Crisis Event: Gray Dawn Read online

  Blakely grimaced as he stepped out of the Humvee and went around to the back of it. He felt like he was watching himself from above again, knowing exactly what needed to be done, and doing it.

  The attackers had screwed up. The fire position buildings were a full block away, and if the gunners in those corner windows had sat tight, if they had allowed Titman’s Humvee to get into the excellent kill zone they’d set up, the crossfire they could rain down might have taken it out. It would have certainly damaged or disabled it. But the enemy had gotten jumpy and fired too soon. Now they were going to pay for it.

  Sparks’s .50 cal had no trouble sending a stream of lead tearing into the masonry and windows of the fourth floor. Blakely used this cover to open the rear hatch of the Humvee, reach in and open a small compartment in the side of the vehicle, and pull out an RPG launcher. After loading the weapon with a warhead and preparing it to fire, he put it on his shoulder, stepped out from behind the Humvee, and took aim.

  He could almost hear the gunners in those buildings saying “Oh shit!”

  From at least a dozen yards above himself, he watched as his instincts took over and he pushed the trigger that launched the rocket.

  Yellow sparks and tongues of fire lit up the night, and the rocket shot out of the tube, racing away and zooming ahead toward the enemy on the left, leaving a yellow-orange trail as it screamed into the side of the building and ignited.

  The warhead detonated on impact and an orange fireball rolled up the corner of the building, sending flames shooting into the sky. Very quickly the interior of the building began to catch fire, lighting up the darkened downtown buildings around it.

  The muzzle flashes on the left were now gone, or invisible in the bright orange flame consuming the corner of the building, but they were still there on the right. Bullets kept popping against the side of Blakely’s Humvee.

  Blakely was just about to load up another warhead when Sparks swiveled the .50 cal and opened up. Another fork of lightning came down a few blocks beyond the burning building and the thunder roared less than three seconds later. A sudden wind began to pick up dust and swirl it into the air.

  Then they heard the engine revving behind them.

  Blakely spun around, getting ready to reach for another warhead if necessary.

  It wasn’t necessary.

  The third Humvee came careening around a corner and racing toward them, bashing abandoned cars out of the way as it came. Whoever was on the .50 cal was already firing.

  Orange tracers joined Sparks’s effort and the two lines of flaming lead tore holes into the corner of the three story building.

  The third Humvee, driven by Corporal Clark, reached the first two vehicles and kept going, racing forward toward the enemy position, its gunner still hammering the building with slugs.

  After only a few seconds of concentrated fire, the muzzle flashes from the building were gone. The gunners quit firing and the building went dark except for the glow of the fire across the street. Youngstown returned to the creepy silent state it had enjoyed when Titman’s convoy arrived.

  Blakely stepped out into the darkness and ran over to Titman’s Humvee. He pulled the door open and slipped inside next to the General.

  “What do we do now, sir?” Blakely asked, already knowing what they needed to do, but waiting to see if the general could muster the mental capacity to figure it out for himself.

  Titman, who was lighting up a cigar, smiled and said, “Combat sure is exciting, don’t you think sergeant?”

  “Yes sir,” Blakely said. “And dangerous.”

  “Yes, well, why don’t you give me some of your input on reducing that danger. What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Mop up, sir,” Blakely said immediately. “Roll in there and kill anything still moving.”

  “Well then,” Titman said, “by all means, proceed.”

  Blakely slid out of the command vehicle as Clark backed his Humvee up next to theirs and got out. Blakely approached his men, who were laughing and giving each other high fives all around.

  “Did you see that shit?” Duck asked one of the late arrivals.

  “We saw it,” Corporal Clark said. “How could we freaking miss it?”

  “That was awesome shooting, sir,” Meadowlark said.

  “We’re not done shooting,” Blakely said.

  “What?” several of the soldiers asked.

  “I thought it was over,” Corporal Clark said.

  “It’s not over until we confirm the kills,” Blakely said. “You never leave an enemy unaccounted for. Not if you don’t want your throat cut. Mount up.”

  Ten minutes later, all three Humvees were on the street directly between the buildings, in what should have been the two gunners’ kill zone.

