“I’m sure this will work,” she comforted.
A pulse of rumbling shook the tables and computers in the room. It was far worse than the last few tremblors, suggesting the structural integrity of NORAD wasn’t so good after all.
“We hear you loud and clear,” Kyla said over the radio. Then, she added, “Over and out.”
Emily clenched his hand harder. “I know you said to hurry, but maybe we should have put in a rush order.”
They waited for a half an hour. He paced up and down the rows of desks while Emily kept trying to find useful information in the computer system. An effort that went nowhere due to the security protocols on the terminals. Unlike the rest of America, there were no empty sets of clothing at the desks. They were too far underground. If there had been people in this room when the weapon went off, they logged off their stations properly and kept their data secure.
A female voice shouted in the hallway. “We found a way out!”
He and Emily had enough time to look at each other with surprise before the young woman named Tabby came storming in. She and her two friends were drenched with sweat, as if they’d run for miles. The girl pointed behind her. “We have to hurry!”
Fairford, England
“Mrs. Priscilla Clairmont?” a man asked from the blackness of the hangar.
“That’s me,” she replied unevenly. She’d been picked up by an US Air Force school bus, along with a few others who were left in the housing complex next to the airfield. It was where all the Americans of the overseas base lived, so it made it easy to gather the stragglers. The others had all been dumped off next to a commercial airliner, which must have been brought in at the last second. However, when she tried to get off the bus, the driver insisted she stay aboard.
He drove her all the way out past the hangars and into the edge of the woods at the farthest edge of the property. For a moment, she worried she was going to be shot and killed in the remote area, but the driver spoke up.
“Ma’am, I’m Airman Greggors. I only had clearance from the Brits to meet the civilian plane. They’re going to be looking for me, which is why we’re here in the sticks. I’ve been tasked with getting you onto that non-civilian aircraft.” He nudged his head toward a C-5M Super Galaxy peeking out from the far side of the closest hangar building. The plane was far too large to fit inside.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said, still not sure what was up but glad to be told she was leaving the woods. As long as she got off British soil with everyone else, it didn’t matter what airframe was under her. The cloak and dagger seemed over the top.
“Whatever you do, don’t stop walking. Do you understand?” The driver pulled out a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.
“Whoa! What’s this?”
“Just follow,” Greggors insisted, hopping down the steps.
They walked across the field of long grass at the edge of the airport’s paved apron. Mosquitoes nipped at her ankles, though she was far more concerned with the sound of jet turbines cycling through pre-flight checks.
“They’re getting ready to leave, right?”
“Yes,” he agreed, before shushing her.
As they approached the back side of the hangar, a group of men came out a door near the far end. It was too dark to see more than flashlights waving about, but some of the men had their hands up. She was sure of that.
“Why—” she tried to whisper, before realizing Greggors had sped up.
Priscilla followed as instructed, still feeling like a lost sheep. The freshness of the nighttime air struck her as she ran across the field, but an open door to the interior of the hangar released the odors of jet fuel, rubber, and oil. The lifeblood of pilots like her. She went quickly by the door, trailing Greggors, but someone inside noticed them.
“Hey! Come over here!” The accent was British, which seemed unusual for a middle of the night incident on an American airbase.
Greggors made sure she saw him whisper. “Ma’am. They need you on that plane. Do not stop or they’ll take you in. Trust me!” Without warning, he diverted course toward the door. Footfalls of running men came from behind the hangar, too.
The plane was turned to the right, so she aimed for the open ramp of the C-5 directly in front of the building. It was about a hundred yards away.
Someone yelled from behind. “Halt! British Military Police!”
Greggors was much closer to the men than she was. He stopped, though she imagined him turning around to make sure she kept going. Since he’d been so adamant that she not get caught, she picked up the pace and tried to reach the corner of the building, so they wouldn’t see her.
Gunshots barked. Flashes of light caught her peripheral vision.
