Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga (63 page)

“I’m going to take back this base and try not to get shot.”

Cooper felt a smile spread across his face.
 
He returned the pistol.
 
“Stand down,” he said into his throat mic.
 
The laser’s winked out and Arol visibly relaxed.

“Where’s the base CO?
 
Is he alive?”

Arol holstered his weapon.
 
“Yeah, a bunch of the less-intelligent and more-gullible personnel on base sided with Molton and took control of the chokepoints.
 
The hotheads, kids, some raw recruits.
 
Basically the worst we got here.
 
The rest of us stood with General Williams.
 
He got wounded in the chaos when the North Koreans showed up and he’s been under lock and key in sick bay ever since.”

Cooper sighed.
 
“Let me guess, the guards are part of Molton’s crew, right?”

Arol grimaced.
 
“Yeah.
 
I didn’t think anything of it, until he announced that there were traitors in the base and he was assuming command.
 
He didn’t have a clue about the MPs, so he asked me to join him.”

“Why did you?”
 
Cooper already knew the answer.
 

“I wanted to get close to him and keep an eye on him.”
 
He shrugged.
 
“I hoped that maybe if he was locked up, his followers would just give up.”

“You trust any of the men you see here?” asked Cooper quietly.

“Most of them, yes.
 
But not Thompson and a few others like him.
 
They were just looking for an excuse to shoot someone, I think.
 
We’ve had our suspicions that a few of the men are actually in local gangs and are trying to smuggle weapons off-base.
 
I was running an op to bust the ring when the Koreans screwed everything up.”

Cooper nodded.
 
“Fine.
 
You point out the ones you trust, we’ll cut ‘em loose.
 
My men will secure the rest here.
 
You need to rally the troops and take back your base.
 
Get your CO out of confinement.
 
Can you do that?”

“You bet your ass I can.
 
There’s a lot more of us than there are of them,” he said nodding toward the sulking form of Thompson.
 
“My question is what are
you
gonna do?”

“That’s a comms room, right?” asked Cooper, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
 
“I’m going back in there and linking up with Coronado or NORAD or
someone
that knows what the hell is going on and can give me some intel.”

“On it,” said Sparky.
 
He shouldered his rifle and disappeared into the comms room.

“Also, I’ve got nurses, doctors, Secret Service agents, and President Denton’s body in there.
 
We’ll need to get all these people out and seen to; most of them haven’t slept in 24 hours and they’re half starved.
 
Got some walking wounded, too.”

Arol scratched his close-shaven head.
 
“You dragged all these people here?”

Cooper nodded.
 
“Straight from downtown.
 
The President was at All Saint’s Memorial, getting treated for the flu.”

The MP whistled, hands on his hips.
 
“Well, let me gather up a posse and we’ll see what’s what.”

“You’ll want to prepare for infections, Captain.
 
I’m afraid we brought the super-flu in with us.”
 
He leaned in and whispered, “I think one of the nurses has it…”

“Damn.
 
Well, there’s no since worrying about that now.
 
We’ve got work to do.”

Cooper turned to see Agent Sheffield emerge from the comms room and approach him, straitening a dusty, ratty tie.
 
“I need a moment.”

“All right.”
 
Cooper turned back and nodded to Arol to start selecting his men.
 

“My men and I—we have duties to perform,” said gent Sheffield in a pained voice.

“Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t the President dead?” Cooper asked, keeping an eye on Arol as he began to move down the line of prisoners, releasing a few.
 
They stood, rubbing wrists and stretching, but gave no indication they held a grudge against the SEALs.
 
For that at least, Cooper was thankful.

“President Denton named a successor.”

“The Speaker, right,” Cooper said, as he turned back to face the Secret Service agent in front of him.
 
“Orren Harris.
 
Isn’t he a Republican?”

“Yeah,” chuckled the agent-in-charge.
 
“That ought to play hell with the politics back in D.C.—but it’s not my problem.
 
My
problem,” he said, hooking thumbs under his belt as he put his hands on his hips.
 
“Is that I was in charge of the Presidential Detail.
 
Without counter-orders from the Director, my job is to protect the President,
whoever
that is, at all costs.
 
I need to get to President Harris.”

Cooper grinned.
 
The man was persistent, if nothing else.
 
“Well, where is the new President?
 
D.C.?”

The older man shook his head.
 
“No, Apache Dawn has been put into play.
 
That means COG is too.
 
They’ll split up the upper tier officials.
 
I’m pretty sure that Speaker—I mean, President—Harris is assigned to NORAD.”

Cooper nodded in agreement.
 
It made sense to have the backup President in one of the most secured locations on the planet.
 
“Any idea which way they’ll go?”
 
Cooper saw the confused look on the agent’s face.
 
“Which President will NORAD back?
 
Which way will the Joint Chiefs go?
 
You guys work in the White House—you have to know more than us grunts in the mud.”

Sheffield chuckled.
 
“You’d be surprised at the stuff we don’t know.
 
I’m not sure who’s in charge of NORAD, but I can tell you the Joint Chiefs don’t care for Barron.
 
They never liked him as a Vice President.
 
I can only guess they
despise
him now.”

“Well, regardless of what happens in D.C., we need to worry about up there,” he said pointing to the ceiling, “before you can go anywhere.”
 

