Finally, a woman’s voice rose above the sound.
“The dark has deepened sufficiently,” she said. “Go to the other fields, go to the town. Do as you desire.”
The crowd slowly dispersed, heading off in different directions as she calmly walked over to the machine shop and fetched a road flare from within. It snapped to life, illuminating her grotesque features harshly against the dark of the night sky. Her face was drawn back, leather stretched over bone, a permanent sickly grin exposing her teeth as she tossed the flare underhanded into the oil spill.
It sputtered for a moment, almost seeming to go out, and then, with a roar that shook the ground, a plume of flame erupted against the dark. The woman turned around, shielding her eyes from the glare as she walked off the compound and turned north to town.
“Captain, we just received an emergency call from Barrow.”
“What’s the situation?” Captain Ronald Tyke asked, glancing over as the mate walked in.
“Riot.”
The single word was delivered in a disbelieving tone, and Tyke didn’t blame him. He stiffened, looking over at the man. “A what?”
“That’s what the call said.…A riot has broken out in Barrow.”
Tyke thought about it briefly, frowning. “Was there a Greenpeace protest scheduled or something?”
“No, sir, nothing of that kind. Summer season has passed; most of those hippy types don’t hang around for long once the temperature starts to drop. The low light this time of year makes for bad photo ops, anyway.”
Tyke grunted, but nodded in agreement. “All right, well, how big is it?”
“Apparently there have been fatalities, and the local police can’t shut it down.”
“Crap.”
“Yes, sir.”
After thinking quietly for a moment, Tyke said, “Have our course changed to take us to Barrow, shortest route. And relay the call to Alaskan Command. I think they’re the only ones with enough warm bodies to break up any serious fight.”
“It’ll probably be over long before either of us get within a hundred miles of the place.”
“I know. We’ll make the calls anyway. We don’t want things to get out of hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“General, a strange call just get kicked up the chain.”
Brigadier General Alphonse looked up as his aide walked into his office with a printed communiqué. “What is it?” he grunted.
“Civilian request for aide in Barrow, sir. There’s a riot in progress.”
The general blinked. “What?”
“Just what I said, sir.”
“Not our jurisdiction. Kick it over to the state troopers.”
“Yes, sir, I did. They don’t have any way to get enough people up there.”
“How many people could they need?”
“Apparently it’s a big riot.”
“Fine, we’ll give them a plane. We can do that much without stepping on any toes.” The general paused for a moment, then frowned. “How big?”
“I was wondering the same thing, so I put in a request for some recon photos,” the sergeant admitted, looking a little guilty.
The general just chuckled — he wasn’t going to make a fuss about whether all the forms had been filled out right or the request had been cleared through the proper channels. He wanted the information too, after all. “And?”
“It’s a big riot, sir.”
The general stiffened at his sergeant’s tone. He’d never known the man to exaggerate, and he didn’t like how serious he sounded. Wordlessly he accepted the paper that the other man handed him, noting the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) symbol in the corner. He held it in front of him, taking in the satellite image of Barrow.
There were plumes of smoke rising from some of the buildings, clear fires burning in others, and ample evidence of destruction everywhere he looked.
“That’s not where it stops, sir,” the sergeant said, handing him another photograph.
Alphonse accepted this one with trepidation. Something told him it wasn’t going to be any better than the first.
He was right.
“Sweet Jesus, son. Tell me this isn’t—”
“Those are burning oil wells southwest of Barrow.”
“Tell the troopers to get their people together, and we’ll send some of ours up with them,” the general said, looking up. “And get me the governor on the line — we may need to declare a state of emergency.”
“Yes, sir.”
Within hours, a motley group of state troopers and National Guard reservists were thrown together out on one of the runways, a C-130 warming up its engines just for them.
The briefing, such as it was, went quickly, as no one knew much of anything…and those who did know something were more concerned with getting in the air than talking on the ground. In all, about sixty men were shoved into the belly of the bird and sent on their way practically before they knew what was going on.
They were given more details once they were in the air, as much as anyone knew, anyway, and they grimly settled themselves in for a long ride with an unpleasant task ahead of them on the other side.
Elsewhere the oil companies were rushing firefighters into planes of their own, screaming for security escorts from the military, while ALCOM started to put together a long-term relief package and waited for a response team from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
It was an unwelcome break from the routine, but by late evening of that night, General Alphonse was confident they had it all well in hand.
CHAPTER 4
“What the hell is this?” Captain Andrews growled, tossing a sheaf of papers across Masters’s desk.
He barely glanced at it, and didn’t look at her. “Requisition forms.”
“I know that!”
He could resist neither the wry smirk that cracked his face nor the words that came to his lips. “Then why did you ask?”
His sense of humor apparently didn’t hold much water with Andrews — her glare would have turned him to stone in another place, another time.
“Beowulf assault rifles, Auto Assault–12s, Smith and Wesson 500 revolvers?” she growled, eyes rolling. “Compensating for something, are we?”
That caught his attention, and he matched her eye roll. “You aren’t in on the mission brief, Captain. You’re not cleared for it, and you don’t know what we’ll be doing. You are here to help manage the administration of the team. So go administrate.”
“You’re treading close to insubordination, Commander, as always.”
“That’s a weak threat, Captain.” He shrugged. “I’m here on the admiral’s request and authority. He may have reactivated my commission, but I didn’t ask for it. You want to bring me up on charges, go ahead. You can’t burn my reputation any more that the government already has.”
She glowered at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “You can’t keep the details to yourself, Commander. That’s not how the Teams operate.”
“The Teams operate on need-to-know,” he countered. “My team already knows the details, and you don’t need to know.”
“That’s not how it works!” she snapped. “Command decides who needs to know what.”
“Not this time.” He shook his head. “Not for this mission.”
“Bullshit!” she snarled at him, infuriated that he’d gotten her to curse, then doubly angry when he just seemed amused by it. “I’m not putting these in until I get some answers.”
“That’s all right, I already did.” Masters shrugged, pulling a second sheaf of papers from a pile and handing them to her.