Please enjoy the full, first two chapters from Eye for an Eye: Blades of Grass Book 5, launching in Kindle, paperback, and audiobook around April 2nd!
CHAPTER 1
Carterton, Oxfordshire, England
U.S. Air Force Colonel Freeman Louis Caldwell strolled through the old English cemetery, the plush grass and long rows of headstones and grave markers still damp with overnight dew. Despite being clean of moss and bird droppings, most of the stone markers bore an ancient, weathered look. Like I feel, Lou thought. The graveyard of the eight-hundred-year-old church a literal stone’s throw to the north was silent, other than the rumble of military jets taking off at the Royal Air Force base less than a mile away. He read names and dates but had somehow found himself in the oldest section, staring at the eternal bodily homes of subjects from King Edward III’s reign. The shuffling of old feet on a groomed gravel path interrupted Lou’s morning quiet time.
“Oh! So sorry!” he heard a friendly voice say, nearly as old as the tombstones, it seemed. “Are you one of the chaps from next door?”
Lou turned. “Did my funny accent give it away?” he joked, a mild smirk on his face. The sun was rising, the white puffy clouds drifting. Lou pulled his sunglasses from their parking spot on the collar of his uniform undershirt. Decked in his flight suit and brown “bomber” coat, he’d left his flight cap with his luggage in the parking lot of the hotel, if that’s what it could be called. He and the rest of the Americans on this new, unique team were staying at a couple of cottage-style “bed and breakfast” hotels in the small village near the U.K.’s largest air base.
The older gentleman with thin, white hair and piercing, gray eyes laughed. “You Yanks always go with an accent joke, first!” His black shirt was covered by an old tan sweater, but it did nothing to hide the white square just under his Adam’s apple.
“Sorry, Vicar,” Lou said. “I’ll be outta your way, now.” He moved from grass to path to pass the man. The roar of two F-35Bs interrupted them, the fighter jets’ wide arc after finishing takeoff, pulling them south by southeast to London, seventy miles away. They both paused their leisurely walks and looked up, waiting for the roar to die down.
“I don’t normally see that kind flying out of here,” the vicar said.
Lou smiled politely. Now that they were both stopped and facing each other, it felt rude not to make small talk. Both he and the local knew the base was occupied by the big birds—that the fighters’ presence meant something special was afoot. He changed the subject. “You have plots here in the garden that are more than twice as old as my country.”
It was the English pastor’s turn to give a knowing twinkle. “And let us pray that your magnificent country continues through these trials.” His expression became concerned. “I fear these days might be not so unlike the second world war...” He paused. “I cannot begin to tell you how many villagers have been driven to prayer by what’s happening—particularly after Albuquerque. Hard to believe it has been nearly three months since that horrible day.”
Lou nodded and studied the older man, figuring he was probably born within a decade of World War Two’s end. “I suppose you had relatives that survived ‘The Blitz.’” The day would come when those who endured Hitler’s daily airstrikes would be gone, as would their first descendants.
The vicar nodded. “Oh, yes... oh, yes...” His expression changed when he pointed. “If it’s inspiration you’re looking for, there are some lads from those days resting over in the section near the lane. Corner of the stone walls.”
“Is it that obvious?” Lou asked.
“My boy, you slump as if the weight of the world rests on your shoulders.” Another compassionate smile.
Lou pulled his coat sleeve up to look at his watch. “I have a few minutes before they pick us up. Thanks.”
“Good luck, Lef-tenant.”
Lou walked away, not caring to correct the man on his rank. Always wondered where they found an ‘F’ in that word,he mused to himself. He picked up his pace a bit. He was supposed to assign his plane a unique and random identifier, or ‘call sign’ for the coming operation. He was having a hard time with such a symbolic detail, thinking instead of many worries back home.
