Overrun (10 page)

The sounds of battle still waged
in the streets overhead. Their chilling echoes followed him into the darkness
as he walked deeper into the hellishness of what the city of his children had
suddenly become.

General Maxwell A. Tuttle sat in
the large Vulture command room surrounded by more than a hundred holovid
monitor screens.

As Quadrant Four commander, he
was one of four military leaders in charge of mission assignments and overall
troop movements of the secretive Vulture squads and Plan Zero. Hoping his men
didn’t focus on the morality issues the mission entailed any more than he did
himself, he monitored the often-changing scenes in front of him and nervously
tracked their movements.

The assault helicopters carrying
Vulture Unit 967 approached Section 15 of the "now-at-war theater".
Section 15 encompassed more than five hundred square miles along the Pacific
Ocean near the old city of Seattle, Washington.

Tuttle was responsible for the
defense of five scientific domes in this area including Science Dome 15 which
housed the Beam Cannon Hardware.

The hardware itself made the
defense of SD15 a top nationwide priority. When he sat and thought about it,
with this lifesaving technology under his protection, the fate of the world
rested in the hands of him and his men. It was a thought he tried not to ponder
for too long.

Tuttle tried not to think about
a lot of things and chose not to make himself aware of a lot more.

Since the war began and the
initiation of Plan Zero was underway, he refused to give or receive orders
anywhere but inside the control room. Watching through the monitors kept him
removed from what was happening. It kept him from realizing too much what he
was doing and what he had already done.

With a grimace he poured another
steaming cup of coffee down his parched throat and watched the first mission of
the day slowly unfold. It was one of a numerous many he had ordered underway in
the next twenty-four hours.

Vulture Unit 967 streaked
towards Seattle with ten heavily armed helicopters and about one hundred men.
Seattle would be the first overrun city in Tuttle’s quadrant to be neutralized
by Plan Zero.

Within a few hours of the
declaration of war, J.G.U. troops had descended upon most major cities on both
coasts and were moving at alarming rates towards the domes. Their attack was so
unexpectedly thorough and efficient, it was quickly believed by almost everyone
in the military community that Plan Zero was the only way to halt its progress.

The assault helicopters made
their approach low to the ground to avoid detection by J.G.U. radar and
satellite detection systems. The soldiers onboard carried enough explosives to
completely obliterate ten cities the size of Seattle.

The redundancy was to ensure a
great area of land surrounding the city was also obliterated. Its rubble and
fiery destruction was theorized to offer impassible barriers and further
protection to the nearby domes.

It was also deemed necessary in
the event any of the team members were captured before successful detonation of
their personal mission assignments.

When the mission was
accomplished and Seattle was ultimately destroyed, the threat of the J.G.U.
occupying force in the area would also be gone. The countryside surrounding the
region would be thoroughly unapproachable due to the severity of the flames.
The troop force within the city’s blast zone would be obliterated along with
everything else.

That was how Tuttle had always
envisioned it. He had outlined many such scenarios when championing his
theories during the development of the plan. Despite that being many years ago,
he still strongly believed in the strategy.

Tuttle watched the single icon
on his screen marking the attack group split apart and become four separate air
assault teams. Each sped to the furthest corners of the city to insert their
demolition crews.

The mission plan was to enter
the city undetected at all four sides, and once within, construct the massive
explosive set.

From more than eight different
image feeds spread across his monitors, Tuttle watched the helicopters settle
over their targets.

"Mission go," he
whispered into his transmitter.

He gazed in fascinated horror at
the screens while the Vulture soldiers jumped. Black parachutes barely visible
in the night fluttered open and carried the demolition insertion teams lazily
to the ground.

Tuttle swiveled in his chair to
focus on a holovid image transmitted from a shoulder cam on one of his men. He
ignored the pain the hot coffee had left in his throat while he watched them
bury their chutes in the sand and sprint off toward their individual target
sites.

Each team had
twenty-four hours to rig and arm their demolition assignments.

The occupied city of Seattle was
set and wired three hours ahead of schedule.

General Tuttle nodded approval
into the holvid transmitter within the command room and watched the screens
tracking the attack craft as they retreated from the city.

When he was satisfied the last
assault craft had reached the ten-mile blast safety zone, Tuttle gave the
order.

"Let it go," he said
quietly into his headset.

Behind the fleeing helicopters
of the Vulture team, the city of Seattle became a mammoth flash of flame and
light. Fire, dirt and debris mushroomed miles into the sky.

Millions saw the blast that
night. Millions more wondered what had just occurred.

"Baby Flight to Home Team,”
the voice of one of the pilots came across the control room speakers. “Baby
Flight to Home Team. Come in. Over.”

Tuttle was somewhat surprised at
the lack of emotion he felt. He pressed his transmitter close to his mouth and
scanned his eyes across the monitors in front of him.

The entire countryside seemed
ablaze from the blast. From an image transmitted from the rear of one of the
lead helicopters, he watched the others race away to escape its wrath.

"Go, Baby Flight," he
answered.

"Detonation," the
pilot reported. “Detonation confirmed.”

"Copy that,” Tuttle lowered
his head and replied softly into the transmitter. “Return to the palace, Baby
Flight.”

"Copy, Home Team. Baby
Flight out."

Tuttle knew this was not the
time to mourn. It was not even a time to think. The first time this
happened…for anyone…would be the time when it would all come undone.

He turned to another set of
command screens beaming live feed from the next scheduled operation in Beuford,
Washington. The images coming from the choppers racing from the destroyed
Seattle region still displayed on the monitors at his back.

Like Seattle, Beuford was
heavily occupied and located even more dangerously close to Science Dome 15 and
the Beam Cannon Hardware housed there. Science Dome 15 represented everything.
The future to the world. An end to the war.

