Soldier Up (10 page)

It wasn’t all clear sailing for Mel in February due to her weakened state she caught pneumonia and was hospitalized for over a week and a good part of that week she was unconscious.   Again the prognosis by the doctors wasn’t good, but Mel being the fighter pulled through eventually.  She left the hospital after a week and a half she went home to recover, where Lucida and John could take good care of her.

              Mel hadn’t been back to work in over six months and really had no intention of going back; yes she tired easily still and had a lot more good days than bad.  Finally, John asked her about her work situation and she decided to come clean about how she felt.  John told her that if she wanted to quit it was fine with him, her caveat was that if she did would she still be able to keep Lucida, she didn’t want to fire her because she no longer wanted to work.  John said he didn’t mind at all, he never even thought about firing her if she quit her job.

              Mel made it clear to John that she may never go back to work again and again John said he didn’t mind at all, as long as it made her happy.  After everything she had been through over the last year he felt she could do whatever she wanted to do as long as she’s happy, money wasn’t an issue.  The next day Mel made an appointment to talk to her boss later that day, the company wasn’t surprised by her not coming back and for the most part they had already replaced her.  It was a real easy exit out of the company with no hard feelings on either side.  They assured her that if she ever wanted to return she would be more than welcome, of course both parties knew would never happen.

              John loved that Mel was home all of the time; it gave her more time to focus on her health and the kids.  She wasn’t fully recovered and probably never would be, it had all been taking its toll on the family and really scaring the kids.  Even more so all the negative news these days, Russia once again threatening to nuke the west if they didn’t allow its incursions into its former satellite countries, this time they were working on exploiting Poland.  North Korea was threatening nuclear attacks on South Korea, Japan and the US.  Various Middle East players have been threatening to attack more moderate Islamic countries, Israel and the US, since the fall of Syria which had a covert nuclear and biological program the US had no real idea where some of those items were.

              It was a mess, one of the newest doom and gloom predictions were Solar Flares being so severe that it would cause local, state, and perhaps nationwide electrical blackouts and if truly bad it could send the entire world back into the stone ages.  So according to the media you had a choice of nuclear strikes, chemical attacks or solar flares which would send everyone back hundreds of years.  Over the last year it seemed to Mel, and maybe it was because she was home more with the TV on and had more time to read online news, that the death and destruction news was becoming more prevalent over the last year.

              She had tried talk to John about it but he never seemed interested, most of it wasn’t news to him he saw a lot of it in military traffic he received keeping him informed of the situation and a lot of it drove the type of training they did.  As for the Solar Flares he did talk about that a bit he said it’s actually called a Carrington Event when it knocks out power and kills electronics.  He then asked her to think back all those years when they were building the shelter under their home they had talked about it quite a bit and even designed it with that in mind.  He told her that they even had electronics down in the shelter that was in faraday boxes and bags.  That all of the wiring in the shelter and the house for that matter had EMP shielding; he even had their vehicles protected as much as he could, no one really knew how much any of that would really help until it happened. He went on to stress again that no one really knew what would happen if there was an EMP event either nuclear or solar, that there has been a ton of testing over the years but much of it was inconclusive.

              He even told her that the 19th and other special operations groups drilled all sorts of scenarios in the event that something like that happened.  He assured her that they were as prepared as they were going to get. 

              She thought about what he said and did vaguely remember some of the discussions they had years ago about EMP, Nuclear attack, chemical and biological attacks, or the threat of home invasion. That’s why they had the shelter built about twenty-five feet under the house, one big safe room that had over two thousand square feet of living space.  Not that she had forgotten anything about the shelter, she was down there a few times a month, well medical condition permitting, checking on supplies and making sure things that needed replacing were replaced or updated.  She just hadn’t thought about the specifics of why they had it built. 

              They hadn’t done any drills in years, she didn’t know the last time the kids were in it, Lucida was in it far more then she was.  Her family was the only ones invited to share the shelter with and she was happy to be included but believed it was a huge waste of money, but it was there money to waste.  Mel thought, mostly just for something to do, that the family should start doing the occasional drill and go over evacuation routes, if the kids were at school how they were going to be picked up. 

