A New World: Conspiracy (40 page)

As they drag the last person out of the
hole, Greg hears a commotion from the other side of the building -
shouting coming from the parking lot. He hustles the person down
the path and drops the rope to Kyle. Time has run out. They’ve been
discovered. Greg can only hope that the locked main entrance door
and the bodies on the other side will suggest that they escaped in
that direction, just as long as they don’t come around the back.
Car doors slam and engines start. Soon, the sound of vehicles fades
as they drive down the road leading to the establishment.

Kyle emerges and they haul up the rope. Greg
wants to keep the route a secret in case they decide to visit
again. He has to walk away now, but people like this don’t deserve
to live. There’s no place on this earth for the likes of them. The
nine of them descend the switchbacks and enter the deep valley. The
sun has passed through its zenith and lowered into afternoon.

They travel slowly, due to the weakened
state of the ones rescued. They also don’t want their movement to
draw any undue attention. Water has provided the four with a little
refreshment and their staggering walk steadies some but they aren’t
up for wind sprints as yet. Greg knows they need to make cautious
haste out of the area. He hasn’t heard any fat lady singing, and
she won’t until they see this city far in their rearview.

It’s a trial getting everyone up the steep
ravine that leads to the Stryker. The team has to help the others
over every boulder and push them up the steep inclines. It’s
apparent the ex-prisoners are near the end of their strength. The
knowledge that they’ve been freed gives them the power to push on
even though they feel like lying down and resting under the
peaceful sun.

Panting and sweating, they crest the top.
The team pauses with their hands on their knees and the others
collapse in the dirt, not caring if they die where they fall. At
least they will die free.

Greg gets the team in motion again and
cajoles the others with the promise that safety lays just a few
more steps away. The powder kicked up from their boots seems drier
and dustier than before. They are all exhausted - the
post-adrenaline let down. The Stryker is parked in the shadow of a
sheltering bluff, almost hidden. They scramble aboard and cram into
every available space. The boy they rescued the night before is
awake and smiles at the soldiers entering. Diane gives a croaking
cry and throws her arms around one of the four they brought. The
ex-prisoners are given water and fall asleep almost
immediately.

Greg turns to Kyle. “Do your magic. Get us
out of here. There are numerous vehicles out and about looking for
us. Make sure we stay out of sight and keep us heading south.”

Kyle takes over the commander’s position and
guides the driver through a myriad of paths. The going is
maddeningly slow due to the need to keep their dust trail down.
Greg turns to the ones they rescued. Diane is holding a young man
in her lap as he sleeps. This is obviously her and Kyle’s brother
judging from the tears rolling down her cheeks. Even as they sleep,
the others are being ministered to by the soldiers. The freed
prisoners are all gaunt with malnourishment and look battered and
bruised. However, it seems likely that they’ll survive their
ordeal.

Greg is thinking about transportation for
them all when he hears Kyle call, “Vehicle ahead, sir. We’ve been
spotted.”

Greg quickly exchanges places and is
informed that they are proceeding south down the Interstate. Kyle
has brought them south of Colorado Springs using his knowledge of
the back trails. Greg orders a halt. Not wanting to silhouette
himself on top of the Stryker and present a target, he looks
through the vehicle’s optics and zooms in.

Ahead, in the other lanes, a dark-colored
pickup is parked off to the side of the road. It could be that the
other group has scouts parking along major routes to report their
position if found. Two people stand on the other side of the truck
looking on with binoculars. Whoever they are, it’s evident that the
team has been spotted and their position more than likely
reported.

“We need to move through this and quick.
Driver, floor it,” Greg says. “If they make a move, blink, or
otherwise breathe wrongly, I’m lighting ‘em up.”

The only thing keeping him from sending the
truck and its riders to the afterlife is the radio call from Jack.
At some point, they were to meet a group coming up from the south.
The call was terse and he didn’t get a lot of information as Jack
was a little busy at the time.