“Damn!” she cursed, crouching and turning to see behind.
A string of gunfire danced out of Greggors’s machine gun. Why was he firing at their British allies? She almost cried out there must have been a terrible mistake. However, unarmed as she was, it made more sense to get to safety.
The small group of British men returned fire, truly lighting up the darkened side of the hangar as if it was the Fourth of July. She took in about two seconds of the light show before making it to the corner. Then she sprinted toward the giant ramp.
She made it across the pavement as if driven by a whip, the last stretch to the ramp was almost in total darkness. When she approached and didn’t see any lights inside the plane, she halted, afraid she might be shot. “I’m Air Force Major Priscilla Clairmont. The driver said I should board this aircraft.”
The gunfire behind the hangar abruptly stopped. The seconds seemed to slow down as she waited for an answer.
A man’s voice called out from the cargo hold. “Permission granted. We need a pilot. I hope you can fly this bird.”
“As a matter of fact, I can.”
The ramp started lifting even before she was on. She had to hop up and get inside before it shut completely. The next few minutes were a blur of accelerated preparations for takeoff. She taxied them toward a runway, and she listened to chatter on the radio. At first, she thought whatever trouble had taken place behind the hangar was none of her affair, but it soon became apparent the issue was more widespread.
The tower identified her aircraft, then spoke directly to her. “You do not have clearance. Debark your plane and prepare to be detained.”
She turned to her co-pilot. The man looked barely out of high school and he admitted he’d never flown the C-5 except in a handful of simulators. If she hadn’t shown up, he was going to try to get the plane off the ground, but she’d soon come to the conclusion he would have dumped them in the fields near Fairford, never getting them ten feet in the air. He was, however, able to follow her directions. “We’re going for it.”
Taking off without clearance was a career-stopper, but after seeing Greggors get shot, she wasn’t going to take her chances outside the plane with any police force. Since Britain was doing everything in its power to kick her and all fellow Americans to the curb, she felt it was doing them a favor by ignoring their calls for her to stop.
“Tower, this is…” She didn’t know the tail number. “…C-5 heavy. We’re heading down your bloody runway. Have a nice day.”
There was no drama as she guided the lumbering super plane down the ten-thousand-foot runway, and there were no British airplanes in the sky waiting to shoot her down. However, a bright flash of light caught her attention out her left window. The British capital was sixty miles away, but she had no doubt where the light came from.
“Holy shit,” she said in awe of the spectacle rising into the atmosphere. “Someone freakin’ nuked London.”
CHAPTER 9
Cheyenne Mountain, CO
“Tell me everything,” Ted insisted while Tabby and her pals caught their breath.
“We found…tunnels…gate,” Tabby huffed through her heavy breathing. “And trees.”
Ted had no idea what to make of her ramblings. The other kids seemed as tongue-tied
as she was, however, so he had to wait until they could speak.
Tabby sucked in a huge breath. “We ran the whole way back. I think the water might be radioactive.” She pointed to her wet feet and held up a hand. “But the shaking walls suggests we have to get out of here. We found a tunnel leading to an exit. It’s…a mile long to get there, at least.”
“A mile-long tunnel?” That might be enough to get to the backside of the mountain, away from the nuclear mess at the front door. Perhaps the yield wasn’t as big as he thought. “And you saw the exit?”
“I crawled to it.” She pulled a few broken pine needles from the pocket of her jeans. “See?”
It was enough evidence for him. “Good job. I knew the engineers who made this place wouldn’t leave it to chance the front door would be cut off as an escape route. There had to be another way in. Emily and I will gather the others. You line them up so they can make it to where they need to go.”
“It’s right behind these buildings. You can’t miss it.”
Ted jumped into emergency mode. He instructed Emily to find a medical kit and get the kids some iodine tablets for possible radiation exposure. He asked some of the others to scour each of the office buildings, looking for more medical kits. Soon, they might all need the tablets.
