Blood & Tacos #1 (7 page)

They all knew the truth. Only LaRoy, as always, clung to the bright side. "Maybe they're PT-76′s on a scouting run. We have to get back, tell General Pearce that the Russians are coming."

"They're not 76′s," McCreary said. The dread in his voice was thicker than Texas tea. "They're not scouts. Those are T-80′s. Seven T-80 main battle tanks. The Russian's aren't coming." He ran his hands through his thick black hair. "
They're already here."

McCreary looked at Whitefeather. The big Comanche had closed his eyes, smelling the breeze coming in from town. What secrets did the air hold? It was best not to ask Whitefeather when he went to… that other place.

"Hawker," McCreary said. "You speak some Russian. What does that sign say?"

"
Welcome … to Wrangler Plains … Texas,"
Hawker recited. "
Population… 1,845."
McCreary felt a stab of annoyance. He didn't need some grunt with a Russian grandmother to tell him the population of his hometown. It was 1845, same as the date Texas joined the Late Great United States.

McCreary swung his binoculars back to the tanks, parked close to the church where he'd married Sunny Summerville. There, a mere feet from the menacing T-80′s, were the front steps where he'd worn his dress blues and held Sunny's hand next to Pastor Joe.

Hawker continued: "The rest of it says:
Soon to be renamed
…
Fertile Worker… Fertile Worker … something… Fields! Fertile Worker Fields!
…"

McCreary squeezed the binoculars when he saw the distant form of Pastor Joe. The reverend sprinted down the steps and ran toward the tanks, waving his hands. The hatch on one of the turrets popped open. A gray-suited Russian tanker appeared. The Russian lifted his arm. It held a pistol.

"…renamed… as soon as our comrades … free themselves…"

McCreary watched Pastor Joe, unafraid, stop shy of the lead tank. He held something up in his hands. McCreary couldn't make it out, but he knew he held a Bible. The same one that he and Sunny had laid their hands on to become man and wife. But as blessed as it was, no Bible could stop a bullet.

The Russian tanker fired his pistol. Whitefeather whispered something sacred and sad in his own language.

"…free themselves… in their minds and hearts … from capitalist oppression!"

As if on cue, the tanks fired over Pastor Joe's crumpled body. Licks of orange erupted from their barrels. The church exploded silently, slats of pure white wood spinning in godless flame.

Three seconds later, the sound arrived at Lonestar Tactical Unit 1 and shook
them to their very souls.

McCreary slept the fitful sleep of a fighting man. He dreamed, as he always did, about the week before the attack. He'd known something was afoot. Troop movements in East Germany. Chinese maneuvers in the Formosa Strait. Soviet maneuvers near Turkey, practice amphibious landings in Egypt, just miles from the Israeli coast.

He hadn't talked to Sunny in three weeks. Command had canceled all leave, and McCreary hadn't been out of Silo J-47 long enough to make a single phone call. Not that he'd have been able to, anyway, with everything locked down. Hours in the terminal he shared with Lt. Jansen. As Jansen blabbed once more about the whole thing being a Communist plea for attention, the Squawker had jolted them out of their routine.

"Juliet! Juliet-Four-Seven! Priority Message Charlie!"

He and Jansen had sprung into action, confirming the missile codes. They'd just inserted the keys when their station, buried two hundred feet under the frozen North Dakota plains, began to rock and shimmy. The lights flickered. Surely they had seconds to live. All thoughts of conscience and doubt were swept away as he and Jansen turned their keys.

On their command, in silos buried all around them, five Minuteman III's breathed dragon-fire and arced into the sky, bound for glory.

"They're away!" Jansen yelled. "That's what you get for stabbing us in the back!" He turned to McCreary, "It's been an honor serving with you, Captain."

Then, the lights went out and the bunker shook. A great roaring rip in the walls and ceiling. The smell of cold and earth. Everything around them collapsed. Somewhere up there, the world exploded and North Dakota—and America herself—was bathed in an unholy nuclear fire.

The Chinese—McCreary later learned—had initiated the plan's first phase: introducing a program into the Defense Department's computers that replicated itself, like a disease. Almost like a computerized…
virus.
And like a virus, it had spread over the newly installed Inter-Network that the technocrats had insisted would keep America safe. Instead, their newfangled computers had given the Communists their gateway. Linked and spreading the contagion, every weapon that carried a nuclear tip—from bombers to missiles—was rendered inoperable. Some Asian wiseacre had added the final indignity: Whenever a command was given to launch a plane, or a missile, the intercom played a tinny alien tune that only a handful of the crews recognized as the Chinese national anthem.

