“No. But I have first dibs on the next tour.”
Then, a bit more apprehensive, “Do you think I should ask Dad not to go?”
“Well, you could. But you know how hard headed he is. What do you think he’d say?”
Sami thought for a moment, then mimicked her father’s gruff voice: “I appreciate your concern, baby. But this is an important trip, and I’m not going to cancel it because of a feeling you’ve had.”
She looked at Hannah and asked, “Pretty close?”
“I think it was spot on. You know that grumpy old man pretty well.”
“Yes, and I love that grumpy old man. I’d be lost without him. But you’re right. If I asked him not to go he’d refuse. Or, he’d stay back and let somebody else go in his place and then if something happened to them he’d never forgive himself.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, honey. Your dad will be fine. I’ll go along to babysit him and make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble by trying to make out with all the women at Colonel Montgomery’s facilities.”
“Hannah! That’s my father you’re talking about!”
“Oh, I know. And you and I both know he’s the biggest dog in ten counties when it comes to chasing the ladies.”
“Well, yeah, I guess that’s true.”
“So, let him go. I don’t have a clue what information he wants to gather down there, but he seems to think it’s pretty important to our security situation. And I’ll try my best to keep him from knocking up any hot women down there and getting shot at by any jealous boyfriends. You do your part while I’m down there babysitting, and make sure no accidents befall anyone else while we’re gone. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I guess. Would you be sure and ask the colonel if he’ll do another tour soon? Tell him it’s for your pregnant best friend, and she needs to go before she gets as big as a house and can’t fit into the helicopter anymore.”
“Oh, Sami, you’ll never be as big as a house. You’ve barely gotten bigger at all. Why, you’ll probably get no larger than a three car garage, tops.”
She smiled.
“Thanks a lot.”
At that moment, Sarah and Bryan walked in for coffee.
Bryan looked at Hannah and Sami’s attire and let out a long wolf whistle.
“Lingerie day, huh? Nice. Y’all should have told me. I’d have worn my pink teddy.”
Sarah elbowed her husband in the ribs.
“Ouch! What did I do?”
Sarah winked at the girls and said to Bryan, “You told me you’d only wear that pink teddy in the privacy of our own home.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Hannah turned to Sami and said, “I think we’d probably better get back to our apartments and change, or we’re gonna be the butt of a lot of jokes this morning.”
Chapter 43
Right on schedule, the chop chop chop of the Huey’s main prop could be heard in the distance. It was coming in at treetop level, as was the colonel’s preference.
“Any other way to fly is for sissies,” he’d told Frank and Karen on the first tour.
It was a perfect morning to fly. The sun was shining, making the early morning dew dance on the flowers and leaves below. The birds were singing, and the woods around the compound were alive with a symphony of chirps and whistles and creaking noises.
The breeze was slight and out of the northwest. Hannah thought she could smell the faint scent of the lake water as she and John stood on what they’d come to call the “helicopter pad.”
Suddenly, quite literally out of the clear blue sky, the helicopter came into view. They could see Colonel Montgomery smile broadly when he saw them waiting.
Montgomery was an old school military officer. He liked it when people waited on him. He despised the times when he had to wait for others. It was a double standard practiced by high ranking military officers as long as the military has existed.
The pilot touched the bird down a safe distance from their waiting passengers, and the colonel hopped off to greet them. He raised his voice to be heard over the noisy aircraft, shouting, “Good morning!” as he shook John’s and Hannah’s hands.
The two were seated in the cabin, Hannah facing forward and John facing her, looking aft. No machine gun was brought on this day, and the crewman who normally would be the gunner assisted the pair in getting strapped in. He fitted them with helmets, made sure they were secure, and told them to give him a thumbs up when they were comfortable.
Both of them did so. He asked over the radio if they could hear him. Both nodded their heads.
“You’re on Tac 2,” the crewman said. You can use it to converse between yourselves and the colonel. If you’d like to monitor the operational channel and listen to the pilot and Air Traffic Control, you may switch to Tac 1. But don’t say anything on Tac 1.”
Both John and Hannah nodded, indicating they understood.
The crewman sat down and started strapping himself back in. Colonel Montgomery looked at his guests and said, “You guys ready to go?”
Hannah smiled and said, “Yes, sir!”
Colonel Montgomery switched channels briefly and said, “Let’s show our guests what this baby can do.”
From the rooftop, Mark and little Markie watched as the bird broke free from the earth and lifted up over the trees.
Markie said, “Wow! Cool!”
Sami, standing behind them, was more subdued. She managed a smile as she reached out and tusseled Markie’s hair. But she still couldn’t get over her sense of dread.
Chapter 44
By mid afternoon things had gotten back to normal in the compound. Hannah and John were finishing up their tour in San Antonio and would be heading back soon.