His brother Foster and his family were first and foremost; Lou hoped they wouldn’t starve or succumb to violence. He had given up nearly all thought of Julia, who would be his ex-wife and not his current wife if the world still worried about things like divorce court. And then there was his new best friend, Rusty the German shepherd, who was on loan to Hope McDonald. She was the wife of his young former protégé, Marine Captain Brandon McDonald, who was preparing for an amphibious landing. The young family had a dog, but it came down to logistics—she and her parents were in a better spot, so feeding Rusty wouldn’t be a literal life-and-death chore as America continued to fall apart. Brandon would sit and talk Bible with the vicar if he were here, he suddenly thought, grinning in a way that only the birds and the ghosts saw.
Lou found the section the vicar mentioned. He scanned the newer headstones, seeing that some were even inscribed with the names of military units, valor awards, or specific battles. It didn’t feel right to him, pulling the name of some man who’d been dead for eighty or more years to use in battle. He heard a horn honk and turned to look past the church’s front lawn. Both of the homes just past the church were housing him and his team, who were gathering in the small gravel lot for their last trip to the base in the nearly nine days they’d been there. He gave a final glance at the graves, neatly nestled in the intersection of the two walls. One parallelled the road, and the other ran along the boundary of the property. Both, about four feet tall, looked as old as time.
The vicar strode back up to Lou, a small, leatherbound New Testament in his hand. “I think you should have this!”
“Ohhhh... No thanks, Padre. I have a friend who would take you up on it. It’s not my thing.”
The man seemed insistent. “I hear you, old boy, but you should take this one with you. For guidance in the trying times to come.” He gave it to Lou, who noticed a little corner of paper sticking out of the pages. He decided not to argue about it.
“Thank you,” he said as he watched the man depart for the second time. He left the cemetery devoid of inspiration and longing for home. But he’d found his team’s call sign just in the nick of time. In a few short hours, they and their British counterparts would be boarding the RAF C-17 Globemaster being donated by the U.K. I wonder what the vicar’ll think if we succeed in doing what we’re supposed to. That C-17 would be called Stone Wall—it would be their flying home for a venture around the world. And chances were great that it would also become their coffin.
***
Fargo, Georgia
The dogs’ barking made Hope Victoria McDonald look up from her prayer. They weren’t reacting to danger—the dogs were simply being dogs, chomping at the odd shapes in the air with giant smiles on their faces.
“Mommy! Look!” three-year-old Sarah screamed in delight. She was blowing soap bubbles with a small plastic wand, as directly at the four dogs as she could. Hope was resting on the rambler’s back patio, still recovering from a complicated postpartum period after the birth of her son. She was grateful beyond words that her husband Brandon had been home for it.
Months earlier, when Marine Captain Brandon McDonald and his Air Force colonel boss had come home from their first assignment, her husband moved them from Virginia back to her parents’ small bee-and-honey farm in southeast Georgia. Hearing that they’d been involved in the dustup with Mexico, including Lou getting shot, was enough to convince her not to argue with Brandon. He knew he was at the mercy of a rapidly devolving military situation, and once she’d been diagnosed with preeclampsia, he’d become as insistent as she’d ever seen. In the months since the birth, she’d been prescribed medication and rest in response to her post-delivery progression to eclampsia.
Hope and Sarah, now three years of age, and Samson, the horse-sized Boerboel, were a welcome sight at her folks’ farm. They were in their early sixties and were doubly happy when one of her two sisters also moved back to their town of Fargo with her kids in tow. Their five-acre patch was on the west side of the tiny city, which was the unofficial western gateway to the Okefenokee Swamp. They had dozens of beehives and supplemented their income with a sizable honey business. The area itself contained many thousands of acres of crops—mostly soy, but plenty of timber, corn, and blueberry, too.
The town wasn’t big—smaller than most Amazon distribution centers. It rested on the west side of the winding Suwannee River, and the area was known for excellent bass fishing and feral hog hunting. One main bridge led southeast toward the swamp, though there was also a railroad trestle a bit to its north. The tracks paralleled the road and moved right next to it a couple of miles out of the tiny city. Clinch County was nearly two-thirds white and one-third black. Like the county, Fargo was diversified by people who had learned to get along. There was commonality when most people were all as poor and hard-working as their neighbors, despite any familial heritage differences. Neighbors helped neighbors. Mostly.
