Dark Road (30 page)

“Go on,” Mallory said, glad that Bill was immediately thinking along these lines.

“Nobody and I mean
nobody
is ready to jump into a helicopter at midnight with no warning, even under optimal conditions, and we haven’t been operating under optimal conditions for
months
.” Bill continued. “The fastest I’ve ever seen a ‘hawk up and running was eleven minutes—and that was a Medevac unit in a combat situation doing a thru-flight, meaning they had already done a pre-flight for the day.” Bill shook his head.

“This doesn’t add up Major,” he said finally. “They needed help so badly that they called it in directly but they didn’t know where it was coming from or how long it would take to get there? The help didn’t know the call was coming but was able to muster enough men to fill half a dozen Black Hawks and arrive just in time to save their butts—and do it all in the middle of the night?”

“Thank you Specialist Brey,” Mallory said. “You will be debriefed after your shift. Find Top when you are done. Save that recording and any more that come in regarding this matter.”

“Ma’am,” Sasha nodded to Mallory.

“You and I need to talk,” Mallory said to Bill, which got a raised eyebrow but no argument from her First Sergeant.

…

“What’s going on,” Bill asked once they were out of earshot of the communications tent.

“In due time, Top,” Mallory said. “We need a little more privacy. We also need a few more people.”

Mallory stopped a couple of runners on errands and preempted their tasks to have them find Joel, Eric, Lieutenant Halstead, and Sergeants Ramirez, Bowersock, Wilson, and Lake. She also told them to have Lake bring his laptop.

“That bad, huh,” Bill said.

“That bad,” Mallory said.

Chapter Thirty

Mallory didn’t say anything more until everyone was present and seated in the command tent. Even then it was several more seconds while she finished collecting her thoughts before she spoke, and when she did, it was into her radio.

“Sergeant Brey, have there been any more transmissions or announcements?” She asked.

“No ma’am,” came the response over the radio.

“Please send the recording to my radio.” Mallory said. She saw Sparky swallow.

After the twenty second recording there were a few seconds of silence during which Mallory looked around the tent at the gathered group. Mallory nodded slightly at Eric, who looked like he had something to say.

“With all due respect,” Eric began.

“Yes Captain,” Mallory cut him off. “It’s bovine excrement. Other than helicopters being used, not a word of it is true.”

Mallory looked at Sparky. “Please play the first transmission that came in last night.”

Everyone looked at Sergeant Lake, and then back at Mallory and back at Lake again. From the outside it looked comical.

Lake stepped forward to set up his laptop, turned up the volume, and then played the first recording. By the end, almost everyone was in shock—and more than a couple of mouths were open. Mallory’s jaw was clenched; she’d been stewing about this all night and was at a slow boil by now.

“Do you by chance have the second transmission recorded?” She asked.

“Yes ma’am,” Sparky said with a small nod. He’d forgotten to stop recording after the initial transmission had ended and almost used up his entire hard drive by the time he’d realized it was still going. He’d pulled out the dead air and made two files, one for each transmission.

Mallory nodded and Sparky played the second recording, which had the desired effect. Everyone in the room, including Joel, was visible moved. They realized now that not everyone was onboard with what the Colonel had ordered, and that someone, somewhere was on the way to help those people—and that they were most likely loaded for bear.

“We can’t keep this under wraps any longer,” Mallory said. “The new orders; the fact that we don’t actually know who’s giving the orders; that we as a unit are technically in rebellion right now, and we don’t know who we can trust absolutely.”

“Have we declared our intentions?” Eric asked.

“Not openly, no.” Mallory said.

“Has anyone that we have…obviously allied ourselves with?” Halstead asked.

“Not to my knowledge, no,” Mallory said.

“Major,” Joel said. “Does my input have any bearing?”

“Absolutely, Joel,” Mallory said. “You’re in this as much as anyone, and by you I mean the civilians. I wouldn’t have invited you and waited until you were here to begin if you weren’t a part of the decision making process. What’s happening is wrong, and as far as I’m concerned at this point you are the only legitimate elected official around.”

