helped conceal his position.

He kept hearing the sounds of rifle fire from unknown positions in the hills. There was some mild return fire, but for the most part, his unit died trying to find cover.