Operation Deep Thaw: Denver Burning, #3

By Algor X Dennison

Carson is an undercover federal agent tasked with undoing exactly the kind of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it catastrophe that brought America down in Get Out of Denver. Cut off from all support and unsure of who he can trust, he still has a mission to complete. 

But as layer after layer of the conspiracy unfolds around him, he has to cut through the lies and threats to find the truth about who took down the power grid, what their agenda is now, and what he can do to stop it.

Book Three in the Denver Burning series shows the social meltdown in Denver from another angle. McLean and Carrie walked away from it all in Book One. Now another man must walk back into it and face the disaster head-on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barde Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386473206

Book preview

Operation Deep Thaw

Part Three of the Denver Burning series

by Algor X. Dennison

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Copyright 2015 Algor X. Dennison

This is Part Three of the Denver Burning series, in which a federal agent named Carson delves into the origin of the man-made disaster that brought down the country in Part One, Get Out of Denver and Part Two, Take Back Denver. His story continues in Part Four: Assault on Cheyenne Mountain.

You can also sign up here to be notified when new books are released from Algor X. Dennison, and get an exclusive free ebook in this series, Denver Overrun, following two police officers during the fall of Denver.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Call

Chapter 2: Into the Hills

Chapter 3: Night Attack

Chapter 4: Emergence

Chapter 5: Unpleasant Encounter

Chapter 6: The Lone Survivor of Hemingway Circle

Chapter 7: Prepper’s Paradise

Chapter 8: Breakaway

Chapter 9: Through the Ruined City

Chapter 10: Secondary Objectives

Chapter 11: Two Agents in a Pod

Chapter 12: Left Behind

Chapter 13: South Together

Chapter 14: Car Chase

Chapter 15: Contingencies

Chapter 1: The Call

The call came while Carson Anders was sparring at a west Denver gym. He was in the middle of a punch/kick Sanshou combo he hoped would break through Rafe’s defenses and finish the match quickly. He was getting tired, and his UFC-hopeful opponent was three years younger and snapping the punches out like a demon.

When Carson’s phone let out a single, sustained tone, he quickly backed off, his mind reeling. After eight years of silence, the call had finally come.

Technically, it stopped coming. His cell phone was chiming, but it was a dead-man’s switch; as long as someone at a regional HQ pressed the button every fifteen minutes, he was on permanent standby. But if the button wasn’t pressed, it meant one of three things.

One was that the system had somehow failed. This wasn’t likely; the triple-redundant signal had never failed yet. Another possibility was that HQ was purposely sending out an alert because the country faced imminent danger, and they were unable to communicate more detail via other means. Or, least likely, it could be that there was no one left alive to keep pressing the button.

At the moment, the why was irrelevant. Protocol was crystal clear: all agents were now on active alert. This was not a drill.

But the sandy-haired, solidly-built Marine veteran couldn’t quite believe it was really happening as he left the ring and opened his gym bag. It wasn’t that he doubted the technology; he carried a cell phone, a satphone, and an old-school pager that were all configured to maintain a connection at all times. If all three failed to register a signal from HQ, that was as final as it got, and this was exactly what was happening now.

But it had never happened before, not in the eight years since he’d been recruited. The adrenaline from the sparring was replaced with a stronger jolt. This could be for real.

Everything all right, man? Rafe asked, noticing Carson lingering over the phone he’d pulled out of his bag. Rafe was slapping around the heavy bag as he waited. You need to head out early?

No, I’m good, Carson lied, and checked the satphone, and then the pager, which was still buzzing at him.

Protocol gave him thirty minutes to drop whatever he was doing, get to his vehicle, and get on the road. If the alert hadn’t been rescinded by that point, he needed to be en route to the secure location. Carson’s Jeep was parked right outside the gym, and he didn’t have anything else to do for the moment but wait and make certain the alert was for real. So he decided to remain where he was for the time being in the hope that he’d soon get an all-clear.

He trotted back onto the mat and took up a fighting stance. Rafe left the bag and rushed in.

Carson’s mind was racing, and it was only by throwing himself into his kickboxing moves that prevented him from breaking out in a cold sweat. Could this be for real? It certainly looked like it, but... his mind rebelled at the implications. If this was a legitimate alert, it was a critical situation, and he was burning precious minutes. He didn’t want to admit that his life might be about to change irrevocably.

Deep Thaw.

That was the name of the covert program, a black on black inner cog in the Department of Homeland Security. His recruiter had assured him it wouldn’t show up on any official record, and only a fellow agent would recognize the name. Not a single congressman had ever heard of it, and most of Homeland Security didn’t even know what it entailed. Deep Thaw was an anti-sleeper cell, an attempt to beat the bad guys with one of their own tactics.

The program had its origins during the height of the Cold War, to ensure continuity of government in the event of a nuclear shootout that left some alive. An infrastructure had been established, with certain goals and priorities appropriate to 50’s and 60’s America, but Deep Thaw had never seen action. 9/11 was a wake-up call for a generation of leadership that had grown complacent, enjoying the security and prosperity of the 90’s and who belatedly realized that just because Russia was no longer directly threatening to nuke the U.S. didn’t mean America was safe. Certain key members of government who had knowledge of Deep Thaw saw its need, and dusted the program off, modernizing it and moving it under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security.

The recent brushfire wars had provided Deep Thaw’s recruiters with plenty of material, and independent agents were pre-positioned near locations deemed critical to the survival of government. They were equipped and trained to respond to any type of disaster that might overwhelm the government, and each was given specific objectives that they were responsible for achieving in the event of activation; independent and resourceful, able to act without any outside support or direction. For security reasons, they were not to know each other and have no official chain of command or communication system.