Joel shook his head. “I wouldn’t go that far…”

Mallory interrupted him because she was getting exasperated with him, “And I wouldn’t sell yourself so short, Mr. Mayor.” She said. “I didn’t nominate you, but I sure as hell voted for you, and apparently so did at least 51% of the rest of the population! Nobody seems to be clamoring for a recall or a lack of confidence vote either.”

Joel looked down for a second to gather his thoughts but Mallory took it the wrong way and snapped at him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

Joel looked at her with fire in his eyes at being spoken to like a child. “Hey,” he said, “I’m a grown-ass man lady! I don’t need you to scold me! I wasn’t sulking, I was gathering my thoughts, and if I want to look down or over your shoulder or close my eyes and imagine you naked I will—so back off.”

Bill had started clenching his jaw as soon as Joel barked back at his Major and Eric saw it. He also saw what Mallory was doing and grabbed Bill’s arm under the table and shook his head to tell him to cool it; it was under control.

Mallory sat back with a small grin on her lips. “Better, so what are your thoughts?”

“We can’t sugar coat it with the population. We need to handle it head-on, just like the situation with Sheri.” Joel said. “We also need to know who else heard the transmission last night and how they are handling working with their civilian populations.”

“Agreed,” Mallory said. “Anything else?”

“What can we do to help?” Joel asked. “ARCLiTE is working, no, forget that. Forget ARCLiTE, forget the orders, and forget being told what to do from your higher command and authority. We were working together just fine before they gave you
permission
to work with us, and integrate with us, and be our friends, and win our hearts and minds.”

Ramirez was the first to laugh at the phrase and then the rest of the table started to chuckle, including Mallory and Joel.

“Well, it’s true,” Joel said. “This wasn’t a mission and Natchez Trace isn’t a battlefield, yet. I don’t know all the right terms but I watched the Embeds on CNN. You weren’t sent here to pacify the indigenous peoples of the Nashville area. We are your fellow citizens of the United States of America and we have all suffered a horrible catastrophic event.”

Joel looked around the tent at everyone and realized he had their undivided attention. “You and I both know that you didn’t need orders to help out.” Joel said. “You mustered, you mobilized,
we
moved out into the middle of the damned woods and started building a town! We’ve since acquired another ready-made town and started using the pre-built facilities here…but in the beginning we…just…did it.”

Eric shook his head and said, “I voted for Karen because I was afraid she’d kick my butt if I didn’t. She said she voted for you.”

“Whiiiiped.” Ramirez said.

“Can it, Ramirez.” Mallory said. “And you were worried about being Mayor.”

“Meh,” Joel said. “So I can give a good speech.”

Mallory rolled her eyes.

…

“Joel,” Mallory said as the meeting was breaking up a half an hour later. “Hang back a minute, please.”

After the tent was empty she asked him, “When are you going to get some help?”

“Pardon,” he asked.

“You have one assistant in Redemption and, don’t get me wrong; Marissa is doing a great job down there.” Mallory said. “You hardly ever have to go down there anymore but you can’t do this job alone. You don’t strike me as a control freak, Joel, but that’s exactly how it comes across to everyone else. You don’t need to recreate the world’s worst bureaucracy but you’ve got to appoint, or hire, or whatever, some additional positions.”

Joel looked behind himself.

“What are you doing?” Mallory asked.

“Looking for a tail,” Joel said. “The first time someone calls you a horse you punch them in the mouth. The second time you look for a tail. The third time, you go get fit for a saddle. By now I should probably be at the glue factory.”

“No, you’re just hardheaded.” Mallory said. “Like most men.”

“Thanks.” Joel said.

…

Sparky had worked to pull communications duty again, even though he’d only gotten about three hours of sleep the night before. He’d come to live by the motto that he didn’t trust what he didn’t fully understand, and he’d never taken the time to
fully
understand the radio gear they used on a daily basis.

