Warlords Read online

  “I know, John. There’s nothing we can do. I’m just relaying what the man said.”

  That pressure was pushing down on John’s shoulders again. A forced labor camp just west of the Mississippi filled with Americans sent there to die. It was like something out of World War II. He knew it wouldn’t be too long now before the enemy got the power back on in the territories under their control and then put people to work pumping out tanks, bullets and planes. Before long, America’s own industrial might would be turned against her. Once that happened, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

  •••

  John was on his way back to the meeting when he saw the department heads shuffling out. Moss was among them and John pulled him aside and filled him in on David Newbury’s story.

  “You think it’s credible?” Moss asked. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time false news was sent our way to destroy our resolve. Those Chinese are great at head games.”

  “I thought of that,” John said. “Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it now. But we need to step up our defenses. The last thing I want is anyone in Oneida being carted away to some forced labor camp.”

  The sun was directly in Moss’ face, highlighting the creases of tension rippling his features. “None of us want that. I’ve already established horseback patrols and checkpoints along every road in here.”

  “We’ll need more, plenty more. I wanna turn this town into an impenetrable fortress.”

  The muscles in Moss’ face tensed and then relaxed. “So what do you have in mind?”

  Chapter 8

  John unfurled the map on the desk in his office. Assembled around him was a somber group. Among them were Moss, Reese, Devon and a rather cheerful Vice Mayor Ray Gruber, the latter’s sleeves rolled up, showing off his thin, veiny arms.

  “Why do I feel like I’m at an AA meeting?” Ray asked, laughing like he always did at his own joke.

  Reese was puffing on one of his vile Russian cigarettes and doing a horrible job keeping the smoke out of people’s faces.

  “There are four main avenues into town,” John began. “From the west along State Route 297. North and south along Highway 27 and east along State Route 63. The approaches from the west and south run across the New River. That’s where most of the fighting is likely to occur. Those bridges need to be mined and heavily defended. I’m talking explosives at least six hundred meters before and after the crossing as well as foxholes overlooking the approaches. We’ll also need some forward observers to—”

  “Why not just blow them up?” Ray asked.

  “Not a good idea,” Moss said. “’Cause if we destroy the bridge then we lose the ability to funnel the enemy into a kill zone.” He turned to John. “With the equipment and weapons we have we might be able to hold off some lightly armed infantry for a while, but the minute tanks, fighting vehicles and airpower join the party, we won’t stand a chance. We’re gonna need artillery support as well as some anti-tank weapons or we might as well swing the door wide open and invite them in. Declare Oneida an open city, like they did for Paris in 1940. And as for those IED’s you mentioned, what the heck are we supposed to use for explosives?”

  Moss was making some excellent points and John was glad because it meant he was thinking. The unfortunate reality was that John didn’t have all the answers. Trying to battle a powerful army with AR-15s wasn’t nearly as realistic as he’d thought before his time in Iraq. There was a common perception in the States that an armed population could give an invading force a real run for their money. The simple and rather unpopular reality was that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, guerrilla bands could descend from the hills, shoot up a convoy of lightly armored trucks and disappear, but anything stronger and bullets had a nasty habit of bouncing off.

  The battle of Najaf at the beginning of the Iraq invasion offered a perfect example. Two armored cavalry regiments, including John’s, had rolled in and immediately come under heavy fire. The only real threat had been from shoulder-fired RPGs as well as mortar rounds fired by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Even then, thousands of enemy fighters were overwhelmed by American firepower.

  One particularly bold tactic employed by Bradley crews was to cut their engine and fake a stall. The smell of blood was often too much for the insurgents to bear and more than once they rushed the vehicles with little more than AK-47s, forgetting that even if the stall had been real, the Bradley’s 25mm chain gun worked perfectly well. Needless to say, the carnage was often unbelievable and reinforced the silliness of facing any kind of tank without the proper weapons systems.

