Authors: Thomas Koloniar
Confirmed nebraska / will
comply . . .
They listened to the Hawaiian and the Australian
talking privately for another hour before the airwaves fell silent.
H
arold Shipman placed his hand on Ester’s shoulder, gently shaking her awake at 4:40
A.M.
“Ester?” he said quietly.
“What?” she said, coming awake quickly. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing bad,” he said. “Are you awake?”
“Well goddamn, Harold, I’d better be. I’m talking, aren’t I?”
Shipman chuckled. “May I turn on the lamp?”
“Of course,” she said, pushing herself up against the headboard. “What is it?”
Shipman turned on the lamp and sat in the chair beside her bed. “You won’t believe it,” he said. “I’m not even sure I do, but our wireless operator has heard from a group on the mainland who has not only cracked his code, but also claims to have been to the impact crater. They say that it’s a mile deep, fifty wide, and that there is heavy seismic activity in the area.”
“What’s so hard to believe about that?” she said, dry-wiping her face with her hand.
“For one thing, it’s difficult for me to believe that anyone civilized is still functioning anywhere near the impact area.”
“Well, that was Marty Chittenden’s plan,” she said. “For someone to survive and carry on.”
“And that’s the irony of it, Ester. These folks claim that Martin Chittenden sends his regards and that he hopes to see you soon. They’re asking to be evacuated off the West Coast.”
“My God!”
“That’s what I said.”
Ester threw back the blanket, revealing her blue flannel pajamas. “When did we get this message?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“Why I am only now hearing about it?”
“Apparently, no one was quite sure whether or not to wake you,” Shipman said. “Had I not gone down to the lobby for a stroll, they would have waited until morning.”
She took her cane from against the nightstand and crossed to the walk-in closet, switching on the light. “Can we get them back on the air?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They signed off asking that we contact them at the same time tomorrow night.”
“They did, huh?”
She reemerged from the closet a few minutes later dressed for the day in black slacks and a salmon colored button-up sweater. “Well, let’s drive up the mountain and see if we can’t get them to answer. I don’t believe for a goddamn minute they won’t be listening.”
F
orty-five-year-old Captain William J. Bisping stood drinking a cup of coffee on the flight deck of the USS
Boxer
LHD 4, a Wasp Class amphibious assault ship capable of accommodating 1,200 crew members and 2,100 battle-ready Marines. In addition, the
Boxer
was capable of carrying up to forty-two helicopters and a number of amphibious landing craft. For the purposes of this cruise, however, it was carrying fewer than eight hundred crewmen, a detachment of only four hundred Marines, two F-35B Lightning VSTOL fighter jets, four attack helicopters, and five EFV, or expeditionary fighting vehicle, amphibious landing craft.
Steaming just off of
Boxer
’s starboard bow at one thousand yards was her escort vessel, the HMCS
Algonquin
DDG 283, an Iroquois Class Canadian destroyer, one of only a few foreign vessels the Hawaiian navy had permitted to join them at Pearl Harbor.
With Bisping’s month-long mission to the Americas now at an end, both ships were en route back to Pearl Harbor. The naval port of San Diego, more than twelve hours in their wake, the
Boxer
hangar deck was loaded stem to stern with thousands of boxes of fluorescent bulbs of all sizes, shapes, and varieties. She was also laden with tons of medical and mechanical supplies, critical to the longevity of the Hawaiian population.
Ashore, the sailors and Marines had encountered a few violent cannibal groups, but the Marines were heavily armed, and the ever-watchful attack helicopters on station in the air above prevented any surprise attacks as the sailors moved methodically from store to store up and down the coast, collecting every lightbulb they could lay their hands on and loading them onto trucks for transfer to the ship. They had taken no casualties, though it was necessary to kill a few dozen starving male civilians intent on eating them, most of whom had been too sickly and malnourished to be effective in pitched battle.
Bisping had remained aboard the
Boxer
, which did not actually go into port until it was time to load the cargo collected on the pier. The reports and digital photographs the division commanders brought back, however, gave Bisping a horrific impression of what had taken place in Southern California during the early months after the impact. Freeze-dried, mummified corpses littered the streets by the thousands, and nearly everything made of wood or that was otherwise flammable had been burned to ash.
Boxer
communications officer, Lieutenant jg Brooks, stepped out of the conning tower and walked across the flight deck to where the captain stood watching the sea. “Message from Pearl, Captain.”
“Thank you, Mr. Brooks,” Bisping said, reading the printout. “Have Mr. O’Leary meet me in my cabin.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
First Officer Commander Duncan O’Leary rapped at the captain’s door five minutes later.
“Enter.”
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
“Have a look at this, Duncan.”
