Authors: Steven Konkoly
“No, I didn’t,” she muttered. “I almost got all of us killed.”
Alex shook his head and mouthed, “No.”
Ed hovered in the doorway, feeling conflicted and guilty about leaving them alone in the makeshift surgery room. He owed Alex everything for this. He had so much to say, but his daughter clearly needed him more.
“I don’t know what to—”
“We’ve been in this together from the start. This is just what we do. Go,” said Alex, suppressing a grin.
“Still, I—”
“Ed, don’t make me chase you out of here.”
“All right,” Ed mumbled, “but I owe you one.”
“Negative. You keep forgetting the church.”
“I haven’t forgotten. Bringing Chloe back—I can’t even.” He shook his head, fighting back tears.
“I know the feeling,” said Alex, reaching out to touch Ryan’s arm.
Chapter 20
EVENT +59:33
Harvard Yard
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Alex entered the command tent and immediately sensed that something was off. The staff sat tensed at their stations, silent. The battalion TOC (Tactical Operations Center) was never quiet. Ever. He took a few steps in and spotted Lieutenant Colonel Grady talking to the UAV section.
Not good.
UAV operations had been grounded for more than two hours, and the storm showed no signs of abating. He removed his boonie cap and twisted the water onto the floor. Grady saw him and patted the UAV pilot on the back before moving to greet him.
“This isn’t a good time, Alex. Sorry,” he said, pointing toward the hatch.
“You’re putting a Raven up? In this?”
“It’s just a precaution. I can’t afford any more surprises like the car bomb. Sorry, but I can’t have nonessential personnel in the TOC right now.”
“This is the first chance I’ve had to get away from the aid station. My son’s fine, by the way,” said Alex.
“I’m glad they got him stitched up, Alex. He sounds like a fine young man. Staff Sergeant Williams told me about the bridge. Sorry I haven’t been able to swing by, but things are a little tense right now. Insurgency chatter stopped three minutes ago. All channels,” said Grady, with a severe look.
“I need to talk to you about the so-called insurgency. It might have some bearing.”
“All right.”
“You’re not dealing with a rogue gang of criminals. This is something much bigger. My son says they refer to themselves as the Liberty Boys.”
“He heard them say this?” said Grady, betraying a hint of recognition.
“From his apartment window.” Alex nodded. “A group of heavily armed men and women drove a pickup truck down their street, assuring everyone that the streets are safe. From what Ryan described, criminal elements ran wild for about twelve hours. There was a ton of shooting the first night, and this Liberty Boys group appeared the next day. They were asking for volunteers to help them secure Boston.”
“That could have been the same criminal group trying to draw out troublemakers,” said Grady.
“You don’t sound very convinced. What I saw was far too centralized for spur of the moment, post-disaster opportunists. They had an effective, grassroots communications network. We were ratted out by a family just south of the turnpike. I didn’t give you a heads-up on the radio because we were running for our lives.”
“You got lucky. Staff Sergeant Williams almost lit you guys up. Flares reach a height of three hundred thirty meters. Over a thousand feet, in case you were curious,” said Grady.
“I remembered the forty second part. The name Liberty Boys has an interesting historical context.”
Grady held a hand up to stop him from continuing. “Why don’t we step outside for a second,” he said. “Let me know as soon as the Raven is airborne!”
“Yes, sir,” replied the UAV operator.
They walked far enough away from the sentry to avoid being overheard. The rain collapsed the brim of Alex’s cap against his forehead before they stopped. Grady, however, appeared unfazed by the deluge against his ballistic helmet.
“I have a few hundred digital pages of information compiled by the Department of Homeland Security on the Liberty Boys—or the Mechanics. Top secret, limited distribution. Myself and the battalion intel officer. There’s a reason for that.”
“A reserve military unit drawing unit members from the greater Boston area? I can’t imagine what the problem might be,” said Alex.
“We left three marines at Fort Devens, including my XO. My first task was to privately open a sealed file stored in my secure Cat Five capsule. The file contained explicit orders for the immediate incarceration of three marines that had been in the unit for more than a decade. Homeland identified them as ‘immediate, high-mission risks. Known affiliation to subversive anti-government militia groups.’”
