Dark New World (Book 3): EMP Deadfall (35 page)

Ethan turned to Amber and said, “I count twelve soldiers. Not as many as I expected from an entire company, but beggars can’t be choosers. So, it’s confirmation. Now we need to get in touch with them. I’ll radio Joe on our channel when the camera shows he’s clear, and tell him to bring another secure radio with him and to scout to the north. He can drop the radio when no one is looking, and when I have the coordinates, I can send a coded message to the Marines to go pick it up. We need to be able to talk directly to them if we’re going to coordinate and share information.”

Amber frowned. “Alright, then. I guess I’ll keep my eyes on the cameras for a while, and you go take a nap. You’ve been at this forever, and you’re hurt. If I see him alone, I’ll come get you.”

Ethan nodded and without a word walked toward the bunks. He was still healing, and the emotional toll of the day—not to mention the tedium of hacking and searching via satellite—had drained him completely.

* * *

1700 HOURS - ZERO DAY +32

Taggart was in a chipper mood. Black escaped but he’d been defanged, and the gear had been recovered. A lot of it was shot up, but the radio still worked, along with the two computers among other things.

Eagan entered the alcove they were using as a temporary command post and saluted him. “Cap, all the bodies have been dumped down to a lower level. The invader unit kept right on going after we ambushed Black, but I have a couple people keeping watch in case more come through. The radio and laptops are set up, and we have intermittent WiFi from another HAMnet antenna we focused our tin can on.”

The “tin can” was a directional antenna, useful for setting up a direct data connection that didn’t bleed signal all over the place like a beacon. The downside was that if you moved it, you’d have to spend an hour refocusing it before connection could be re-established.

“Very well. Turn it on and let’s see if the 20s have sent us any more intel. We retrieved the cipher book so we can still decode. Have someone notify me if anything comes in. Put half the unit on duty, and put the rest on personal time. No one is to leave the base, however.”

Eagan made a sloppy, almost insolent salute, grinned, spun on his heels, and left Taggart alone again. Taggart gratefully eased himself down against one wall and tipped his helmet forward over his eyes. Like soldiers everywhere and in every time, he fell asleep in seconds.

He thought he heard his name. Taggart opened one eye and saw Eagan standing in front of him. “Captain,” Eagan said looking apologetic, “you wanted me to wake you if we received a transmission. One has come in.”

Taggart yawned and struggled to his feet, then grabbed his rifle and the cipher decoding book they had retrieved. “When did the message come in?” he asked.

“Timestamp says hours ago, but it only just finished downloading. Weak connection, Cap.”

Taggart followed Eagan to the cul-de-sac they had set up for the electronics and walked to the terminal. To the Militia tech at the computer, he said, “Thank you, private. You may go. Eagan, you’re with me.” Taking the chair, Taggart opened the book and began to decipher the message. It would have gone fast and easy on a capable intranet, but they had to do things Old School, and it took a while to get the decode sequence correct. Once he had, though, the message popped open quickly enough.

Taggart read and then reread the message. He looked at Eagan, a grin spreading across his face. “So, shitbird. It seems this Operation Backdraft is a go any time in the next seventy-two hours. No idea what it is yet, but the message ends by saying, ‘Precaution: faraday’ and repeating it three times. It must be important. Any idea what a faraday is?”

“Yeah, I know. Why don’t you, Cap?”

“Eagan…”

“Okay, fine. You have no sense of humor these days, Captain. Faraday means ‘faraday cage,’ which is a fancy way of saying we should put all our electronics into a metal enclosure so that the energy of an EMP will move around our gear, rather than through it. This spares our circuits from the effects of electromagnetic pulses. They’re gonna EMP the enemy by EMPing everybody.” He frowned. “There are a hundred ways this could backfire on us.”

Taggart eyed Eagan warily, but he showed no hint of insubordination. “So, we need to find metal enclosures… And where do we find those?”

Eagan grinned. “Throw ’em in the trash, sir. Metal trash cans with tight-fitting lids will work, especially down here. Or a working microwave—just put the gear inside, and it’ll keep the EMPs out just like it keeps the microwaves in. I read that somewhere.”

