The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (13 page)

“Can they just take what you have?”

“Who’s going to stop them?”

“This is beginning to sound a lot like the revolutionary war.”

“Yeah, isn’t it?”

Chapter 7

Captain Black, commanding the US Special Forces troops in the Ukraine led his teams to a hill overlooking a Russian Army forward operating base. He dictated out loud what he saw, so his radio operator could encrypt the information and bounce it off a US MilSat to the Pentagon. He sent images to the Pentagon with his notes. Sergeant Gray asked, “Captain, what are we going to do now?”

“Sergeant, how long have you been in this man’s Army?”

“Sir, this April will be twenty-two years.”

“Then you already know the answer to your question.”

“Yes sir, we wait for further instructions.”

“See, you knew the answer before asking. Before you ask, I have no idea how long it’ll be before they respond.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll keep the men alert.”

“Sergeant, rest a third of the men. I’ll let you know when I hear anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

An hour later their instructions arrive. Captain Black taps Sergeant Gray on his shoulder, whispering, “Sergeant we have our orders.”

“Sir?”

“Come with me.” The two men quietly leave the tent where the other two sergeants are sleeping.

“We’ve been ordered to use the Russian anti-armor and anti-personal missiles to attack their base camp. We’re supposed to wipe it out. HQ doesn’t want any to escape.”

“Sir, can we use the mortars?”

“Only if they’re Russian or Ukrainian. We’re not to use any NATO weapons.”

“Sir, we’re not carrying any. I check the men every day to make sure they didn’t hide any side arms that we missed in the last screen. We have two Russian mortars with a total of forty rounds, HE, and WP.”

“Excellent. Let the men get a little rest. We’ll wake the camp at 0300 hours, feed them and attack at 0400. We’ll fire 5 rounds of WP from the mortars followed by 5 of HE, followed by another 5 of WP. The secondary team will launch anti-armor missiles at the tanks when the first mortar rounds are in the air. If we time it correctly, we’ll take them completely by surprise and cripple them before they know what hit them or where the attack is coming from.”

“Yes, sir.”

The American SOF camp quietly wakes, the men having cold MREs for breakfast. They take down their tents and police the area, removing every trace that they spent the night on the hill. At 0400, Captain Black says, “Fire.”

Within a second the first rounds are dropped down the mortar tubes and are on their way to their targets before the captain completes the word ‘fire’. Antitank missiles leave their shoulder-fired launch tubes as he finishes saying “Fire.”

The anti-armor missiles arrive on target a moment before the mortar rounds explode. The missiles strike the Russian T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks on top of their turrets. The missiles’ multistage warheads burrow into the body of the tanks where the main warhead explodes the onboard ammo and fuel. Tank after tank explodes, sending burning debris and shrapnel into the troop tents. The initial mortar rounds arrive as the line of tanks start exploding. WP burns through everything it touches. Water doesn’t put the fires out. The Russian troops quickly come awake, racing out of their tents into the hell the American’s released on their camp. Missile after missile strikes the lines of tanks as the mortar rounds explode over the tents. The American troops fire as quickly as the launchers can be reloaded and the shooter can lock a target in the missile. The mortar’s first target is the ammo/supply tent, followed by the mess tent and the officer’s tents. After the initial targets are destroyed, the mortars shift to the general camp, rounds land in the center of the camp moving out in an increasing circle. The Russians aren’t able to immediately counterattack and by the time they are able to pick their heads up from the debris of their destroyed camp they discover all of their weapons are destroyed. The Russian troops looks for survivors, providing aid to the few wounded by setting up a first aid tent to replace the one destroyed by their attackers. They lay the wounded in lines in front of the new first aid tent, marking the ones who have the best chance of living when another round of mortar shells and missiles arrive killing everyone in the camp. Colonel Black tells Sergeant Gray to take a squad to the camp, “No prisoners and don’t leave any proof behind of who we are.”

“Yes, sir.”

The squad walks down the hill carrying Russian-made assault rifles. Thirty minutes later they return telling the Captain, “Mission completed.”

“Thank you Sergeant.”

In Moscow President Putin is informed of the attack by the Russian Federation Minister of Defense, Sergey Shoigu. “Mr. President, there were no survivors. The attack was done with our weapons. Even the boot marks in the mud match ours.”

“Minister, do we have a rogue platoon?”

“No Mr. President, my guess is this was an American Special Forces group operating behind our lines.”

“How did they get our weapons?”

“Most likely grabbed them from one of our depots.”

“Find and kill the Yankees. Send a squad of our best Spetsnaz to find these assholes before they do any more damage to us.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the Minister of Defense leaves Putin’s office, he lifts his secure telephone which connects him to a special operator, “Get me the Minister of Finance.”

Within twenty seconds, the call is connected. “Mr. President?”

“Complete taking down the American’s economy.”

“Mr. President, hurt them or take them down completely?”

“Crush them.”

“Yes sir, I’ll issue the trading orders and dump the rest of our dollars and I’ll activate the last worms in the software we installed in their computer networks.”

“Tell the world from now on we won’t accept dollars in payment for our gas and oil.”

“Yes, sir.”

Twenty minutes later the New York Stock Exchange internal security department notices a huge surge in short trades, driving the market down fast enough that the stock market internal safeties are engaged to slow trading down. The safeties are designed to slow the sudden downward or upward pressures on the market. Many were put in place after the 1929 crash and improved after the 1987 crash. Even with the safeties engaged the market closed for the day down 600 points. While Russia is dumping all of their dollars, the Fed is trying to slow the fall of the dollar by buying dollars. By 2:00 PM, the Fed has purchased $1.8 trillion before the chairman of the Fed orders the purchase program shut down. The dollar continues to fall all night as the Asian markets open and China, followed by Japan, who has secretly signed a security treaty with China joins Russia dumping their dollars.

