A woman answered, “We’re fine. We killed two sailors who answered the call to kill us. The birthday girl took a nick to the neck, but she’s going to be okay.”
The air in Ted’s chest rushed out as his body stood down from high alert. There were endless questions he wanted to ask, including how they fought off two traitors, but he didn’t want to give anything away. He assumed the enemy was listening to this channel, since it was their radio. “I’m so glad to hear. Can you continue to the rendezvous?”
“We’ll be there,” Emily replied.
His sign-off was short. “Affirmative. Out.”
Ted got to his feet and faced the Marine. “I owe you my life.”
“Just doing my job. Sorry about scaring you, sir, but I couldn’t tip off my allegiance until I knew for certain the captain was with them. When I said I worked for David and it didn’t get an immediate reaction, I knew something was off about him. However, when he pulled out his pistol to shoot you, I knew what I had to do.”
He was glad to have her help, but she’d taken a big risk. “What if he’d turned and shot you without asking questions? Then I’d never know you were with us.”
She shrugged. “I was pretty sure he was a bad guy, sir. My platoon has been watching this man since he miraculously showed up in a lower hold when the event cleared out the JFK. Since then, the carrier’s air defenses have gone offline, the lifts stopped working, and computer systems have gone haywire. We got intel this morning concerning enemy activity at NORAD, so I assumed it was their base of operations. The captain seemed to confirm it, as well as his role in those problems.”
“And this guy?” Ted pointed to the dead sailor.
“A man like Van Nuys wouldn’t travel out in the wild without a personal bodyguard. A tight-knit group of like-minded assholes. His other two buddies tried to kill Kyla and the vice. The captain’s last remaining guard was certainly with him.”
He rubbed his stubbled chin. “I guess we have to assume everyone back on the JFK is on the other team? How can we get back to friendly forces?”
“My Marines aren’t playing for the other team, sir. They’ll straighten things out. Right now, let’s gather weapons and gear,” she replied, gently kicking Van Nuys as if to ensure he was really dead. “I assume you can fly a plane? Your niece said you were a pilot on Air Force Two.”
“I can.”
“Good. What are your orders, sir?”
He appreciated the deference to his rank. “Call me Ted until we get out of this mess. I’m not even dressed in my uniform; no sense tipping off the enemy who I am or who I work for.”
She seemed satisfied. “Once we’re in the air, I’ll tell you where we have to take the VP next.”
He frowned. “I’m guessing I’m not going to like it?”
“Nope.”
On the Interstate, Illinois
After being on the bikes for so long, Tabby was happy to be safe inside another stranger’s car. The blue Subaru wagon had plenty of room for the three of them, and the two shotguns. When she found tie-downs in one of the compartments, Peter suggested lashing the bikes to the roof rack, in case they needed them again.
A few hours later, they were on the interstate and getting close to St. Louis. The three of them talked about many things during the drive, including how much they missed Donovan, but they didn’t dwell on the negative. She thought it was a good idea to let them reminisce for a short time, but whenever the conversation headed for the skids, she turned them back to happier things.
“As long as we lay low, we can do whatever we want when we get back home. Got any big plans?” Their goal was still to head to Bonne Terre, though she had no solid plans for when she got there. The question was her way of probing whether either of the teens had thought it through, either.
Audrey seemed excited at her prospects. “If we’re really the last people in America, I figure it wouldn’t hurt to collect the best furniture from all the houses in my neighborhood and put them in mine. I’ll have the best dining room table. The finest china. The best jewelry.” She extended her wrist from the back seat, as if to show her an elegant bracelet.
Peter went next. “I’m going to have every video game system and every title ever made. If I’m going to die alone, at least I’ll win at some of those games.”
“Hey,” Audrey interrupted, “you won’t be alone. You can live in the house next to mine. We can visit every day.”
Tabby secretly laughed. It was cute how they talked, and she wasn’t ready to break it to them they could live in the same house. No one was going to criticize their life choices, not even her. It would be easy to fall into the role of parenting the pair, but she didn’t want that burden for herself. They seemed like smart kids; they’d be fine.
But what about me?
The long drive had given her time to think about her situation from multiple angles: the tour guide, the mentor, the older female friend, the defender. However, it never really sank in that she might not have a male companion for…a long time. Vinny from the TV station was the closest she’d seen to an eligible bachelor since the disaster started, and he was probably dead.
“Hey, what’s that?” Peter, in the passenger seat, pointed ahead.
She squinted to see far down the highway. They were in corn country, so the roadway was flat and straight with nothing but young corn stalks on either side. A few cars remained in the highway where they’d stopped, which made the motion stand out. “It’s a plow.”
She slammed on the brakes.
“What are you doing?” Audrey screamed. “We can’t stop here! At least drive over there.” The girl pointed sideways off the road.
“No. We’ll be seen.” She wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed logical. She’d had a lot of time to think about how they’d be spotted from drones, and her conclusion was they were harder to spot when coming directly at a camera, or going directly away, exactly like it would be for human perception. Thus, she put the car in park to cut down on their chance of being seen moving.
“Get out!” she added. “Get to the corn.”
