by T A Walters
It was the world in a magical setting that, in an instant, was torn away; like a page out of a fairytale book. He knew not to wonder what became of that world: He already knew. And it was the bitterness that lingered in his heart that told him he was part of something important. The distinct honor of being chosen to take back that world made him eager to press on and make the enemy pay. In all that he had done, and all that he knew he was about to do was not just for himself but for all Americans.
Scuba Bill strolled up and squatted beside Joe. While they both faced the dying bonfire, Bill reached forward with a cigar and held the tip on the fringes of an ember. Joe listened to the rapid puffs Bill made. In a moment, he heard the exhaling of a thin line of that smoke through tightly pursed lips.
“So,” Bill began. “You never told me the whole story about you and Kat.”
Joe taken a little by surprise hesitated in thought. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I told you about her thinking she had contracted rabies. In her desperate state of mind, she tried to hide away from the rest of us. She thought she’d be a danger to everyone.”
Bill glanced over at Joe and gave him a proud grin. “I got a different story from Kat.”
“I don’t know what she might have told you. I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Kat said you were a perfect gentleman and her hero.”
Joe tossed a pebble into the embers just to watch the plume of sparks fly into the night sky. “She was delirious from running a fever and talking out of her head.”
“She asked me a while ago to reassign you to the running with the convoy.”
Joe stood up, and Bill did the same. “Whatever possessed her to request that?”
Bill smiled and said, “Well, you know how it is when you’re talking out of your head.”
“No, I don’t know how it is.”
“She just wants you safe from danger, is all.”
Joe placed his hands on his hips and stared squarely in the face of his friend Bill. “I don’t want to hang back with the others. I want what you decide is best for everyone here, and I’m willing to take risks to achieve our goals of getting America back.”
“Easy Joe,” Scuba Bill warned. “I’m just telling you the way it is. I don’t need you to climb down my throat for relaying a bit of information I think, is important to you.”
Joe apologized for telling Scuba Bill his relationship with Kat was never meant to evolve into anything resembling a romance. Yet there was vulnerability within him he couldn’t hide from Kat. And it manifested itself before he realized it was Mary that he was pining for.
Scuba Bill just shook his head, “So Kat became a proxy for Mary?”
“I miss those days … the way they were, and my life. I just want them back.”
The hiatus in the conversation brought about a few concerns that weighed heavy in Joe’s mind. It seemed as if Scuba Bill understood the situation very well. His eyebrows drew a straight line as it was felt by Joe that it was Kat he felt the sorriest for. “She’s looking forward to your advances,” Scuba Bill said.
The mood was darkened by the worried expression on both men’s faces. “Advances?”
“Yup,” Bill stiffly replied, taking another puff on his cigar. “Kat’s going to expect a few nice turns coming her way. Such would be you calling on her now and then ... maybe a little more than now and then and spending time with her to make small talk would be good.”
“Whoa whoa, wait a minute.”
“NO, you wait a minute,” Scuba Bill snapped back while pointing his cigar in Joe’s face. “I’m not placing the lives of over a hundred fifty men and women in this convoy in the hands of a heartbroken woman who can’t focus on what we might face in San Antonio. Kat is a very talented lady who recently became tragically alone in this world and is desperately trying to fit in with her new family.
You destroy her, and you kill us all. I left you to hunt her down and bring her back because I have confidence in your abilities to get the job done. That’s a lot of expectation my friend. Now I trust you’ll do the right thing.”
Scuba Bill turned and walked off into the night.