The Stryker launches forward, jostling those
within. Some of the ex-captive’s wake and their eyes startle open.
They begin flailing in a panic before remembering where they are.
The men next to the truck parked ahead don’t move. The Stryker
closes the distance. The two don’t respond in a hostile manner – of
course, who would with an armored Stryker bearing down on them –
but they don’t leave the cover of their enclosed truck either. As
they draw closer, Greg sees that it’s an enclosed four-by-four - a
Suburban or Tahoe. Both men have long beards and one holds a
shotgun at his side.

Greg orders the driver to slow and change
lanes. As they pass adjacent, Greg pokes his head out of the
hatch.

“Are you the unit Captain Walker told us
about?” the larger of the two men shouts.

Greg shouts for a halt and pitches forward
as the heavy vehicle slows and stops.

“I’m Jax and this ugly brute is Steven.”

To Greg, the both of them look like they
should be riding Harley’s rather than an SUV.

“I was under the impression you were going
to radio when you were close. I was pretty close to unleashing some
heavy steel your way,” Greg says.

The post-adrenaline drain and knowing he had
to leave one person in the hands of those fanatics has left Greg
with little patience. Plus, he is just coming down from his fear of
having been discovered.

“We didn’t think we’d run into you this far
out. And I’m glad you held your trigger finger light. I don’t think
we’d have enjoyed that much,” Jax says with a grin.

The large man with shaggy brown hair and a
bushy beard then looks north and points. “Is that your
handiwork?’

Greg whirls around in the cupola. To the
north, several thin streamers of dark smoke rise into the air with
the tops bending to the east as they catch the wind.

“No…no it’s not,” Greg replies, shading his
face to get a clearer picture.

* * * * * *

Gav listens to the supervisor as she watches
the central screen stabilize.

“We were doing a recon of the surrounding
area, checking on the camp south of us…camp C-US-9. The one that is
holding up in those caves.”

Gav gives an impatient nod and the
supervisor continues, “Ahem…yes, as I was saying, we were doing a
routine surveillance run and we found this.”

With the punch of a button, the screen
stabilizes and she sees in magnified image of a Stryker sitting
near an open mine on top of a ridgeline.

“Okay, so why am I looking at a Stryker
sitting in the middle of nowhere?” she asks.

“That’s about seventy miles southwest of
us,” he says, noting a slight raise of her eyebrow. ”But this is
where it gets interesting.”

Gav nearly sighs out loud but restricts it
to an inward sigh. It’s the same wherever she has gone. The folks
want to guide you through their process to show their cleverness.
Sometimes that’s necessary to sway others toward a decision, to
show that it’s the logical one to take, but here it feels like the
supervisor wants her to be impressed and throw him a bone.

Her mood has definitely taken on a black
side since the recent failures. She can’t change them, nor can she
alter her situation through sheer force of will. It is what it is.
There isn’t anything she can do to alter her present position. She
understands that, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. She
wishes her staff would understand that she doesn’t need to be taken
by the and guided. The sheer fact that they are here shows their
expertise and they should just cut to the chase without taking her
for a ride. Yeah, her temper has definitely been short lately. And
those old men sitting in luxury in the back rooms…she doesn’t even
want to get started thinking about that or she’ll scream. She takes
a deep breath and pays attention to what the man beside her is
saying. This is where things will transpire that will change the
way things are…not the delusional wishes of old men.

“Nahmer,” the man says to get her attention
back.

“Yes, yes…go ahead,” she replies.

“As I was saying, I did a backward run of
the captured video from our satellites. This Stryker and the team
with it departed McConnell AFB when Captain Walker was there. That
was several days ago. I believe it to be a team from the A
camp.”

“Are they onto us?” she asks, worried about
a team this close to their command center.

It’s not that a single Stryker is a threat,
but if they know about their location, well, that’s a worry. The
stalemate between the two groups is still in existence, and the
others are bound to find out about their location having captured
her shooter, but any one of them this close is an additional
anxiety.

