The location was not a new project. In fact, it harked back from even before the very beginnings of the Cold War, and was intended as a command bunker in the event of a nuclear attack. Whilst the enemy had changed drastically since then, the threat of nuclear annihilation had only ever grown in intensity, especially as Middle Eastern countries had since acquired their own nuclear arsenals. Not to mention the alarming amount of radioactive material which was unaccounted for since the fall of the iron curtain. The existence of a bunker in those mountains was not a state secret; in fact, the original cold war era bunker had been decommissioned and was now a novelty hotel, but the public never knew of the other base nestled into the dark hills.
Troy and a few other commanders of elite groups of specialists were read-in on certain contingency plans. They were all on code-word standby to drop everything they were doing and get their teams there with as much ammo as they could carry. Inside there was space for almost a hundred personnel. The base was buried deep into the very mountainside and had been excavated in parts over the last thirty years, as the emergency base was extended and refitted for various upgrades.
There were also vast stores held inside: MREs, munitions, telecoms suites, as well as huge fuel reservoirs and maintenance equipment to keep their birds in the air. The way the flattened helicopter pad had been created showed very little sign from any aerial surveillance and each helicopter could be covered with folding canopies. One by one the helicopters set down and shut down their engines as they disgorged their crew and passengers. Most of the operators, typical amongst their kind, had fallen back to sleep during the ride there but now came awake without any issues.
“Inside, grab a rack, find the briefing room in ten,” Troy announced when the last sounds from the winding down engines had faded away. “Valdez, Farrell, get on overwatch. I’ll fill you in later.” The two teammates, inseparable at the best of times, nodded their assent.
Troy heard a muttered, “Oohrah” in stereo as the two trotted away to their assigned duty, which he translated into his own vernacular in his head. Commanding a team of mixed forces produced a lot of interesting cultural differences, and the oohrah/hooah debate between the army and the marines was a constant one which took a predictable turn when their resident SEAL piped up to offer his opinion on the matter.
Valdez, one of two trained and experienced snipers under his command, was a stone-cold killer who also had a passion for drawing landscapes in pencil; the pastime offering a stark contrast to his profession but also an insight into his love and deeply intrinsic knowledge of terrain. Farrell, his fellow United States Marine Corps recruit and friend, mocked his ability to find routes over open ground by telling others he had been a Coyote bringing illegals over the Mexican border. Valdez was from Houston, but that never stopped Farrell telling the story. He operated a big support weapon which he carried with ease, despite its incredible weight and his slight stature. Farrell operated as Valdez’s eyes and protection detail, and between the two of them they had probably taken the lives of more insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan than the decorated heroes Joe Public heard about. They didn’t do what they did for fame, but because it was their job. Pure and simple.
Troy walked inside, leaving the aviators of SOAR running out the camouflage net canopies to cover their aircraft. Just as the operators of Endeavor cared for their weapons first, the 160th maintained their aircraft before themselves. He threw his ruck on the closest cot in the closest rack in the room nearest the ops center before pulling dust sheets off the table in the briefing room. As he did so under the weak glow of the emergency lighting, which had come on automatically when the main door had been opened, the main lighting came online. Troy smiled to himself knowing that Dillon, the team’s proud tech geek, would have taken it upon himself to find the main power grid and fire it up. The bunker was powered by a generator as a backup, but one of the last changes to have been made was to reroute the entire power grid from a small hydro-electric plant submerged in the Greenbrier River. The facility, although officially decommissioned, was in fact a multi-billion-dollar project and one of the American military’s best kept secrets.
A boot scuff behind him made him turn, and he found Chalky in the doorway of the windowless room. A puff of renewed air circulation dropped the temperature by a couple degrees as the airflow kicked up a gear to provide enough clean air for the bunker to support live bodies.
“So…” Master Sergeant White said to him, waiting for the personal response to their mission before the official line was given to the team.
“Yeah,” Troy said tiredly, adjusting his weapon, and sitting heavily, kicking up a small cloud of dust, “the shit has well and truly hit the fan, my friend.”
“We’re expecting more though, right?” Chalky asked him hopefully, meaning both in troops and information.
“Three of the standby teams on call to come here were at Bragg,” Troy told him, meaning that they had lost close to a combined thousand years’ worth of fighting experience in one go with the loss of the other teams like theirs along with their air support. “But we’re supposed to be getting two Apaches from somewhere. ETA within the hour.”
That was welcome news to Chalky’s ears, after the crushing blow of discovering their 25 percent now had to act as the 100 percent they originally expected. There was almost nothing quite as lethal on the battlefield than a Boeing AH-64 Apache, and the chances of being supported by two of them to add to their strength would give them an incredible edge over any adversary.
“Well, shit…” Chalky said before he puffed out his cheeks and blew out the air slowly. “I’ll go find us some coffee.” He walked out of the room, leaving Troy alone with his thoughts.
Five minutes later, having been hailed on the secure satphone from a pair of death-dealing air-sharks which hurtled toward their position hugging the terrain at close to 180 mph, he told his extended team to settle in until they arrived. He gulped down his second cup of coffee and took a lap of the main areas, finding the various members of his elite squad busying themselves with equipment or tech, and finding that their additional ammo cache had been carried to the closest armory. The screaming whine of four turboshaft engines penetrated the bunker, and he walked to the door to feel more than watch the angular aircraft settle down on the flat surface. Both aircraft were fully manned, with each pilot and co-pilot occupying their own sealed cockpit, and he watched through the thin moonlight as four men, scratch that, he thought, three men and one woman, based on how the hips of the first pilot swung, all walked toward him. He greeted them on the threshold, seeing that each of them only carried a small pack which would contain their emergency survival equipment. All of them wore M9 pistols similar to his own on their chests, and all of them had clearly abandoned sleep at a moment’s notice when they got the call.
“You must be Gardner,” said the man in the lead who had occupied the front seat of the second helicopter. “Colonel Simon, air force,” he said introducing himself and offered a hand before turning to his other pilots. “Captains Rogers and Harley.” Two men nodded to him, one bearing the call sign ‘Buck’ on his helmet. “Major Healey, army,” he said, indicating at last the hip swinger. Troy shook hands with them in turn, noticing the Ranger patch on Healey’s flight suit and trying not to raise his eyebrows. He was no misogynist, in fact he appreciated a fighting woman more than most, but finding, especially in this sudden shit storm, a young female army major who had successfully attended ranger school was something of a rarity. It was commonplace for advanced-trained aircrew to train as infantry, given their close working relationships with the SF guys on the ground and their likelihood of being shot down in places less than hospitable. Also uncommon was the makeup of mixed arms helicopter crews. Troy assumed they were part of a cross-training exercise when they got the call.