Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (81 page)

Three…two…one…

When
Cooper Braaten opened his eyes, he was the cold, hard, killing machine that the
Iranians had feared for nearly a decade.  All his storm-tossed emotions—the
anger at the breach in operational security, the upwelling of grief over the
catastrophic loss of half his Team—
everything
not essential to mission
completion were locked securely in the sea chest of his heart.  He would deal
with that post-op. 

“
Yo,
Coop, I got Nest
,” whispered Tank over the net.

Cooper
switched channels on his radio.  “Striker One, Actual, to Nest.”

“
Go
ahead, Striker One, Actual.
”

“We
made a hard landing with Bravo platoon only, grid Poppa-Bravo-Niner. Repeat:
Alpha Platoon is down.  Assuming command and proceeding to objective,
approaching from north.  Multiple tangos on rooftops to north and east of
original LZ, there’s a shit-ton of civvies in between us and the objective,
please advise, over.”

After
the briefest of pauses, he heard the reply: “
Nest copies all, Striker One,
Actual.  You walked into a real sierra-sierra.  We’re getting some interference
on—” 
Static broke up the transmission.

“Nest! 
Nest, come in…” Cooper said.
He looked at Swede who shook his head
sadly. 
Sierra-Sierra. Hmph
, thought Cooper. 
Shit-storm doesn’t
begin to describe it.

“—eat:
proceed to your objective post-haste.  No contact with Slipknot.  Repeat: WE
HAVE LOST CONTACT WITH SLIPKNOT.  You are weapons-free to engage any enemy
encountered.  Just get to that hospital!
” 

“Copy
that, Nest.  Striker One, Actual, out.”  Cooper switched back to his command
frequency. 

“Let’s
get down to the street.  Go, go, go!” he said, pumping his arm for the men on
the adjacent building to see.

“
I
got a fire escape, east side
,” said Mike, already running across the roof.

Once
on the ground, Cooper’s squad took a knee, weapons up and covering all sectors
as he consulted the map attached his arm guard.  “All right, we’re two blocks
south of the objective.  Charlie—”

“Yeah
.”

“Get
set up. We’ll leapfrog to the annex building across the alley from the
objective, south side.”

“Hooyah,
” was Charlie’s
whispered reply from the opposite side of the building.

“Let’s
go,” Cooper said.  He flashed a hand gesture and led his fireteam across the
dark alley.  He noticed the absence of normal civilian traffic.  There were a
few cars, driving by, but nothing like what he had expected for Los Angeles at
sunset.  It should be packed with civvies.  It looked liked the general
population was heeding the government’s call to stay home and avoid contact
with people to try and stem the spread of the flu.  Or maybe the reports that
people were starting to die weren’t just media hype.  Either way, Cooper didn’t
like what he saw.

“Awful
quiet
,”
Charlie whispered from a block away.

“
Where
the hell is everybody?
” asked Tank.

“
Coop,
I got a body in the street.  Civvie,
” whispered Tank.  A second later,
“No
wounds.  He’s cold.  Think it was the flu?”

“Damn
if I know.  Just keep your eyes open and try not to touch anything.  No one
gets infected.  Team 1 moving.”  Cooper paused at the corner of a building,
covering the forward advance of the rest of his fireteam.  In the distance, he
could hear an ambulance siren echo.  He checked his frequency.  “Striker One to
Slipknot Support, do you read me?”

Static.

Switching
back to his command frequency, he whispered, “Still can’t raise the Secret
Service.  Something ain’t right, boys.  Stay frosty,” he warned.

“
Team
2 in position
,” Charlie reported in a whisper.

Cooper
waited until he could see Mike, Jax, and Swede at the emergency exit of the
parking garage across the street—three shadows waiting for him.  Suddenly the
world around him was plunged into darkness. 

“Wait
one,” he hissed.  The ground started to rumble, then a dull, deep
booooom
echoed between the buildings around them.  Car alarms went off and in the
distance he heard glass shattering from what must have been dozens of plate
glass windows.

“
The
hell was that?
” hissed Charlie.

“
Earthquake?”
asked Jax.

“Go
dark!” whispered Cooper.  Now that the street lights and shop signs were
extinguished, he flipped down the state-of-the art wide-view night-vision
goggles attached to his helmet and turned them on.  The world went black, then
glowed green and came into clear focus.  The six tube design gave him the
widest possible view with the best clarity and definition available.  He could
see the blinking IR markers on his team across the street as they crouched,
weapons out, scanning for threats.  Textbook.  He grinned.

“Nest,
Striker One, Actual, how copy?” he whispered.  Getting no response he gritted
his teeth and sprinted across the street.  As he took his place next to Mike,
he tried again.  “I say again, Nest, come in.  This is Striker One, Actual.”

Static.

“
I
got a bad feeling about this
,” whispered Charlie’s voice.  “
All clear
from our side.  Comm net totally deserted.
”

“Well,
if that was a ‘quake, our job just got a little harder.  Hey, I got a visual on
the main entrance.  We’re a hundred yards out.  Moving now,” warned Cooper.  He
used hand signals to direct his squad.  One by one they filed out and ran for
the annex building, staying as close to walls as they could.

“
No
movement from the rooftops.  I don’t think our tangos hung around
,”
reported Charlie.   

Cooper
paused at the corner of the Annex building to catch his breath and scan the
rooftops once more. “Team 1 in position.  Rooftops clear. Bring it home, 2.”

“Moving
.”

Out
of the green-tinted shadows displayed in his night-vision goggles, Cooper
watched his second in command lead the last remaining fireteam.  Each man
sprinted forward and dropped to one knee, covering everything in front and
above him.  The next man ran past and found a spot farther along and like
clockwork, they leapfrogged past each other..

