GWOT 2 - Stones Cry Out
May. 31st, 2018 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkitty[first story of Book 2: Resistance Builds]
I had no right to risk the rest of the team. We had carried out our mission. Against the odds, we had safely delivered all H-1Bs and their unprotected dependents to a place where they might ... might ... be safer.
Now we should just go home. Retrace our steps by some other route. No one much cared who was coming _into_ California. If you were dumb enough to go look at crater glass and long before that get trapped on the wrong side of a series of checkpoints, that was totally on you.
But I had something I needed to check out. Not the playa. Not Gerlach. I knew what lay there. War crimes. Massacres.
But these things happen in wars. And the first massacre had been at San Francisco, when 100,000 people reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 10 seconds.
I now knew the locations of two Homeland detention centers from personal observation. Eastern California on the 395 corridor, at Manzanar. Eastern Nevada on the 80 corridor, just shy of the state line with Utah.
But I knew I could never get close to either of them. Isolated areas with excellent perimeter security. All too easy to just throw me in with the other inmates, after some electric persuasion to explain my curiosity. And no burn treatment.
That was bad enough. But what I suspected was far, far worse.
"Never to forgive! Never to forget!"
Wyatt and I had very carefully traced what little information we could obtain. Hypothesized ... if we were Homeland, what bases would we use? What bases would be active in the war effort, and thus unavailable to us? What bases would be quiet, and therefore more suitable? Homeland ran on roads, not rails. So we could not, as Allied forces did in World War II, use aerial reconnaissance to track the cattle cars full of refugees ... and then do nothing. Winning the war had been more important. And millions died, some of whom could have been saved.
That was the thought that haunted me.
But do you know how many prison camp revolts and escapes there have ever been? A handful in Nazi Germany. A few in Soviet Russia. More than one in Poland, if you count the Warsaw Ghetto as the industrial open-air prison it really was. Even a couple in pre Firecracker America.
How many successful?
None. Zip. Zero.
I had no illusions that if we somehow Got The Word Out about what was happening, that anyone would do anything about it. The fix was in. The Firecracker War, whether or not America had started it, was a reality that could not be ignored. We defeated China or China defeated us. There was no third option. And either way the casualty counts were already in the millions.
The powers that ran the nation and spoon fed us our propaganda had authorized, funded, armed and trained Homeland to do exactly what it was doing.
That was what I needed to know. What exactly was Homeland doing?
I _needed_ to know. Not out of obligation to 3500 people in San Jose. Out of obligation to ... well, humanity. Honor. That which causes men to walk on two legs rather than run like wolves on four.
I walked over to Brooke's hotel room. By common consent, as our only female guard she had gotten her own. I knocked.
The door opened a fraction and a pistol barrel showed in the crack. Then she let me in, and bolted the door after.
"Brooke," I began. "I need to ask you to do something. This isn't a security thing or a site thing. This is a personal thing."
She nodded warily.
"I want to send the rest of the team back to site. I... personally... I need to conduct a dangerous recon. I can think of no one better to help me with it than you."
Her second nod was less wary.
I wanted to tell her about the Ammunition Technical Working Group. But I couldn't do that. What you know, you will share when you are tortured.
So I took another tack.
"All the soldiers, all the Marines, the honest cops, the veterans ... they're in China. The shitheads are in charge here. You know it, I know it. I need to know how deep the rot goes. I think I can cover you with my travel papers. But of the whole team, you are in most danger if we are interned."
Brooke was a Marine rifleman. She was out - medical disability, sway back. But once a Marine, always a Marine. And Marines have always been the guardians of America. To be specific, America's honor - as quaint a concept as that may seem.
She nodded once, briskly.
"Whatever you need." Then she paused, swallowed briefly. "Stay here."
?, my face said.
"Good cover," she explained.
Brooke had _not_ been read in on the Ammunition Technical Working Group. And she was not normally the type to think in intelligence terms.
But we were all exceeding our normal abilities.
I nodded briefly. The room had one bed. And after catnaps on shaded asphalt, I needed a decent night's sleep.
So I put my handgun where I could reach it easily, staged my boots and trousers, and took my half of the bed.
After a minute, Brooke did the same.
I fell asleep almost at once.
