An hour later all had given their report and only the second in command had yet to speak. Hilary asked him to give a base report to include the Air Force Academy and the other bases nearby. The colonel cleared his throat and began to speak. ‘Madam President, we only have news of Fort Carson. The storm overwhelmed us and we have with us the Fort Commander and his staff. He sent the rest of the base personnel to Colorado Springs to help the civilians where they could. Once the storm hit hard, we lost contact with everyone and all satellites and aircraft. After a while we gave up except a line was open to the White House, but no response to date. The rest of the time we have spent in maintenance and some of our scientists have been working on growing some food in a makeshift greenhouse.”
Hilary looked at him and then to Greg. No communication was necessary as by now they could read each others’ minds. The last thing the president said was this to the group: “Let me introduce you to my second in command. He is a former CIA man and I’ve elevated him to act on my behalf in all matters. From now on he is your boss. His name is Greg Hoffman and this is his family with him. The old gentleman with the railroad hat is Chuck and he is in charge of all logistics to and from this base. Next to him is Bubba and don’t let looks fool you. He holds a Masters Degree and is my Civilian Commander with a rank of full Colonel. Greg’s wife Becky is in charge of all education hence forth. All of you will respond to them if I was giving the orders. The two pretty ladies sitting with me are my personal body guards and don’t let their looks fool you either. They are well trained and fiercely loyal. My secret service of course will be around snooping at all times. Tolerate them as they are only doing their jobs. Now, having said that, I will leave you and return for the night in the train with my staff; Greg will take the floor now and he has a few things to say and tomorrow I will be making the rounds to see what is happening here at this base.”
Greg only comment was: “Please return her tomorrow morning at seven and Colonel I want all of your staff in a meeting at nine am tomorrow. I want all the reports on the bases operation delivered to my new house in two hours including personnel jackets on all the officers and heads of departments including the maintenance; top to bottom and I need inventories on all foodstuffs and all other supplies down to how many nails we have.”
He stood up and the meeting was over. He and his family walked out following the colonel. The captain who was making the housing arrangements came to Greg and asked him to follow him to his new rooms. The colonel whispered into his ear and the captain looked at Greg with new interest. Greg and his family were shown a building that would be their home for some time to come. The others were likewise shown their new residences. The captain told Greg that his rooms for only tonight that tomorrow other arrangements were being made for his accommodations. Greg said nothing and they continued on their way.
By the train’s standards the rooms for him and his family were quite nice. Small but comfortable and the kids seem to make themselves at home. Becky looked around and checked out the small kitchen. It was not intended for cooking large meals as the mess hall provided all the staff with the food needed. Greg wondered who had stayed here before them as it had the feel of someone had just left. Well, he thought, no matter I have a job to do and the sooner we get started the better. He looked at his watch and it was after six pm. He sat down at a small desk with a computer and opened his briefcase taking out the legal pad he had written on in the meeting. He was tired as they all were, but he had a full night’s work ahead of him and while the kids had the TV on low volume watching a video movie, he studied his notes on the various people at the meeting.
A half hour later a knock at the door produced an airman with a cart full of hard files and a box full of diskettes. The airman stacked the files next to his desk along with the box and said good night hurrying out the door. The files were color coded and at the top it began with the Base Commander. He gave a big sign and opened the file and began to read.
By midnight, kids and Becky long ago asleep, he turned off the light and went to bed. He had a good idea where the base stood and a better than good read on the personnel. He had some ideas as he stared at the ceiling before he fell to sleep tired to the bone.
The president spent the early evening and into the middle of the night talking to the secretary of the base commander. She grilled the poor girl until almost midnight before releasing her to trudge her way back to the inside of the mountain. Hilary went to bed fairly confident she knew the ins and outs of the base in its recent past. She fell asleep in her car which had become a natural place to take a rest. A smile crossed her face just before drifting off of having the car moved into the mountain.
Chapter 22
Early the next morning, Greg woke up with a headache that would kill a cape buffalo. He tried to open his eyes, but even the dim light hurt his eyes. He asked his wife for some pain medicine and she gave him a powerful pain killer. He was prone on occasion to migraines but hadn’t experienced one for a long time. He sat up slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. His wife turned on the shower. So nice to have a hot shower she thought. Maybe life here will not be so bad after all. She helped him to the shower and he let the hot water run across his body for a long time. Thirty minutes later Greg lying down on the bed began to feel the pain killer kick in. He looked at his watch and it read six thirty. Thirty minutes until the meeting he called would start. He couldn’t miss the first meeting. Becky told him she had found some instant oatmeal packages and she had microwaved some for him. No toast, but tea and some stale cookies were on the table for him.
