Authors: Steven Konkoly
“None of the officers showed up?”
“Two are confirmed casualties, and the rest live too far north. They may show up eventually, but until then, you’re Bravo Company commander.”
Kate was going to love this. Alex went from sitting on his ass typing reports about militia units—about a day’s worth of work—to leading a marine rifle company, which in his previous experience took up about twenty-five of the twenty-four hours in a standard day, plus time on the weekends. At least it was only thirty-three marines. A typical rifle company could field nearly one hundred forty.
“Sounds easy enough for now, Colonel. Any other good news?”
“Bravo Company has no equipment. The reserve center at the former air station was wiped out by the tsunami. Nothing was salvageable, including weapons and ammunition. I have arranged the delivery of replacement gear for two platoons. Vehicles, comms gear, weapons, everything.”
“Delivery date?”
“TBD, but I anticipate it will leave Hanscomb Air Force Base within three days. I need you to secure hangar space at Sanford Airport. Preferably, enough space for the entire battalion. I need this done ASAP. An Air Force Combat Controller Team is onsite, preparing the field for sustained 24-hour flight operations. Combat engineers from Maine’s 133
rd
Engineer Battalion will arrive tomorrow to reinforce the location. It’s about to get busy in your neck of the woods.”
“I can’t leave my family here unprotected. Not until the Maine Liberty Militia has been destroyed. I’ll run back and forth to Sanford. All other business will be conducted over the ROTAC.”
“Why don’t you relocate everyone to the airport? In a few days’ time, it’ll be the safest location in Maine.”
“I’m not moving my family into a hangar to eat MREs, drink funky-tasting water and sleep on cots indefinitely. I plan to call on one of the top militia guys in the county tomorrow morning. I’ll secure hangar space immediately after that.”
“Anything stopping you from doing it this afternoon?”
“Yes. Her name is Kate Fletcher. I believe the two of you have met?”
“Fair enough. Contact me when you’ve secured space at the airport. And Alex? I’m glad to hear everyone pulled through the attack. I’d hate to think what might have happened if you hadn’t returned before this morning.”
“Me too. I owe you for the ride back to Maine.”
“It all worked out for a reason. Talk to you tomorrow, Captain Fletcher.”
Alex turned off the phone and lay there for a moment, staring at the deep blue sky. Even with the amphetamines coursing through his body, he could fall asleep in a second if he closed his eyes. Glancing at the gauze holding a 4x4 dressing against his left thigh, he realized he should probably spend some time tending to his injuries. His efforts up until now had mainly consisted of applying some kind of hemostatic dressing or powder to stop the bleeding. He really needed to properly clean and possibly stitch the thigh.
Staff Sergeant Evans emerged from the barn and walked toward Alex. He sat up and planted his brown hiking boots into the grass, preparing for the painful ordeal of standing.
“Natural causes, sir?”
“Metal poisoning.” Alex nodded.
“Lot of that going around,” said Evans.
Chapter 47
EVENT +83:21
Limerick, Maine.
Kate sat down for the first time since the motion sensors had been triggered. Soaked through every layer of her clothing, streams of sweat poured down her cheeks, dropping from her chin onto the table. Alex stepped through the empty slider and set two red plastic cups in front of her. He took the cushioned seat next to her on the porch and squeezed her hand. He looked utterly exhausted, his red face covered by rivulets of perspiration. She closed her eyes.
“I’m willing this into an ice cold beer,” she said.
“Well water. Compliments of the house.”
She drank the cold water in a single gulp and stared through the bullet-riddled porch screen next to her.
“Round one of the cleanup is done. There’s only a one in twenty chance of getting a splinter stuck in your ass—or a piece of glass,” he said, digging into the cushion under him.
He placed a sliver of glass on the table in front of her.
“We’ll get there. Stroke of genius pulling all of the window screens yesterday. Linda’s idea,” she said.
Neither of them spoke for several moments. She felt terrible for her friend. The same .308 that had almost killed Alex and her in the sitting room had effectively destroyed Linda’s ankle. Alex wasn’t too optimistic about her prognosis. Unless she got extremely lucky and the bullet passed cleanly through, the damage likely caused by the steel-jacketed round would require serious orthopedic surgery. Repeated surgeries if she wanted to walk normally on her left leg again.
