Dark Grid (18 page)

“Now,” Kyle said, “I need to get Chuck and Sheri on the horn with Top to discuss this whole Pete business.”

…

“Based on the story Steve from the hardware store told, Pete was about as lit as you can be and not be on fire.”  Mallory had pulled in two of her platoon leaders for this impromptu meeting and wanted to get some of the basic facts straight first.  “Chuck, as his supervisor, did you know of any history of drug use?  Wait, scratch that, never mind…don’t answer that.  Let’s assume the power is coming back on in ten minutes and everything is going back to normal.  I don’t want you between a rock and a hard place legally.  Sorry about that.  Let me rephrase that; have either of you witnessed him using or high before?”

Chuck answered first, “No I haven’t--not drugs.  He’s come to work hung over a couple of times.  I don’t recall that he’s ever shown up drunk though.  He’s never been drunk on call either that I’m aware of.  Sheri?”

“Not that I can think of.  There’ve been plenty of times that he’s ‘just happened’ to show up at a girls’ night out, though.   And there’ve been none too subtle attempts to hook up with me when he was plenty wasted--but never on the job.  And no, I’ve never seen him do anything illegal, drug-wise.  I’ve been offered enough…stuff…though, to know it’s not hard to get around here--certainly not pot.”

“Oh, I wasn’t questioning availability.  I’ve had to discipline more than I’d care to admit regarding that.  No, I was just wondering what ‘Mr. Great’ was like.  If this was part of his personality or if he’s, shall we say, expanding his horizons.  Hopefully he’ll expand his perceptions to the point he embraces a telephone pole with his frontal lobe, but until then we have to deal with him.”  There was a sigh from the other end.  “Ok, next question, did he hunt?”

Again, Chuck was the first to respond.  “He did, yes, but he wasn’t a lifelong hunter and he was the opposite of what a lot of the folks around here are.  He was a ‘shoot it and stuff it’ kind of hunter.  He wanted everyone to see how big a man he was for shooting a rabbit or a deer or a bear--as if--so he had near ‘bout everything he shot stuffed.  The first deer he shot, he didn’t even get the count right.  Bragging to everyone that he got a six-point buck--everyone looked at him like he’d lost his mind.  Didn’t know you counted all the points on both sides here in Tennessee.

“Sorry, where was I?  Oh yeah…hunter, yes and no.  Yes he hunts, no he’s not a lifer, why?”

“I wanted to know how tight security needed to be around ‘Promised Land’ and yes, Ramirez, I’m still pissed.” Mallory said.  “Stupid name for an advance area.  Point being if he were a long time hunter with finely honed skills we could be in worse trouble than if he’s a drug using alcoholic who’s going to come speeding in here and try to run us all over in his Mustang instead of snipe us from the tree line.”  There just weren’t enough people for the security detail needed at that level yet.

“Change of topic, do you remember anything else about the group on the freeway from yesterday?”

“Nothing other than Earl was eyeing all us ladies, and the kids,” Sheri replied.  “I don’t even remember most of what Eric said.  I was busy deciding what to go for first, knee, groin, throat, or eyes.”

“Chuck, you?  Any impressions other than freakiness?” Mallory asked.

“I got the idea for the CBs from them, but that’s about it.  Earl seemed like he was looking for a fight, but his buddy kept trying to calm him down.  That other guy kept playing dumb, too, even though he obviously wasn’t.  He was laying it on real thick too.  The dumb hick was just too obvious.  I don’t know if he was trying to let us know he was smart and in charge and telling us to back off and leave them alone in his own way, or if he’s overconfident or what.”

“My concern is that they had one good idea, and that was it.”  Mallory said.  “They didn’t seem too coordinated this morning and although going in the back way might have seemed like a good idea, they fled when a single person showed up.  They didn’t respond with a gun, which, while good for us, shows that they don’t necessarily have any long-term plans yet.  That might make them desperate and in the long run that’s bad for everyone.  I don’t like dealing with desperate people, ever.”