Then, the Chinese launched Phase 2: Sending their fifty Long March rockets high over the United States, to detonate two hundred miles up. The explosions fried every electronic circuit in the country. The Chinese hadn't tried to flatten the cities and the missile silos.

That part of the plan had been the Russians' job.

For reasons that he never figured out, only McCreary's silo—representing just five missiles out of thousands—had managed to go aloft that day. Whether they reached their targets, McCreary doubted he would ever know.

But the dreams only touched on that part of the story. Whenever he slept, his dreams always eventually led to Sunny—her long honey-colored hair, her narrow waist, her virtuous smile. Her delicate hands that could squeeze a trigger and pick off a jackrabbit at a hundred yards.

It was Sunny, the cheerleader who'd waited for him after football games. Sunny, who wore that frilly skirt, who loved him enough to let his hands roam, but loved God and her virtues enough to make him wait. Sunny, who wore his ring as he went into Air Force Pararescue. Sunny, who talked him through it on the phone after he told her he'd washed out. Sunny, who told him to come home and marry her. Sunny, who didn't get mad after their honeymoon to Corpus Christi, when the Air Force decided that they still owned him and stuck him in the ground in North Dakota.

And of course, it had been Sunny who compelled him to claw his way out of a crooked elevator shaft and to survive everything afterward.

General Pearce studied the reports on the card table he'd been using as a desk since Omaha. Sweltering in the General's tent, McCreary stood at attention, while his men—LaRoy, Whitefeather, and Hawker—stood behind him.

"This report you filed," Pearce said. "It doesn't make sense. The First Cav and the rest of III Corps stopped the Russians and Mexicans at San Antonio."

"How do we know for sure, General?" LaRoy blurted out. "We've had spotty radio traffic from that sector since last week!"

McCreary winced. LaRoy had never learned when to shut it.

"I don't remember asking you a thing, Private!" the general barked. He shot to his feet and glared at McCreary. "Once again: An Air Force flyboy and his ragtag squad of enlistees are trying to tell me how to link up with III Corps."

"With all due respect, General," McCreary began. "This ragtag squad of enlistees and I have been the eyes and ears of this brigade since Omaha. We're telling you what we saw. An entire Russian tank battalion has taken over my town. I need to go back there."

"No," the general said. "We can't risk it."

"Can't risk it? We need intel!"

The general waved his hand over the card table. "We have intel! You've done your job. No need to put your squad—and the rest of us—at risk. So far, the Russians don't know our exact location. We've tied up their air assets over New Mexico, which is why they haven't spotted us."

"You don't know that!"

"McCreary, if these Commies catch you, they'll know we're moving south with brigade strength. At the very least, we wait for the 101
^st
. Their radios are working. They're in Mississippi and heading this way."

"General, if I may be so bold—" McCreary began.

"No! That's my decision," Pearce said. "I'm sorry about the Russians in your town, Captain. I am." He added, with a soft tone that did nothing to assuage McCreary's worst fears: "They may be godless cowards, but I'm sure your wife is alive. You'll see her soon. Just be patient."

"General, please—"

"Dismissed!" The four men stood abruptly at attention, and in unison, turned
and banged through the door into the hot Texas sun.

The four of them—McCreary, Whitefeather, Hawker, and LaRoy—entered their tent
and dropped their gear on their bunks. McCreary fumed. He had made certain assumptions
on returning from their scouting run: Certainly after reading their report,
Pearce would authorize another trip south.

But he hadn't.

Usually McCreary respected the old man's caution. It had held them at the Missouri River, just before a squad of Russian-made Mexican Hind helicopters had swooped in and wiped out the 173
^rd
, waiting to rendezvous on the other side. The general's instincts had kept five thousand men from leaving what remained of Lincoln, Kansas—just avoiding the swarm of radioactive twisters south of Wichita Falls.

But now, the general was being
too
cautious. McCreary and his men were the whiskers of a lion that was meant to pounce. Not cower in a scrub forest west of Waco.

Behind McCreary, Hawker disassembled his rifle. "I'm sure she's all right," he said.

"You know it, Cap" LaRoy chimed in. "That Sunny of yours sounds tough as nails. Don't you worry about all the things them Russians do to womenfolk whenever they take ov—"

"That's enough, Private!" Whitefeather barked with uncharacteristic ferocity. The dreamcatcher above his head swayed from his voice.

But McCreary heard none of this. His complete focus was on his bunk. Lying on his bunk was a sheet of paper. A string of words formed a row, neatly typewritten.

In Russian.

"Hawker," McCreary said in a voice he barely heard in his own ears. "I need
you to read something for me."