Sanctuary: A Postapocalyptic Novel (The New World Series) (19 page)

Luke replicated what he had been shown. He leaned forward, both legs bent, with his weight distributed evenly.

Sebastian lowered his voice now and stood behind Luke. Leaning in, he said, “Remember, sight alignment, sight picture, and squeeze. Don’t pull it. Your body has a natural arc, just keep the sights on the bottle and slowly apply pressure.”

The pistol went off, surprising Luke. It appeared that his brief training had paid off. He hit the target, a plastic milk jug that they had found lying among other garbage on the ground. He turned around and looked expectantly at Sebastian.

“Good shot! How did that feel?”

“Good, not as bad as I thought it would be,” Luke said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Beginner’s luck!” Brandon said.

Sebastian gave him a look and shook his head.

“Do it again, Luke. You’ve got five more shots. Same as you did before and always remember this: Don’t worry about your last shot. Once it’s downrange, it’s gone. Only worry about the shot you’re about to take. Again, sight alignment, sight picture, and squeeze.”

Luke repeated what he had done the first time. He hit the target five more times.

Sebastian was overjoyed at Luke’s performance, but tempered it internally because he knew shooting at a static target without stress, was different from real combat. What he had accomplished, though, was a little confidence-building.

When Brandon got behind his Smith & Wesson, he hit four times and missed once.

Sebastian tried to give him advice but Brandon proved to be difficult.

“Do you know why you missed that?” Sebastian asked.

“I thought you said don’t worry about the shots afterward.”

“Yes, don’t worry about them, but all shooters need to know why a shot goes a certain way. Critical analysis is important—it can help you adjust if you need it. Worrying is an emotional state. I need your mind to be analytical.”

“I don’t know; it was the last shot anyway. If that had been a person I would have killed them with the first four shots.”

“You’re not understanding me. I’m not being critical to just be critical. I want you to be extremely proficient.”

Brandon wasn’t paying attention to Sebastian; he opened the cylinder and dumped the casings on the ground.

“Brandon, look at me when I’m talking,” Sebastian chided.

Brandon looked at him and wrinkled his face.

“I know what I’m talking about. I’ve shot guns all my life. I used to shoot competitively when I was your age. I’m a Marine and a Scout Sniper. I do this for a living and I do it very well. If you listen to me, I’ll make you not just a shooter but an outstanding shooter.”

Luke spoke up. “I want to shoot again. I want to be an outstanding shooter.”

Sebastian kept his eyes on Brandon, who nodded slightly, showing he understood.

“Okay, let’s burn some more powder. Luke, it’s your turn. Load up.”

Cheyenne, Wyoming

Baxter enjoyed being out of the bunker. He wasn’t a big fan of bitter cold, but the fresh air and sunlight made up for it.

The lodgings he had been given made him and his family feel like they had a home again. Having an environment like that put him in a better mental spot for dealing with the tough problems occurring all around him.

His morning briefings from the various governors and other civilian leadership around the United States continued with the same sad reports of increased starvation, people freezing to death, and out-of-control violence. Something new came this morning too—a flu epidemic had broken out in Nebraska. This worried him. It was one thing to have to fight mankind but now Mother Nature was dishing out massive death. The migrations of people had started to slow because they were dying. The migratory paths were now littered with the remains of tens of thousands. As if these issues weren’t enough to manage, toss in an enemy force on the move and now an assassination plot, and keeping it together was an overwhelming proposition. Baxter was doing the best he could, though.

Baxter was thankful that Conner had seen the importance of bargaining with Barone. Having the use of his men and resources would alleviate some of their problems. Allowing Barone to take the Northwest wasn’t ideal, but it did give what was left of the United States a smaller geographical area to manage.

The idea of nuclear weapons as a way to stop the Pan-American Empire was quickly removed from the table by Conner. He had learned his lesson from before. While he didn’t fully regret the use of the weapons, he wouldn’t allow them to be deployed on American soil.

The morning briefing he was headed to with Conner and the other staff had one goal: make a decision on how they’d handled the PAE. Baxter took a deep breath and made his way over.

