The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (6 page)

“At least they’re alive,” Adam said. “David’s dead.”

“As is everyone else who didn’t bend to Lukas or get the hell out of there.”

The door opened at the top of the stairs, causing Adam to tense and Gene to raise his gun. However, as a sandy blonde-haired man descended the steps, Gene let out a sigh of relief and lowered his weapon.

“Perimeter is quiet,” the man said with a heavy French accent. “I have Lev’s motion sensors deployed and a few of your Stonewalls activated at three points. Impressive tech, I must say.”

“Did you find another car?” Gene asked.

“Oui,” the man replied. “An old truck—rusty and blue, just like your country tunes.”

“I assume this is the Frenchman you were talking about?”

“Forgive me, monsieur,” the man said as he bowed his head slightly. “I am Marc L’ecuyer. It is pronounced le-qwee-yay. Take care you remember that.”

“And why is that?” Adam asked.

“Because the last time a world war broke out, it was America and her allies, led by men named Roosevelt and Churchill, who saved France. This time, it will be General Gene Smith, the Sons of Liberty, and men such as Marc L’ecuyer who raise your country from the ashes. Perhaps the historians will remember the famous Adam Reinhart as well.”

“World war?” Adam muttered.

“You don’t think America could collapse without the whole world feeling that fall, do you?” Gene said, shaking his head. “We don’t know much of anything about what’s going on elsewhere, but make no mistake, this is a war that will more than touch every continent.”

“And you’re a general now?” Adam asked as he turned back to Gene. “General of the Sons of Liberty?”

“Hell,” Gene began, brushing his fingers through his gray hair. “Seems if you’re the one organizing a rebellion, everyone wants your face plastered on the damn thing. As you can tell, Marc here is about as French as a baguette. I met him, Lev, and a handful of other foreign warriors years ago at a NATO conference. I’ll have you know we had quite a few non-nationals fighting for DC.”

“Where are the others?”

“Dead, dying, or hunkering down somewhere outside of DC,” Gene replied.

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispered, pausing as he forced the lump back down his throat.

“Do not fret yet, monsieur,” Marc said, a small smile touching his lips. “The fight is not over yet. You may have saved our pretty little French butts ninety years ago, but we knew how to fight from the shadows of Paris when the Germans took over. I have no doubts in our abilities to conduct ourselves in a similar fashion until more allies arrive.”

“Yeah, that may be true,” Gene cut in, “but we sure kicked this war off with one hell of a mess.”

“Forgive me, but I’m trying to wrap my head around all this without much luck,” Adam said. “You’re talking about a preplanned assault, French Legionnaires, Israeli Special Forces, and your Sons of Liberty. I mean, you’re telling me you gathered an army on American soil and no one knew about it? Last night I arrived in DC thinking Lukas was about to step down and the United States was finally going to start the rebuilding process. Now—if I’m understanding everything correctly—DC is in ruins, Lukas Chambers is now some emperor, and the USA doesn’t exist anymore.”

“You’re sitting here, aren’t you?” Marc asked. “And Gene’s here too. Are you not still Americans?”

“I don’t know,” Adam began. “But—”

“And I may be French and Lev over there may be Israeli, but we too want the same thing.”

“Which is what?”

“To live in a world where powerful men can’t simply take what they want because no one ever dared to slap their hand.”

“But what happened, Gene?” Adam asked, turning to Gene. “I mean, how did you manage to organize such a resistance without anyone knowing?”

“I wouldn’t quite say I managed much more than a loss of a hell of a lot of good men,” Gene grumbled. “After we parted ways in Montana, I spent my time gathering every weapon and every soldier I could muster without letting too many in on our secret. We managed to pretty much stay incognito till the end. I had friends overseas like these guys willing to drop what they were doing and come to our aide, as we had done for them so many times before. On top of that, I had a multitude of retired and royally pissed off vets ready to hang Lukas and every other crooked politician in DC by their own entrails. I even had the state militias that the Feds had been tryin’ to suppress for years ride with me. By the time Hewitt up and quit on us, I figured the time had come for America’s last guardians to deploy.”

