“I had a contact within the NSA follow the money trail. The Wolves are funded through a series of offshore shell companies. No real surprise there. But after untangling some of the web, my friend found that most of the money flows from odd places. There is a conglomerate of multinational corporations. Names you know. Defense firms, banks, big pharmaceuticals. The money has been funneled through a private security firm, bounced through various cutouts. These guys have strong ties to the media. People that purchase elections. I haven’t had time to analyze the data, and I don’t know exactly who is involved. It’s a shell game these guys are playing.”
The colonel paused to let this sink in.
Henry’s head was spinning. A conspiracy? So powerful and pervasive that a group could use the Wolves as attack dogs? Why?
“Now I don’t have definitive proof of any of this, and I’m glad of it. My friend in the NSA had a fatal car accident last week. Something stinks, that much I am certain of. I don’t trust anyone. And I’m not going to be a puppet on a string, not anymore, that’s for damn sure.”
“So now what?” Henry asked.
“Right. First of all, the Wolves are no more. If you choose to leave, you are free to do so. If you decide to stay, you are welcome. I intend to hole up here until the shooting stops.”
Henry was shocked. Colonel Bragg was a warrior and a patriot. Henry assumed they’d be headed into the fray, one way or another.
“You boys know I’m from Texas. I swore an oath to my country, but my country has let me down. It let you down, too, whether y’all can see it yet or not. I’m not going to fight my fellow Americans. I’m just not going to do it. I don’t care if the order comes from the president of the United States or from the governor of Texas. I’m done.”
“Um,” Sergeant Major Martinez said, “where exactly are we?”
The colonel chuckled. “Alberta,” he said. “Just north of the US border. Now the first thing we need to do is remove the ICS relays. I don’t know who might be tracking us. We probably don’t matter anymore, but just to be on the safe side, we need to cut those out. Next, those of you who are leaving need to take whatever gear you can carry and get those birds the hell out of this valley. I don’t want to be spotted by a drone or a satellite.”
May came downstairs with a tray of mugs and several metal pitchers of coffee. She put the tray on the floor and went back upstairs without saying a word.
The computer screens displayed continuous images of Washington and San Francisco burning. Reporters pointed and gestured and looked grave. Other screens showed rioting in New York City, Atlanta, LA, and places Henry could not identify.
The Wolves formed a line and Doc Alex, the unit’s medic, performed minor surgery on each man. The ICS relay was about the size of a mosquito, embedded in each man’s neck. The device contained a microchip, power supply, and wireless Internet portal. The relay was not physically attached to the chips embedded in each soldier’s brain, so the operation was simple and mostly painless. Without the relay, the men could still utilize the night vision equipped in their contacts, but would be unable to interface with drones or one another.
The men gathered around to decide who was going where, and how they planned to get there. A third of the men were from the Northeast, another third from the Southeast, and the rest were from the Midwest and West. The flight crews for the Blackhawks were Night Stalkers.
Ultimately, the men compromised. The birds had already expended a considerable amount of fuel and would only be able to travel about three hundred miles. They would stay together and try to refuel at one of several small airports in Canada. From there, some of the men would fly west. The other bird would head south, flying low. They would abandon the aircraft and disband on foot once they reached civilization.
They were loading weapons and food into crates, when a piercing beeping sound erupted from the computer center.
Henry paused and looked over toward Colonel Bragg.
“We’re too late,” he said. The colonel toggled a switch on the console in front of him. “May, get down here,” he said, turning to the busy soldiers.
“We’ve got company. UAVs are circling our position. We may have some infantry on our asses within minutes. That ass-hat commander at Malmstrom couldn’t let it go.”
The computer monitors, some of which had cycled through news broadcasts, and some of which relayed images from security cameras positioned throughout the valley, went fuzzy. They’re jamming us, Henry realized.
Colonel Bragg called Martinez over to the command center and spoke to him for a few seconds in hushed tones. Henry stuffed extra magazines into the webbing in his vest, feeling the rush of adrenaline and heightened awareness that he always did before a firefi
Colonel Bragg talked as he inserted a magazine into an M4 from a rack on the wall. “We’ll exit through the back of the bunker; there’s a tunnel that comes out at the base of a ridge about two hundred meters west of the cabin. Haul ass up that hill and spread out. I’ve got a concealed machine gun emplacement up there with a fifty. There’s good cover and high ground. Get some.”
Sergeant Major Martinez led the way; Henry grabbed his now hundred-pound ruck and followed Martinez down a long concrete corridor lit by naked light bulbs. There was the sound of boots slapping on the floor and gear rustling and breathing. The walls were close and the men jogged in single file. They bunched up while they waited for Martinez to open the final steel door. When it swung open, sunlight—different, brighter and more real than the anemic light cast from the bulbs—streamed into the cement tomb, a portal of white with the men silhouetted against it.
Henry was the sixth man back from the door. No gunfire, that’s good. No explosions. Yet.
The men broke left, then right, in pairs. The feeling in him was reminiscent of how he felt the first time he jumped out of a plane more than ten years ago. Following a line of men into the unknown from a safe, dark place into chaos and wind and light. Watching his brothers ahead move without hesitation, wondering whether he’d have the sack for it when his time came, yet knowing he did and dreading it and loving it at the same time, proving something vital to himself with each step… and then he was in the light and the wind and cold. Pride, fear, and loyalty and… Oh shit, here it comes!
He broke left.
There was a hum in the air, a vibration of wrongness and tension, a crawling thing Henry could feel on his skin as he slogged uphill through snow up to his knees. He followed in the footsteps of the previous team members, noted where the path broke off behind a boulder, fixed his attention on making it to a stand of birch trees twenty meters upslope. He made it to the trees and slid down behind cover, the HK in his hands like an extension of his body. Not five feet to his right, Carlos moved into position, facing away from the cabin covering the approach from upslope.
Henry felt conspicuous. He’d worn what he had available; his fatigues were designed for a nighttime assault, albeit in cold weather. But in his dark gear he presented a target against the blindingly white snow. He burrowed into the snow. He heard the crunching of combat boots and the clicking of gear as the next team ranged past him.
The cabin, with the smoke trailing from the stone chimney and the snow on the rooftop, might have adorned a Christmas card.
One second, the cabin was a warm tranquil refuge, and the next it was a fireball. The inbound missiles struck almost simultaneously, and the cabin was erased in flame and fury and a rolling boom Henry felt in his bones and soul and teeth. A yellow-orange flash, then roiling smoke and pieces of cabin flying through the air and spiraling down. The helicopters exploded next, before Henry took a breath. He flinched with rage and the feeling of being violated.