Showdown At Chimney Rock: Sarah's Run (A Five Roads To Texas Novel Book 5) Read online

  Showdown at Chimney Rock

  A Five Roads to Texas Novel

  Rich Baker

  Edited by

  Sara Jones

  Illustrated by

  AJ Powers

  Contents

  Authors Note

  Showdown at Chimney Rock

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  OTHER BOOKS FROM UNDER THE SHIELD OF

  FIVE ROADS TO TEXAS

  After the Roads

  For Which We Stand

  Convergence

  SIXTH CYCLE

  Torment

  DEAD ISLAND: Operation Zulu

  Invasion Of The Dead Series

  THIS BOOK WAS FORMATTED BY

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Rich Baker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author or publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-9988282-3-7

  Authors Note

  With thanks to everyone who has joined the Phalanx authors on this journey. I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re honored and humbled that you choose to spend your time with us and the characters we’ve created as they navigate the Five Roads universe. And now, once more into the breech, my friends…

  Regards,

  Rich Baker

  Showdown at Chimney Rock

  Rich Baker

  Prologue

  El Paso, Texas, April 24

  “Dr. Sanjay, I trust you have good news for me,” Nampoo Yi said in heavily accented English.

  Sanjay was worried. The mercenaries who had shown up at the medical center had him shaken. They were never supposed to meet face-to-face, but he needed the satchel they rescued from the ill-fated courier. Until now, none of the teams who had been working for him had ever met him. This crew was quite resourceful, but they knew too much. He would have to have his security deal with them. He put that out of his mind for the moment, as there were more pressing issues to which he needed to attend. “I’ve been working diligently, Mr. Yi,” Sanjay replied to Yi’s statement.

  He wasn’t lying—he’d done everything they had asked and more. He oversaw the construction and provisioning of dozens of supply stations with everything the incoming forces would need—food, fuel, weapons, transportation—all of which was outside the scope of his expertise. Still, he did it, and no one in the American government had connected the dots. And given the list of items he had to procure, it was no small feat. Sanjay felt he deserved some respect from the man on the other end of the connection. “I want to speak to my family.”

  Nampoo Yi gritted his teeth. He was tired of Sanjay’s games, as if there weren’t other people with his skills he could have coerced into performing the work for them. Sanjay was just the first to accept the offer, not that he had much choice. As time wore on, however, he’d been getting more petulant.

  “I am a man of my word, Doctor. If I say they are fine, then you have to simply trust that I have done no harm to your family,” Yi said with his best estimation of nobility while clinging to the mental image of his chambers that morning and the good doctor’s eldest daughter chained to his bed, nude. He didn’t typically like them young; however, the mother… she didn’t hold up under stress well.

  Sanjay sighed. He was becoming increasingly convinced that he was never going to see his wife or daughters again. He regretted ever getting involved with this cabal, not that he’d had any choice. It was too late for that now. He merely told the man what he wanted to hear. “I have the final components to the formula and should have the first batch completed shortly.”

  “That is fine,” Yi answered. “I need you to start mixing right away and send transcripts to my email via the encrypted server. Be certain to use the VPN so your transmission will not be traceable. No mistakes now, Doctor. We’ve come too far. Don’t put anyone at risk at this late hour.”

  “Of course, Mr. Yi. It will be done as you say.” Sanjay shut off the satellite phone and turned back to his computer. He dragged and dropped several files into an email, and after checking to ensure the VPN was active, he clicked send. He sighed, hoping that bought his family another few days of safety.

  The PC beeped, drawing his attention back to the screen. A new email sat atop the rest of his messages. The subject read:

  message failed to send

  He opened it and scanned the contents of the message. It listed a series of IP addresses and said the transmission failed after ten attempts. He tried to send it again, and again it failed. He banged his hand on the desk in frustration. He tried again, and once more it failed. He opened a browser and tried to access his Gmail account. He was greeted with the message:

  Hmmm... can’t reach this page

  Try this:

  Make sure you’ve got the right web address

  “Of course, I have the right web address, damn you!”

