John agreed and looked back to find fifty men and women lined up in formation.
“Are these cadets we’re sending to the front?” John asked.
“It’s the most we can afford right now,” Moss told him. “When the call went out, I was swamped with volunteers. Seems everyone wants to do something to help, but I went through the list of names and picked fifty. With only one backhoe, digging trenches and fortified positions takes manpower.”
“I know,” John replied, watching a group of girls handing loaves of homemade bread to the soldiers. “We’re working on getting you more backhoes to fill those gabions.”
“Fill? I gotta find the material to build them first.”
“Start with whatever chain-link fences you can find.” John told him about the trip to Home Depot they would need to make.
Moss chuckled. “Sounds like a regular Saturday errand run.”
“It does, doesn’t it,” John agreed.
A man in woodland fatigues with a patch on his left breast which read U.S. Army headed their way. The insignia on his uniform indicated that he was a colonel.
“Colonel Paul Edgar,” the man said, holding out his hand to John. With dark, short-cropped hair and olive skin, he certainly looked the part.
John greeted him and introduced him to Moss. “This is my head of security.”
“I can’t tell you what a sight for sore eyes you boys are,” Moss told him, swept up in the moment.
“We feel the same way,” Colonel Edgar replied. He turned to John. “I don’t mean to be unceremonious, but we’re gonna need to get moving. Where are the troops you’re giving us?”
The men and women in formation behind them saluted, some better than others.
“Yes, I saw these,” Edgar said, “but where are the rest?”
John was taken aback. “This is all we can spare.”
“I was told by Colonel Higgs to expect several hundred volunteers.”
“Several hundred?” John said, shocked. “I wasn’t given a specific number, only told to send whoever I could spare.”
“Well, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is our last stop and I have two empty cars at the back that I need to fill before we leave.”
“But Colonel,” John protested. “We need these people to maintain the train tracks and help make biodiesel and everything else the army needs to help with the war effort.”
“John, if we don’t get more soldiers to the front to help plug the gaping holes that open up every time the Chinese launch an attack, then there won’t be a war effort.”
Reluctantly, John turned to Moss. “All right, round up the rest of the volunteers. How many did you say there were in total?”
Moss paused, counting in his head. “Nearly three hundred.”
“Can you fit them all in?” John asked.
The colonel smiled. “Even if I have to strap them to the roof.”
Moss left as one of Edgar’s sergeants led the group of fifty toward the back of the train. If this encounter was anything to go by, the front was surely a chaotic and disorganized place.
Losing that much manpower would require John to shift the workforce around in order to compensate. If John’s concerns about sending his people to the front were vague before, they weren’t anymore.
Less than an hour later, the rest of the volunteers were stowing their things in the last two train cars when Colonel Edgar returned. Accompanying him were eight soldiers carrying four heavy containers.
“What’s this?” John asked.
“Call it a gift,” Edgar replied, patting the largest of the boxes. “This here’s a Ma Deuce. Along with five thousand rounds.”
Moss furrowed his brow. “A ma what?”
“Army slang,” John told him, “for a .50 caliber machine gun. Don’t you need those up at the front, Colonel?”
“We do, but it might come in handy for you folks. The enemy’s supply lines were stretched far too thin to fuel up their jets and choppers, which is part of why we’ve been able to hold on for as long as we have, but the word coming down the chain is that’s about to change. A big shipment came in yesterday evening. That’s part of the reason we’re on such a tight schedule. But it also means you’re likely to start seeing some increased enemy air activity in your area.”
“Increased? We haven’t seen a single plane since the EMP.”
“Getting the fuel, that’s been our biggest problem. We’ve still got the aircraft, all of them hardened against the effects of an EMP, like most of the equipment in the military arsenal. Problem is, once the tankers and refineries we rely on to move that fuel were knocked out, we were grounded. You should have seen what we had to go through to get the armor in place.”
The military’s dependence on civilian infrastructure was a major vulnerability. It was one thing to protect military hardware, but another thing entirely if that hardware no longer had the nuts and bolts that kept it running. For this reason the Allies had devoted considerable energy during World War II to bombing Nazi ball-bearing factories. Without them, any mechanized army was bound to grind to a halt. Lack of supplies was also the reason that Germany’s final daring push during the Battle of the Bulge had stalled.
“What about the smaller ones?” John asked about the green, nondescript containers at Edgar’s feet.
“Those you’re really gonna like,” the colonel said, grinning. “It’s a Stinger anti-air missile launcher. Unfortunately, all I can afford right now are three missiles. Colonel Higgs told me you were in the 278th over in Iraq, so I’m assuming you know your way around these puppies.”
John smiled, as much because of the smug look on Edgar’s face as his use of the word puppies.
“Now, if there isn’t anything more,” Edgar said, turning to leave.
“There’s just one other thing,” John replied. “We’re planning on making a run to Home Depot for some building material. The closest one is in Oak Ridge. I was wondering if you knew whether the town had been liberated.”
“If you mean liberated from Russian agents, I can tell you they never got a hold of the place. They tried, far as I heard. But there’s government industry there—the Department of Energy, among others—so you can imagine their deception didn’t go over very well.”
“So it’s safe?” John asked.
“Nowhere is safe, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking. If this were two months ago, I’d say stay put, but my guess is most of the people who woulda given you any trouble are already dead.” The colonel’s eyes dropped to the weapons he’d left. “I guess Christmas came early for Oneida this year, didn’t it?”
“Thank you, Colonel,” John said, praying he would never need to use the gifts he’d just been given. For a moment, the smell of gun grease from the Ma Deuce whipped him right back to Nasiriyah and what had been one of the worst days of his life. John shook the feeling away and wished Colonel Edgar a safe journey, not entirely sure the troops heading for the front would make it there in one piece.
Chapter 13
Not long after, John and Reese were at the head of a five-car convoy.
A trip to a hardware store that in the old days would have simply meant a long drive was today a major operation. They were ten altogether, two in each pickup, the truck beds empty to give room for the supplies they were heading there to get. The prospect of turning the power back on even in a limited capacity was still hard for John to believe. It would be the first step in increasing their ability to help resupply the front.
Part of the plan brewing in John’s mind over the last couple of days involved turning the old movie theatre on Alberta Street into a factory producing bullets, mortars and improvised explosives. This along with the extra food they grew would be shipped by train to the front. If it proved successful, John would send his own envoys out to liberated towns to show them how to do the same.