White Wasteland, Jeff Kirkham [ebook reader with highlight function TXT] 📗

the radio. His own team, the two Ferrets and the thirty Lions from Wheaton’s garrison watched the mounting catastrophe from a thousand feet over the I-15 freeway. It was Wednesday morning. Chad’s prediction of battle had been off by one day.

“It looks like the damn Civil War. The original one,” Wheaton said.

Jeff radioed back. “Roger. Do they have technicals?”

Evan could see columns of men walking down the freeway from the gates of the gravel yard. No vehicles were joining them, which made sense since the freeway was packed with dead cars.

“Negative. Just infantry. Looks like three thousand men, give or take.”

“Good copy. Three thousand troops. Any movement to the flanks?” Jeff asked.

“A small mounted force seems to be loading up in Jeeps and trucks and heading east toward the backside of Traverse Mountains. Negative on movement to the west.” Evan needed to move out to get into blocking positions against the flanking move. It would take the enemy at least forty-five minutes to get near the top of his mountain, but that wasn’t much time to get set.

“Copy. Let me know as the battlefield develops. Jeff out.”

Evan understood Jeff’s newest battle plan, and Evan had concerns. Serious concerns. In war, simple plans worked best. Complex strategies became soggy oatmeal very quickly.

This level of complexity wasn’t how Jeff worked. Ever. It was doubly perplexing. Jeff had adopted an entirely new playbook, wholesale, on the eve of the most lopsided fight they’d ever attempted.

Up until now, focused violence had been the beginning and the end of Jeff’s toolkit, and it’d always gotten the job done.

This new thing, with dozens of moving parts, had Evan’s head swimming in doubt.

But now the die was cast. They would live or die by this overblown battle plan, so help them God.

I-15 Freeway

Point of the Mountain, Utah

Jeff couldn’t see the actual enemy, but he could see mist rising off the freeway—the harbinger of body heat. The morning cold was turning to fog as it touched the skin of his enemies and mingled with their breath. He knew what three thousand men looked like, though he’d never faced that many on the battlefield. He’d seen them in stadiums, so he could picture them as an army. Even so, the whorls of vapor twisting up from the freeway implied a true multitude of men, primed to kill, and in great enough numbers to impact the weather in the canyon.

A chill went down Jeff’s spine. He shrugged it off and hardened his eyes.

“Call them back now. Tell them to RUN!” Jeff barked at Zach, his radioman.

“Pull back. Run. Run!” Zach urged into his radio handset.

Jeff’s electrical technicians burst out of the tangle of dead cars in the freeway and rushed back, dragging wires, tools and their rifles. Jeff stepped up on top of the Jersey barrier and urged them on—not shouting at them, but waving like a madman to get them back to cover.

All night, they had been setting up IEDs and claymores, working with red lights and doing their best to string together a complex system of tripwires and remote controls. They’d rushed the whole enterprise and Jeff hadn’t a clue what’d been left incomplete.

Had all the control wires been connected?

That would naturally be the last thing when dealing with high explosives.

Jeff waved with even more urgency. Some of his men dropped what they were carrying and doubled their run. The roiling mist flooded down the freeway toward them, with only the cars blocking sight of the enemy.

His first men hit the barricades and leapt over. They heaved for air and scrambled to ready their rifles. Jeff searched the incoming faces for Frank—his lead man on the crew of electricians who had worked all night on their trap.

Jeff couldn’t find him. Maybe he’d already jumped the barricade. He couldn’t see Frank in the last group of running electricians, and there was no time to search the barricades. He would have to fight without knowing the status of the explosives.

His Homestead riflemen had moved into position at five o’clock in the morning. President Thayer had marched all night the night before and had shown up an hour earlier with an additional three hundred men. Jeff’s entire force consisted of four hundred and fifty men.

He had no time to brief the Mormon squad leaders, so he placed them two tiers back in the barricades and told them not to shoot until his own men fired first. They had no time for anything except the simplest instructions.

Unfortunately, this put the men of the Homestead at the front of the Mormon civil war—the first to die. The shock troops. The cannon fodder.

Jeff simply had no time to think through the implications of how this fight might impact the Homestead. Almost every man from the Homestead who could shoot a gun, and who hadn’t gone with Tye, was on the front line. If this went badly, the Homestead would be vaporized.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Jeff had to leave it at that. There was no turning back.

President Thayer stepped up beside him. He’d been praying with the men. He and Jeff hadn’t yet briefed.

“May the Lord hold us all in His mighty hand. North and South. May he give Elder Burnham the wisdom to turn his hand from this awful course.” The LDS president prayed out loud.

“Burnham’s dead. I’m pretty sure,” Jeff stated. His eyes were glued to the churning mist as it filtered through the vehicles.

“How so?” President Thayer asked.

“I’m sorry sir. There’s no time. Please get down. In fact, go all the way to the back. Please leave. Now.”

Jeff wondered whether President Thayer, technically his boss, was going to second-guess his orders. The man squeezed Jeff’s shoulder, turned, and trotted to the back of the rows of barricades.

Jeff raised his binoculars and picked through the gray forms of the dead cars.

This time, he saw movement.

“I’m pulling chocks and moving to intercept the flanking element,” Evan reported over his radio.

“Negative. Send Wheaton. I need your eyes.