  He grabbed an SD card from the lab station’s top drawer and inserted it into the slot on the side of his laptop. He opened a folder on the PC and dragged several files into it. Then he started the word processor and typed a couple pages of information about the contents of the disk. He read it over, made a couple corrections and printed the document. He stuffed the paper and the SD card into a padded envelope, scribbled an address on the front, and took it down to the lobby desk. He gave it to the woman behind the desk, who put it in the outbound container marked for the courier. He knew that even if the US Mail wasn’t running (was a pandemic apocalypse in their credo?), the courier from the company would come by as he did every day to see if there were any packages from Dr. Sanjay with the intermediary’s address on them.

  Now, Sanjay thought to himself, time to deal with that arrogant prick, Ian McCollister, and the rest of his band of misguided loyalists.

  Chapter One

  Above Juarez, Mexico. May 4

  The six-man team checked their gear. The call came in two hours ago, and after months of training and waiting, they were finally going over the border. Kamal Baraghani moved from one man to the next and said the same thing to each.

>   “You’ve trained for this moment. You’re ready. Allahu Akbar!”

  Each of them nodded and exclaimed “Allahu Akbar” in response, but their nerves were showing. They were tense, jaws tight, shoulders stiff. It was their first real jump as a team for a real mission. Kamal knew from experience that once they were out of the plane, muscle memory would take over, and they’d be fine. They’d practiced HALO jumps hundreds of times. It was just a matter of getting them out the door.

  The Pilatus PC-6 reached the drop zone on schedule. It was time to go. Kamal had practiced, over and over, the line he wanted to say. Now that it was time, it sounded inadequate, but he said it anyway.

  “All right men let’s go take our places in history. First Iranian boots on American soil!”

  They stood in unison and gave their gear a final once-over. If they didn’t have it with them, they’d have to locate it as they went. America had no shortage of places where they could obtain weapons, ammunition, and food, which would be their primary needs if the information they sought was not where it was supposed to be. One by one, the men went out the side of the plane. Kamal was the last to exit.

  Directly beneath him was Ciudad Juarez. As much as Kamal hated the United States and everything the West stood for, he could understand why the Mexicans wanted to get there. Juarez was a cesspool. It was worse, even, than the slums of Tehran.

  He watched the United States border glide by beneath him. At this altitude, he really could not see a difference in the cities of Juarez and El Paso, other than the US had more paved roads. He knew at lower altitudes, he would see a big difference—at least before the crimson plague began to spread. Now the cities were probably not that different. That thought made him smile.

  They continued their descent. Kamal recognized Interstate 10 as it passed underneath. Ahead, he could see Beaumont Army Medical Center, their objective. The group Kamal was taking orders from was a mix of different nationalities, mostly Iranian and North Korean. Their inside man was supposed to send them information critical to the ultimate success of their plot. It had been eleven days since they last heard from him, and there was no sign of the information. There was a Plan B for sending intelligence of this type, but it was courier-based, and the courier service had been unreachable as well.

  The first man in their procession opened his chute. Landing atop the rectangular building was one of the trickiest landings they’d ever attempted. If they missed the roof of the ten-story building, they'd overshoot and end up in the parking lot or the desert scrub beyond. One by one, the chutes opened and their descent slowed.

  The first man, Ario Pejman, timed his landing perfectly, his first foot landing close to the edge of the roof. Several strides later, he had his chute pulled in and was turning to help the next soldier. Ario spoke Spanish and was a good soldier. A master of few things, but good at a lot of things.

  Javad Nalci landed next. His momentum carried him all the way to the walled structure surrounding the HVAC units, and it looked like he hit it pretty hard. Javad was their security system expert. Whatever information they could get from the system in the hospital, Javad would find it. He also spoke English, which could prove valuable on this trip if they needed to go beyond the hospital walls.

  Zand Tousi stumbled and fell, tumbling on the rooftop. Zand was a generalist like Ario but also spoke English. Kamal hoped he didn’t break anything on that rough landing.

  Marduk Pejman overshot the roof. He flared up, using the air current to gain some altitude, and pulled hard into a turn. He came back at the building and disappeared on the other side of the HVAC structure. Marduk was their demolition and transportation man. If he couldn’t hotwire it or drive it, he could blow it up. He was also Ario’s older brother. The Iranian military frowned on brothers serving in the same unit together, but they slipped through the system. Kamal found them both good to work with, so he didn’t make an issue out of it.

