Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (21 page)

The black-clad SRF man seemed to relax slightly. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. We’ll take them back to the terminal building and call it in.”

Sergeant Hill shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

The man was about to respond when Hill looked down the road away from the terminal. “What the hell is that?”

The man turned, obviously puzzled, and Hill stepped close and smashed the man’s face with a left elbow strike, pulling the man’s sidearm from its holster with his right hand as he stepped back. He brought the gun around in one fluid sweep, transitioning into a two-handed grip and firing over the heads of the kneeling men. Luke heard a gasp behind them, and the clatter of a weapon on the pavement, but kept his eyes on the scene before him. Hill already had the first SRF man on his knees, his own gun pressed to the man’s temple as blood gushed out his nose.

“Y’all can get up now, Butler,” the sergeant called. “And I hope like hell there are more of you wherever you came from.”

***

Two minutes later they had the SRF men hidden in the woods; the live one zip-tied hand and foot, and mouth duct-taped. Hill motioned them away so they could speak in private.

“How many more?” Butler asked.

“Only two here,” Hill said. “They’re over in the main terminal complex. But there seem to be a bunch of the bastards over at the nuke plant. I’ve been seeing chopper traffic in and out of there all day.”

“The two in the terminal building will have heard your shot,” Luke said. “They’ll call in backup for sure.”

Hill was shaking his head. “I doubt it. It’s almost a mile, with thick trees all the way. That’s a long way to hear a pistol shot. There’s also a generator running, powering a window AC unit. A very noisy window unit. And these boys ain’t what I’d call the most situationally aware troops, if you get my drift.”

“What’s going on, Hill? How long have these goons been here, and where is everyone else?” Butler asked.

“Everybody else in this case was me, the major, and Sergeant Brothers. The others either took off or never showed up in the first place. As far as these assholes,” Hill said, “two chopper loads of them hit us day before yesterday. They showed up with some sort of bogus order we were to turn the terminal over to them. The major refused until he could clear it with our chain of command. That basically meant never, because we haven’t had comms since the power went down. Anyway, they beat the major down, and when Brothers tried to intervene, he got a beat down for his trouble too. By that time they had a nine millimeter to my forehead, and I had no doubt whatsoever they’d use it.”

“So they’re holding the others in the terminal building?” Butler asked.

Hill shook his head. “They took ’em out by chopper. Maybe over to the nuke plant or maybe someplace else. I don’t really know. They kept me here because they needed someone who knew the layout. They been dragging me all over the place, making me show them what’s where. They’re up to no good, for sure, and I had no illusions when they knew what I knew, I was toast. When I saw y’all and recognized Butler, I figured my best bet was to throw in with you folks.”

Hill looked back toward the terminal. “And right about now, I’d say, would be a good time to get out of here.”

“Negative,” Luke said. “If the two left pick up on something wrong, a chopper could intercept us long before we got back upriver.”

Butler nodded agreement. “We’d be sitting ducks on open water. What’s their routine?”

Hill shrugged. “Well, they haven’t been here that long, but so far they seem to change shifts by chopper every twelve hours at noon and midnight. A couple of ’em scour the hard copy bills of lading, tryin’ to get a handle on how much there is here, while the other two drag me around to show them where things are. They swap off and argue about it a lot, since they all want the ‘let’s sit on our butts in the air-conditioning’ duty. We were goin’ down to check one of the rail sidings when we heard y’all’s boat. They just pulled the vehicle off the road into the woods and waited.”

“So they didn’t come out specifically in response to our arrival or radio back to the others when they heard the boat?” Luke asked.

Hill shook his head. “Nope. Like I said, not the sharpest tools in the shed.”

Luke looked at his watch. “So if they follow routine, we’ve got ten hours, more or less, before the next shift change.”

“About that,” Hill said, “presuming you think two days’ experience qualifies as routine.”

“How about weapons?” Butler asked.

“Just what you saw. M4s and sidearms,” Hill said.

“No, I mean weapons here in the terminal? Is there anything easily accessible we can grab now?” Butler asked.

