Warlords Page 3

  “I’ll see what I can do,” John said, feeling that knot in his gut begin to squeeze tight. “I’ll send as many as I can spare.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  It sounded as though the colonel was getting ready to end the conversation, but John wasn’t through.

  “Colonel Higgs, what’s your plan in case they break through?”

  There was a long silence.

  “We have a reserve armored force hidden away to block any holes.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What more can we do?”

  “Maybe it’s time we do like the Russians did in WWII. Create a defense in depth with a series of strong points designed to slow and weaken the enemy as they advance. Their supply lines must already be stretched to the max. Any losses they suffer would be difficult to replace.” More silence and now John was beginning to wonder if the colonel had stopped listening. “We also need to make sure we’re not fighting the battle on their terms. We need to go low-tech, pass orders using handwritten notes, light signals to launch our fighters. If the Millennium Challenge war game the armed forces conducted in 2002 taught us anything, it’s that an army with a technological advantage can be defeated using asymmetric warfare.”

  “I’m very familiar with the Millennium Challenge.”

  “Then you know the Joint Forces Command reset the wargame when Lieutenant General Van Riper’s unconventional tactics were working. Listen, I’m not trying to step on any toes here, Colonel, believe me. All I’m saying is it sounds to me like we need to think outside the box. It’s how the Celts destroyed three entire Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.”

  “John, I’ve heard what you have to say, but I’ll tell you right off the bat, I’m not prepared to turn our nation into another Iraq. Americans fight insurgencies, we don’t become them.”

  Henry tapped John’s shoulder. “You’ve only got a few more seconds before they can pinpoint the signal.”

  The colonel was still talking. “I don’t care what technology they have. No one can stand toe to toe against the might of the US military. They’ve got a weakness and we’re gonna find it.”

  “Time’s up, John,” Henry said nervously.

  “There’s something you’re forgetting, Colonel,” John said. “We’re not the Romans anymore. We’re the Celts.”

  That was when the signal went dead.

  John leaned back in the chair and rubbed the corners of his eyes.

  “That didn’t seem to go very well,” Henry said.

  “A train is coming through town tomorrow and he wants men and women shipped to the front.”

  “Really? So they’re holding them off then?”

  “For now,” John replied. “But I’m worried the army isn’t adapting fast enough to the new reality. The military spent the last few decades moving from a bulky Cold War model capable of fighting two conventional wars at once to a smaller, more nimble and high-tech force. Problem is, once you pull the plug and lose access to the satellites that tie it all together, you lose the nimble and all you’re left with is the small.”

  The corner of Henry’s mouth curled into a half grin. “Have you been speaking to my girlfriend again?”

  John tried to return the gesture, but wasn’t able to.

  “It’s hard for any bureaucracy that large to change overnight,” Henry said.

  “I know,” John replied. “Especially when that means accepting the fact that you’re not as strong as you used to be. Trust me, Henry, as I grow older, I understand this more and more. The front needs soldiers and support personnel, I have no argument there. I just can’t help feeling that with the way things are being run, I’d only be sending these men and women off to their deaths.”

  Chapter 6

  John’s rather unsettling conversation with Colonel Higgs was still replaying in his mind as the conference room began to fill up. It was situated across the hall from the radio room and featured a long oval table with ten chairs. Two battery-powered lanterns gave the place an ominous feel John found rather appropriate under the circumstances. On each of the four walls were stickers and Post-It notes with the various projects they needed to get underway.

  If there was one thing John had learned navigating through the council meetings back on Willow Creek Drive—a time that seemed decades ago now—it was that the voting system they’d used to decide policy had crippled the committee’s decision-making process. As a result, one of his first acts as mayor had been to select several department heads. His second was to let them know that he and he alone would have the final say. John would listen to their advice and take that into consideration, but gone was a time when he would be forced by raised hands to make life-or-death decisions.

  At least that had been his goal when the people of Oneida had elected him mayor. But here he was, only a few days later, forced once again to put more innocent lives on the line.

  The department heads were all present along with a handful of their aides who stood with their backs against the wall. John began the meeting by relaying the details of his conversation with Colonel Higgs. A deathly silence settled over the proceedings. Everyone wanted to do their part, but who among their friends and fellow neighbors in town would be asked or even sent to defend the line along the Mississippi?

  Moss was in charge of security and fire rescue and John turned to him first. “I’ll need a list of names. All able-bodied males and females between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.”

  “But that could be as much as thirty to forty percent of the population,” Moss protested. “Who will defend us against gangs of raiders or—”

  “Forget raiders,” Dan Niles spat. “We need folks to keep the town from drowning in its own filth.” He was a large, red-faced man whose breath wheezed in and out of him like a broken accordion. John had chosen him to head the waste management department. With nearly two thousand residents, Oneida would need a way to clear garbage and dispose of human waste.

  “We’re not going to send all of them,” John replied. “Only as many as we can spare. But our contribution to the war effort will be more than just soldiers and sentries. The colonel mentioned the difficulty they were having keeping the troops fed and armed. I think I have a solution.”