Taggart nodded. “You know some weird things, Eagan. Very well. Send a detail for one of those. Now another problem. We have received coordinates from this 20s guy, Dark Ryder, and he says the straight poop is that our old friend, Spyder, is bunkered up at that location. Apparently, he and the Koreans are on unfriendly terms and internal conflict between them is considered imminent.”

Eagan shrugged. “Yeah, Cap. We got those two dogs barking at each other with our little PsyOps raid. Glad to see your brilliant idea worked. Sir.”

Taggart ignored the private’s attempt at banter. Some other time, maybe. “I’m thinking we need to organize another raid—”

They were interrupted by a fresh-faced private, one of the survivors of another unit that he’d picked up some time ago. “Sir,” the private said as he saluted, “we have a situation at Beta Portal.”

“The south manhole cover?”

“Yes, sir! At least a dozen soldiers requesting entrance. American, sir. One has a radio, and they said they were directed to us by the 20s.”

“Very well. Show me.” Taggart followed, and they arrived in minutes at an entrance.
 

Twelve Army soldiers—regulars, from their insignias—stood in the alcove in formation at attention. “Why were these soldiers granted access before I was advised,” Taggart said to Eagan.

“They came down while we were in conference, sir. Security breach—coulda been a total FUBAR, and I’ll deal with that later.”

Taggart nodded, then strode into the alcove. One soldier in front of the others saluted, and Taggart returned the salute. “So you’ve been reassigned to my command?”

“Sergeant Beaudoin reporting for duty, sir. I have eleven surviving soldiers. They’re yours now, sir, if you can use us.”

Taggart smiled. “I certainly can. Very well. Put your men at ease, Beaudoin, and we’ll get some chow for your boys and girls. I’ll return after you’ve all eaten, and we can debrief you then.”

Taggart turned without waiting for more saluting silliness and walked away with Eagan on his heels. He still hadn’t gotten used to people saluting him and really didn’t like it much even in this subterranean safety where no enemy could see it and mark him as an officer.
 

“Shitbird, as I was saying. We need to organize a new raid. Obviously, we have to leave our electronics down here, but we have what, forty-five people now? Roughly. God bless the 20s for that. Have someone map those coordinates we received, and let me know where it is.”

“Happily, Cap. Time to crush the Spyder. If we can hit him in time, we can probably use his bunker as a COP.”

“If it’s in a good tactical position, then yeah, we’ll definitely use it for a combat outpost. The area’s bound to be highly kinetic, so we’ll need something to fall back to anyway. Then, when this Backdraft op goes up, we’ll press the OpFor and their Korean masters from their own lapdog’s base.”

“Sir, I thought the U.S. Army doesn’t fall back, sir. Don’t you mean retrograde?”

“Don’t be an oxygen thief, shitbird. Enough of the mil-speak. Now go follow my orders, pretty please and with cherries on top, before I bust you back down to private.”

Eagan didn’t bother to make his usual reply—that he was already a private—before veering off to follow orders. Taggart was a bit disappointed. Maybe Eagan was actually getting used to Taggart’s field promotion being essentially permanent. He hoped not, as Eagan gave him his only real sense of camaraderie these days.

- 19 -

2200 HOURS - ZERO DAY +32

JAZ STOOD ATOP the hill and, though the intervening food forest blocked her view, she stared down toward the farm with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. “Soon I’ll kill every last damn one of them,” she muttered.

Choony frowned. “So much hate will eat you from the inside, my good friend,” he commented. It was a shame to watch Jaz growing harder, colder. Of course, he’d never met “streeter” Jaz before, the hard-eyed survival-first young woman she’d had to become in the city, so he feared this new world had destroyed the girl’s innocence. But Choony still saw the beautiful person inside her, and he did his best to nurture that, to keep it alive in her. She deserved better.

Jaz exhaled a long sigh. “I know, Choony, and I hate that, but not as much as I hate Peter and his goons. They totally deserve the whirlwind that’s coming for them.”