“I see!” she said. Hope swung her leg over the outdoor chaise and stood. She closed and laid her Bible on the short table and took a sip of her tea before heading out barefoot into the long grass. The shade of longleaf pines and pecan trees cast a shadow straight down under the lunchtime sun. She watched the dogs as they played and barked, Rusty finally feeling like he belonged in the pack. I guess Sarah’s about as safe as she ever could be, the young mother thought. A screen door opened at the back of the house.
“Thomas wants lunch!” Muriel Fields called outside. “And I warmed up the leftover soup!”
“Okay, Mama,” Hope called back, her Georgia twang finding itself a place in her life once more. She’d learned to dial it down back in college, which was where she met Brandon. After marriage, they moved to California for several years. Later, moving to Virginia and the heavy population density in the D.C. metro area had nearly eradicated the dialect. “Be in in a minute!”
Running and jumping in circles around the delighted, squealing toddler were four dogs. Samson was from a line of South-African mastiffs originally bred for fighting leopards. He was one hundred eighty pounds and was a walking muscle. His neck was as thick as both of Brandon’s thighs combined. Tan with brown ears, he was loving, playful, and protective.
Her parents’ dogs—George and Gracie—were both rescues from the closest Humane Society. Both mutts mostly resembled Labradors. They were older, the first to go lap a gallon of water and lie down once playtime wore them out.
Then there was the mostly black German Shepherd they were babysitting. Lou assured her that he would give his life to protect her children. Rusty had been with them for almost two months, and it took him a bit of time to become comfortable. He and Samson got along right from the start. Lou had explained that Rusty and he had both done quite a bit of flying, and the dog had witnessed and heard war. It wasn’t until the third and final day of his short visit that he confessed the truth about Rusty’s history.
Lou apologized for not explaining it earlier. He would’ve left Rusty with his brother to guard his niece Kyla, but they were having issues with thieves and were having a hard time just feeding themselves, even with the foreign aid coming in from England and most of the E.U. He told Hope all about Rusty helping him rescue Kyla from her abductor—and the gruesome nature with which he ripped the murderer’s throat out like a canine battle axe.
Hope’s father kept Rusty on a cable run during the day for a few days afterward. At night, he slept in the detached shop. Over time, the family grew to trust the dog, and he slowly became part of the tribe. Rusty continued to sleep in the shop, which was where most of the bounty from three decades of canning vegetables and pecans was stored. The family had always been thrifty, stockpiling canned chicken, soups, stews, and smoked pork from the several hog hunts Stephen Fields went on each year. Additionally, there were countless jars of honey. Just because the war had nearly killed all businesses didn’t mean the bees weren’t working. Rusty had grown used to the isolated nights, and the family felt much better... because even in their low-population countryside, crime was increasing.
After she fed her infant and Sarah ate her soup and toast, the three would make their daily afternoon trip two blocks over to their church. The congregation started having a prayer dinner every night after Albuquerque. Anyone from the local area was welcome to come and eat, but it would only last if folks chipped in with donated food. Hope had found comfort in the nightly ritual, a sense that her community could support and help each other through the trying times. She volunteered to serve meals while the older ladies doted on her children. And she yearned to find her brother in the line someday.
Their oldest sister Stephanie had moved home. Divorced, with two prepubescent kids, it was the only logical choice in the decaying world. The next oldest sister Nichole lived in South Carolina with her family. But then there was Junior.
Stephen Fields, Jr. was much younger than his sisters, an “oops” baby. Now twenty-three, he hadn’t been seen since before the invasion, and usually months apart before that. He ran with meth dealers long enough to become one himself. Every time he came by for the last five or six years, things would go missing. Muriel started hiding her jewelry under the edge of the carpet along a bedroom wall just to protect it.
Despite that, Hope wanted to see him come home. She would do whatever it took to rehab him. Everyone deserves a second chance, she thought as she eyed Rusty wrestling with Samson.
“Okay, Sarah. Time to put it away and come inside for lunch!”
