Success and Failure
March 21st, 2013
1
This had to be close enough.
Adrian waited for Kenn to finish updating the newest Eagle who was about to take over his post for his shift of eight in the morning to two in the afternoon. Jeremy was on Neil’s team, Level Three status, and the right to have Point had only been earned last night.
Adrian sighed, tired and worried as he waited for his people to get ready to start another day of hard traveling. They were on the edge of the Thunder Basin National Grasslands, off 387, and while he was glad to be east of 25, pictures had verified that Casper and Buffalo were ghost towns.
It made his stomach burn. One was buried, the other submerged. His warning hadn’t been heard, hadn’t mattered. They hadn’t picked up a single survivor since the dust storm, which made these people in Cheyenne all the more important.
Sighing again, Adrian swept the mountains that surrounded them. Would the evergreens up there have the mold that the fir and pine trees down here did? Would it smell like smoke and unburied dead? Were there bodies of deer, moose, and people? He was almost sure they would discover that for themselves.
“You’re The Man on this one, Marine. You ready?” Adrian asked as Kenn came to his side, sharp tone of a drill instructor replacing the calm demeanor the camp usually witnessed. The slavers’ rampage had traveled up Interstate 25 faster than they had estimated, and Cheyenne had called again.
“Locked and loaded. Kyle’s team is stowing the beans, bags, and bullets.”
“They’re good to go, eager to prove themselves. What about you, jarhead? How do you feel?”
Kenn’s expression was hard as he noted Adrian’s dusty jeans and wrinkled camouflage shirt. He’d been up all night again. “Good, ready.”
“In and out, Marine, like with the old lady. But if not, if something goes wrong and you have to fight?”
Kenn’s voice was intent. “Then we’ll kill as many as we can.”
It may have been wrong in the old world, but it was all that was left to them now, and Adrian made them believe in it by doing it himself whenever he thought the man’s crimes (it was almost always the men who committed big transgressions now) warranted it. This definitely did.
The slavers were a growing threat that he felt duty-bound to eliminate. But he couldn’t yet, not against one hundred fifty well-armed men who had become good at conquering large groups of survivors. The terrible stories of the refugees who had escaped, town after town, neighborhood after neighborhood (life after life!), said he needed to tread carefully with the slavers.
It pleased him that Kenn seemed to feel it too, repeating himself to make sure his boss knew.
“If any opportunity comes up to do damage, we’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
Adrian clapped him on the arm, satisfied that Kenn meant it. They had been falling behind and would arrive later than expected. That made the mission more dangerous, putting the Eagles and the slavers near Cheyenne at roughly the same time.
“Watch your six. We need you.”
“Semper Fi.”
“Oorah!”
A deep frown planted itself across Adrian’s face as Kenn and the Eagles left. He hated it that their first encounter with these dangerous men would happen without him there to judge the threat.
Adrian hit the button on the tape player in his pocket, listening intently. Was he missing anything?
“SOS, Safe Haven! This is Cheyenne! SOS!”
“Go ahead, Overloaded.”
“They’ve hit Wellington! We can see the smoke and people are coming here, and I can’t care for them! We need help now!”
Adrian hit stop, the desperation making him consider changing places with Kenn, but he knew he couldn’t. The Marine wasn’t ready for leadership of an entire camp yet. For this mission though, he was perfect. Kyle and his team were good, making steady progress every day, and though only ten men were getting into the armored vehicles, they would still be a force to be reckoned with.
Fighting a migraine, Adrian went on his rounds. Another forty souls would bring their number to a hundred and seventy-seven. They were only a week from Cheyenne, but there was no way the whole camp could go and get out without being seen. Kenn and Kyle would make it in two days, and Adrian would worry the whole time.
The constantly growing group seemed almost empty to Adrian once Kenn and the Eagles were gone, and the leader threw himself into the work, forcing a faked optimism that only his men noticed.
Adrian didn’t like the feeling of being incomplete but never doubted that they were. He also hated to have people out of Safe Haven, only relaxed when the entire flock was under his watchful care, and he knew they’d been lucky so far that everyone who had gone out had returned. He’d increased their chances with the addition of armed escorts, but Adrian anticipated a time when he could settle them down and show them how to provide for their needs, instead of scouring this broken land like scavengers.
