Redemption Page 3

  Danny had weekly meetings in Kaneohe on Oahu, twenty miles east of Pearl Harbor. He was picked up by seaplane for those—a luxury I’m sure he appreciated. That half-hour, 150-mile flight sure beat the four-hour boat rides he used to endure.

  Living out here, with an island to ourselves, was heavenly. It almost made us forget what brought us here in the first place. Almost. But not quite.

  As I approached the front steps to the tree house and saw the rest of our governor-assigned security team—two Army Rangers—sitting in the shade around the radio, I knew exactly why they were here. I knew exactly why we were all here.

  THREE – What We Knew (Ryan)

  ---------- (Wednesday. July 20, 2022.) ----------

  Jake Hendricks and Royce Cotter both waved as I walked up—we called them Deacon and … well, Royce. “Anything new, guys?” I asked them that daily. As usual, Deacon had his Bible beside him and his guitar in his lap. Abbey was sitting next to him—with another guitar—apparently learning how to play a song. Royce was making coffee.

  “No, sir,” Royce replied with a thick British accent. “All quiet.”

  They didn’t need to call me sir. I’d done nothing to earn that distinction. My military experience was limited to buying Girl Scout cookies—which is to say none at all. But it was decorum for these guys, deserved or not. Royce had spent the first decade of his life in London—thus the accent—but lived in Colorado the next nine years before joining the Army. Visually he could have been a stunt double for Maroon 5’s front man, Adam Levine, with the tattoo sleeves, spiked black hair, and chiseled frame. Problem was he was tone deaf and an awful—terribly awful—singer. Deacon had all the musical talent. He also had a similarly deep accent—Southern or “hillbilly drawl”—though he denies it. He hardly ever spent even a day outside of Oklahoma, or a week off his ranch, until he turned twenty, at which point he too joined the Army. Royce was the brains. Deacon—a former rodeo hand—was the brawn. He even had a second nickname, Red Bull, given to him more for his temper than his energy level. But few people were allowed to call him that. Deacon’s brother, a legendary mixed martial arts fighter, had given him the nickname years ago. When his brother died in the attacks, the nickname mostly died with him. As far as I could tell, no one outside his military family used it anymore, and we respected that. Deacon and Royce had progressed to Rangers together, and they moved to the island with us a few months after Danny and Kate’s wedding—again, as assigned by the governor.

  When we’d arrived in Hawaii and met Governor Barnes, America’s highest-ranked surviving government official—as far as anyone knew—he listened to the story of our epic journey from Minnesota to Hawaii. He took an instant liking to Danny and promoted him to captain, even though Danny had requested to be released from the military. Danny didn’t want to fight anymore, but he understood the value of his survival experience, and it didn’t take much for the governor to persuade him to stay on in an intelligence capacity.

  On October 12 of last year, the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Qi Jia attacks, Governor Barnes called together all surviving military personnel, enlisted or retired, for a summit at the “new Pentagon”—the Hexagon. Blake, Dad and I went along with Danny, not sure if we’d be allowed in, but no one stopped us.

  Of the 2,639 people still known to be alive on the islands, only ninety-six of them were military or law enforcement or had previous training and/or experience. Ninety-six people do not much of an army make. Were it not for the Shield—Hawaii’s high-tech defense system—Qi Jia would have easily overrun us long ago. Roughly five thousand miles from our nearest ally, Australia, we were essentially on our own out here. Most of our survivors were tourists who had been vacationing on the other islands, outside of Maui and Oahu—the islands less affected by the chemical blasts. Fewer than seven hundred of us escaped the mainland after the attacks, and only forty-two survivors had arrived since we did.

  At that meeting it had become clear there were two distinct factions: the fighters and the strategists. The governor encouraged people to voice their own opinions and stand by their beliefs, regardless of their rank or assigned units. Right away that caused problems. Military troops don’t have the luxury of opinions. They will adopt their CO’s position 99.9 percent of the time. If not more. It was no different here.