  The rank smell of battle wafted past John’s nose as his mind returned to Moss’ question. “Tennessee is coal mine country, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Reese’s eyes lit up when he saw where John was heading. “Sure is, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.”

  “Thought of what?” Ray asked.

  “Some of those mines must have dynamite and ammonium nitrate fuel oil stored somewhere on site,” Reese answered, stubbing his cigarette into an ashtray. “Once we get our hands on it—”

  “Then I can show you how to make an IED,” John said.

  Ray let out a nervous laugh. “I feel like an insurgent already.”

  “Sorry, Ray,” Moss said. “I’m afraid you won’t be the one getting your hands dirty.”

  John agreed. “You’re my eyes and ears when I’m away, Ray. I need someone to oversee the defenses and make sure things are going to plan.”

  “Well, I already got my men filling sandbags,” Moss said defensively.

  “Yes,” John replied. “I saw that and I have an idea. We need to establish a series of successively stronger defensive points to weaken and demoralize any enemy who approaches the town. A defense in depth. The outer ring around the city will be mirrored by an inner ring. Inside that we’ll have the buildings of Oneida as our last line of defense. HESCO bastions should form a tight perimeter wall. They’re easy enough to create with fence wire and sturdy cloth sacks sewn together. We’ll also need a tractor with a backhoe to fill them with sand and rocks. In town is where the fighting will be the fiercest. We’ll need loopholes cut into walls for concealed firing positions and buildings reinforced with sandbags.”

  Moss was looking overwhelmed with the amount of work still to be done.

  “As Hitler’s armies headed toward Moscow,” John reminded them, “Stalin ordered men, women and children to dig anti-tank ditches that stretched for miles around the entire city.”

  “I don’t think we have enough people for that,” Reese said, searching for his pack of Belomorkanals.

  John sighed. “I only hope that none of these preparations are necessary.”

  •••

  After they were done, John headed to the kitchen pantry to grab a can of beef stew for lunch. The old days of heating it in a microwave were gone, maybe for good, and the prospect of firing up the old-fashioned stove oven they’d installed seemed daunting. He pulled a spoon from the drawer and decided to eat it cold. He was two spoonfuls in when Diane appeared.

  “I thought you were working on irrigation systems?” he asked her, pleasantly surprised.

  She smiled. “I was gonna ask you the same. Aren’t you supposed to be turning Oneida into Fortress Europa?”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” he replied, laughing.

  “Cold lunch again,” Diane observed.

  “No time for creature comforts. Besides, I think I’m developing a taste for cold beef. How’s Emma? Has she eaten today?”

  Diane gave him a look that said, Your guess is as good as mine. “I take it your conversation didn’t go over as well as you thought it would.”

  “It’s a little hard to explain why the mayor’s barking orders right, left and center while his own daughter’s doodling in her bedroom.”

  Diane crossed to the pantry and started searching for something to eat. “She’s traumatized, John. Maybe a little patience and understand
ing is in order.”

  “I have been patient. We’ve all been traumatized. I saw Brandon’s sister Natalie out earlier lugging around buckets of water. All that after losing her father.”

  “Yes,” Diane said, “and I commend her for it. But Tim Appleby was killed right next to Emma. She saw it happen. Had Tim’s blood on her face.”

  John grew quiet. As a soldier overseas, he’d seen far worse sights. There were things the human mind wasn’t meant to see or experience, things that were disturbing enough to make a combat vet call out in the middle of the night. He could still see the faces of his men, dead because of orders he had given. Rescue missions launched to retrieve a single soldier that left half a dozen more dead. The few versus the many. John had thought those were equations he’d only need to make while deployed overseas, but ever since the EMP, he’d been put in that terrible position on a daily basis.

  Perhaps seeing the distress on his face, Diane came in and hugged him. “I don’t envy you right now, John. It’s a tough spot to be in and I know how you take on too much responsibility for the people around you. Give Emma another couple of days. If she hasn’t come around by then we’ll try something else.”