I woke up at gray dawn. Brooke was nestled into my back, a warm feeling that my defenses had passed in the dark.
I leapt out of bed so that she would wake up without realizing.
The team's expressions were carefully guarded over the weak excuse for a 'full breakfast' that the hotel was capable of offering. When I put Matt in charge and stacked them in the ambulance while Brooke and I took the nursery van, eyebrows climbed. Then I split us off. They would go directly back by local roads, avoiding Interstates and checkpoints, with perfectly legitimate travel papers authorizing them to support the War On Terror.
What we would do, and where we would go, I carefully did not say.
None of them were stupid enough to say what an outsider would be thinking.
"The boss is taking a little side vacation with a piece of ass."
It didn't fit my MO. It certainly didn't fit Brooke. She was a widow. Her wife had been killed horribly, by criminals in the early days after the Firecracker. She had found the body, and killed some of them. But it would never be enough.
But if I could get bystanders - such as a local informant, or a checkpoint - to buy that story, it just might be enough.
Brooke traded her M-16 for an AR-15. We wouldn't need a happy switch. The site would. And the ambulance - formerly my personal van - had a semi-secret compartment for such things. I tucked in most of my gear, including the papers we'd been given in Gerlach.
The one highly illegal item we kept was the explosive. I had known a couple things, and Mo had taught me a few more, but I had no business playing with detonators and wires and charges. Unless I had to.
The team broke contact west. We broke contact north.
Having had recent experience with Jungo Road, the Winnemucca-Jungo-Cedarville route seemed safest. With just two of us and the van, we could skip hotels and carry lots of water. So we did, careful to cross the playa at night.
We didn't talk. Brooke had her thoughts to keep her company. She fought with herself to keep happy thoughts of her wife. Now and again she slipped, and would ask me to take over driving for a bit.
Courtesy of Wyatt I had a route, a little list. Places to check, in Southern Oregon and far Northern California. Places that would be convenient for values of Homeland.
On the third, we hit pay dirt.
###
We'd hiked in with skill and care. We had no electronics on us and only passive optics - binoculars.
On paper this had been a wildlife refuge. Worthless land, little water. Now it had checkpoints, a ridiculously tall guard tower (at least 100') with cameras and even an aerostat, and concentric rings of fencing around a central area full of tents.
The buses came in. They came in full of people. They left empty.
The crowds were pushed into a processing building. Most of them came out the far side, shaved heads and minus their effects. But the counts were off. Kind of a roach motel ... they go in, but not all of them come out.
A smaller side building - definitely new - built of brick. It gave off smoke day and night.
That streak of smoke told the entire story, to those of us who are willing to face facts and work the hard equations.
This was desert. No one was bringing in firewood ... or food. There had been no trucks. There was no warehouse. No unloading activity. No agriculture, no crops.
This was an extermination camp, and what was burning were the bodies of the dead.
Brooke and I spoke less and less to each other. Only necessary communication, and that in few words, or none at all.
When you live cheek to eyeball with someone for days, in immediately life threatening conditions, you learn a lot about each other whether you want to or not.
If this had been even vaguely a normal situation, we'd have been bitching about the smell of each other's farts.
I don't know what she learned.
I learned that Brooke was a hard core operator. That the Marines had lost a skilled operator when they separated her. She wasn't bright but she was stubborn. And what she knew how to do, she did very, very well.
We slept together. Literally that - one of us awake and observing while the other napped in body contact. Then stretch, take care of personal needs, and swap.
After three days neither of us could be in denial any more. There was no massive food cache, no delayed deliveries, no alternative fuel for the clouds of smoke. And we were low on water.
We crawled out. We hiked further out. We made it back to the van, desecrated a pack of baby wipes, and cancelled the rest of our planned tour.
The silence between us grew deeper, until it was a living, tangible thing.
At the one Homeland checkpoint, we were both automations. Blank eyes, faces dead. The checkpoint guards didn't even look at our papers but waved us through. We were obviously no threat to anyone.
The Bay Area after the Firecracker was full of survivors with PTSD. We were just two more.
What the guards didn't know is why we were so composed.
Because we were resisting the suicidal urge to murder them all, and keep on killing until overcome by superior force. And then commit suicide rather than accept capture.
