“Bravo Team coming in hot!” a voice yelled from the direction of the commo van.
“Stand down!” Will yelled. “They’re all dead.”
Specialist Jacobson emerged from around the corner of a building, rifle at the ready. “You guys alright?”
“Yeah,” Pollard answered, then coughed. The cigarette smoke burned the inside of his throat where he’d been strangled. “Fucker pulled a grenade.”
Jacobson walked up slowly and jutted his chin out. “What about that one. Should we smoke him?”
“No,” Will grunted in frustration. “We need to tie him up, but my previous order still stands. We’re not going to kill unarmed prisoners.”
His longtime friend’s eyes went wide and he gestured with his head toward the pile of bodies. “What about these guys?”
“That was different,” Pollard chuckled. “They attacked, we responded.”
“Okay… Um, I have some five-fifty cord in my ruck. We can use that.”
“Yeah. What about the signal van? Is that out of commission?”
“There were two operators. We got into a firefight when they saw us. They’re dead, but we didn’t do anything with the equipment. Figured Valencia should look at it to make sure we turn it off or something.”
“Good call. We’ll secure the area, then hit the van and the missiles. If there are any infected in the area, then they’ll be on their way after that grenade explosion.” He turned away from Jacobson to address the squad. “Okay, we need to check the buildings in this town, make sure there aren’t any more Iranians hiding out. And we need to figure out what happened to all the town’s people.”
“We saw a burnt-out building on the far side of the commo van. You can’t see it from here. If we don’t find anybody alive, I bet they put them in there and burned it down.”
“Okay. Take your team and check it out. We’ve got this guy. Make it quick, though. If there are any infected in the area, they’ll be making a beeline for our location.”
“Roger, Sergeant,” Jacobson said, pointing to his three guys.
“Cooper,” Will said as he watched the team move quickly toward the commo van that blocked the view of the church.
“Yes, Sergeant?” the airman asked.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“You watch our friend here,” Pollard directed. “We’ll see about tying him up as soon as we can, but we need to make sure he doesn’t have any buddies hiding out somewhere.”
“Got it.”
Pollard led his remaining two guys through the two small buildings flanking the missile site. Besides the sleeping area where several sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows were piled up, they found a few books written in what he could only assume was Persian and a couple of radios. It wasn’t much, but that was all the intelligence items they saw. No laptops, no cellular phones, nothing.
“That’s weird,” Valencia muttered in response to the lack of communications devices.
“Right?” he replied. “How were they supposed to communicate over really long distances?”
“I mean, they could use a retrans site, but that could only be, like, five-to-ten miles away at most,” the squad’s communications expert stated.
Pollard nodded. A retransmission site would be placed near the end of the Iranian radios’ max range, passing the signal through their own radios on to the next site, and so on until it finally reached the desired recipient. He didn’t know how many retrans sites could be strung together without loss of signal clarity, but it probably wasn’t more than two or three.
“So, these guys’ headquarters element is probably only fifteen or twenty miles away at most. Maybe closer. Is that what you’re telling me, Private Valencia?”
“Roger, Sergeant.”
“We need to blow that van and the missiles, then get the fuck out of here.”
“That’s probably the best move,” the private agreed.
Pollard regarded him for a second before saying, “No shit. That’s why I just said it, dickhole.”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” he replied, ducking his head.
“Okay, let’s go,” Pollard called out to the next room where his other two guys were poking through the sleeping area for intel. “We need to get the fuck out of here and back into the desert before more of these dudes show up.”
Jacobson was already back by the time they emerged into the light. “Found a bunch of bodies in the church,” he confirmed.
Pollard nodded tersely. “Fine. We need to exfil this site. They didn’t have any long-range radio equipment inside, which means—”
“They’re in contact with a supporting element not far away,” Jacobson answered.
“Yup. You guys blow that jammer van, we’ll take care of the missiles. I want no more than a five-minute timer and everyone moving into the desert before this turns into a party.”
“Which one do you want me to wire first, Sergeant?” Specialist Tate, the engineer with the explosives asked.
“The van,” Pollard answered immediately. That was their primary mission. “But give me a brick and I’ll get it set up on the missiles. All you’ve gotta do is attach the timer and the fuse.”
“Got it,” Tate answered, dropping his rucksack and pulling out a plastic-wrapped block of C-4 explosive. He tossed it to Pollard and then ran toward the van.
Four minutes later, the squad was jogging into the desert with their prisoner in tow. Three minutes after that, the first of the explosives blew, lighting up the early evening sky and finally providing the illumination they’d been missing.
10
NEAR LIBERAL, KANSAS
MARCH 5TH
“Oh, thank God. He’s coming to!”
Vern’s eyes fluttered as Sidney rushed into the room from where she’d been watching out the window for more troops. Katie turned to her with tears in her eyes. “He’s awake.”
“Good morning, Vern. Have a nice nap?”
“No. I died,” he replied, bewildered. “I felt myself die.
