Beyond Borders

by Bobby Akart

  “You must consider your family, Cooper,” Fiorella insisted. “My husband was in Kansas when this happened. I know that he is trying to return home to me at all costs. As his wife, I take comfort in knowing he is trying to put me first above all others. You must do the same for your brother, sister, and parents.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to them. Fiorella, thank you so much for taking care of Morales and allowing us into your home. God bless you.”

  “Oh, young man, He has. Make no mistake about that. Now, I will send Palmer out to speak with you while Pacheco and I prepare dinner to be cooked in the outdoor kitchen my husband built years ago. The sky is crystal clear tonight, and we should rejoice in the blessings we’ve all been given.”

  Cooper gave Fiorella a hug as Riley started Red Rover. The diesel engine puffed out some black smoke but roared to life.

  “Thank you so much. I’ll talk to them now.”

  Fiorella added one more thing. “My husband would be honored to give you fine young people his beloved Red Rover to expedite your journey home. He would not hesitate to make the sacrifice if he were standing next to me right now.”

  “But we couldn’t,” protested Cooper. “This is an operating vehicle, a valuable asset to travel around in. You may need it to go—”

  Fiorella held up her hand and interrupted Cooper. “To go nowhere. We have everything we need right here in Kingsbury Colony. My husband simply returned to Kansas to retrieve his sister and brother-in-law for the move west. They have a place set aside for them down the road to join us.”

  “Fiorella, are you sure? This is so generous.”

  “It is yours if you wish,” she replied. “Now, let me retrieve your sister, and we’ll meet you around the side of the house for supper.”

  Cooper looked skyward and smiled. Despite Red Rover’s age, it appeared to be reliable. Even at thirty or forty miles per hour, their trip home was cut short from many weeks to a matter of days. As was typical of Cooper’s thought processes, he did the math quickly in his head.

  Fifteen hundred miles. Forty miles an hour. Less than forty hours of travel time. Works for me.

  “Hey, I wanna see it too!” exclaimed Palmer as she trotted through the crunchy snow toward the barn.

  Riley turned off the ignition and joined his siblings. “I love this ride, guys! Can you believe it? A truck that runs after what’s happened.”

  Cooper hugged them both around the shoulders and walked them into the barn. They had some decisions to make.

  For the next ten minutes, they agreed to leave Pacheco and Morales with Fiorella. There were many reasons for their decision. First and foremost, to give Morales a chance to live. Taking him on the road was out of the question. Second, the Brazilians could help Fiorella protect the ranch until her husband returned, or at least until Morales could ride again. Third, and it was an unspoken understanding between them from the moment they’d left Calgary, they wouldn’t have to be put into a difficult situation in which they’d have to choose between their own safety and their friends.

  With the decision to pull out in the morning made, the mode of transportation was debated. Riley was one hundred percent for taking Red Rover. His arguments stemmed around the usefulness of an operating vehicle that ran on diesel fuel, which could be obtained at any farm or ranch.

  Palmer lamented the loss of her horse. She’d handpicked it as a foal from Governor Burnett’s Four Sixes Ranch. The two had competed in many barrel-racing competitions. In the end, she was willing to leave her horse behind for a chance to reunite with her parents in a matter of days rather than months or not at all.

  Cooper raised a few negatives, including the fact they’d have one of the only operating vehicles on the road. Red Rover, while beautiful, was a bright, shiny candy apple red. It wasn’t gonna sneak up on anyone. As a result, they could find themselves fighting to defend their Defender, only to lose it and be without transportation when the battle was over.

  Riley and Palmer agreed with Cooper’s concerns, but they offered a variety of measures to avoid hostile contact. It might slow their trip down, but it was a huge difference over riding the horses. In essence, they could travel an hour in Red Rover the same distance they covered in a day on horseback.

  The rodeo kids fist-bumped to memorialize their unanimous vote. They’d pull out of Kingsbury Colony, Montana, in the morning, with Red Rover delivering them home.

  Pacheco broke up the subdued celebration as he shouted at them from the outdoor kitchen. “Hey, guys! We’ve got homemade brats, ranch-style beans, and cornbread.”

  Fiorella and Pacheco stood around the warm fire and the cast-iron cookware emitting heavenly smells of down-home cookin’. As the group toasted cups of apple cider and said a quick prayer thanking God for their good fortunes, a growing rumble began to fill the air from a distance.

  Everyone turned to the east, searching for the cause of the now roaring, grumbling sound. It grew louder, causing them to look in all directions as the Rocky Mountains echoed the noise back toward them.

  The grumbling changed to a loud, intense crackling like someone was shaking a giant piece of sheet metal. Then a wind accompanied the noise, which came at the group like a wave. Cooper could almost see the wave in the previously still night air. The winds accompanying the wave hit them, pushing them backward, causing Fiorella to lose her balance and fall against a chair.

