Dark Days of the After (Book 3): Dark Days of the Apostasy Read online

  At one point in time, Quan had hoped Tacoma’s former military presence would turn the tide against the Chicoms, but the former President had called on all military aged men and women to settle the wars of the world. This was an impossible feat that left Naval Station Whidbey Island and Naval Station Everett all but barren. Camp Murray Army Base and McChord AFB were also left with skeleton crews as Seattle's military were eventually stationed around the globe. The west coast vulnerabilities were the ones most concerning to American citizens, yet the President expressed his confidence in the Coast Guard, who quickly deployed to other locations shortly after the Commander in Chief's grand speech. The last lines of defense to were the nuclear subs, but they were soon deployed as well, leaving Tacoma and Seattle open to Chicom influence, and then complete control.

  Very few people knew of the Chicom’s utopian location, but Quan had high-level contacts who might have heard about a small valley in Yale, Washington that happened to be surrounded on three sides with steep hills, and on the fourth side, a river. Quan was told this was the Chicom paradise. For sustainability, it had a great growing season, fertile soil and was extremely close to water. From a defensible position, it was shielded and sheltered by three walls of steep hills with a tight inlet to funnel traffic in and a waterway to bug out through if overrun. Even better, it was within a day’s drive of the ports.

  To Quan, it sounded amazing. It was too bad the scourge of the earth would soon call Yale home.

  Clearing his mind, Quan had things to do. He needed to focus. Especially now. As part of the receiving team for the barge, he managed to get access to the shipping manifest, then tried to calm his mind when he realized the printout was just about as thick as the Bible.

  All around the transformers were crates containing the tools, equipment, and all the parts and wiring necessary to install the new transformers. There was also a gas tanker for refilling and a reinforced eighteen wheeler complete with a mounted Minigun for transport security.

  There was a fleet of armored riot vehicles, Humvees and a small fleet of CAIC WZ-10 Chinese tactical helicopters designated to the Arizona team. With a crew of two for each helo, and the weaponry to clear a path through even the nastiest of SAA troops, the air support would be transported by ground and used only as a necessity. If the stabilization team didn’t arrive and contain Palo Verde in short order, the nuclear meltdown could turn the United States into a veritable wasteland, destroying the fifty-year plan of occupation and overthrow.

  Quan knew that—besides the Christian and Muslim genocide, and the complete decimation of America—the Chicoms only cared about decommissioning the nuclear reactors, wiping the west coast clean of dissidents, and forming their new utopia in Washington.

  Quan, and many other Chicom defectors, represented not only the Chinese dissidents, but the American Resistance. The Chicom reign of power needed to come to an end. But so far, The Resistance was losing on multiple fronts. Quan’s team back home tried to warn other chapters of The Resistance about the quiet Chicom infiltration that happened in early 2020, but in 2027, the occupation became public and uncontested by the US government. It was in the open. Just recently, they tried warning their American counterparts that the EMP was imminent, but it was already too late.

  Now that the western half of the US was in societal meltdown, did they stand the chance of at least mobilizing for an assault on the Chicoms, and eventually their utopia? He tried to think long term, even though his short term objectives were terrifying. To succeed in overthrowing the occupation, Quan knew he needed his American allies. They were waiting for him now.

  He had to defect, and quickly.

  Tonight.

  Solar generators were set up all along the base, night becoming day as the unloading of the barges got underway. He worked for the first four hours, to the time when everyone had their heads in their tasks and things were moving in some sort of order.

  When he could squirrel away and get some privacy, he quickly keyed the walkie-talkie and said, “Q17 here, copy if you read me.”

  “Copy Q17, you’re secure,” the voice said.

  “Transport vessels are here,” Quan said. “Is the launch path secure?”

  “Traffic count is zero, pedestrians eight. We have crossing guards to assist with the transition if necessary. Just need your ETA.”

