“I wonder where the rest of our ex-con friends ended up?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically. Other than those who’d gone to Trish’s place, he hadn’t seen any of the prisoners he’d let go, nor did he see the other guards who’d slipped away from their duty. If all the ex-prisoners came back, he’d have a more useful fighting force of about fifty. Even if they weren’t the most disciplined lot, he could have used the numbers.
“Probably in the strip clubs,” Cliff replied, twisting his mustache. He couldn’t remember the man’s real name, but the inmates had assigned him a nickname because he’d worked for the post office as a letter carrier. The man appeared to be in his late twenties, but his mustache made him look a bit like Cliff Clavin from Cheers, a show he was surprised the younger ones even knew about.
“Pfft.” Kevin slapped Cliff on the shoulder. “All the strippers are in pole-dancer heaven.”
Cliff seemed shocked at first, then laughed cautiously. “That’s just wrong, man.”
“Well, it’s true. There won’t be any strippers for a long time, unless you want to find a pole and dance on it yourself.”
A few of the men laughed, though Trish acted disinterested in the banter.
“Guys,” he said, trying to get their minds out of the gutter. “I need options for how to deal with the problem in front of us. This airport is being used by our enemies to invade the hallowed soil of Texas. Are we going to just let that happen, or are we going to do something about it?” Invoking the name of Texas was a calculated risk. Amarillo’s penal system brought in bad guys from as far away as Oklahoma City and Roswell, New Mexico. Not everyone would bleed Texas red, white, and blue.
The men mumbled among themselves for a bit as he kept watch. He assumed he was going to have to think up a plan on his own, but postman Cliff spoke up. “Why don’t we drive one of the bigger mail trucks into the middle of that place and shoot the hell out of anyone we see?”
“Screw that,” someone replied. “I’m not going in there for any reason. I’ll stay right here and launch rockets, or take potshots with a rifle, but if we go in there, I don’t think we’d ever come back out.”
It was a good point. Each plane brought more bad guys into the airport. How many had come in since they visited earlier in the morning?
“Can anyone fly?” Brent asked, knowing it was a long shot. Most petty criminals wouldn’t have the cash or time to get a pilot’s license.
As expected, no one raised their hand.
“Can anyone drive a big rig?” he pressed.
A few hands went up.
“Does anyone know how to set up a remote-controlled vehicle?” he asked, knowing it was an even longer shot than flying. If they could organize a fleet of big trucks, then program them to all drive into the airfield, they could tear up the planes, or at least severely damage them.
No one raised their hand, at first, but finally Ross raised his. “I never did no remote control, but I had an old Chevy I wanted to disappear, so I put a brick on the gas pedal and tied a rope to the steering wheel. It went right where I wanted, and fast.”
“Where did you want it to go?” Brent asked, afraid to know the answer.
“It was the old lady’s truck. She took a tone I didn’t appreciate. Said I was a no-good bum and wanted me out of the house. The crazy bitch said I didn’t respect her, or her house. I went ahead and jimmied her truck and sent it straight into the Red River.” Ross burst into laughter.
Brent ignored how he’d essentially proven his wife’s point; criminals seldom thought through the crimes pulling them into the prison system. Those that did often used their time to plan how to do it better when they got out. Still, it planted the idea in his head. If he could find a heavy truck, maybe they could send it toward the airport and do a little damage.
“Gentlemen, we have the start of a plan.”
CHAPTER 13
Martha’s Vineyard, MA
“Protect the whole arsenal?” he said with disbelief. “How?”
Meechum chuckled. “I know how it sounds. I’ll tell you everything I know, I promise, but please let me do it when the vice president is with us. What I’m going to tell her is classified as top secret, so I want to be sure she gives me approval. I don’t want to lose my pension.” She finished with heavy sarcasm in her voice, probably because nobody was around to pay her retirement plan anymore.
“I can wait,” he said, understanding where she was coming from. He also had a high-level security clearance; he’d been through a new check every year of his life since becoming a senior pilot with the Air Force. They always told him it was to ensure he was qualified and above suspicion for leveraged attacks, such as blackmail. However, he always suspected they also wanted him cleared in case an emergency happened to the president. If the VP suddenly found herself promoted to the head office, she wouldn’t get far along if her crew lacked the clearance to talk to her.
“For now,” he added with a chuckle.
The flight in was uneventful, for which Ted was grateful, but he didn’t see Emily’s boat as he came in, nor were she and Kyla waiting for them when they arrived. At first, he paced around the terminal, which was about the size of a high school gymnasium, but after about fifteen minutes, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’ve got to do something,” he lamented. “Do you want to help me find an airplane big enough to take us all to North Dakota? That way, when Emily and Kyla get here, we can jump on and be gone. They might be hiding from pursuit.” He thought they were fairly lucky to avoid any drone activity. The captain most likely called his bosses to report he’d found the most important woman in America. Every resource they had should have been sent right to the lighthouse, and the skies and seas around it. However, it wasn’t his place to correct the mistakes of his enemies.