***
West of Miami, Texas
Granger Madison was lying on his worn and tested sniper mat. Security forces, he thought. I don’t think that’s a fairground. Must just be a cattle merchant’s place. He was barely breaking the horizon of the slight hill in the Texas panhandle, using his binoculars to scout the route ahead. He was mostly covered in a filthy green military poncho, which had a mylar blanket layer sewn to the inner side with paracord fibers. In actuality, it was two blankets glued together for more durability, their purpose being to block his heat signature from thermal imaging gear. His legs stuck out, but it was the best they could do when they’d finally started their eastward journey six weeks earlier.
The area wasn’t as flat as it felt. Small desert canyons of brown and red dirt broke through the short grass plains all around. The sound of a semitruck “jake brake” reverberated through the air. He saw a Kenworth towing a cattle carrier slow down on the north-south highway he’d crossed earlier and turn left onto the road that led past the cattle yard and into the tiny town. It turned again, into the facility.
Must be rounding up the cattle from all the nearby ranches, Granger guessed. Easier to guard one spot. He watched Mexican troops unload the herd, realizing that the Chinese were simply feeding their army—at the expense of the American civilians caught behind enemy lines. One thought kept him focused... kept him from shooting—the need to get home and find his daughters. He couldn’t do that if he was dead.
The preceding eleven weeks had been horrible for everyone in the southwest states, regardless of their nationality. The destruction of Albuquerque was even more horrifying than the pictures of the mushroom cloud over it would indicate. True to what Buff Corey had said, the radiation was nearly nil. The Micro Fusion Munition generated the destructive energy without needing the traditional nuclear chain-reaction that spreads contaminated particles for a hundred miles. But photos of the aftermath reminded Granger of pictures of Berlin at the end of World War II. He couldn’t think of Albuquerque without thinking of those young teens he’d told to hide in the deep, flash-flood culvert. That thought, in turn, always made him sad and angry and forced him to snap out of whatever funk he was in.
To the Chinese advance, it had had a profound effect. The units in Texas had made it to Houston and Dallas at greater cost than they had predicted. But then they were forced to stop, not just because of their supply issues, but because of the gap between them and the elements that had been battered taking Hawthorne and Fallon, Nevada. Their transit over Utah had not gone easily. They had severely underestimated the Mormons’ preparedness levels. Over half the state were “preppers”—they had food, armament, medicine, and the ability to communicate nearly as effectively as any military unit.
They were now advancing on Kansas, and the incoming units landing in ships in Los Angeles were being flown to Santa Fe, Amarillo, and Lubbock as rapidly as possible to make up for the entire division that had been vaporized in the Albu-blast. The lines were thin and had gaps many dozens of miles wide. And the towns that found themselves behind enemy lines were not making life easy for the Mexican and Venezuelan forces tasked with security and “winning hearts and minds.”
It was quite the opposite. While the security forces were rounding up those with firearms in their homes, there was no viable way for them to find thousands of caches buried in the deserts and prairies. Insurgencies were mounting across the many states. They weren’t huge forces—but they didn’t have to be. Small, cellular teams would recognize patterns of laziness or routine among the rear echelon invaders, and then they would plan an Operation of Opportunity. “OO”, pronounced Oh-Oh, became the code. Granger and his companions had started to notice the two letters painted as they walked east—on cattle water tanks... buildings... small bridges, large overpasses, even trees... always swallowed in other symbols or drawings, sometimes as cartoon eyeballs or as part of a word. To the foreign armies, it looked like graffiti. To Granger and patriots like him, it was a secret message.
Most of a mile to his west, Karen, Hooch, and Petunia were waiting for him in a wadi. Karen accompanied her man on the venture simply because there was nothing left for her back in occupied Arizona. She had nursed him back to a functional state after the last mission killed almost the entire Team Anvil. With that, the loss of Tracy and the others before him, he had simply reached emotional capacity overload. Mentally, he was through. He’d found her and most of those who had bugged out of Camp Longhorn at the large refugee camp at the NRA’s Whittington Center.
