Toward the Brink (Book 3) (16 page)

It took him the best part of ten minutes to row the twenty or so yards to the twin-hulled craft that had brought them to Sandspit. The one oar he had wasn’t the problem, it was that he had to row silently. He was thankful for the morning light, but he could tell it wasn’t going to be a bright, sun-filled day with the storm clouds that had begun to roll in and the smoke haze that hung around like a London fog. He quickly filled an old sports bag with extra magazines. It would have to be enough.

He jumped back into the dinghy and rowed hard. He didn’t care about noise this time—he had to get back!

“
T
here’s
someone on a dinghy headed for that catamaran.” Holmes pointed toward the small Sandspit Harbor.

“Someone trying to escape?” Red Beret took the night scope from Holmes for a look.

“I don’t like it. Get your men ready, it’s time to attack.”

“I don’t think that’s the right move to ma—”

Holmes pulled a 9mm pistol from his back pocket; it had been returned to him once Red Beret had agreed to follow him to Graham Island and the sanctuary on offer. He shot the commander of the Terrace force in the center of his forehead just below his beloved Red Beret. Holmes had no use for insubordination—not at a time like this. Holmes observed for the shortest of moments how, in the half-light, the blood that ran from the commander’s wound matched the color of his beret, which now floated in the sea after it was blown through the air with part of the wanna-be officer’s cranium.

“You!” He pointed his pistol at another soldier. “You’ve just been promoted. Now let’s get this attack underway!”

“Err… ” The shocked soldier, who was more inexperienced than the previous commander, hesitated for a moment. He responded when Holmes brought back the hammer of the pistol. “Yes sir, right away!” He had little respect for Red Beret and his decisions, which had cost men their lives. Hell, this CIA guy seemed to know what he was doing.

“And throw that piece of
shit
overboard.” Holmes indicated the body that still thrashed about on the deck.

“Yes sir, Mr. Holmes, right away!” The soldier was delighted with the new level of authority and acted accordingly.

Red Beret was dumped into the sea as unceremoniously as one would throw back an undersized fish. The boats moved into top gear, magazines were inserted into rifles, and the soldiers were eager to perform. After all, they’d seen what happened if you disappointed the
company man
.

A
head
, the Tall Man neared the jetty with the extra ammo as the firing from the fish market slowed dramatically.

“Shit. Hold on, fucking
hold on!
” he yelled.

He paddled as fast as he could with one oar, and with about five yards to go, he heard it: The sound of the powerful engines of the three cruisers. He turned his head to the sound of the boats. He saw the three boats head toward the beach to the side of the jetty; they weren’t slowing down. As they neared, he also saw that each boat was full of camouflaged soldiers. They hit the beach in a classic commando-style raid. They were usually conducted with Zodiacs, but if this was all you had, it was all you had.

It’s a rescue
. The thought crossed the Tall Man’s mind when he saw the armed men aboard the boats, but just as quickly, he found himself in doubt. One man in a suit jacket exited the cabin of the lead boat, and the Tall Man recognized him immediately; this wasn’t a rescue at all.

The man was Holmes, Richard Holmes.

“
T
AKE OUT THOSE FOAMERS
!” Holmes yelled loud enough to be heard over the motors of all three boats and the sound of the water as it crashed into the hull.

Three or four armed men at the bow of each boat opened fire—not selective semiauto fire but full automatic. Flames burst from the muzzles of their M4s and empty brass cases flew wildly. Foamers fell as they neared the market building. The firing from inside had decreased to such an extent that the foamers had gained a good deal of ground. An M249 light machine gun was soon brought into action from on board one of the boats. This belt-fed weapon provided larger capacity for sustained fire, and soon it had taken its toll on the foamers, which had already been thinned out from the accurate fire from inside the market.

“
E
lliot
! Elliot, come here, come here!” Chess screamed. “We got a rescue team!”

Elliot was in the room across the hall. After Kath had discovered the Tall Man gone, he’d been at a loss as much as she was until he had looked out the window and saw the Tall Man in the dinghy. He knew Chuck wasn’t out to save his own skin; that wasn’t in the Tall Man’s nature. He went to get more ammo to give them a chance at survival.

