Anita nods, pursing her lips.
“Cassidy,” Chris says, looking at me. “You will take over command of Ken Thrawn’s Titans in addition to your own team. That will give you a force of about two-hundred. I’ll take the bigger chunk of the Freedom Fighters and Mero’s Red Fox.”
I nod. I am not apprehensive, being the commander of my very own militia. Ultimately, we will all answer to Chris because we respect him, and he is the brains of our operation, when it comes down to it.
“Cassidy, you’ll take your forces to the south east corner of the city,” Chris continues. “I’ll be on the north east side with my forces. We’ll form a militia-made ring around the city limits.”
“What about the sea?” Anita Vega asks. “We can’t cover that.”
“I’m counting on the United States Air Force to take care of it,” Chris replies. “Our job is to take back the city without destroying it. The National Guard and the Army have destroyed most of the Presidio and some of the Naval Postgraduate School to prevent our intelligence from falling into enemy hands. The rest of the city… well, let’s focus on preserving it, if we can.”
I notice his usage of if. To me, that signals that Chris is going to try, but in the end, this is going to be an old-fashioned shootout. Just the way Harry wanted it to be. He would enjoy the drama. It would suit him well.
“So we can’t drop a bomb on the city because we want to preserve it,” Vera says, “and because we’ve got POW National Guard and Army units inside Monterey. What happened to our Coast Guard boys and the Naval forces here?”
“Most of them got out,” Chris replies. “They’re regrouping.”
“We have to do this the hard way,” Sophia sighs.
“This is going to be brains versus brawn,” I correct. “Omega outguns us, but we’ll outsmart them. We’ll hit fast and quick, draw their attention to a couple of areas of the city, then slip our forces through the back door while we’re juggling the smoke and mirrors. It will work.”
No one looks convinced, but there is no argument.
We have to stay positive, after all.
“I’ve sent recon scouts into the city,” Chris goes on. “As far as we know, Harry Lydell and the rest of the important Omega officers — whoever they may be — are holed up in the Naval Postgraduate School.” He looks at me. “Marshal Sullivan and his militia will attack Monterey from the south, Anita Vega will attack from the north. While they’re busy defending both sides of the city…” Chris opens his hands, drawing a circle around the east edge of the city with his finger. “Cassidy and I will slip in with our forces through the back door.”
“Can it be done?” Marshal booms. He is stately in his militia uniform and snow white hair. “Will they really fall for a scheme like this? They know we’ve got our militias out here somewhere. They may be expecting it.”
“They’ll be expecting something,” Chris replies. “But they won’t know what.”
I stare at the map, aware of how much is at stake. We can’t allow Omega to gain any kind of foothold on the Pacific Coast.
“What about the Pacific Northwest Alliance?” Sophia asks. “California joined forces with you guys for a reason — so that we could have backup when this kind of thing happened. Can’t you send help?”
Anita Vega shares a glance with Marshal Sullivan.
“The purpose of the Alliance was not just to unite the states,” she says slowly, “but to unite the militias. Our militias are more powerful than the military right now — we are by far more driven and organized than what’s left of the United States’ forces. I hate to tell you this, Commander Hart, but the Alliance’s strength has never been in the states themselves. It’s been in the militias.”
The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought between the United States and Chief Tecumseh’s Confederacy. I get a flash of the words of a teacher I had in eleventh grade, during American history class. Tecumseh was a Shawnee Native American Indian, and he realized the benefit of having forces that were united. As tribes, they didn’t stand a chance against their enemies because they were separate units. The tribal mentality had to go. And so Tecumseh created the Confederacy, a united front of Indian tribes to combat their enemies. Their most crushing defeat was the Battle of Tippecanoe… but the fact remains: Tecumseh recognized that standing alone is never the way. There is strength in numbers.
“Just like Tecumseh,” I whisper.
Chris gives me a strange look. I shrug.
I can’t help my flashbacks. They just happen.
“So you and I take our teams here,” I point, “and then we go into the school and take it out?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“What do we do with the Omega officers?”
“We kill them.”
“All of them?”
“All of them. No more mercy.” Chris looks at the leaders gathered in the circle. “This is the way it has to be. These people are wicked, they stop at nothing. They murder children. We kill them before they kill us, period. Any questions?”
There are none.
But I can’t stop this thought from running through my head:
I have to be the one to kill Harry.
No one else but me.
In the blistering heat of the battle, there is but one thing I know to be true:
Survival is a combination of skill and luck. There are many times I should have died on the battlefield — should have had my throat slit while I was a prisoner of Omega. But somehow I made it through. I am still alive, and Harry will rue the day I escaped from his guards.
All of Omega will.
Tight muscles. Slick sweat. Short breaths.
Tick, tock. Time is passing. We’re right on schedule.
I blink, checking my optics. I can see the border of the Naval Postgraduate School, the wrought-iron fence with its dull dark blue paint. My stomach flips. Almost time. I look left, at Chris. He nods reassuringly. He knows me well — he can read the worry on my face.
I look right. Uriah is settled in the grass, lying prone, like me. We are all like this — all two hundred of us. Uriah gives me the ghost of a smile, his dark eyes sparkling in the dim moonlight. There is no fog tonight. It is clear and crisp. Manny is next to Uriah. He has a rifle, and although Manny is not a sniper, he is a good leader. I take comfort in the fact that he is at the front of the line with me.
Chris gives me one last look, then slips into the darkness of the surrounding marshy woodland. He has to get back to his men. I look down at my hands, shaking slightly. Being the Commander of a group this big is not terrifying, but it is intimidating. I must make wise decisions in the heat of battle, or many lives could be lost.
And there is nothing scarier than knowing someone’s life is in your hands.
In the distance, there is the rattle and boom of automatic gunfire, the occasional flare in the night sky when a mortar is launched. I watch one drop back down to earth. Anita Vega and Marshal Sullivan are doing their job well, attacking the north and south ends of the city. Watching through my scope, I can see Omega troops at the school scrambling to reach their vehicles, to reinforce the borders of the city.
Good. This is what we had hoped for.
I gesture to Uriah and get to my feet, ghosting through the darkness, a creature of shadow and silence. The militia moves with me, the order to go forward spreading through the ranks as the officers pass it down.