  Blakely was leading a squad of four into the three-story building on the right. He stepped through the shattered double doors on the first floor of the building and motioned his men to follow him. His night vision goggles made it easy to see the interior of what had once been a brownstone apartment building. The first floor had a small foyer with mail boxes in it, and a hall right down the center, with four doors on each side.

  Blakely had his men take turns kicking open every door whose knob wouldn’t turn.

  In less than two minutes they’d cleared the floor and climbed the stairs at the back of the building. There was blood on the steps that lead out through the back exit, but Blakely had his squad sweep the building anyway.

  Five minutes later they were on the third floor, where Blakely took the point himself, nodding at the bloody trail that lead out of the corner apartment where the enemy gunner had been set up. The door was closed and locked, so Blakely stepped back and kicked it open.

  He went in behind his kick, ready to spray the room with gunfire, but held back when he saw the place was empty.

  At least it was empty of living occupants.

  There was one dead guy on the floor.

  The dead guy was a sergeant with the U.S. military.

  “Shit, sir,” Blakely said. “We’ve got a dead sergeant up here.”

  “Are you sure?” Titman asked.

  Blakely wanted to pick up the dead man and drag him down and throw him inside Titman’s Humvee, but instead he dug through the dead man’s pockets until he was sure there was nothing in them, then held his voice steady when he said: “One hundred percent, positively sure, sir. First Cav.”

  “What the hell are them boys doing up here?” Titman asked, but before Blakely could answer he heard an unmistakable “whoomp” from somewhere outside the building.

  “Let’s go,” Blakely said, and he pulled the dead man’s sidearm from his holster—the exact model as his own—and took off at a sprint, running down the stairs as fast as he could go without tripping and going end over end.

  Out on the street, his men were on the verge of panic again. Blakely saw Duck standing down on the opposite end of the burning building, his rifle pointed down the street into the darkness.

  Blakely ran to where Duck stood.

  “Grenade,” Duck said. “Rigged on a wire.”

  “Where?”

  “Back there,” Duck said. “Back of the building.”

  Blakely left Duck covering the street and jogged along the ashy sidewalk to the back of the burning eight story building. Another fire burned in the back alley, but it was small compared to the fire about to consume the top of the building. All that was burning in the alley was the rear entrance doors to what had been an old office building. Lying out in the middle of the alley, charred and burned and not moving was what was left of one of his men, a kid named Hodges.

  “Dumb kid,” Blakely said, and turned away. He walked back the way he had come, telling Duck to head back to the Humvees with him. As far as he was concerned the day had been a complete catastrophe. Three out of fourteen dead soldiers represented a loss of more than 20% of their force. A few more days like that and the mission would certainly be impossible.

 
; “Mount up!” Blakely yelled, and his men began streaming toward the Humvees out of the darkness and flickering shadows of the burning building.

  “What about his body?” Hider asked, his voice still rough and raw from the exposure to chlorine.

  “Get it off the street,” Blakely said, then watched as two of his men picked up Hodges and carried him toward the brownstone. “We’ll come back for it later.”

  “Drop that body,” Titman commanded almost immediately. “We don’t have time for niceties.”

  “Yes sir,” Hider said, the contempt in his voice obvious and unhidden.

  “Where to now, sir?”

  Titman was just about to tell him when corporal Kane said: “We got another transponder spike, sir. More clear this time, about a hundred miles west of Youngstown.”

  “Is it the package?”

  “It’s the right frequency,” Kane said. “We can't get a fix through all the dust, but we’ve got a direction of travel, and it should clear up as we get closer.”

  “Well goddamn,” Titman said, smiling and taking a long suck on his cigar. “Those CIA pukes aren’t as dumb as they act.”

  “Sir?” Blakely asked, not sure what Titman was talking about.

  “Roll out, gentlemen!” Titman said into the comm. “It’s time to go put us a damsel in distress!”

  End of Part I

  The following is an excerpt of Part II of the Crisis Event Series:

  Crisis Event Part II: Black Swan Blues

  Coming Soon to Amazon

  Crisis Event

  Part 2: Black Swan Blues

  Chapter 1

  He would have killed her if he hadn’t stepped on the branch—the one she dropped on her way back to her tent to build a fire. But as soon as his boot crunched down on the dried wood, Sadie spun around. She had only a second to react.

  It almost wasn’t enough.