...

Conner was in a surprisingly good mood, to the surprise of his colleagues. His joyful demeanor forced others to feel more upbeat—or, at least, to mimic that feeling.

“Before we get into the meat of this meeting, I wanted to let everyone know some good news. Vice President Cruz and Secretary Wilbur will be leaving Coos Bay soon. I just received a personal call from Colonel Barone not an hour ago. That is not the only good news; it appears that Barone is honoring our agreement. I know some of you weren’t in complete agreement with my decision to offer a treaty to him, but we now have an ally in our fight against the PAE. When I spoke with the colonel he had decided on his boundaries, which I feel are reasonable.” Conner stood up and walked to a large map. He began to outline the states of Washington and Oregon. “This is all he wants, so I agreed. I apologize for not seeking your counsel. I felt this was fair. He will also allow us free access to utilize the port in Portland. Of course this gives us an advantage we had been seeking before.”

“Mr. President, let me be the first to congratulate you on this development. I had some reservations but this is a solid deal,” Baxter commented. Others in the room added their congratulations on the diplomatic arrangement.

Baxter then shifted his tone. “I do want to ask this. What happens with the next Barone? What happens if, I don’t know, North Dakota wants to secede?”

Conner sat back down and thought before answering this serious question. “General, all we can do is take one incident at a time. I wasn’t in complete support of allowing Colonel Barone to just take what he wanted, but the realities are that we need him and he needs us. I didn’t have leverage and he thought that the vice president was his. I’ll say this and let me be clear. No one man, including me, is worth an entire nation. I mostly wanted his forces at our disposal. Not to be harsh, but Cruz was a conciliation prize. I don’t know what tomorrow holds for our beleaguered nation. It will never be the same again, but I won’t let it completely die. You’ll have to ask me that question again when something like that happens. Does that make sense?”

Baxter nodded. He understood the difficult position they were in. “It does, sir, thank you.”

“So now that we’ve covered the good news, let’s talk about the PAE,” Conner said.

Over the next hour they covered everything they knew about the PAE. Some of the most critical intelligence had come from someone inside his army. A new resource, a man named Jordan, had come to them like an unexpected gift. Jordan was the leader of an insurgent group in Sacramento. All he would tell them was that he had someone on the inside feeding him information.

“As you know, these communications between us and Jordan just started coming in on an emergency frequency. His intelligence is interesting, but I would suggest we take some of it with caution,” Baxter commented.

“I understand the concern. How do we verify these are legitimate communications?” Conner asked.

“There’s no way to confirm anything until we have some feet on the ground down there. We need to meet with him. Only then can we adjust our movements and make operational decisions based upon his information,” said William Fillmore, commander of the Wyoming National Guard.

“Agreed. Can I send a team of special ops down there?” Barone requested.

“Yes, we need to know for sure. Let’s cover, though, what this Jordan person says is going on in the area,” Conner stated.

“There’s good news and bad news. We now know the leader of this Empire is a self-styled emperor. He’s a young Mexican national and the son of Alfredo Juarez, the largest cartel leader in Mexico. We now know from the people we captured and from the equipment that Barone told us they seized that they have been provided support from the Venezuelans. We don’t know if it’s state-sponsored.”

Conner interrupted Baxter and said, “Is there really a question of that? Of course it is. I should have nuked them when I had a trigger finger. We’ve not had diplomatic relations with them for years. It’s apparent the Venezuelans don’t like us and for a price they wouldn’t hesitate to sell a portion of their military. I think now we can start to make a connection that this Pablo and Venezuela might be the ones that orchestrated it all.”

Baxter jumped in and stated flatly, “Then that gives us justification to deploy nuclear weapons against Venezuela.”

“No, we are close to an arrangement for support from Australia. I don’t need to alienate them again,” Conner interjected.

“But didn’t you say that when you talked with their prime minister they denied involvement?” Fillmore asked Baxter

“Yes, they claim that their minister of defense was involved in the direct transaction. He hid the mass troop movement as humanitarian support for Mexico. Of course, we can’t find him. He’s missing,” Baxter added.