“They took a beating up there from that .308. We never did find it.”
“Find what?” Kate asked.
“The .308. It wasn’t on any of the guys in front of the garage or in the mudroom. Someone slipped away.”
Kate looked over her shoulder at the eastern tree line. “You don’t think—”
“We scoured the eastern woods,” he said, shaking his head. “No sign of the shooter.”
“They’re gone, honey. They lost twenty-nine men. You don’t come back after that.”
Instead of agreeing with her, he reached out and plucked the porch screen.
“We won’t be able to sit out here at night. Mosquitos will eat us alive.”
She sensed he was holding back. Alex usually played the role of cheerleader.
“We have rolls of screen in the basement. We can pop this stuff out and replace it. Same with the slider. We’ll have to board up one side, but it’ll work,” she said.
“Then there’s the rain. Almost every window in the house is broken, and of course, these are custom windows.”
“We’ll be fine. We can cut enough plywood to cover the windows. We prepared for this possibility. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to work for now.”
“One rainstorm and all of the insulation will get soaked. We’ll be living in a mold experiment by the end of September. This house was so perfect,” he hissed, crumpling his cup.
Kate had never seen Alex like this and wondered if it had something to do with the amphetamine tablets. His hands looked steadier, but they still shook while he held onto the cup of water. This was something bigger. Something he didn’t want to tell her.
“It’s still perfect,” she said. “The kids are fine. Your parents are fine. We have everything we need to thrive here. It’ll take time, but we’ll eventually patch up every single hole in this house.”
Alex sipped his water and stared at the lake beyond the trees.
“What’s going on?” she said, grasping his hand on the table.
“I don’t think we can stay here,” he said, slowly shifting his gaze to her.
His eyes looked distant, almost vacant, which terrified her.
“Honey, you’re starting to scare me.”
“I just scraped chunks of internal organs off the walls inside our house. The bloodstains will never come out, as far as I can tell. I’ve tried scrubbing with bleach. We’ll have to sand the spots and repaint them,” he said softly.
“Then we’ll sand them tomorrow,” she said, searching for something in his eyes.
They softened for a moment, watering.
“Ryan’s helmet had two rips in the fabric covering, one right above his left eye. Without the helmet…I couldn’t clean that up.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” she said.
His eyes sharpened. “There’s a reason I wanted to take the marines to Parsonsfield this morning,” Alex said carefully. “I don’t think this Eli Russell character will ever leave us alone.”
“We already agreed on a strategy to handle him.”
“I didn’t want to tell you this earlier, because I didn’t want to start a panic, and I didn’t want to leave you alone here with the kids. The attack this morning is connected to Milton Mills. I killed Eli Russell’s brother on that bridge.”
“This Russell guy is in charge of the Maine Liberty Militia?”
He nodded. “I killed his brother, and apparently, you killed his nephew in Waterboro. He’s never going to stop, and worse yet, he’s somehow convinced his whole gang of shitheads that we’re some kind of Homeland Security-sponsored, covert operations team. Part of the government’s false-flag operation. He’s using this story to recruit people for his militia.”
Alex’s revelation changed everything. No wonder he had been reluctant to let the kids out of the basement. It had nothing to do with the blood on the walls or the stifling heat. He didn’t think they were safe here.
“So, what do we do? Pack up as much as we can and go back to Durham Road until the military deals with Russell?”
“If we leave the area, I don’t think this place will be here when we get back. We have one option as I see it. We could move everyone to Sanford Airport—temporarily. I’m supposed to secure hangar space for the rest of the battalion tomorrow, and Grady said we could grab extra space.”
Kate stared at him in complete disbelief. Now he was driving around the state for Grady?
“What are you doing in Sanford?”
“Maine is about to be designated as a Regional Recovery Zone and—”
“Yeah, I get all of that. I thought you were putting together reports for Grady. Now you’re making trips to Sanford? When were you planning on telling me?”
“This is the first chance we’ve had to sit down and talk since this morning. I think we can make this work,” he said.
“I can’t see how. The idea of living in a hangar doesn’t sound appealing. Better than dead, but there has to be another solution.”