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The world’s economies are in free fall due to the collapsing value of the dollar and the stock market crash. By the end of April, most of the Western World is on the verge of another depression. Europe has to reduce or stop most of their government assistance programs pushing Europe into a state of upheaval and rioting. The central governments in Greece, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Belgium have all resigned based on parliamentary votes of no confidence. Italy has governments form and collapse daily before the Mafia talks to the Pope. They jointly agree to govern the country. France breaks up into Muslim and warlord controlled areas. Paris is a burnt out shell of a once beautiful city. The kings of Spain and Belgium both disband their parliament, they rule by decree to pull their countries off the edge of the cliff.  Switzerland closes their border, they expel all none citizens and lock their country down. Since every citizen is armed, they are asked to carry their weapons all the time to stop riots. Anyone without a valid ID card is deported.

Canada finds itself with French-speaking Quebec seceding from the Union of Canada, the large Chinese population in Victoria demand the right to turn most of Victoria into another Hong Kong. Alberta demands the right to either join the USA or go their separate way, they are sick of the high taxes and dual language laws. Alberta’s economy has been damaged by lower oil prices. However, they are still viable due to a mix of high technology companies combined with their oil production.

The population in China’s major cities demanded more freedoms. They demanded an end of the one-child rule and an end of the Army picking people off the street to work as slaves in factories. The economic slowdown forces many of China’s ODM factories, like Foxconn, to be forced to fire over three hundred thousand workers. Most are tossed out of the factories without any sort of severance. China’s new middle class takes a beating from the layoffs. People take to the streets demanding the Chinese government help them. The Communist Party of China deploys the Chinese army to stop the protests. China’s army crushes the protests, China’s communist party announces a new series of prodemocracy movements to calm their population. Putin watches China loosen the strings on their people. He waits for the right time to strike like a vulture waiting for its prey to die so it can feed. Putin knows in less than a year Russia could be the world’s sole superpower, enabling him to rule the world. He decides to make an offer to China, one they won’t be able to refuse.

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When Fred and I return from San Antonio, we’re surprised to find our neighbors fighting among themselves. Everyone in our compound is standing in the front yard yelling at each other. I try to stop the screaming and yelling without success. Fred leans on the truck’s horn which finally stops the arguments. I yell, “What the hell is going on?”

Paul says, “We can’t agree on the trench. I want it to be dug by the backs of our homes. Randy wants it to go in the front and then cut across the backyards of our homes. That’s twice the work and it will cut into our fields, reducing our crop yield. Randy refuses to dig in the rear of our homes. Flo doesn’t want her garden touched.”

Randy yells, “If we cut the trench in the rear of our homes we won’t be able to use it to defend the front of our homes which face the street.”

Paul, yells back, “That’s why we’re cutting the trenches cutting across our driveways.”

The yelling goes back and forth like a group of five-year-olds on a school playground that can’t get along. I nod to Fred, who leans on the horn again. The yelling finally stops, everyone looks at me, “I thought I made the plan clear when we got together three nights ago. What the hell happened? Why didn’t you call us?”

Paul replies, “We didn’t get around to starting the trench until today. We knew you were due back today, so there was no reason to bother you.”

“Why didn’t you start the trench until today?”

Randy laughs, “Jay, we’re farmers. Farms in the spring are very busy places. We have been working on getting our crops planted. We assumed planting was the most important job, which is why you bought our farms to begin with.”

“You got me there, I forget about the work involved in farming. I’m afraid to hire people because I want to keep the trench a secret. Anyone we hire is going to talk, when they do, a smart gang leader may decide how to get around our defenses. We have to work out a plan that covers both the farming and the work on our defenses. Plus, I’ve been thinking of building underground shelters under the new barns.”

Paul’s son, Joe raises his hand. “Joe, you don’t need to raise your hand, what’s on your mind?”

“Sir, if we teenagers could skip school for a couple of weeks, we could dig the trench or work the fields while our fathers dig the trench. We skip school in the fall during harvest time, we’re not doing much in school and many of the teachers don’t show up anyway since the union couldn’t get them a raise.”

This was an idea that hadn’t occurred to me. “Joe, I think I need to discuss this with your parents. It’s an interesting idea. I tend to forget that on farms everyone in the family works.”

Paul laughs, saying, “Jay, the current administration tried to stop our children from working until they reached eighteen and only then worked a limited number of hours a week. They were trying to put us out of the farming business. They wanted us to hire full-time employees, which we’d have to give benefits, sick days and vacation time to work our fields.”

“I take it you showed them the front door?”

“We tried, but they kept coming back. Many of us got into financial problems last fall when we were forced to hire people and pay them $9.00 an hour. Many didn’t last a day, we constantly had to train new people, cutting into our crop yields, our costs increased and our yields decreased. The local manager from the Department of Labor came around just before you arrived in town to tell us we had to hire more people this year. In fact, he’s due to return within the next week to check on the people we hired this year. He told us he wanted to see the printed benefits program and make sure we hired a good mix of men, women and all races. We told him sometimes there’s not an even mix looking for work. He told us if we didn’t meet the government-mandated mix ratios for workers, he’d shut us down.”

I shake my head saying, “Since the gates have been installed at our driveways, make sure the no trespassing signs are mounted today. If he still shows up, send him to me.” I said, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Everyone smiled and nodded thinking the government manager was about to get a surprise. “Now let’s discuss the trench.”