  Two SEAL platoons from SEAL Team 1 out of Coronado, California, had been conducting training exercises on the small island of Kahoolawe during the first wave of attacks. One of those platoons arrived in Pearl Harbor hours before the second wave of attacks. The two men who stayed on the boat, Trigger and Twix, were the only survivors from that platoon.

  The other SEAL platoon uniformly stood behind their leader, Captain Kevin Baker—definitely the loudest voice in the room—when he declared their intent to fight Qi Jia. Dad and I could hardly contain our disbelief. He actually wanted to leave Hawaii and go fight them? With who? With what?

  Baker had vocally challenged any military personnel to defy him in considering otherwise. He wanted to take a team to California—convinced that more of the Coronado SEALs—from teams 1, 3, 5, and 7—were still alive somewhere. “They wouldn’t be just sitting on their asses like we are,” Baker said.

  I couldn't imagine there were survivors there—especially there—but Baker didn’t appreciate it at all when a couple of Army Rangers agreed with me and basically called him stupid. Fortunately, Danny had stepped in and broke up that fight before it could start.

  The governor singled Danny out as his personal intelligence officer—and someone worth listening to. As Danny was only twenty-one, that didn’t sit well with many in the room, in particular Captain Baker—fifteen years his senior in age and military experience. “Who are you going to listen to?” he’d roared. “Who are you going to follow? A man who was gifted his rank for surviving with luck, or a soldier who earned my rank after more than a decade of war and personal sacrifice.” He looked around the room. “I’m a SEAL captain. You all know what I’m made of.” Then he pointed at Danny. “What do we even know about you? Other than you were really, really lucky.”

  “He can shoot,” Blake had offered, understating Danny’s sniper qualifications considerably.

  “Well whoop-de-doo,” Captain Baker scoffed. “The boy can shoot.”

  Danny casually put his hand on Blake’s arm. “Let it go.” Blake bit his lower lip and nodded. Nothing they could say would help. Danny understood the captain’s disdain and didn’t take it personally. The captain wanted a pissing contest, but Danny was content to let him stand there and piss all over himself.

  Army Ranger Deacon, on the other hand, didn’t like Baker’s arrogance. “Why don’t you sit down and shut up?” His steely eyes glared up at the captain from under the brim of his weathered red Oklahoma ball cap.

  Baker’s reaction revealed his surprise. The big burly officer clearly wasn’t used to being challenged. “Excuse me? What the hell did you just say to me?”

  He made his way toward Deacon, who remained seated and didn’t move an inch, even as the captain walked directly up to him and deliberately stepped on his cowboy boots. Royce stood and placed himself between Deacon and the captain, cutting him off before he could get any closer. “Captain, what he said was that not all of us agree with you on this. That’s all.”

  “Stay out of this, Tea Biscuit,” the captain’s first lieutenant, Brock Schmidt, retorted, shoving Royce back. “Irish asshole.”

  Deacon started to stand, but Royce held him down. “Easy.”

  Captain Baker pulled Brock back. “The hell that’s what he—”

  “Well, then maybe that’s what he meant,” Royce replied. “Look, you’re entitled to your opinion, but if Danny, or I, or any of these people don’t see it your way, we’re—”

  “Idiots,” Brock cut him off. “Or f—”

  “Again, you’re entitled to feel that way,” Royce interrupted. “And I’ll let that go. But …” He locked eyes with Brock. “You mix up England and Irel
and again, and I’ll have to kick your ass.”

  Brock started to object but shut up when Baker cut him off. The captain hadn’t stopped glaring at Deacon, who had yet to look up at him. But Deacon and Royce projected a vibe that kept Baker from taking this “conversation” any further. The captain was otherwise ready to throw down with—and against—anyone, friend or foe. His attitude divided the room, leaving no gray area. You were clearly either with him or against him.

