One Year After: A Novel Read online

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  The attack did come in precisely as John had predicted; the two Black Hawks swept in at just after three in the morning. The watch post John had suggested be pushed forward and concealed within spitting distance of the mall, which had been converted into Asheville’s helipad, had warned of the liftoff ten minutes earlier.

  The two helicopters touched down, seconds apart—one in the parking lot in front of the town hall, dropping its troops and then lifting off, and the second coming in thirty seconds later with a second squad. The second chopper remained on the ground, rotors turning at idle, while the other circled. Half of the first squad stormed into the town hall, weapons raised. A number of shots were fired, and at that same instant, the phone receiver John was holding, his link to the Swannanoa road barrier, went dead.

  “They shot out our phone, damn it!” John snapped.

  The second squad to land spread out in a skirmish line and raced toward the hospital … and found it and the town hall empty.

  John, with Maury Hurt and a couple of the members of his first company mobilized down from the college, sat concealed in an abandoned apartment above the old hardware store, which looked straight out at the hospital and town hall. At least for the moment, they tried not to laugh, though the fact that some shots were fired as the assault team stormed into the town hall told him that their orders did carry deadly intent.

  The assault unit that had charged into the hospital with weapons raised came out, and even in the dark, he could sense their confusion by the way they moved. He prayed that it ended this way, that confused and cursing, they’d get aboard their chopper, lift off, and the second one that was circling would pick up the rest, and they’d be gone. Maury had argued against John’s plan, saying that if ever there was a time to capture one or maybe both of the Black Hawks, it was now. He did balk, however, at John’s repeated query about whether he was ready to gun down the troops that had landed and whether he realized that even before they could snatch it and move it, chances were the Apaches would be on top of them in retaliation.

  He wanted a message sent back to Fredericks, not the first shots of a full-scale war unless Fredericks ordered it first.

  The troops headed back to their helicopter. No one in the town had night-vision goggles, but in the shadows cast by an early morning waning moon, he could see that the men were confused by the results, and several stopped alongside the small public bathroom in the town square to talk.

  “Come on. Get back aboard and get the hell out,” John whispered.

  It was far tenser and more dangerous at this moment than the men who had come in realized. He had pulled everyone out of the town hall; it was too obvious that they might hit that first to try to take prisoners, but in the perimeter around the town hall and hospital across the street, he had over a hundred troops concealed, and they were trained killers. Survivors of the fight with the Posse and close to a score of small-scale skirmishes since—several of them with the reivers—they had stood many a cold, lonely night’s watch at the hidden locations guarding the approaches into their valley. Their weapons varied from hunting rifles to what before the war were rather illegal automatics, a number of the weapons taken from the Posse dead. He had an RPG that had been captured from the Posse; a second RPG, a homemade affair, he entrusted to his best small unit, a group of Afghan and Iraqi vets.

  Their orders were strict: no one was to fire unless directly fired upon or he popped off two green flares—green because they were the only two left in the entire supply of the town. But he knew from many bitter experiences and history itself that orders were one thing, but the tension of a moment like this another. A weapon accidentally discharged by either side … someone undisciplined or even drunk and pissed off … anything could happen when you put this many armed men and women with ever deepening antipathy in close range of each other.

  The rotor of the copter on the ground began speeding up, the always distinct thumping echoing across the open plaza. The troops loaded in, and it lifted off. Even as it cleared the parking lot, the second chopper came back in from the west, flared, and settled down, troops loading in. As they left the town hall, there was more gunfire, and just as the last man loaded in, the door gunner unleashed a sustained volley into the building. Then the chopper lifted off into the darkness and was gone.

  John breathed a sigh of relief and then sat back to wait. A standard ruse was for an enemy to come back into the same place fifteen minutes or so later. They undoubtedly had night vision, and he did not. He would not relax until his forward scout reported that all four aircraft were back on the ground, a report that did not come back for nearly a half hour. With the telephone switchboard in the town hall apparently shot out, it was a long wait until he heard a moped puttering into the town plaza, its driver circling several times, obviously a bit confused as to where to go, until John finally leaned out the window and shouted for the driver to come over. He then received the report from the courier that all four choppers were back at their base.

  He shouted for an all clear. Kevin Malady stepped into the town square and repeatedly blew a whistle. Only a few appeared out of hiding; the rest remained concealed as ordered. A paranoia John had developed while waiting for this move was that maybe Asheville had more air assets than he knew about. More could be concealed on the far side of town or even called in from Johnson City or Greenville. Bureaucracies being as they were, he knew it would take a lot of wheeling and dealing to borrow more assets, but he was not going to bet anyone’s life on that. He had passed the word that they had to assume that the sky above was now unfriendly and indeed watching.

  He stepped out of the hardware store, looking up and feeling a bit naked. The first indicators of dawn were approaching as he walked up to Kevin, nodded, and shook his hand.

