Sitting around the long oval polished teak table, they watched a tracking device on the big screen as green dots moved from Mexico into southern Arizona. They inched up into the tip of southern California and toward Las Vegas. Red dots appeared representing U.S. Bombers coming from the bases with which the General had been communicating.
As the dots merged in Las Vegas, they disappeared because the electronic signal became confused when interceptions occurred. Such would be the display until the skirmish was over. The room waited breathless until finally most of the red dots circled to fly back to their bases. The green dots were gone, and everyone in the room cheered.
Sebastian turned up the sound for command central headquarters inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado and the base in Montana. The cheers at those locations sounded amazing. The U.S. had won. At least the first battle.
“Now we wait for the phones to ring,” said Rick. “Can we hear the conversation when it comes?” he asked Sebastian. He received a thumbs up from the chubby man in glasses who seemed to be controlling the whole world from his laptop. They would be able to eavesdrop on the President's call to the bases that attacked the invaders. He had them on a conference call, dressing them down simultaneously.
“What the (bleep) are you doing?” yelled a very angry President. “No one gave orders for a strike.”
The faces around the table acknowledged somberly by their expressions that this, indeed, was the proof that the President was in direct communication with the enemy. All communications networks connecting the bases with Washington had been blocked. The connection between Willow Springs and those bases was securely innaccessible. There was only one way for him to have learned of the attacks.
“We are at war, Mr. President,” said one of the commanders. “We have been invaded on our southern border, and we are combatting that attack on our homeland. Would you like to explain on speakerphone why it is that you alone are not applauding our victory? I'm sure everyone would like to hear your explanation.”
There was silence. The President had no answer, and since he could be heard whispering something to someone, it was obvious that he was not alone in his treason. What was he going to do now? He had expected the takeover to complete itself in days or weeks as he waited it out in relative luxury. When the time came he would emerge to lead a new United States—to be called the New Arab United States of America—NAUSA.
He expected accolades, cheering, even parades in his honor. He would immediately set up negotiations with Europe, Asia, and Africa to set up a map of Sharia regions. There would be world-wide conversions... or convictions for those who did not convert, with a death penalty attached. He would rule this new world in all his glory. Then, when the time was right he would reveal his true identity and accept full honors, being worshipped as the Lord of Hell as well as all the earth. Failure had not been an option. He broke the telephone connection abruptly.
“Sebastian sent all the bases our files and maps,” said the General. “along with an audio file of this conversation with their Commander in Chief, and a video of the battle of the red and green dots. It shouldn't take them long to realize what's been happening. There may be more of us left than we realize.”
Flashes of color from the giant screen suddenly demanded their attention. They watched in horror as hundreds of red dots appeared on the giant screen—all headed toward them. They came from dozens of bases in all the areas surrounding them. It had happened too fast.
“How did they respond so quickly?” said Rick, in disbelief. “They must have been sitting in the planes awaiting the order to go. We're done for.”
“Well of course they were ready,” said the General. “They've been anxious to get into this war. Somehow they didn't receive the information we sent. How could American fighters so quickly and easily justify firing on American bases? Wouldn't they question such an order? Are our messages getting through?” the General asked Sebastian.
“They are moving in succession, Sir,” he said, scared and sweating. “They went to the east coast first and it will take a few minutes for them to reach all the bases. I thought it would be faster to hit “send all” rather than choose through a list of all our bases. And it would have taken longer to have done it that way. With the planes in the air, is it already too late to stop them?”
“I hope not,” said the general, who looked away from the screen to see that every member of the team had bowed their heads in prayer—even Rick. This was a sight he had never before seen around a conference table. He realized they were right; all they could do at this point was to pray.
“What about our Patriot Missile defense system?” asked the General. “You have one here. Is it set up to fire?”
“No, sir,” answered Rick. “We didn't have anyone trained to operate it.”
“You couldn't have hit all of them anyway,” said the General with a tone of despair.
He watched the red dots approaching their three major undergound locations in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado as well as the bases that had attacked the invaders in Nevada. Their underground communities could live for a while, he thought, maybe for a long time if the food and generators held out. But they could only hope that when they emerged from their place of refuge the radiation had moved or dissipated. There was no way of knowing if it would. This was all theoretical.
Then amazingly, the General watched as some of the fighter jets began making wide turns to head back to their bases. Then others began taking the same action.
“Look at this!” he cried out, to the praying people with heads bowed, “Look at what's happening.”
They saw the red dots moving away and began to cheer. The messages had gotten through to their bases and new orders had been issued. But three red dots continuted on course. They watched the screen in horror as each one headed toward each of the three bases—theirs and the ones in Montana above them and Colorado below them.
