Mission Report from CA-4 Team Leader Vod Pacheco
Mission Date 7/04/2161
Cannonball Run 2161-Day 2
Or
10 and 2…. 10 and 2!
AZ-3 Zipper Hoover checking the Convoy
Core Team Members –
Fred/Vod – Freds Scout Vehicle “The Jeep”
Keshawn/Tim Commando Scout
New team member William “Bill” Reyes with K-9 Joe
Attached Personnel –
Cathy Drayton – Phoenix Team Psi Ops – Adviser/Ranger RTO
Patrick Samson – AZ-3 Asst. Convoy Commander – Ranger
Sue and John Commings – AZ-3 Commando Ranger
Paul Maintina, Zipper Hoover, John Rooser – AZ-7 Humvee
Inland Empire Personel –
Lefty Jim – Head of the Truckers
Janet Barsdale – Master Trader
Paul Rubins – Trucker 2nd in command
14 others manning the rest of the vehicles
Mission Summary – Day 2
The sun practically sprang over the horizon, as it does in the high desert. We had been up for 30 min or so, getting the vehicles organized, and some hot breakfast. It was great having the trucker cooks along, they could do wonders with the Ration packs, and almost made you look forward to them. The truckers on the other hands thought they were GREAT. Funny how you always want what you don’t have.
We checked in with Prime base, since we were still too far to reach High Desert Command and let them know we were back on the road. Some good news! Apparently a couple of days ago Prime base was able to activate a nearby Frozen watch cell. One of their people, a Recon K9 specialist William Reyes has been detailed to meet us about 12km south of Nixon, NV. Since the loss of Travis on our team we have been short one, and it will be great to get some new blood in the unit. I used my Morrowcomp to check into his records, and noted that he was frozen about 20 years before us, so that should make for some interesting conversation. A man even more out of time than we were, having missed about the entire computer revolution of the 80s, and 90s.
We had gone about 3-4 clicks past the wrecked dune buggy, when we noticed a strange sight on the side of the road. A pickup truck from the brotherhood. Upside down. And crushed. On TOP of a boulder about 50 feet off the side of the road. Examination showed 3-4 bodies, in such a state that we really couldn’t decide if it was 3 or 4. The truck had no “blast marks or burn marks, and looked like it had been picked up thrown down like some child’s toy. Could someone like that 16 yr old girl do this? Nothing more to it, so the scout element went back to the road and continued south.
Things were going fine until the road went by the south end of Pyramid lake. We could see some smoke columns coming from what must have been Nixon NV. I called a halt to the convoy up the road from the town and out of sight behind a 500 foot high hill/ridge. We moved up closer to Nixon, Fred and I in his jeep, while Tim and Keshawn covered us in the commando Scout. We could see 2-3 armored trucks and an old school bus in the town, moving amongst the burnt out buildings, helping people out. The vehicles were flying the brotherhood flag. The brotherhood people spotted us as we approached and quickly moved towards us in one of their SUVs. I pulled out a white flag, as the brotherhood people deployed 100m away. A bald guy of native American ancestry approached me with another white flag. He had some old tactical police armor on, with a helmet and some type of revolver at his side. “Who are you?” he said.
“My name is Vod, who are you?
“Captain Dawson”, he said, “of the brotherhood’s Piute clan”
“I’m commander of a convoy group hired to move a bunch of material south”
“The brotherhood runs this area, do you have any medical supplies we have some injured people here? What kind of material and how much are you moving?” he queried
“One thing at a time. First, yea we got some medical supplies and would be happy to help you folks out as a show of good will and negotiating safe passage south”. I could hear over my open mike headset one of the AZ-3 guys muttering…”safe passage, Hell, lets just blast thru and get on with it”. Dang I’m going to need to whack those guys with a newspaper soon, everything isn’t just Black an White. We have to learn to live with people in these parts and make some friends. Even if they have practices we don’t necessarily agree with like Slavery. Ill keep the newspaper in reserve and try talking over a drink at the next opportunity.
I had Patrick move up in the M19 Humvee to cover us as Tim and the rest of CA4 got out to see what we could do to help. Our medical skill was a big help, and we managed to patch up a lot of people who would have been pretty bad off. The town was another smoking ruin. Talking to the survivors, we found out that a group called the SYRN “Followers of God” came into town and was looking for people who were “Blessed”. They took 2 slaves, and publicly cut the sheriff in two in the middle of the street. They declared that they were directed to destroy the followers of Sin. Apparently the Brotherhood falls into this category for them. The people were in two distict groups. The Slaves were marked as such with an iron colar around their necks. But the “free” people were doing their best to take care of them. The slaves seemed to be well fed and in generally good health. Apparently the Brotherhood enforced taking care of their property.