  Danny could see plenty of others agreed with Baker. Even after his run-in with the Rangers, the captain’s platoon was strutting around the room, flexing, crowing, and intimidating the undecided. But there were also many more like Deacon and Royce who clearly remained unconvinced. Danny looked at the two SEALs—Trigger and Twix—from the lost platoon, and even they didn’t seem enthusiastic about rushing off to fight. They’d already lost a lot and understood the magnitude of the threat.

  The governor tried to rationalize patience and waiting until they knew more. With the satellite and technology capabilities from Hawaii, he was confident they could connect to the enemy’s communication grid and learn a great deal more about them in a matter of months. It took some convincing but—amazingly—Captain Baker eventually agreed to wait six months before making a move.

  “But not a day more!”

  As if he had the last word.

  “Officially” it took almost the entire six months to finally connect to the Qi Jia communication grid. In truth, a handful of the governor’s covert operatives in the Hexagon had been connected for some time already—which officially only Governor Barnes and Danny were aware of—but they weren’t about to share that intel with Baker. Sensing the captain’s patience was approaching its explosive end, the first week of April the governor allowed his technology experts to announce they had a few satellites positioned just right, to where they had almost continuous coverage of all transmissions into and out of Denver from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. From here on out, Captain Baker would know what the governor and Danny knew. Well, almost.

  Incidentally, at that time they picked up another signal from Colorado, unlike any they’d heard to that point. It played music fifty-nine minutes and fifty seconds out of every hour—always the same ten songs, same sequence, over and over. Then every hour, on the hour, a robotic voice would say the date and a number. That first day the message said, “Four … ten … twenty-two … forty-seven”—April 10, 2022, and the number 47. They had pinned the transmission source to Colorado Springs, likely inside NORAD’s bunker in Cheyenne Mountain. And given that the number changed, always decreasing, the best guess was that it was a head count of American survivors there. A handful of military veterans wrote down the names of every song that was played and tried to decipher whatever message was being sent out.

  On May 18, a thirteen-year-old grandson of one of the military vets broke the code, associating specific letters with numbers. He came up with a ten-digit number—a phone number with a Colorado Springs area code. The only phone in Hawaii with an active dial tone was the emergency line in the Hexagon’s bunker, and not a single call out had worked thus far. Supposedly it was a direct line to the bunker in the White House, but no one had ever answered, and no outgoing calls elsewhere had connected. The governor picked up the red phone in Hawaii’s defense center and dialed the ten digits. This time—after two rings—someone picked up. “About damn time,” the voice on the other end said.

  The governor’s technicians were right about the source—they were now connected to NORAD—and about the number after the time stamp. There were still thirty-nine people alive in the Cheyenne Mountain bunker today—mostly military, including an Air Force general and a major. Danny listened on speakerphone in a room with the governor and a dozen other officers, as General Niles filled them in on what they were up against.

  Supplies were dwindling in Cheyenne Mountain. At best they had another six months of food rations for thirty-nine people, and the general expected the survivor count to be half that by that time. None of them would make it another year, of that he was certain. On October 12, 2020, 103 people had been alive and well in there. Seventy-four had died since then. They’d battled several severe flu outbreaks, and one officer had lost his mind and killed a dozen people before shooting himself. The general was tired, frustrated, and angry and wanted someone to come get them out. Now.

  Captain Baker was ready to go. The general passed on all the intel they had gathered, including the approximate number of Qi Jia soldiers in each region and the locations of the primary enemy bases in North America. Most of what he gave them matched what Danny had already shared—as provided by our African friend, Lazzo—and what they’d picked up from Qi Jia transmissions in the past month. They did, however, learn Puerto Rico had also been completely wiped out in the attacks and was now being used exclusively as a prison, controlled primarily by Libya. There had been no communication between Denver and Puerto Rico though, so it was anybody’s guess who might be held captive there. Americans? Qi Jia traitors and deserters? The president? Could our president possibly still be alive? No one knew.

  The general explained that mainland North America was divided into eight enemy zones, each controlled by one of the seven attacking countries, with the last zone, Colorado, jointly operated. Who knew how accurate the troop estimates were anymore, but they were at least a baseline.

