Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) (44 page)

Greene was surveilling one such radio when he heard some chatter that had piqued his curiosity and caused him to call on Buchanan.

“Bravo One, Bravo One, this is Mike Bravo. Over.”

Mike Bravo was the call sign given to Greene. Being the linguist, his area of operations was suitably called the Mother Brain, or, as the military would call it on the radio, Mike Bravo.

“Go for Bravo One,” Buchanan responded. The radio discipline had slacked a bit over the course of the last couple months, but there were certain etiquettes Buchanan was willing to sacrifice and others he was not.

“Bravo One, I’m picking up some interesting comm from due east of us. Can you return to Mike Bravo? Over.”

“Ten-four, Mike Bravo, I’m en route.”

Buchanan dropped what he was doing and reported back to Greene.

“What did you find?” he asked him.

“Sir, I was contacted by a rogue patriot group due east of here who had stumbled upon our frequency.”

“What did they say?”

“They were calling for you, sir. I didn’t respond.”

“Good job, Staff Sergeant. What was their call sign?”

“Three twenty-five marforce?” Greene said inquisitively.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Buchanan said shockingly.

“Sir?”

“It’s a unit designator; 3/25 Marforres. They’re a Marine Force Reserves unit,” he replied. “Marines from Brook Park, Ohio. Gimme the mic,” Buchanan ordered him.

“Three twenty-five Marforres, this is Bravo One. Over.”

Buchanan waited anxiously for the radio traffic to return. There was a pause that made him nervous. He was assuming the call was coming from a Marine unit desiring to rendezvous with his combined armed forces group. The resistance was growing in word and deed. So, it was natural assume this call would be no different than other calls that he had received in the past.

At the end of the long pause between relays, he was more surprised than he had anticipated.

“Bravo One, I know I’m breaking radio protocol, but this matter is urgent and we are past etiquette. This is Joint Chief of Staff and commandant of the Marine Corps, General John James. I am near your location with fellow Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Belt McKanty. We have already dispatched a unit of Marines to a mutually distant waypoint. Rendezvous with these Marines and use their intel to communicate with me further. They will be at MGRS Sixteen Tango Echo Lima Three Five. How do you copy? Over.”

Buchanan was shocked and apprehensive about what he had just heard. His initial reaction when he had heard who he was communicating with was excitement. However, he was soon overwhelmed at the possibility of a trap. While Greene was taking good notes from the relay, Buchanan was listening closely and conceiving a plan to meet up with the commandant and still be safe about it.

“Commandant, this is Bravo One. I copy and am dispatching a rendezvous party immediately. Over.”

“Loud and clear, Bravo One. We are going radio silent until we hear from you again. Over.”

The radio went silent and Buchanan handed the mic back to Greene and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Good catch, Staff Sergeant. We’ve got work to do.”

“Reynolds up,” Buchanan yelled.

Fort Wayne, Indiana

General John James and Admiral Belt McKanty had not only survived the execution of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but had journeyed from the District, in Virginia, through West Virginia, Ohio, and into Indiana.

Their goal had always been to reach South Dakota, where John had a regiment of Marines tucked away with supplies and armaments. Along the way, they had lost several friends, including the cab driver, Joshwa, who had secured their way safely out of the District, Joshwa’s wife, Zamora, and their two sons, Aaron and Gideon. Ironically, their route took them to a town called Defiance in Indiana. The general and admiral thought it to be a matter of coincidence when they were met by a band of patriots, national guardsmen, and Marine Corps Reserve units that were actively opposing the occupation. The group had beaten down several UN convoys and overwhelmed UN command posts. For John and Belt, it was a dream come true.

The leader of the group was a National Guard captain by the name of George Clark. He was heading to Fort Wayne when he had stumbled upon the general and admiral, subsequently relinquishing his command to them.