Captain Dawson was impressed with our dedication with helping the wounded. After it was done, he asked bout our convoy. I explained we had 10 cargo vehicles, and some escorts and were hired to transport the cargo south to a location near Vegas. Dawson wanted to hire our group to fight the Syrn, but I informed him that at this time we were already under contract to another unnamed party. Making sure to use Fred as a trade negotiator, Dawson was Frustrated, but grateful for the help, we settled on 10 cases of mixed small arms ammo. One for each of the cargo vehicles. We agreed, and I had one of the Hunvee’s deliver the ammunition to the town. Dawson loaded up the ammo and headed south quickly as they needed to check on other Brotherhood outposts. He assigned a Lt Watchouse with his SUV to go with us south thru the Brotherhood territory. Apparently they would go as far as Avalon, on Walker lake. About 90 miles farther south. I radioed the Convoy to come ahead into the town. Once Watchouse saw the size of our convoy vehicles, he was mad. He expected small trucks, not the monsters we were traveling with. Watchouse new he could have gotten more, but he truckers and AZ-3 people knew we could have blown thru everything Dawnson had without trouble as well. A good bargain is one in which either everyone, or no one is happy. I guess this is a little of both. The convoy pulled out of Nixon about noon, heading south.
About 30 minutes later we were approaching the location indicated by prime base where we were to meet up with Bill Reyes. We stopped and I popped the red flare. In a few minutes my radio crackled to life. We exchanged some security codes to confirm identify, and a few min later I spotted someone in MP fatigues walking out of a pile of boulders. Next to him was a German Sheppard, even equipped with his own load carrying pack/harness. I jumped down from the Jeep, as he approached. He welcomed me with a salute and stated “William Reyes,” and then indicated the dog “and Joe King. Nevada, Frozen Watch 4.”
I returned the salute, “Commander Vod Pacheco, CA-4, High desert Region. At ease William, you can call me Vod. We don’t hold on too much military formalities out here. Its good to see you and welcome to 2161”
“Thanks, and I’m Bill, you’re the first person I’ve seen other than those in FW-4 me since 1979. Glad to see you guys, I’m tired of breaking in these boots for the past couple of days.”
I followed up by introducing Fred, Keshawn, and Tim, the rest of CA-4. “Jump on into Fred’s Jeep here, and lets get you settled.” Bill went around to the others and greeted them, making sure that Joe knew who he was meeting as well. Then did some type of 1-2-3 game with Joe. Bill smiled and said “I get the window seat”, Joe yipped at him and jumped into the back seat. I could almost swear Joe was just as happy to be riding.
With that Fred started up the Jeep, and we continued back down 447. For the next 30 min or so, used the team radio to brief Bill on the Mission, convoy, and people we were traveling with, while scanning from the MG position for anything of interest. Bill seemed a little surprised that I was in command while the AZ-3 Mars team commander was in the convoy as well. I let him know that it was due to the fact we were in the High Desert Command structure, and the AZ team had just come in from Tempe AZ about 2 months ago and they were still finding their place. Bill was surprised that the MP was so scattered, and I went on to describe how teams had been sort of randomly awakened since just after the war. With CA-7 a hundred years ago, AZ-3 about 30 yrs and us, 5 months ago.
We were cruising past an area marked “Dodge” on the map, I was giving Bill a summary of the High Desert Command, when we heard some explosions in the distance ahead, and spotted some smoke columns. “Welcome to the party, Never a dull moment in CA-4. Keshawn, Tim, check your 11oclock, I spot smoke.” Consulting my map again, it looked to be from the direction of Wadsworth. Clicking the convoy band on the radio I contacted the Convoy which was cruising along about 4 km behind us, “This is Vod, Patrick you listening? We have some type of combat up ahead, so hold up the convoy where 447 turns southeast. I’m going to take the Scout group up for a closer look and see what’s cooking.” Patrick acknowledged, and I followed up with the team “Alright CA-4, lets see what’s smokin”
The scout and Jeep moved up to beyond the bend in road, about 4-5 km from the town. We could see there was some pitched battle going on, between the Brotherhood and we could only guess the SYRN. We recognized a couple of vehicles from Captain Dawson’s group. I really didn’t want to jeopardize our convoy, or inadvertently commit us to one side or the other of a conflict we weren’t involved in. I decided to try to skirt the town around the south side. And either find a way, or get a better look at what was going on in the town. The commando scout and Jeep traversed a salt flat around a 200 ft high hill and we were watching the town when Watchman drove up in his SUV.
“What are you doing here?? There are people dying in the town!” he exclaimed.