~~~~
Alone now, Joe felt somewhat lost in the thought that he’d just been bamboozled by Scuba Bill to go against his core beliefs, and by the same token, he knew Bill had a valid point. So fragile the heart of a good woman, Joe knew Kathryn Colby would make a good wife. That is, of course, for an earnest man of integrity, and Joe thought about Kat on occasion; thought about how fun she was to prank and joke around with. And how she would pause and look at him with a big-eyed smirk on her face. It was as if she was getting away with something he’d only find later when it was too late. She always seemed a step ahead of him, but she was like that as Joe found her to be very intelligent. Joe always found the inexperienced side of Kat to be her weakness. “You’re so gullible,” Joe would tell her; and they would laugh, and she would graciously accept that from Joe and perhaps no one else. Kat had a temper she kept concealed well; like the time she tried to explain things to that Russian radio operator, who persisted in wanting her to put Roger on the radio so he could speak with him. Perhaps it wasn’t so much as temper since Joe had never seen Kat angry. Maybe it was a matter of patience under stressful situations.
Now Joe began to wonder what Kat’s reaction would be if being let down concerning their relationship. Would she cry?
Joe could not bear to see her cry and for whatever reason, he could not explain why that was so. It was the one thing Joe, and Scuba Bill had in common when it came to Kat’s position in this mobile battalion convoy. There were over 300 men and women, not to mention children in this convoy. And it was all but the children who were trained to handle and fire an assortment of weapons. Even Juanita Adams, who preferred to cook and clean and outweighed Joe and Scuba Bill together, had an unusual gift when it came to using a sniper rifle. She could hit a rail post at nearly a mile away. She carried a .45 caliber semi-auto sidearm at all times in a kitchen apron pocket because, even after his best attempts at searching for a holster belt that fit Juanita failed, Scuba Bill suggested she was on her own.
It was this, and all the infantrymen and women Scuba Bill was concerned about when it came to Kat’s happiness. The more Joe thought about it, the more he began to see it all whittled down to one person who supported the entire convoy single-handedly. Scuba Bill knew that and probably never told her for a good reason.
It all came together for Joe. He realized now, Scuba Bill was right. He knew that back when he ordered Joe to find Kat and bring her back. Joe couldn’t decide who was more jubilant at finding Kat alive than Scuba Bill. It was Bill’s foresight that was astonishing. As a strategist, Bill would probably be a top contender in chess, Joe mused while staring back toward the dim light of Kat’s little window in the JLTV.
Chapter 4
Joe found himself wrapping on the door of Kat’s JLTV. He saw shadows moving inside and heard a voice shouting for him to come in. As Joe helped himself through the door, a face moved forward into the light. It was Scuba Bill.
“I was just on my way out,” Bill said. His hand reached out to pat Joe on the back.
“Goodnight Commander,” Joe replied.
Kat wheeled out of her nav station chair and curled her arms around Joe’s neck, “No kisses,” she told him, “I’m lots better but I’m still contagious I think.”
Joe just gave a smile of relief, “I’m sure we wouldn’t want that!”
She tipped her head to one side and gave Joe a quirky sort of grin. “Sarcasm will get you into trouble mister.”
“What did I do now?”
Seemed every time he saw Kat, she was more vibrant than before. In fact, beauty seemed to follow her at every turn. Joe fought to hold his heart in check while the glimmer of her eyes peered right through him. She was just a geek in Army fatigues—but no, something had changed. Kat had evolved into something more.
Kat’s expression turned grim, and she
glanced over at Joe, her finger across her lips. “Hush.”
The radio squawked with the rambling voice of a man speaking Arabic. Grappling for her pencil and pad, she transcribed the message while Joe quietly looked on. Words, like aggression, intercept and engagement brought forth from the pencil she held tightly against the paper in front of her. Seconds later Kat dropped her pencil on the small desktop. She cupped her hands over her face and sniffed back a tear or two.
“What is it, Kat?”
She stole a moment to compose herself, drawing a heavy breath, “A Soviet recon communique being read by a Middle Eastern radioman to ground forces.”
“A relay?”
“Yep.”
Joe shrugged, “I wouldn’t be too concerned with that.”
“The Russians have managed to spot our position.”
“They know we’re on Interstate 10 just outside of San Antonio.”
“They said all that?”
Kat picked up her pencil and tapped an area on the notepad that had numbers jotted down on it. It was all too familiar; Joe had seen it before while sailing. The figures corresponded to Latitude and Longitude. “Okay,” Joe announced, “38.330 ‘North–Lat by 43.539 ‘West–Long.
