One Man's War

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  “Why?” she asked defiantly. “Don’t you think us womenfolk can fight too? This isn't a wee fly wank in the toilet with the Kay’s catalogue open at the underwear section!”

  “It’s not that, babe. From what we’ve been led to believe, they not only want me and the codes, they’re coming for the plane and its pilot too. I just want you and the plane far from here if the shit hits the fan. They can’t take something that isn’t here,” he said, hoping he was getting his point across. He’d never seen her so angry.

  “I have a splendid idea, Tim. Why don’t we all just fly out of here?”

  “Because, this is our home.”

  “Tim, damn it, we’ve been through so much!”

  “Exactly why I’m not going to run away from this now. We all have been through so much together and separately since the Event. At every step of the way, there has been some asshole trying to take what we’ve got away from us.”

  Her anger spent, she went to him, wrapping her arms around his torso, and then sighed and squeezed him tightly. “Let’s go back to the house, and finish the plans we were discussing,” Tim told her.

  They walked hand in hand back to the house, where they found Jimenez and Izzy on the porch. “Where’s Robyn?” he asked when he got to the top of the steps.

  “She took Walter inside and was going to put him to bed,” Izzy replied.

  Tim sat back down on his favorite chair, Holly taking the seat next to him. When they were comfortable, Tim got Holly up to speed, filling in the blanks that she still didn’t know.

  When he was finished, she sat for a moment, and then said, “So you’re telling me there is really a president back in Washington?”

  “That’s about the long and the short of it, ma’am,” Jimenez asserted.

  “And someone—you have no idea who he is— told you his plans?”

  Tim nodded and started to fill his pipe.

  “If that’s the case, doesn’t he have the legal right to those codes?” she said. “And I thought you didn’t have them anymore.” The anger was flashing back in her eyes again.

  “I still have them. I copied them down into a notebook long before we ever met you and Izzy.”

  “Wouldn’t you be breaking the law then?”

  “Most definitely. To tell you the truth, I really don’t give a shit. The world changed six years ago. The old laws don’t mean a thing anymore,” Tim said, striking a match to light his pipe. The light from the flame lit his face eerily, giving him an almost demonic look, accented by the cloud of smoke.

  “Holly, Tim is right,” Izzy said.

  “Tim has been saying all along that we’ve got to follow the Constitution, that we’ve got to let it govern our lives so that we can build back civilization. By disregarding who we now believe is the president, isn’t that going against everything he’s said all along?”

  “Since I first found out about this, I had a lot of time to think about it, a lot of soul-searching,” Tim said. “You are absolutely correct. We’ve got to follow the Constitution. However, I’ve also believed, and have followed this one simple rule in my life, for as long as I can remember: if a law or order from a superior is unjust or immoral, isn’t it my moral obligation as a human being to disobey those laws or orders?”

  “We can’t use the Nuremburg defense, Holly,” Izzy said.

  “But if he or she has the legal right to those codes, it’s not an unjust or immoral order to return them!” Holly pointed out.

  Tim sat there silently, and thought about what she’d just said. She was right, he knew, but the feelings he’d had welling up inside him finally came out.

  “Here’s what I have to say about that, and if it doesn’t sound right, if you all think I’ve gone off the deep end, then we’ll pack up and leave tomorrow,” he said. “That crazy ship captain wanted those codes, and we know why. I wasn’t about to give them up to him, or anyone else, not now, not ever.”

  “That was the right thing to do there, Tim. He wanted them for all the wrong reasons, but this, if it’s true that the government is still intact, is a whole different thing!” Holly said in exasperation.

  “Maybe that’s true. But look around you. Six years ago the world went to shit, from what exactly I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.” He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts then went on. “The one thing that I do know for sure is, from the very beginning, I just wanted a quiet, safe place for me and Robyn. Then you guys came along, and I wanted the same thing for all of you. For my entire adult life, I’ve been fighting someone else’s wars, for people and a government that forgot a long time ago what they really stood for.”

