by Td Barnes
Bradley chuckled, and his eyes reflected humorously, indicating both marvel and appreciation. “I presume you have thought of everything, judging by the number of trucks coming and going.”
Kennedy grinned and replied. “We have spent a ton of taxpayer money and several years determining what we would need for a colony on the moon, and that is what you are getting. You will see some items that you do not know even exist. The toilets are designed to recycle liquids and even purified for drinking in outer space. The solids are vacuum extracted into a processor that reduces everything to dust for discharge through vents into the atmosphere. We are providing specially designed and processed medicines with an indefinite shelf life. There is even a cremation unit for processing the dead should you need it.”
“Concerning the potties - I hope you brought us several of them. We have five miles of the tunnel you know.”
“Well, you nailed me there. We have four units,” Kennedy replied sheepishly. He scratched his chin in thought. The stone face and lack of expression of this colonel made him a bit concerned how he would react to such a stupid screw up. He realized this contribution being insignificant in the overall scheme of things even with him bringing any available units.
“Save the brain cells. We will install your units near the main mess area and the medical modules where we have vents. I understand that the tunnel already has latrines installed from its construction stage. I imagine they have pressurized septic laterals extending outside to accommodate the facilities deeper in the tunnel. We will resort to the old Army way and install piss pipes and portable potties if we find these are not adequate to service our people. We may be hauling our waste in honey buckets and dumping it in the desert if we must stay very long. We can use the cremation ovens to get rid of it if needed.”
Bradley remained imperturbable when it came to his restraining any display of emotion to stress, exciting events, or news. It did not show, but he felt a giant load and a thousand questions lift and float away during the next two hours of watching the supplying of his mountain. He knew from experience the logistics and behind the scenes requirements for even something simple like a bivouac, but housing hundreds of humans in a mountain in the middle of a desert for an indefinite period with no resupply created problems requiring solutions that he could not yet fathom.
Bradley appreciated now his research and thought previously expended while preparing his publications and lectures about life after an EMP attack. He mentally recalled his checklist of what a military unit would need following such an attack. He looked at the Humvee that brought him to the mountain.
“Excuse me a moment,” Bradley said to the two from Starquest. He turned to his executive officer. “XO, at some point the survivors of this attack must defend themselves from raids by other survivors. It is a blessing to us is the opportunity to prepare for this. We have enough space inside the mountain to fill it with a major inventory of military defense assets. Make it your mission to grab and store inside the mountain every Humvee and piece of ordnance you can get. I mainly want M1114 and M116 up-armored HMMWVs with guns and ammo, and grab us all the high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles we can get. I want every damned piece of military equipment from the armories. You must somehow scrounge us all the air defense, stinger missiles, surveillance drones, and infrared night vision equipment you can. The military bases and armories will not need them and we will. This includes blankets, cots, first aid kits, infrared equipment — everything. Is that clear, Colonel?" He ordered his raspy voice a husky whisper.
“Yes, sir,” Barlow replied. “She turned to the sergeant major. You heard the Colonel. Pass this on to the company CO and make it happen.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sergeant Major,” Bradley said.
“Sir?”
“I will so inform the company commander of what the XO and I are instructing you to do. If you see him first, please pass this on on my behalf. The urgency here outweighs any delays caused by this having to go through a chain of command. Tell the CO to have the civilian vehicles dispersed out of sight the best he can and camouflage them. I do not expect we will have any traffic here that might steal the private vehicles on the outside, but to be sure, remove the tires, and store them at the mountain for preservation. This can wait until we have our people settled at the mountain, but we need to drain the entire fuel systems of the stored motor vehicles, military and civilian alike so they will not gum up from lack of use while in storage. We must be concerned about storage and security of our Class III supplies. Be certain to add the appropriate stabilizers and additives to our petroleum products. Also, remove the batteries and preserve them. It may be years before we will need these vehicles, so do everything you can to preserve them for future use. Remove and secure any distributor wiring and anything irreplaceable that desert rodents might chew up or steal for nests.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bradley turned back to the Starquest people. They both looked at him with an awakened degree of seriousness and respect for his long-range perspective for their situation. “Doctor Sanders, other than your photosynthesis veggies, I suppose you have some ideas on how we will feed these people? They will grow very tired of military rations.”
Sanders wrinkled her freckled nose in thought, looking towards a pen of goats awaiting slaughter and butchering. “I can’t improve on what you are doing. The menagerie of animals already here at the mountain provides us a controlled source of meat, milk, and eggs, and a breeding program for the future. Our mountain offers more than any other safe-haven existing around the world, plus you have professional knowledge and technology that exists nowhere else."
Bradley laughed. “I know about livestock. I poked you to see if you are bringing some other space food that I’ve never heard of.”
“No, sir. Only the salad.” She said laughing. “You must provide the steak and salad dressing.”