  The plan was for Quan to hijack a loaded truck of his choice and get out of the city as fast as possible. He now had the truck, the keys and the nerve to move. He also had the worst butterflies in his life, but he wasn’t telling anyone that. Once he was clear of the port, he’d head north and pray the Chicoms didn’t catch on, or that the SAA wouldn’t intercept him. Either scenario was a death sentence.

  “The package is secure,” Quan said. “I just need to pick it up.”

  “Any word from on high?” the voice asked. He was referring to local Resistance, their counterparts.

  “Reports of heavy traffic on the Oregon border. Major pileup and fatalities. A cleanup crew is on their way, but the locals might need additional support. We have to get there before cleanup crews arrive.” Meaning assassination and annihilation battalions.

  “Copy that,” the voice said. “We’re ready and able to provide support.”

  “I’ll be in touch, over,” he said, his nerves now dancing.

  “Copy that, over and out.”

  Quan stowed the walkie-talkie, swallowed the biggest lump in his throat and prepared to vacate the secure facility. As he walked out among the flurry of dock workers, he casually headed to the vehicle he’d identified as one of the many troop transports heading to Palo Verde. It had weapons and ammo, some food stores, and room for fifteen troops, plus two up front.

  When he got to the truck, he saw two men at work nearby. There were others around, but they all had their heads in their own tasks. And since it was darker over there, far enough from the reach of the artificial lights, he had a small modicum of cover.

  He stabbed the first man in the stomach, then cut his throat. The second man he caught with three sharp jabs into the armpit and a final one in the throat. He whipped the blade out, wiped it off on the man’s coat, then dragged both bodies into the dark where he rolled them under a nearby truck and out of sight.

  Swallowing against a slight upsurge of puke, high on adrenaline and fear, he got in the truck, started it up and checked the gauges, specifically the gas. The tank was full. He gave a relieved sigh as he backed up the vehicle. When he was clear, he navigated his way through the chaos of the port, eventually reaching the checkpoint with his manifest ready.

  When he pulled up, the guard took his manifest, then went and looked in the back of the transport. The fact that he had no troops back there was cause for concern. When the guard came back up with that look on his face, he smiled.

  “Where are your troops?” the man asked in Chinese.

  “I was ordered to pick them up offsite. Apparently they’re behind schedule for us and need all the hands they can get. We’ve got a Palo Alto team all set.”

  “I haven’t heard about this,” he said, suspicion weighing heavy in his eyes.

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it, too,” he said, casual even though he had his pistol on his lap, ready to use it. Behind them, someone honked. There was a line building. The guard handed the manifest back, then waved him through.

  Quan took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then smiled and drove through the checkpoint. He quietly navigated the given route into the heart of Long Beach where his contacts in The Resistance were waiting for him.

  It took a good hour to find the rendezvous point, but he didn’t encounter any issues with the SAA or the Chicoms, so that was cherry. Apparently no one wanted to fight in the dark.

  When he arrived, he was greeted curtly, and then the entire advance team loaded into the back of the transport.

  Longwei Zhon climbed into the cab, looked at him a long time, then smiled. “I didn’t think you’d be able to pull this off,”
Longwei said in perfect English.

  “I was worried myself,” Quan repeated in English. “Yet here I am.”

  “We’re ready when you are,” he said.

  “Good.”

  Quan started the vehicle then headed for the highway. They passed through the checkpoint using the manifest, his rank and the fifteen troops in the rear of the vehicle. Almost all of them were Chinese, and all were dissidents dressed as Chicoms.

  “Shao Xiao Chen is missing,” Quan told Longwei.

  A look of thrilled disbelief crossed Longwei’s face and he said, “Do you think…?”

  “I think Harper and her team took him out,” Quan said. “If that’s the case, this is a major victory for The Resistance.”

  With a grim look and no enthusiasm, he said, “Da Xiao Zheng has ordered a recon team followed by a large assault force to converge on Five Falls. I’m assuming that’s where Shao Xiao Chen was stopped.”