Now camped in the heart of the Thunder Basin National Grassland, they were only fifteen miles from the South Dakota state line. The tall pines, blue grass, and forget-me-nots were comforting sights after all the horror along 387. If not for the heavy fog, they would already be on the road now, sheep gawking out the windows at a muddy landscape that included a crashed government chopper.
Adrian tensed suddenly, feeling the uneasy mix of power and magic coming. The landscape wavered, changed, and for a moment, he saw a survivor of the crash, her outline tall, thin and tough.
He looked away from the vision, thinking it had been so long since he’d had one that he’d forgotten how it made his heart feel squeezed.
Hoping she was one of his, Adrian got moving again, feeling a little bitter with fate. He had been promised magic, and so far, had only gotten a gifted teenager who was too young to help yet.
Adrian lit a smoke, telling himself it didn’t matter. When Charlie was needed most, at least he would be here, already under the discreet eyes of the Eagles. They had been told to watch him right after the restless teenager had gotten his own tent–the result of a noisy fight where Charlie had almost hurt one of the boys he was bunking with.
Kenn’s cadet was a bit unstable. Unhappy, Adrian corrected himself. Even the job with the veterinarian wouldn’t be enough to hold him here. Something had Charlie’s mind, pulling at him, and when Kenn returned, Adrian hoped to ferret out whatever it was.
There was a full day of activities planned–the biggest: a towing contest. Their clearing times had improved because he’d made it into a race to discover who could do it fastest without breaking any safety rules. Tonight, the first crew leader would be picked by whoever won, and with Kenn gone, more people would be willing to try. There was very little that his right-hand man wasn’t good at, and it even sounded different without him here. The people were subdued somehow without his energetic, boisterous XO.
Adrian kept walking, sick of hearing tents flapping in the wind. It was slow going right now. He was organizing them, teaching them to survive, and the whole time, he had been moving them north, toward Montana. That had changed last week when he’d convinced them that going any further north would run them into a ground zero and probably give them lethal doses of radiation. Stories from refugees they’d picked up supported him. They were moving by vote now, picking a long list of places to try, but he would have guided them east even if they hadn’t voted to. It was bad here. They couldn’t stay in Wyoming any longer.
The packs of mutated ants were thick throughout the state, and once he got them a couple hundred miles further from 25 and the slavers, Adrian planned to travel southeast for a while, toward Georgia and the miles of caves hopefully still waiting there. He hadn’t thought of a better place yet and dreaded having to confirm that going into the ground was the only way they would survive. There had to be somewhere else!
Comforted by the steady crunch of boots guarding their perimeter, Adrian moved past Kenn’s improved mess–where coffee and food lines were now open on both sides–and came to the traveling emergency class. Tents flapped mockingly in his ear, and he paused to listen to part of a lesson, immediately assaulted with the odors of cologne, sweat, and cigar smoke. He loved it. It was the smell of life, and beat the hell out of all the other shit they were usually inhaling.
A small group was gathered around the side of a big van, watching Peggy Ann Kelly, the single, 40-something mother of little Becky, change a flat tire. This class had solved the need for one crew to do all of the work, all of the time. This way, the entire camp did it.
The cute, reddish-blond woman was sweating and greasy. Most of the men watching would have gladly done it for her to get her attention, but Adrian had made it clear that people needed to be able to fend for themselves, as well as function as a team, and the males offered advice but no actual help.
Peggy struggled to break the last lug nut, and Adrian denied the bald professor who stepped forward to help. The portly man carried his profession proudly, from his thick glasses to his plaid-patterned suit. Adrian didn’t look away from the brooding glare the teacher sent his way. He also didn’t keep his voice down, and the gusting wind carried it further than the class.
“She has to learn. What if she gets separated?”
The man frowned, and the thick, disapproving silence from the others surrounded him.
“You sure it isn’t because I’m black and she’s white?”
Adrian stiffened at the accusing tone. Joseph had been here long enough to know how things worked. Was he still holding onto that shit? They didn’t have many of the other races represented here yet, but that wasn’t because Adrian didn’t want them. The war had split more than families. The old segregation lines had slammed down, making most races search for their own kind. It was something he needed people like this bitter teacher to help him conquer.
“You’re from Salt Lake City. You were almost dead when we found you. Group of men had beaten you so badly that we didn’t think you’d live at first. There were only twenty of us then, and no one knew what to do with you. About you.”
“Because I’m a nigger.”
It wasn’t a question, and the people around them muttered uneasily. No one used the word here, not even in joking. Adrian would throw you out for that, even if you meant it affectionately.