One checkpoint would not be enough.
I was more ambitious.
I had no right to risk the rest of the team. We had carried out our mission. Against the odds, we had safely delivered all H-1Bs and their unprotected dependents to a place where they might ... might ... be safer.
Now we should just go home. Retrace our steps by some other route. No one much cared who was coming _into_ California. If you were dumb enough to go look at crater glass and long before that get trapped on the wrong side of a series of checkpoints, that was totally on you.
But I had something I needed to check out. Not the playa. Not Gerlach. I knew what lay there. War crimes. Massacres.
But these things happen in wars. And the first massacre had been at San Francisco, when 100,000 people reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 10 seconds.
I now knew the locations of two Homeland detention centers from personal observation. Eastern California on the 395 corridor, at Manzanar. Eastern Nevada on the 80 corridor, just shy of the state line with Utah.
But I knew I could never get close to either of them. Isolated areas with excellent perimeter security. All too easy to just throw me in with the other inmates, after some electric persuasion to explain my curiosity. And no burn treatment.
That was bad enough. But what I suspected was far, far worse.
"Never to forgive! Never to forget!"
Wyatt and I had very carefully traced what little information we could obtain. Hypothesized ... if we were Homeland, what bases would we use? What bases would be active in the war effort, and thus unavailable to us? What bases would be quiet, and therefore more suitable? Homeland ran on roads, not rails. So we could not, as Allied forces did in World War II, use aerial reconnaissance to track the cattle cars full of refugees ... and then do nothing. Winning the war had been more important. And millions died, some of whom could have been saved.
That was the thought that haunted me.
But do you know how many prison camp revolts and escapes there have ever been? A handful in Nazi Germany. A few in Soviet Russia. More than one in Poland, if you count the Warsaw Ghetto as the industrial open-air prison it really was. Even a couple in pre Firecracker America.
How many successful?
None. Zip. Zero.
I had no illusions that if we somehow Got The Word Out about what was happening, that anyone would do anything about it. The fix was in. The Firecracker War, whether or not America had started it, was a reality that could not be ignored. We defeated China or China defeated us. There was no third option. And either way the casualty counts were already in the millions.
The powers that ran the nation and spoon fed us our propaganda had authorized, funded, armed and trained Homeland to do exactly what it was doing.
That was what I needed to know. What exactly was Homeland doing?
I _needed_ to know. Not out of obligation to 3500 people in San Jose. Out of obligation to ... well, humanity. Honor. That which causes men to walk on two legs rather than run like wolves on four.
I walked over to Brooke's hotel room. By common consent, as our only female guard she had gotten her own. I knocked.
The door opened a fraction and a pistol barrel showed in the crack. Then she let me in, and bolted the door after.
"Brooke," I began. "I need to ask you to do something. This isn't a security thing or a site thing. This is a personal thing."
She nodded warily.
"I want to send the rest of the team back to site. I... personally... I need to conduct a dangerous recon. I can think of no one better to help me with it than you."
Her second nod was less wary.
I wanted to tell her about the Ammunition Technical Working Group. But I couldn't do that. What you know, you will share when you are tortured.
So I took another tack.
"All the soldiers, all the Marines, the honest cops, the veterans ... they're in China. The shitheads are in charge here. You know it, I know it. I need to know how deep the rot goes. I think I can cover you with my travel papers. But of the whole team, you are in most danger if we are interned."
Brooke was a Marine rifleman. She was out - medical disability, sway back. But once a Marine, always a Marine. And Marines have always been the guardians of America. To be specific, America's honor - as quaint a concept as that may seem.
She nodded once, briskly.
"Whatever you need." Then she paused, swallowed briefly. "Stay here."
?, my face said.
"Good cover," she explained.
Brooke had _not_ been read in on the Ammunition Technical Working Group. And she was not normally the type to think in intelligence terms.
But we were all exceeding our normal abilities.
I nodded briefly. The room had one bed. And after catnaps on shaded asphalt, I needed a decent night's sleep.
So I put my handgun where I could reach it easily, staged my boots and trousers, and took my half of the bed.
After a minute, Brooke did the same.
I fell asleep almost at once.
I woke up at gray dawn. Brooke was nestled into my back, a warm feeling that my defenses had passed in the dark.