“Just until Russell is put out of business. The airport will have tight security, and we’ll have a battalion of marines around us. I can billet a squad here to keep an eye on the place, so it’s here when we come back. Part of a forward operating base or something like that.”
“Why don’t you just make this a forward operating base now, and we stay?”
Alex smiled. “I might be able to sell that to Grady. Russell won’t move his militia’s base of operations south. It’s too risky. He’ll head north, but not too far away. Keeping a full squad or platoon of marines here as a quick-reaction force makes sense. If Grady doesn’t agree, we’re back to square one.”
“Then we reinforce the defenses we already have with Staff Sergeant Evans and his men,” said Kate.
“Our fallback plan can’t include the marines. Grady could yank them out of here tomorrow depending on his needs.”
“I don’t think he’d do that to you.”
“He’s running a marine infantry battalion, not a babysitting service. Judging by the scope of operations planned for southern Maine, Grady’s going to need every marine in the inventory to do his job. We can’t count on any organic support at the house. If he doesn’t buy the forward base idea and pulls the marines out of here, the best we can hope for is a thirty-minute response time for reinforcement—if available.”
“That’s too long,” she said.
“I agree. We need to make a decision on this within the next day or so. Space to house civilians at the airport will vanish quickly once the recovery zone is officially designated.”
“Can we defend this place without the marines?” Kate asked.
She didn’t think so, not with three out of their seven riflemen limited to static positions by their injuries and one out of commission. Charlie, Linda and Ryan could take up their same positions on the second floor, but they’d require assistance to switch windows. Ed’s injuries put him in a different category. They could lay him in the basement to watch over the kids, but that might be the extent of his usefulness in a battle. Putting a rifle in Samantha’s hands didn’t help their overall defensive posture. Asking her for more than a few shotgun blasts in the general direction of the enemy was pushing it.
“With a working thirty-caliber machine gun and seven hundred fifty rounds? It depends on what they throw at us. Same as this morning, I’d say no problem, even with half of our crew injured. If they add a few more .308 rifles to the mix and stick to the trees?” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not so optimistic.”
“The machine gun works?”
“As far as I can tell. Evans plans to test fire it a little later. We also need to fix the gates, or at least harden them to SUV-sized vehicles. If they drive up on us too fast, in large enough numbers, who knows?”
“We’d have some warning, at least,” she said.
“Not until we unscrew the sensor situation. The two damaged transceivers correspond to the eastern approach, which means we have a huge gap in our coverage along Gelder Pond Lane and the gate. We should probably do that before dark.”
“If we have the marines here tonight, we can worry about that tomorrow,” Kate said.
Alex looked relieved by her suggestion, but still hesitant to agree. He nodded slowly and forced a smile, which beat the distant and defeated look he had brought to the table several minutes ago.
“At some point, we’ll have to lay this out for the whole group. Let them weigh into the decision. If I were Charlie and Samantha, I’d be thinking real hard about relocating to their house up near Waterville. If they left, the Walkers wouldn’t be too far behind them,” said Alex.
“Then we better have that meeting sooner than later. If the rest of the group decides to leave, we can’t stay, and I don’t want to miss out on Grady’s airport offer. Not with that psychopath running around.”
“I’ll talk to Grady tomorrow and see what he thinks about establishing a forward base in Limerick. If he goes for it, we don’t have to impose a rushed decision on anyone.”
Kate leaned back in her seat, glancing inside the house. “I’d still like to know where everyone stands.”
Chapter 48
EVENT +86:18
Porter, Maine
Eli Russell sat in a wobbly rocking chair on the wide front porch, admiring the vast vegetable garden past the dirt driveway. He didn’t know the first thing about growing vegetables, but he could worry about that next year. Right now, all he had to do was figure out how to harvest everything and store it for the winter. Too bad the farmer hadn’t been friendlier. Maybe they could have worked something out, where he let them live in exchange for running the farm. No big deal. He’d find another farmer or two to take the deal, no matter how far and wide he had to travel. There was no way he could let this bounty go to waste. They’d need every scrap of it to survive the winter, unless they could put a stop to the Homeland invasion within the next few months.