The People’s Liberation Army’s forward progression had halted in the three months since the Albuquerque blast. When it started up again, those at the Center had been forced to decide—leave, or stay and fight? Granger was torn about leaving Donna, the widow of his deceased best friend, behind. But the remnants of the old Acme Ranch group all vowed to head to Colorado together. They all had too many collective children for the long journey to North Carolina.
Only Ryan “Hooch” Meyer wanted to go with Granger and Karen. The Georgia native had taken the death of Oliver Hewitt hard, and the fact that they’d had to leave him as a KIA in the tank battle which they’d barely escaped, even harder. The trio had been gifted an eighteen-year-old white mare named Petunia. At the far end of middle age, she was still a huge asset for carrying most of the load while she and the three humans walked. For most of the trip, Granger would slip out of the overnight camp on Petunia in the predawn hours. But as they approached the war’s frontline, it became more apparent to them that even that was a risk. On that evening, he would have to slink back while watching for more cattle trucks.
He picked up his sniper rifle after setting down the binoculars. All three lenses had porous, sand-colored, semi-transparent fabric covers on them to break up the sun’s glare. He needed the larger magnification it offered over the tiny bargain binocs he carried.
And what might you be? he wondered. Granger looked past the small town. To its immediate northeast, a camp of some sort was being broken apart. Though a couple of miles away, he recognized the Chinese desert-camo uniforms. They were folding up tents and loading trucks and helicopters. He thought he saw a flash of red color for a quick moment. A field hospital, he realized. You guys must be moving to keep up with the advance. He watched for two more minutes, looking for signs of armor or artillery, but seeing none.
It might be time to meet some locals, he thought. They had been largely avoiding even the smallest of towns, filtering water right out of the cattle troughs and barely wet creeks and shooting wild hares for food with a suppressed .22 pistol. Bury our guns... wander in like refugees... find out if anybody knows of an Oh-Oh that will help us move farther east.
CHAPTER 2
RAF Brize Norton
The United Kingdom’s largest airbase wasn’t much to gawk at, especially when compared with America’s largest Air Force bases like Eglin, Elmendorf, or Wright-Patterson. Home to the U.K.’s forces for air transport, mid-air refueling, and parachute training, the greatest percentage of it was simply housing and other support facilities. It had one runway, two major taxiways, and a handful of large hangars and repair shops spread out, most clustered around one large tarmac.
Lou and most of his odd squad were inside one of those, going through the final mission briefing while a few other things happened. The loadmaster and the co-pilot were both Brits. Try as they might to keep Lou out of the pilot’s seat, the British folded under General Judah Montgomery’s far-reaching influence. It was, after all, an American intelligence team and protection force guarding the special payload—at least, part of it. The U.K. was also contributing a unique piece to the cargo. The allied team was in the thick of it, and it wasn’t just a “one-and-done” operation. There were segments to it—places to go, people to talk to, Top Secret orders to deliver.
It wasn’t Lou’s first time at the base. He’d once flown the presidential limousine there for an official visit by President Jeremiah Allen’s predecessor. But on that trip, he had brought his own Globemaster. On this trip, Lou and his American peers, and their precious cargo, had been transported to Great Britain by HMS Ambush, an Astute-class, nuclear-powered attack submarine. It had been Lou’s first time on a sub, and he decided that if God truly existed, it would be his last. They were being granted a plane for the likely one-way trip by the Royal Air Force.
In the hangar conference room, Lou pretended to read a tattered copy of Casino Royale he had found near the coffee and tea station. The Americans had been there long enough that the peacocking and service bashing that reared on day two had finally subsided. The two nations’ flyers were beginning to gel as a team. The gravity of hitting the air soon was starting to make bravado unimportant. He watched Wing Commander Hugh Greenbaum, call sign “Cornetto” after his favorite dessert, exit the latrine, knowing the man had just finished a tense phone call with his wife. The forty-year-old co-pilot was one of six Brits on the team.
