The State (9 page)

CHAPTER 14

The Tiller Farm

“Pack 691, this is Mike Romeo Zulu 47, please ident.  Over,” a man’s voice spoke to Ian through his headset.

Ian sat up a little straighter in his chair.  Bob leaned in, knowing that he had just received a response from whomever he was broadcasting to.

“Roger Romeo Zulu 47, this is Pack 691. Ident is tri-pod.  Over.”

“Confirm ident, please activate your video screen and hold for Director Hilton,” the man said, wasting no time on chitchat.

Ian looked at Bob and nodded.  Life was about to get even more complicated.  He flipped on the video screen and camera and removed the headphones, activating the speakers.  The screen showed a nondescript room with a blue background and an American flag standing in the corner.  It had to be a bunker somewhere, Ian thought.

Twenty seconds later, the screen changed to the face of an older man with broad shoulders, a chiseled chin and close-cropped hair.

“Son-of-a-bitch, Burrows, you look like shit,” the man started the conversation.  “I’m glad you’re alive, man.  It’s good to see an old face.”

“Mr. Director, I’m sure that I have looked worse,” Ian opened.  “It’s good to see you too, sir.”

“Are Leah and Grace ali…I mean, are they all right?” he asked, correcting himself in mid sentence about asking if they were still alive.

“Yes sir, they are.  We all made it.  We have some stories to tell, but we have made it so far.”

“Okay, good.  Now, let’s cut the crap.  As you know, the shit has really hit the fan.”

“I do know some of that, sir, but I have not been fully briefed on exactly what happened, our response and what my mission is,” Ian said, cutting the older man off.  Ian could sense Bob and Violet hanging on every word.

“Son-of-a…” Hilton pulled his hand over his face like he was wiping the exhaustion away.  “Okay, here it is, short and sweet, like we used to do it.”

Ian nodded.

“Ian, we were this close to stopping this,” he said, holing two fingers about an inch apart.  “Our teams in New York and Washington got the sons-of-bitches before they could set off their bombs or warn anyone.”  He ran his hand over his face again, the tension in his face remained.  “And of course you know we missed them in Atlanta and Chicago.”

Ian was slow to answer.  “Yes, sir, I do.”

“They were good men and women.  Some of them were Agency,” he said, as if they were part of his family.  

Ian glanced over Bob and Violet.  He could see tears in her eyes; it was the first time that he could remember her showing emotion.   Mary walked in from the outside with Leah and they both quietly took seats at the table to watch and listen. 

“So, the invasion?” Ian asked.

“They hit us with two damn EMPs.  Sent them up as climate monitoring satellites a couple of years ago.”

“You mean,” Ian leaned into the screen.  “They’ve been planning this for years?”

“I don’t think they parked them up there to study freaking polar bears or the ice shelf, like they claimed!”

“What else?”

“They clogged our ports with hundreds of cargo ships.  They were loaded with thousands of soldiers and hundreds of drones.  They launched hundreds of helos and thousands of rockets from the same platforms.  They gassed the port cities and used the rockets and helos to gas a number of strategic bases along their front line right up the middle of the US.  They freaking gutted us like raw fish, Ian!”

“Sir.”

“Hang on, there’s more,” Director Hilton cut him off and did not wait for a response.  “When that son-of-a-bitch, Payne, the asshole former senator made his first announcement, he sent it with an exclamation point.”  Hilton let his voice drop, which was probably the only visual sign of a chink in the man’s outer shell.

Ian sensed it. 
It gets worse
, he thought to himself.

“What is it, Al,” Ian had known the Director long before he was the Director.  He might be one of the few people left alive that could get away with calling the burly man by his first name.

“Ian, he killed the Vice-President.” 

“What?” Ian whispered.

“He had him killed, Ian.  It was one of the men on the VP’s service; he was a spy.”

The word, spy, had a different meaning to Ian than the way Al Hilton had just used it.  To Ian, the man that killed the Vice-President was an assassin, not a spy.  Ian was a spy, he had been one for twenty years, and he had yet to assassinate anyone.

“How was Payne a part of it?”  Ian knew these two men; the senator and the vice-president.   One he remembered fondly, the other, he wanted to rip his head off.  The VP had been a Colonel in the National Guard when Ian was on one of his tours.  They had crossed paths a few times…the brass always wanted to have the special ops guys on speed dial.  The Senator was a different story altogether.

  “We’ve since learned,” the Director continued.  He was back to business mode.  “That Payne was the one that got the shooter on the Secret Service duty through his SASC position.  The shooter killed Weber’s entire staff and almost everyone in the VP’s bunker before one of the Marines took him out.”

Ian listened, his mind chewing through the data he was learning and contrasting it with what he knew about Washington and the players involved.  The SASC was officially known as the Senate Committee on Armed Service and was one of the most powerful committees on the Hill, if not the world.

“Payne was on which committees?”