General James and Admiral McKanty had learned from Captain Clark that Fort Wayne was rumored to be a city still operating under the Articles of the Constitution. This was an idea that seemed refreshing to them and reminiscent of a long-lost America. The thought was to move with Clark and his men to Fort Wayne to continue fortifying the city and to help restore the Constitution.

The food supply in Fort Wayne was not ideal, but it was enough to survive on. They had the luxury of local agriculture under its protection and plenty of generators and experts in every field to assist with new ideas for living in such times. America had become so spoiled by its electronic gadgets, electricity, and running water that it had forgotten how to survive without such amenities.

The defenses in Fort Wayne were easy to set up once the lawlessness had abated. There was a short burst of anarchy when the Flip happened, but for the most part, it was crushed early on. The people came to understand that they could survive if they pulled together. Unfortunately, there had to be a certain brand of local law to make it work. Without laws, the people became anarchical and that was unacceptable. The mayor and the governor of Indiana were brothers; that was the biggest asset the city had. They were able to pull resources down from the state level to the city level, utilizing the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist in the security of a free society. Because of these laws, the city was not entirely free. There were curfews and limits on how much food and water were rationed. The people were still free to have firearms for the purpose of resisting tyranny. You were free to leave Fort Wayne at any time, but you could not bring anyone back unless they could be an asset.

The arrival of General James and Admiral McKanty was a welcomed one. It didn’t take the city officials long to decide that they had the necessary assets to be allowed into the city.

Governor Jim Williams and Mayor Lawrence Williams had greeted them at the gates and welcomed them in for their accomplishments and sacrifices to the old American way of life.

John and Belt had to explain to the politicians that they were on a more pressing mission: the destruction of FEMA and the removal of all foreign invaders.

Jim and Lawrence concurred with the military men and offered their assistance, essentially allowing them anything they needed to successfully pull their coup.

As they discussed details and tried to develop a strategy on a successful coup, the
roamers
returned with more UN equipment and had stumbled upon a frequency being used by another large group of resistance fighters.

Roamers
was a slang term for the groups that patrolled the city perimeter and expanded the territory of Fort Wayne and, ultimately, Indiana. When Michael had arrived with John and Belt, he requested to be a part of the roamers. His new job was primarily maintaining a security net around the city and, secondarily, expanding outward in a spiderweb technique to engulf more territory and safe zones.

In the meantime, John and Belt spent some time with their new allies, listening to radio chatter, and came to a consensus that they were going to make contact with the leader, Bravo One. Volunteers from the local Marine Corps Reserves unit 3
^rd
Battalion, 25
^th
Marines, were sent towards Bravo One with a specific set of instructions from the general, who could tell by the radio traffic that he was dealing with another high-ranking Marine. If he was right, he could solicit the help of a brother and strengthen the cause that much more. Combining the size of Bravo One’s force with the Marine regiment on standby in South Dakota could turn the tide.

John was unaware of the intelligence that Bravo One had on Goose Island but had intelligence of his own on the FEMA infrastructure. Being a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave him privy information that would be mutually beneficial to share with Bravo One. For now, John had to be content with waiting for a reply from his would-be connection to the west.

John had given the Marine dispatch a frequency and channel to turn to at a predetermined time. John didn’t want to risk transmission interception by enemy forces, so he chose to minimize the possibility by dispatching the channel and frequency manually, rather than over the air. The ball was now in Bravo One’s court.

Jess and Cade had traveled north, up the tracks, leaving Nathan and Denny to travel south, down the tracks. Several of the train cars were toppled off of the rails and lying on their sides, while others were still upright, but smashed between some of the other cars. It was hard for any of them to fathom the amount of force required to cause such a disaster. That was the primary question running through Jess’s head as she and Cade walked ever northward, guns at the ready.

“I wonder how fast they were going,” Jess said curiously.

“I don’t know, but they would have at least been booking it at the sound, by the looks of this wreck,” Cade said sarcastically.

