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  ‘WOLF PACK’

  INVASION AND CONQUEST

  By

  Rob Buckman

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place, and incidents are the product of the author’s feverish overactive imagination. Any resemblance to current events, locations, and people, living, dead, dead drunk or unconscious is purely coincidental and designed to protect the guilty, the innocent and bystanders without fear or favor. All rights reserved, and publishing, reproducing or broadcasting this story in any form or means is prohibited. This including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, smoke signals, semaphore, flags, sign language or telepathy without express permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  This book is solely for adult entertainment as it contains graphic violence, murder, mayhem, sex, genocide, bad language and generally ignores the rule of law, the Constitution, bill of rights, due process, common decency, PC correctness, the rules of good behavior and good manners. Being duly warned, read on.

  Copyright © 2017 by Rob Buckman. All rights reserved.

  First Electronic Edition: August 2018

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MAP

  400 Mile Tehachapi to Soda Springs Yomp

  PREFACE

  Over the generations, the idea of a warrior changed from an assortment of healthy, able-bodied men willing to fight to protect the clan, family, or property from external attack. To bigger groups eager to attack another clan or family and carry off their property. In those days, there was scant difference between warrior and civilian as with the Viking. The Danes, Saxon, Pit, and Norman where farmers when not fighting. Later, the chiefs of these clans used bigger and bigger standing armies and navies, first to defend their boundaries and later extend their domain. It is here we see a division between civilian and soldier. Between those who wanted, for whatever reason, to fight, and those wishing to stay at home and take care of the farm, the family, or business. The division between civilian and soldier became greater when armies like the Romans became organized and men better trained at his chosen profession. Now it wasn’t enough to be willing and able to fight, but trained to fit into the established military machine and most times trained in a specific feature of waging war. Archer, cannoneer, sapper, infantrymen, cavalry, or other specialized activities. This then changed how the civilian looked upon the soldier, at first as a protector or victorious warrior who protected and expanded their world, to someone to look at with fear and loathing if he was from the opposing army.

  In either case, civilians looked upon the soldier, in all his forms, from infantrymen to sailors to Marines and in modern time’s aviators as the protectors who stand between them and the darkness. They are the human shield protecting them from the wolves while they sleep safe in their beds. Knowing someone was standing on the walls watching over them, and willing to stand and fight and if necessary die on their behalf. In days gone by when you took the ‘Kings Shilling’ or signed the ‘Articles of War’ you bound yourself to protecting the country and its civilian population. For many it was a way out of poverty, while for others a means to gain glory, fortune and recognition, using it to springboard themselves to higher office or a position in government. Once the modern age arrived and we became more efficient at killing our fellowman, there was little glory to be found in the mass slaughter of the modern battlefield where 80,000 men died in a single battle. Or a whole city of one point five million people could be obliterated by a single bomb. Yet, despite everything, men and women are still willing to join the military, police and fire services in one capacity or another, and stand between the civilians and the darkness, defending them to the death.

  No matter the capacity they serve in, they become the sheepdogs protecting the flock from the wolves. To all those who have served, and are serving, this book is dedicated to you, and you have my deepest respect.

  Rob Buckman (Royal Engineers)

  …“Without a sigh his sword a brave man draws, and asks not what omen but his countries cause.”… (Homer, the Iliad)

  CHAPTER ONE: WOLFMAN

  "Wolfman! Wake the fuck-up." Master Sergeant Chuck Rayburn yelled for a second time over the din inside the aircraft. Only just audible due to the throbbing of the four powerful C135A turbo prop engines, the man in question at the end of the row of equipment-clad men didn’t stir.

  "Oh, for fuck sake! Someone smack Wolfman and wake him up." He shouted down the line. As the closest, Corporal Benning reached over and nudged Decker hard with a booted foot, unwilling to risk his hand on such a venture, knowing Decker’s propensity for violence.

  "Hey, Wolfman - wake up, for fuck sake, we’re almost there." All he got for his trouble was a grunt in reply.

  "Huh." The comatose man answered at last, hardly stirring.

  "Jesus man, you really tied one on last night."

  "Benning, you’re an asshole. Fuck off and let me sleep." Staff Sergeant John 'Wolfman' Decker of the 22nd.Squadron of her Majesties Special Air Service growled, opening one bloodshot eye to survey the interior of the aircraft. The dyspeptic look on his face under his combat helmet, a three-day growth of beard, made him look more like a rather scruffy, hung-over pirate than a soldier of the Queen.

  The interior of the aircraft didn't look any better than when he’d closed his eyes the moment he staggered aboard and strapped in. Twenty odd grunts, a top sergeant, a green as grass Second Lt who couldn't find is ass with a flashlight, a seeing eye dog, and a bloody map were all dressed up for a dance no one wanted to go to. Particularly not Staff Sergeant John Decker. In his considered opinion, this was the worse ‘Charlie Foxtrot’ he'd seen in a long time, and that was saying something. What twenty-two under equipped Spec Ops 'snake eaters’ would do against a bunch of alien invaders equipped with intergalactic starships and advanced weapons he hadn't a clue. Even with his skills as a scout/sniper and twenty years of Spec Ops and killing nasty motherfuckers for a living, he didn't rate their chances of survival very high.