After he had almost finished his breakfast, a knock on the door produced a driver and a cart ready to transport him to the conference hall. By now Greg had mostly returned to normal and he grabbed his briefcase and went out the door. Greg looked like a college professor with his jeans on and a sweater over long underwear he had found in the drawer. A sport coat with the leather patches on the elbows gave him a distinguished look. He was fully awake now and looked around while the driver took him to the conference hall. More activity than late afternoon yesterday he noticed on the drive. The driver took him to a back door to the conference room opposite the one used the day before. A security guard was posted outside the door and came to attention when Greg stepped out and walked to the door. The guard opened the door for him and Greg thanked him and stepped into the room full of people staring at him. The high back chair was still in the same place as yesterday and he had no intentions of using it.
An airman asked if he would like a cup of coffee and Greg declined with a small smile that didn’t go unnoticed by the young airman dressed in a freshly pressed uniform. Greg stood at the head of the table and looked the group over. He counted sixteen people sitting around the table. About half were women and the rest from young men to gray haired scientists sat looking at him.
Greg took out his legal pad and sat down studying it. He looked up and said, “Good morning, my name is Greg Hoffman and I’ve been assigned by the president to find out the status of this base and the weather anomaly we’re having. Please let’s go around the table and introduce yourselves to me and which department you are representing.”
Greg had sketched a table diagram and as each member was introduced to him he placed their names on his legal pad. Greg made copious notes and an hour later they had gone around the table and back to him.
Greg thanked them all and he then told them the story of the train ride from Chicago to New York City. He left no details out including the treason by certain individuals and the terrorist attacks along the way. The last thing he told them was he was now the man in charge and once he got organized regular scheduled meetings was the rule of the day. “For all intense and purposes this is the Western White House and the center for government,” he said with all eyes on him.
“Now, I will take any questions you might have, but remember, I’m just as in the dark as you are concerning what is happening to our world. Here at this base we have some of th
e finest minds in the world. I intend to find an answer and all of you had better do more than your best to help mankind out of the predicament.” He looked around the table and not one question came out.
Greg said, “Well, let’s get started then and I would like each of you to summarize what you think and give me some ideas to work with. Let’s meet here again after dinner at seven p.m.”
Greg looked at his watch and saw it was a quarter to nine and the president was due here anytime. She had told Greg she would be there in the morning when Colonel Travis and the rest of the military staff showed up. Greg was organizing his notes when the president came in with Carol and Janet behind her and her Chief of Staff.
Last to come in was the beleaguered airman secretary from the former base commander. The president went to a sidebar and Greg followed her. She said, “I found out some interesting things last night and let’s talk about them after the meeting. As far as keeping Colonel Travis as second in command of the base, that is up to you. One thing I want is for Chuck to supervise moving my railroad car into this facility for safety and for my comfort. Before we are through around here, not many friends, I fear, will be left; and we can’t throw them out the door so we must give the discontents something worthwhile to do, like to grow vegetables or something like that.”
Greg nodded his agreement and looked over his shoulder as the colonel and his staff walked in the door. The president said she was going to the mess hall for some breakfast and when Greg was through here to join her there. Greg said he would be happy to meet her there as the oatmeal had long been used up that his wife had made for him this morning. Hilary laughed and walked out the door leaving him to have his meeting with the base officers.
Once again Greg moved to the head of the table while Colonel Travis and his men stood at the back of their chairs waiting for Greg to sit down. Greg sat and all of the military men sat down after him. Greg noticed their uniforms sparkled and many bore many ribbons and medals. He had gone over their records last night and all of them were veterans with outstanding records. Greg knew he had good men here and the only problem was leadership. He intended to rectify that missing link and put this operation on a solid footing.
Greg said, “Colonel, I have looked at all of your personnel jackets and find nothing in them short of excellence.”
A sigh from a few of them could be barely heard, but heard nonetheless. “I have one question for all of you and this is my question: are you prepared to fulfill your duties that were and are assigned to you to the best of your ability?”
Silence was not the word the quiet atmosphere projected. Not a paper was heard shuffling or a tinkling of glasses against teeth or a loud breathing could be heard around the table.
Finally Colonel Travis stood up and said, “Mr. Hoffman, sir, if you will give us a chance to show you and the president our loyalty and devotion to our country, all of us to a man is here this morning to follow your orders to the letter.”
He sat down and Greg was duly impressed by the response he heard. Greg stood up and said, “I thank you all and I’m not going to give you a speech to pep you up, but I want to emphasize we are in a fight for our very existence as a specie against overwhelming odds. We need a plan to carry out and I want each of you to write down your ideas and thoughts on what we might do to survive this attack by the weather. Let’s meet again at the same time tomorrow and go over what each of you has written down. Thanks for coming and I have no plan to replace any of you at this time. Do your job and all will be well.”