Adrian’s tone was sharp. “We only had our basic laws, and race was something we hadn’t even talked about. We saw you bleeding and had to make a choice. Let you die, or let you in and find a way to deal with all the problems mixing races inevitably brings.”
Adrian now had the attention of everyone close enough to hear, and he used the moment to strengthen the bonds. “We made the choice in about fifteen seconds, Joseph. You’re not black or white in this camp. You’re a survivor, and that’s the only one that matters here. Leave race in the past, where it belongs, and things will continue to improve for everyone.”
2
“All those jeeps worry me,” Kyle stated quietly, lowering the binoculars.
“We’ll have to draw them out,” Kenn replied, watching the heavily armed men patrol the top and four sides of the large brick school house where the refugees were hiding. Two on top, one each on the sides and rear, and two more on the front doors–maybe four inside, but judging from all the jeeps parked wildly along the exits, probably more like six or ten.
They were outnumbered, but not by much, and Kenn frowned in concentration as the thick clouds rolled through the sky and colored lightning flashing in the distance. He scanned the area again, seeing holiday decorations torn down and pictures that had been used for target practice, but underneath, he was evaluating how best to kill them all.
“You and me are covering the top?”
Still missing his rifle, Kenn merely answered with his hands. They hadn’t found any ammo for the M16s, so that meant getting into range for handguns. When it started, a few of the Mexicans would come out, but most of them would take up positions around the hostages, and they’d have a standoff. For a while. Then their reinforcements would come. This was only a scouting party, and it bothered Kenn that neither he nor Adrian had expected this level of organization. They would have to do this quietly. No telling how far out the big group was.
It had only taken Adrian’s Eagles thirty hours to get here, driving straight through in five-hour shifts. The men who hadn’t driven stood sentry duty when they arrived, to let the others get a short rest. They had snuck in as dusk slowly faded.
The ten men on sentry duty hated it here. It reeked with decay, and even the constant gusts of salty, smoky wind couldn’t knock it down. The awful odor came from all the bodies. Thousands of them, fresh and old, littered the city, along with lines of burnt houses, cars, and businesses. There were thick drag marks in the dust left by the storm, garbage and mud-covered streets, and little pillars of smoke rising that signaled the path the Mexicans had taken to get here. It was a war zone.
“What do you want to do?”
The edge of frustration in Kyle’s voice was what Kenn had been waiting for, and he stood up, always feeling the need to prove who was in charge when they were on missions together. To the listening men, he said the right thing. Only Kyle would sting afterward when he remembered almost losing his cool with only silence used against him.
“We kill them all.”
Kenn knelt in the dirt, flipping open his K-BAR to draw in the damp dirt behind the big storage sheds they were using for cover. He hadn’t created this plan, but these men wouldn’t know that. “We go with suppressors. Take out this side and corner, and as they come out, we pick them off. If The Man comes out too, it’ll all be over.”
“And if we don’t spot the leader?” Kyle kept the bitterness out of his tone, but not his gestures. He almost hated the smug Marine leading his team today, and was now actively hoping for someone to join Safe Haven that he could support.
Kenn slid his knife into his muddy boot. “We’ll have taken out at least half these men, and that’ll leave a lot of exits without coverage. We’ll look from those trees along the windows first, then slip in and nail ‘em as we find ‘em. Once inside, we go for the gym, because that’s where they’ll be with a group of sheep that size. From there, we’ll do what we do best.”
“They might negotiate, surrender.”
Kenn stood up, automatically checking his gear and gun, and the other Eagles followed his lead. They had been on a few missions where hostages were involved, but only once had there been a shootout. The small gang of Aryan brothers hadn’t wanted to give up their captives. They had given their lives instead, but the newness of doing battle hadn’t worn off for the Eagles yet.
Kenn tapped his good luck charm, a Zippo lighter he kept in his pocket. “Adrian wouldn’t give them mercy, and we won’t either. Top four shooters with me, the rest to the sides and meet up. I’m man in the middle. On my mark.”
Kenn’s timing was perfect. He and Kyle fired as they ran, and the two Mexican lookouts jerked at the same time, fell together. The other man on the roof darted toward his comrade, and then he arched, stopped, and fell as the second rush of black-clad Eagles hit the building.
They came to the wall in fast waves, Kenn and Kyle sliding into view as the front doors opened, and two men walked out.
Kyle whistled and then waved a ringed middle finger at the shocked faces.