              When she spoke to John about it he indulged her and so did Lucida they all understood she was looking for a purpose right now, besides what could it hurt.  Mel really got into it again, researching how to survive each type of disaster and best ways to handle them.  Of course she ran them by John who was all for it because she was all for it.  The Army Special Warfare Community had brainstormed all of these scenarios for years and still was.  They drilled and drilled each of them as much as they could also given the parameters of what they could represent as a real world scenario with real world conditions. 

              The research and planning that Mel did she did with Lucida who helped her with all of the research and implementation, the more Lucida read about the different types of disaster scenarios the more convinced she became that the money spent on the shelter below the house was not as much a waste as she thought.  She and her husband lived less the half a mile away in an apartment so if anything did happen they were close to help and get help if needed.

By mid-summer Mel had moved passed the doom and gloom of the end of the world scenarios she was prepping for.  She had moved onto photography and art which was a lot more positive and you could see it in her moods.  When Mel found something new that she liked she went whole hog on it.  She bought thousands of dollars of photography equipment and enrolled in classes at the local College.  She started getting more involved in the art world and volunteering, life for Mel was good and to top it off most of her hair had grown back.

              The doom and gloom news stories were still being reported, now more than ever.  Most recent was that the North Koreans were now stating they had a way to deliver a nuclear strike on the US mainland, the Russians were still threatening an all-out nuclear war with the west especially after their invasion of Poland.  The Islamic Jihadist now had access to nuclear weapons, apparently Syria was a lot further along than western intelligence agencies knew about, problem was the same intelligence agencies had no idea if they had an effective way of delivering them; the word was that they didn’t but they didn’t really know.

              In other news they were reporting a large solar event was to hit this weekend which brought out all the Carrington Event talk and CME which is a massive burst of solar wind and magnetic fields rising above the solar corona or being released into space.  The belief by the talking heads was that it wouldn’t affect anything on Earth and even if it did no one would notice.  Yup, doom and gloom, doom and gloom.

              On the other hand Colonel Clayton was getting ready to leave on their two week summer field exercise; it would take place on Camp Parks so they would be local, well locally out in the sticks.  They had been preparing for months most of Camp Parks was moving to the field, the 19
th
would be acting as the Opposing Force.  There was the 184
th
Infantry – Air Assault, 319
th
Signal Battalion, 368
th
Military Intelligence Battalion, 143
rd
Artillery from Union City, 352 Combat Support Hospital and a few other units.

              All of the above units would be moving to the field by vehicles, the 19
th
would divide out into their teams and would jump into various locations to conduct counter-operations against the units in the field.  The only unit off limits was the field hospital; it was there to support everyone in the field.  The FTX (field training exercise) was scheduled to kick off at 0100 with most of the units heading out from main post which was in about fifteen minutes. The 19
th
wouldn’t move out until later on in the morning they needed to give the unit’s time to get out and set up, but everyone was in and ready to go.

              The word went out for everyone to return to their vehicles, the Soldiers from the 19
th
were helping with getting everyone from the various units off safely.  Throughout post you could hear the sound of engines starting and revving the engines, it was time to move out.  Vehicle after vehicle moved with the convoy heading out into the field, men and women in field gear were looking forward to getting the two weeks over with and getting back to their lives, the FTX was an inconvenience for most of them, well except for the SF guys who loved being in the field.

              Twenty minutes after the vehicles departed main post every single light on post went out, what vehicles were moving, at least most of them, died right there and came to a rolling stop.  The men of the 19
th
who were standing around playing grab ass or just talking looked at each other as they were plunged into darkness.  Some of them reached for their cell phones to give them some light but they were dead too.  This prompted all of the rest the men to look at their cell phones which were also dead, most of them had a good idea of what this meant, and they hurried back to Headquarters to find out what the hell was going on.