  Northeast (Colombia): 45,000 troops.

  Southeast (Libya): 110,000 troops.

  Southwest (Mexico): 150,000 troops.

  Midwest (Japan): 75,000 troops.

  Colorado (shared): 20,000 troops.

  Alaska B.C. (Russia): 275,000 troops.

  Canada (China): 215,000 troops.

  Northwest (North Korea): 65,000 troops.

  In all, 955,000 troops. It didn’t sound like much until you considered, all told, we only had a hundred or so men to oppose them. This was more than a rematch of David versus Goliath. This was baby David with a pacifier and rattle against Goliath and an army of drones, missiles, and technology.

  The one advantage we did have was that the Qi Jia army was mostly spread out across the entire continent. A rescue team might be able to bob and weave their way through without detection. The most dense population was in the former US states along the Mexican border—Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California—where millions of Mexican citizens had moved north to claim free land. The other seven zones were almost strictly military. A small command base was set up in a central city in each of the zones, the only cities left intact and with functional electrical grids: New York City, Miami, Dallas, Chicago, Anchorage, Toronto, Seattle, and Denver. San Diego had also been spared—fully intact—but we knew that was merely to allow Tijuana to expand. San Diego was under Mexican control—and officially the command base for Qi Jia’s West Coast naval fleet.

  To attempt a rescue, our troops would have to move one of our two aircraft carriers away from the Shield’s protective cover and out into the open Pacific, halfway between Hawaii and Los Angeles—about 1,300 miles. Our forces would then have to launch a couple AC-130 airships off the carriers for a single shot at dropping troops into the Rockies in Colorado. The planes would have to squeeze through a thin radar gap north of LA, find a safe airstrip to land on in Colorado, then refuel and wait for who knew how long for the rescue team to return. The rescue team would have to reach the bunker in Cheyenne Mountain, gain access to it, and lead the survivors to the airstrip for the flight back to the aircraft carrier—assuming it hadn’t been sunk yet.

  If that wasn’t already risky and complicated enough, three hundred civilian survivors in Hawaii would have to be trained for critical roles in operating the aircraft carrier. They’d be sitting ducks waiting out there for the rescue team to come back. If Qi Jia caught wind of the carrier’s presence or intercepted the rescue team, it would be a total loss of the planes, the ship, and the people. All to save thirty-nine Americans in Cheyenne Mountain. In a nutshell … it was a stupid idea. If not the stupidest
idea ever.

  FOUR – The Pack (Danny)

  Two Months Ago.

  ---------- (Wednesday. May 25, 2022.) ----------

  A rescue attempt didn’t make sense to me—at least not this one—and I stated as much as soon as the general was off the phone. Baker started swinging at me right then and there. Unfortunately neither Deacon nor Royce were in the room. Blake wasn’t there either. I didn’t back down, but I was no physical match for the SEAL captain. The other men in the room finally separated us, and I was helped out of the room with a bloody face and almost certainly a couple broken ribs. When Governor Barnes and I ran into Deacon and Royce in the hallway, the Rangers wanted to go after the captain, but the governor talked them down. There was enough of a division in the forces already. He reasoned with them to let it go, and I backed him up. I told them to go pack up all their gear and bring it back to the governor’s office. I had an assignment for them.

  An hour later, after a quick doctor visit—I was right about the ribs by the way—I was stretched out in Governor Barnes’s office with a bag of ice pressed against my face and another ice bag wrapped around my chest.

  The stoic governor I was accustomed to was not in this room. This handwringing, deep sighing, head shaking man was the polar opposite of that guy. “I can’t keep him from going, Danny, no matter how little sense it makes to any of us.”

  “You are the governor, sir.”

  “Yeah, but what does that really mean? No one’s listening to me. And with General Niles encouraging him …”

  “I know.” I was officially the same rank as Captain Baker, but also felt inferior.