  “What kind of lead time do we have?” Longwei asked.

  Longwei Zhon had a bulletproof reputation, but he looked younger than his thirty-one years in the low light. Quan wondered if his team was as talented as was reported. Quan himself didn’t come into his prime until his late thirties, experience and failure being the finest of teachers. He didn’t trust many people under the age of forty.

  “We don’t have a lead time,” he said. “We’re playing catch up.”

  “What?” he asked.

  Quan nodded.

  “How far are we behind?” he asked.

  “A day, maybe two at most,” Quan said. “The convoy is large and slow. They’re moving a tank, which is a strong show of force, but a travel impediment and a huge drain on fuel.”

  “What are they planning?” Longwei asked after a few hours of nighttime travel.

  “They want to move the Army through California, up Interstate 5 and into the major Oregon cities. Mop up teams and high altitude bombers will level the cities, save for Diablo Canyon, tightening up our path and making it difficult for the SAA to follow us on foot.”

  “We have to secure Oregon and Washington,” Longwei said.

  “We need to pick our battles, play this thing right,” Quan said. “We’ll also need to secure Five Falls, but we need to let those transformers through. If we can do that, time will eventually be our friend. In other words, we need to win this battle, but let the Chicoms feel like they won the war.”

  “We can’t do that,” Longwei said. “If we even breathe a word of this to The Resistance, they’ll have our heads. If I know Skylar and Harper, they’ll be dug in already.”

  “They have yet to hear my pitch,” Quan said. “The utopia the Chicoms plan on building for themselves will be the utopia we take from them. That’s why we need to amass our troops, fortify our will, then work out a rock solid strategy.”

  “You never expected America to survive this, did you?” Longwei asked.

  Solemnly, Quan shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “What about the cities?”

  “The Chicoms have been corralling the bulk of the population into the cities through the Strong Cities Initiatives started a decade ago. They wooed them in with technology and convenience, and then they cut off the supply lines and freedoms to the rural areas through fires and outright assaults. Now that everyone is contained, they’ll be easy to destroy. High yield, high containment explosives will level everything. We’ve got fleets of bombers on their way now.”

  “Are these contained nuclear strikes?” Longwei asked, concerned.

  Quan shook his head and said, “They weren’t willing to risk the fallout, so they opted for something less consequential.”

  “There will be survivors,” he said.

  “Not for long.”

  “When is President Hu planning his arrival?” Longwei asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The entire west coast will be a wasteland.”

  “Only California,” Quan said. “There will be enough untouched land in these coastal cities that we can clear the Chicom rats and later build upon the paradise in Yale, free of the smoke, the congestion and the noise of the current occupation.”

  “What about the rest of America?” he asked.

  “It seems Hu is resolute in letting the SAA, the EU and the AA fight over everything but the west coast. In the process of leveling California, they’re thinking they can stamp out the SAA, or at least dissuade them. Word is, Hu is in talks with the EU and the AA for uncontested control of the land he’s already taken.”

  “What does the SAA say?”

  “They are predictably belligerent,” Quan said. “They believe this was their land long before it was America’s land.”

  “Well that’s just stupid.”

  “You know these zealots when they get on their soapboxes. They never did wrong, they were the victims, the world owes them an apology and reparations. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “I could care less about the ideology,” Longwei grumbled. “I just want to know what we’re going to do.”

  “We have to catch up to that convoy and hope the recon team doesn’t take out the crew in Five Falls.”

  “What happens when we reach the convoy?” Longwei asked.

  “We pray your team knows how to fight.”

  “They do,” he assured Quan. Then: “Have you had contact with either Skylar or Harper?”

  “Harper yes, but Skylar went dark around the time of the EMP. We don’t think she survived. Five Falls was the fall back location, the eventual stronghold. So who knows? Maybe she’s already there.”

  “My team can fight, but honestly Quan, I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop what’s coming.”