She opened the door and got out. The menacing sound of an engine caught her attention right away; the machine coming her way was moving fast and loud. The crunch of metal on metal echoed from down the roadway as the plow struck the abandoned cars.
“Should we take something?” Peter inquired, standing at his door.
The machine was too close for her liking. “Just run!”
The three of them went down a small embankment, then into the adjacent corn field. The stalks were about four feet high and provided enough cover to hide them, but they had to go about ten rows back before she lost sight of the highway completely. However, when everyone was safe, she returned a couple of rows because she wanted to see the machine go by.
It approached with the energy of a chugging freight train. She saw the black diesel fumes belch out the dual pipes before she saw the machine itself. When it arrived, it became apparent a second sweeper was in the other pair of lanes, doubling the volume they were able to plow.
“Stay low,” she said, checking behind her to make sure the kids weren’t doing anything stupid, like standing up.
When it got there, she thought it might have been a converted train engine. It was as big as an eighteen-wheeler, but it was all one machine, like the box trailer was built into the front part. It also had more wheels than a semi, and they were about twice as large, maybe as tall as a man. The dual-faced plow on the front was low and swept-back, like a graceful wing.
The fast-moving contraption slammed into the Subaru and seemed to lift it off the ground as the scooped plow caught it. It happened so fast, Tabby could barely understand what happened, but along with the bone-jarring crunch and scrape, the car flew sideways off the highway. She watched as the shattered glass of the windshield caught the sun.
It twirled like a trapeze artist doing a dismount.
And it was going to come down right on top of her.
/> CHAPTER 12
Newark, NJ
Kyla and Emily worked together to get the big boat off the shore. She was glad to be gone too, since there was one body floating in the water and another in the bushes. A strip of the dead man’s shirt was wrapped around her neck, putting compression on the small graze she’d gotten during the gunfight. She thanked God she wasn’t lying in the weeds. Exchanging gunshots at point-blank range wasn’t a sport she wanted to do ever again.
“Did your uncle teach you how to shoot?” Emily asked from behind the wheel.
Kyla made an effort to keep her hands in her pockets or holding one of the boat’s grips. Otherwise, Emily would see them shake. “Yes. Well, not really. I’ve been practicing with one of the Marines back on the ship.”
“Ooh, a Marine? I bet they were all over you—a pretty young lady.” Emily flashed a brilliant smile, like she knew something about which she spoke. She piloted them through the narrow inlet at the beach, taking them from the lake into the open sea.
Kyla shook her head. “It’s nothing like that, although I guess a few of them were okay-looking.” Carthager was the big, bronzed, figure of a man she might normally find attractive. “No, a woman Marine took me under her wing. Showed me how to be a badass. I mentioned her earlier; she came with me on the helicopter.”
“In my experience, Marines are cut from a different cloth. I hope she made it. Male or female, we need every one of those Marines fighting for us. I’m glad you got the lessons, too. It takes some of the pressure off me to defend you until Ted gets back.”
“We can defend each other,” Kyla reasoned.
“Bingo. Your uncle and I made a pretty good team these past few days. Once he and you are together and safe, we can focus on warning the rest of the world what’s going on here.”
Kyla looked back. The boat was already hundreds of yards into the open channel. The lighthouse came into view, no longer hidden by the tops of nearby trees. She also saw the beach on that area of the shoreline. A man caught her notice—
“Look! Another sailor.” Kyla pointed him out to Emily, but she had a hard time looking back while also piloting the boat on the choppy water.
“Crap burglar,” Emily responded.
Kyla noticed Emily kept her head low. “Do you think he’s shooting at us?” It would be hard to hear a gunshot from so far away. She figured the only way she would know for sure was if one of them fell over dead. Without waiting for the answer, she hunched over too.
“They’ve been given the green light to kill us. I’m not taking any chances. Heck, so far, I’ve been bombed, shot at multiple times, and almost had a plane shot out from under me with a missile. I wouldn’t put anything past these guys, up to, and including, a nuclear bomb.”
“Wow. My uncle was in that mess, too?”
“In it? He’s the reason I’m still here talking to you. I don’t know what they taught him in flight school, but he sure knows how to survive. I told him I was going to promote him when—” She stopped talking, like she’d said too much, but quietly added, “—when we get back to friendly forces.”
“How far is it to Martha’s Vineyard?”
“I don’t really know. All I’m sure about is it’s a big island below the boot of Massachusetts. As long as we stay within sight of the shore, we should see it.”
Kyla finally sat up. The man on the shore had become a tiny point. She didn’t know the exact range of a rifle, and it was extra difficult to measure distance on the open water, but she figured they were free and clear of that one guy. He was probably running back to his bosses.
Or maybe he was going back inland to find Uncle Ted.
She looked at the radio the sailor had left in the boat. Should she risk giving herself away to warn him?
In the air to Martha’s Vineyard
“So…where are we taking the vice president?” Ted asked Meechum, who sat next to him in the cockpit of the small Beechcraft Skipper—a two-seater probably used as a trainer. The bubble-like cockpit gave them each a wonderful view of the Block Island Sound below.
