Captain Marcus Jones looked out over the deserted runway, glaring at the firelight in the distance. He didn’t know what the hell had happened, but he and his troopers had to find out in a hurry and put a stop to it.
“How long until the fire teams get here?”
“Twelve hours.”
“Shit,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Won’t be anything left to put out by then, not here anyway.”
“Yes, sir.” Corporal Miller nodded from beside him.
They were just lucky as hell that the recent thaw had made the whole place slushy and wet, meaning that most of the fires would be isolated to relatively small areas. The same could technically be said of the fires to the south as well, Jones supposed, but burning oil wells was a whole different ball game.
Those would still be burning by the time the fire teams arrived, of that he had little doubt.
“All right, get the men ready. We’ll move out ahead of the guardsmen, regroup at the terminal building.”
“You got it, Captain,” Miller said, nodding before turning back to relay the orders.
Jones looked over the group of men and women in camo BDUs. He was bothered that they were here, but at the same time he hoped he wouldn’t need to call them in for anything more than disaster relief. State of emergency notwithstanding, Jones didn’t like the idea of using military against American citizens, so he really hoped that the riot was over. That was just a level of publicity he didn’t want or need.
The state troopers quickly gathered around, bundled up in their cold-weather gear. Most held Remington shotguns, but a few of the Special Weapons and Tactics boys had MP5s and Remington 700 long rifles.
“We’re going to move up to the terminal building as a group, scout the immediate area, and then break up into teams to secure the area and get things under control,” Jones said. “Keep your eyes out for any rioters or locals. I want to know what the hell happened here, everyone clear?”
They confirmed their understanding, so he just nodded and turned to look at the terminal building off in the distance.
“All right. Let’s go.”
The state troopers set out from the C-130, marching toward the terminal building. They crossed the cold ground in a few minutes, arriving at the darkened building quickly as they spread out a bit and began to poke around.
The officers called out to whoever might be around, identifying themselves as state troopers, as the men looked in through the large windows, tested the doors, and generally began investigating the area.
“Locked up, sir,” the lieutenant reported.
Jones nodded. “Pop the lock, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
They needed a headquarters, and the terminal building would serve them well enough. A man with a breaching tool stepped up and jammed the titanium prongs into the door, snapping it hard enough to pop the lock with ease, but accidentally shattering the lower pane of tempered glass in the process.
Jones winced, but brushed it off. It would have been nice to keep the door properly sealable, for heat if nothing else, but they’d just have to board it up. He nodded to the officers in front of him, gesturing for them to lead the way. They leveled their shotguns, cleared the door, and moved in. He followed them with one hand resting on his gun belt, but did not withdraw his weapon.
“It’s clear and quiet, sir.”
Jones nodded — he could see that. It was hardly a large terminal building, and most of the space was a single large open room. The rest was divided up into small offices, back rooms for luggage checks, and a small pair of restrooms.
“Get Shill up on the roof,” he ordered. “Find a ladder or boost him up on your shoulders if you have to. We need a lookout.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mike Shill was one of the SWAT snipers they’d brought along, and while he wasn’t as well equipped as even the guardsmen, Jones was comfortable entrusting the watch to him. He trusted the man to keep his finger off the trigger, something he wasn’t as confident about with the military people.
“And someone find the damn lights,” he growled.
“That’s strange.” Jenner scowled, lifting his NODs up and peering into the night. He rapped them sharply with his hand before pulling them down over his head again.
“What is, Corporal?”
“I’m not sure, Sarge. I thought I saw movement, but it must have been a glitch, ’cause there’s nothing out there.”
Kell considered that for a moment, then waved to a man who was still inside the C-130. “Thermals.”
“Right. Here you go, Sarge,” the man said, stepping down and handing the specialized night-vision devices to him.
Kell flicked the thermal lenses on, listening to the soft whine as the capacitors charged, and then lifted them to his eyes to scan the area. He saw nothing but blues and blacks, no sign of any heat source in the local area other than his own men.
“Nothing there, Corporal. You still seeing movement?”
“I don’t know, Sarge, but I’m seeing something,” Jenner said, lifting his NODs off his eyes again so that he could squint into the night. “Damn things must be glitching.”
“Let me see.”
Kell relieved Jenner of the NODs, putting them to his own eyes. At first he didn’t see anything abnormal, but soon he too was frowning. He took them off his eyes to sweep the scene with his own eyeballs.
“I see what you mean. Strangest damn glitch I’ve ever seen,” he muttered, shaking his head in confusion. “Looks like ghosts moving around, just out of range.”
“Yeah, I know, right?”
“I’m not so sure it’s a glitch, Sarge.”
The two men turned to look at Corporal Merrin, who was sweeping the scene through his own set of NODs.
“Same thing, Corporal?”
Merrin nodded, handing the device over to the sergeant. “Looks like.”
Kell scowled, not liking it when his gear started to act up in mysterious ways. He checked the scene through Merrin’s goggles and spat in annoyance.
“Definitely not a glitch,” he said. “At least not with the internals. If it were later on in the year, I’d figure the cold was screwing with them, but it’s not that bad out here yet.”
The other two nodded their understanding. Alaska was often used as a hostile environment test area for military equipment, specifically because the temperatures could become about as extreme as anywhere else on the planet, while the weather and terrain outdid almost anywhere else a military unit could possibly be called to serve. However, as the sergeant had said, it wasn’t all that cold at the moment, and the NODs were well within their rated operating environment.
“All right.” Kell jerked his thumb out in the direction of the anomaly. “Go check it out, you two. Stay in contact. Just make sure that there’s nothing out there, and then get your asses back to the plane.”
“You got it, Sarge.”
The two readied their kits, shouldered their M4s, and headed out from the C-130 as Sergeant Kell went back up the ramp to assign a couple more men to the guard detail.
Marcus Jones surveyed the terminal building, taking in the signs of struggle and violence that filled the place. Trash bins were overturned, their contents scattered across the floor, and there was blood on the seats and floor and smears on the walls.
No bodies, though. What the hell happened?
“Building secured, sir,” Trooper Kanady said, walking over to join him. “We found broken glass in the offices, a computer tossed across the room, but there’s not a soul to be found.”
Jones nodded, looking down at the tablet computer he was holding. He checked a map of the town, scowling as he realized that it didn’t list wherever the hell the town’s hospital or clinic was. There was a dental clinic to the northwest, and three schools to the northeast, plus a Search and Rescue headquarters just east of them. He sighed, flipped open his satellite phone, and dialed his secretary.