  Diane stared at him from across the room with a knowing grin. He’d put her in charge of food management and this next part was going to affect her directly.

  “You’re killing us with suspense, John,” Shelley Gibson said. She was a strikingly beautiful engineering student from the University of Tennessee who had been home for the summer holidays when the EMP hit. John had put her in charge of the water department.

  John tapped the pencil against the table three times. “Soybeans.”

  For a moment, no one said anything. Diane was the first to speak up. “Excuse me?”

  After that everyone broke in at once. For a moment, the resistance in the room made John feel like he was talking to Colonel Higgs again. There was nothing more frustrating than the way people opposed anything that was different before giving it a fair shake.

  “All right, settle down,” he said, but to no avail. A second later he slammed his open palm against the table’s cherrywood finish. “Hear me out before you go rushing to judgment. I’m not sure if any of you know, but soybeans used to be the number one cash crop in Tennessee. The state has over a million acres planted and nearly fifty million bushels harvested last year alone. It’s a crop we can use for food and eventually for fuel. Did you know that each acre of soybeans can make fifty-six gallons of biodiesel? That’s fuel we can use to run cars, the trains that travel through our town, the military vehicles that help to defend us and it might even help us turn the lights back on.”

  Now the room was dead quiet and John knew he had their attention. “There’s plenty of land around Oneida we can use to cultivate, but I’m thinking there may be a better way.”

  “John, I know at least three farmers in the area who grew soybeans,” Dan said.

&nb
sp; “That’s exactly where I was going,” John told him. “Why start from scratch when there may be farms that, until recently, were already operational?” He turned to his wife. “Diane, that’s something I’ll need you to look into. I also stumbled upon a cannabis farm not far from here.”

  “I feel a Rob Ford moment coming on,” Ray Gruber blurted out to gales of laughter. Ray was one of Marshall’s trusted lieutenants who John had commissioned as vice mayor. It was Ray’s job to take over running the town if John was away or if something were to happen to him. A thin, sinewy man in his mid-forties with a thick Tennessee accent, Ray was sharp-witted and always the first to smile.

  John cracked a smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no one’s getting high,” he told them. “As some of you may know, there are hundreds of more productive uses for the stuff. Making nets, ropes, textiles. Hemp seed oil can also be used to create paint, varnish and maybe even light lamps.”

  “I’m still dreaming of being able to take a hot shower,” Shelley said, her normally silky blonde hair looking matted and dull.

  Now the energy in the room had changed.

  John turned to Diane. “A shed at the pot farm also had books on hydroponics, which I’m sure you and your team can use to increase the yield.”

  A worried look clouded Diane’s features. “The only problem, John, is that we’re approaching fall. The best time to plant soybeans is in the spring.”

  John nodded. “Then we’ll need to build a greenhouse. Because crops being fed hydroponically can be packed closer together, a greenhouse a hundred feet by thirty feet can produce as much as one acre’s worth. If need be come winter we can heat the space with wood stoves.”

  Diane and the people under her all seemed to slump at once.

  “I never said this was going to be easy. In the coming days and weeks we’re gonna be overworked and undermanned. I know that as well as anyone, but giving up isn’t an option.” The words no sooner left his mouth than John thought of Emma, who was likely still in her room, staring out that window, drawing. It was a horrible feeling trying to convince people to forfeit their innate human desire to sit around doing nothing when a member of your own family was perhaps the guiltiest of all. Diane must have sensed the change in his expression because she gave him a look which said, Don’t worry, we’ll sort her out.

  “We also need to start collecting diesel engines salvaged from trucks in and around Oneida to power the pumps and to act as a generator for the town,” John added, muscling through the concern he had over his daughter’s recent behavior.

  Ray, the vice mayor, stuck his hand up. “I’m afraid our power problems won’t be solved for good until we build around five or six permanent magnet generator windmills each capable of generating forty-eight thousand kilowatts. It’ll mean building a large bank of twelve-volt batteries inverted into the town’s substation. But the real pain’s gonna be finding the inverter, rectifier, fuses and other components we need to transform AC power to DC then back to AC at the proper load so we don’t fry everything. I think at least some of those pieces can be found right here in town. Blades from the props of grounded Cessnas at the Scott Municipal airport as well as the motors from treadmills over at Hal’s gym. The rest we might be able to scavenge from hardware stores in the area.”

  “The Ace Home Center on Industrial Lane has practically been stripped bare,” John said. “That aside, a windmill is a great idea, Ray.” This was a good example of how bringing a group together to share ideas was better for everyone.

  John was no sooner finished thanking Ray when a member of Moss’ security team with curly brown hair named Devon poked his head into the conference room.

  “Mayor, can I see you for a moment?”

  John nodded. “Of course.” He turned to the others in the room. “Why don’t you all take the next few moments to think about what’s on our plate going forward and how each of your teams are going to make them happen.” He left, trying to put on his best smile, but knowing all the while that being summoned from an important meeting could only mean one thing: trouble.