  “Because you’re a good man, Tim,” Holly said.

  “A good man? Honey, if you knew half of what I’ve done in my life, you wouldn’t say that at all,” Tim spat, standing and walking over to the porch railing. He placed his hands on the wooden rail, his back towards them, and hung his head. “Have you ever heard the term ‘False Flag’?”

  “I’ve heard the term,” Izzy replied.

  “A false flag operation is basically a dirty trick, writ large. You do something really nasty, and make it look like the other guys did it.”

  “Like burning the Reichstag,” the old doctor said.

  “I don’t understand you, Tim,” Holly said.

  Tim kept his gaze out over the dark meadow. He took in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out in a rush of air.

  “What I’m about to tell all of you I’ve never told anyone about, ever. It fills my nightmares, and I don’t think I’ll ever get the image out of my head, and it’ll stay there until I’m dead.”

  He was quiet for a few moments, inhaled again, and with a trembling voice, began. “Back in 1986, I had just made sergeant. I was regular Army then, stationed in Panama. On paper, I was cadre at the Jungle Warfare School at Fort Sherman. Most of the time I was, shall we say, ‘loaned out’ to several agencies— the FBI, the DEA, the CIA— for …special jobs.”

  “That’s some serious Secret Squirrel shit, Sar’ Major,” Jimenez said.

  “Yeah,” Tim said, nodding. “Squirrelly is a good word for it. To make a long story short, the Sandinistas were the bad guys; allegedly, the Contras were the good guys.”

  Tim turned to face his audience, folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the railing. “One night a whole platoon of us, carrying nothing that identified us with the US government, dressed in Czech uniforms, toting AK47’s, bee-bopped into a friendly Contra village, roused everyone out of their beds, then dragged all of them, every man, woman and child out to a field…”

  “Oh…” Holly gasped, bringing her hand up to her face in shock.

  “Yeah. Do I really need to go on?”

  “No, you don’t have to go on,” Izzy said.

  “I was twenty-one, Iz. Almost thirty years ago now, and I still see it when I close my eyes like it just happened.”

  “That was a long time ago, Tim. You’re a different man now,” Holly said, rubbing her arms as if a chill had crossed over her.

  “Exactly.”

  “Please explain,” Holly said.

  “It’s like this, and it seems so simple to me, but correct me if I’m wrong. I knew when Robyn and I found the codes in the field around the wreckage of Air Force One that I’d have to protect them from anyone who wouldn’t respect their power.”

  “You did. You kept them from that crazy captain,” Holly said.

  “Be that as it may, you have no idea the weight that was on my shoulders when I keyed those codes into the computer back on Volivoli. I’ve been through a lot in my life, and never have been as scared as I was that afternoon.”

  “I can imagine,” Izzy said.

  “Izzy, no disrespect, but no you can’t. You honestly have no concept. I knew at that moment, the moment I hit the ‘enter’ key, what that bombardier in the Enola Gay had felt. Not the ones who history says dropped the bomb. Not Paul Tibbetts, the pilot, not Harry Truman.
It was the bombardier who dropped that bomb and killed all those people.”

  “That shortened the war by months, and saved thousands of lives,” Jimenez said.

  “Did it, Taco?” he asked, not waiting for a reply. “So there I was, launching a nuclear weapon, the first one to do so in anger since World War Two, and that scared the living shit out of me.”

  “I’m still not following you, Tim,” Holly said softly, her heart breaking because she could feel the pain in Tim’s voice.

  “The world ended six years ago. We moved on, tried to live a good life, be good people. But in every step we took, there was some asshole trying to take it away.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Izzy said.

  “Now we’ve supposedly done away with the last tyrant. We have a little community set up here, Jerry is out on Oahu doing the same thing, and we have our intrepid sailors out sailing the Seven Seas. All my life I’ve fought for what is right, and seeing what the government was capable of doing, of endorsing, and for the most part, I was totally helpless. I was just tool to do their bidding, knowing they were corrupt, unable to do anything about it. Now I can.” He let what he’d just said settle with everyone, let them digest it.