“And you don’t think Homeland found all of them,” said Alex.
“That’s why we’re talking out here.”
“Don’t you find this a little disturbing? Homeland investigating your marines? Category Five Event Response with no information flowing from higher headquarters? Boston is falling apart because the two groups with half a chance to keep it together are working against each other. Maybe that’s by design. By the way, I saw a few XM-9s out there,” said Alex. “What exactly happened to the National Guard unit out of Brockton?”
“We don’t know. They just stopped communicating with us,” said Grady.
“I think they had a problem. An internal problem—and I think you know more about the situation than you’re willing to admit.”
“How many XM-9s did you see?” asked Grady.
“Does it matter?” Alex countered, studying Grady’s poker face.
The XM-9 was a new combat carbine used exclusively by the United States Army and National Guard units. Civilian variants of the Heckler and Koch line of XM rifles had been specifically banned from importation into the U.S. by the 2016 Combat Weapons Reduction Bill.
“You need to reach out to militia leadership across the river before this situation spirals further out of control. I’ve studied groups like this in Maine and New Hampshire. Talked to their leadership. They’re highly suspicious of the government, but they’re reasonable. Most of them share the same mission as your battalion: to help the people in a crisis. I assume that’s still the crux of your mission?”
“The Liberty Boys are making that mission extremely difficult,” stated Grady.
“That’s because you’re working against each other. If the current organization has roots to the original Mechanics, you’re talking about a league of New Englanders that has spent the better part of the past two hundred fifty years planning to fight a guerilla war against a possible government takeover. I’m surprised that I didn’t come across this group in my research.”
“They don’t officially exist. You won’t find a single modern reference to them on any website. They don’t produce literature or host bean suppers like nearly every other militia group out there. They don’t muster in the streets to fill sandbags when the rivers overflow or serve hot meals after a nor’easter. Instead, they donate sizable sums of money through untraceable proxies to support relief efforts. They have considerable resources at their disposal. We’re talking generational wealth.”
“You need to take steps to convince their leadership that your battalion isn’t part of a master plan to subjugate the United States. That’s the only way this won’t end in a complete disaster.”
Grady grinned and gripped Alex’s good shoulder. “I need you to head this up.”
“Excuse you—Colonel,” said Alex.
“You have experience talking to militia leaders. You’ve studied their structures and drawn conclusions based on research. My education into this subject started two days ago with the arrest of my executive officer and two staff NCOs. I can give you a laptop and a private room in one of these buildings to sort through the digital file. Help me make sense of the Liberty Boys and form a strategy. I barely had time to read the executive summary.”
“Sean, I was really hoping to head out as soon as possible. I need to get these kids home to their mothers. We’ve been gone for thirty-six hours with no contact,” said Alex.
A marine appeared between Stoughton and Hollis Halls, walking the well-worn, muddy path toward the battalion TOC. They waited for him to salute Grady and pass before continuing their conversation. The marine sergeant glanced back at Grady as he approached the sentry stationed outside of the TOC.
“Your son really isn’t in any condition to travel right now. Neither are you, for that matter.”
“I was hoping you might spare one of those Matvees for thirty minutes. I have a Jeep stashed up in the Middlesex Fells Reservation.”
“Not until I figure out why militia radio traffic went quiet. I should have UAV coverage in a few minutes. Could you give me a few hours of analysis?” said Grady.
Alex’s attention strayed to the marine that had passed them a few seconds ago. The sentry was speaking into a Motorola. The sergeant leaned against the HESCO barrier and started to unclip his assault pack from his Modular Dragon Skin Vest (MDV).
“Who is that?” asked Alex.
“Sergeant Bruckman. Chief mechanic,” answered Grady, craning his head to look at the marine.
“Why is he detaching his assault pack?” asked Alex, thumbing the snap on his drop holster.
The marine looked back at them, his eyes dropping to Alex’s holster.
Shit!
Alex drew his pistol as Sergeant Bruckman dropped the assault pack and fired a quick rifle burst into the sentry’s chest. He tried to turn the HK416 on the battalion commander, but Alex lined up the sergeant’s silhouette with his front sight and fired first, joined a fraction of a second later by Grady’s P30L service pistol. More than a dozen 9mm bullets struck Bruckman in rapid succession, driving him against the HESCO barrier and knocking the rifle out of his hands.