Cooper turned back to Arol.
 
“Got a sit-rep topside?”

“Last I saw before Molton dragged me down here was that there was a North Korean force—we
think
—approaching from the northeast.
 
All our equipment has been damaged, so all we could really tell was that a fairly large group of something was coming.”
 
He shrugged, wincing in pain.
 
“We assumed it was the Koreans.”

Cooper keyed his throat mic: “Sparky, keep on it until you get something.
 
Let me know when you get a signal.”

“
Aye, aye
.”

Cooper pulled out his spare radio, a handheld unit.
 
He tossed it to Arol.
 
“Channel 6, if you need anything.
 
I’m counting on you to take back this base, flyboy.
 
We’re going up top to recon.
 
Is there any other way out of this bunker?
 
We may need to beat feet in a hurry if the Koreans show up in force.”

Arol nodded.
 
“There’s two emergency exits, at the north and south ends of the facility.
 
If we need to, I can get us out of here.
 
But going topside may be a death sentence.”

“Well, I hate being trapped.
 
All right,” he said to Sheffield.
 
“If the coast is clear, feel free to head wherever you want.”

“You’re not coming with us?”

“No.”
 
Cooper frowned.
 
“The North Koreans took out half my Team, including my CO.
 
Men I’ve spilled blood with for the past decade.
 
You Secret Service guys are trained to protect the President.
 
I get that.”
 
Cooper exhaled and looked down.
 
“There’s gonna be a reckoning, and until I get orders to the contrary, my mission now is to destroy the enemy.
 
It’s what they trained us for.”
 

Cooper turned away.
 
“Swede!” he called down the hall.

“Yo,” replied the big SEAL as he came around a corner.

“On me.
 
Let’s go do a look-see topside.”

I
T
TOOK
A
SURPRISINGLY
long amount of time for Cooper and Swede to make their way through the warren of corridors and hatches up to the surface.
 
There was some damage to the entrance to which they were directed by Arol, but the main hatch was still at least somewhat serviceable.
 
Cooper put his ear to the big metal door.
 
He could hear a humming sound, more of a vibration than an actual sound.

“
Something’s
going on out there.
 
Let’s see what we can see.
 
Ready?”

Swede nodded.
 
He adjusted his grip on the hatch handle.

“All right,” Cooper said, taking a knee and bringing his rifle up.
 
“Do it.”

Swede grunted with effort and after a moment of painful-sounding steel on steel, the door relented and a shaft of sunlight pierced the dust-clogged air.
 
The door also let in the overpowering sound of engines.
 
Lots of them.
 
Big ones.
 
Cooper held up his hand to stop the door from opening any farther.
 
He crept forward to get a look.

Through the rubble, he could see a sliver of blue sky.
 
Something gray flashed by, accompanied by the roar of those engines.
 
At first he thought it was a helicopter, but something about the shape of the flash he saw suggested a plane.
 
It was moving too slow for a plane, though.
 
As the noise receded, he heard some indistinct shouts and the rumble and unmistakable squeak of tank treads.

Swede let go of the door to take up a covering position.
 
The bulky metal door swung inward and squealed loudly, steel grinding on steel.
 
Cooper dropped to the deck in surprise.
 
If there were any North Korean soldiers within twenty yards, they had to have heard that awful noise.
 
He glared at Swede, who shrugged and pulled his own rifle forward.

Cooper heard a shout, followed by another.
 
“Shit,” he hissed.
 
“We’re made.
 
Get ready to fall back.”

A shadow crossed over the gap in the rubble on the other side of the door and the blue sky disappeared.
 
“Sarge!
 
Over here!
 
I got a door!”

Cooper and Swede exchanged looks.
 
That voice sounded like it came from Kentucky, not Pyongyang.

“Hey!
 
You three—yeah
you,
knucklehead—get your asses over there and help Bonner.
 
Clear that debris away,” barked a voice that could
only
belong to a drill instructor from Parris Island.

Cooper held up a fist for Swede, then gripped his rifle and waited.
 
Rocks shifted and dust trickled into the open hatch as many sets of hands attacked the pile of rubble from the other side.
 
The sliver of blue sky began to grow as rocks and bits of the ruined base were removed.
 
He could hear bits of radio chatter and chirps.
 
None of it was in Korean.

When the last big rock moved to the sounds of three sets of curses, sunlight flooded the little chamber Cooper and Swede occupied.
 
He squinted and tried to make out the silhouette that filled the sky.
 

“That’s far enough!” he called out.

“Holy shit!
 
Friendly!
 
Friendly!
 
Don’t shoot!” said the kid from Kentucky, falling backwards into the rock heap in surprise.

“Identify yourself!” barked the drill instructor’s voice.
 
Cooper heard weapons brought up and chambered.
 
They were
definitely
outgunned.

“You first!” he hollered back.
 
Someone chuckled nervously.

“Gunnery Sergeant Benjamin Rickston, United States Marine Corps.
 
And you are?”

Cooper held a tight grip on his rifle.
 
His mind raced—what were the chances that these Marines would want him and his refugees dead, like Colonel Molton?
 
Had President Barron gotten to them as well?
 
An idea occurred to him.