The other five allies from “across the pond” were all out in the hangar, which was shut up tight to the tarmac, lest any Chinese or Russian satellites that survived the space warfare might still be lurking three hundred miles up. They were supervising the loading of both precious cargos—one American and one British—so that the rest of the embarkation process could begin. Flight Sergeant Isabella Jones, in her mid-30s, was the ultimate authority on securing the cargo bay. She also calculated fuel and weight distribution, though the very first leg was going to require more than they could carry. There were two other British C-17 pilots. They would fly the first half of the extra-long leg, then debark after Lou and Cornetto landed at their first destination. It was a simple step to keep Lou and Cornetto from being dangerously exhausted. The last two Brits weren’t in the military, but rather MI-6. Unlike the one CIA operative on the mission, they weren’t tagging along to issue top-secret briefings—they were technicians in charge of a very unique and somewhat ironic piece of spy hardware.
Rounding out the American piece of the crew were the one CIA spook, two Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians, eight Army Rangers, and one Delta Force operator. Sergeant Major Joshua Silver was in charge of the security of the flight and its contents. He insisted on suspending military pleasantries and being called Honker, a nickname bestowed upon him by his comrades when he joined the elite operations unit twenty-one years earlier. The worst-kept secret was that soldiers being soldiers, they’d shunned all political correctness and assigned him a nickname based on his large nose and Jewish heritage. He jokingly told everyone Honker was short for “Honkerberg.”
Sergeant Jones, known as Izzy, entered the dayroom, and the open door revealed the noise of moving equipment and maintenance technicians in the hangar bay. “Stone Wall, Colonel?”
Lou looked up from his book. “Not after the Confederate General, Izzy,” he said. Out in the bay, a team was putting the finishing touches on painting their name on one side of the plane, like the old-school bombers used to do. “More like a reflection of... our resolve, I guess.”
“Very good, sir,” she said. “The packages are secure.” She looked around the room, seeing most of the team gathered around a big TV playing video games. “You Yanks and spies can go load your gear and set up your slings in the front end of the hold.” Most stood, though two of the Rangers were trying their best to finish their video game race.
“Now, Rangers,” Honker said with the perfect blend of calm and “don’t make me say it again.” Izzy exited ahead of the cluster of men and spooks hauling their gear and weapons bags out to the hangar bay. The hardened soldier in charge of the rest moved over to the table where Cornetto had plopped himself after a stressful phone call. “Commander, you want me to grab your gear?” He looked at Lou. “Colonel?”
“No thanks, Honker,” Lou said. “The two of us only need to bring some skivvies and a toothbrush.” The other pair of pilots had already checked themselves on board to begin preflight checks. He looked at his watch. “Let’s muster everyone in here in a half-hour.” He stood up from the lounge chair and walked toward the long table with chairs on both sides.
“Roger that.” Honker grabbed his own bags and moved outside.
Lou sat at the table across from his co-pilot. “Everything all right, Hugh?” The last thing I need is a depressed, angry co-pilot on this op to end all ops, Lou thought.
“Nothing to bother you with, sir.” The man’s face was as glum as his tone, hidden behind the English’s well-known politeness.
“I’m sort of surprised your superiors didn’t require you to pick an unmarried man,” Lou said. He was all too familiar with what “wife issues” looked like. “Or woman.”
Cornetto smiled with an added layer of cultural niceties. “I suppose that’s because I wouldn’t let them! Seriously, Colonel. I’m fine.”
“Lou,” Lou corrected. “And I’ll be honest. If your head isn’t in the game... I don’t want you going.”
“It is, Colo... Lou. I’m one hundred percent.”
Lou scanned the man’s expression for an awkward amount of time before speaking again. “Then I suggest you convince yourself, Corn. Go drop your phone in the treasure chest,” he suggested. Every member of the team was tossing their last personal effects into a box, from wallets to phones to wedding rings.
Cornetto took a last look at the phone screen setting on the table between them. “I’ll admit she doesn’t want me to go. But she understands why I have to...”
“Because you’re the wing commander,” Lou said. “I get it. And I bet she does, too. If you can’t make peace with that before we start the final briefing, then now’s your chance to pick someone else.”