I lowered my binoculars, and explained “our group paid for safe passage, that doesn’t include getting involved in your fight. If they wanted that, they should have offered safe passage in exchange for assistance on the way thru”. Watchman looked away and swore under his breath, knowing I was right. Talking to Watchman we determined it would take 6 or more hours to navigate across country down to hwy 80 with the convoy. That wouldn’t work for me, we needed to get through. “Lets get back to the road guys” and the scout unit moved back up to 447 about 2km from town. As we moved up, the gunfire in the town slackened and stopped, and I could see Dawson’s vehicle and a schoolbus moving up the road towards us.
Dawson climbed out and approached me. “What are you waiting for… flatten the town!”
“That wasn’t in our agreement”
Dawson turned to Watchman “what were you waiting for? Why didn’t you come down and help?”
Watchman replied “Sir, I was tasked to escort the convoy, and my 4 guys wouldn’t have been much help would it?”
Dawson was pretty upset, “we lost 10 guys in there…..”
I broke into his conversation, “Well, there isn’t a way around, so we need to go through.” I brought up the convoy circuit. “Patrick, Cathy, why don’t you come up here, we need to figure out a way thru this town.”
Talking to Dawson, the SYRN were holed up in the high school NW of the one bridge across the shallow river. He said they are probably 2 “Breakers” in the town supported by mixed foot soldiers armed with bows, and light hunting firearms. A Breaker is someone with a Physic mind powers. Telekinesis, telepathy, etc. I turned to Tim and rolled my eyes at him. He just rubbed his temples and popped a few aspirin. About 5 min into the conversation the M19 Humvee pulled up, Patrick and Cathy got out and walked up to us. I explained about who was holding the town. We were kicking around a few ideas, when Patrick made some ugly comments about kill them all and lets just get the show on the road. I could see this attitude ticked Fred off who made some snide comment back about typical AZ-3 just not understanding the real world. Patrick immediately tensed up and I could see things getting hot very quickly.
“Commander Sampson!, Fred! At ease!. This is not helping the situation. Both of you calm down and realize that everyone is on this team, on this mission together. 1000’s of people are counting on us. It’s hot out here in the sun and tempers can flare easily. There are people in that town which are preventing us from accomplishing our mission. Tim, Cathy take the commando Scout into town and, use your special abilities to go into town and see what you can talk some sense into them to get us thru peacefully. Patrick, mount up in the M19 Humvee and cover from 250m out. Keshawn, take your rifle, and go with Patrick to cover from there in case we need you to selectively touch someone. Bill, Fred and I will go in the jeep to about 100m out to cover Cathy and Tim. Lets be about it.” As the group broke up, I could hear Patrick mumble something about.. ‘its about time…’. I will make it a point when we camp tonight to take him aside and see what is really bugging him. It’s not just this mission or Fred, but something deeper is going on in AZ-3’s commander. I connected to Cathy on the coms and let her know to use the girl we rescued last night as a possible bargaining chip to get us thru. Failing that, the SYRN might have just picked a fight with another foe.
We all took positions as indicated, and the commando Scout rolled up to 100m from the high school under a white flag. It is nice that the white flag seems to be respected. We watched as someone who could only be described as being in Jedi clothes missing a light saber walked out of the high school and up to the scout. Cathy and Tim started talking to them, and we could hear how the Jedi was interested in them. They were blessed and should come with him to join with the SYRN. Something strange started to happen, as Tim grabbed his temples and went quiet. Then I saw Cathy put her hand on his shoulder. She said “Its not nice to try to read someone’s mind without permission.” Then we all heard her say “Light them up, take them down, NOW.”
Over the convoy circuit, I reinforced the order “Open fire, flatten the town, Keshawn, take down Obi-Wan.”
Keshawn didn’t hesitate and a 50 cal sniper rifle barked. You could hear him swear over the radio… “The shot went right thru him. No effect”.
I opened fire on the high school, laying down suppressive fire with the MG mounted on Fred’s Jeep. I could see Cathy and Tim getting back into the commando scout and I told Fred to move up so we could cover. The M19 dropped a dozen rounds of 40mm HE into the school turning it in to a burning splintered mess. Tim called out over the radio, “The image is a hologram, the Breakers across the street in the brown house”. Bill started calling out targets, being out of range of his SMG he helped spot enemies for me. Keshawn jumped into the Humvee as it started to roll down the road into the town behind the Jeep. Fred was getting up some speed, and Tim was moving the commando down the street as well. Suddenly a flash of almost lightning came from the house and took out a chunk of the roadway next to the commando scout. I turned the MG on a brown house and held the trigger down, hosing the walls from left to right. The M19 opened up again, this time taking my lead on the brown house, and then it was a shattered mess. I Called the Convoy and said to get rolling and follow us through the town.