              Colonel Clayton was standing out front of HQ with a very bad feeling; he was feeling everything just went to hell in a hand basket.  Dognillo came to him to ask what his instructions were, the Colonel looked at him for a moment, “Get everyone geared up and issue weapons with live ammo and secure our perimeter. Let’s start there.”  Dog took off while at the same time barking out orders to the men who were there, the others would be along shortly.

              As soon as the perimeter was secure he ordered that a team be sent to the motor pool to see what vehicles would start, the ones that wouldn’t get the mechanics on them.  He then ordered that other teams be sent out to find the units that just left and offer what assistance they could.  He was the Senior Officer on post for the time being and possibly for the foreseeable future, he told them to tell the units which shouldn’t be too far off to return to main post, to their units.  If the vehicles wouldn’t start get as much gear out of them that they could carry or load up the vehicles that were still running, if any.  There were quite a few of old two and a half ton trucks and old five ton trucks in those convoys, if the problem is what he thought it was, those vehicles should still run.  Then the Colonel ordered the Sergeant Major to crack the faraday cages and get the tactical radios out, test them and if they work distribute them to the teams.  Once that was done he wanted two teams to head outside the main gate and headed toward Dublin Blvd to see what was going on, make sure they have radios if they’re working.

              He also told him that he wanted a command meeting set up for 0300 in the main conference room in the 19th HQ, get all the commanders into it that were coming in from the field ASAP.  Lastly, at least for now, dig out the old TA-312’s we have, get all the batteries out of the cages too, test to see if they work, see if the Signal Company has any cable dogs and if so starting lines with running phones out to the LPOP’s we have set up.  Once you get in touch with them see if they have an old switch board we can try, let’s get moving we need to try to get as much ahead of this before sun up.  The Sergeant Major responded, “Yes Sir!” and took off.

              Colonel Clayton stood there in the dark looking around, “So we finally did it,” he thought to himself.  He needed to get everyone on the same sheet of music before sunrise, the civilian community would be waking up and they are going to want answers.  Then it occurred to him that back in the Midwest and East Coast the population was waking up probably to the same situation they were in.

The Sergeant Major came back with good news, the radios and batteries they had pulled out of the cages worked just great.  They were also in touch with the signal company who was going to be able to run the cable and phones out to the LPOPs.  Anzio Dognillo came in a few moments later and reported the meeting was a go for 0300, that most of the units didn’t get that far away in some cases a mile or two.  Most of the units had some vehicles that were running, generally the older ones but it was enough.  He also reported the perimeter around the 19th had been set up and teams were out of the wire headed towards Dublin and we had comm’s with them.

At 0300 the Commanders of all the units who were involved in the FTX met in the conference room, there was a lot of chatter regarding what the hell was going on, was this part of the FTX or what?  The Colonel walked into the room and the Sergeant Major called everyone to attention, the Colonel replied, “As you were,” and everyone sat back down.

The Colonel looked around at the room, “Gentlemen and Ladies, I don’t have fucking clue one what is going on right now.  This is not part of the FTX I assure you.  I do have some educated guesses as to what might have happened but that’s all.”  The Colonel went on for the next hour covering the ins and outs of EMP and how it could affect things.  They were only forty-five minutes into this thing and at best it was all a guess on his part.  He went onto say that since he wasn’t sure he was going to act like it was.

He asked the Commander of the 352nd Combat Support Hospital how quickly he could get set up and he was expecting casualties at any time.  Their Commander was a Lieutenant Colonel who asked why all the urgency? The Colonel explained on any given day, more than 87,000 flights is in the skies in the United States. If this is an EMP event I do expect aircraft to drop from the skies if they haven’t already, we need to be prepared.  The 352nd Colonel hadn’t considered that and nodded and said he could be set up and ready to receive patients within the hour.  “Great,” responded Colonel Clayton. “Let’s get that done.  We also need to get all of the water buffalos and fuel tracks back here and placed under guard, I’ll leave each unit to do this, but it needs to be a top priority.  He was now addressing the two Company Commanders of the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry, I’m going to need your boys gentlemen, we have to secure this entire camp now, right now my men have secured our compound but we are few and can’t be everything to everyone.  Your men have their weapons and will be issued basic combat loads, ammo, MRE’s, grenades …”

“Sir, are we at War?” Asked Captain Hodgkins.