“What's with that?” asked Cal. “Did they not get the orders?”
“Either that, or they are disregarding orders,” said the General. “These could be martyrs for their cause intent on fulfilling their mission.”
There was absolutely nothing anyone could do at this point. They had no defense. They had already prayed. So they waited and watched.
“Look,” said Stephen, again permitted to attend the meeting. “Look at what's happening now!”
Two of the three dots hit their targets. The ones at Montana and Colorado, blowing up on impact and developing the familiar concentric circles which indicated radiation. The third dot, the one headed for them, went poof. It disappeared completely from the display.
“What does that mean?” asked Cal, speaking what all of them were thinking. “We weren't hit. We would have felt something.”
“It's as if something shot it out of the air” Rick said. “But there was nothing in the air and there couldn't possibly have been anything on the ground either.”
“Could we replay that, Sebastian?” asked the General, “and could you blow it up bigger?”
Sebastian typed vigorously on his keyboard. They watched the red dot heading for them and again saw it just disappear. Rick was very disturbed. He was seeing something that was impossible. Nothing could cause a jet plane to just vanish. It hadn't been attacked by anything they could see.
“Again, please,” asked the General. “Stop,” he said next. “Hold that view still.”
He walked closer to the screen, somehow forgetting that he could have asked Sebastian to zoom in on the graphic.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the area in front of the red dot. “There's a disturbance in the space right there. Can we zoom in further without too much distortion?”
As Sebastian worked his magic, they saw a faint outline in the background. It looked like angels to Cal. He was sure he saw creatures with wings appear in front of the aircraft.
“Well maybe we'll never know what happened,” said the General, giving up on it. “Some Bermuda Triangle thing,
maybe. Or maybe it just blew up due to some mechanical malfunction. We need to deal with some other issues now. Contact Montana and Colorado. See if there's anything we can do to help them. We just have to hope their resources hold out longer than the radiation.
“And there's our next mission,” said the General. “We need to dismantle our government so we can start a new one.”
“How do we do that?” asked Rick.
“First off,” he replied, expecting skeptism, “we need to fire a bunker buster bomb into the Underground White House.”
When his sugesstion was met with hi-fives and cheers, he was relieved and a bit surprised. He thought to himself that although he had known the President had not been popular among the military, especially in his second term, he hadn't known he was this despised. But he didn't know what most of the group knew. That he actually was the anti-Christ. They wanted nothing more than to blow him to oblivion.
“So are we actually going to use the MOAB?” said Stephen, enthusiastically.
“How do you know about that, young man?” asked the General, amused.
“Because its the biggest and best bomb that we've got,” he said. “Everyone I know thinks it's the coolest. It's the Mother Of All Bombs.
“Well I'm one up on you, partner,” said Sebastian, “but of course I have access to sources you and your friends do not. We have one a third bigger and badder than that now, the MOP. Guess where it is. Whiteman AFB near Kansas City. If their attempts with nuclear suitcase bombs had been successful, that installation might have been destroyed. Fortunatly, it was spared.
“Would you like me to put you through to them, Sir?” he said, addressing the General, “ So you can give the order.”
“As quickly as you can, Sebastian,” he said, “connect me with the commander there. We need to do this before the S.O.B. tries something else. He could send something from Russia or somewhere. We've got to show the world we've discovered the snake in the henhouse, and we've got to chop off its head.”
The room watched with both horror and wonder as the large red dot traveled in a straight line toward the Underground White House from Kansas. Who would have imagined they'd ever witness such a thing, they thought, much less have a part in making it happen. As the red dot hit its target it expanded into dark red and maroon concentric circles then diminished to a size that covered barely more than the boundaries of D.C. itself.
“What does that mean?” asked Cal, “the way it blew up then shrunk again.”
“Although it's equipped with a nuclear warhead,” said Sebastian, “it's designed with the bomb at the front end, keeping almost all the nuclear fallout inside the cavity created by the blast.”
“What about the Middle-eastern countries, Russia, and Mexico, and any other nations that were his allies?” asked Rick.
“I think they're probably shaking in their boots,” commented Nathan. “We're back.”
“That's pretty much it,” said the General. “We'll have to deal with them, of course. But they've lost the war. I can expect Europe is ready to change its ways. But our foreign relations will be up to the new leadership, which you're probably looking at right here.” He was directing a moving pointed finger at Cal, Rick, Nathan, Jerry, Brady, Joseph Talbot, and Sebastian. Then jokingly, he spun around and pointed right into little Stephen's nose. The boy jumped before he realized the humor in it, and everyone laughed. Laughing was only one of the things they did not think they would do on this day.