  He was coming full speed, already swinging the cop club at her head, his face a scowling mask of malevolence.

  Sadie shoved her armload of firewood at him, threw herself sideways, and twisted away from the blow as she fell.

  Dust geysered up when her knees hit the ground, and fire raced through her back as the club slammed into her left kidney. The only thing that saved her was the fact that the man’s target—Sadie’s head—had moved. Her back, which took the full force of the blow, was almost three feet lower than where he’d expected her head to be.

  That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

  “Owww!” Sadie yelped as she went face first into the ground. Gray dust sprayed up and coated her respirator shield, fouling her vision. For a several seconds her left leg was numb, and she worried she might be paralyzed. But then she rolled over, wiping at the respirator with one hand and scrabbling to grab a big enough stick to defend herself with.

  “Come back here!” the man said as his feet thudded to a halt in the dust and he turned to come at her again.

  “Wait!” Sadie shrieked through the respirator. In a brief flash of awareness she saw he was wearing a torn and dirty cop uniform, the dull badge still pinned to his chest. His nametag read J. Franklin, and the big red patch on his shoulder said Shanksborough Police. There was no pistol in the holster at his side, though the yellow Taser on his belt might still work.

  Sadie’s shriek seemed to freeze the cop for an instant—just enough time for her to get to her knees, wrap her fingers around a gnarled little log as thick as her wrist, and swing it at the cop’s legs. There was a vicious “crack!” when the log smashed into his left knee, and an exhilarating wave of pleasure raced through her body.

  Strange thing to enjoy, she thought as the cop yelled, “Faaaaack!” and hopped on one leg.

  The man in the cop suit bent his good leg so that he could take the weight off his injured knee. The cop club, which he’d drawn back again, wavered.

  But not for long.

  When he swung the club again he brought it arcing down and around so that it was travelling a horizontal path toward Sadie’s head. She saw the cop put weight on his injured leg and he twisted his hips. Time slowed down in this fight-or-flight moment, and Sadie knew instantly that the power behind this blow could kill her if it landed.

  Sadie ducked right and swung the little log she held upward. There was a baseball bat “crack” and the log snapped in half. The impact rattled Sadie’s hand so badly she was sure she’d broken something. But she didn’t have time to worry about a broken hand. The club kept coming, and it smashed into her left shoulder blade with enough force to send a blast of pain flaring across her back like the burn of a propane torch.

  Her arm went numb, and she felt a strange buzz in her fingertips.

  “Ahhhhh!” she wailed as her forward momentum carried her into her tent and knocked her pack over. Respirator cartridges, shotgun shells, 9mm bullets, clean clothes, and various tools lay scattered out before her on the thermal blanket. The shotgun she’d found the day before was right there, a foot away from her hand, right next to the little box with the Radex geiger counter inside it.

  “Now you’re gonna get it!” the man yelled, and he reached down to grab her ankle.

  Sadie snatched the shotgun as the man yanked her out of the tent. She rolled to her left, bringing the gun up and pointing it at him.

  “Hold it!” she yelled.

  The man in the cop suit didn’t hold it.

  Instead he stepped astride her, reaching down to grasp the sawn-off barrel, his injured knee apparently forgotten. He smiled once he got a good grip on the gun and Sadie noted with disgust that he’d filed his canines to sharp points.

  “You got to cock that thing, you want to use it,” the man said, and gave the barrel a jerk.

  Sadie let go and the cop, who’d expected some resistance, stumbled backward a few steps. While he was regaining his balance Sadie reached behind her into the tent. Her numb arm wouldn’t support her weight so she toppled over and had to roll to her right to get at what she wanted: the bottle she’d filled with the water from the car battery the day before. It was right where she’d noticed it a few seconds earlier, tucked into the side pocket of her pack, and she got her hand around it.

  “Well I usually don't like to fill my new girls full of lead before I fill ‘em full of spunk,” the cop said. He flipped the shotgun around and pointed it at Sadie. “But if you don’t hold still I’m gonna have to reverse my usual order of things. I haven’t tried it with a dead girl before, but I’m what you’d call an experimental kinda guy.”

  Sadie kept moving, rolling up to her feet as the cop dropped his club and levered both triggers back with his other hand. He pointed the gun directly Sadie’s belly and said: “Well now, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  End of excerpt