  John nodded absently, still seeing the faces of those young men, a ghostly cemetery now filled with the residents of Willow Creek and the Patriots who had died liberating Oneida. His heartache over the death he’d been witness to always brought him back to thoughts of General McClellan during the Civil War. General McClellan had been pivotal in training a magnificent Union army early in the war, but he’d been terrified of committing that force to battle. It seemed incomprehensible to him to tarnish something so beautiful. His hesitation to pursue the enemy and never-ending excuses compelled Abe Lincoln to lament: If the general does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.

  Once Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lead the Union armies, he’d quickly proved he wasn’t afraid to shed some blood, both friend and foe.

  These were the two extremes John often found himself bouncing between. The idealistic side of him screamed out to preserve life at all costs, while the practical side knew there could never be real peace without bloodshed. The nature of the human animal was to blame for that, not him. At least that was what he told himself.

  “There was something I wanted to ask you, John. I know now might not be the best time.”

  “What is it?”

  “I was thinking about that pot farm you mentioned during the meeting.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure where Diane was going with this, but he didn’t like it, not one bit.

  “That crop has probably already flowered and I wanna take a group down to salvage as much of it as we can. It may be the only chance we get to save the oils for ropes and lighting and whatever other uses we can put it to.”

  There wasn’t much John could say. It was his suggestion after all to have her team look into salvaging crops from the local farms. The idea that she’d be going with them hadn’t occurred to him.

  “Your knowledge and experience is far too valuable to take the risk,” he tried.

  “Oh, cut it, John. I had a feeling you’d pull that line. You’ll have to forgive me if it’s a hard one to swallow coming from a mayor who leads assaults against neighboring towns.”

  “They weren’t hostile, Diane.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that at the time. Sometimes your protective side is too much.”

  He relented, realizing she was right. “The next thing we know Gregory and Brandon will be asking to hop that train to the front tomorrow.”

  Diane’s eyes fell to the ground and at once John knew he’d stumbled onto something. “No, you’re kidding,” he said in disbelief. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “Go talk to them, John. Brandon and Gregory are out back.”

  Chapter 9

  The boys were by the rear door just as Diane had said, but instead of filling sandbags they were feeding their pet goose George with grains and wild grass. A fenced-off area they’d hastily thrown together using chicken wire and wooden stakes served as a pen for the beast.

  Both Gregory and Brandon turned as John approached.

  “It’s good to see George is still going strong,” John said, not entirely sure how to broach the subject he’d come to talk to them about.

  Gregory nodded and smiled with enthusiasm. “He’s been eating like a pig.”

  In spite of his son’s jovial expression, John wondered what damage had already been done to his son’s psyche. No one, especially not a child, should ever be exposed to the kinds of things they’d seen. Emma was exhibiting outward symptoms of trauma, but Gregory wasn’t and that made John all the more concerned.

  “We need to find him a goosette,” Brandon said with a devilish smile. “You know, a girlfriend, so we can breed an army of Georges.”

  John couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s no such thing as a goosette. Technically speaking, George is a gander. His future love interest would be a goose.”

  The boys smiled and turned to continue feeding the bird.

  “Listen, Gregory,” John said. “I was surprised to hear your mom say you were here. I thought you would have reported to Moss already to help erect the gabions.”

  Nearly identical looks of guilt crept up both boys’ faces. It was clear enough that even though John had been addressing Gregory, he was speaking to both of them.

  “We’re gonna go as soon as we’re done with George,” Brandon said.

  John nodded, his hands on his hips as he examined the bird. Gregory was right, George was getting bigger.

  “Have you spoken to Emma lately?” Brandon asked. “I wonder how she’s feeling. I know she hasn’t been eating all that much lately.”

  “She’ll come around,” John told him. “Although it wouldn’t hurt if you had a word with her. You may have more luck getting through than I did.”