So, Kat, what’s our position?” Joe braced himself for the disappointment that Kat was right, but there was still that chance she could be wrong about this whole thing.
Kat raised her pencil to the display monitor left of the central console and bounced the eraser tip off the screen’s surface. The numbers were there plain to see; 38.330 ‘N: 43.539 ‘W.
Joe sighed, “Yup, that’s us all right. And that depicts our current location correct?”
Kat nodded, “You need to send word of this to Commander Bill A-S-A-P!”
Joe scrambled from the JLTV. Minutes later, he clamored up the rear tailboard of Scuba Bill’s armored assault vehicle and yelled for Bill to come out. “This better be good,” Bill yawned, “or you’re in deep trouble buddy.”
“More like deep shit. I need you to get with Kat in the JLTV. She’s got something for you.”
~~~~
Joe trailed in behind Bill all the while trying to fill him in on the details. It was difficult for Joe to ascertain if Scuba Bill was listening and taking in what he was telling him. Cold and void of expression, Bill dispensed with the pleasantries of taking the time to ask Kat if he could enter the JLTV. Instead, he flung open the door and sat down beside her while she studied various radar settings on the menu screen.
“Talk to me Kat,” Bill said.
Kat remained focused and on task, her finger tapping away on an assortment of tactical radar modes of operation. “The Russians have discovered our position and has relayed those position coordinates to nearby enemy bases.”
Both Joe and Scuba Bill remained hypnotized while watching Kat scribble on her notepad, some sort of cryptic notes she gleaned from one of three monitor screens before her. “Sure could use a calculator,” Kat muttered blowing back a lock of hair from her vision.
Scuba Bill glanced over at Joe. “Find her a calculator.”
Joe’s eyes squinted, and his head swayed, “Now?”
“Now.”
“I have no idea where to look,” replied Joe while rubbing the back of his neck.
“Pound on every vehicle in this convoy; someone has to have a calculator,” Bill’s voice raised, “And yes, I don’t give a damn what time in the morning it is—just do it.”
Kat never looked up from her manual calculations, not even to look up and wish Joe luck with locating the calculator. “The convoy needs to be awake and on standby anyway,” she told Bill. “What I’m about to tell you may set the wheels rolling right away.”
“Kat, you’re going to make a general’s rank sooner than I thought,” Bill said, adding, “You have a natural sense of strategy I haven’t seen in a long while.”
Over the top rim of her reading glasses, Kat glance over to him, “Thank you, Commander.”
He just gave her a slight smile of approval. “What I need Kat, is that forward enemy battalion position. Can you do that?”
“I’ll do my best,” she said while she continued to copy numbers down from one of the display screens before her.
Bill’s eyes darted from screen to paper as she scribbled-out solutions from various blips on a radar display. “It’s like you’ve done this before.”
“My Dad always said I was a ‘quick study,’” she said, never looking up. “My father was a Ham Radio operator and studied Civilian Search and Rescue operations. It was interesting stuff, so I hung around a lot.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Together we were quite a team. Dad was slow when it came to crunching numbers, but he was outstanding in the logistics end,” she confessed. “I found math to be fun and an easy way of getting good grades in school–I take after my Mom I guess. She was really good at math.”
Bill knew about Kat’s parents being killed the night she was rescued. Both her mother and father died in an explosion from a shoulder-fired RPG that was volleyed into Kat’s home. Kat saw the whole thing from a neighbor’s house window. Call it luck or just destiny that it was not her time to die; but rather, a time to help a friend with a home-made walnut brownie recipe.
~~~~
Scuba Bill was ready to issue orders for the men to gather for a meeting. Joe returned with a calculator and tossed in front of Kat. “It belongs to the Taylors, but they said you may use it for long as you like,” said Joe yawning.
“Joe, I want the fighting men assembled out front of this JLTV right away.”
Scuba Bill exited from the JLTV and went back to his armored assault vehicle. Kat spoke, never looking up from her work, “We have a wave of enemy fighters rolling our way.”