Greg walked to the mess hall and found his headache was gone and he was famished. This place, he thought is bigger than it looks after he had been walking for ten minutes with his driver slowly following him. He finally got in the cart and a few minutes later was sitting with the president eating a hearty breakfast. Hilary had finished her breakfast and was sipping some tea. She waited for Greg to finish eating. She looked at his handsome face and thick hair. His strong jaw sat under lips that were inviting. She envied Becky her man and for once in a very long time, she was hungry for someone of the opposite sex to share the future with. She shook off the thought and focused her attention on the matters at hand. Greg wiped his lips with a napkin and wondered to himself how long the supply of paper would last?
Hilary said to him, “Greg what do you think about this place?”
Greg looked at her and thought what an open ended question, but now that he knew her pretty well, understood her meaning.
He said, “We made the right decision to come here. Here is where we will find some answers and build a sustainable environment for the population that is here. We just need to organize the people into specific teams and put them to work. The first thing we need to do is send Chuck back to the city and see what the Air Force Academy looks like. I will send with him Colonel Travis as a guide. Lucky for us Chuck told me he can put the passenger train on a siding and take the snow plow train and a few cars to transport any personnel back if necessary. In addition, we should send some troops to the city and investigate the population situation. After we get a report on how much of the population is alive and well, maybe we should set up some centers for caring for the people the best we can. Anyway, I will put that plan in motion and my first order of business is to get with the weather and climate experts and see what the hell is going on. Also, we need a head count and I went through the inventory, but I need an updated one. Until we can provide and grow our own food, we need everyone on a per calorie daily diet. Perhaps you can appoint someone who might be suitable for that job?”
“Greg, you are as usual right on top of things and I will assign the inventory and the allotment job to my Chief of Staff. Meanwhile I suggest you get a secretary and a lieutenant for an assistant to yourself. You should take over the base commander’s office and run the operation from there. I told you I will move the train car, if they can do it, into the complex here. I talked to Chuck and he is checking with some Army engineers about moving it in.”
They both talked a little while longer and she told him that the base commander fell apart when the storm hit. He just got flustered and is now under heavy medication in the hospital. Greg took his leave and thought he would go back to his home. The driver was waiting for him and told him his new quarters were ready and his wife and kids were already there.
Since the turn of the century, more excavation had taken place. The arms buildup had cooled down and more attention was focused on space and high technology with spy satellites and communication being on the front burner. More scientists lived her now than ever before. A separate tunnel had been bored with a tunnel boring machine. Spokes like on a wheel were bored off the center tunnel and unique housing and laboratories filled up the new space. Because of global warming a separate tunnel along the face of the mountain housed the climate portion of the base. It was here that Greg would spend most of his time in the coming days and weeks.
His driver after a fifteen minute ride dropped him off at his new place to live. It was not far from the weather center and had a thick glass wall facing east. When Greg first looked at it, he felt he was inside one of those glass Christmas balls you shook and the snow would fall over a nativity scene. The weather continued to blow a gale. The windows were four inches thick and completely bullet and shell proof. Greg found out from his wife this was the base commander’s quarters and because he was in the hospital and so forth, they decided we should live here. She told him a team of maintenance people moved all of his stuff out of her in thirty minutes and what little stuff we had, followed just as quickly. The kids were having a ball dancing in front of the window and just being kids. Becky was happy with the larger space and was making some plans for making it their home with her touch of magic that after a month Greg found fascinating to look at. He had no idea where she got the things to furnish the house, but there were a mixture of Native America and old west art on the walls and rugs of Navaho on the floor.
Greg sat down on a leather sofa. An inlaid yew w
ood coffee table sat in front. Rustic enough to put your feet up on and that is what he did. The kids came bounding over to him and sat down next to their father. Becky was moving around the kitchen which was somewhat larger than the other one, but still small. Greg looked at the mahogany book cases full of books and he decided to look at them later. He was enjoying for the moment sitting down with his family for the first time in a long while. The kids were firing questions at him about a tour of the entire facility.
Greg said, “Kids wait until I find out a few things and then we will have a nice sightseeing trip in a few days.”
Their faces showed a little disappointing, but soon were asking about school. Greg looked at Becky and she nodded to him and he told the kids their mother was in charge of that project and she would make a schedule when they were all settled in. A giant TV was in front of the sofa and the kids asked if they could watch some videos.
Mother said, “Go ahead but keep the volume down.”
Greg moved to the kitchen area and sat on a stool watching his wife explore each and every nook and cranny of the small kitchen. She had found some coffee cups and instant coffee which she made them while he looked over some notes.
Sipping their coffee, she asked him, “Greg, what do you think, can we make a life here or is this temporary?”
He looked at her and smiled and said he wouldn’t mind hanging around here for awhile. He then walked around to where she was standing behind the counter and gave her a hug and said into her ear, “Honey home is where you hang your hat. Let’s go check out the bedroom while the kids are watching TV.”
Becky led the way and an hour later after another hot shower Greg was ready to take on the world.
Unearthly Snowbound Page 18