  He thought they had one chance in a million of getting out of this alive, and that was the short odds. Trying to capture hell with a bucket of snowballs while wearing nothing but your jockstrap had better odds of success. This was supposed to be an ad hoc rescue/extraction mission to find a bunch of civilians trapped behind enemy lines, an iffy proposition at the best of times, and this absolutely did not qualify as the best of times by any stretch of the imagination. Their orders were to extract him, her, or whatever and a vital information package, but no one bothered telling the men, especially not him, why these particular civilians was so bloody important, or what the information was, except maybe the Lt. Then again, the brass never told the grunts a damn thing worth listening to. The plan, if you could call it that, or as much of it as Decker remembered from the briefing. Was for the C135A to do a low-level drop near the last known location of the civvies, then check out a civilian airstrip five miles from the targets last known location so the aircraft could land. They then had to locate the civvies, have them hump their way cross country, now full of an unknown number of little green aliens, get their sorry asses back to the aircraft and get the fuck out of Dodge. After that, the plan was to fly them up to the ‘Truckee-Tahoe’ Airport in northern California, and deliver them to the eggheads at a Base near a town called ‘Norden’.

  If he remembered right, which was doubtful at the moment, as he was still half in the bag when they dragged his drunken ass out of his rack at an ungodly hour in the morning. There was no air cover, no satellite surveillance, no Intel on the alien strength, no Intel on the civvies, which was just hunky-dory, as they didn’t know shit about the terrain they had to hump across to get to the aforementioned civvies, or back to an iffy airstrip in the fi
rst place. That was assuming the little green fuckers hadn’t detected and blown the aircraft to shit in the meantime. To add to the fun and games, none of the troops aboard had worked together on an operation before, just training under the tender loving care of one Staff Sergeant John Decker, and the wrong training at that. His job was to train this bunch into an anti-terrorist quick reaction, hostage rescue team, so at a stretch they fitted in a way.

  If that wasn't bad enough, the Brass didn't even know for sure if the civilian airstrip was even usable, or long enough, and the reason for using a ‘STAL’ C130A. Left unsaid what they were supposed to do if the airstrip was unusable and they couldn’t repair it. Even a Short Takeoff and Landing C130A had it limits. As he said, this was definitely working up to be the ‘Charlie Foxtrot’ or cluster fuck of the century, and then some.

  His chute straps cut into his shoulders and crotch, and his head inside his helmet pounded like a big brass drum from too much beer, vodka and tequila, and felt as if he was about to throw up. Trust the brass hats to pull this out of their collective asses on the day he was due to demob and go home. He'd done his time and looked forward to getting out and go fishing. He'd had enough of the bullshit, and half-baked solutions to winning an un-winnable war. After thirty years, the US was still fucking around in the Middle East, with no end in sight to the so-called war on terror. Eighteen years ago, when he passed through ‘Selection’ and graduated out of SAS training, after spending three years before that in the Royal Marines', he thought he could change the world. Fat chance of that with the way the Generals, and the ever-changing political situation. What with one President after another fucking things up worse than the last one.

  Somewhere along the line, he couldn't even remember where, or which country he was fighting in, much less what for. Just heat, flies, sand and dust, or freezing cold, wet, and rocky, with a bunch of pissed off motherfuckers shooting at him or trying to blow him up, he’d had enough. After twenty years of fighting unwinnable wars in places, he’d never heard of, he'd had it. He'd paid his dues, sweated for them, bled for them, cried over lost comrades for them, or maybe he’d eaten one too many MRE's or ‘C’ rats. Whatever it was he was done. Let all the young warriors, all full of piss and vinegar who thought they were fucking invincible take over. He had a beautiful wife, and an even more beautiful daughter to go home to, or at least he hoped he did, and a fifty-two-foot fishing boat to play with. All good reasons to get falling down, knee walking, commode hugging drunk at his own demob party.

  That all changed when the aliens dropped the hammer on planet Earth. The experts must have seen them coming, yet no one knew they existed until the little green assholes dropped thousands of plasma bombs on every major and minor city on the planet. In less than 48 hours, they’d about bombed the human race back to the Stone Age. They'd targeted power stations, distribution lines, and communication hubs with EMP pulse bombs. That instantly blinded the military all over the planet, and brought civilization to a standstill. Anything with an electrical circuit or system not protected against the EMP pulse was toast. Cars, trucks, busses, elevators, computers, power systems, phones, aircraft and all the unprotected electrical infrastructure the human race relied so heavily upon came to a halt. After that, they’d dropped big rocks on every major capital on the planet, effectively decapitating the senior military leadership and government. Most long-range military and civilian communications went into the toilet, thereby preventing any coordinated response from what remained of the military leadership. The medium range UHF comm sets worked, and parts of the internet, but it was spotty at best, and the radio traffic was full of static, even at short range. The only reason they worked at all, someone said, was due to the aliens concentrating on the major cities and military bases. Whatever, it meant their short-range unit comm systems still functioned, but they had no long-range communication back to base. If things went into the dumpster on this trip, they were SOL where reinforcements were concerned. Once they’d blinded the human military, they began dropping rocks or something similar on every major city, town, military installation, airport, and rail hub they could find. KEW’s is the official term for them, kinetic energy weapons was the fancy name. They were nothing more than a big rock falling to earth at terminal velocity, and depending on the size of the rock, they could drive a hole half a mile deep into the surface crust. The resulting blast and earthquakes did as much damage as the original impact. They came down from space, looking like the finger of a vengeful god. Once they’d done that, a swarm of trans-atmospheric craft came down and systematically bombed and strafed any concentration of humans they could find, no matter how small. Fighter aircraft that got off the ground didn’t last long, even if they did score a number of kills with their radar guided missiles, so the aliens paid particular attention to anything that looked even remotely like a military base or airfield. They destroyed anything not in a hanger or underground.

