The kid was right. “Maybe not, but I can guarantee you I’ll do everything in my power to get them out of there. I tried going in alone and it was a dumb thing to do. I’m lucky to still be alive. Besides, we need to get a grasp on this Chairman character and figure out what we’re really up against. What do you think?”
Brandon didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. John reached out and pulled him into a hug. This was all Brandon probably wanted anyway, someone to tell him everything was going to be all right. And who could blame him in a world like this?
Brandon wept until he’d exorcised as much of it from his system as he could. Processing the loss of his father wasn’t going to take thirty minutes like it did on Dr. Phil or countless other TV shows that were thankfully gone. This was a real loss. The kid had known and loved his father for years. It was going to take a while for the wave of grief to gradually subside. Although it never would completely.
Not long after, they headed back to Betsy, exhausted and eager to hit the sack. Nevertheless, it was a while before John managed to fall asleep. He kept seeing the faces of the two men he’d killed today. The first as he’d collapsed in the middle of the street. Then his companion as the top of his head had exploded in a fine red mist. Eventually, sleep engulfed him and that was when John dreamed of Iraq.
June nineteenth, 2006. Apart from the two soldiers who were still missing, it was looking like just another day in Iraq. News had been trickling in to the operations center all afternoon and none of it was good. Seven bombings in and around Baghdad had left forty-three civilians dead. In one of them, a man had detonated a shoe bomb in a Shiite mosque, killing eleven.
To the west, U.S. and Iraqi troops were in the process of surrounding the Sunni city of Ramadi. The civilians trapped in the city expected a Fallujah-type assault any time now. John was moving onto something about prisoner mistreatment when First Sergeant Wright appeared.
Sweat poured down Wright’s neck and John wasn’t sure if it was due to the stifling desert heat outside or the news he was about to deliver.
“I’ve seen that look on your face before, 1SG,” John said. “And both times you were bringing me bad news.”
“We found them,” was Wright’s only reply.
“PFC Hutchinson and PFC Davis?”
“Yes, sir. About three miles from here.”
Wright didn’t say more, not right away, and John had a good idea why.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes, sir.”
The muscles in John’s jaw tensed as though he were working something hard between his teeth. He’d been to the base dental clinic three times already for grinding. During the day his response to the stress was often to clench. In his sleep he tended to grind, but all that really accomplished was a slow erosion of his enamel. At this rate he’d be in dentures within a year.
“Found them in a gulley south of the village of Mufaraji.”
“Had they been…” John paused.
“Decapitated? No. They’d been tortured, at least as far as we’ve been able to tell, but they weren’t mutilated.”
“Good. It’s horrible when the family has to see that sort of thing.” Whether they heard it on the news or not, John knew they would find out once the body arrived Stateside. Of course, the barbarity perpetrated by the enemy only strengthened his will to destroy them. “Wait, what do you mean as far as you can tell?”
Wright’s eyes dropped. “The EOD team’s still working on them.”
Wright’s answer confused John for a moment. EOD stood for Explosive Ordnance Disposal. He asked his sergeant to explain.
“Hutchinson and Davis were both rigged with an IED. Those initial explosives were attached to lines leading to others in the immediate area. The idea was to lure our boys in and then detonate to create more casualties.”
The bastards were using their commitment to leave no man behind against them. Now this would surely be in the news. Not that John gave a damn about the bad publicity. It was the young soldiers’ families having to hear about this. It was hard enough losing a loved one, but to lose them like this?
The other implication was something that showed ever so slightly in Wright’s expression. John had committed to bringing the missing soldiers home alive. A promise that he’d failed to keep.
Chapter 15
John awoke sweating profusely. He sat in the driver’s seat of his truck for a few moments, not entirely sure which was worse: the dream or his present reality.
After a simple breakfast of canned beans with Brandon, he went looking for Marshall. They were supposed to discuss the Chairman and a strategy for freeing Diane, Gregory, Emma and the Applebys. Making his way into the command tent, John looked around and saw that Marshall wasn’t around. In a corner of the tent, however, one of his men sat at a table with a radio, fiddling with dials amid a sea of static.
“Looks like not everything got fried by that EMP,” John said casually.
The man at the radio turned and introduced himself as Robert Rodriguez, call sign KZ4TG, a former military communications and electronics specialist.
“She’s an oldie,” Rodriguez said, making a dull clang as he patted the top of the radio. “I kept her in a Faraday cage, which is why she made it.”
John had done the same back at the house for a few of his more important items. He hadn’t bothered with radios in part because he’d never had the time to figure out how to use one properly. Although it had certainly been on his prepping list, along with a million other items. That was the addictive, never-ending nature of getting you and your family ready for a worst-case scenario. There was never enough time to cover every single eventuality. Pick your battles—a pearl of wisdom his mother had repeated her entire life, one he’d ended up applying in the most unlikely of situations.
“After the military,” Rodriguez told John, “I returned to Oneida and joined the Emergency Management Office. Once the country was hit, we began reaching out via our radios, first to local towns, then as far away as California and Oregon.” Rodriguez drew in a deep breath. “Wasn’t long, though, before they stopped responding.”
“Maybe more immediate survival needs took over,” John suggested. On Willow Creek, fiddling with radios hadn’t been their first priority.
Rodriguez looked at him knowingly. “People are busy just trying to get by. Yeah, that was my guess. But before long Jefferson City was the furthest west we could reach.”
“What about Europe?” John asked. “I heard these signals can travel quite a ways.”
Rodriguez seemed happy that someone else was finally taking an interest in something he was passionate about. “Oh, they can. But most of the folks in Europe we’ve spoken to are in it up to their eyeballs just like us. Seems like they were hit just like we were. But talking to them was a real waste since they ain’t got a clue who did it.”
“Truth be told, neither do we,” John told him. “I mean, it was an EMP. That much is clear, but who and for what purpose?”
Rodriguez snickered. “I could take a guess or two. You look through any history book and you’ll see what I mean. The day you become a dominant power in the world, everyone wants to knock you down a peg or two.”
“So how’d you end up as one of Marshall’s men?”
“Same reason you did.”
“The Chairman?”
Rodriguez nodded solemnly. “Soon as the Chairman came in waving those official papers around, he pretty much had the town eating out of his hand. First out was the mayor and then, one by one, the other members of the Emergency Management Office started disappearing.”
John’s eyes grew wide. “He was trying to isolate the town.”