Firepower, John Cutter [best summer reads .txt] 📗

Vince felt a sharp twinge, hearing that. He kind of liked Shaun Adler, and it didn’t feel good to deceive him. Maybe there’d be a chance to help him, later on…

Shaun shook his head. “But… I feel bad about Bobby. He should have a right to his own opinion, you know? America and the… the Second Amendment?”

“First Amendment. But yeah. He should have that right.”

“Gustafson seems to think you’re our new star around here, Vince. I was wondering if you could say a word to him — see if he’ll think about letting Bobby go. I’m small potatoes, man, but you…”

“I haven’t been here long. Not even half a potato yet.”

“You’re the most expert guy we’ve got. Rumor is he has something big planned for you.”

“Something to do with Operation Firepower?”

“I don’t know anything about that. But I guess Gustafson’s going to make some big announcement at the Erntefest.”

“Which is — what?” He’d heard the term before somewhere…

“The harvest festival. Like in old Germany. The Brethren have it every year.”

Then Vince remembered where he’d heard the term Erntefest. From Aktion Erntefest — the Nazi code name for the program to exterminate the Jews…

*

Vince had just finished the morning round of Centurion training, beneath a sullen gray sky threatening rain, when Mary Lou, the stocky, black-haired Shield Maiden came to get him. “The General would like to see you.” She had a slight Serbian accent. She smiled at Vince, in a way that made her cheeks widen and her receding chin seem to vanish into a dimple. “Um — right away, if you please.”

“Sure thing. Tell Marco, will you?”

He jogged up toward the open gate of the compound and in a few minutes was standing at parade rest in front of Gustafson’s desk. Behind the seated “General” was a PC screen hanging on the wall.

“You asked to see me, General?”

“Yes, have a seat, Vincent.”

Vince sat at the chair across from him. “Any word on Deek Fisk, sir?”

“No. We’ve put out a national alert for him, as we suspect he’s simply deserted. It happens, now and then. Such men must be found and…” He shrugged. “Let’s concentrate on the business at hand.” Gustafson opened a laptop and tapped a key. A map-style layout of a group of streets and buildings, unlabeled, appeared on the big screen, in brown, white, green and blue. Gustafson took the laptop in his hands and turned to look at the map.

“Vincent — you were an officer, with a lot of combat experience, much of it in urban battlefields. I need your know-how, your experience — some advice, really. It’s for a… writing project. I’m doing a book about tactics, you see. So a what-if situation.”

All this sounded rather rehearsed to Vince, as if Gustafson had sketched it out in his mind ahead of time.

Inside a green circle was a rectangle, probably meant to represent a large building… There were few other details. A blue indicator might indicate a river running a little distance behind the building. Five streets ran orthogonally from off the map to meet the circles.

“This is a hypothetical battlefield situation?” Vince asked.

“Purely hypothetical. Now…” Gustafson tapped the laptop and an oblong of red appeared on the screen. “Here you see a substantial gathering, perhaps a thousand people, on a green in front of a large building.” He used the laptop cursor to indicate the red blob and the big rectangle. “Now, looking at the terrain, what would be the most efficient way, short of a bombardment or truck bomb, to attack that gathering, with maximum effect in the shortest time?”

“I don’t know what the ranges are, the distances between objects; I can’t see most of the terrain. I don’t know how many soldiers are involved. If you give me a clear picture of the whole scenario, sir, I can advise you.”

“Hmph.” Gustafson stared at the image for a moment, then shook his head. “I cannot… at this time…” He broke off and switched off the image entirely. “Perhaps when you’ve proven yourself. And in fact, that’s the other matter I wanted to talk to you about. I believe the time has come…”

“Yes sir? For what?”

“I need you to kill some people for the Brethren. Certain people in a certain place. Then we’ll know you are one of us.”

Vince waited a beat, then another. Then he nodded. “I’ll need to know who and where before I can get it done, General.”

Gustafson told him.

Before returning to Centurion training, Vince went to the library and pulled the Slavic/English dictionary one inch out from the other books.

*

A little before nine that night, carrying pen and paper, Vince returned to the Wolf Base library, took out a volume of Goethe and brought it to a corner table. He waited, leafing through the book to look busy and to keep his mind occupied. But he was tired — lifting three hundred-pound logs will do that to you — and he was puzzled. How was he going to handle this?

The targets Gustafson had given him were supposedly treasonous former Brethren, who’d started their own white nationalist faction. Theoretically, the world would be better off without them. They were just more domestic terrorists waiting for their moment, waiting to figure out exactly who to massacre, and how.

But he only had Gustafson’s word for that. There could be a hundred complications. They could have kids around them, for starters.

There was an option outside the box. He could make his move now. He could kill Gustafson, Mac Colls, all the key inside people here. He could release Bobby Destry, get into the armory, find the explosives, destroy their base — and the other Brethren probably wouldn’t carry out the plan. They’d be leaderless…

But then, killing Bin Laden hadn’t stopped Al