Kyle was nodding as Mallory continued.  “It’s actually one of the cardinal rules of setting up an ambush.  Unless you have a nuke and you are willing to use it, leave the enemy a way out and a means to recognize and use it.  If they are well and truly trapped with no means of escape and no realistic chance of surrender, they have nothing to lose and you will be forced to kill them to a man as they will fight to the death out of sheer desperation.

“All right then, Chuck, Sheri, I have some purely military matters I need to discuss at this point, then.”  It was an obvious dismissal but still incredibly polite.

“Understood, no problem.”  Chuck held the tent flap for Sheri, and they were on their way.

“Ramirez, you’ve got a whopping ten guardsmen.” Mallory was in logistics mode.  “Yes, I planned on security; no I didn’t plan on needing security yet.  How does the barracks situation look so far?”

“Well, it looks like someone accidentally packed six whole barracks tents; don’t know how that could have happened.”  Kyle was sure that Mallory could hear his smug, self-satisfied grin.  At least he hadn’t been idle after getting up so early.  “So we’ve got more than we could fill right now.  We don’t have cots yet but those could come at any time.  All the tents should be up within the hour including mess and latrines.  Water is all set up and being reverse osmosised--or whatever,--and the civilian park is completely set up.”

“Ramirez, you are forgiven,” she said.

“For what?” Kyle asked

“Don’t push it.” Mallory said.

“Right,” he said

“In that case, I’m sending another squad out tonight.” Mallory said.  “It won’t be the engineers I was planning on, I still want them to do some planning.  I’ve actually got two short mortar sections I’m going to send, along with their families.”

“I’m sending additional night vision and field security equipment as well.”

“They’ll have a place to sleep when they get here and we’ll put them into the security detail rotation starting tonight.  ”

“Sounds like a plan.  Good work Ramirez, keep it up.”

“Roger, Ramirez, out.”

“Wow, I think she really did forgive me,” Kyle thought to himself.  “Nah, musta been a slip of the tongue, not calling us ‘Promised Land’.”

Interlude Two

The initial plan, codename Dark Grid, involved taking the entire electrical grid down for as long as twelve hours, depending on the amount of notice that NASA had been able to give.  The government also had a worst case scenario plan, which allowed for the power to be out for eighteen hours.  In addition to both of those plans, the military also attempted to provide a “go to hell plan”--as in ‘what are we going to do when it all goes to hell’.  These were held in reserve for when Mr. Murphy made his inevitable appearance and even the worst case scenario plan failed to provide for all contingencies.

The government, traditionally, doesn’t believe in “go to hell plans” as every contingency can be overcome if you throw enough money at it.  Take for instance, uhm, the uh…well, I’m sure there’s a good example out there somewhere.  The CME of 2012, unfortunately, was not one of them; and as of 5:30pm EDT on Day One, the President and his staff were in the air trying to decide where, or even whether to land.   When Day Two broke, the President was still in the air and his staff were still trying to decide where to land.

That they must land eventually was never really in question--the plane couldn’t stay in the air indefinitely; but after refueling midair twice, they’d gotten a nasty surprise.  Getting refueling planes in the air with full refueling tanks was rapidly becoming a problem.  Couple that with the need to minimize the distance the refueling planes had to fly and coordinate the logistics surrounding keeping the plane airborne and suddenly they were in a sufficiently predictable flight pattern that they might as well land.  From the limited reports they were receiving now, the entire northern hemisphere had gone dark.  Assuming those reports were correct, and there was no reason to believe that any other country had been more prepared than the U.S. had been, the military threat to them was now virtually nonexistent.

Washington D.C. had become less than conducive to anyone’s continued safety rather early on.  Suffice it to say that word got out that a number of buildings in the Capital either still had power or had it again--nobody knew or cared which.  By 2:00 pm, the President and all of the Cabinet that had been in Washington were evacuated from the White House and the Capital Building, and by 3:30 they were aboard Air Force One.

That was a good thing, as a mass riot on the Mall started at 3:41 and there were nowhere near enough law-enforcement officers to keep it under control.  It was either the first riot of many over the course of the next week or it was the beginning of a week-long riot, nobody would ever be absolutely sure.