Joe Ellings, on Jaz’s other side, shrugged. “It is what it is, Jaz. But with these knives and pistols you’ve brought, me and my friends reckon we can arm up your people. When the time comes, Peter won’t know what hit him.”

Choony said, “So how are you going to deliver these weapons to the Clan? You said you had a plan.”

“Easy,” Joe replied. “We’ll stash them behind the outhouses, in the reeds.”

Choony considered this for a moment. The farm had three outhouses, which led to 220-gallon concrete cisterns. Worms ate everything that went in, and their castings—along with urine and any water—drained into a long, gravel-filled trench that acted as a grow bed for some sort of swamp plants. Overflow went into a second trench, which in turn overflowed into a swale and soaked into the ground. He’d seen the water as it left the trenches, and it was crystal clear.

“So the Clan will pick up the weapons as opportunity allows?” Choony asked.

Joe nodded and opened his mouth to respond, but his radio crackled: “Hey, Joe, status check.”

Joe clicked the button on his radio and it chirped, letting him know he was broadcasting, but then the little red power light went out. He tried again, but nothing happened. “Battery died,” he said to Choony and Jaz, “so y’all best hightail it out of here afore someone comes to check on me.”

Choony nodded. Yes, that sounded like a great idea. “Alright, Joe. Good to see you again, and I thank you for the help you’re providing to my new family down there.”

Jaz motioned to one of the two Marines who had accompanied them to the farm. “Alright, let basecamp know we’re heading home.”

The young man pulled out his handheld, but frowned. “No power on it. When we get back, I’m definitely going to square away whoever was on charging duties.”

Choony felt a tiny spider of doubt in the back of his mind. Both radios? At the same time? That didn’t bode well, but nothing was yet certain. “Alright, Jaz. Let’s get back and grab another radio so we can let Ethan know the plan.”

They shook Joe’s hand, and then they headed north while the White Stag sympathizer walked south toward the farm.

* * *

Taggart stood with his command staff—Eagan, another soldier, and one of the Militia members—looking at the operational area map. It was just a folding paper map from a gas station, but it showed the streets around Spyder’s base. Six pennies were spread around to show the general location of each squad under his command for the current operation. An unused stack of nickels would be used for enemy positions. Eventually. So far everything was quiet, and that made Taggart nervous. “Where the hell is the OpFor?” he asked Eagan, but it was rhetorical.

Eagan, ever the smartass, shrugged and said, “Maybe they realized what douchebags they are and, overcome with remorse, they all killed themselves.”

Taggart fought the urge to grin. “And deny us the satisfaction of killing them ourselves? That would just be adding insult to injury. No, they’re in there somewhere. Those few blocks are a maze of rubble now. We just have to figure out where they are.”

He looked again at the map. Spyder’s three blocks—no, now five, the bastard—were outlined in red pen, and his outposts outside the red zone were noted with X marks. “We’ve already cleared his outposts, all four of them. They were empty. Eagan, status checks.”

A minute later, Eagan returned and nodded. “They’re all now in position at the perimeter and awaiting furthers. Still no contacts. Maybe Spyder’s guys are at the dee-fack.”

Taggart kept looking at the map, but replied, “Neg. It’s after 2200 hours so they aren’t taking chow. And our latest intel said Spyder is once again being a good little lapdog, so I doubt he’s been wiped out by our Hajji visitors and their DPRK masters. Do we see any civilians?”

“No, sir. No reports of civvy contact. But RumInt says Spyder has a dusk curfew for civilians, so that’s not out of order.”

“RumInt? Eagan, rumors are not intel. But you’re right, he does have a curfew. Still, I don’t like how quiet it is. Advise all units to maintain a slow op tempo. Slow and steady, stay alive, converge on the objective together. I need live soldiers, not dead heroes. Something ironic about using the enemy’s own radios against them.”

Eagan grinned, saluted, then moved aside to get on the radio leaving Taggart to his worry and his map.

Taggart’s radio, tuned to the all-units channel, crackled to life. “Zipline, Zipline, this is Bravo One. We have visual on six Hajjis, small arms only, twelve meters east of Oscar Four, unaware of our presence. They’re in a bagged emplacement.”