Cornetto picked up the phone as he stood. He walked over to an olive drab metal box on the counter near the room’s refrigerator and placed it inside. He then walked over to the thick window that looked out into the hangar bay. Lou stood and walked over to join him.
“Is that... a photographer?” Cornetto asked in disbelief.
“He’s with your base,” Lou said. “We’re going to do a group photo in front of Stone Wall. Then those mechanics are going to paint over their hard work.”
His counterpart looked toward him, confused. “Begging your pardon, Colonel! Why?”
“Posterity, Commander. This one’ll be for the history books.”
The man laughed. “You still think they’ll be able to record history after all this? What was it that Einstein said about the fourth world war being fought with sticks and stones?”
“With our best effort and a coupla kisses of luck... I do.”
“Begging your pardon, Lou. I haven’t found luck to be all that reliable.”
Whereas I have had so much luck that only God’s grace could explain it, Lou thought. “Regardless, while we’re briefing, they’ll be out there painting every tail number and mark on that plane the same shade of gray the rest of it is.” Lou turned from his peer and went to grab his pack. “C’mon, Corn, let’s go take a picture. We have a long week ahead of us.”
***
Smith Rock State Park Bivouac Area, Oregon
The two men had never met before and likely never would again. The visitor had been on his way for two days before retired Army sniper Nick Williams had received the decoded message at his base of operations near Prineville. A HAM radio operator received it on HF. The message was in a book cipher. Both the sender and receiver needed the same book. From there it was as simple as looking up a specific letter on an exact line on a particular page. It was archaic, but as long as the book was kept secret, even the Chinese AI was finding it nearly impossible to crack. One of the self-published authors in the organization had written nearly forty novels in her career, and she had dozens of copies of each book for vending at fairs and such. Millions of novels had been printed just in the decade before the invasion. Three times a day, the book changed to a different one on the list. And that list was the best-kept secret in Oregon.
Nick and the other man, who he knew almost immediately was some sort of retired infantry officer, walked the dirt trail. Nick had brought three people with him who were waiting in the visitor center parking lot. The man who said he would go by Jeff for the meeting had five trailing them up the hill, guarding the pair. All looked well-trained to Nick’s eye.
They stopped at what should have been a breathtaking vista. Smith Rock and the surrounding crags shot skyward all around the various horseshoe bends of the Crooked River. Under the blue sky, the firs and lush green fields between water and cliff almost looked like they had been airbrushed by an artist. The men had a quick meet-n-greet down below and then hiked more than a mile—about as secluded as two men could be in the lower forty-eight. Jeff took off his backpack and handed Nick a fifteen-inch, padded, bubble-mailer envelope.
“Scan these photos and maps real quick,” Jeff said. “Then I’ll tell you what this is all about.” The mysterious “Jeff” was claiming to be one of the organizers of the Oregon Resistance. Though they hadn’t had things as bad as those in the Puget Sound area, the Rainier Impact Zone, or RIZ, had still done major damage to the infrastructure in north Oregon. The population centers of the state had vastly different ideologies from the less-dense areas. For months before the Chinese invasion, they had been at war with themselves. The coming enemy had exacerbated the strife and the sometimes-violent struggles between the Marxists and the Patriots. Where one side was training and arming to fight the invaders, the other was trying to take control of the cities to welcome the communists with open arms.
Nick tore it open. Everything was printed on normal, cheap printer paper, conducive to burning quickly should the need arise. A few pictures were drone shots, and the rest were taken with long-lens cameras from somewhere elevated.
“Where’d they take these?” Nick asked. He was looking at the main shipping port in Portland. The initial wave of Chinese forces from Northern California had brought in the equipment and personnel to get the piers functional again. Even in Portland, the 9.0 earthquake off Washington’s coast had wrecked piers, dropped bridges, and toppled some of the offload cranes. But not all of them. The area was filled with more equipment, some of it tanks and other armor, and some of it more construction gear. Nick thought he saw the prefabricated pieces to make new bridges. There were thousands of Conex boxes.