One thing that was known for sure was the time of the first fire.  June 15, 4:19pm EDT: a garbage can was lit on fire and thrown through the front window of an interior decorating company.  With all the draperies, pillows, fabric samples, stuffing, and cotton-poly blend materials in the showroom the entire place was engulfed in a matter of minutes, and the entire building, with the exception of the stone façade was completely gutted shortly thereafter.  Nor was that the last fire in the Capital.

With no electricity to run the water pumps there was no water pressure.  The pumper trucks had the ability to pull water directly from lakes and streams, and they did so when they saw a fire and could get to it in time, and there was water available.  But that was the exception to the rule.  Usually once a fire got started, it simply had to burn itself out.

There are people who just want to watch the world burn.  On the downside, they got to get a little carried away in mid June.  On the upside, they tend to get sloppy after awhile and get caught up in their own orchestrations and by the end of the week there were several fewer arsonists in the world--or at least Washington D.C.

Chapter Nineteen

The day after they’d been surprised behind the Northern Tool & Equipment, Clint decided enough was enough.  The ragtag bunch that had decided to follow him out of his apartment building when the power went out needed direction in a big way.  He kept thinking about the group that had stopped while they were changing the tire on the side of the road and how they had seemed to have their act together.  The one guy had obviously been ex-military too.

Nah, he’d been former military and Clint was honest enough, with himself anyway, to admit the difference.  Not everyone drew a distinction between the two--ex and former.  For a lot of people they were the same thing, but for someone who’d received anything but an honorable discharge, well, they weren’t.  Former meant you’d left on your own, on good terms.  Ex held the stigma that you’d been kicked out and told not to come back.  Clint was ex-military, OTH or Other Than Honorable Discharge, and to top it off it had been after a very short time.

What had we been thinking, and why was I talking like that?  I have a full set of teeth, I don’t come from a family stick; they must have thought we were a bunch of inbred hillbilly rednecks waiting for all the tires to just explode.  I must have taken my own advice to ‘play dumb’ too seriously.

Now things were a little different.  They’d been trying to get into the back of the Northern Tool to avoid notice when that guy had shown up and he and Earl panicked and tried to run him down.  That was on Saturday, June 16
^th
.  On Sunday he’d made the decision that he wasn’t going to live like a beggar on the streets anymore.

Early Sunday morning, before the sun had quite come up, Clint grabbed Earl and two of the other large guys in the group.  “Everybody else stay here.  We should be back in about an hour or so.  Stay quiet and just keep your heads down and everything will be fine.”  They left in the largest pick-up truck they had and headed back towards the tool store.  They needed some bolt cutters and potentially some drills to get into where he wanted to go.

When they pulled up behind the store it was empty and Clint got out with the tire iron.  He fed it through one of the links on the chain and twisted it until it was tight and then had Earl grab the other end.  Together they kept twisting until the link broke.  There, no more chain and the lock was still in place.  Ten more seconds and the gate was open.  They went inside and found a pair of bolt cutters, a DC powered electric fuel pump, fifty feet of non-static hose and nozzle, as well as a couple of battery powered drills and drill bit sets.  The last thing he grabbed was a couple of hammers and a set of cold chisels.

The other guys grabbed flashlights, batteries, handfuls of Slim-Jim beef sticks, candy bars, and one of them had snagged an inverter and was dragging a 4.5 KW portable generator behind him.  Clint hadn’t gotten everything he’d wanted but that was ok; he was planning on being back later and taking his time to stock up.  He’d be getting several more generators shortly.

On the way out he gave directions to Earl, who was driving, to head out towards the less desirable side of town where Clint had noticed a number of pawn shops the day before.  First things first: they had a few guns but not nearly enough to arm everyone, and nowhere near enough of the same type or caliber.  They needed to standardize and they needed to get ammunition.  This was where they would do just that.

They drove past seven different pawn shops taking glances inside each one and trying to determine if someone was inside and what, if any, firearms there were to be had.  On the third pass Clint decided on the second one they had passed and told Earl to pull over.  Clint had the bolt cutters for the chain around the metal gate and a hammer for the glass window in the door.  The other three all had handguns in case someone showed up to contest their entry.