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Oh-dark-thirty. I used to say I wasn’t going to do this, yet here I am, Repeth thought. When I was a lower-enlisted Marine I swore I wouldn’t make my troops hurry up and wait all the time. When I got to the exalted position of senior NCO I’d do away with all that nonsense. Yet here I am, making them hurry up and wait. And why? Murphy’s law. Something always goes wrong, and the smart leader is the one who gets everything done early, builds extra time and flexibility into the schedule.
But she had to admit her people were handling it well as they sat on the edge of the runway with their backs against their rucks, smoking and joking. Their duffels and sea bags and hard cases were palletized and getting loaded right now into the C-17 Globemaster transport planes, visible in the glare of the portable generator lights half a mile down the runway. She looked upward but because of the harsh lamps she couldn’t see the usual desert-sky spray of the Milky Way. The moon was bright, half-full and setting in the west.
A breeze brought the aroma of jet fuel from the tanker trucks topping the big planes off, along with the sharp smell of exhaust from the aircraft’s auxiliary power units already burning gas and supplying power. She knew loadmasters were arranging their cargo as maintainers, pilots and copilots ran preflights and safety checks: endless rituals to propitiate the unforgiving gods of the air.
She knew the fifteen aircraft here represented almost half of the remaining C-17s in the entire United States Air Force. Once there had been almost two hundred and fifty, but most of them had been destroyed by the Nebraska’s nukes.
Nukes I launched. Keys I turned, God forgive me. She bit back tears.
Her heart ached for her country and her once-proud military forces. I should be glad we are getting this kind of priority. Fifteen sorties to lift the entire battalion – thirteen platoons and enough vehicles and supplies to operate for two weeks. After that, we’re on our own. Still, there should be plenty of salvage where we’re going.
She mused on the bombs, forcing herself to think about it. Each miniature sun had created a circle of destruction, a dead zone. Each ground zero marked the heart of a city, or a military base, sometimes a piece of both. About half of the bombs had fallen on the great population centers and bases of the Eastern Seaboard. The oval encompassing Washington, D.C. and Baltimore had hosted a dozen fireballs as far south as Quantico and as far north as Charm City itself. The Capitol and the White House, the Pentagon, Langley, Andrews, Fort Belvoir, Fort Meade, Dulles and Reagan and BWI airports, all were irradiated, vaporized, sterilized.
Even that might have been a horrible but manageable crisis, with the states of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia mobilizing to reestablish order and provide relief, had the alien Demon Plagues not been cast like a deathly blanket upon the fragile surviving societies and institutions, crushing them under the weight of chaos and tragedy. As far as anyone could tell, nothing functioned in the death zones more organized than a volunteer fire department.
She and her troops faced enough work for a hundred battalions for a hundred years, helping the medics to get the survivors inoculated. The priority airlift was a tribute to the importance of their mission, to begin reclaiming the national capital region. They could have started anywhere, but the symbolism, President McKenna felt, was important.
It just wasn’t the United States without the city that bore George Washington’s name.
When times are tough, people need symbols. God knows I do, and right now it’s Old Glory flying above the Battle Color. We’ll raise them on the banks of the Potomac yet. She squeezed and surreptitiously wiped her eyes.
Repeth walked among her people, greeting most by name. She walked over to the other platoons of First MP Company, saluting their officers, conferring with their senior NCOs, taking the pulse of the whole unit. In her estimation, morale was high and the troops were eager to get on with it.
The faint and far-off tones of the aircraft down the runway changed as they fired up the first of their jet engines. Battery power had already started the Auxiliary Power Units, tiny turbines that generated electricity for the aircraft. Now the power from the APUs drove electric motors to turn the huge turbofan engines that would lift their enormous loads into the sky. First one started, then another, each in turn supplying more juice to the system until all four house-sized propulsion units on each bird sang their songs of power.
“All right, Fourth Platoon, on your feet! Ruck up, ladies and gentlemen, those birds aren’t coming to us! ‘Platoon, tench-hut! Right, hace! For-ward, harch! At ease, harch!” In four files the platoon marched easy down the edge of the tarmac, Third Platoon dimly visible in front of them as a mass of bobbing heads, shoulders and rucks. She looked behind at the company of Homies gaggling after them. She knew that in back of them, the clerks and lawyers and doctors and nurses and morticians and engineers and many other experts, the professionals that were the heart of Civil Affairs, were loading buses. Rick would be back there, probably embarrassed to be with the pogues, but he was no soldier, and it would send the wrong message for him to be here at her side.
She had laughed when Transportation had asked her when she wanted the platoon to be picked up. “It’s less than a mile from the barracks to the airfield,” she told them. “Don’t waste the nation’s gasoline.” When the other MP platoons had heard, they cancelled their rides too. I guess the Homies couldn’t let us show them up. Good for them. At least they have some pride.
The mass briefing the night before had finally given them some details on the landing zone. Fort AP Hill, south of Fredericksburg, Virginia, possessed the airfield closest to the south side of D.C. that could take the C-17s. Other units would work the west and north.
The landing zone was also well outside the direct blast zone, though not outside the radiation plume or the reach of the Demon Plagues. As a US Army installation not open to the general public, it might have retained some semblance of law and order. Or at least be safely deserted.
Unfortunately, no one had been able to contact any units stationed there. Reconnaissance drones had shown some human activity but no vehicles moving, and the base power plant revealed no heat signature. As far as they could tell the place was dead, as were most of its people. However, there did appear to be some organization in the city of Fredericksburg immediately to the north.
The briefing officer had said, “We’ve got a pair of Super Hornets off the Harry Truman that will give you some air cover and surface suppression as you land, and there’s a Force Recon team from the Somerset that is supposed to be moving in right now on foot. They’ll give the planes the final call via UHF about conditions on the ground, then they’ll attach themselves to the battalion after you land. The MP company debarks first in platoon order to set up dismounted security, then Homeland, then Civil Affairs and Medical. The aircraft will offload hot and extract immediately. After that you’ll be pretty much on your own for one to three weeks, until the ground forces pushing in from the west link up.”
On your own. Her people hadn’t liked that much, and she had to remind herself they weren’t special operators like she was, used to the idea of being alone and unafraid deep in enemy territory. They were security forces, not commandos, not even infantry. Well, I’ve gotten them as ready as I can.
The roar of the engines drowned out her thoughts as the formation marched into the staging area in front of the hangars. Ground crew with glowing flashlights and bulky headphones directed them to their bird. Its tail ramp gaped open, providing easy access to the enormous interior space. Pallets squatted on the spine of the plane, fastened down to hardpoints in the floor, and her people walked along the left and right to take their places on the red-orange fabric jump seats.
Her heart beat faster despite herself as she boarded. To her, jet fuel smelled like action. Half an hour later they roared into the sky, powering upward like an express elevator to Heaven.