Helen and Karen and a couple of other volunteers were in the kitchen, baking pies and planning the evening meal.
Joe, the only true musician in the group, was setting up the microphones in the dining room for a concert he was planning to give during dinner. As a surprise to everyone other than him and Rachel, she would accompany him on one of his songs.
They’d been sneaking off to the barn lately for private lessons on the acoustical guitar. Others had seen them come and go, and had assumed they were witnessing a budding romance in the works.
And there was a little bit of that too. But mostly it was Joe getting Rachel ready for her big musical debut.
All seemed right with the world, until Bryan broke in over the radio.
“Sarah, come in Sarah.”
There was no response.
“Sarah, this is Bryan. Come in, baby.”
Still no answer.
Frank, on duty at the security control center, tried to help.
“If anyone is with Sarah or knows where she is, please have her turn her radio on and answer.”
No response from anyone.
Bryan started to panic. Sarah never turned her radio off. This wasn’t like her at all.
All conversations in the compound immediately ceased as all ears were glued to the radio.
“Okay,” Frank said. “Nobody panic. Has anyone seen Sarah since lunchtime?”
There were no responses.
Frank continued.
“Bryan, you didn’t have lunch with her?”
“No, Frank. I was on guard duty on top of the building. I haven’t seen her since this morning.”
Frank went on.
“Okay. Did anyone have lunch with Sarah?”
Silence.
“Has anyone seen her since breakfast?”
At last, an answer.
Debbie said, “I saw he just after breakfast, Frank. She said she was going outside the compound to pick some wildflowers.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Mark, you were on the security desk this morning. Did anyone let Sarah out the gate?”
Bryan interjected.
“Frank, Sarah never goes in and out of the gate when she picks flowers. She always goes through the evacuation tunnel that comes out under the
old cabin floor.”
Frank released the microphone key and cursed. Then he keyed the mike again and asked one last question:
“Bryan, are you sure she’s not in your apartment taking a nap?”
Bryan sounded irritated. Or maybe it was worry.
“No, Frank. I’ve searched every inch of the compound. She’s not here.”
“Okay. Sami, I need for you to come and relieve me at the desk. I need for all available men to meet me at the gate in ten minutes. Replace the batteries on your radios. You shooters draw a weapon from the gun case. As of now we’ll consider her missing and presumed lost in the woods. We’ve only got a few hours before nightfall, so we’ll have to move quickly.”
Karen asked, “Is there a way to get ahold of Hannah and John? Maybe one of them knows where she is.”
Mark answered, “Hannah definitely doesn’t know. She made a comment just before they walked out to meet the helicopter that it was sad her best friend didn’t bother to come and wish her bon voyage.”
Three hours later, as pairs of searchers scoured the woods outside the compound, a tiny robin landed in the middle of a clearing half a mile away.
The robin was building a nest for her brood, and poked through several wildflowers lying in a loose bouquet in the short grass. She walked through a puddle of red sticky blood, but didn’t know and didn’t care what it was. She selected a wild bluebonnet from the bouquet, decided it would make a perfect addition to her nest, and carried it away into the darkening sky.
Thank you for reading The Army Comes Calling. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. Please enjoy the following preview of the next installment of the Final Dawn series.
Final Dawn Part 6:
MISSING
Hannah awoke for the second time, still in a daze and still in a world of pain. She still couldn’t move the lower part of her body. Couldn’t even feel it, as a matter of fact. The huge piece of wreckage that covered her hips and legs kept her from even seeing whether her lower body was still intact. The tingling she felt occasionally came in waves, first barely perceptible and then very intense.
Had her lower body been severed in the crash? Was that why she couldn’t feel her legs and feet? Was the tingling merely her body’s way of trying to convince her she was still whole? Or was her hip bone as far as her body extended now? Was the weight of the huge chunk of metal which covered her from her pubic bone to her ankles the only thing keeping her from bleeding to death from legs that were no longer there?
She’d had little formal training in medicine while in college. She’d always been amazed when she told people she was an astrophysicist how many thought that had something to do with medicine. Many of her friends had asked her casual questions about their ailments, as though she were formally trained in the medical field.
The truth was, the few medical courses she took in college were merely block fillers: elective courses she took simply because they interested her and she needed the credits. She took two semesters of basic medical principles and first aid techniques. Another on emergency medicine.
She tried her best to remember. Her abdomen was sensitive to the touch, and was warm and hard. That meant internal bleeding, she was almost positive. And that wasn’t good.
She tried again to cry out. But her lungs just wouldn’t inflate to allow her to do it. Even now, three hours after the crash, she was still breathing in very short, very labored breaths. Whenever she tried to inhale deeply, the stabbing pain from her fractured ribs made her feel like passing out.
She looked once again at the arm.
Oh, she tried not to. The pain it caused her was even worse than the pain in her abdomen or the pain in her lungs.