Cooper
couldn’t shake a feeling that they were being watched.  Something was wrong, very
wrong.  First they had been ambushed by men on rooftops directly along their
flight path with shoulder-fired missiles that took out half his SEAL Team. 
There were attackers scattered everywhere along their possible evasion routes,
then nothing.  Communications with Coronado just went down the toilet.  Now,
just as they approach their objective, power goes out to this part of Los
Angeles.  He could see in the distance the high-rise buildings were still
lit-up like Christmas trees.  So, the rumbling they’d felt
wasn’t
an
earthquake. 

Someone
had selectively taken out power to the area just around hospital and nowhere
else.  That was
not
the result of a minor earthquake. 
That
showed planning, resources, and purpose.  It
was
a trap – a
well-executed one, but a trap, nonetheless.  He could feel it in his bones.

Static
tickled Cooper’s ear.  He checked his frequency.  “—
in, Striker One!
”

Relief
washed over him.  “Go ahead, Nest, Striker One, Actual.  What the hell is going
on?” he whispered.

“—
attack,
say again, comms failing
—”

Cooper
frowned.  “Say again, Nest?”

“—
blind,
GPS, and our satellites are being
—”

“Nest!”
said Cooper.  “
Come in!
”

“—Korean
strike force!  Hostiles in your
—”

“
Nest!
”
hissed Cooper.  No response.  He looked around.  The familiar look of a major
American city suddenly looked like Tehran to him. 

“
Coop,
what the fuck was that about?
” asked Charlie.

Cooper
checked the main, and auxiliary command frequencies.  Nothing.  Switching back
to his squad, he sighed.  “All right guys, I think we’re on our own.  Last I
could tell, it sounded like HQ said our satellites have been taken out by the
North Koreans.  I’ll bet you a case of beer those tangos on the rooftops were
NKors, too.”

Automatic
weapons fire echoed in the distance.  It was joined with more, closer it
seemed, to the west.  Now they could hear multiple sirens and people screaming
at the edge of their hearing.  Horns started to honk at intersections where the
stoplights were out.  The panicked voices of civilians filtered in between the
darkened buildings.

“
I
got tangos firing on the hospital’s north entrance!
” called out Mike from
the south corner of the annex building.

“—
units
this net, repeat, all units this net: Apache Dawn is in effect.  This is not a
drill!  I repeat, all units this net, Apache-
” the link went dead in a
painful burst of high pitched static. 

The
sound of a gun battle rattled all around them.  A louder
bang
signaled
someone’s use of a grenade.  Single pop-pops.  It sounded like pistols firing
in-between all the
rat-a-tat-a-tat
’s of AK fire.  The screams of
wounded, frightened civilians penetrated the night.  Cooper could also detect
the sharp popping of M4s.  It sounded to him like the Secret Service had enough
sense at least to bring a few real guns.

Civilians
appeared in ones and twos, dragging and pulling each other away from the
fighting.  Some were yelling for help and calling on God.  Most just ran,
crashing into each other and anything that got in their way.  Fear, Cooper
observed, was a powerful motivator.

“
What
the hell is Apache Dawn?
” asked Tank.  The sound of his voice drew Cooper’s
attention back to the mission.  He ignored the civvies and activated his mic.

“That
means we’re in some deep, deep yogurt.”  Cooper paused as a man shoved an
elderly woman out of his way.  The old woman angrily shook off Cooper’s hand
when he tried to steady her.

“Let
go of me!” she hissed.  She tottered off, clutching her tattered dress
tightly. 

Cooper
shook his head.  “Listen up, Striker.  Our President is across the street,
under siege in that hospital.  All that stands between him and those NKors
orver there are a handful of Secret Service agents.  It is up to
us
to
reach and secure him.  That, gentlemen, we
will
do, AT ALL COSTS.”

An
explosion echoed across the street and the number of screaming civilians
diminished.  Smoke drifted across into their positions.  Cooper could see a man
trying to half-drag, half-support a woman with blood covering most of her lower
body. 

Doctors,
nurses, patients – some in hospital gowns flowing in the wind – people caught
on the street all streamed out of the hospital.  The surrounding buildings were
emptying as well, contributing to the growing river of screaming, shoving,
panicked humanity spreading in all directions away from the invaders. 

Most
people seemed not to notice the squad of dark-clad heavily armed SEALs wearing
night-vision goggles as Cooper tried to lead his team through the roiling wave
of civvies.  “Keep moving forward!” he yelled, pushing a screaming man out of
his way.

“Help
us!” someone shouted.

“Run! 
Move!”

“My
baby –“

The
voices rose into a cacophony of sound that fought for dominance with the
explosions that shook the ground.  In all his years of training and fighting
around the world, Cooper had never experienced anything so chaotic.

A
break in the mass of fleeing civvies let him throw his back against the corner
of a building adjacent to the hospital.  It was forward progress, but not much.

This
is taking too long – there’s so many
people!

“From
what I can tell, comms are down net-wide—we are cut off from reinforcements. 
That means it’s time for us to drop the hammer and do what we do best, SEALs.”

“
Hooyah,
Master Chief!
” was the chorused response.

“All
right then,” said Cooper, checking his weapon one more time.  “Let’s show these
cocky little fuckers what happens when you show up uninvited at
our
house.  Team 2, flank right.  Team 1, left.”

“
They’ve
gained entrance to the hospital
,” warned Mike, standing on a parked car’s
hood to see over the mob of running civilians.

“All
right.  I want controlled bursts, and keep it accurate.  We got a lot of
wounded civvies on the ground, so watch your step and keep your footing.  If
you go down your going to have a hard time getting back up.”

“Hooyah
,” someone
grunted.