O’Leary read the printout and gave it back. “Extract who, sir?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” the captain said. “Get up to the con and inform
Algonquin
of the change in orders, then bring us about a hundred and eighty degrees. I’ll make an announcement to the crew shortly.”
“They won’t be happy, sir. This means we’re going to miss Christmas.”
“We’re not going to miss Christmas, Duncan. We’re going to be celebrating the birth of our Lord right here aboard
Boxer
.”
“Yes, sir,” O’Leary said with a smile. “I’ll be sure to point that out to them.”
“Please do.”
When O’Leary was gone, Bisping sat down on his bunk and took a Bible from beneath his pillow. It contained the only photos he had of his wife and three children, the only photos he would ever have. He touched his wife’s face and sat looking at her.
The temptation to jump ship and head off across the country on his own to look for them had been difficult enough to suppress the first time. Now, with the change of orders, he would be forced to endure the temptation for another indefinite period. He would, of course, never actually abandon his ship or his crew, but it was an agonizing temptation nonetheless. He told himself that Atlanta was too far to travel anyhow; he told himself that his family was long dead; and most important, he told himself it was better not to know exactly what had happened to them.
Chief Petty Officer Gordon, the senior aircraft mechanic, reported as instructed, informing Bisping that the particulate matter in the air was thin enough that it didn’t seem to have affected the turbines of the helicopters.
“Good,” Bisping said. “The precipitation must have brought a lot of it down. We’re heading back to Cali, Chief. So make sure that all of our aircraft can be ready on a moment’s notice.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Bisping announced the change of orders to his crew over the MC then laid down for a short nap. He had not been napping more than twenty minutes when the ship’s claxons began to sound.
“Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge.”
Bisping took the phone from the wall, getting O’Leary immediately. “What is it?”
“A pair of Lanzhou Class destroyers, Captain, steaming right at us out of the north at twenty-five knots, distance thirty-two hundred meters beyond visual range. There wasn’t anything on the scope until just now, sir. They’re coming out of a squall.”
“Turn into them!” Bisping ordered. “Scramble the F-35s and advise
Algonquin
that they are to take whatever action necessary to sink both vessels. I’m on my way up.”
Bisping couldn’t imagine what a pair of Chinese destroyers was doing in American waters, but twenty-five knots was very near their top speed, and both vessels carried the Hai Ying antiship missile, lethal within a range of well over a hundred miles.
Boxer
and
Algonquin
would be engaging them at less than twenty.
By the time Bisping reached the bridge, the
Algonquin
had already been struck once and there was a fire on his own ship’s flight deck, where a firefighting team was already in action.
“What the hell happened?”
“ The fuckers launched a full spread the second you hung up the phone, sir.”
O’Leary was watching the northern horizon through a pair of large binoculars. “Our phalanxes knocked two missiles down but we each took a hit.
Algonquin
took one to her bow cannon and we lost a chopper on the deck.” A phalanx was a radar-equipped weapon system based on the M-61 Vulcan Gatling gun, capable of firing its 20mm cannon at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute, roughly seventy-five rounds per second. They were the ship’s last line of defense, and the
Boxer
had four of them, two mounted on the stern, one to starboard, and one to port. The
Algonquin
carried one on the foredeck.
“How many missiles did
Algonquin
get off?”
“Two, sir. I don’t see any smoke on the horizon yet but there are no more missiles inbound at this time.”
The flight officer was requesting permission to launch both of the F-35 Lightning fighters, and permission was given. As vertical/short takeoff and landing aircraft, the F-35s could take off regardless of the burning helicopter on deck.
“I don’t want any more goddamn missiles hitting my ship. Is that clear, Mr. Ryder?”
“Aye, sir!” answered the weapons officer, knowing he would be getting his ass chewed later on.
“Mr. Brooks, what’s happening aboard
Algonquin
? Did their missiles hit or not?”
Brooks was on the phone to their escort within seconds.
“
Algonquin
believes they scored a hit on each vessel, sir, and they’re about to launch another pair. There was a problem with their weapon system, but they’ve got it back up.”
A second pair of SM-2 antiship missiles were fired from the
Algonquin’
s deck and went streaking toward the horizon just fifty feet off the surface.
“Four more Chinese missiles inbound!” Ryder announced.
This time four Sea Sparrow antiaircraft missiles were launched from the
Boxer
to intercept them. Seconds later Bisping saw three explosions just off the water some 1,600 meters out.
“One got through,” Ryder announced. “Port and starboard phalanxes have a lock!”
Each phalanx fired a single two-second burst and the missile was destroyed a thousand yards out.
By then both fighter jets were closing on the Chinese destroyers, reporting that both vessels were hit and smoking. It was unclear whether they were still capable of launching missiles, but the ships were still steaming south at better than twenty knots.