Clearing his throat and glancing down at his wristwatch, Joe bit his lower lip. His attention shifted to a tactical radar display over Kat’s left shoulder; pointing his finger at the small red blips, he noticed something. There was a white line on the border of the screen that faded from top to bottom of the screen with a 3 letter designation of the letters DOT. “What are we looking at here Kat?”
“Being that there is limited vehicular traffic these days; we have fortuitously discovered enemy troop movement heading toward San Antonio via 35 that would be difficult to discriminate otherwise.”
“How far away?”
“240 or so clicks north of San Antonio.”
“I hate to sound stupid, but how many miles is that?”
Kat seemed a little fidgety in her seat, “Joe, Commander Bill needs you.”
“5 miles, 50 miles?” Joe readying himself to leave as it became apparent Kat was too busy to hold a conversation.
He heard her sigh, “149 miles away give or take a few hundred yards.”
Joe smiled. The situation was less dangerous than he expected. If enemy movement down Interstate 35 were anything like Interstate 10, there would be plenty of roadblocks to contend with. The distance alone would place them at least 3 to 4 hours away. The convoy could be halfway to the Chihuahuan Desert by then.
Outside the JLTV under a full moon, Joe could hear Scuba Bill shouting orders to assemble. Within minutes all the fighting men in all stages of dress, from pajamas to coveralls and even a few in undershorts filed in; forming small groups of people, eagerly awaiting word from Commander Bill. Among them were Major Edson, Paul Munroe, Lee and the motorcycle company; 133 fighting men and women. Joe knew Scuba Bill wasn’t too keen on having women fighting in the ranks, but he noticed a broad grin from him as he watched Juanita Adams saunter up to the positions.
Juanita was pulling her thick black hair back while twisting a rubber band around a mane meant to serve as a ponytail. Whether Bill noticed or not, it seemed the fat woman had shed a few pounds, but then, seemed everyone had. It was good to see her finally small enough to strap a gun belt around her middle. Had Joe to remember when she said that her weight problem was not from food but from sitting on a sofa all day
watching soap operas. Maybe she was right, and perhaps it was also true that she loved the new life she led today. “Yeah, she’s a little crazy,” Joe muttered to himself.
Scuba Bill looked over at Joe with a bemused look on his face. “What’s that?”
“Ah, oh,” Joe stammered. “Just thinking out loud is all.”
Bill raised a small red rubber parking lot cone to his mouth. He would shout orders through it as if it were a megaphone. “Attention.
Russian Reconnaissance has spotted our position. Right now counterinsurgency is headed our way from the north and could be here in as little as 2 hours.” Scuba Bill paused a moment while he paced before the assembled troops. He glanced at the faces and the heads of all those attentions, watched as Scuba Bill pause while pacing the assembled ranks.
“By now,” he continued focusing the makeshift megaphone to those concerned, still slowly pacing back and forth, “situations are going to get intense. You are going to be under attack and as you may or may not know your defenses depend on readiness … your survival depends on one another’s ability to prepare and put to use what we were trained to do.
In 2 hours, our enemy will be here. But we won’t. We will be west of San Antonio, and we will be traveling in full battle readiness. From there we will be only 250 miles from our destination. The quicker we destroy Russian Reconnaissance planes on the way, the better off we will be, and so I want my SAM crews to be alert at all times. Anything that flies I want it shot down. Eyes and ears people … so let’s bug out!”
Scuba Bill turned to Joe, “I want all handheld radios set to channel 2 and radio-checked.”
Chapter 5
Russian General Gregor Alexei Pestro stood alone on the beach at Tybee Island Georgia. Just 15 miles east of Savannah, he watched as several landing craft rumbled onto the beach from transport vessels at sea which brought them here from Mother Russia. Tank-like treads rattled with the moan of diesel engines while the bobbing heads of his comrades-in-arms held a salute for their general. From here, the landing vehicles would transport troops and supplies to Hunter Army Air Field just a bit south of Midtown Savannah.