Oh, he had an in-depth knowledge of how it worked. Radio theory and electronics were his
thing,
but deep in the guts of the units were bits and pieces he’d been forbidden to touch…until now. Now he had one open and hooked up to probes and scopes and could really see what made them tick, especially in comparison to the stationary and mobile stuff.

…

“Sergeant Lake to see you, ma’am,” Mallory’s guard said.

“Send him in,” she said.

“Please have good news for me, Sparky,” Mallory said when he came in carrying a cardboard box.

“Oh yes, ma’am,” he said with a huge grin. He took out two handheld radios and gave one to Mallory.

“But bad news first,” he said. “In the presence of a satellite capable mobile communications station, such as we have, the handhelds will hit the satellite.”

“I asked for good news,” Mallory said with an arched eyebrow.

“Turn on your radio, please.” Sparky said.

Once both of their radios were on, and using a channel that he had selected as unused by anyone else in camp, Sparky transmitted some unsavory and rather vulgar comments about Colonel Olsen.

Mallory closed her eyes and counted to ten, out loud…twice.

“If that didn’t work like it was supposed to I’m going to shoot you myself,” she said without opening her eyes.

“I guarantee it worked,” Sparky said and picked up the meter that was still in the box. “This needle didn’t move.”

Mallory opened her eyes and looked at what Sparky had in his hands. He was holding a portable spectrum analyzer to measure radio frequencies up into the gHz range. “Call me on your other radio and watch the needle.”

She did so and was immediately rewarded by a flick to the right.

“Wait,” Mallory said. “I told you I was ok with you destroying one radio.”

“Yeah…” Sparky said with a confused look on his face.

“But there are two modified radios here.” Mallory said.

“Yeah…” Sparky was still not getting where she was going.

“I didn’t give you permission to modify more than one radio.” Mallory said.

Sparky swallowed. Now he got it. “Well, ma’am,” he said. “Actually you never gave me permission to modify any radios.” He was slowly drawing himself to attention and looking six inches over her head. “What you said was that, if necessary, you were ok with me destroying
a
radio. I was able to determine everything I needed to about the radio without destroying it.”

Evan cleared his throat, as he was Evan now and now Sparky. “I assumed from our previous conversations, and tasks you had set me to, that you wanted a way to use the current radios we had without using the satellite links.” Evan said. “I also assumed that if there was a way to modify the radio without destroying it, although I had permission to try on the one radio and to reprogram it if necessary, I had permission to do so.”

He could see via peripheral vision that she was interested in his explanation, so he went on. “I was able to modify the programming to ignore the presence of any satellite uplink in the vicinity, or, more appropriately, not look for one in the first place and act as though one didn’t exist. Once I had that done and it didn’t destroy the radio I, um, did it to a second radio because it hadn’t destroyed the first one, and that was the only restriction you had placed on me. Ma’am.”

Mallory kept a straight face for a count of three and then started laughing. “That was some really convoluted logic but I have to say it would probably stand up in a court of law.” She said. “I don’t think it would keep you from being
grounded,
but legally it’s sound. At ease, soldier, sit down.”

Sparky slumped into the chair behind him.

“We can’t modify all of the radios in camp right away, though,” she said. “We can’t even do them a few at a time. If all of the intra-camp chatter died out they would wonder what happened.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Sparky said. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the mobile rigs in-depth yet, either, but I’ve done enough work on them in the past that I’m fairly sure the same reprogramming can be done on them. It means we can most likely continue to use these,” he held up the handhelds, “for a good long time should something happen.” And he rolled his eyes up to look at the sky.

“I think it may happen sooner rather than later,” Mallory said.

…

“What do you need from me, sir?” Sparky asked.

“That’s actually
my
line,” Eric said. “What do we need to push out over the satellite to everyone we trust so that they have everything they need to make this underground—or pirate—network work?”

“At this point,” Sparky said, “everyone should actually have everything they need. What I want to send out is the software, and instructions to take the handhelds, mobiles, and base stations off of the satellites—if other units want to.”

Eric just stared at Evan for a few seconds before he said anything. “Wait, what?” He finally said. “You want to pull everything
off
of the satellite
everywhere
? On purpose?”