  Brandon removed the ball cap he was wearing and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I’ll make some lunch after and bring it to her.”

  “That would be nice,” John replied and turned to leave. He hadn’t made it further than a few steps before he stopped. “I’m guessing you two have heard there’s a train coming through town tomorrow.”

  Both of them nodded slowly.

  “And you know where it’s headed, right?”

  “To the front,” Gregory told him. “To fight the Slovaks and the Chinamen.”

  John wasn’t thrilled with derogatory stereotypes, but it was hard to defend the very men who were on their land committing atrocities.

  “That’s no place for young men such as yourselves. I heard the two of you were thinking of hopping that train and I can tell you that it’s a terrible idea. If you were both full-grown men I’d have no real say in the matter, but since you’re both under my care, you’ll stay in Oneida. There’s more than enough work here to keep you busy.”

  Brandon opened his mouth as though he were about to offer some resistance. But John cut him off. “There’s no glory that way. Only death and suffering. In the coming days and weeks I’m sure you’ll find plenty of opportunity to prove yourselves.”

  “Yeah, by digging foxholes and filling sandbags,” Gregory exclaimed. “They need us up there, Dad. It’s every American’s duty to stand up and fight.”

  “No, son. It’s every American’s duty to fight smart. Charging off into chaos when neither of you have the proper training is just plain dumb.”

  “I have training, Mr. Mack,” Brandon said. “Everything I’ve done since the lights went out has gotta count for something.”

  “This isn’t a debate,” John countered, his voice raising in an uncharacteristic show of emotion. “I’ve been put in charge of prepping this town for the worst and I’m your guardian. Both of those are the only reasons you need to do as I say.”

  Gregory’s eyes fell to a pile of loose pebbles which he
nudged with his sneaker. Brandon stood squinting at John in the glare of the sun.

  “Do I have your word you won’t disobey me, boys?”

  “Yes,” they both mumbled in unison.

  John didn’t like coming down as the heavy. He also understood it was the dream of just about every young man to rush off to fight during war. With the outbreak of World War II, boys as young as fifteen and sixteen would provide false documents in order to trick recruiters into letting them sign up. But of course, John’s objections weren’t simply that the boys were under his care, nor that he needed their help. Right now, the front lines were a terrible place for anyone to be and he was sure that soon enough they’d become a living hell.

  Chapter 10

  Later that night John lay in bed next to Diane, a cool evening breeze ruffling the drapes. She had the habit of pulling the covers right over her head, which often made John feel as though he were sleeping next to a pile of blankets. He watched the slow rise and fall of her breathing, unable to fall asleep himself.

  This was when thoughts and scenes from past wars tended to worm their way into his mind. Difficult decisions he’d made long ago would re-emerge to torture his conscience. Had the men who died under his command been killed by mistakes he’d made, or by a system that was inherently violent and chaotic? John tried hard to steer his mind away from such guilt loops. The past couldn’t be changed, no matter how much one might wish for it. As a commander—heck, even as a parent—he was constantly forced to make difficult decisions based on little or no data.

  As much as John tried not to think about the poor souls strung along the Mississippi, he couldn’t help but wonder what they must be going through. They were outnumbered and at a technological disadvantage. He was surprised they’d managed to hold out as long as they had. Drawing in deep breaths meant to relax his mind, John slowly drifted off to sleep. Awaiting him were dreams of Iraq and the tragedy that continued to haunt him.

  It was March, 2003, and they were nearing the outskirts of Nasiriyah and the banks of the Euphrates River. Two main bridges crossed from the south: one over the Saddam Canal, which John and Bravo Company were fast approaching, and the other over the Euphrates. Made up of mostly Shiite Muslims, Nasiriyah was the gateway to Baghdad. Two hundred and twenty-five more miles and they’d be in the capital, a destination which represented more than an end to Saddam’s regime. For John it meant a ticket back home to his wife and young children.