“Emerging Threats and Capabilities,” Hilton responded.  “Ian, we’re way ahead of you.  The man had his hands on cyber security, intelligence, counter-terrorism, and homeland security.  They all rolled up under his committee.  He was perfectly positioned to open the door and let these assholes smoke us!”

“What about the intelligence angle?  We roll up to them…”

Hilton cut him off.  “Only from a military intelligence angle and Homeland.  The Agency is pretty insulated from them.”

“Yeah,” Ian said.  “So was the VP.”

“Right, so they did it Burrows, now we have to make it right.  When you activated your homing beacon, I think that might have been the first freaking time I have smiled since this thing went down.”

“I am assuming then, that I am being deployed on a mission?”

“Damn right you are, you’re going to find and kill Senator Payne.”

Just then, the short-wave radio crackled to life.  It was Grace.

“Base, this is Tardis Blue,” her voice was strained.  “We have three enemy choppers that just flew over the ridge and headed your way!”

Bob looked up from the radio equipment and out of the partially opened window.  The noise of the three choppers was immediate.  Their rotors thumped the air and rattling the farmhouse.  He could see Anna and Adam half way between the farmhouse and the stables.  They heard it too and froze with fear.

“Move, now!”
Ian yelled, grabbing the secure radio and yanking it off the table.  He tried to grab Bob’s shoulder, but the Marine shook him off.

Bob key the microphone to the two-way.
“Adam, run to the barn!  Run to the barn!”
  He let off of the mike as the bullets started piercing the house.

“
Base,
they’re firing!  They’re firing
!”  Grace yelled, not knowing that the first bullet had blasted through the two-way radio in the farmhouse and through Bob’s heart.

CHAPTER 15

The Tiller Farm

“
Base,
they’re firing!  They’re firing
!”

Grace screamed into the two-way radio as she and Joshua watched the three helicopters circle the farm and unleash thousands of bullets into the farmhouse and stables.

“MOM!!  DAD!!  Joshua, do something!”
she yelled, and grabbed his arm.

The wood structure of the old farmhouse exploded with the strike of every bullet.  The very foundation seemed to rattle in cadence with the thumping of the spray of bullets and the beating of the rotors.

The third helicopter broke off the attack on the house and turned its guns on the red stables; firing continuously at the home for horses.  Grace knew that there were know horses in the stable, they were all turned out to the pasture, but she had heard Bob order Adam and Anna to run to there.

“Com’on!” Joshua yelled at Grace as he took off along the edge of the tree line.  She started running after him, both had their rifles ready to fire at any second.  Joshua slid to a stop about 100 yards from the stables and knelt down.

Grace slid up next to him and they both brought their rifles up to fire.

“The one over the stable first!” Joshua yelled.

Joshua and Grace started firing on the closest copter.  Joshua was firing the larger caliber 7.62 round with armor piercing tips from his Ruger rifle, and Grace was firing the armor piercing .223 round from her borrowed AR-15.  The combination of both ordinances made for hell from the ground for the helicopter.  Grace’s round pierced the glass and found a target with one of the pilots.  Joshua’s rounds were more deadly.  His rounds had the ability to pierce the metal, engine and flight controls of the copter.    They each unleashed their entire clips of ammo and reloaded. 

It took a second, but once the pilot realized that his copilot had been shot, and that they were being peppered, he turned to see the two soldiers firing at him.

“He’s going to swing around!” Grace yelled, her second clip almost out.

Joshua didn’t answer.  If the copter swung around, where they could fire from the door mounted machine gun, there would be no escape.  He continued to pump rounds into the engine.

The bird rotated towards Joshua and Grace and nosed over as smoke filled the cockpit.  With a head on shot at the pilot, Joshua put an armor piercing round directly through the front windshield and through the pilot’s chest.

The results were catastrophic and immediate.  Without a pilot, the helicopter veered backwards with whatever pressure was still left in the dead pilot’s hands.  It nosed down, almost striking a large oak three, away from the stables and towards the house.

“Oh no, not the house!” Joshua whispered.

But before the doomed helicopter could reach the house, it spun around and tagged the rotor of one of the helicopters shooting at the house, causing both helicopters to spin erratically towards the pasture.

“RUN!”
Joshua yelled.  He tried to grab Grace’s hand as he ran into the woods and away from the impending doom of the helicopters, but she shook him off.  “
Grace!  Com’on!”

Grace wouldn’t move, she stood and watched the two damaged helicopters spin out of control.  The first helicopter, with the dead pilots, finally nosed over and plowed directly into the field, exploding as its rotors caught the ground.  The impact propelled one of its rotors slicing into the air and through the fuselage of the second helo.

“Grace!”

The second bird exploded in midair from the cataclysmic shredding apart of its structure.

The explosion was intense, sending large pieces of burning shrapnel in all directions like flying buzz saws.  Grace fell to the ground in an attempt to cover herself from the carnage.  A rotor, flying at near the speed of sound, sliced over their heads and cut through several treetops.

Grace looked up at the third helo; it had seen her.  She could hear Joshua yelled at her to run. 