  The crackling was relentless, like fireworks erupting over and over, closer and faster until the pressure was squeezing Cooper’s chest. And then he looked up.

  Across the horizon, from Canada to Colorado, the sky was alit with the red glow of the solid rocket boosters of more than a dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles lifting off in perfect coordination, rising high over their heads and tilting toward the west.

  “My God,” said a gasping Fiorella.

  Cooper muttered the words from Revelation, “And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon.”

  Palmer followed with the words from the next verse. “It is done.”

  THANK YOU FOR READING BEYOND BORDERS!

  If you enjoyed it, I’d be grateful if you’d take a moment to write a short review (just a few words are needed) and post it on Amazon. Amazon uses complicated algorithms to determine what books are recommended to readers. Sales are, of course, a factor, but so are the quantities of reviews my books get. By taking a few seconds to leave a review, you help me out and also help new readers learn about my work.

  And before you go …

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  READ ON FOR A BONUS EXCERPT from LINES IN THE SAND, book three in the Lone Star series.

  Excerpt from LINES IN THE SAND

  Preface

  The phrase line in the sand has been used for centuries in several historical and military contexts. From the days of the Roman Empire until the present geopolitical strife between the United States and North Korea, a line in the sand has been used both figuratively and physically to describe a point of no return—a metaphor for an event or moment in time beyond which the decision and its resulting consequences are permanently decided and irreversible.

  As early as 168 BC, history shows that one Roman leader, in an effort to convince an adversary to concede his demands, slowly walked around the king and drew a line in the form of a circle. “Before you cross this circle, I want you to give me a reply for the Roman senate,” the Roman consul demanded. The king, who was occupying Roman lands in Egypt, was warned to acquiesce or be destroyed. Sta
ying within the circle, the king nodded his agreement and extended his hand to the Roman consul. Only then did the Roman consul shake it and remove the line with his foot.

  Typically used in a military context, one of the most famous instances in American history occurred at the Alamo in 1836. Colonel William “Buck” Travis had just been named commander of the newly constituted Republic of Texas on March 2, 1836.

  In the final days of the Battle of the Alamo, with the famed Mexican General Santa Anna surrounding the Texas stronghold, Colonel Travis received an ultimatum from his Mexican counterpart—surrender or die.

  Colonel Travis consulted with James Bowie, the co-commander of the Alamo. They agreed that their group of less than a hundred defenders were no match for the larger, well-fed Mexican army of fifteen hundred. Nonetheless, Colonel Travis called his men together in the Alamo’s open courtyard.

  He explained in all honesty that defeat was certain. The letter demanding surrender was read aloud. Colonel Travis proudly announced that he’d rather die than give the Alamo to the enemy. He then removed his sword and drew a line in the sandy soil of the Alamo between himself and his soldiers.

  Colonel Travis asked for volunteers to cross over the line in the sand and join him. He made sure they understood their decision was irreversible. All but one man crossed the line to join Colonel Travis in a battle the tales of which will be told for as long as men tell tales. Emboldened by his men’s unselfish bravery, Colonel Travis provided Santa Anna his answer—cannon fire.

  In recent times, presidents have used the phrase to intimidate world leaders and to rally public support for military initiatives. President George H. W. Bush famously drew a line in the sand when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. As the crisis intensified, President Bush declared this line in the sand was drawn for the purposes of defending Saudi Arabia in the event Iraqi forces advanced beyond Kuwait.

  But then, the line shifted as U.S. military forces were used to drive Iraq’s Revolutionary Guard out of Kuwait. Many within the Bush administration advocated invading Iraq and removing Hussein from power, but the president elected to work within his United Nations’ mandate. A dozen or so years later, the next President George Bush initiated the Iraq war.

  In 2012, President Barack Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad would cross a line that would trigger a U.S. military response.

  Following this proclamation, Syrian forces used chemical weapons in Aleppo (March 2013), Damascus, Ghouta, Jobar, and several other Syrian towns throughout August of 2013. The line in the sand had been obliterated by President Assad.

  There are consequences to not backing up the line drawn in the sand. After the red line, as he called it, was drawn by President Obama, over one hundred thousand Syrians died, many as a result of chemical weapons attacks.

  This leads us to the present-day conflict with North Korea. For decades, prior administrations from both political parties have drawn lines in the sand concerning the DPRK’s nuclear proliferation. Sanctions were imposed, negotiations occurred, and the lines ultimately became blurred or moved altogether.

  As a result of America’s passive diplomacy in the past, a series of extortionate demands from Pyongyang yielded capitulation by world leaders and an advancement of North Korea’s nuclear capability. While the world focused on the DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs, the more immediate threat, their conventional forces, had become unacceptably large and dangerous. Kim Jong-un easily spent a third of the nation’s feeble gross domestic product on military uses.

  For years, the line in the sand for U.S. policymakers has been North Korea’s development of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. North Korea achieved that goal in 2016.