  “Good job,” he said, and then he headed for the town hall. It was Kevin who shouted for him to stop and to not open the door, and John inwardly cursed himself. They just might be capable of setting a claymore or IED on the way out, and Kevin shouted for a couple of his Afghan vets to come and check things out first. It was a long, tense fifteen minutes, the sky to the east shifting from blackness to a wash of indigo and deep gold before the two came out and said the building was cleared, but they were grim faced, angry.

  John went in and stopped at the town’s small telephone exchange.

  “Son of a bitch.” The switchboard had been blown apart, at least a couple of magazine loads poured into it. They had shut down most of the town’s communications with this one wanton act of destruction, and John suddenly felt that the clock of their progress had been pushed backward.

  His office had been ransacked, filing cabinets torn open, papers missing. Almost amusingly, they had taken the long-defunct computer, which had rested on a side table gathering dust.

  On his shot-up desk was a manila envelope labeled “For John Matherson.”

  John went to pick it up, but one of his vets called for him to wait and then cautiously pushed the envelope with the muzzle of his M16 and flipped it over, finally opening it up himself before handing it to John.

  What a pathetic world we are indeed slipping back into, John thought, to again bring back these types of concerns. It was too dark to read the note within, and not wanting to turn on a flashlight, he just held the envelope as he walked through the rest of the building.

  Fortunately, they had taken the radio equipment set up by ham radio operators from equipment that had survived the Day and moved it to a secondary headquarters, which would now operate out of the basement of Gaither Hall until this crisis was resolved. Basing on the campus was inconvenient for many, but it had the tactical advantage of being in a narrow cove, with plenty of tree canopy for concealment.

  John had left his far-too-easily identifiable Edsel in the garage of the house, and there it would stay henceforth, and he stood outside the hardware store waiting for a lift from one of Bartlett’s recycled Volkswagen vans, which had become something of the community’
s bus service. Bartlett, being Bartlett, did feel it to be a bit weird that the vans were adorned with 1960s-style peace signs. It was all just too ironic at times.

  John stepped back into the hardware store where he felt it was safe to turn on a flashlight and read the note sent from Fredericks.

  John,

  The decision by you and by those who follow you to refuse the legal order to report for service with the ANR has now placed you—and all those who harbor you—firmly outside the law. I truly regret this. I thought we could work together for the common good of all. The fact that you are reading this note means that you and your followers have gone into hiding. There is no place to hide, and you know that. The deadline to report for mobilization has been moved up to noon today. If you are willing to comply as ordered, I am certain we can still work this out in a fair and equitable manner with all charges against you dropped. I know you are reading this within minutes of the departure of the troops. Since your phone service has been interrupted, raise a white flag at your boundary position at Exit 59 and remove all obstacles at that position at the same time, providing open access for the renewal of all traffic both ways will indicate your intent to end this crisis peacefully. This must be done immediately after dawn.

  Don’t make any mistakes here. You are a military man who understands the chain of command and how each of us is a cog in the administrative system of state. It is time to do your part as expected.

  Dale Fredericks

  Director of Administrative District #11

  District of the Carolinas

  United States of America

  He crumpled the note up and was about to toss it. There were a few things in his life that were hot buttons, and to be called a cog was one of them. It had been shouted at him repeatedly by an overly eager DI when going through boot camp, the sergeant taking delight in being able to harass ROTC trainees whom, months later, he’d have to salute for the rest of his life. It was a term constantly used by an officious XO of his division while stationed in Germany in the waning days of the Cold War. It was a term that was lifeless, stating they were all just simply part of some massive, Moloch-like machinery—the state, the company, the organization grinding relentlessly onward, and one either became a cog in that machine or was ground under it.

  John stuffed the letter into his pocket and looked at Maury and Kevin. “Full mobilization. Our landline communications are down, but we’ve lived with that before and must again for now. We’ve never drilled properly for it before, but we have discussed what to do if facing an attack from the air. I’m expecting a full-out air-and-ground assault this morning.”

  He handed the note to his two friends to read.

  “Son of a bitch, calling us cogs. I hate that,” Maury replied.

  “I want the entire downtown area evacuated immediately; get that siren going. Noncombatants are to be moved to designated shelters as planned and troops deployed in anticipation of an attack, as well.”

  In the months after the Posse attack, John had spent many a night developing contingency plans for a variety of scenarios, from the annoying border raids—which, at times, could turn deadly as several had with the reivers—up to taking shelter if a full-scale thermonuclear war was unleashed. They had given some thought to an aggressor who had managed to snatch a couple of aircraft or choppers. If the Posse had come at them armed with but one Apache, fully loaded, and done a proper air recon first of his deployment, it would have gone very badly for the town.

  Never, though, had they thought along this line that they just might be facing not raiders or some gang but their own government, which he prayed was only one rogue administrator with a power complex.

  The next eight hours would tell if this was a bluff or not.

  Maury and Kevin both saluted and turned to run off, John instinctively returning the salute. Like it or not, formally accept it or not, he was again in command.

  His retirement of little more than a day was over, and though in so many ways he hated it, there was, deep down, a certain thrill to it all, as well. He felt in control of his fate again. He absently rubbed his jaw. The tooth still hurt, but there was no time to worry about that now.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DAY 748 • 9:15 A.M.