"Holy God, it's finally
happening," Tuttle breathed out loudly to the command room. He put a hand
to his face and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Tuttle sat back in his seat for
a moment and closed his eyes. The nightmares lurking behind them seemed less
monstrous and more appealing than the world he lived now. He slouched his
shoulders further back into his command chair and tried to find a world
somewhere in between.

Around him he could hear the
hushed voices of his command center crew as they hovered about their controls.

Tuttle remained sitting with his
eyes closed and waited for the next mission status report to come in.

* * *

A faint tug from a hand reaching
over his shoulder brought Tuttle back from his attempt at sleep. His eyes flew
instantly awake, and his mind stepped his body and senses up to full alert.

He looked down at his watch to
see that more than four complete hours had passed.

The monitors in front of him
still flickered brightly across the dark silent command room. The men around
him continued to work noiselessly. Some took guarded glances back in his
direction when he sat straight up in his chair.

An arm reached toward him and
held a steaming cup of coffee just under his nose. Tuttle took the cup from the
outstretched hand and stared at the air assault team swooping across the
screens.

He took a deep sip to chase away
the rest of his brief sleep and went over his recent orders to the Vulture
troops massing near Science Dome 15 again in his head. They were almost eighty
miles from the city limits of Beuford and about one hundred miles from Seattle
which had already been burned.

He still felt he was right. It
was all necessary.

J.G.U. troop activity had been
extremely heavy on that part of the coast. The invasion force was much larger
than anyone had ever expected. Enemy divisions were already branching out and
flanking inward toward the center of the country. Every dome throughout the
nation was now threatened.

The protection of Science Dome
15 was his primary and nearly sole objective. The secrets to the Beam Cannon
Hardware were held within its walls. Technology, that once implemented, would
blanket the ruined world with a new atmospheric shield.

The secrecy of its location had
to be maintained until the Vulture squads had been given enough time to do
their work. Tuttle’s orders were to utilize every last man to the utmost end to
keep the J.G.U. in this area completely at bay.

The United States’ bid to win
the war rested on keeping the secrets held within this facility from being
wrestled away. If this were to happen, everything would be lost.

It was entirely for this reason
that Tuttle had sent eighteen chopper teams to Beuford. Thirty-six assault
helicopters in all, each carried two full squads of men and enough high-end
explosives to obliterate the city more than a hundred times over. Its smoking
ruins would burn uninhabitably hot for months offering no means whatsoever of
approach…or escape.

Tuttle fought the vomit
struggling to escape his stomach when he thought of the chances of even his own
men going in on the mission escaping the destruction of the city alive.

He watched the helicopters swoop
across the command screens towards Beuford and Science Dome 15. An entire
garrison of ground soldiers had also been dispatched to surround the facility
in the event the attack chopper teams failed or were destroyed.

The attack aircraft sped closer
to Beuford. So far there were no signs of detection. They had progressed
precisely on the schedule he had designed to avoid peak troop movements and
general civilian activity within the occupied city.

J.G.U. troops were pouring into
the country by the thousands. With the arrival of each new regiment, even dusk
and deep night bombing raids were becoming more dangerous.

Rumors of Plan Zero were flying
around J.G.U. camps. Vulture spies had reported back that every J.G.U. soldier
was ordered on twenty-four hour watch for surprise air and land assaults in
addition to their regular assignments.

Every J.G.U. division was on
full alert. Their strategists were beginning to surround and protect their
troops and positions accordingly.

Tuttle feared in another
seventy-two hours it would be nearly impossible to even approach the cities
that were already overrun. They were being fortified and secured that quickly.

The Vulture choppers reached
their insertion locations and hovered just above the ground waiting to unload.

Tuttle stared hard at the
command screens and prayed for the men readying themselves to drop into the
dark and enter the war. He wiped a thick line of sweat creeping down the side
of his face with the back of his hand.

Dark lines dropped from all
sides of the helicopters, and the men began to descend quickly down.

Tuttle reached for another sip
of coffee and glanced at the clock over his console.

This would be the last Plan Zero
mission before dawn. He hoped to order some ground troops to Science Dome 15 to
assess the area once the city was lit.

He swirled cold coffee across
the dried skin of his lips when all the command screens before him suddenly
went dark.

"What the…?" he asked
frantically waving his tracking team back to their posts.

Every man standing or milling
about the room rushed to a station. The screens remained black at the front of
the room.

Tuttle could feel unease and
fear stifle the air around.

"Mayday! Mayday!
Mayday!" A scared voice crackled from several command console speakers
throughout the room. The signal was very faint and faded in and out.

"Determining
position," someone to Tuttle's left said just loud enough to be heard over
the din. Tuttle turned from the men scrambling at their posts to the image of
the attack area that now filled the front screens. "Viper 5 is in the
lead."

"Right there," someone
said pointing at a small image that flashed across one of the center monitors
and then vanished.

"Viper 6, Viper 6, do you
copy?" Mick Piper, Tuttle's chief communication officer, calmly spoke into
his headset. "Can you see Viper 5? Repeat. Do you have a visual on Viper
5? Over."

"Negative, Home Team,"
a different scared voice sounded into the control room. "He's down! He's
gone down! Repeat. Viper 5 has gone down! Heavy troop activity beneath us.
Rockets are beginning to fire."

"Give us your coordinates,
son, we're having trouble locking in your position," Piper's voice
remained steady. Tuttle walked over and stood behind his shoulder. "Tell
us where you are. Over."

"We've also lost contact
with the rest of the Vulture team! Repeat. We've lost contact with rest of
team. Jesus Christ! We're all alone out here!"

The frantic voice faded from the
speakers and was replaced by the loud searing hiss of empty static. In another
instant it was gone. Only the small steady hum of power running through the equipment
filled the silent room. No one dared to breathe.