From his conversation with the Starquest personnel, Bradley realized the mountain being the beneficiary of years of planning for sustained colonization in outer space. He confirmed this afterward when he conducted a walking inspection of the entire tunnel complex with the most senior from the Department of Homeland Security personnel, Starquest, and other departments, individuals recommended by Robinson and the company CO for selection to head department heads and provide a military advisory staff. Together, they learned the resources in the tunnel to work with, needed changes, and choices of what and who would go where. During the inspection tour, Bradley educated his chosen staff on what the future held for those at the mountain, making them realize the extent of the change in the lives of those at the mountain. They could well be on another planet when it came to their new lifestyle and mission in life —no making of new friends, taking vacations — nothing outside of these five miles of tunnel — their subterranean city— their subterranean world.
Bradley and his key personnel organized the mountain with this mindset. Meeting the logistic requirements for supplying the mountain far exceeded the capabilities of Bradley and his newly formed command. He delegated his staff officers the authority to coordinate, supervise, and inventory, to spare such administrative details and responsibilities from the company commander and his men where feasible.
His being a stranger to the region rendered him useless in the planning and acquisition of the supplies delivered. He recognized this and focused his attention on ensuring that his people knew what entered the mountain and where they stored it. He was not aware of those responsible for much of what arrived and frankly did not care. He delegated authority where and as needed for what occurred at the mountain but otherwise stayed out of the way of the company commander in dealing with routine military matters. He took his hat off to the one dispatching and coordinating the massive supplying of the mountain in a Herculean way apparently devoid of bureaucracy and regulatory accountability.
Bradley added his own degree of bustle outside the mountain when he delegated authority to continue out
side the south portal the greenhouse started in Beatty, leaving it up to Captain Callahan to concentrate on military defenses of the mountain to include guard bunkers and trenches outside the entrances. Callahan ordered the rail tracks severed inside each portal door and the external tracks removed to prevent their use on the outside to breach the portal access.
In his earlier life before the EMP, Capt. David Callahan, a native of North Las Vegas, had trained to deploy rapidly to a suspected or actual terrorist attack. His unit conducted special surveillance to determine the effects of the offense and assisted local authorities in managing the consequences of the assault to minimize the impact on the civilian population. Though accustomed to assessing suspected WMD attacks, he and Colonel Bradley were sharing the first experience with a real EMP attack. He knew how to advise civilian responders on appropriate actions, or facilitating the arrival of additional state and federal military forces to include command, operations, communications, administration, and logistics, medical, and survey, but lacked the training of an infantry company commander.
It had surprised him when he received word to pack up his wife and two-year-old son and report to Nellis Air Force Base, where he found the rest of his team likewise drifting in with their families.
None of his team, the others joining his company, nor he knew the selection process for the deployment to the mountain. They only knew that married personnel possessing a high-security clearance and at the top in their field rated acceptance for this assignment.
He hardly knew his line officers or most in his command at this point, but nonetheless felt very pleased with his appointment to Colonel Bradley, an expert in EMP and the author of the training resource used by his team and other first responders previously met on training exercises at the Nevada National Security Site.
All this training kicked in as he organized his newly assigned permanent party personnel to remove weeds and any obstructions to a field of fire, leaving it to those organizing the other units of the Nevada National Guard and the military at installations in Nevada, Utah, and California to supply the mountain. He assembled his platoon leaders and NCOs and organized what they needed to secure the perimeter of the mountain.
His troops installed motion detectors and security lighting in the existing buildings and any equipment that an enemy might use for cover from the defenders of the mountain.
They mounted machine guns and grenade launchers in the line of defense, and behind the protective berm inside the mountain, blasting the rock to form trenches that extended to the entrance of the portal for personnel traveling to and from the defense positions.
In what later amounted to greater perception, Callahan ordered the installation of cameras, motion detectors, and lighting on the mountain above and around the north and south portals with control from inside the mountain. These included highly-classified security and repulsion devices from the Area 51 Groom Lake Facility and the Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base.
Considering the south portal being a back entrance used more for vehicle access and housing for the livestock, he ordered explosive devices installed where the defenders could blow the opening by remote control in the event someone managed to breach the door. Six hundred feet below the top of this mountain at Jackass Flats, he quickly established a fortress equipped and capable of withstanding a massive and sustained aggressor engagement.
Callahan chose the locations for the armory cubicles, one for storage of heavy caliber weapons and ammunition and another near the center of the tunnel for small arms and ammunition. Soldiers shuffled ordnance for room in the cubicles with both safety and accessibility the key considerations.
In a beehive of activity, his 593rd Transportation Company preserved the stored vehicles and inventoried the arriving spare parts, fuels, tires, and batteries of the private cars in the adjoining cubicles. He dispersed 100 yards apart for safety nineteen fully loaded tanker trailers delivered the past three days to provide fuel storage tanks for diesel and gasoline.
The soldiers encased the motor pool vehicle storage section with the orange colored desert tortoise fencing collected from outside the mountain with a plywood baseboard with wire spikes to discourage pack rats and other rodents entering the mountain to nest in the vehicles and chew on electrical wiring and fabrics.