“What the hell …” Elliot had heard the full-auto fire from outside, and he was as aware of the confrontation outside as Chess was—he just hadn’t seen anything.

“Oh my God, Elliot. It’s Chuck. He’s come back, he’s come back!” Kath looked out the window and saw her Chuck coming to the front entrance. “The front door, Elliot, he’s headed to the front door.”

T
he soldier
with the M249 saw the silhouette of a tall figure running toward the front of the building. Holmes had specifically instructed Red Beret not to kill the tall one or the former president. The commander hadn’t informed everyone in his force. A burst from the light machine gun sent six or seven 5.56mm rounds in the direction of the Tall Man, who was about five yards from the front entrance. Two rounds caught him in the upper abdomen, and a third slipped by his ear. He stumbled, regained his balance, and then went down, the bag of ammo still held tightly in his hand.

“CHUCK! CHUCK!” Kath screamed from inside. She hadn’t seen him get shot, it was just out of her view, but she heard the burst of fire and she sensed it. Like a part of her own body had been ripped from her, she knew the man she loved more than life itself had been shot.

“Grab her!” Mulhaven yelled when he saw Kath run to the front door. Caution didn’t enter her mind. She had to find her Chuck.

Tristan took hold of her, and she screamed in protest. “Let me go, let
fucking
go!”

“Keep her there,” Elliot ordered as he headed to the front of the building, Chess next to him. “Open the door,” Elliot yelled to the soldier. “You ready?”

“Better believe I am.”

The soldier who had been on guard at the front door opened it, and Elliot rushed outside, M4 at the ready, and fired three bursts of full auto in the direction of the harbor while Chess ran and grabbed the Tall Man under his armpits.

Chess wasn’t a small man himself, but he didn’t attempt any heroics; he just wanted to get their injured friend inside. As Chess dragged the Tall Man back, Elliot let loose with his last burst from the M4 and scurried backward himself. This time he saw two pleasure boats that had beached themselves to one side of the jetty and another just out in the water, and there were more than a dozen armed men, some of whom fired in his direction.

This wasn’t a rescue, it was their execution.

“
Y
ou fucking
idiot
!
” Holmes screamed. “I gave express orders not to kill that man!”

“Sorry, sir, I thought it was a foamer.”

Holmes counted to ten. He wanted to shoot the asshole, but he needed to keep as many of this outfit as possible.

“Foamers!” A call went up.

The foamers who had been closing on the market had switched their attention to Holmes’s raiding force. Holmes’s group made far more noise and were out in the open, but the problem for the foamers was that their number had significantly decreased.

Almost twenty full-auto M4s and a single M249 opened up on the foamers as they approached; it was a turkey shoot.

“
C
huck
, Chuck, oh my—” Kath managed before her emotions got the better of her and fainted at the sight of her man. Chess dragged him in as fast as he could, but that also caused the blood to pump faster from the Tall Man’s wounds.

“Morris! Sergeant Morris, get in here!”

Morris was a combat medic and knew what to do.

“Chess. The bag. The bag …” The Tall Man struggled.

Chess took the bag, looked inside, and saw the magazines. He wasn’t slow, either; he knew the “rescue team” were the ones who had shot the Tall Man, and the fact that they continued to fire in this direction told him they hadn’t mistaken him for a foamer. It was deliberate. If they didn’t react now, they’d all be dead—or at least, most of them.

“Right, gotcha! Come on, Elliot, we got work to do!”

“But Chuck is—”

“In good hands. And if you wanna live, let’s fucking
GO,
soldier!” Chess asserted his authority now, this time, when it was needed most.

The Tall Man smiled as he looked at Sergeant Morris, who busied himself with cutting the Tall Man’s jacket and shirt. “He’s a good man, a good …” The Tall Man lost consciousness.

“Magazines! Fresh mags, come and get ‘em,” Chess yelled.

Every soldier who had come in on the C-17 now had three full clips, as did those who carried the AR-15s. Now was the time to show these jokers what real professional soldiers were like.

I
n the time
it took the Terrace force to take care of the remaining foamers, the Prince George survivors regrouped and positioned themselves for a counterassault.