Kathy called out, “Ok, that took down Obi-wan, but I can tell there is one more somewhere up ahead. Small arms fire continued coming at us as we drove past the high school. I kept up a steady stream of bursts from the MG, as a round bounced off my helmet. Bill kept spotting targets and keeping the M19 busy, while Joe hugged the floor of the Jeep. At least 2 bricks hit the windshield, and Fred yelled about scratching his paint. Tim complained that an arrow bounced off his head as well. Cathy was using the coax MG to spray the various buildings around her as they drove down the street.
Resistance faltered and slowed as we made a sharp turn east on 447 towards the bridge. The commando Scout was in the lead, followed by the Jeep and the Humvee, all spaced out about 50 meters apart. Tim called out on the radio “I see someone on the bridge ahead, it’s a woman, holding hands with 4-5 kids”
Cathy told Tim to hurry up and rush the bridge. Then the commando scout sort of “scooted” sideways like it was pushed. “Hurry up TIM!” and she let a burst go towards the bridge. Bill also let loose a burst from his SMG. Slim chance at this range, and the rounds just flew and bounced. I let a burst off towards the bridge as well, and one of the kids broke loose and hit the ground. I heard Bill cry out “What are you doing Fred?”.
I looked down from my position to see Fred driving with his knees and loading a grenade launcher. “10 and 2! 10 and 2! Get your hands on the wheel!”
“I got it, no problem man…”, Fred replied handing the now loaded M203 launcher to Bill, “Teargas, take out he group on the bridge”
The commando scout was about at the bridge when suddenly it “slid” sideways and off the road into the mud. Keshawn let loose a burst behind me and another kid went down. Bill hung out the window with the M203 and placed a perfectly aimed shot right at the woman’s feet. In a moment she was surrounded by a thick white cloud of gas, and all the people went down hacking and coughing. We skidded to a stop next to the group as the gas dissipated, and approached the still hacking people. In Bill approached the ones on the bridge to secure them when he suddenly grabbed his head. Then BRRAAP, Bill put a burst into the woman. Apparently he felt her trying to get into his mind or something and reacted out of instinct. A little shook up I told him he did the right thing. One of the kids was dead, but he others would recover. Just to be safe for now, we sedated them and tied them up in the commando Ranger when it arrived with the Convoy. I had Keshawn secure the north side of the bridge, and detailed Bill to cover him, while we used the Humvee to pull the scout of the water. We searched the bodies, and found another of those Crosses with an “eye” in the middle.
“Crimson King!”, Tim called out. “that has been bugging me since last night. That sybol is from his followers, and I bet he is behind SYRN. It makes sense that they are looking for “gifted” people with some Phi ability.”
“Makes sense, good job Tim” I said, now lets get thru this town and on to somewhere we can hole up for the night. It was getting to about 5pm and we had about an hour before sundown. Watcher indicated that there was a truckstop just a mile or so down the road when it crossed the East/West Tradepike. (I80) The scout and Jeep moved up front, and the rest of the convoy kept up the pace until we were clear of Wadsworth. The kids and girl were still unconscious, but we would need to figure out what to do with them later.
I checked my map, and found “Loves’ truck stop” at the indicated spot. Sounds like a good place for the night. We might be able to get some good information on the terrain south of here, any groups or possible hazards to watch out for.
We approached the fortified truckstop, and for some goofy reason the lookout fired a round into the ground in front of us. I was about ready to have Keshawn light him up with 20mm, when I saw his cohort Whack him on the head and start waving his arms at us. We calmly drove up and into the walled fortress that was once Love’s. The place had maybe 100 people or more in it, and every one of them totally silent and staring as the massive cargo movers pulled up and parked. Fred recognized a couple of the markings on trucks and assured us that this is a safe place to spend the night. All the truckers seems happy to be with a few more of their kind and I gave permission for groups to go and explore what they had to offer. And to see what they could find out about the area, especially south of us.
I clicked on CA-4’s frequency. “Good job today team. A little rough, but Im proud of the way you held it together.” I walked over to the commando Ranger and caught Patrick’s eye. “Why don’t the two of us go get some hot food and something to drink, maybe talk a bit about things.”
Patrick just looked at me, then through me. “Yea, I think we do have some things to talk about”
Day 2 summary –
All vehicles functioning, no breakdowns, losses, or personnel casualties
Approximately 60 miles driven on day 2, 160 total, 400 miles to go to the High Desert Command compound. Camped at Love’s Truckstop for the night.
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