He also tried to contact Kyla again, but he received no reply. After a few precious minutes of effort, he had to give up. He figured he could find another radio on the outside…so he left the room.
“Make sure we’re all here,” he advised. “No one gets left behind!”
He watched as the ex-prisoners lined up behind Tabby and her companions. He was about to order them to move out, since they had no gear to carry, but he did notice someone’s absence. “Where’s the bird guy?”
“Dwight?” the man named Jacob replied. “He’s probably in the liquor store.”
He recognized it as a joke.
Tabby raised her hand. “I forgot. We saw him at the exit. He followed us in the tunnel and wouldn’t come back to get you. He said his bird didn’t want to return. Once he saw the sunlight, he didn’t look back.”
He gave her a thumbs-up. “Fine. As long as he’s out of here.” Ted pulled Emily aside. “We have one other problem.”
“The men in the convoy.”
He nodded. “If I abandon them now, they might follow us anyway. Then we’d be in trouble for ditching them.”
Her eyes became slits as she thought up a plan. “You could wait for the rest of us to get out through the tunnels, then go get those men. Use an excuse we had a medical emergency, or whatever, and had to run out as fast as possible. They shouldn’t hold that against you. Then you could meet up with us once they’re outside.”
“It’s worth a shot,” he replied. “Besides, I’d rather have them with us when we attack David. They were really pissed about the betrayal and want payback. It would kind of be like tossing wolves into a den of hyenas. They’d tear each other apart…”
“And we’d sweep in after it all,” she said cheerfully.
“One step at a time,” he cautioned.
They separated after a brief kiss. He waited until his people had cleared out, then he strode down the wide hallway toward the front of the bunker. He hoped Rando and the others would be grateful when he told them there was an exit. However, he didn’t want to get there too fast. He bent down as if to tie his boot, then stayed in the position for a good five minutes. Long enough to give a big lead to his own people.
He finally made his way to the end of the hallway. When he got there, he found the Banana Republic soldiers inexplicably drinking beers and listening to a portable music player. It was as far from a military operation as he could imagine. It was closer to a frat party.
It took a few minutes to search for Rando, which suited him fine. Every second his people were on the run, it ensured they would get out first. He’d been worried the men would see his group as easy prey, but they hadn’t even bothered to do basic reconnaissance outside the first chamber in the bunker. It was easy to think of them as sad excuses for military men, but he kept in mind that Rando was cunning and dangerous, if nothing else.
“Amigo!” Rando yelled to Ted. The man had put his reflective shades back on.
“Hey, uh, Mr. Rando.”
“It’s just Rando,” he replied. Unlike most of the others, who drank beer, he was holding a fifth of Jack Daniels. It struck Ted as hilarious the group had lost all their vehicles and supplies to the nukes, and they’d only had time to bring one trip’s worth of priceless supplies before the doors shut, but most of them had salvaged only liquor and beer.
General Mendoza’s body remained where it fell.
Rando noticed him looking at the general. “Oh, we’ll get someone to clean up the mess. In fact, does anyone in your crew know how to dispose of a body?”
The way he’d said it made Rando laugh at himself, as if it was an inside joke.
Ted did his best to chuckle. “I actually came here to tell you there’s a way out. My people are already heading that way, but I, of course, wanted to lead you through the same passage. To freedom.”
Rando’s eyes lit up. “To revenge!”
He expected Rando to round up his men and immediately go for the exit, especially as there had been a bad quake minutes before, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. After five minutes of watching Rando chit-chat in Spanish with some of his men, Ted did his best to be polite when he interrupted the leader. “Sir, we should really be going.”
“No, this is a celebration. A benefit of my glorious leadership. A party to prepare for all the bad shit we’re going to do to David when we use your exit.”
He wanted to suggest the guy take his party outside, but the man obviously had a plan. He couldn’t have missed the tremors and chunks of falling roof. Fist-sized pieces dotted the floor near the general’s corpse.