The utter secrecy of Deep Thaw was a safeguard against infiltration and disruption from the outside, but it was also a simple hedge against being de-funded and scuttled by shifting political tides. The utility of such a program was that it remained out of sight, out of mind, until the day when it became absolutely critical.

The recruiter, a woman whose name he never learned, said there were maybe thirty or forty agents throughout the country in and around major cities, with a handful of support staff in Washington, California, and the Mid-West. They were officially attached to a different long-term program in Washington, also secret but more prosaic in its duties.

Deep Thaw’s protocol mandated that if a catastrophic national emergency ever struck, one that threatened the government’s chain of command and rule of law, the sleeper agents would go to active status. But they wouldn’t be operational – not yet.

You aren’t first responders, she’d told him. We have plenty of those. You guys are the backup, the clean-up crew. You are invisible, and you will move around looking for situations where a nudge is needed; when you find one, nudge it. In the category of disaster we’re talking about here, one that threatens the long-term viability of the nation, we can’t depend entirely on the success of first responders. There’s the possibility that they might all be neutralized. We need an absolute fail-safe, a non-network of independent agents that can weather anything, including the risks we haven’t even dreamed up yet, and still remain operational. Agents that can wait until the timing is right and then come out of hiding to restore order. She’d paused. Your profile fits our needs exactly.

Rafe came in fast, interrupting his reverie, and for the next several seconds he was on the ropes. Then he broke free and used his superior height to keep Rafe at bay.

There was a small cabin in the mountains to the west, hardened and stocked with supplies. It was shielded within and surrounded without by razor wire and other nasty surprises to keep vandals out. If the signal ever stopped and didn’t come back online within half an hour, he was to consider himself active and proceed straight to the cabin. That was the only direction he had received, other than brief monthly check-ins conducted via cell phone. Inside the cabin, there were sealed orders, directives specifically for him that would tell him what he needed to do after activation. He’d never seen them; he’d never even opened the door to the cabin. He’d been up to it once, to learn the route.

That was his life. Eight years collecting black-source paychecks in exchange for doing nothing. Not too bad, all things considered. He had plenty of time to keep fit, stay sharp on the gun range, and devote time to reading, something he’d never gotten enough of in the military. The money wasn’t spectacular, but the benefits were fine, and he didn’t need much. It was enough to buy a book or two each week: mostly history, but some fiction too.

It felt good to settle into his place, focus on his personal preparedness, and watch the world go by. Always ready, knowing he had a higher purpose that the stressed-out crowds around him couldn’t even guess at.

There were yearly drills, and once a month he went out of town for a professional training retreat, which was always fun. He never met a fellow Deep Thaw agent, however, at least not that he knew. They just attached him to a nearby military exercise or FBI/CIA training meet.

After the first few years of near total silence from the system, he’d stopped expecting anything to happen. When asked what he did for a living, his arranged cover story was that he worked from home doing vague IT stuff. He seldom found cause to mention his three tours in Afghanistan, including some covert work that was very off the books. He was a private person by nature, even anti-social. No dependents, no social entanglements, low profile. The perfect fit, like the recruiter had said.

Now it seemed the protocol was active for the first time in the program’s history. It could only mean something serious. Every second that passed without a recall signal made it more likely that it wasn’t a drill or a screw-up somewhere in the system. A nuke dropped on Washington, maybe, or the discovery of an asteroid headed for Earth, or even an extreme solar flare. It had to be a fast-developing situation, not a foreign invasion or pandemic. Those would take a while to develop into a true crisis. All he’d heard on the news that day was the standard economic doom and gloom, civil unrest in the cities, and the corollary social outrage du jour.

A surprise attack would do it, like 9/11. The whole point of the call was to pre-empt the news and the public panic that would follow, to allow him time to get up into the mountains and out of sight. Carson’s heart beat faster and faster as he defended against a combo from Rafe and tried to push back his own excitement. He admitted it to himself—he was excited.

He channeled that excitement into action, sending a flurry of punches Rafe’s way that sent the shorter man scurrying backwards. Rafe returned to the attack with some Muay Thai, and Carson resorted to a brutal Krav Maga elbow strike against Rafe’s headgear.

His phone went off again.

It would keep doing that every ten minutes until he got it up to the cabin, so that the GPS in the phone could confirm that he had reached his secure location. Carson waved Rafe to a halt and they both panted, sweat dripping from their lean bodies. He went to his bag again.

Gotta bail, he told his partner, silencing the phone and tossing it back into his bag. Sorry, man.

It’s cool, dude. I was winning anyway. Carson just grinned and shook his head.

He was almost done packing his small gym bag when the lights went out.

There were still several other people in the gym, although the evening rush hadn’t yet begun, and they all looked around at each other in the dim light coming from the few windows.

Rafe was again pounding on the heavy bag near their sparring corner. Oh, come on! he said, glaring at the lightbulb that had just winked out overhead. Good thing we stopped early, huh? he called after Carson with a goofy grin. You must have had a premonition.

Carson finished with his bag and walked quickly back to his friend. Listen, Rafe, he said, keeping his voice low. I don’t know what this is, but I have a bad feeling about it. I don’t think the power’s coming back on for a while. You need to get home and check on your wife, okay? And make sure you have enough clean water to last a few days.

Rafe looked up at him, incredulous. Dude, you serious?

Yeah, Carson said. Yeah, I’m serious. Get home now and make sure you have enough supplies for a week.

Rafe scoffed. It’s just a blink, man, it’ll come back on. Just a blown transformer or something.

Carson shook his head. Maybe, maybe not. I’ve gotta go. Good luck.

Chapter 2: Into the Hills

Outside, the late afternoon sunlight was warm and bright. Far to the west, the sun was dipping toward the Colorado Rockies, and a few fluffy clouds floated in the early autumn sky. Carson’s more immediate