“How did you know Lukas was going to take over Washington?”

“It’s what I would have done had I been a treasonous maggot who played the world for a fool,” Gene replied dryly. “When I heard about his plan to step down during the State of the Union address, I knew that was when we needed to be there. And no offense, but you’re one dumb son of a bitch, thinking he’d actually go through with that. But I spread the word, managed to stay hidden as we quietly marched toward DC, and signaled our men to move in once Lukas started blabbering.”

“What happened?” Adam asked.

“We had three main advances,” Gene replied. “The plan had been to begin by moving in with small strike teams. Someone was jamming all communications in DC and we managed to locate the source of the jammer at Reagan International. Marc and Lev infiltrated the airport with their team of commandos to disable the Graystone device and open up comms as we signaled the attack by activating the old tornado sirens. Alpha team had fifty men infiltrate the Capitol Building to secure Lukas while Bond and his men moved in to extract as many politicians as possible—mainly you. As that was going on, we were supposed to set up an aerial blockade with nearly sixty fighters and half as many fast moving helos. They were to keep out any drones that the Patriarchs launched while our amphibious tanks moved off the Potomac and set up a base of operations on the National Mall. Lev helped us outfit the tanks and infantry with new anti-drone Pulsar weapons, courtesy of our allies over in Israel.”

“They’re designed to disable airborne drones via a concentrated electromagnetic shock,” Lev said, looking up from his tablet. “Though I’m more than sure they’d disable ground troops as well. It’s a lot like wielding lightning.”

“I think I saw something similar on William’s gun,” Adam said.

“The smaller the shotty packs disrupt the targeting systems,” Lev replied. “But the bigger guns can bring down an entire fleet of drones with one well-placed shot.”

“We’ve got one on top of the stealth Humvee outside,” Gene replied. “The Humvee is not as fancy as the newer JLTVs, but it’s retrofitted to drive under the radar and upgraded to the max. If we’re smart, we’ll stay out of sight—never needing to use the Pulsar, save maybe to discourage a fight.”

“So you’re telling me you had this grand plan with enough equipment and technology to secure DC,” Adam said. “You’re still not telling me what happened?”

“I messed up,” Gene replied. “I thought we’d be battling small airborne drones, maybe some tanks and whatever soldiers the Patriarchs could muster. I didn’t think we’d be fighting hundreds of Yellow Jackets and a fleet of unmanned fighter jets with our Air Force out of commission.”

“Yellow Jackets?” Adam said. “I remember William shouting about a Yellow Jacket after this monstrous drone ripped into us.”

Gene nodded. “They call the big ones Yellow Jackets. It’s ‘cause of the reverberating sound the blades make and the sting the weapons unleash. They’re slow moving, but they’ve got mini-guns, rocket launchers, and an automatic targeting system that makes them perfect for hunting down men.”

“But William’s men managed to take one out,” Adam said.

“That was one of hundreds,” Gene said. “Maybe thousands. And William’s men were some of the few men equipped with portable Pulsars and incendiary rounds. But it wasn’t just Yellow Jackets we were fighting. Hell, they had dozens of old MIG fighter jets that had been retrofitted to fly remotely. Regardless, the main advance launched an hour before the speech near Widewater State Park and managed to stay hidden until they beached again near the Roosevelt Memorial. My hope was that the three advances would have attacked simultaneously, squeezing Lukas and whoever was there with him faster than they could react. We didn’t think they’d be the ones with a jump on us. In all my zeal, I broke the cardinal rule of warfare and underestimated my enemy.” Gene leaned forward, his angry eyes fixing on Adam’s. “It won’t happen again.”

“No one could have known what they had waiting for us,” Marc said. “Surprise and deception; it has always been the way of battle. It was not your fault any more than it is your fault that this whole war began in the first place.”