The two men drew their guns, and the Eagles ducked out of sight as they gave chase.
“One...two...three. Now!”
Jumping out together, their guns took down both men before they could return fire, Kenn shooting twice–but only one shot was aimed at the enemy.
The two Eagles quickly dragged the heavy bodies around the corner as Chris pointed to the other row of trees. Chris was on Kyle’s team, second in command. “The banners center there. That’s probably the gym.”
Eight men carefully eased up the trees a minute later, using the thick branches for cover from the ground and windows.
“Bulletproof glass.” Kenn’s voice was barely audible.
Kyle snickered, showing white teeth, but the amusement didn’t reach his voice. “Not today. All the Eagles are packing armor-piercing rounds. Your mags too.”
Kenn’s mind raced as he peered through the dirty glass, seeing only five armed men around the circle of roughly fifty civilians on the gymnasium floor. Which one was the leader?
A door opened on their side of the building, and a tall, thin man emerged; face completely hidden by his bandana. He noticed the bodies right away.
“Dedro!”
“Aaahhh!”
Kenn’s shot connected, but the guerilla’s yell ruined their element of surprise. People came to the windows, and footsteps ran toward them.
Kenn aimed for the jeep in front of the glass doors, trying to time it as the next rush of men came out.
His earlier shot to the gas tank was already allowing a long stream of the pungent liquid to escape.
Kyle and the Eagles stayed still, waiting for the distraction Kenn was about to provide.
Woosshhh!
His flare sparked the puddle of gas, and they watched bright, orange flames flash eagerly over the concrete and scorch their way up the fuel dripping from the gas tank.
KKkaaaablammm!
The explosion shattered half of the windows along the front of the building, throwing the jeep through the doors just as they opened. The slavers rushing out were consumed in a cloud of twisted metal and hot flames.
“Fire!”
“Get out!”
“Sit down!”
The gym was in chaos, people pushing for the doors. The slaver’s orders were ignored in the panic, causing the guerillas to raise their guns and take aim at retreating figures.
“Now, Eagles! Open fire!”
Bullets began to fly, raining down on the Mexicans before they could retaliate, and the shooting was very, very good. Their targets were moving, mixed in with the small sea of terrified civilians, and slugs found foreheads and throats amid total chaos. Despite all the people trying to get out of the chained doors, only slavers were hit.
“Damn!”
Chris examined his arm as blood dripped down the thick tree trunk in steady streams. “I’m trimmed–that’s it.”
Kenn and Kyle were both relieved, ignoring the refugees who continued to panic. Neither man ever wanted to tell Adrian they’d gotten one of his army killed.
Seeing no more enemy movement, Kenn leaned inside the window he’d shattered with his shots. He spotted shaggy, unkempt hair, cold sores, and smelled body odor that made him grimace. No threats to my place in this group.
“US Eagle Force! Safe Haven!”
The shout echoed in the concrete room, getting attention, and Kenn whistled at them.
They looked up warily, quieting.
“Someone here named Overloaded? Your taxi’s waiting.”
Kyle and his men dropped ropes, and lowered themselves to grab fire extinguishers as the people cheered. A tall, thin man with a long staff and a dirty bandage over his face slowly stumbled toward Kenn’s window position.
“What’s the word?”
Kenn scanned the bodies on the floor and then the door, where Kyle and Chris were getting the small fire under control. He keyed the mike on his belt. “Freedom. Mission accomplished. Let’s do some cleaning and get these people to the boss.”
3
It took Kenn and Kyle under an hour to evacuate the filthy school. It would have been one hour exactly if the Marine had swept every room, but he didn’t bother with the basement, where the dead had been placed. As they pulled away, no one noticed the hysterical blonde woman running up a nearby road, arms waving frantically. They never glanced back.
Kenn brought home forty-one survivors, and Adrian met them eagerly with Seth at his side, but both men were once again disappointed. They now had a hairdresser, yet another bank teller (it wasn’t surprising to Adrian how many of them had survived. They were used to having their lives threatened), and a lot of other careers they didn’t need yet, but none of them, not even Greg, the blind radio man, had what he was searching for.
There was no fire burning in these people, only bright fear and desperation, and he was unable to sleep until very late, sure he had passed one of his own somewhere. Adrian chose to linger a bit, knowing it was a dangerous thing to do considering how close they were to the slavers, but he needed the help as much as these refugees needed him. He would keep calling.