The force from Terrace was not prepared—not at all.

Concentrated and accurate semiauto fire rained upon the Terrace force, which had formed into a closed position, from the two windows of the administrative offices of the Sandspit fish market.

“Holy shit! They’re shoot—” one cried before he was cut down.

With a fusillade of fire from the market providing cover, four armed men rushed out the front door of the building, weapons at their shoulders. They peeled off in two groups of two; one went left, the other right to flank the Terrace force—or what remained. The trees that dotted the area and some waste Dumpsters concealed the two groups in the semi dark as they took up positions on either side of the Terrace force. They communicated using hand signals, which they could just make out, before they opened fire.

There were fewer than a dozen men left, and the first volley whittled that amount by half. Those left returned fire; it was all they knew to do. Panicked, and with visibility low in the early morning light, they could only fire in the direction of their attackers. A few trees were wounded and a Dumpster took a barrage of hits, but that was all. The soldiers who had flown into Prince George in the C-17 and joined up with the group of survivalists from Twin Falls played cat and mouse, and they were definitely the cat in this game.

After what seemed like a few minutes without a shot fired, a member of the Terrace force stood. “I think we must have got ‘em!”

“Careful, careful…” one of his buddies called out, but when others began to stand, he joined them.

“Keep your eyes open, keep them—”

The silence was broken by a burst of controlled fire from each side and just in front. The last of the Terrace soldiers fell not at the hands of foamers, but fellow humans because one man had convinced them of the need to attack.

The four soldiers from the market reloaded and then, after checking for any survivors, took up a defensive stance just outside of the building at the edge of the parking lot. They kept their eyes on the Sandspit airport ahead for any more foamers. Unless the foamers began coming from the sea, there was no need to worry about their ‘six. With the sun about to emerge, it would be doubtful, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. It was overcast, but there was enough light for the soldiers to see. That was then they heard the roar of the boat engine in the harbor.

W
hen the counterattack began
, Holmes was still aboard the main boat. He didn’t know why at the time, but he told the soldier at the controls not to beach it. He was now glad he did. His force were sitting ducks out in the open.

He hit the deck when the first volley hit the soldiers on the beach. He lay there until the shooting stopped, and he prayed a search of the boats wouldn’t be conducted. After five minutes with no indication of such an event, he popped his head up for a look and saw four men in camouflage take cover in the parking lot. He wasted no time and started the cruiser. He reversed it for a short distance before he spun it around and took off in the direction of the mainland—back to the old drawing board. His plans ruined, he would have to build anew.

By the time the four armed men got into position to see the boat, it was out of range for all practical purposes. They had no idea who was in the boat but would have tried to sink it if they had.

B
ack inside the fish market
, no celebrations took place. The man responsible for keeping many of them alive lay unconscious in one room while Sergeant Morris worked to stem the flow of blood. The woman he loved—and who loved him—lay unconscious in another after collapsing from shock.

Elliot, who held the Tall Man is such esteem, was devastated. A blood transfusion was considered, but because the Tall Man’s blood type wasn’t known, Morris advised against it. Bandages and other medical supplies were brought in from the catamaran once it was determined they were no longer under attack, but the bandages alone could only slow the blood loss, not stop it.

At last, it seemed, they were safe and free from the foamer menace, but without the Tall Man to share in the victory, it was hollow. Elliot cast a forlorn figure as he went outside to sit on a rock by the edge of the water. Cindy, though reluctant, let him go; she knew he needed to be alone. For the first time since his mother passed, he cried.

He wasn’t the only one.

E
lliot sat
, his chin in the palm of his left hand and the elbow attached to that hand nestled against his knee. He occasionally picked a pebble from the ground and tossed it into the water. The harbor prevented any waves from coming in. He sat for over an hour thinking, just thinking. He thought of the incredible journey he had been on and the great people he had experienced it with, but mostly he thought about his buddy, his friend: Charles “Chuck” Black.

He was aware of footsteps as they approached, but didn’t show any concern. He was beyond that.

“Hey, Elliot,” Bob Charles called softly from behind him. “Mind if I join you for a bit?” Bob leaned against a wood rail next to Elliot. “He’s holding, he’s a tough one.”