The next pictures were of the railyard on the Willamette River to the south. Like the pier on the Columbia River, it was filled with Chinese apparatus of a variety of uses. The last photos and maps were of train tracks and bridges that he didn’t recognize.
“I can’t tell you, man,” Jeff said. He looked to be in his early sixties. Decked out in a blue, long-sleeve button-up and a cowboy hat, his thick mustache and weathered stature reminded Nick of the Marlboro man. “We have to use that surveillance site until we can’t, if you get my drift.” He cleared his scratchy throat and continued. “The Charlies have managed to get that port open. That’s a big deal because any military that was up here was wiped out by the earthquake.”
Nick guffawed. “You don’t gotta tell me about that!”
“Look, man, I don’t even know your name—and I don’t wanna know. We just heard there was a retired light infantry guy spear-headin’ stuff here in the central part of the state. That you trained up and sent out a few effective squads already.”
“All that’s true. What you hadn’t heard was that I was at the Battle of Seattle.” The thought of the critical failure still haunted him. “I’m done snipin’. I’m done playing overwatch or assassin. For every one of me, ten good hunters can do the same job.” He tried to hand the papers back to Jeff.
“That’s not what we need. Word has it that the squads you trained up haven’t had a clear role. What’re they doing?”
“I think one went up to Salem. I know at least one of the other two had been trying to ambush the Charlies along I-5 near Eugene. In between, they’re coming back to Prineville. I met a colonel who set us up with a supply drop twice a month.”
“Good,” Jeff said. “See those maps of the railroads?”
Nick scanned the last pictures he’d come to a little more thoroughly. “Yeah...”
Jeff continued. “They can’t get their equipment across the river in Portland.”
“Why would they want to?” Nick was confused about the tactics.
“We think they want to get the Port of Seattle operational,” Jeff said. “Word is that the tide has washed out Puget Sound of enough landslides to get ships through again. They can dredge the rest like they did to get the Columbia opened back up. A lot of that is construction equipment. They’ll start repairing bridges, too, to get stuff flowing out of Portland again. Hell! They’ve still got about four million soldiers back in China to get over here! They make that happen... they can roll right into the missile fields in Montana and the Midwest.”
Nick scanned the pictures again. “So, how’re they getting’ stuff over there now?”
“The Dalles,” Jeff said. From his journey to Oregon with his girlfriend, Nick recalled it was about a hundred miles farther upriver. “They don’t trust the auto or rail crossings between here and there. Too much quake damage for the weight of all this stuff. We will be taking out a long section of track along the river by collapsing the hill in three places. There’s a vehicle bridge in The Dalles that can handle just a few pieces of gear at a time. And an intact railroad trestle.”
It was starting to click for Nick. “You want a couple o’ squads to go up and handle that. I can try to get a coded message to my guy. Get some extra explosives on the next drop.”
Jeff chuckled. “I guess I didn’t explain it good ‘nuff, yet. I’m an ex-flag officer. Gettin’ stuff is the easy part. When we blow that line, they’ll just take this other one. Here.” He pointed to the map. “See?”
Nick did fully see it. The Union Pacific line went south to Chemult in the central part of the state. It continued south, but there was a switchyard, too, where it connected with a Burlington Northern line—which ran north to the massive trestle over the Columbia in The Dalles.
“I guess the landslide idea for your river line is to make it too huge a project to fix.”
“That’s the thought. They could fix a section of rail that gets blown up in a matter of hours. What we need from you is to take out the entire switchyard. It has to be coordinated. They already have security there, holdin’ the switches and patrolling the lines for dozens of miles in each direction. But if we blow ours before you’re ready to destroy Chemult, they’ll lock down the entire area with a couple of companies.”
“Do they use the southern lines, too?”
“They can,” the man said. “But our contacts down along the state line say the trains heading south typically are taking soft goods, not war machinery.”
“Sounds like stopping the flow north is the major priority,” Nick said. “Because you and I both know a plan never survives first contact with the enemy.”
