Acme Ranch
Southeast of Tucson, Arizona

“And in recap, the total number of United States Naval vessels known to have been sunk or sinking over the engagements of the last eighteen hours are as follows,” the buzzy and sometimes warbly voice crackled over the HAM radio. “Three aircraft carriers. Four attack submarines. Three Ticonderoga class cruisers. Six Arleigh Burke class destroyers. Nine littoral combat ships. And seventeen ships specific to refueling, supply, or amphibious assault. Entire squadrons of aircraft from all branches of the military have been hacked and are presumed destroyed. There is an unknown number of ships with smaller amounts of damage. Casualties to sailors and Marines are expected to be in the dozens of thousands. Stay tuned for our update in forty-five minutes. The next round of net check-ins may bring in additional facts regarding President Allen’s responses to the ongoing unprovoked attacks by China...”
As the American Contingency Radio Network operator provided his call sign to close his transmission, Bob turned the command post speakers down, reducing the buzz to a low hum. Everyone at Acme Ranch, except for most of the kids and the two people on watch up on the hill, was in the converted garage trying to grasp the gravity of what they were hearing. The air was scorching and still. Karen Kirkland realized she was finally hearing her heart pound in her ears, just in time to hear Jerome Washington’s wife Robin gasp loudly.
“That can’t be right!” Robin proclaimed, shaking her head as the tears that had been building up burst through the full seams at the bottom of her eyes. “Dear God!” she yelled a little louder, looking at Granger Madison… wishing Jerome weren’t on watch up on the hill at that moment.
This broke the seal on the emotional vacuum occupying the ranch’s principal center for monitoring radios, using maps, and tracking all activities. Soon Karen had taken a giant breath, too, as her body told her she’d been holding it in tense anticipation. Fred, Brad, Donna, Daniel… they were all joining in the most shocking news they’d heard since 9/11—truly the modern equivalent of what their grandparents and beyond had experienced on December 7th, 1941. Karen saw Tracy, Granger, and their guest—a Delta Force operator named Mikkel ‘VooDoo’ Hudson—exchange worried but knowing glances. Like Bob and her Uncle Claude, the men were all combat veterans. Despite that, this news was beyond anything their minds had told them was likely to happen in their lifetimes.
“What’s this mean?” Karen asked Granger, who was sitting in a folding chair, still recovering from the cartel IED that had rattled his cage a mere twenty-five hours earlier. The pair were nowhere near being ‘a couple’, though she had grown fond of their flirtatious small talk.
“I’m not sure…” the Road Runners’ leader admitted quietly, under the near din of worried, excited, angry emotions pouring out in the garage. He looked at the special forces master sergeant. “Is this Rampart Edge thing still a go? I mean—this Chinese-Mexican-Venezuelan buildup on the border no longer looks like political theater…”
VooDoo looked at the satellite phone in his hand. The display told him he still had a working network with which to receive calls. “Until I’m told otherwise, yes,” the hardened graying soldier said. “It would seem we are suddenly behind the eight ball. If anything, the need to align capable civilians just became a thousand times more urgent.” He eyeballed the scarred, retired-firefighter and former Marine before him. “But you’re in no shape to go, bro. I’ll handle it.”
“Too bad Lucky Charm took off for L.A.,” Granger said. “I might’ve taken you up on that. But you need to either take me or Tracy. No way am I letting you roll without someone to watch your back.”
“We can decide that in a few hours,” VooDoo said, scanning the Casio G-Shock on his wrist. “I’m going to grab a few Zs before this phone rings.” He made his way past the pair and the wall shelves filled with freeze-dried food and into the house.
Karen heard the commotion dying down. She could see Claude and Bob seated at the bench on the far wall, both with headsets on, each working a large HAM radio to try finding new signals and learning new information. Tracy had just wandered over to her and Granger. “Wheeewww…” was all he could say to his friend.
“I think I’m still heading north with VooDoo in the morning,” Granger told his younger buddy. He caught ranch owner Donna Wolf’s attention and gave her a request to come over with a small wave. “Tracy will be in charge of security while I’m out on the recruiting mission,” he told Donna. “You said something about caves to the west?”
“Yes,” Donna said, affirming with a quick nod. “About three miles. Technically on state-owned grazing land. But we and one other ranch are the legal users and custodians of the twenty-one thousand acres. Why?”
“I think that Tracy and Karen should spearhead a mission to scout those caves—and start setting them up as a bug out location.”