  Chapter 7

  John was being led to the infirmary, that was all he knew, and the first thought to cross his mind was that something had happened to Gregory. His son was so desperate to prove his worth that John could easily imagine him biting off more than he could chew.

  “Who got hurt, Devon? Will you at least tell me that much?”

  “It’s too complicated,” Devon said as the two of them marched down the sidewalk.

  Weeds and dandelions pushed up through the cracks in the concrete and every day the streets smelled more and more of waste and garbage. Oneida was slowly becoming an urban relic from the mid-1800s.

  Devon marched along at a good pace. No older than twenty-two or twenty-three, he had the physique of a man, but the face of a boy, with rosy cheeks and eyes that sparkled. He had been one of the Patriots who had helped free the town. Charging in repeatedly under heavy fire, Devon had retrieved four wounded men from the battlefield. The Patriot militia didn’t have any formal way of honoring heroic acts and so John had set one up. They’d called it the Medal of Daring, a recognition bestowed on any member of the community who went above and beyond the call of duty. It was fashioned from spent 5.56 shell casings and a piece of fabric belt. Devon wore it on his chest with pride in spite of its humble creation.

  A moment later¸ the two men arrived at the infirmary. John went in first and entered a dimly lit room. A handful of security personnel were milling about, whispering to one another. All eyes were on a man with shredded clothing and a battered face, lying on a cot. A nurse named Samantha Hill was dabbing his forehead with a wet cloth.

  “What happened?” John asked. “Was there an accident?”

  Reese was in the corner of the room, leaning back in a chair against the wall. He knocked a cigarette out from a pack with Russian writing on it and lit the tip with a Zippo. Righting his chair, Reese stood and made his way to John.

  “I don’t think you should be smoking in here,” John told the sniper. It didn’t matter that Reese and his Remington 700 had played such a vital role in removing the Chairman, not to mention in saving Diane’s life. This was a hospital.

  “I don’t know how those Russians smoke these things,” Reese said, examining the pack of Belomorkanal cigarettes. “Why couldn’t those supply trucks we hijacked have been filled with Marlboros? Is that too much to ask?” He dropped the lit cigarette at his feet and put it out with the tip of his shoe. “Our friend here isn’t from Oneida,” Reese told John, pointing to the man. “Stumbled into one of our patrols hobbling through the forest. By the looks of him he hasn’t eaten in days.”

  “Is he American?” John asked.

  “So far as we can tell. Says his name is David Newbury, that he’s on his way to find his wife and kids. He lives in Oak Ridge, but was in Little Rock, Arkansas on business when the Chinese, Russian and North Korean units stormed the city.”

  “Oak Ridge? That’s near Knoxville. What’s he doing this far north?”

  Reese shook his head. “Wondered the same thing myself. I believe he was moving by night and trying to stay off the main highways. Must have got himself lost. Navigating using stars isn’t something you can learn off the internet. Says he was a member of a survivalist forum, whatever that means, and thought he knew what he was doing.”

  John agreed. The man’s desire to learn survival techniques was commendable, but trying to use things you’d only seen on a webpage made about as much sense as performing surgery after watching Grey’s Anatomy.

  “Any word on what happened to Little Rock?”

  “Seems the Chinese practically razed it to the ground. Wasn’t much resistance ’cept a few pockets of citizens, according to him. I guess most of ’em didn’t know the military had pulled back to the Mississippi. Poor souls.” Reese shook his head, the muscles in his face tightening with the thought.

  “Did you run him through the test?”

  �
��Oh, yeah, our friend here can name every state in the Union along with each of their capitals. Also knew who Garth Brooks was and could name every member of Lady Antebellum.”

  John smiled. “Who’s Lady Antebellum?”

  “Either he’s the real deal, John, or a Russian whiz. He’s even got his Southern drawl down pat.”

  “Fine,” John answered, growing impatient. “So he’s the real deal. Now why did you summon me from an important meeting to tell me all of this?”

  “Turns out the enemy’s taking people from territory they capture and sending them to special camps.”

  John’s gaze tightened on Reese.

  “Our man here, David, spent nearly a month in one near Jonesboro before he was able to escape while on a scavenging detail.”

  “A what?”

  “The enemy has groups of prisoners emptying homes of non-perishable goods in the cities they conquer. He managed to slip out a back window and make a break for it. But I have a good idea how those savages operate. You pull something like that and they’ll do what they did in East Germany and North Korea. Kill your entire family, and if that’s not an option, then ten strangers they pick at random.”

  “Is that it?”

  Reese shook his head. “They aren’t throwing these people in camps to keep ’em under control. They’re forcing them to work, most of the time without food. The drinking water is contaminated. People are dying in the hundreds everyday. The ones who survive are put through gruelling ‘re-education’ programs. Apparently the Chinese and North Koreans wanna make communists out of us. The Russians don’t seem to agree, but aren’t raising much of a stink so far.”

  John wiped a hand down his face. “So what are we supposed to do about it?” he yelled, drawing the eyes of those around them. “You’re talking about a heavily fortified camp behind enemy lines.”