Bisping took the mike from the comm officer. “Ghost Rider, this is the captain. Your orders are to sink them. Is that clear?”
“That’s affirmative,
Boxer
. We are beginning our attack run now . . .”
Both F-35s carried a pair of joint-strike missiles designed for holing enemy ships at or near the waterline. One fighter broke to the east, the other west, as they dropped to a mere two hundred feet off the water, cutting sharply back toward the Chinese destroyers to attack them full abeam. At one mile, both launched their missiles, then broke hard to the right and climbed, hitting full afterburners and firing countermeasure flares in case the Chinese tried to shoot them down. But the Chinese antiaircraft systems had been knocked out as a result of previous missile strikes.
All four antiship missiles struck home, hitting the vessels at the waterline, and soon both ships began to list, quickly going dead in the water. The F-35s made a number of strafing runs with their 25mm cannons, then returned to the
Boxer
. One sailor aboard the
Algonquin
had been lost to the missile strike, and the
Boxer
had lost two helicopter pilots.
“Mr. Brooks!” Bisping said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Get a message off to Pearl. Message is to read:
‘
Attacked by two Chinese Lanzhou destroyers six miles out of San Diego. Sank same.’ ”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Let me know if they change our orders. I’m going down to the flight deck to see about our men.”
T
he women were gathered once again in the cafeteria, and Forrest stood before them with his usual smile. “Ladies,” he said happily. “How are we this evening?”
A quick glance told him that Lynette was not in attendance; she had been avoiding him like the plague since their last exchange.
“Fine,” many of them answered, having no idea why the hell they were being called together again so soon, and most of them dreading it.
“Do we have to eat scorpions this time?” Erin asked with a dry smile.
“Only you, E. The rest of us get caviar.”
There was some laughter and then everyone quieted down.
“As of last night, we have a brand new plan,” Forrest announced. “And you will all be happy to know that it does
not
involve any scorpions, mice, or any other kinds of creepy crawlies. What it does involve, though, is a great deal of risk. As you all know, Melissa has been working very hard to decipher the encrypted transmissions we have been picking up for a long time now. And I am happy and very proud to report that her diligence has finally paid off.”
This sent a tremor of anxiety through the group, everyone suddenly aware of what such a development could mean.
“As a result of this new knowledge,” he went on, “we are now in contact with the Hawaiian Islands, where they seem to be making a hell of a lot of progress toward building a future.”
A wave of enthusiasm swept over them, hesitant smiles on their faces.
“In another odd twist of fate,” he continued, “Marty happens to be a personal acquaintance of Hawaii’s new leader. And, as luck would have it, this leader of theirs seems to value Marty’s life enough that she has agreed to send a ship to rescue us.”
The women let out a collective cheer and there was general pandemonium.
“Hey! Ho!” he said, after a sharp whistle. “Allow me to finish before you get too carried away.”
The women settled quickly, smiles still plastered to their faces.
“They’re sending a ship,” he said, “not a convoy of trucks, which means it’s up to us to get ourselves to the California coast by the first of the year. This gives us just over two weeks. And we have no idea what kind of obstacles lie between here and there. The trucks we have will drive through some pretty deep snow, but there’s no telling how much snow has fallen in the mountain passes. It could be ten feet deep for all we know. We’ve got two months worth of MREs to take with us, but they won’t do us much good if we get snowbound and miss our window for extraction.
“So here’s the deal. The only personal items you may bring with you are what you can put in the pockets of your coats. Everything else stays, no exceptions. With all the food and fuel and ammo we’ll be hauling, there won’t be room for anything else. As it is, we are going to be sitting quite literally on top of one another in the vehicles.”
“When are we leaving?” Andie asked.
“The men are prepping and loading the vehicles as we speak.”
“Jesus, that fast?” said Maria two.
Everyone began talking at once.
“Shut up!” Joann shouted, throwing the room back into a startled silence.
Forrest chuckled, thanking her. “Okay. There’s no need to go scrambling around the complex like cats on fire. No one’s going to be left behind, so everybody stay calm, take your time and be careful. We’ve come too far for somebody to get hurt now. Make sure the children are bundled up in their winter clothes because we’re only taking one blanket per person. There won’t be room for many sleeping bags.”
The group broke up, and Melissa caught Forrest in the corridor. “What about my computer?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve always been a little bit superstitious,” he said with a smile. “Suppose we left it here as a sacrifice to the gods of war? It might help guarantee us a victory.”
“I love my computer.”
“I know you do, sweetheart, but you’re going to have your hands full helping with the children and helping me to look after Laddie. And I think maybe it’s served its purpose.”