“We need to keep an open channel with Caracas and monitor them. Let’s get back to the PAE,” Conner said.

“Ah, where did we leave off?” Baxter asked. “Right here, okay. Pablo is commanding a large army of over twenty-five thousand men. It’s a mix of light infantry and mechanized infantry. He has no air support and his naval forces were destroyed, thank you, Colonel Barone. The situation on the ground in Sacramento reads right out of a history book about Nazi-occupied Paris. He took the capitol in a massive ground assault. The governor is missing and the lieutenant governor is now his prisoner. Jordan then goes on to report that his insurgency has inflicted some damage on the PAE Army by attacking supply lines and base camps. However, the PAE has implemented a plan to combat this by direct action against the civilian population. PAE commanders have created a civilian paramilitary force called—you’ll remember this name from before—the Villistas. They have just started to deploy them into the civilian population. They are harassing and killing at will anyone they feel is resisting or even providing support. Their tactics are ruthless. They have found records of locals who own firearms through old registration paperwork and are going to their homes to disarm them and confiscate those guns. They have accessed old paperwork from the local VA hospital on any vets in the area. They’re visiting them and forcing them to align with them or be killed.”

“Those sons of bitches!” Fillmore barked.

“I know. They’re using our old bureaucracy against us. The silver lining is the insurgency has stopped the PAE advance. They have been deploying mechanized recon units but their main advance has been halted. The word is once the Villistas are fully implemented, they will begin their march north.”

“And where’s that?” Conner asked.

“We don’t know.”

“Can Jordan find out? Get him to have his source provide that,” Conner ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Baxter responded.

“So what’s our next move, people?” Conner asked, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table.

“We have air, he doesn’t. Since we don’t have an organized ground force to send against him, we could bring support to the insurgency if it turns out to be real. We can immediately send down what special ops teams we can spare to coordinate attacks that will greatly reduce and impede his army,” Baxter recommended.

Fillmore jumped in. “We use our air to destroy all roads leading north. We level all bridges, et cetera. This will force his army to go overland. With spring coming, the softer ground will work for us and slow down wherever he advances to next.”

“I like what I’m hearing,” Conner said with a smile.

“We can beat him. All he has is an army. It is a powerful force but he can’t fall back to ships nor can he be resupplied now. The main concern I have is if he was the one who was behind the EMP and nuclear attacks, then he might have more of those types of weapons up his sleeve. I know you have removed the option of a nuclear response to the PAE off the table, but we have to have it as an option,” Baxter said.

“No nukes on our soil. I won’t do it,” Conner said flatly. “Do we know his overall motives for this attack?”

“We have some info on that, sir. This guy Pablo fashions himself a new Napoléon.”

“So we’re dealing with a total psychopath?” Conner asked rhetorically.

“Yes, sir, a total nut job, but a nut job with an army.”

Sacramento, California

“Where did he go?” Pablo asked the young man, a former staff person of the governor’s.

Both men were walking in the outside garden of the governor’s mansion. The man stuttered repeatedly as he told Pablo about Pasqual’s movements.

“So you saw him actually go inside the house?” Pablo asked. Apparently, Pasqual had taken a vehicle, and by himself left to go into a residential part of Sacramento. Given the conversation that he’d had with Isabelle, his interest was piqued.

“Yes,” the man answered.

“Did you know who he was seeing? Anything?”

“No, sir. He-he-he went in and sta-sta-stayed for about thirty minutes, then came out. I-I-I didn’t see anyone else.”

“You saw nothing unusual about his interactions with other officers?”

“No, sir. Looked, ah, ah, normal. Talking, laughing,” the man said.

“What can you tell me about the area?”

“Like what, sir?”

“Was it nice? Was it a ghetto?” Pablo asked.

“Average, not too nice, but-but not a ghet— bad place,” the man stuttered.

“Fine, keep watching him. I want to know everything he does. I need you to see who he’s following and next time, get me the address. Be smart and look for a name or mailbox,” Pablo said, patting the man on the back and ushering him off.