Dark New World (Book 2): EMP Exodus (12 page)

As the noise grew into a full-fledged roar, Frank could finally tell that the plane or planes were coming from the east. Not surprising, he thought. Please, God, don’t let them see the clan, he prayed.

The planes came into view through the trees then. Next to him, Michael whispered, “Fighters. Look at the pods on the wings, those are missiles.”

“Ours?”

“Negative. It looks like a Flanker, but those don’t carry bombs. Gotta be a Fullback. A variant of the Sukhoi, and from what I’ve read they’re damn rare. But that isn’t a Russian camo. I don’t recognize it—it looks vaguely Iranian, but what does a grunt know about that?”

A lot more than me apparently, thought Frank, once again glad to have Michael’s expertise in the clan. If those planes saw his people, they could wipe out the whole clan. Wouldn’t that be goddamn ironic, so close to Lancaster they could almost taste it…

* * *

Cassy lay under a tree and bit her lip to keep from crying out. She’d struck her bad shoulder on a large root when she slid into cover. Her daughter, Brianna, and Jaz were under the cover of her tree as well. She frantically looked for her son, Aidan, and only turned again to look at the planes after she spotted him under another tree with Mandy.

The planes were clearly fighters, though she couldn’t tell anything more about them except that there were three of them. Studying airplanes was not something she’d had time or desire to do, though at the moment it would have come in handy. She glanced at Frank, who was with Michael, and saw that he was hiding still. So, they were enemy planes. Then she thought how silly it was to have wondered that in the first place—all the planes in the air that she’d seen so far had been those of the invaders. Of course, the EMP must have grounded all the U.S. fighters, just as it had the commercial jet that she’d seen crashed in Philadelphia.

The three fighters were coming directly toward them in a tight wedge formation, one plane in front and the others slightly behind to both sides. As the planes came closer and closer a sense of panic washed over her, and she reached out with her good arm to embrace Brianna to her tightly. At least if they were going to die here, she decided, they would die together…

Just before the planes reached what Cassy imagined was a good distance to drop bombs or whatever, they veered to their right, heading more northerly now. A second later all three planes unleashed several missiles, which streaked away toward the ground. The buzzing noise of their strafing machine gun fire rose over the din of their engines, despite the fact that those engines were now pointed back toward the clan.

Multiple deep booms washed over her, and she felt like it might knock the wind out of her. As her ears rang from the sound, she saw several small mushroom-shaped clouds of black smoke and fire rise up from the ground, maybe only a hundred yards or so from where she lay. What the hell were they shooting at?

In seconds the planes were gone, engines flaring with afterburners as they tore off eastward, no doubt heading back to whatever base they came from. For the moment all was clear.

Michael was the first to stand, she saw, and he waved the “all clear” sign with his hands. The others, Cassy included, began to rise and move out toward Frank. The flock seeking their shepherd, she briefly thought, then grinned when it struck her how her mom might react to such a sentiment. ‘Only Jesus is the Shepherd, Cassy,’ she could practically hear her mom’s stern-but-level voice correcting her.

As the roar of jet engines faded to faint, rolling echoes, Cassy heard Frank telling everyone to gather around. It was hard to understand him because her ears were ringing so loudly.

When everyone was gathered, Cassy noted their expressions. The kids looked afraid, of course, and so did Jaz. Frank and Jed were calm, or appeared so. Michael was pissed off, as were Mandy and Tiffany, though Amber might have been angry too. It could be hard to tell with her, sometimes. Ethan, however, looked excited.

Frank spoke up over the hushed questions everyone seemed to be asking, and Cassy realized how silly it was to be whispering after all that noise. He said, “Those bastards were shooting at someone or something, and it wasn’t us, thank God. Michael says that they wouldn’t send so much firepower after refugees, so it has to be either a building or a U.S. military unit.”

“Hard target or friendly forces,” Michael corrected. He looked so pissed that he could barely contain himself.