  “Rook One to King Three, two Indians and two raptors are up and coming your way.”

  John clicked his mike twice to acknowledge receipt of the message and did not reply. Fredericks said they didn’t have cockpit cameras, but they obviously did have night vision and undoubtedly radio-tracking gear, as well. Rook One was his new watch station based up along the parkway looking directly down on Asheville, a position the reivers had created over a year earlier, manned now by three watchers from those former enemies, concealed in a bunker that one could pass within five feet of and still miss.

  “Sound the siren again!” John shouted, retreating back to his watch position above the hardware store across from the town square. Everyone in the council, now hunkered down in Gaither Hall, had argued he should be up there, but he felt compelled to witness what was about to happen, praying that Fredericks was just going to make a demonstration of force and nothing more. Surely he did not want a full-scale fight and that this was a bluff to overawe. If Fredericks put some troops on the ground from the Black Hawks and made no further moves other than have the Apaches circle for a while, then even at this late date, some kind of common sense would prevail.

  “I think I hear them,” Maury announced, leaning out the second-floor window above the hardware store.

  “They can haul ass,” John replied, looking off vacantly. “You’ve gone in aboard them, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah. Even though it scares the crap out of you, it’s a rush every time.”

  “It’s why kids are willing to get shot at; everything tied into getting shot at is such a rush, and they figure it won’t be them that get it. I pray to God this is a bluff.”

  He could hear them now, as well, coming in fast, the thump of the approaching rotors echoing off the empty streets … louder and louder … and then a flash of light raced past the window.

  “Jesus!” John barely had time to cry before the first salvo of rockets slammed into the town hall and fire station. There was a sound like tearing cloth, a rippling chaos of noise, another flash of light, and two more explosions tearing into the town hall complex, the concussion from the blasts shattering the windowpanes over John’s head, showering the room with glass. The first Apache zoomed straight overhead so that John instinctively ducked as it roared over the town square, dodging into a hard bank to the right to avoid the billowing clouds of smoke. There was more gunfire and two more rocket impacts into what was left of the complex, the second helicopter peeling to the right, the two weaving, gaining altitude.

  In response, there was a scatter of shots from the ground, nearly anything fired from the ground ineffective, even if it hit. The troops were breaking fire discipline, but it was understandable in their rage at such wanton aggression. These were not the vulnerable Hueys of Vietnam; the Apaches were ground-attack helicopters, the best that John’s nation could produce before the war, designed to take nearly any small-arms fire from the ground and just keep on flying.

  The Black Hawks? If they thought they were going to drop troops into the town square again after what the Apaches had done, it was going to be a very short and quick suicide mission, and something within John prayed that Fredericks would not be so stupid as to order his troops into such a mission. The entire perimeter was armed with troops far better trained than what Fredericks could throw at them.

  “Better get back from the window, John,” Maury said, pointing to the northeast where the two Apaches had leveled off and were now coming back in. And then, for a chilling instant, John’s eyes were blinded by the distinctive red sparkle of a laser sight. He dived for the floor and scurried to the back of the room. If these choppers were equipped with the facial recognition technology rumored to be in development before the Day, they would hav
e just painted him with that laser, and within seconds, the computer—if indeed such were on board and loaded with his profile and pictures—would have come back with a positive ID, and this building and all in it would be dead. There was no telling what high-tech equipment positioned in the Middle East on the Day had survived to now be used here.

  Seconds later, every window in the hardware store shattered from the minigun bursts, and for a few terrifying seconds, John thought his worst fears were true. He crouched down low and was suddenly covered with green sludge from an exploding can of latex paint stored in the room, glass shards covering him. If they had put a rocket into the room, he now realized his folly for being here—he and his friend would be dead.

  The two Apaches thundered past. He could hear the shifting of the rotors, the changing tempo as they arced up, breaking left and right and preparing for another strafing run.

  “John, I suggest we abandon this place!” Maury shouted. “Once they’re just past us, we break out the back door, head farther down Cherry Street, and hunker down there until this storm has passed.”

  John nodded agreement, peering up over the shattered windowsill to watch as the Apaches did another southwest-to-northeast strafing run. The hospital was going up in flames. Fortunately, all had been evacuated along with the precious supplies the evening before, and for the sake of their souls, he hoped the two pilots flying this mission knew that fact, because otherwise they deserved to be damned as three rockets slammed into the extensive array of buildings, and a fourth, going a bit high, took out the post office.

  By the time they had passed, John and Maury, dragging the portable two-way radio, had retreated through the back door of a favorite old haunt, the used bookstore. The next strike strafed the length of State Street, incendiary rounds igniting several fires. The second helicopter followed, curving down along Cherry Street, such a beloved lane of their community, shattering windows, and then there was a distant explosion. John assumed they were hitting the empty Ingrams’ market and the warehouse next to it where the L-3 had been stored. During the night, Billy had hurriedly taxied the precious plane along the interstate highway, concealing it within the cavernous remains of one of the buildings in the abandoned conference center at Ridgecrest.