“No. they departed before anything happened
and we haven’t picked up any communications. We still have the
satellites blocked. They can’t know the situation,” the supervisor
says.

“What are they doing then?” Gav asks.

“I believe it to be a ground search for
survivors. They’re parked very near the other camp. We’ve been
monitoring all of the C-camp’s activities and it could be that the
A-camp team knows of the captives being taken. We know, looking
through the video, that they rescued one of those that were
out.”

Gav knows the activities of this camp well.
They emerge to take hostages and tie one of them up for the
infected. The act is offensive to her, but she has elected to do
nothing as of yet. She knows they’ve raided an armory at Fort
Carson and carry some firepower. She would lose a few of her troops
should she attack the cave structure, and luring them out would
take considerable resources. They are on her target list
though.

As she looks at the live feed, she notes
vehicles departing the cave’s parking lot. At first there is a
scant few, but then more join them. A short while later, she
watches as a small team of nine leave the bushes adjacent to the
mine and walks to the Stryker, which departs shortly
thereafter.

With her mind working rapidly, she watches
the slow progress of the Stryker as it meanders around the urban
sprawl on a southerly course. The control room crew has identified
the other vehicles that left the cave structure and have them
targeted. Her thoughts center.

“You say they are seventy miles away?”

“Yes, Nahmer,” the supervisor answers.

“Thank you. Nicely done,” she says, her
accent betraying her origins and she departs the control room.

Crossing the concrete floor of the equipment
bay, she walks briskly toward the quarters housing the soldiers.
She sees an opportunity to take care of the one group and a chance
to whittle down some of Walker’s forces at the same time. If she
captures some of them, she may gain some useful information. It’s a
risk, but nothing else has worked so far and she’s tired of
spinning her wheels. She knows it’s only a matter of time before
the A-camp reacts. Sending her men out is risky, but she doubts her
base will be hit in the interim.

Satellite footage places the AC-130 back in
the Northwest. If they see the Spooky heading their way, she’ll
have plenty of time to recall her men. There’s only the C-130 that
met with the
Santa Fe
and is now transiting the southwest.
The aircraft is only carrying a small team with one Stryker. They
aren’t a threat to her facility or to what she is planning. They’re
secure in the bunker and there isn’t any way that Walker’s group
can hit them directly.

Her mind wanders to what she would do to
attack this facility. Everything is located underground and
accessible only via the bunker – she made sure of that. The only
exposure they have is the solar farm. They can do without that;
they have generators and can rely on them for a significant period
of time. If they’re attacked, they’ll just hunker down and wait
them out. The other camp doesn’t have enough troops to hold any
particular area for long, and the AC-130 can’t stay in the air all
of the time. No, they are secure here. However, doing nothing gives
the camp basically a free card to play as they will. She needs to
keep them off balance and reactive. If she can do that for a period
of time, the aircraft fuel will eventually fail, stranding the
AC-130, and the scales will shift in her favor.

Doing nothing will give Walker room to do as
he will and that worries her more than anything else – what he will
do with that kind of freedom. She needs to act, and the lone squad
far away from base offers an opportunity. The group from the caves
has also emerged in force from the protection of their caves. She
can take care of both at once – two birds with one stone.

If in the process, she manages to capture
some of Walker’s squad, she can gain additional information, but
she won’t do it at the expense of losing her irreplaceable
soldiers. Human intelligence offers more than any technical
information, but she won’t risk her soldiers going solely for the
capture. There’s no doubt she’ll lose some soldiers taking on the
small team but, if she goes in solely for the capture, she’ll lose
more. The opposing squad has a Stryker, but she has plenty of those
in addition to faster moving Humvees. She’ll herd the opposing
force into a kill zone. With only a single squad and Stryker, a
company of her men should be adequate to take them out. Lacking any
communications with their base, they’ll be sitting ducks.