After the mid air explosion of the second helicopter, the third helicopter stopped firing on the house.  The house, full of thousands of holes and covered with burning pieces of helicopter, collapsed in on itself and caught fire.

“NO!”
she screamed.

<  >

Wu sat in the back of the last helicopter.  He was absorbed in the revenge they were exacting on the rebels.

“The State punishes those that do not do as they are told to do,” he said quietly to himself.   He had hardly noticed the other two helicopters were damaged until the second one exploded in a giant fireball.

He whipped his head around to see the fireball fall to the ground and engulf itself in a secondary explosion.   Wu looked around the grounds.

“Where are they?” he yelled at the pilot.  “They must die too!”

The pilot scanned the area, flipping the helicopter in several tight circles looking for an enemy.

Wu saw the soldier rise from the ground first.  It was the same one that he could have shot the night before.

Why didn’t I shoot?  Now they have killed more of my comrades!

“There!  There!” he said, pointing for the pilot to follow the direction he was pointing.  “Kill them!  Kill them now!” he ordered the gunner.

<  >

“GRACE!  NOW!”
Joshua yelled from the faux security of the tree line.  Grace finally turned and ran, loosing her helmet as she did. 

“Up there!” Joshua waited till she caught up to him and he grabbed her hand, pulling her up the hill after him.  They were headed for a crop of rocks 30 yards up the hill and familiar to Joshua from his youth.

<  >

Wu watched them run.  He knew the helo would catch them and mow them down.  And that is when the soldier’s helmet flew off revealing the blond ponytail.

She is a girl!  They are fighting with girls,
Wu thought.
  The State said that the American girls would flee from us in fear.

The helicopter arrived on site and spun around to position its gun at the target.  Wu watched over the shoulder of the gunner.  He wanted to see them die.

The gunner wasted no time, and began unloading what he had left of his ammunition at the outcropping of rocks.  Trees splintered and exploded around the rocks, filling the air with bark and sap.  The ground detonated with the impact of every round.

<  >

“In there, NOW!” Joshua yelled.  He practically threw Grace into the small car size cavern. 

The bullets ricocheted off of the rocks around their enclosure.

“Oh my God!  Oh my God!” she was beside herself. 

The sound of the rocks exploding around them was deafening.

“Oh my God!  Oh my God!”

Joshua did the only thing that he could think of; he wrapped his arms around her and tried to protect her from the shards of rock and bullets.  He knew he couldn’t protect her from the reality that their parents were most likely dead. 

“They killed our parents, they killed our parents!” she sobbed into his shoulder.

The bullets never let up.  Joshua felt that it was only a matter of time before they had an angle on them.  He knew he would never be fast enough to fire back at them.  He just held Grace and prayed that they would trip up somehow, giving him some advantage to save their lives.

That is when they heard something different besides the noise of a helicopter, the firing of a high-powered machine gun or the impact of bullets on their position.   The noise was whining and whistling. 

“What’s that?” Grace asked, she lifted her face from Joshua’s shoulder.

“I don’t know.”

The sound grew with volume and intensity with each passing second.

<  >

Wu smiled with each round fired at the soldiers.  He had been smarter than they were.  He was better trained.  He was fighting for a cause.  He was fighting to liberate the Americans, and if it meant killing some of them along the way, well, that was acceptable by the State…and by him. 

He never heard the whistling noise closing in on his position.

<  >

Just before the whistling noise peaked, Joshua pushed Grace’s head back into his chest and put his helmet-covered head on top of hers.

“Close your eyes, cover your ears and hold your breath!”  Grace did as he said and flexed her body waiting on some sort of impact.

The whistling peaked and changed over to the sound of a rocket engine just before the missile impacted with the helicopter causing a massive explosion and an even larger secondary fireball.

The fireball washing over the hill and through their position, setting fire to the sap filled air and igniting the tinder.  The wave of heat generated by the fireball cooked the outer layer of clothing and singed the hair on the back of Joshua’s neck.  The pressure wave from the explosion reverberated the air trying to pound the oxygen from their lungs.  The rocks took the brunt of the blast, with Joshua absorbing the rest for the pair.  

Within a second or two, the fireball dissipated and the only noise they could hear was crackling fire.   Both Joshua and Grace drew timid breaths of warm smoky air.  They both coughed from the gasses and char in the air.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, tears rolling down her cheek.

Joshua lifted his head up and looked around the rocks to see the metal frame of the helicopter burning on the ground.   He released Grace and they both stood as a US fighter jet scream overhead.

“Our guys got’em,” Joshua said.

“Yea, but…” she took off down the hill, dodging fires and fallen trees at a full run towards the house and stables.

“Grace!  Wait,” he yelled from behind.  He too, started to run.

Grace came to a stop once she got to the bottom of the hill and could clearly see the burning and collapsed house and the partially collapsed barn.  She dropped her rifle on the ground as Joshua came to a halt next to her.

“They’re dead,” she said softly and fell to her knees. “Joshua, they’re all dead.  Everyone we love is dead.”