  “Tim, if there is a president, he has the legal authority to have the codes,” Holly said.

  “That’s true. Let me ask everyone this… the world as we knew it has ceased. What have we been doing since? What is Jerry trying to do out in Hawaii?”

  “Rebuilding civilization?” Jimenez said, like a question.

  Tim snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “Exactly, we’re trying to rebuild society, civilization. We’re not trying to rule the fucking world! None of us has any grand illusions on our own self-importance. We haven’t commandeered some ship, and gone tear-assing all over the Pacific Ocean terrorizing who’s left. We’re not threatening anyone. We just want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit. We don’t want, or need, someone who doesn’t know us tell us how to live our lives. That had gone on for far too long in the old world. So long, in fact, that most of us forgot what it’s like to be really free.”

  “But, Tim,” Holly started to say.

  “No buts, Holly,” Tim said gently. “Yes, I want to live under the rules of the Constitution, but I want to go back to 1775 when those smart men wrote it, back to the basics. Not live under the thinly veiled lies that we were spoon fed. I was sick and tired of others telling me how to live my life, what I could and couldn’t do, all because they, the anointed ones, knew what was best for me, as if I was too stupid to figure it out on my own.”

  “I’m all for it, Sar’ Major. I know exactly what you mean,” Jimenez chimed in.

  “None of us wanted to be in this position. I know that. And if you want to leave, I won’t stop you.”

  “I’m staying, Tim. I’m not going anywhere without you,” Holly said, steel in her voice. “But I don’t get what you mean about the president. You haven’t come right out and said it, but you only have one transmission of warning, then the report from Sam yesterday telling you about the troops. What makes you think anyone means us harm?”

  “I haven’t come right out and said it, it’s only a feeling in my gut. And again, I could be wrong, very wrong. I’ll put it to you as a question. If this guy, or woman, saying they’re president is so benevolent, why would someone in his camp risk sending me a message to warn me? Why send a whole company of troops to quote ‘retrieve the codes, arrest me, bring me, the codes, the aircraft, and pilot back to Washington DC’ unquote?”

  “Now I’m following you, Timothy, and now I’m in one hundred percent agreement,” Izzy said. The sound of the screen door opening distracted everyone for a moment, and they all looked to see Robyn coming outside, lantern in one hand, six pack of beer in the other.

  “I figured we all needed a drink,” she said, handing out cans, popping one for herself and sitting on Jimenez’ lap. She looked at Holly. “Walt is sound asleep. I’ll go and check on him again in a few.”

  “Thank you, Robyn,” Holly said, then turned to Izzy. “Getting back to what you just said, Iz, you understand? I sure don’t.”

  “Like Tim said, if this president of ours is so benevolent, why is someone in his camp, a Benedict Arnold so-to-speak, warning us, and why is he sending out an army to arrest Tim and yourself, and bring you all back to DC?”

  “If he was so concerned about the country, the last thing on his mind would be sending troops out to arrest someone,” Tim said. “He should be making sure the power is on, the people are fed, the home fires burning, all that.”

  “Yeah, he’d be sending out, what do you call them, diplomats or something, right, Sar’ Major?” Jimenez asked.

  “That’s right, Taco. He’d be sending out envoys all over the country. He’d be trying to get communications working again, bringing people together, and not trying to get his hands on the nuclear codes. If I was in his position, that’s exactly what I’d be doing, and those codes would be way down on the bottom of my list, just below contracting gonorrhea.”

  “Is that really enough, Tim?” Holly asked.

  “It’s enough for me to know I want nothing to do with him, or her, and more than enough to know I don’t want to give up the codes. If I could, I’d find each and every silo in the country and fill every goddamn last one up with concrete. I don’t want the power, and I sure as shit don’t want some other nutcase to have the power,” Tim asserted.

  “Aye, I guess you’re right,” Holly said after a moment’s reflection.