This news made Elliot take notice. “You sure, you sure?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you on this, Elliot.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not much to see at the moment, Elliot, and I think the sergeant would appreciate the space, y’know.”

Elliot did, but damn. He wanted to go and see, see what he could do, but he knew he couldn’t perform miracles, and that’s what was needed.

“Sir? A moment?” Tom Transky approached from the market, his face glum.

Elliot found it hard to swallow as he feared the worst.

“Sir, we have a situation that needs to be addressed. I know this is a bad—”

“Is this about Chuck? If not, perhaps it could wait, Tom?”

“Sir, it’s not about Chuck, and it can’t wait.” There was an urgent edge in Tom’s voice.

“Okay, then go ahead.”

“Sir, as your chief of staff, I made it my duty to stay informed as best I could, but—”

“Get to the point, Tom, please.”

“Sir, you are aware of the Dead Hand nuclear retaliation system in place in the former Soviet Union, which is believed to be still in operation today. We employ a similar system, referred to as the ‘spoilsport’ retaliatory system. It has no official designation that I know of, and—”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“It was decided in a meeting two administrations ago that the president didn’t need to know.”

“Then how the hell do
you
know, and why didn’t you inform me?”

“Sir, I was never meant to know, either, but in my pursuit of information on Richard Holmes, I came across it. There have been other matters that have occupied my mind of late,
Sir
.”

Elliot stood and walked toward Tom. The sound of Tom’s voice and the mention of a retaliatory system had Elliot’s attention, as it did that of the former president.

“Sorry Tom, I … I should have known better. Go on.”

“Sir, the core of the matter is this. The spoilsport system was put in place to retaliate after a first wave of nuclear devices has fallen across the country. It’s an automatic response. No human control is necessary for the launch to go ahead. Basically, the system assumes that everyone in the country has perished.”

“Why would anyone devise such a diabolical system?”

“When this was developed back in the sixties, it was the belief of the military that if we—Americans—were no longer in control of our country, then we wanted to be damn sure no one else would be.”

“That’s a childlike mentality.”

“You’ve described the military mindset to a T, Elliot.”

Elliot looked at Bob. He didn’t have a smirk on his face—he was completely serious.

“What prevented it from launching before, then?”

“The system activates when we reach DEFCON 3, and during the heated debates in the Situation Room and the PEOC over this crisis, our alert level went to DEFCON 3. General Stodge was left in charge and was to override the system. But the speed with which the collapse occurred—the spread of this plague and the foamers—there is no guarantee he managed to do it. If it were me and there was a choice between switching off the system or getting out alive, I would choose the latter.”

“And where is the override switch exactly?” Bob pressed ahead, urgency in his voice.

“The Pentagon, sir.”

Former President Charles exchanged a glance with Elliot. Neither was under any illusion about the importance of this information.

“How do you propose we get back to the
fucking
Pentagon? It’s taken us days just to get from Twin Falls to here!”

“I know, Elliot, but it only took us hours to get from Washington to Prince George, and we have to do the same thing. Find a plane, fuel it, and go. Even a small plane. We don’t need to take too many.”

“Hang on, hang on. You said it would go into action sometime after the first wave of nuclear weapons fell on the country, right? There’s been no nuclear attack, so we—”

“Elliot, it becomes active at DEFCON 3, but it’s not operational. To prevent the system from going operational, a code has to be entered every day or it begins the countdown process. The override can stop the countdown.”

“Did you happen to discover how long that takes?”

“Anywhere between two and ten days, sir.”

T
hat was it
, then. Events once again had decided the fate of Elliot and his group, at a time when they had thought the running had come to an end. There was no choice. A party would have to be selected to head back to the Pentagon to find the override switch.

What if the place is overrun with foamers, or the plague has become airborne and the air can’t be breathed? Or, what if the Russian or Chinese systems haven’t been disabled, or…

Elliot’s thoughts ran wild with scenarios, none of them good.

Heaviest on his mind was his friend, Charles Black—
the Tall Man
—and how they (how
he
) really needed him. Now more than ever.

T
he End - Craig
A. McDonough January 2016.