Frank nodded, hands up toward Michael, appeasing. “Yes, that. And we all saw how close those missiles were. Maybe half a mile at most. Now, Michael says our duty is to go see if any soldiers survived or, if it was a building, see whether anything can be salvaged. It could be dangerous, though, so we need to be either all in or all out.”

 
Michael spat. “I’m going, one way or the other, Frank. If you all go on, fine—you aren’t soldiers, and you aren’t Marines, so I understand. I’ll have no problems catching up to you later.”

Ethan could no longer contain himself. “If it was soldiers, they may have working vehicles that didn’t get destroyed, or radios, or supplies. I’m going with Michael. Plus, if any soldiers survived they may need our help.”

Frank nodded as he said, “I agree. I vote we go. Anyone disagree? Speak up if you got another idea.”

Everyone looked around at the others, but no one spoke up to disagree. “Fine,” Frank said, “then we need to get going right away. We move out in five minutes, so get packed up.”

Once again, Cassy was impressed by Frank’s level-headed leadership, and his ability to get everyone moving in the same direction quickly. She thanked all the stars in heaven that she’d stumbled into these people.

- 14 -

1215 HOURS - ZERO DAY +8

CASSY STARED IN awe at the scene of destruction. It had only taken them twenty minutes or so to find the site of the air strike, but it was clear at a glance that few could have survived that attack. Two tanks and six of the military Hummers had been moving along an old logging trail, and all were blackened twists of smoking metal, now. There was also an old-style Jeep, which wasn’t burning but had numerous huge, jagged holes in it from the strafing jets. Two men inside the open-top vehicle were now mostly chunks of gore. What a jet’s guns could do to a human body was beyond terrifying.

“Mandy, take the kids back a bit, please. They don’t need to stare at this,” said Cassy. Her mother nodded and expertly herded the juveniles away with help from a limping Mary.

Michael put his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Oorah! Any survivors? Sound off like you got a pair.” Cassy loved that bark of his—both calm and super loud at the same time. If she had known how to do that, her kids would
never
have disobeyed her growing up…

Cassy heard a voice and jumped in surprise. “Hoo-ah! Identify yourself, soldier,” shouted a male voice she didn’t recognize.

“That’s Marine to you, Doggie,” replied Michael. “Stand down, we’re friendlies. Anyone else survive? Wounded?”

There was a rustle in the brushes nearby, scorched. Three men in cammo pushed through the brush. Two appeared to be okay, but they were both helping the third soldier, who was bleeding from his leg and had half his hair singed off. “
Semper Fuckyou
, Jarhead,” said the wounded soldier. He was the one who had talked to Michael, and he wore a huge grin. “So happy you aren’t OpFor, even if you are a Marine.”

Minutes later, Ethan had done what he could for first aid to the wounded soldier, and the other survivors had gone out and quickly returned. They confirmed there were no others left alive.

The wounded soldier, who said his name was Lt. Harrison, gritted his teeth from both pain and anger. “Those were all the operational vehicles we could muster, goddammit. And I lost near thirty good soldiers today. Fuck all, I can’t even write their families.”

Michael nodded. “FUBAR, sir. What were your orders, and why were you out here, of all places?”

Harrison let out a loud breath, then said, “We were under orders to head to some dink town near Philly to find a civilian and, if he was still breathing, to help him get back online. Back channel, I was told he was an important asset for the fight against the fucking invading forces. We had a lot of weird computer gear for him in the back of the Jeep.”

Ethan looked up in surprise. “Um, sir, can I ask you what was the name of the guy you were going to look for?”

Harrison stared at Ethan for a long while, clearly sizing him up, and then said, “Yeah… Could be… His asset codename was ‘Dark Ryder,’ and he might just be the only guy still alive and in the region with the knowhow and equipment to help us put up a coordinated counteroffensive.”

Cassy looked at Ethan again and gave him a hard stare. What the hell? But Ethan was just some rich conspiracy nut. A gaming freak. Wasn’t he?