  “Let’s finish up the plans were making,” Tim said, coming back over to the group, pulling up his chair. He pulled pulling out a topographical map of northern Yavapai and southern Coconino counties.

  He motioned Robyn to hand him the lantern and set it next to the map that he’d spread out on the wooden cable spool that he’d been using as an outside table. He set his pipe down next to the lantern and studied the faces in his group. When he was sure that he had everyone’s attention, he cleared his throat and began.

  “Alright, we’ve already discussed that I want Holly to take the C130 down to Luke AFB, along with Walter, Robyn, and the other three women, and stay there until everything here is clear.”

  “When do you want us to leave?” Holly asked.

  “I don’t know just yet. Didinato says they’ve just entered Colorado on I-70, and he and John will be bird-dogging them as best they can, but they might have problems keeping up.”

  “Why?” Jimenez asked.

  “He’s on horseback, and has several head of buffalo with him,” Tim told the young Marine.

  “Horseback? No shit?”

  “Yeah, Taco. Seems he found our friend, Dawn Redeagle and traded his ride for the horses and the buffalo. He’ll be a while getting back. There is good news. He reported the conditions of the roads are getting bad, and the convoy is not travelling much faster than them. I kind of figured the roads would start to go downhill after a while. There’s a big span over Hell Canyon just north of Drake on Route 89. When I was out there a few weeks ago looking for more junipers to cut, I saw that it had collapsed into the canyon. The bridge piers were probably undermined by a flood at some point, and just fell in on itself.”

  “So you figure the roads all over the country are starting to deteriorate?” Izzy asked.

  “Everything is, really, when you look around. Nature is taking back what man has tried to make his. I knew it’d only be a matter of time.”

  “So they might take as much as a few weeks more to get here?” Robyn asked.

  “Yep, that’s what I figure. That will work for us. That, and the conditions of the roads. Sam said they were here,” he said, pointing to another, larger map of the western half of the United States. “Just a few clicks west of Burlington, Colorado. Now they can take two routes. They could stay on I-70 and continue through Denver, over the Rockies, into Utah, where they can pick up I-15 and head south into Arizona via Nevada, coming through Las Vegas, and picking u
p I-40 to the west of us in Needles, backtracking from the west.”

  “Are you sure they’ll come that way?” Holly asked.

  “No, they could also come down from Utah the way Robyn and I did, on Alternate Route 89 at Colorado City, across the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and come down through Flagstaff. I’m not convinced they’ll come that way, though, through the Rockies. No telling what kind of shit through the passes could be blocking them. It was clear when Robyn and I came through a few years ago, but that was then. Several years, and most probably several heavy snowfalls have most probably done all kinds of damage in the passes. Landslides, avalanches, ground heaves.” Tim pointed at the map again. “If I were them, I’d come through Denver, pick up I-25, and head south from there into New Mexico, pick up I-40 in Albuquerque and head into Arizona that way.”

  “That does make sense,” Izzy said.

  “What do we do, Dad?” Robyn asked.

  “Taco, how much TNT did you say there was at Camp Navajo?”

  “Literally tons of it. Five point six tons, to be exact,” Jimenez told Tim.

  “Good, because we’re going to drop a bunch of highway bridges, and a few railroad ones too, just to be on the safe side. Our wayward Aussie railway man will probably not like it, but that’s too bad.”

  “Which ones?” Jimenez asked, leaning into the map that Tim had moved into view of the two counties.

  “The bridges over this gorge here, a few miles east on I-40,” he pointed. “Both spans, east and westbound traffic, and the railroad bridge about five hundred meters to the south. And these two spans here, just a little east of Ash Fork, along with the railroad bridge to the north.”

  “We shouldn’t have to worry about them coming from the south, and that bridge is already down on Route 89.”

  “Yeppers. The only worry I have from that direction is that they could find the dirt road from Drake, and come up through that way. I can lay a few antitank mines there if we want.”

  “What about them finding Camp Navajo?” Holly asked. “If they find that, won’t they be able to raid our supplies there and turn them against us?”