  The line in the sand was moved again. The new line was to prevent North Korea’s development of a hydrogen bomb. In early 2017, that line was crossed.

  Finally, in 2017, the ultimate line in the sand was to demand that North Korea stop development of an ICBM with a nuclear-tipped warhead capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

  In 2017, President Donald Trump stated that North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States … they will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen. The terminology was different, but the intent was the same. The question remains whether this line in the sand will be blurred and what, exactly, does fire and fury look like.

  Sometimes, both militarily and in life, you have to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. Once someone identifies that point of no return—that moment when an adversary has crossed the line—they have to be prepared to back it up. If you have an unspoken policy to move the line, know this …

  What you allow is what will continue.

  Chapter 1

  December 1, 2022

  North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  The dragon that never sleeps.

  Native American folklore claimed Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain was a sleeping dragon that saved the Ute Indians from a massive flood that invaded the valley surrounding the mountain. The Utes believed they were being punished by the Great Spirit, but after they repented, the dragon was sent to drink the water. The dragon then fell asleep, became petrified, and thereafter became known as Cheyenne Mountain.

  Unlike the legend, Cheyenne Mountain, which was located outside Colorado Springs and just south of Denver, hadn’t slept in over half a century. Once made fully operational in the spring of 1966, the country’s most important military installation had been home to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.

  NORAD was the nerve center of the U.S. military, especially during times of heightened tensions around the world. After the electromagnetic pulse attack of a week ago, the entirety of the nation’s defense forces were operating at DEFCON 1, the maximum state of readiness.

  Referred to as the cocked pistol, military personnel operated at DEFCON 1 around the clock. Around the globe, as well as from space, ground-based sensors and satellites transmitted data to NORAD’s unparalleled computer systems for analysis.

  Like the operation of a human brain, NORAD collected information from these various sensors and compiled the data in one place for analysis. The personnel within Cheyenne Mountain pulled it together, made sense of it, and then passed it along to the commanders who made the decisions that defended America.

  The stress levels in the operations center were high for the airmen whose focus was on detecting and tracking incoming nuclear threats to the U.S., but not from what might happen if a nuclear attack was initiated. The nerve center of NORAD was determined to detect a possible attack in order to give the nation’s defense network maximum response time.

  Everyone in Cheyenne Mountain knew a nuclear missile fired from North Korea could reach the U.S. mainland in approximately thirty minutes. At DEFCON 1, nerves were frayed, creating an atmosphere of controlled chaos within the operations center.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jim Klaus remained within the newly renovated battle cab, a dedicated command center and meeting room used by the commander and senior members of his staff. If the operations center was the brain stem that gathered information from the sensors around the globe, the battle cab was the brain, which processed and made decisions upon the information.

  Colonel Klaus was studying the satellite images of North Korea taken by a reconnaissance satellite just four hours ago. Klaus refused to believe the hollow promises of Kim Jong-un that his country had no intention of escalating hostilities following the satellite EMP attack. His job was to trust no one, especially the words of dictators like Kim.

  Despite his skepticism, the satellite images continued to tell the same story—the DPRK was, in fact, standing down. There had been troop movements but the opposite of what he’d expected. The DPRK appeared to be thinning their ranks. The number of personnel operating along the border with South Korea had diminished. There we
re not war games under way. Most importantly, no missile launches seemed to be imminent. The Korean Peninsula was eerily quiet.

  Oceangoing vessels had been entering and leaving at a steady pace, with a slight uptick. Their cargo was unknown to Colonel Klaus, although that was beyond the scope of his command anyway. He focused on their nuclear arsenal.

  North Korea relied heavily upon its mobile missile launchers created by retrofitting Chinese-made timber haulers into a highly practical transporter erector launch vehicle. These vehicles could be easily camouflaged and moved throughout the country undetected by a satellite’s probing cameras.

  Colonel Klaus had developed an eye for these vehicles and even employed an old-school magnifying glass to home in on a suspicious-looking truck in the satellite images. Yet there had not appeared to be any concerted effort to redirect the launch vehicles toward the DMZ or North Korea’s east coast nearest Japan, which were closer to the United States’ targets.

  The colonel took a long sip of his black coffee, the first of many on a typical day in the battle cab. He had been warned repeatedly by his cardiologist to cut back on the stimulants, to which he would reply, “I will, as soon as the world cuts back on nuclear bombs.”

  “Launch detection! Launch detection.”

  The suddenness of the announcement over the speaker system within the operation center startled Colonel Klaus, causing him to choke on his coffee and cough repeatedly to recover.

  “Repeat. Confirmed launch detection. Coordinates are forty-one degrees, fourteen minutes, nine seconds north latitude and one hundred twenty-eight degrees, thirty-four minutes, thirty-nine seconds east longitude.”

  His first reaction was to look down at his Casio watch, and he pushed the timer. He knew the next few minutes would be the fastest of his life.