“Sure, this place gives me the creeps, anyway.” Meechum pointed to the floor of the terminal, which was layered with gray tiles, but also peppered with the clothes of the fallen. It made him appreciate that he no longer saw the clothing the same way he did back at the terminal building at Andrews Air Force Base. It was still haunting, but it didn’t give him the creeps, as Meechum described it. If anything, seeing those clothes made him more determined than ever to strike back at the sickos who’d done this.
Martha’s Vineyard Airport was essentially a miniature version of any big city airport. It had two runways, a proper taxiway, several enclosed hangars for storage of planes, as well as the terminal building itself. It also had the true measure of any named airport: car rentals. The larger scale also meant there were larger planes parked on the tarmac. If he could find a twin-engine jet, it would get them where they needed to go a lot faster than the single-engine Beechcraft, or any of the other small airplanes parked nearby. It wasn’t that the small craft couldn’t get them there, but it would fly slower and require more fuel stops. Since he didn’t know what to expect out there, he wanted to cut out as many stops as possible.
He went right toward four modern aircraft parked a hundred yards from the terminal. “Any of those would do.” He had his eye on a Cessna CitationJet CJ2, which could be piloted by a single person, such as himself, though the distinctive Avanti P-180 was also attractive.
“Won’t we need to find keys?” she asked. “Are they in the pockets of one of those people back in the terminal, do you think? Like you found it in the other airport?” They’d discussed his escape from the lighthouse, as well as how he got a plane working at the Montauk airfield.
Ted shook his head. “Smaller planes have keys, a lot like automobiles, because they get left at small airports around the world. No one is there around the clock to watch them, so the keys make people feel safe. Bigger planes, like these here at Martha’s, would normally have full-time security watching them, so they don’t require keys. Of course, now that no one is here…”
“We can take what we want,” she finished with a smile.
“I just have to pick the best one,” he added with dry wit.
&nb
sp; He strode around to get a look at his options, but as they walked, he wondered how much she knew about the big picture stuff. Despite spending time with the vice president, a woman who should normally be the center of an intelligence operation unmatched in history, he’d barely heard any news since the attack. “Do the Marines know how the hell they did it?”
“The attack?” she said, tracking his thoughts.
“Yeah.”
She shrugged. “They didn’t tell us what to expect when we went wheels up from Yorktown. We ended up in the lower part of the boat because Lieutenant Keller wanted his platoon off the main decks, so we could observe. He got caught doing recon on an upper deck when the big zap happened, but his positioning of the rest of us saved our lives. Kyla was saved by being in a lower compartment, too. Whatever it was that did it, the metal of the decking must have blocked it.”
“It means it had to be an energy weapon of some sort, right? What else could have penetrated some decks, even if it didn’t get through all of them?” He’d had a little time to think through various scenarios, but it was the first time he had confirmation of how the survivors made it through the assault. “And how would you deliver a nationwide, uh, zapper?”
“Beats me. I work with everything from a knife up to a Javelin anti-tank missile, but they never told us anything like this existed.”
“It exists,” he said matter-of-factly. “At some point, we’re going to have to figure out how they did it, then take it out. They’ve threatened other nations—”
“I know. We operate a secret shortwave radio and have been keeping track of friendlies all over the world. It’s a shitstorm, though. Several EU countries have already pushed out every American they could find. The Middle East, too.”
“What about Great Britain?” he interjected. Though she’d become little more than a casual acquaintance, he had no ill feelings for his ex-wife. She was stationed in the UK, at least for the time being.
“I think they’re fine,” she replied.
It dawned on him how big the war had become since Meechum and Kyla arrived. Now he knew a little about the actual attack, he’d been alerted to the necessity of taking Emily out west to a missile base, and he’d been warned about terrorists possibly taking over an aircraft carrier. He even knew how the enemy was communicating. If they could get Emily and Kyla to show up, he’d be well on his way to mounting the first counterattack—a role he relished.
Come on, Kyla, make it back to me.
Highway in Illinois
“Move!” Tabby shouted. She guesstimated where the Subaru was going to land, then lunged away with as much thrust as her legs would give her.
“Yee-ow!” she screamed as the car came down inches from her backside.
The crunch of metal and further shattering of glass rang in her ears as she tumbled through four rows of cornstalks. One of the bikes had been flung sideways, and it cut through the corn about five feet to her left. The bell rang wildly when it smacked the dirt.
She’d fallen almost face-first, giving her a taste of the nasty soil. While she spit it out and wiped it from her cheek, she rolled to her side to see if her friends were all right. “Peter? Audrey?”
They’d been a bit behind her, but she’d given them a brief warning. She assumed they’d been watching the plow go by and were ready for the flying car, but with those two, she never knew. Seconds went by, and she began to fear the worst. Tabby prepared to crawl over to search…
“We’re fine,” Audrey finally replied from the other side of the car.
“Thank God.” Tabby fell back to the ground, content to sit for a moment and make sure she didn’t toss her cookies. The roar of the plows faded as they drove on, but new engine sounds followed; other vehicles were on the interstate, including the rumble of semi-trucks—lots of them.