“Well, we got, or had I should say, our own security force, so there’s an armory in the terminal police station. That’s still under lock and key. And there are weapons in inventory, a lot of them, but they’re a bit harder to get to.”

Luke nodded and looked at Butler. “Okay, at a minimum I say we take out the two in the terminal building, alive if possible, then load out all available weapons and ammo. We sure as hell can use the firepower, and prisoners will give us some much-needed intel.” They both looked at Hill.

He shrugged. “I’m in as long as it buys me a boat ride out of here.”

***

Hill wasn’t exaggerating the SRF men’s lack of situational awareness. Long and Abrams donned the black uniforms of the two neutralized thugs and followed Hill as he walked nonchalantly into the small air-conditioned office in the main terminal complex. The waiting men looked confused, but not unduly alarmed, no doubt assuming the pair were new faces from the larger SRF contingent at the nuke power plant. They both had guns to their foreheads before they discovered their mistake.

With the new prisoners trussed up beside their first captive in the back of a commandeered terminal pickup, they walked across the parking lot to the terminal police station. Hill used a ring of keys retrieved from the pocket of one of the SRF men to unlock the police station and armory.

Butler and Luke entered the armory behind Hill, their eyes as wide as kids in a candy store. There were multiple rows of M4s standing at vertical attention, with cartons of ammo stacked on shelves behind them. Butler pointed at several boxes labeled night-vision gear, and racks of tactical gear, including body armor. Another shelf held cases of flash bang grenades. Luke shook his head in disbelief.

“Were you expecting a war?” he asked.

Hill grunted. “Your tax dollars at work. I never thought they needed all this crap, but nobody asked me. That’s what happens in a government organization when you get a budget—spend it all or lose it next year.”

Butler grinned. “Well, I can assure you, Sergeant Hill, that we’ll put this material to the very best of use.”

“You got that right,” Luke said. “We need to get this stuff back to Fort Box ASAP, but I’ve been thinking, we need to know what the hell is happening over at that nuke plant too.”

Butler shook his head. “Sounds like mission creep.”

“You know I’m right,” Luke said. “As soon as they know we’ve been here and gone, they’re going to put more troops into this place. And for sure they’ll probably be more chopper overflights. If we’re gonna find out what’s going on next door, now is the time.”

“All right. I can see that, but what do you have in mind? We have to get this stuff back to Fort Box.”

“Maybe we can do both.” Luke looked at Hill. “Are those patrol boats we saw tied up down at the wharf operational?”

“Absolutely,” Hill said. “And both have full tanks of gas. That’s standard operating procedure. Not that we had anybody to run them.”

Luke nodded and turned back to Butler. “All right then. I think Long, Abrams, and Sergeant Hill here should load all of this gear and our three prisoners in those two boats and return to base. The rest of us will recon the nuke plant.”

“I should go with y’all. I know the area,” Hill said.

Luke shook his head. “Negative. I’d love to have you, but you’re far too valuable. I think we’ll be making some more trips to the terminal, and having someone who knows it inside and out will be a tremendous advantage. We can’t risk you on a recon like this.”

Hill scowled, then grinned. “Well, what do you know? For the first time in my military career, I’m too valuable to be expendable.”

Everyone grinned, then Butler spoke. “Actually, there’s a small tributary of the river that runs by the north side of the power plant. There are homes along that stretch with boat docks. That’s how I know about it; I’ve towed a few disabled boaters back to their home docks. We can get pretty close. My only concern is the engine noise.”

Hill shook his head. “I don’t think you have to worry about that, at least during the day. A lot of folks on this end of the river have been using their boats for transportation. We been hearing boat motors for some time. Less, of course, since gasoline started running low, but we still hear one now and again. I doubt these boys will come looking for you even if they hear the motor.”

“I hope you’re right,” Luke said.

Cape Fear River (Tributary)

Near Brunswick Nuclear Plant

Same Day, 5:35 p.m.

Butler eased the boat along, running dead slow on only one of the two engines and oversteering to compensate for the slight uneven thrust. They crept through the ever-narrowing tributary, looking across the marsh bordering the stream to the tree line and solid ground beyond. Ahead of them in the distance, high-voltage wires stretched through the air from left to right.