“I think we need to talk more, Lieutenant,” said Ethan, voice shaking.

* * *

For the last hour, Ethan had gathered the gear from the Jeep and inspected it. One was clearly a laptop, but the other items were lost on the rest of the group. Ethan, however, knew what they were, and grinned like a fool. “Only one piece was damaged, and I jury-rigged it with some wiring from the Jeep. No one will mind if it no longer has working turn signals.”

Frank shrugged. “Not my Jeep, not my problem. So what is this crap?”

Ethan couldn’t keep the joy out of his voice. “This ‘crap’ is some of Uncle Sam’s finest rugged, hardened asynchronous encrypted data transfer and com-link hardware. Some assembly required. But with it, I can get the hell online from anywhere in the world, just about, and get back in touch with some people I was working with after the lights went out. Well… before my bunker was compromised, I mean.”

Frank didn’t reply, no doubt trying to avoid a conflict. He was a good man, Ethan had long ago decided, but neither Frank nor the rest of the clan could understand what “Dark Ryder” had given up to save their lives. But it had been
his
choice, not theirs, and he held no grudge against them for what had happened because of it.

He was finally able to click the last component into place, and then connected his laptop and booted it for the first time since leaving his bunker. It whirred and pinged as the desktop came up and it saw new hardware, and it took a minute to find the right drivers from among the files on his loaded-up USB flash drives.

His effort was quickly rewarded. Once the hardware initialized, he loaded the now-familiar “AIR_RDEA” file, and a dialog box popped up along with two dozen new alerts. Ethan noted that they were evenly spaced, so they were automated. It might take a minute for his acknowledgement to be seen. Into the green box he typed,

> Dark Ryder ack. Temp online. Relocating, connection intermittent
.

It took almost ten minutes for a response.

> DR: retrieve attached txt file
AIR_RDEA 411.txt

Ethan acknowledged, downloaded the coded text file and ran his decryption routine on it. The data quickly came up, and though Ethan could only decipher parts of it, the picture it painted was bleak. Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and parts of Oregon were eighty percent occupied by North Korea, backed by the Chinese, but they had been halted at the mountain passes in both directions. That wouldn’t last long, however, as the defending units were running blind without Ethan’s broadcasts and could not respond effectively to an enemy with intact communications.

Additionally, Florida, Georgia, and the Gulf Coast out to New Orleans were similarly occupied by Cuban and Russian forces, but they were spread thin. They’d suffered terrible losses at the hands of a well-armed American populace, though the mortality rate among civilians was already running at twenty percent and climbing. The Gulf State civilians kept coming at the invaders, thinning their ranks, but at a terrible cost.

What Ethan cared about more personally at the moment was the invasion of New York City and beyond. That mostly Arabic and Persian force had occupied the area he had foreseen—a roughly square territory, the borders of which were Baltimore, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Boston. Civilian casualties in the region were upwards of thirty percent, mostly the old and the very young, almost all noncombatants. The ISIS-led coalition didn’t give a damn about human lives, at least not those among the invading forces.

The enemy unit locations around occupied America, which the file showed by coordinates and coded notations, were thick within those regions, and other than the Koreans in the Pacific Northwest there showed no signs of halting their drives. Everywhere, the invaders were suffering massive losses and delays due to unaffiliated local partisans, but they weren’t being stopped in their tracks. For that, America needed a coordinated military response, and the EMP had prevented that so far.

With a sigh, Ethan connected his laptop to the HAM radio on the Jeep and powered it up. With a few deft clicks on the laptop’s touchpad, he was broadcasting his coded signal once again, piggybacking on and embedded within a transmission that sounded like nothing more than static. He let the message cycle five times in twenty minutes, then packed up his gear. Hopefully, the new intel would help the remnants of the military and the official partisan groups who could receive it. But now it was past time to get the hell out of Dodge before the enemy noticed and located the transmission.

* * *

1700 HOURS - ZERO DAY +8