She took a centering breath, then got to a crouch in order to see over the stalks. For a second, she imagined life going back to normal. The highway was filled with box trucks, flatbed trailers stacked with shipping containers, and tanker trucks. They all followed the mega-plows like ducklings behind their mother. A few cars were sprinkled in, furthering the illusion. However, the flow of traffic took up all four lanes and all of them were going north toward Chicago. And worse, lots of the flatbed trucks carried the robot horses.
It wasn’t a return to normal; it was a full-on invasion.
Peter and Audrey scooted over to her while she observed the procession.
“Hey, tour guide,” Peter laughed, “what’s next on our itinerary? I’m bored.”
Audrey slapped him across the chest.
“Ow!” he said with mock pain.
Tabby laughed at the crazy situation she found herself in. It had been mere hours since their friend had been gunned down and they were joking again. She wished she could bounce back that fast. All she thought about were the trucks driving by, and the enemy within. Those were real people, not robots. They were the jerks who killed her parents, and everyone else. In her head, they were senseless, drooling, maniacal killers, ever searching for the next innocent they wanted to murder. She would never see them as proper soldiers on the march.
Tabby spoke dramatically. “I’m going to kill them. Every freaking one of them.”
“Say what?” Peter asked seriously. “I was kidding, you know. We almost died a second ago. I was making a joke about being bored.”
Tabby caught herself, then glanced back to the kids. “Oh, right. I don’t mean right now. But someday. Those people driving those trucks, they’re going to pay for killing Donovan. For killing our parents. I know we can’t do anything at this moment, but I’m going to be on the lookout for how I can.”
From tour guide to G.I. Jane? It sounded insane when she thought it through, but nothing so far gave her any hope they could peacefully surrender. Gus and Vinny had said their co-workers tried to surrender and were killed on the spot by real people. No one asked Donovan if he wanted to surrender; the robots didn’t seem to care, either. She shook involuntarily at the idea of having no way to protect the two happy-go-lucky teens in her charge.
It took about five minutes, but the parade of tractor-trailers came to an end. A single military armored truck trailed behind. It had eight wheels, a muted gray hull that reminded her of a narrow turtle, and a small turret on top. A pair of men sat in the open hatches on the turret, dressed in black uniforms and black hats. She was close enough to see them laughing as if one of them had told a funny joke.
The face of the enemy.
She crouched lower, afraid men with real eyes would turn and see her in the corn.
“Stay down,” she hissed, sure Audrey or Peter would be standing too high.
The wheeled vehicle rolled by without slowing. She had no idea what it was, or what military it came from, but she didn’t want to tangle with it. They’d been lucky so far, and she wanted that streak to continue.
“We have to collect our stuff,” she said, only after the convoy was a distant hum.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked. “The car is toast.”
“Some of it had to survive. Our guns and stuff are in there.” She pointed to the ruined Subaru, which was lying on its side. “We’ll get what we can and find another car. We’ll have to take backroads.”
“Won’t we get caught with those things on the highway now?” Audrey said with worry.
“Well, we can’t walk home. We have to get there before more of these jerks show up. I want to be somewhere familiar, you know?” All at once, getting the kids home seemed like the most important mission in the world.
She’d gotten up to full height when stalks of corn crunched from behind her.
A drone?
More stalks tipped over. Like in the movies, she saw an object running through the rows, heading right for her. She reached around to the gun at the small of her back, but the fear made her clumsy and slow. Having it probably wouldn’t matter if a mechanical horse-drone found her.
Of course they would scou
t alongside the highway.
She crouched down, intent to at least block the drone and maybe give the kids time to escape.
Then a dark shape came out of the greenery.
It went right for her.
CHAPTER 14
Martha’s Vineyard Island, MA
As Kyla and Emily motored along the shoreline of Rhode Island, the boat traffic increased greatly. Unlike the automobiles on the highways that ran into things, or stopped when the clutch wasn’t engaged, boats kept going until they ran out of fuel. Some of them had crashed into land, or headed out into the ocean, but the congestion as they approached Martha’s Vineyard suggested it was a fishing and pleasure boat anchoring area; lots of white dots were adrift on the blue waters.
“Do you think anyone’s alive out there?” she asked Emily, who sat resolute and mostly silent at the wheel.
“No. Nobody’s alive. People have all been cleaned away, just like they said.”
Kyla wanted to argue the point, show some hope in front of the leader of the country. Tell her she was wrong, and this was why. But nothing came to mind that would prove her right. Eventually, she drifted to sleep with the rhythm of the waves…
A change in the engine pitch startled her awake.
“Whoa!” she blurted, tipping forward a little.
“It’s okay,” Emily reassured her. “We’re here.”
They were in a small bay with dozens of single-mast sailboats anchored behind a rocky sea barrier, so waves wouldn’t strike them. A large renegade ferry had sped through the mooring area, creating a path of tipped hulls and debris. The ship had run aground on the beach beyond the boats. Emily pointed to it. “I bet Ted could get that running and use it to take us out into the ocean.”
“Wouldn’t the missile boats get us?” Kyla asked in return.
“I don’t know,” Emily remarked. “Maybe they aren’t prepared for ships to come through, only airplanes. Who would be looking for a wayward ferry? Maybe it drifted loose, with all the other boats?”
Minus America (Book 3): Rebel Cause Page 10