***

USS Lyndon B. Johnson DDG-1002
Northwestern Pacific Ocean

“What’s the status, XO?” Navy Captain Millie Goldberg said smoothly, voice releasing just a fraction of the tension into the handset of the ship’s sound-powered phone. She was on the LBJ’s bridge, taking a rare respite from her feet in her Skipper’s chair on the starboard side. The bridge was about halfway up the smooth, angled surface of the unique vessel’s lone structure above the main deck. Built for stealth and superior wave-cutting, the long slender hull had helped the nearly brand-new ship survive the nuclear-torpedo-caused tsunami that had wiped out a large portion of the northern fleet, including the mighty supercarrier, USS Halsey. LBJ and her crew were attempting to thread the fine needle of balance between rescuing fellow sailors from the freezing ocean and searching for Chinese threats.
“Less than one minute, Captain!” Executive Officer Commander Agwe Bailey hollered into his handset over the roar of the January Pacific wind and rain. His accent always present, the native Jamaican had spent an entire career working to perfect his English for just such a moment. The muscular 41-year-old was almost always smiling, despite his role as the ship’s number two officer. The XO role was one akin to a motorcycle club’s enforcer, always ensuring areas were inspection ready and sailors who lacked discipline were kept in line. But the events of the previous two days had driven the smiles and positivity out of every surviving soul. The incredulous feeling that war was breaking out with China remained. It was the Captain and XO’s roles to keep people performing their jobs. “The last survivors are moving into the hangar bay. We’re pulling the Jacob’s ladder up right now!”
“Copy, XO. Sea Snake 21 is reporting that the group of rafts to the southwest are empty. I’m suspending the rescue and recovery for the night, and there’s a good chance we’re being re-tasked sometime in the next several minutes. Have the 1st Lieutenant take over the intake of survivors. Get yourself dried and fed and be in the CIC in thirty minutes.” I think we need to get that helo back on the deck, pronto, she concluded silently. Better get to the Combat Information Center.
Millie didn’t even wait for the acknowledgment. She cradled the black plastic phone and stepped back down off the swiveling stool, left knee creaking and frozen with arthritis and pain. “OOD,” she said, calling the Officer-of-the-Deck over, who had just finished taking a report from the ship’s Damage Control Central on a different handset. “I’m heading to CIC. The rescue detail will be reporting stowed for sea shortly. When they do, make your heading 115 at twenty knots.”
Millie worked her knees a bit as she departed, barely hearing the OOD repeat the orders and call out to the bridge team that the captain was departing. She proceeded aft down the short centerline passageway and zigged left up the inclined ladder to the next deck. Moving aft once more, she ended at the closed door. They were much too high off the waterline for needing watertight hatches at this point. She twisted the knob, realizing that the space might need to go back to 24-hour protection. At sea, the only persons on board were presumably the crew. But ever since she’d heard about the Chinese special warfare assault on the Russian fleet, the possibility of such an event happening to them was not too far back in her thoughts.
“Ops,” she said as she walked into the dark space, shooting a quick left and then right past two blackened panels meant to keep hallway light out. Everyone working in the CIC was kept at near-night-vision to enable longer and easier durations of staring at electronic screens.
“Aye, Cap’n,” a very tired Lieutenant Commander Dennis Bates called out in the dark, responding to the nickname for his role as the Operations Department Head.
“Flight ops,” Millie announced as she squinted and made her way toward her Ops Officer. “Let’s move the rescued to the mess decks and the infirmary. I want Sea Snake 21 back on deck in twenty, if possible.”
“New orders, ma’am?” the mid-level officer asked. The secure comms center was part of the overall tactical brain buried in the ship’s upper structure. Even though the top-secret message had been sent straight to the captain, he knew she’d be briefing him shortly.
“Just a warning order,” she advised. “We’re going to progress east-southeast and keep our eyes and ears peeled until the new orders arrive. On a separate note, let’s start locking the accesses to all the sensor spaces like we’re in port.”
The bulb turned on over Ops’ head. “Good thought, Cap’n” he mumbled, not able to stifle a yawn as he spoke. “Sorry, Ma’am.”
“Of course, Ops. We can’t sustain this pace without risking a greater catastrophe. We undoubtedly will be engaged at some point. I’ll be addressing the crew shortly. We’ll be going to a port-starboard rotation soon.” The crew would remain in a modified battle-ready condition of General Quarters, with half of them being allowed to go eat and take naps. Dennis Bates went to make Millie Goldberg’s orders for the helicopter come to life.
She took a fresh look at all the tactical data the ship was taking in—known or suspected contacts under, on, or over the ocean… Radio and satellite transmissions… Input from their drones and military satellites, not to mention the ship’s own long-range cameras. The last known positions of the Chinese subs, combined with the amount of time that had passed, led her to be gravely concerned. The only recompense was that the artificial tsunami had been just as damaging to their own craft. Then there was the space threat. So far, China had shown no restraint at lobbing devastating tungsten slugs from space. Team LBJ literally had to scan continuously in all possible directions for the next attack. Millie cracked her own yawn and headed toward the exit. I should go down and see how these Halsey survivors are doing, she thought.

