Globall War of Terror - Nightmare

Globall War of Terror - Nightmare

We were rolling on two lane paved road, the battered barracks van in the lead, recovery truck behind, then bus then shuttle. It was early afternoon, the heat of the day had everyone tired and restless.

Then the barracks van blew up in front of us for no apparent reason.

Buddy brought us to a panic stop, herringbone left, and I dismounted with my binoculars.

The interstate bus went herringbone right which left the shuttle bus enough time to stop in the center.

I had just time to realize I was hearing rotor blades when I heard extremely powerful loudspeakers.

"HOMELAND! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS!"

Three helicopters. A recon bird with rockets, which had just put paid to the van and killed three of my people. Two medium transports that even now were disgorging troops on either side of the road, flanking us at 100 yards. Ideal distance for trained troops, not so good for us.

Brooke brought her rifle up and fired controlled bursts at one of the helicopters.

Its minigun tore her to shreds.

"Next rocket goes in a bus! Drop your weapons!" said the enemy officer over his bullhorn, from his dismount position. A designated marksman already had a bead on my chest, I could see the reflections from his red laser.

I thought about it. I seriously thought about it. A clean death by fire.

But perhaps we could BS or bribe our way out of this yet. I keyed my mike.

"Weapons down," I ordered.

Everyone complied. The troops rushed us, then the buses. They started pulling the passengers off the buses.

One man briefly resisted and was riddled with bullets.

I stood there with my hands raised until the enemy officer came over to me. I still wore my sidearm but I had no chance of drawing it.

"[Echo 18]," he introduced himself. _He knew my name_.

"These people are innocent. I kidnapped them," I began.

He interrupted.

"They are enemy aliens and will be properly taken care of."

They took our shovels and made them dig a ditch at the side of the road.

Buddy also still had his hands up. He had misplaced his pistol somewhere. No one paid attention to him.

Then the machine gun team started setting up.

I drew and my world shattered.

When I regained consciousness, my broken right arm had been crudely splinted with one of our own splints. My belt gear had been cut off and the contents of my pockets removed. Aches told me that I had been thoroughly searched while I was out.

Two Homeland ... soldiers? No. Not soldiers. Paramilitaries? Thugs? Genocidaires? stood watch over me. One had broken my arm with a baton while the other had jabbed me with a cattle prod. Temporary memory loss is a known side effect.

I had failed my own personal kill house exercise.

I sat by myself. Three of my guards sat some distance away.

Buddy's headless body was nearby. He'd gone for it too.

And there was a jumbled line of corpses tumbled into the newly dug trench. Including three on litters from the ambulance. And children.

"Fill it in," the enemy officer ordered my guards.

They did, wielding shovels while held at gunpoint. And when they had finished all but a few feet, they too were shot.

They stood me up under my armpits to walk me over to the bit of trench remaining.

The enemy officer put his hand on my shoulder.

"You did your best," he said kindly. Then he turned me away from him. I heard the whisper of his pistol draw.

"... wake up, sir ..."

I sat bolt upright with my right arm asleep.

It was early afternoon. I was in the shade of the bus. Everyone around me was still alive.

Brooke -- whom I had last seen ripped apart by minigun fire -- walked up.

"About that time, sir," she said and handed me a bottle of water.

I drank deeply.

Then I shuddered.

"Bad dream," I explained briefly.

Then geared up to do my best to keep it from becoming reality.

Globall War of Terror - WInning

Everyone was so accustomed to the Jungo shuffle that it was almost a disappointment when we lost no more tires, had no more vehicles get stuck, and made it to the Y turnoff joining a flat improved gravel road. The abandoned mine road was holding up well.

We were OK on water, not good but OK. We were mostly OK on gas.

I had a decision to make soon. I had a fragmentary piece of route intelligence from Major Cartwright's convoy. He had started in Salt Lake City, Utah and taken I-80 all the way across through Sacramento.