Lieutenant Colonel Barlow naturally took Bradley’s order concerning the acquisition of vehicles, weapons, ordnance, and military supplies seriously enough that she made it her primary project while freeing Captain Callahan to manage the military defense. Under her direct supervision for the past three days, the south portal had roared without letup with arriving military vehicles disappearing into the tunnel, but not returning. Dozens of Humvees, complete with weapons, entered with the driver later walking out without his vehicle.
Trucks delivering tanker trailers filled with petroleum products likewise disappeared where only the vehicle returned. Fortunately, a wide area existed in the tunnel where the truck could turn around once it dropped its trailer. It also provided a holding area for trucks ready to leave the mountain while blocked by an oncoming vehicle.
The combined echoing sounds evidenced the existing state of urgency where across the flats trucks roared, and personnel yelled directions to the drivers — these sounds mixing with the sounds of the livestock and activities at the corrals.
The noise of vehicle traffic stopped on the third day, replaced by the roaring human and livestock sounds reminiscent of roundups of the Wild West while ranchers moved the menagerie of cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and burros immediately inside the south portal. They placed the horses and burro pens near the entrance for easy access to outside use. Other than being in a tunnel, sounds and smell of the various penned animals at the south portal resembled that of a local county fair. The guinea hens roamed free to rid the tunnel of insects.
Sergeant Major Weston took the lead in keeping the community working as a team. He dispersed tons of supplies throughout the tunnel for human needs. On the civilian side of activities,
Mayor Robinson organized a group of sixty women from the Amargosa Valley and from those arriving from Beatty now working around the clock in shifts for three days canning the vegetables coming from the Amargosa Valley farming community.
Rancher Don Pierce organized the men from the Valley and Beatty to slaughter the cattle, hogs, and chickens while Capt. Gerald Anderson, the S-4 quartermaster, supervised the soldiers assigned to the mountain in inventorying the meat and packing it in brown sugar where the meat would cure. He also oversaw the children ferrying the canned goods to the storage alcoves for inventory by an identification number and bar code on each container, assigning young adults to scan everything into a computer system to account for every item at the mountain. The high level of technology involved spoke highly for the first responder preparedness existing in the state of Nevada.
At DIA, Bradley had often worked with scientists and academia, but not in these numbers. He had jested in his earlier remark to the Air Force colonel that many of those smart enough to have a Ph.D. after their names could not find their ass with both hands but believed it now with the Prima Donnas among them arriving with priority demands and expecting accommodations impossible to provide.
The academia with a Ph.D. indeed posed a different breed than those he had met earlier from Starquest. Rather than bruise their sensitivities with his aggressive way of dealing with trivia, he finally assigned his sergeant major to address the VIPs and retreated to observe the equipping of a combination war room and the Command Center in the alcove near his quarters.
Bradley stopped at the #1 mess to grab a cup of coffee but did not linger. From the mess hall, he saw the signal corps soldiers unloading all sorts of delicate electronic equipment into the main tunnel. The sergeant in charge noticed Bradley approaching him and saluted. Sir, I was about to put out the posse looking for you. Do you have a preference of alcoves for the Command Center?”
Bradley scanned the items being unl
oaded and realized his being supplied with a major, state-of-the-art command and control center. “Follow me, sergeant.” He led the sergeant to a large alcove a short distance where he recalled seeing what appeared to be an administrative or control center earlier established during the construction of the tunnel. “This will do, he said after the sergeant, and he examined the alcove in mind and the two adjacent ones.
The alcove chosen for the Command Center had previously served as an operations center and still contained existing communications and intercom cable and wiring. It was located about 200 yards inside the underground tunnel complex and provided views of the desk of the guard commander near the portal entrance. It also offered a sight of the #1 mess towards the interior of the tunnel, which weighed heavily with Bradley because of his coffee caffeine addiction.
Bradley’s electronics background kicked in immediately when he saw the soldiers unloading the racks of equipment. He knew what he wanted and needed, so with the other activities being under control by his subordinates, he decided to take a leading role in the setup and staffing. For his communications room, he selected enlisted personnel assigned to the mountain from the 422d Signal Battalion and for his war room; he selected enlisted men, officers, and agency SpecOps staff of the Special Operations Squadron at Yucca Lake airfield, a secret CIA base for UAV operations.
Bradley’s operation demonstrated the same urgency of the rest of the mountain with his soldiers first installing the EMP-hardened radios delivered earlier to Beatty, followed by the installation of alarms from the external sensors, maps and anything else that he thought those the mountain might need in the war room. They hurriedly set up five full racks of nuclear-hardened military radios of military bands along with an EMP hardened data system in a smaller alcove adjoining to the Command Center.
He selected the central command center alcove for installation of the monitoring systems of the Nellis AFB Battle Staff Briefing Room — three 12 x 12 feet etched and fogged glass rear projection screens for monitoring the activities inside and out of the mountain. Each individual screen displayed single or double Viewgraph or 35mm slide, or single, dual or quad computer or video display, enabling monitoring with a zoom capability of 12 individual key areas within the tunnel simultaneously, or any combination of such with enough memory to provide a 3-D CAD capability to view details of an emergency.