“Do you mind if I go and check on my people?” Ted suggested politely.
“Your people?” Rando shot back, suddenly not so happy.
“Our people?” Ted rephrased, as delicately as possible. He’d brought his rifle with him this time, but there was no hope of fighting off a hundred armed men.
“Ah, yes. They are all our people. Viva la resistance!”
“Viva!” he said with fake enthusiasm.
He decided, after having ample time to walk the halls, and after watching Rando chug at the bottle, he would have been better off leaving them.
Cheyenne Mountain Western Exit, CO
Tabby crawled out of the drainpipe for the second time. It was mostly sunny skies above, with rays of light coming down through the tall pines. There were no landmarks in sight, which was probably how the base designers wanted it.
“Come on out,” she called to the others.
Audrey and Peter agreed to stay at the end of the line, to ensure all the ex-prisoners got out through the proper drainpipe. Though they’d only opened one of them, she’d learned through hard trial and error as a tour leader there was no limit to how far a person would go to get lost in her mine. She wasn’t about to make assumptions with the new group.
While checking out the surroundings, she caught sight of Dwight and his red-and-blue Macaw. “Hey!”
The man was perhaps a hundred feet away, talking to someone she couldn’t see. It might have piqued her interest if she didn’t already know him. He was undoubtedly talking to his bird.
Behind her, a few men had already come out, their white jumpsuits filthy from rubbing the dirt caked inside the pipe. It would take a while for the others to make it. It gave her a little time to trek over to Dwight and see what he was up to. If nothing else, she wanted him to know everyone was coming outside and he shouldn’t go off on his own.
She spoke to some saplings as she went toward Dwight. “Tour guide, coming through.”
The smell of the pines reminded her of Christmastime. Her mom had always decorated the house with too many little Santas and snow people. The wreath on the front door w
as the laughingstock of the apartment complex—much too large for the simple entry. Her family always insisted on buying a real tree for the tiny apartment. An act she only now understood. The festive aroma of pine was something she would never separate from the holiday.
Tabby became lost in the memories, which she almost shared with Dwight as she walked up. However, as she came around one of the thick pines, she realized Dwight wasn’t talking to his bird, though the flighty creature was on his shoulder. Instead, he was speaking with a man dressed in a black uniform.
“Oh, who’s this?” the man said, suspiciously looking at her. “She’s Poppy, isn’t she?”
Dwight shrugged, not even bothering to turn toward Tabby.
There was a narrow dirt path in the woods. Two men had approached on dirt four-wheelers. The thick soil and a little embankment along the route had muffled the sound of the motors. The guards had no doubt questioned Dwight about why he was alone in the woods, and, because he was nuts, he’d told them he’d been searching for his bird. Tabby’s arrival seemed to clear up the confusion.
“I’m Poppy,” she blurted.
“No, you’re not!” Dwight snapped. “She’s still in the woods! I hear her.”
The guard looked behind her, but not seriously, as if he’d already come to the conclusion the frumpy man wasn’t all there. “Come on, you two, I need to take you back to camp. I promise, we’ll take good care of you.”
“Don’t burn me, Bernard,” Dwight pleaded.
She tried to get a better look at him. He’d been leaning against a tree as if he’d had some trouble staying upright. Like her, he’d scavenged in the offices to find something new to wear. The sport coat and trousers he’d selected were about two sizes too large. They hung loosely around his body, making him appear as a small child in his father’s outfit. It was another reason the guards didn’t seem to take him seriously.
The guard replied, “We aren’t going to burn you. Start walking and we’ll take you to safety.”
Tabby tried to think of what to say. “We can stay here. We have a camp somewhere down that way.” She was sure to point away from the grate behind her. Was someone watching her, wondering if she was talking to herself? The men on the four-wheelers were in an indentation in the land. They weren’t visible from back there.
Minus America | Book 5 | Hostile Shores Page 6