  Dariush Shojaee landed cleanly. Kamal intentionally overshot the building, maintaining some altitude, and executed a similar turn as Marduk. He could see Marduk on the roof, stripping his drop gear. Kamal aimed his landing at the east end of the rooftop, where there was more room for him to set down. Years before, he came in too hot and broke his leg on a rooftop landing. It took three surgeries to repair the bone fully. He wasn’t eager to repeat that experience on hostile foreign soil.

  He landed cleanly, keeping his balance and pulling his chute down. The four who set down on the north side of the building rallied to his position.

  Kamal stripped his helmet from his head. They had just descended from 7600 meters, opened their chutes at twelve hundred meters, and traveled sixteen horizontal kilometers. “Whew! What a ride! Give me a status. Is anyone hurt?”

  Zand raised his left hand. “I hurt my shoulder, but I’ll be all right.” He rolled it a few times. “It still works, but it hurts to move. I’ll walk it off.”

  “I hurt my knee,” Javad offered. “I hit that structure pretty hard. I’m sure it will be worse tomorrow, but I’m combat effective, sir.”

  Kamal nodded, assessing the team. “Okay. The hard part is over! We get that door open, go downstairs to Sanjay’s office, collect his data, acquire transportation, and signal for extract. Allahu Akbar! We are the tip of the spear! The first Iranian forces to have boots on the ground in America. One day they’ll be teaching this moment to school children. You’re already heroes, men! Marduk, get that door open and let’s execute our mission.”

  Marduk dropped his pack and retrieved the detonation cord and the electric detonator from inside. As he was getting ready to mount the det cord, he had a thought and pressed the thumb lever to open the door. It depressed, and the door pulled open.

  Kamal laughed. “That’s why you’re the demolitions man, Marduk. You always think things through!”

  Marduk chuckled. “I almost forgot rule number one—check to see if the door is really locked!”

  The six men shouldered their packs and walked inside. After descending the stairs, they reached the door that would take them into the hospital itself. Kamal pulled the schematic from his jacket pocket. “Okay, when we get inside, we may be facing hordes of infected infidels. You’ve seen them in videos, and we fought some of them in Mexico. These will be no different. Small-caliber suppressed weapons only. Low noise. Understood?”

  The men all signaled that, yes, they understood.

  He continued. “Put on latex gloves. Any infected we kill will need to be checked to be sure they are not Sanjay, as the belief is that he was killed or became infected. Ario, Javad, and Zand, you three go to the security office and get their systems online. We may need the footage from the day Sanjay went dark. Whatever happened to him, we need evidence. Marduk and Dariush, with me. We’ll go to Sanjay’s office and see what there is to see.”

  The two groups headed in their different directions. Inside the hospital, the smell was pervasive. Not only were there infected wandering the halls, defecating and urinating on themselves, but dead bodies were rotting inside a building that had been baking under the hot Texas sun without working air conditioning.

  They quickly dispatched the infected they sporadically encountered, checking each one to verify it wasn’t Sanjay. Kamal had grown to like the suppressed .40 pistol allotted to him. It was chosen by the invasion force because American law enforcement widely used that caliber. Finding resupply on the fly would not be too difficult, and the 180-grain rounds were subsonic, which would help with noise discipline. They weren’t as silent as Hollywood movies tried to make them sound, but they were quiet enough.

  Kamal located Sanjay’s office and tried the knob. It was locked, but it opened inward. He squared up and planted one of his massive boots directly next to the knob. The doorframe buckled, the edges of the metal trim work cracking away from the drywall. He kicked at it again, and the door broke loose, flying inward and swinging all the way to the limit of the hinges, driving the interior doorknob into the wall.

  The
smell of days of decomposition hit them all hard. Sanjay lay back in his chair, his head twisted to one side, leaving no doubt that his neck was broken. Fluids drained from his body, leaving a greasy pool in the carpet under the chair. Flies buzzed around the body in a thick cloud.

  “We found him,” Marduk said. “Now what?”

  “We let the air clear out while we check the laboratory he worked in,” Kamal answered. He consulted the building schematic and led the team to Sanjay’s main lab. This door was also locked, but just as easy for the big man to kick in.

  “After you,” he said with a flourish. Marduk and Dariush walked in ahead of Kamal. They located Sanjay’s workstation and began going through the drawers, looking for anything to do with the project while Kamal stood in the doorway, watching for infected. Dariush pulled a battery pack from his bag and plugged the laptop into it. It beeped several times, and the screen displayed the message Boot Sector Not Found.