I leapt out of bed so that she would wake up without realizing.
The team's expressions were carefully guarded over the weak excuse for a 'full breakfast' that the hotel was capable of offering. When I put Matt in charge and stacked them in the ambulance while Brooke and I took the nursery van, eyebrows climbed. Then I split us off. They would go directly back by local roads, avoiding Interstates and checkpoints, with perfectly legitimate travel papers authorizing them to support the War On Terror.
What we would do, and where we would go, I carefully did not say.
None of them were stupid enough to say what an outsider would be thinking.
"The boss is taking a little side vacation with a piece of ass."
It didn't fit my MO. It certainly didn't fit Brooke. She was a widow. Her wife had been killed horribly, by criminals in the early days after the Firecracker. She had found the body, and killed some of them. But it would never be enough.
But if I could get bystanders - such as a local informant, or a checkpoint - to buy that story, it just might be enough.
Brooke traded her M-16 for an AR-15. We wouldn't need a happy switch. The site would. And the ambulance - formerly my personal van - had a semi-secret compartment for such things. I tucked in most of my gear, including the papers we'd been given in Gerlach.
The one highly illegal item we kept was the explosive. I had known a couple things, and Mo had taught me a few more, but I had no business playing with detonators and wires and charges. Unless I had to.
The team broke contact west. We broke contact north.
Having had recent experience with Jungo Road, the Winnemucca-Jungo-Cedarville route seemed safest. With just two of us and the van, we could skip hotels and carry lots of water. So we did, careful to cross the playa at night.
We didn't talk. Brooke had her thoughts to keep her company. She fought with herself to keep happy thoughts of her wife. Now and again she slipped, and would ask me to take over driving for a bit.
Courtesy of Wyatt I had a route, a little list. Places to check, in Southern Oregon and far Northern California. Places that would be convenient for values of Homeland.
On the third, we hit pay dirt.
###
We'd hiked in with skill and care. We had no electronics on us and only passive optics - binoculars.
On paper this had been a wildlife refuge. Worthless land, little water. Now it had checkpoints, a ridiculously tall guard tower (at least 100') with cameras and even an aerostat, and concentric rings of fencing around a central area full of tents.
The buses came in. They came in full of people. They left empty.
The crowds were pushed into a processing building. Most of them came out the far side, shaved heads and minus their effects. But the counts were off. Kind of a roach motel ... they go in, but not all of them come out.
A smaller side building - definitely new - built of brick. It gave off smoke day and night.
That streak of smoke told the entire story, to those of us who are willing to face facts and work the hard equations.
This was desert. No one was bringing in firewood ... or food. There had been no trucks. There was no warehouse. No unloading activity. No agriculture, no crops.
This was an extermination camp, and what was burning were the bodies of the dead.
Brooke and I spoke less and less to each other. Only necessary communication, and that in few words, or none at all.
When you live cheek to eyeball with someone for days, in immediately life threatening conditions, you learn a lot about each other whether you want to or not.
If this had been even vaguely a normal situation, we'd have been bitching about the smell of each other's farts.
I don't know what she learned.
I learned that Brooke was a hard core operator. That the Marines had lost a skilled operator when they separated her. She wasn't bright but she was stubborn. And what she knew how to do, she did very, very well.
We slept together. Literally that - one of us awake and observing while the other napped in body contact. Then stretch, take care of personal needs, and swap.
After three days neither of us could be in denial any more. There was no massive food cache, no delayed deliveries, no alternative fuel for the clouds of smoke. And we were low on water.
We crawled out. We hiked further out. We made it back to the van, desecrated a pack of baby wipes, and cancelled the rest of our planned tour.
The silence between us grew deeper, until it was a living, tangible thing.
At the one Homeland checkpoint, we were both automations. Blank eyes, faces dead. The checkpoint guards didn't even look at our papers but waved us through. We were obviously no threat to anyone.
The Bay Area after the Firecracker was full of survivors with PTSD. We were just two more.
What the guards didn't know is why we were so composed.
Because we were resisting the suicidal urge to murder them all, and keep on killing until overcome by superior force. And then commit suicide rather than accept capture.
One checkpoint would not be enough.
I was more ambitious.