Gene paused, staring back at Lev as he quietly shook his head. “If only you knew the truth behind that statement. But someone’s got to take the blame. Months of raising the Sons of Liberty, years of preparing myself, and now….” Whatever else he had been ready to say trailed off, ending in a harsh curse under his breath. Adam’s eyes passed over Marc and Lev before settling back on Gene. “What went wrong?” Gene began again, laughing weakly under his breath. “Hell, I can’t think of a single thing that went right.”

“You got Tanker and me out,” Adam replied. “And from the little I saw, you might have brought the Capitol Building down on Lukas’ head.”

“I reckon William did his job getting you out, but that was him and his men,” Gene said. “We wouldn’t be hiding in a basement if I’d had ten thousand replicas of William, Marc, and Lev.” Gene paused, looked up as a cold misty cloud escaped his mouth. “All my fighter jets were moved to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base over the past four weeks. The helos were scattered about military bases in Virginia and Maryland, waiting for the word that the jets were over DC and the time had come for them to move in.”

“You still haven’t said how you managed to stay hidden for weeks.”

“The entire country was falling apart,” Gene replied. “Cities were falling to hordes of drug hungry addicts and bases were seceding. If the panic that began a few months ago helped us in any way, it made it easy for our resistance to stay hidden in the madness. A few men here, a couple armored vehicles there—we made sure it all trickled in little by little. Regardless, when my men moved in twenty minutes before the main advance arrived and infiltrated Reagan International, we quickly discovered someone else had beat us there. Lev’s intel told us that we’d be dealing with lightly armed civilian guards, but Russian mercenaries had secured the Graystone device before us. We don’t know how the Patriarchs got the jump on us, but an army of retrofitted Soviet planes intercepted our fighters just after they got airborne. Info was scarce and we still don’t know how many survived, but I only counted five A-Tens over DC. Five…out of sixty.” Gene shook his head in disgust and anger before continuing. “Lev’s been trying to break through the communications blockade to figure out who else survived, but all he’s managed to find out is that those Yellow Jackets chased my men to exhaustion and has been putting them down like rabid dogs.”

Silence filled the room as Gene lowered his head, a hot rage filling his eyes—combating the pain and sorrow that concealed his face. Eventually, Marc spoke.

“You should know that while everyone else was fleeing the battle, Gene sent a Blackhawk after you and William, dragging me and Lev with him in the Humvee to save you. You owe your life to that man.”

“He owes me nothing,” Gene spat back. “No one owes me anything.”

Silence dominated the room and Adam hesitated, knowing what question he needed to ask next but unable to mutter the words. Finally, he took a deep breath and forced the question from his lung.

“Lukas said Fort Bragg had been destroyed,” Adam began slowly. “My family….” His throat locked up and he wasn’t sure he could continue. He remembered what the president had said and knew Fort Bragg had supposedly been hit, but the attack on the fighters from Seymour Johnson gave Adam a hope that maybe Fort Bragg had been spared or given the time to mobilize a defense. It was a selfish hope, but it was all he had left. “Sarah and the kids were there. So was Elizabeth, my parents, and Eric.” Gene gazed back at Adam, sadness breaking through the coldness on his face. Adam barely breathed his final words. “Gene, I need to know.”

Gene paused before looking over to Lev and nodding his head. Lev slowly lowered his eyes, swiping around the see-through tablet.

“I found this on one of the Russians at Reagan,” Lev said. “I don’t know if it belonged to Lukas’ men or the Patriarchs, but what I do know is it’s the only thing allowing me to access their heavily encrypted data. They had been running dozens of Graystone devices up and down the east coast until about an hour ago. I won’t dare transmit anything; I’m sure they’d be triangulating our position and—”

“Please,” Adam interjected. “I just need to know where they are.”

Lev nodded and tapped the device—the screen lighting up with a dim glow that flickered where the cracks crossed. He handed the tablet over without a word.

Adam took the tablet in hand and stared at the image, the screen’s glow illuminating the tears Adam failed to hold back. It had been six hours since the attack, but he could clearly see the fires that still burned brightly at the base. He scrolled around the live video feed and found the barracks his family had been housed in—or rather, the crater where the building had once stood. A smoky fire billowed from the ruins next to the blackened field his children had played on not twenty-four hours ago.