Butler pointed at the power lines. “We’re almost to the power plant now. We should probably nose her in somewhere along here.”

“Try to find a place where the channel gets as close as possible to the tree line,” Luke said. “That marsh looks like cottonmouth central, and I’d like to minimize the amount of muck and marsh we have to wade through.”

Beside him in the open door of the little cabin, Washington visibly shuddered. “Amen to that, brother. I do hate snakes.”

“I’ll do my best,” Butler said, “but we don’t have a lot of options here. I pretty much have to go where—”

“There!” They rounded a bend, and Luke pointed out a narrow inlet, barely wider than the boat, running through the thick marsh grass toward the tree line marking firmer ground.

Butler stopped the boat and studied the inlet. “Okay. I’ll try it, but I’m gonna back her in. If we have to leave in a hurry, I sure as hell don’t want to be backing out.”

His companions nodded and watched as he turned the boat expertly and maneuvered stern first up the narrow inlet. The inlet dead-ended at the tree line, but Butler killed the engine thirty feet short.

“We’ll paddle her back the rest of the way,” he said. “I don’t want to take a chance on damaging the propeller on a submerged stump.”

Three minutes later, and to Washington’s obvious relief, they only had to walk a few steps through mud and muck to solid ground.

“What now, LT … I mean Major?” Washington asked.

Luke shrugged. “We play it by ear, I guess. We’ll work our way through the woods to the power plant, then take it from there depending on what we see.”

The others nodded and followed Luke through the woods, maintaining their intervals. As the trees thinned, they moved more carefully from tree to tree until the power plant came into view.

“Son of a bitch,” Luke said. He glanced over his shoulder as Butler and Washington moved up beside him. “What’s that look like to you?”

They stared past him at a large area in the middle of an open field, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with coils of razor wire running along its top. The area was rectangular, and each corner was topped with a tower, complete with the searchlight and machine gun. They could make out two figures standing in the nearest tower.

Inside the fence were row on row of large tents, obviously communal shelters. They heard shouts of children playing and saw an open area at the far end of the enclosure. People moved listlessly from tent to tent.

“It’s a frigging concentration camp,” Washington said as Butler nodded agreement.

“So much for a volunteer effort,” Luke said.

He pulled a monocular from his pocket and looked beyond the fenced area toward the plant itself. There was a long row of tents outside the fenced area, and here and there civilians moved among them. He judged the SRF presence to be at least company strength, if not greater. Several choppers sat in the asphalt parking lot, and on the far side of the parking lot, tents were arranged in the orderly rows of an advance military base.

Luke passed the monocular to Butler, who looked, nodded, and gave the instrument to Washington.

“Looks like some civilians in the concentration camp and more in the tents outside. What do you make of that?” Butler asked.

Luke shrugged. “I don’t know, but my guess is anyone outside the wire is cooperating with them, and those inside are less enthusiastic.”

Butler nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Yeah, and it looks like they plan to stay a while,” Washington said.

Butler nodded again. “And between here and the military terminal next door, I expect there will soon be a whole lot more of them. Which makes the likelihood of them leaving us alone—”

“Somewhere between slim and none,” Luke finished.

Washington looked thoughtful. “Maybe it ain’t a bad thing, if they get the power back on, I mean.”

“I got no problem with that,” Luke said. “My problem is the way they’re doing it, and what they intend to do with it after they restore it. They seem much more inclined to take things for themselves and toward consolidating control than helping others. Somehow I get the feeling if they get the power back, it’s not going to help anyone but them.”

“But what are they really up to?” Washington asked. “I mean, all we can tell is they’re holding a bunch of prisoners.”

“We got the three prisoners. Maybe we can get some intel out of them,” Butler said. “I’m thinkin’ we shouldn’t push our luck.”

Washington shook his head. “We’re not going to learn too much from those SRF fools. Maybe how many troops and where they’re from, things like that. But they’re not likely to have a clue what’s going on inside the power plant. They’re not exactly geniuses.”