This pain was in her heart.
But the arm kept drawing her back. It wouldn’t let her not look.
It was as though the limb, peeking out from underneath a chunk of Army green fuselage that had to weigh a ton or better, kept calling her name.
Hannah studied the arm again, desperate to know. She’d known John for years now… considered him one of her best friends. And she knew he had tattoos. She remembered seeing the words “Semper Fi” tattooed on his shoulder once when she was giving him a haircut.
But even as well as she knew him, she couldn’t say for sure if he had the letters “USMC” tattooed on the inside of his right forearm.
Like the arm that peeked out from the piece of fuselage.
She hadn’t seen John since the crash. Hadn’t seen anyone, in fact. As far as she knew she was the only survivor.
And she knew in her heart she wouldn’t survive long without help.
Suddenly, there was a sound. Of what? It was a scratching noise, barely perceptible.
No. It was a dragging sound. Coming from the area past the arm.
Hannah strained to see who or what was making the sound, but the sun was setting and the area around the crash site was getting dim.
Finally, around the side of what was left of the propeller assembly, a weak and damaged figure emerged.
It was the crewman who’d strapped them into their seats for their return flight just before they left Kelly Air Force Base. The one who told her it was bad luck not to smile for the man who buckled her in. The man who told her she was beautiful and who pointed out that he was single and looking for a mate.
She’d been told that by many men over the years, of course. But she was still flattered, and gently told the man she was happily married and had a child.
She’d laughed when the man said, “Dang it!” as though he was genuinely heartbroken.
She wondered if he’d be the last man to ever tell her she was beautiful.
He dragged two legs behind him as he clawed his way across the ground. One was tied off with a tourniquet just above the knee. The leg below that was gone. The other leg was intact, but was crushed almost beyond recognition. She saw a piece of femur protruding through the flight suit on his upper right leg, and found herself trying to remember how to treat an open fracture.
She could tell by the paleness of his face that he’d lost a lot of blood, and that he was quite probably in shock.
Still, as he saw her his face seemed to change. He seemed to gain motivation to keep crawling toward her.
As he drew closer, she was able to squeak out a few words: “Are you okay?”
The question seemed ludicrous in the face of the obvious.
But he didn’t seem to notice. It seemed, in fact, that it took her words several seconds to even register.
Then, in a tone perhaps meant to reassure her, or to console her, he mustered, “I’ve been better. How about you?”
She said, “I can’t feel my legs. I don’t know if they’re still there.”
He managed a smile in what must have been a truly monumental effort.
“Oh, they’re still there. I was checking them out on the other side. Nice legs. How about the rest of you?”
“I think I’m bleeding internally. And I think at least one of my ribs is broken.”
She spoke barely above a whisper, and in short breaths. Any effort beyond that brought her incredible pain.
She looked again at the arm, and she had to know. Was that the arm of her good friend John? Or was John somewhere else? Perhaps himself injured and hurting on the other side of the crash site?
“Please, I have to know. My friend John. Did he make it?”
The crewman looked at the arm, where Hannah had been directing her attention moments before. Then he looked at Hannah, with the most agonizing look upon his face.
She braced herself for the bad news that she was sure was coming.
Final Dawn Part 6: MISSING will be available on amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers in January, 2015.
Please enjoy this preview of Countdown to Armageddon, available now on Amazon.com in paper and Kindle formats. Also available through Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON
Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’
s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.
His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?
No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter, that word might well be “average.”
If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.
And it was that combination – his penchant for making a buck, and being lucky, that led him here on this day to the Guerra Public Library on the west side of San Antonio.
To research what he believed was the pending collapse of mankind.
Twenty three years earlier, in 1990, Scott had done two things that would change his life forever. Even back then, he was just an average Joe. He’d had plans to become a doctor, but his average grades weren’t cutting it. So he dropped out of college halfway through his junior year.
He’d have loved to have married a beauty queen, but his average looks certainly did nothing to attract any. Neither did his average amount of charm. So instead he started dating Linda Amparano, who was a sweet girl but somewhat average herself. They seemed to make a perfect, if slightly vanilla, couple.
The second thing Scott had done that year was buy a dilapidated self-storage unit on the north side of San Antonio. It was one of those places where people rent lockers to store their things when their garages have run out of space. Or their kids go off to college. Or when they just accumulate so many things that they’ve run out of room to put them all.
Pat, the guy who’d sold the property to Scott, was a friendly enough sort, but not a businessman at all. He didn’t understand some of the basic principles of running such an operation.
Not that Scott was an expert. At least back then he wasn’t.
But even back then, Scott knew the value of curb appeal, and that a fresh paint job and a few repairs could attract a few more customers. And a few more customers would help supply money for advertising, and special offers, and long-term lease discounts. No brainers, actually.
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