He was letting Jess take the lead so he could watch her. While he was actively looking over his shoulder, he would always face back forward and carefully study Jess. He was confident she was the person that had killed Scott, back in October. His suspicion of her was rapidly taking hold of his thoughts, so that after a few minutes of walking, he wasn’t focused on the task at hand, which was searching the train cars for information.

“Hey, Jess.”

“Yeah?”

“I was eavesdropping earlier and couldn’t help but hear something about you being taken!”

“It was nothing,” she said, trying to dodge the topic.

“You know, it’s not healthy keeping stuff bottled up. It can create an explosive personality disorder.”

“And you’re a doctor now?”

“No, just speaking from experience.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Jess said. “You tell me what happened to you, and I’ll tell you what happened to me.”

“Back in my army days, one of the senior noncommissioned officers always had it out for me. He had bullied me for a couple years, only because I was a weak swimmer. Every day was the same thing. When there was a special assignment, I was looked over. When there was monkey matter, I was assigned the duty. Eventually, we were shifted from stateside to the jihadist wars. When I was in Iran, my unit was overcome by hajis. We were running low on ammunition and men. I had watched most of my peers die right before my very eyes. My unit went from several dozen men to five, in the time span of an hour. Air support was tied up on other missions; apparently, we were prioritized. I remember looking over, in the heat of conflict, and seeing my friend Scott bleeding from the neck…”

Cade was telling his story, purposefully mixing truth with lies, waiting for a response from Jess. He carefully looked over both shoulders one last time to make sure nobody was watching. It was just him and Jess. Nobody could be heard and the only sounds they could make out were the sound of their footsteps and their voices. Cade had one hand behind his back, reaching for the same switchblade that he had used to kill his friend Wayne. He was waiting for Jess to acknowledge the killing of his friend Scott.

Jess was not ignorant of what was being said. What she refused to reveal to Cade was the fact that her senses were now heightened as adrenaline began to flood her veins. She was trained to
act
and to
react
. This training had saved her in the past, and was proving true once again.

“What happened next?” Jess asked, doing her best to play coy.

“I shot the staff sergeant that had been bullying me. I shot him in the head and nobody noticed it happen, because we were all shooting and dropping like flies.”

“I’m sure he had it coming. He took you to a bad place,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

Jessica played it off as if nothing was going on, but she felt deep down that this guy was somehow tied in with the same Scott she had killed a couple months earlier. She was looking in and around the crashed train cars, as if searching for clues, all along, she was actually buying time to see what Cade’s next move was going to be. She thought of her Glock pistol that was tucked into the small of her back, but with Cade behind her, it was too risky of a move. Her rifle was at the ready, but facing in the opposite direction. She could sense something was amiss, but chose to change the topic.

“Look, over there,” she said, pointing into a train car. The grotesque scene was one of horror movies. There were corpses still hanging from some of the shackles in the cars. Some of them only had hands and arms hanging from the shackles. The scene didn’t faze Cade, who was still pressing to hear her story.

“You said that if I told you my story, you would tell me yours.”

Jess decided to risk it.

Her rifle’s safety switch was already in the fire position. She had one chambered and she had press-checked it before leaving.

“When I was back at Gorham, I was working with some RNs who had not familiarized themselves with firearms…” she started saying as she prepped herself mentally for an impending fight. She was walking along the tracks, slowing along the way and taking as much time as she needed to prepare herself. With each step, she slowed and looked into a train car. “So I was teaching them how to use them. What I didn’t know was that some thug from Murphysboro had snuck into our homestead and decided to have his way with me.”

Cade had left his right hand on the rifle trigger. He knew the risk in shooting her. It was one that he wasn’t willing to take. His plan was to stick her with his butterfly knife, the same way he did his pal in Murphysboro.

With his left hand, he reached down to lift the tail of his shirt, to reveal the case his knife was resting in. He quietly unbuttoned it as Jess told her story. He slid it out and kept it behind his back. Using his back as a catch to quietly open it, he pushed the button and the blade unfolded just a bit. From there he slowly let the spring do the rest until it was fully unfolded and in the locked position.