We never would have cleared all those Homeland checkpoints. But those checkpoints should be well behind us now.

The Utah side of the state line had not been guarded. The Nevada side had been covered by state troopers. They shouldn't object to a convoy leaving their state.

But Winnemucca had been out of fuel when the convoy went past. They'd had to wait for resupply.

We couldn't wait. We would have to buy food and while we had the money, we couldn't afford the curiosity.

The other option was to take variations on a sharp left turn and get lost. But this would only take us further from our destination.

The temptation under normal conditions would be to send someone forward for recon. But we only had the vans for that, and no means of communication back to the main convoy. We could lose a lot of time - maybe a van - and learn nothing.

We roll, I decided. From here on out, we would behave like ordinary commercial traffic.

That meant Brooke had to put away her happy switch, I had to put away the infirmary care package, and all of us needed a truck wash and a hand wash respectively. I changed, from tactical gear and uniform to a company polo shirt, still with badge and handgun.

The drive to Winnemucca was a relief to everyone but me and Buddy. We knew the dice we were rolling, and not even to a casino yet.

Just outside town there was a commercial gas station with the pumps blocked off by abandoned vehicles. "CLOSED" was spraypainted on the side of several.

Damn.

That meant gas stations with attendants and curiosity. It couldn't be helped.

It was late afternoon, nearly early evening, when we rolled into Winnemucca and went to the first gas station and fueled up.

The pumps accepted my Company card. Amazing.

Buddy ambled into the gas station and ambled out with a double armful of groceries.

"Fuel desk says the truck wash is on the other side of town. They also say there's a checkpoint westbound at Fernley but nothing eastbound until Salt Lake."

He took the groceries back to the nursery van and put them in the side door in one smooth motion.

We drove through the city streets to the other side of town. Signal lights. A little traffic, not much.

The WalMart parking lot was crammed with RVs, trucks, cars... it was a zoo. Only a handful of porta potties and a fenced off area covered with tarps suggested any hint of order.

We had to wash down the vehicles; it wasn't an option. Dust and mud would be too revealing later down the pike.

So it was that Buddy was just finishing washing the interstate bus when two local police cars came up and parked on either side of the wash.

I approached the older looking of the two. I noticed an oddity about his uniform that most people wouldn't notice but arrested my attention, so to speak.

No name plate.

"[Echo 18], convoy captain, how can I help you officers?"

"Just curiosity. Who are you, where you headed?"

"[Company] security working for [Client]," I said. "Employee transfer."

It had the advantage of being true.

I had correctly identified the officer in charge. He waved off his partner who promptly got back in his cruiser and drove off.

"Headed west or east?" he asked.

I took a big chance and told the truth again.

"East."

"Good. We don't get much traffic from Reno. Occasional bus full of wounded, headed to the hospitals in Salt Lake. No cars, no buses. And definitely no buses full of what looks way too much like migrants to me. But they have soft hands. Not farmers."

"Not farmers," I agreed. "Tech workers."

"Mind if I talk to a few?"

"Be my guest," I said, and walked him over to the shuttle bus.

It was as messy, dusty and crowded as you can imagine. Everyone looked at him with dead eyes as he went in the door. I motioned the guard-driver clear.

This would be a private conversation. And the results would be critical.

A few minutes later, he came out and over to me.

"Well, son, I'm thinking you and your folks need to head out of here eastbound as soon as you can manage it. Like as soon as your vehicles are washed and you get water. I'm going to stay with you until you leave. When you wash the other vehicles, follow me."

With that he went back to his cruiser, popped the trunk, and started fiddling with something in the back. Making sure his rifle was readily accessible.

We hurried through the power wash. It took only twenty minutes.

Then he turned on his lights and took the lead of our convoy. We followed, through what little remained of town and past what would normally be the turn off to the road leading to I-80 eastbound.