The group took the elevator together to the dormitory floor and pushed Cal to make the announcements to the community. They stood him upon a chair so that he could be seen and heard. He told them the events that had happened, then that they could return to their homes and begin making plans for the future of America.
“Now that you know everything that has happened,” Cal continued, “we need to plan wisely for the future. Although it may seem backwards, we have won the war, but we will still have battles to fight. There are still those in this world who would work against our interests, though they may not be the Evil Incarnate. There are still obstacles to our peaceful world. We need to be vigilant about never again allowing God to be shut out from our daily lives whether public or private. We need to stand for what is right no matter how persuasive the alternative might be.
“And eventually, we will reclaim all of our land. It will take time, probably years, but as the radiation dies down, we will be able to send crews into the east. As our population grows, we will venture gradually back to the states beyond the Mississippi. We will go there, bury the dead, get the power back on, clean up the debris, and re-build. We will hold elections, we will re-instate our Constitution and rebuild our future.”
Cheers came that embarrassed him. The group headed home and immediately began preparing a huge feast at the large outdoor cooking area. When the kids moaned some disspointment at losing the recreation area and the pool, Cal suggested they leave the doors open, now that danger had passed, and they set up a shuttle service to take commuters back and forth from the facility to the neighborhood.
The massive government computer network was used to set up a communications base. It established a defense system among the military bases, monitored the satellites, and helped in the organization of a civilian government to replace Washington D.C. With Sebastian's help they were able to transfer banking accounts back to the proper people, and business was able to begin again in Pinedale and the surrounding towns. Many who came from there were able to return home and re-establish a degree of normality. Accounts belonging to the deceased without heirs were placed in a treasury and a monetary system was established so that loans could be made for small businesses, and to provide some government services.
Abigail helped to set up a school for the children in the community. She used the Internet to coordinate with the families of people on the military bases throughout the west. The only places where living people survived. Online classes were set up to accomodate areas where teachers could not be found. Abigail also created a course in Biblical Archealogy and looked forward to the day when it would be safe to excavate again in the Middle East. Now there was no one to stop them. Mutually assured destruction had taken care of that. The area from Israel to eastern Africa to China remained a black hole. They only needed to wait for the radiation to dissipate before exploration there could begin and the land could be re-claimed. Stephen became Abby's star pupil. She promised to take him along when they were again able to enter that land.
Cal arranged to have the chain link fencing around Willow Creek removed, and hunting began again, as well as an expanded road system leading to other lakes and ponds for fishing and recreation. They planted fruit trees in an orchard that separated the town from the two hills where the cabins were standing. This restored some sense of the original ranch-style resort that Brady and Uma had loved so much. It was still a mountain retreat. Only now there were a lot more people in it. Rick Foley re-recorded the deed away from the government and back to the McFarlands. It didn't matter any more, for all practical purposes, but Brady appreciated the gesture and framed the deed for display in his den. Willow Creek was becoming a town, actually the capitol of a new nation. But Brady still had a ranch to call his own. A cattle ranch operated under his own guidelines which treated the animals humanely with dignity and kindness.
Uma had suggested that she and Brady switch cabins with the Callahans to allow for their expanding family, sure to be a large brood, if not a dozen, as she hoped. The two of them no longer needed all the space in the lodge. But Abby had fallen in love with their cabin, and Cal had plenty of volunteers who would help them add an upper floor which would give them more space and compliment the rustic style that was so charming. They even erected a rustic log fence outside the back door making a small enclosure big enough for Angel to have a little yard where she could run, play, and poop in safety. Bears can climb trees, a well as fences, but this one was safe because along the top was a barely visible electric wire with high eno
ugh voltage to discourage even the largest bear from attempting to grab their little fluffball.
Cal was confused that in the end the rulership of God over the earth had not been established exactly as he imagined from his reading of Biblical prophesy. Abby thought she understood it and shared her explanation, one that made sense to her.
“If the Evil One had won, earth would have become a bastion of Satan, and he would have ruled over humans as a supreme dictator. But God doesn't work that way. He likes human beings to have freedom, and with it the freedom to choose good over evil. So we will always struggle against temptation as we have from the very beginning since the original Adam and Eve. What we have won in this war is the ability to have God in our lives, the opportunity to live for God, and the joy of having the blessings he sends us every day of our lives.”
General Monahan returned to his ranch in Texas to the arms of his loving wife Sarah and his prized Appaloosas. Cal and Abby visited him often in her Cessna. They brought little Jonah along and introduced him to the horses. The General became the head of the military establishment, although he ran it from the computer in his den. He was one man who knew what to do to preserve the security of the new nation.
The Last Stand (Book 3) (The Repentant Demon Trilogy) Page 18