  “I know,” he said in the darkness. “This I know.”

  Quan and Longwei traveled through the night, encountering little resistance along the way, which surprised them both.

  “Why do you think the roads are so empty?” Longwei asked.

  “Think of the incoming barges in Long Beach and LA as the trough. Right now, it’s feeding time for the locals. Especially after the EMP. The chatter has been rampant though, at least on the lines of communication still operational. A lot of the Chicoms don’t think the EMP was a good idea. They’re nervous about resources, and many of them think the event was triggered too late. The South American Army has air support they brought in after the EMP hit and now they’re attacking some of the more northern cities. It’s got everyone hunkered down and waiting.”

  “So now that the barges are arriving, they’re either down there picking up supplies or they’re dug in and waiting?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well then, I guess our timing isn’t so bad,” Longwei said.

  An hour later, they encountered the convoy. Quan felt a rise in his blood pressure. This was not excitement per se, more like a tightening of the sphincter.

  “Is this them?” Longwei asked, a pair of binoculars up to his eyes. “I mean, it could be.”

  He handed the binos to Quan.

  “I don’t know,” he said, checking out the line of vehicles in the darkness. “It’s not as big as I thought it would be.”

  The convoy was maybe half a mile ahead. Longwei took the binos back, watched them from a distance, then said, “They’re turning off the road. It looks like they’re hitting a rest station. Should we take the chance?”

  “I think we have to,” he said. “They’re big enough to be a threat, but I’m still concerned they aren’t big enough to be the assault force we’re looking for.”

  They stopped a quarter mile from the convoy, which had indeed come to a stop at a rest station. Everyone piled out of the truck to stretch.

  “What’s our ROE?” Longwei asked.

  “We’re going to need a recon/forward assault team,” Quan said, looking around at the men and enjoying the cool, fresh air. “We’ll be weapons ready, but with the intent of observation and reporting. We do not engage the targets until we confirm they are indeed the targets.” />
  “How will we know that?” one of the soldiers asked. He was already locked and loaded, like he’d been waiting for this the same way a kid waits for Christmas.

  “Best guess based on intel. It’s my call, clear?”

  “Clear,” everyone said.

  Longwei situated his immediate team, then he and Quan suited up, put on their NVGs and ran through a quick comms check. When they were ready, the recon team set off into the dark as six men, or the “Inner Circle.” The IC6 consisted of Quan, Longwei and two counterparts each. The “Outer Circle” consisted of four snipers and a man on the RPG. That was the OC5. The remaining men and women held their positions, watching over the vehicle and its contents, as well as monitoring comms should the IC6 call for drone surveillance and/or support. At that point, no one wanted to set up the drones until the target was at least confirmed. It was contrary to regular protocol, but with everything being so quiet, they opted for HUMINT (human intelligence) first, followed by overhead observation, should the situation require it.

  After a final comms check, Quan and his two men set off for the eastern end of the rest station while Longwei and his two men circled around through the trees and the hillside, reading off troop count and movements as they went. It seemed everyone was just taking a piss, stretching out and jaw jacking.

  “IC1 to IC4, what’s your location, out?” Quan said.

  “Getting into position now,” Longwei answered quietly. “Troop count from current observation point twenty-six. I repeat, two six. Vehicle count is four Jeeps, a troop transport, and a supply truck. I can’t get in close enough for a cargo check, but it might be worth a look, just in case. Especially if this convoy just came from the trough.”

  “Any sign of a tank, Humvees, anti-aircraft guns?” Quan asked.

  “Negative,” Longwei answered.

  “Can we split the pack and neutralize targets without losing troops?” Quan asked, not sure if he wanted to go down that road, but certain that every living Chicom was a threat.

  “Copy that,” Longwei said. “You do thirteen, I do thirteen. Have OC5 on standby watching the vehicles and the bathroom, although I think these guys probably prefer the bushes.”