He turned off his lights, made two turns, then into a driveway to a big parking lot next to a mobile home. A metal storage building twice the size of the mobile home was next to it.

He got out and went to the door, opening it. It had been unlocked. Then he came back.

"You won't be bothered here if you leave within the hour. The water works, help yourself. Leave the place the way you found it. Take nothing."

"Thank you, officer."

"Thank me for nothing. You never saw me. You don't have permission to be here. You certainly don't know that there's a BOLO out for two stolen buses out of Livermore, California that matches this description, advise Homeland if seen. Good luck."

He left by a different route.

"OK folks, we have twenty minutes. Use the water hoses, fill our containers, quick hand wash."

The guards, medics, firefighter and Buddy took turns at the one guest shower in the mobile home - 1 minute each, to hell with modesty, leave the place cleaner than you find it. Everyone else had to make do with rags and a wipe-down outside.

It was tactical. We needed to look clean for the next leg.

My eye caught a piece of mail.

"Deputy ..." and my eyes immediately glazed over. I didn't want to know any names. Especially names that could be tortured out of me.

Forty five minutes later we were washed up, full on water, and ready to get back on the road.

The buses were not stolen. That was just an excuse.

Homeland was in fact looking for us, in specific - or at least the buses they'd seen on the video from the checkpoint. That would make things a whole lot harder.

Fortunately I'd planned for that.

Two hours later, we arrived at the casinos near the Nevada-Utah border.

Something was wrong with them.

The signs were dark. Some room windows boarded up. Surrounded by fences. Upended 40' containers at each corner with sandbagged machine gun nests on top.

Oh shit.

I didn't have to see the "HOMELAND" signage on the fences facing the freeway as we drove past to realize the new occupants and the new use.

And ahead of us, near the state line and parked in the center divider surrounded by J barriers, an innocent looking trailer with a generator hooked up to six spindly tripods.

All covered in cameras, aimed at both sides of the road to gather license plates, vehicle descriptions and even faces.

This was the risk of using I-80. We had covered in two hours on the Interstate what had taken us two days on Jungo. But we were definitively made. Nailed.

There was nothing for it but to slink down in the passenger seat of the recovery truck as if I were asleep, so they wouldn't get a facial recognition shot.

Buddy didn't bother. But he did happen to rub his nose at the right moment.

I started a timer in my head.

We had that long to break contact from the enemy reaction force.

We passed into Utah. We saw the Nevada state police cars and checkpoint on the other side, but as I had hoped they paid no notice to us.

Just because there was a Homeland internment facility in short range did not mean that they would have a reaction force capability. But it would be a convenient place to base them, covering most of the freeway between Fernley and Salt Lake.

I remembered one of my favorite stories of the Cold War.

The commando ship _Rainbow Warrior_ under operation of the militant NGO (and sometimes pirate) Greenpeace had landed a video investigation team at an illegal seal fishery. In Soviet Russia. The one militiaman was reluctant to start an international incident with his hunting rifle, but he did call it in.

A massive Russian naval armada was dispatched to intercept then take, burn or destroy the interloper - perfectly legal under international maritime law. For seventy-two hours they waited at the border of international waters for _Rainbow Warrior_.

They waited in vain. Apparently she was faster than believed, and had escaped into unpatrolled waters. The armada's units returned to base.

Six hours later, _Rainbow Warrior_ limped into the interception point. She'd blown a main shaft seal and instead of doing her maximum speed of 21 knots, had done her new best of merely 3 knots. And kept going, to safety, and her videos to the world press.

I got out my "Campgrounds of Utah" guide.

We exited within ten minutes, took a right turn and got lost.

###

At the campground, after we had set up a watch, distributed the very last of the beef jerky, and squared away the refugees, Matt came up to me.

"Sir... about a minute after we exited the freeway, I saw a police interceptor flooring it past the exit we had taken. Forward fixed red light, no strobe, couldn't see the markings. Mostly white."

It had been that close.