“Minot, North Dakota,” she replied.
“What the heck is out there? An airbase, I know. And?”
She shot him a wary look. “I can’t say any more than that until I talk to the vice president.”
He held his hands above the wheel. “All right. You drive, then. I’m done.” It came across as immature, but he was mad as hell she would hold out on him. The Marine had no idea what he and Emily had been through.
The plane’s nose dipped, and Meechum grabbed the door handle like it was about to open and fling her out. “Are you nuts?”
Ted still didn’t put his hands on the wheel, though the plane was drifting more to the right than he liked. If she didn’t come around quick…
“Fine. It’s the missile base. We have to go to the damned missile base.”
Ted grabbed the wheel for both of their sakes. Once he had it straightened out, he felt bad about the trick. “Sorry. I’ve been through the wringer and I guess I’m not in the mood for bullshit. It’s dangerous as hell up here.”
“Life is dangerous these days,” she deadpanned, settling back into her seat. “I take it you mean we are in more danger being up here.” The woman was strapped in and snug in her seat, but he noticed her fidgeting with her fingers, like she wasn’t entirely comfortable in the air.
“When we flew in across the Atlantic, I’m talking about when the attack happened, Air Force Two came under attack from missile boats. We were pretty far out at the time, but there’s no telling what range they have, or if they’ve moved since then. I like to play it safe.”
“Is that why we’re flying the wrong way?” she asked matter-of-factly.
He was impressed she noticed. Ted flew them almost due west out over the water, even though the destination was to the east. If they were followed, he planned to cancel the flight completely. They’d ditch somewhere on the mainland, if possible, then get to Martha’s another way. If no one pursued them as they headed east and north to the coast, he planned to get lost in the ground clutter of the eastern seaboard as he turned back east, then make a final cut to the island of Martha’s Vineyard. It would add time to his route, but he figured they were going two or three times faster than the yacht so they’d get there at about the same time. Rather than explain everything to her, he kept it simple. “We’re taking the long way.”
That seemed to satisfy her. They shared some silence for a while, before she pulled out a handheld radio. “I need to call my people, let them know the captain was in on it.”
The plane bobbed on the wind as he took it over the coastline. In seconds, he was over the houses and forests of Connecticut, as he’d planned. “Sure. Better to call them now, before we get to where we’re going. You know, in case we’re tracked.”
She held up the black box. “It’s encrypted. We plan for this stuff, you know?”
He nodded. “I know. I’m just giving you grief, Marine.”
“Meh. I’m used to it. Before we came here, I basically had twelve asshole brothers in my squad.”
They laughed for a moment, before she got on the radio.
A male voice picked up. “This is Crackerjack, go ahead.”
“This is Kit Kat. The otter was a snake. I repeat, the otter was a snake. Plan accordingly.”
“Affirmative, Kit Kat. Be safe. Out.”
Ted looked over. “That’s it? I take it the otter was Van Nuys, but aren’t you going to take over the ship? Call in reinforcements?” There were a lot of actions he figured the Marines could take, but he soon realized he’d been thinking like it was the time before the attack. “Do you even have reinforcements?”
She stayed silent for a few moments. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’ve protected the vice president, and it seems we’re sharing state secrets, so I figure there’s no reason not to… Other than a depleted platoon of Marines on the John F. Kennedy, there isn’t a certified allied unit anywhere in this he
misphere that I know about. Everyone is suspect now. Anyone who left the country right before the attack. Anyone who put themselves in a position to be outside the country, even months before. Entire units who transferred before the attack. If you think about the scope of the destruction, lots of people had to know it was coming. You can’t scare up a nation-killing attack without someone, somewhere, knowing something.”
The cockpit fell into silence again, and he had the time to appreciate the lush, green landscape along the coast. He glanced over to Meechum from time to time, wondering if she would ever settle in, but she always seemed uncomfortable. He’d been with Emily for so long that he actually missed having her with him. She would have kept the airplane stocked with humor and snark. He found himself missing her.
Miles later, Meechum came out of her silence. “You know, you didn’t need to scare me into telling you. Any relative of Kyla is a friend of mine. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I trust you with my life. I’m up here in this rickety milk crate, you know?”
He saw an opportunity for a follow-up. “So, I don’t need to forget how to fly if I ask you what’s so important about the North Dakota missile base?”
“Happy to tell you,” she answered with her ‘get-some’ attitude. “We need to protect the entire United States arsenal of nuclear bombs.”
Amarillo, TX
In all his years in Vietnam, Brent couldn’t remember a juicier target than the one in front of him now. The international airport was a bustling hub of military and civilian transport planes, which were the main targets. The enemy had also amassed a small fleet of Humvees, hundreds of motorcycles with strange attachments added, and an equal number of little metal machines had been lined up in even rows and columns. Using the binoculars from their hiding spot inside a nearby building, he had the perfect observation point overlooking the whole thing, though they weren’t quite strong enough to make out what those lines of machines were for. His bigger problem was that there were so few of them, and so many of the enemy.
Minus America (Book 3): Rebel Cause Page 9