The marine’s MDV stopped the bullets from entering his torso, preventing his instantaneous death. Colonel Grady closed the distance to the marine, firing his pistol at the mechanic’s unprotected face with devastating effect. Bruckman’s faceless corpse slid down the tan HESCO cage and toppled into the shiny grass. Grady had already disappeared over the barrier to check on the sentry, reappearing a second a later.
“Alex, get the battalion surgeon ready for a Class Two!”
Alex holstered his pistol and took off for Stoughton Hall, placing his hands on his head as marines scrambled out of the TOC. Tensions were high, and he didn’t want to give any of the headquarters’ staff an early excuse to fire their weapons. Given what just transpired, Alex felt confident that every marine in Grady’s battalion would put their service rifle to work, sooner than later.
“Fletcher is friendly!” Grady shouted. “Sergeant Major, get Bruckman’s assault pack out of here. Possible IED. Put it in one of the HESCO pits away from the TOC. Bruckman shot Kappleman at point-blank range. Help me get this marine to the BAS!”
Alex needed to get his crew out of Cambridge within the next ten minutes. Bruckman’s aborted attack on the TOC was only the beginning. A cascade of destabilizing violence would ripple through the battalion positions in short order. He’d seen this before, and so had Grady. Alex reached the side entrance to Stoughton Hall and stopped. Beyond the fact that one of Grady’s marines had just attempted to detonate a bomb in the battalion TOC, something nagged him about the rogue sergeant’s actions.
Bruckman had removed the pack, which indicated that he either planned to throw it inside or leave it behind. Either method required remote detonation. Throwing it through the entrance hatch didn’t make sense. With a bull’s-eye painted on his forehead, Bruckman would have been forced to trigger the bomb well within the casualty radius. He probably planned to drop it next to the piles of personal gear stashed around the tent, setting off the IED from a distance. But how did he acquire the bomb? Did he bring it with him from Fort Devens? Each question led to answers he couldn’t ignore. Not if his son was stuck in the battalion aid station.
“Notify the battalion surgeon that he has a Class Two casualty inbound,” he said to the marines assigned to the sentry post between Stoughton Hall and Hollis Hall.
“Do it,” said a corporal, dispatching a private to deliver the message.
The corporal looked shaken, on the verge of tears.
“That wasn’t your fault, son. Get that out of your head right now,” said Alex.
“Why did Bruckman do that? I don’t—”
“There’s nothing to understand about it. Don’t let
anyone
through, Corporal, without clearing it with the TOC first. Copy?”
“Yes, sir,” said the marine, shifting his rifle toward the Old Yard.
“Colonel Grady!” yelled Alex, running back toward the TOC.
Alex passed two marines carrying the critically wounded sentry to Stoughton hall. He didn’t see an obvious entry or exit wound, but the upper half of his body armor was stained dark red. Bright red blood streamed from his mouth and nose. He’d be dead within thirty minutes—if that. Grady leaned against the tree next to the TOC sentry station, his hands and uniform sleeves soaked in blood. He shook his head and grimaced.
“Fucking savages,” he muttered.
“Sorry, Sean. Your marine…” said Alex.
“One of the rounds hit a centimeter above his Dragon Skin,” said Grady, shaking his head. “You ready to give me a hand figuring out this insurgency?”
“Can you confirm that the IED is remote triggered?” said Alex, kneeling next to Bruckman’s body.
“Hold on,” he said, searching around. “Top? Can you take a look at Bruckman’s pack and confirm the detonation mechanism?”
“Roger, sir,” said a hulking Latino marine standing next to the battalion sergeant major. “Make a hole!”
The master sergeant ran toward the unlucky marine tasked to carry the backpack to one of the shallow pits dug into the Old Yard.
“Get the marines focused, Sergeant Major. We still have a shit storm brewing out there,” added Grady.
“On it, sir! Back in the TOC! Let’s go!”
Alex emptied the dead marine’s pockets and vest pouches, trying to avoid staring at his lifeless, destroyed face and the brain matter seeping out of his combat helmet. He found a Motorola resembling one of the battalion’s encrypted models and handed it to Grady.