  One of the last emails he'd received from the Ministry of Defense in London, before everything turned to shit, was that his official discharge papers were on their way, and orders for him to report to the SAS depot at Credenhill, before discharge from the service. That was the main reason for the party the night before, or was it the night before that, he wasn't even sure now, and completion of his stint at training US Special Forces in hostage rescue. This was his going away present, a nice cushy job out of the line of fire for six months in the sunny climes of the US of A to finish his service. It also accounted for his present condition, hung over, still half-drunk, and about ready to blow chunks across the cabin. Either no one bothered to inform his US CO, or he'd just ignored the email, so when the brass rousted out the joint operations strike team in the wee hours of the morning, at zero dark thirty as they say, his teammates simply dragged his sorry ass to the briefing. Not that he remembered much, except the order to gear up. They managed to repair the runway enough for the C135A to take off, and kept the aircraft low, fly-by-wire, and nap-of-the-earth to avoid detection, or so they hoped. Whatever, from Decker’s point of view, the pilot had somehow managed to hit every bit of bad air between there and California, and between that, the noise and the stink of JP1 jet fuel, Decker felt like he was inside a blender on 'Crush Ice'. His stomach churned again, and he knew he was about to puke. The last thing he wanted to be remembered for on his last trip was tossing his cookies all over the inside of the aircraft. If that wasn't bad enough, he realized he needed to take a leak, badly, and unsnapping the seat restraint Decker got to his feet and weaved his way aft.

  "Decker! You throw up on me, and I'll kick your fucking ass all the way back to base." Rayburn yelled as he walked up and saw the expression on Decker's face. “You hear me?”

  "Fuck-you, Rayburn." Decker shouted back, giving him the finger, a loud belch, and a fart for good measure. He nodded to the cargo master standing by the rear ramp.

  "Lower the ramp." He shouted over the din.

  "Against orders, Sergeant."

  "I don't give a shit about orders, asshole. You want me to throw up all over you, and piss down your pants leg, that’s fine with me." As Decker reached down and fumbled for his fly between the crotch webbing, he saw rather than heard the cargo master mutter something insulting, but lost it in the background noise of the engines, not that he gave a shit.

  The sound of rushing air filled the interior as the cargo master lowered the ramp, and Decker saw the treetops whipping by below in the moonlit darkness. The team made their displeasure known about the inrush of freezing cold air by shouting insults at him and telling him to hurry the fuck up. At least it helped cleared the fart smell out. Decker ignored then and concentrated on getting his dick out of his pants between the chute webbing. Looking down at the tree tops streaming by he knew they were way too low for a jump, but by flying 'nap-of-the-earth' the hope was they would avoid detection by the alien's, and so far it looked as if the 'Brass' was correct. Once they reached the drop zone, the aircraft would climb to the low jump altitude and circl
e so they could un-ass and get on with the mission. So far, they'd made the eight hundred mile trip from Peterson Air Force Base to Southern California without incident, but that changed in an instant. As the ramp came level, he grabbed a handhold and started to take a leak when the cargo Master grabbed his shoulder, his eyes wide with fear, tapping his headset.

  "We've got incoming!" He yelled. "Get strapped in." Before Decker even turned, something slammed into the aircraft and fire erupted along one wing. Instantly, Decker was stone cold sober, and knew the aircraft was doomed.

  "Everybody out!" Decker yelled. One look through the wall port told Decker they were up shit creek without a paddle, but before he’d even taken a step, the blast from a second shot blew him backward off the ramp into space.

  He knew they were way too low for a jump, but staying with the aircraft wasn’t an option. Even as he flew backwards off the ramp, Decker's training kicked in and he instinctively grabbed and pulled the 'D' ring of his chute, a real no-no under normal circumstances at this height, but he had to try, feeling his chute deploy. It streamed out horizontally behind him in the rushing air, thereby saving his life by pulling him clear of the doomed aircraft. As he swung to the vertical, he saw bodies stream out of the rear of the burning aircraft in one last desperate attempt to escape their fate.

  "Too low too low." He muttered even as he dropped below the tree line and lost sight of the falling bodies. Moments later, branches tore at him as he crashed through the upper canopy, falling like a rock, and way too fast for a safe landing. He lost consciousness as something smacked him on the back of the helmet hard enough to knock him out, and dropped him into blessed darkness.