“As I told you Captain I have no clue what’s going on?” said the Colonel.

“Then why all the live ammo and stuff?”

“Well Captain in a few hours the civilian population of the entire West Coast will be waking up and wondering what the hell happened.  They will be without power, it looks like some cars won’t start, and will they have running water? We currently don’t, what about if one of the aircraft hits one of the local neighborhoods? People are going to be scared, we need to be ready.  Where are they going to go? They’re going to be looking for help from the Government Captain and we are the Government.  Right now our ability to take care of ourselves is finite. People in the long run are going to want what we have and I’m not going to give it to them.”

“Sir what about our families?” asked a Major from the 386th MI Battalion.  Colonel Clayton knew this question was going to come up.

“Thank you Major I’m glad you asked.  Over the next few hours as the sun comes up we will have a better idea of what’s going on.  Look I’m not going to keep anyone here who can’t be here, period.  For those of you who are willing to stay we will send out trucks up to fifty miles to collect your families and bring them here.  Now we’re not your moving company what you will be able to bring back will be limited, it won’t be one truck per family, there will be two to three families per truck.  If this is an EMP event we can’t spare a lot of fuel. If your family is further than fifty miles away then I’m truly sorry there isn’t anything we can do.  However, if you choose to leave you can hitch a ride out with one of the trucks and we will take you as far out as that truck is going no further.  We will not give you any of our vehicles, it’s not going to happen folks we need them.  Also, if you are leaving the weapons stay here, I shouldn’t have to say that but it’s gonna come up.  I also suggest that once we get everything set up this morning and I do mean after, start sending your troops to see if their vehicle starts.  They can use their own vehicle to retrieve their own family and bring them back. How far out doesn’t matter then but we will not be giving them any fuel.” Dognillo leaned over and said something into the Colonels ear. “Ok, I stand corrected we can give them in their fuel tank between five and ten galleons if they need it, they will not be allowed to take any of the fuel cans. Please keep this in mind if this is an EMP event the electric pumps at gas stations won’t be working you really need to hammer that home to your troops.  That means they won’t be able to pull up to a gas station and get gas.  Lastly it’s gonna take us a few days to bring all the families in so please be patient.  We can’t leave, no! I won’t leave the camp undefended. Questions?”

“Sir that seems somewhat harsh,” said the Colonel from the 352nd.

Colonel Clayton responded, “It’s harsh but necessary.  Look, if this is an EMP event things are going to get a lot worse real quick before they ever get better.  Let’s face the reality of the situation; most people don’t know how to live without modern convinces.  People are going to wait for the Government to come riding to their rescue; it’s not going to happen.  We are going to help certainly, but not at the cost to everyone here and this command, we are still here to defend the United States and its Constitution.  If you or your troops thinks that’s ever going to change then you need to pack it up and leave.  There are going to be people in hospitals and hospices that need immediate medical care and they’re not going to get it and they are going to die, there’s nothing we can do.  People are going to starve to death starting in a few weeks and die from no water, they just don’t have the survival instincts.”

“Well there’s got to be something more we can do.” Said the Colonel from the 352nd.

“Colonel may I ask your name?” said Colonel Clayton.

“I’m Doctor Steven Spear.”

Colonel Clayton perked up at that, “What kind of doctor?”

“General Practitioner.”

“Thank you doctor I appreciate it.  Once we get going we will have outreach programs into various communities.  Right now I have two A-teams out and each team has a team doc who has the ability to treat and stabilize a lot of stuff.  We have plans in the place for quite a bit of what we expect to happen in this situation, a lot of it though depends on the manpower we have and if fifty percent of the troops decide to head home and not come back that’s obviously going to hurt some of the plans we have.”

“Thank you Colonel Clayton for explaining we appreciate it,” said Dr. Spears.