***

USS Lyndon B. Johnson DDG-1002
Northwestern Pacific Ocean

Carmen Martinez watched the chaos in the LBJ’s hangar slowly become more organized. Various sailors from the destroyer’s crew were barking orders and performing tasks. Blankets were being handed out. Corpsman and the ship’s doctor were working with engineers to frisk the crew for radioactive particulates. As the once mighty warship had split open from missiles, internal explosions, and crashing after the giant wave sent their bow skyward, the two nuclear reactor compartments could no longer contain their Pandora. Radioactive coolant water had mixed with the cold, salty sea, covering some of the sailors with various levels of contamination. A decision had been made to decontaminate all the survivors, regardless of readings. Wash-down shelters had been constructed out of tarps and folding frames, set over tougher plastic tarps to catch the water. It was destined to be thrown back into the sea, but it needed to be kept from reaching every crack and crevice in the helicopter bay.
“Next!” Carmen heard a female corpsman yell. “You! Name!”
“Mar-Martinez,” Carmen stammered, still shivering. Ten hours in the round orange covered raft had been more than enough cold exposure for her. I’m never going in the ocean again, she’d thought a hundred times. “C-C-Carmen. DC3,” she added, letting the person know she was a third-class damage control specialist.
“Step into the cofferdam,” the corpsman told her, pointing as if explaining to a five-year-old.
Carmen didn’t mind. Between fighting fire and flooding, jumping off the sinking ship, and floating in the life raft, she did not know when the last time she’d slept was. I just wish I could wake up from this nightmare, she thought, reminding her of months earlier in Washington State when she’d had a similar thought. She stepped over the lip to the temporary pool and moved in next to another sailor, a male, who was mostly undressed. The LBJ’s crew just didn’t have the space, materials, or manpower to worry about something vain like mixing the genders in the wash-down.
“Strip and throw all of your garments into the chute!” she heard a male sailor order, voice and face muffled by a full-face respirator and a full set of rubber rain gear. During the horrendous experience, her mind wandered once more to watching her friends—most of them—unable to escape the tilting aircraft carrier. Where’s Dustin? And Cobra? she wondered. Those were the two men from her life raft that she actually knew before the tragedy. She felt the healing powers of warm water from a rubber hose and nozzle cover her from head down.
“C’mon, shipmate,” she heard the voice behind the mask once more. He was not unsympathetic. It was just the tone of a tired sailor with a long night ahead of him. “Toss the uniform. We have coveralls waiting for you.” He had a long-handled brush and was dunking the hard red plastic bristles into a bucket of soapy water.
Carmen felt the burn of feeling returning to her frozen hands as the warm water ran over her. She fumbled through the process of doffing her uniform and undergarments. After the SOBs in Washington had their way with me, how bad can this be? she asked herself. In the last two months, she’d used a strict workout regimen as her post-rape therapy. Between that and Cobra’s Jiu Jitsu classes, she’d made her petite frame hard. Almost buff.
She felt the bristles as the sailor begin to scrub her head and scalp, joined after a moment by the brush of a second sailor. “Keep moving forward,” she heard a different voice say. Through the soapy foam and mere slits of her eyes, she could see the male survivor ahead of her stepping out of the cofferdam up ahead. She moved into his spot as the sailors kept scrubbing. No place was too private in the attempt to remove from her skin any contamination she may have swum through.
When ordered to, she stepped out of the cofferdam into the open towel being held by a female officer. “Step through the forward centerline hatch and head port,” the woman instructed. “You’ll be led into the air detachment maintenance office.”
Carmen did as ordered, continuing the procession as one of 137 survivors that LBJ had picked up from her sunken ship. She’d been guided through the process by LBJ sailors all along the way, receiving a set of coveralls that had been donated by a crew member. More radioactive readings, another recounting of her name and rank, and she and the others ultimately found themselves on the ship’s mess decks. The smell of the space had been nearly identical to the Halsey’s, instantly bringing back a flood of memories. Sandwiches had been prepared. There were personnel specialists assigning Halsey sailors a place to go sleep via the old-school ‘hot rack’ method. LBJ crew members just going on watch for the night would not need their bunks. It wasn’t a great solution, but it got the Halsey crew members out of the way while the destroyer’s crew went about the tasks necessary to find the enemy before it found them.
Carmen found herself in the berthing compartment for female sailors near the head of the ship. It plowed up and down through the waves and rocked port-to-starboard a lot more than she’d been used to sailing on the carrier. She found the correct rack, and after a trip to the bathroom, planted herself behind the blue privacy curtain. Will try to find Dustin later, she decided. The tough Latina fought back the well of tears building behind her eyes as the emotional toil caught up. God. I don’t know how much more I can take…