Or maybe not.
Since he couldn’t see the side of the roadway, there was just as much chance there wouldn’t be a slide down a gentle slope into the forest. There was just as much chance they’d slide over the side of a cliff, fall eighty feet and end up in a fireball.
Frank wasn’t familiar enough with west Texas to know it was as flat as a pancake.
There was no cliff within a hundred miles.
No forest, either.
This had been farmland, rich and fertile. Before Saris 7 it had been one of the richest agricultural regions in all of Texas.
Now it was left to its own devices, as had virtually all other farmlands in the state.
The truth was, if Frank had spun out and left the roadway on this particular highway, he’d have slid forty feet and come to rest against a barbed wire fence.
He might well have been able to get his door open and scamper into the near white-out conditions.
But he didn’t know that. And under the circumstances he figured his chances were better staying where he was.
Trying his best to talk his way into becoming a human being in Justin’s eyes.
And trying to convince John the driving was truly treacherous so John didn’t just shoot him in the back and take the wheel himself.
Back in the compound adjacent to Salt Mountain, some three hundred miles away now, Hannah was frantic.
She’d been the only one Frank had confided in when he decided to help in the search.
She’d assumed at the time he’d be back within a few hours, and she’d prayed he’d have Brad with him.
That wasn’t the case.
Frank had been missing for three days now; Brad for four.
Hannah was doing her best to hold herself together, but was on the verge of a breakdown.
She was feeling a lot of guilt for not trying to talk him out of his decision.
She’d lost too many of her friends in recent months. And she feared she’d lost two more.
-21-
In southwest San Antonio colonels Wilcox and Medley huddled with MSgt Wayne Selleck, trying to determine their next course of action.
It was only a single gunshot, coming from somewhere in the bowels of the compromised super-bunker.
But it was enough to send them a very distinct message.
A message which said, in effect, the occupants weren’t coming out without a fight.
They were more surprised than anything else. All indications were that the rats inside the bunker were soft and cowardly. Washington politicians who were used to bullying average Americans by writing bills which benefited themselves and their cronies to the detriment of everyone else.
They were men who fought with a pen because they didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to fight any other way. Damn few of them ever served their country. Most of them were young men during the Vietnam years, and avoided the war because their fathers wielded great power or because they knew the right people.
They were men who didn’t mind sending other people’s kids off to be killed in war. They sent their own kids off to shady doctors to get deferments instead.
These were men that colonels Medley and Wilcox didn’t expect to put up a fight.
But one of them did.
How many more?
Had they taken a private security force into the bunker with them?
That didn’t make sense to Wilcox. They seemed so sure of themselves, keeping their big secret. Wilcox imagined them to be quite smug, thinking they’d pulled the biggest scam on the little people. The average Americans that they never gave a damn about and left out in the cold to die.
Medley agreed.
“To take a security force in would mean more mouths to share the food. More bodies to share the space. More people to share the posh amenities they no doubt had designed into the bunker.”
He just didn’t see the President of the United States sharing his workout room with a pimple-faced kid, just because that kid was brought along to protect his butt.
“In any event, we might want to rethink things,” Selleck said.
Wilcox and Medley were both doctors. They’d both been in the war zone, in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
But war zone hospitals are set up in zones that are relatively safe. Though close to the action, they’re seldom in the midst of it. If they are, it’s because somebody screwed up.
Also, as surgeons Wilcox and Medley were considered noncombatants. They weren’t even allowed to carry weapons.
So although both of them had been to war, neither had ever fired a weapon in anger, or been shot at.
MSgt Selleck, however, had done both.
Plus, he was their resident expert in engineering matters. He had a pretty good idea about how the bunker was constructed, and what it looked like on the inside.
At least in general terms.
“Okay, Wayne, Medley said. You’re much more experienced in this than we are. We’re handing you the controls. Where do we go from here?”
“I appreciate your confidence, sirs. The first thing we do is cover that hole we made in the wall so we don’t get anybody shot.”
He picked up his hand-held radio.
“Myers, you listening?”
“Go ahead Sarge.”
“I need a big ass shield to cover that hole we made while we regroup. Can you get on your dozer without exposing yourself to fire?”
“I’m already on it, Sarge. Just waiting your go signal.”
“Will the blade go high enough to protect you?”
“Yep. I’ve got it as high as it’ll go. I can’t see the hole, so therefore they can’t see me either.”
“Ten four. Take it slow. I’ll watch and tweak your course as you get closer.”
“How far in do you want me to go?”
“Put it right up against the wall, then park it there and get the hell away from it.”
Medley asked, “Is that safe?”
“Sure. That bulldozer blade is three inches thick at the top, six inches thick at the bottom. Hardened Pittsburgh steel.
“They can’t see the driver, so they probably won’t even shoot. If they do, they’ll hit the blade and the blade will laugh at their bullets. Their bullets won’t even tickle it.
“Once the dozer blocks the hole we can move around safely again. Then we’ll go to Plan B.”
“And Plan B is…?”
“We’re gonna try to smoke ‘em out.”
He switched the channel on the top of his radio and keyed his mic again.
“Armory, this is CES operations.”
A female airman responded.
“Go ahead, CES ops.”
“This is Selleck. I spoke to your Lieutenant about an hour ago about some tear gas canisters. Is she available?”
“Stand by.”
After a couple of seconds another woman’s voice came on.
“This is Lieutenant Allensworth.”
“Hello, L.T., Sergeant Selleck here.”
“Hello, sergeant. I take it your first effort didn’t work?”
“I’m afraid not. Are y’all still willing to help us out?”
“The truck’s loaded and ready to go. We’ll dispatch it now and you should see it in about ten minutes. Should be easy to spot. It’ll have a police escort front and rear.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Any time, sergeant. Good luck.”
-22-
Brad had been looking at his radio for hours, every time he returned to his truck to warm up after being out in the frigid cold.
He cursed himself for breaking the darn thing. He’d been adjusting his tire chains when the radio slipped from his belt and hit the pavement.
It didn’t hit that hard, but happened to land perfectly on its corner. That almost guaranteed a certain amount of damage, because there was very little surface area to help dissipate the blow.
That, plus plastic tends to get brittle and more prone to breakage when it’s about ten de
grees or so.
The battery cover popped off the back and broke into two pieces. The housing which held the battery into place was cracked and prevented the battery from making a connection.
Other than that it appeared to be in good working order.
Finally he picked the radio up and started trying to get it back together again. No matter how he tried, though, he just couldn’t get the battery to make contact.
It was frustrating the hell out of him.
Then he remembered the tiny piece of foil gum wrapper he’d found the day before.
And he remembered something his father had taught him when he was a boy.
Brad grew up in a house that had been built in 1946. His hometown had been decimated during World War II. Not necessarily by the number of casualties. The little town of Comstock didn’t suffer any more war deaths than anyone else.
Rather, Comstock had been decimated because nearly all its able-bodied men had been called into action for the war in the Pacific. Even more in Europe. And those who were left, as well as many of those who got medical deferments, got jobs at a munitions plant thirty miles away.
For the last two years of the war the town of Comstock was run almost exclusively by women: wives, mothers, sisters. They all pitched in to do the things men traditionally did, and they did a bang-up job.
Then the war ended and the boys came home. The munitions plant closed down, and all of a sudden the unemployment rate in Comstock hit seventy percent.
The federal government helped out with a work program to build a federal prison right outside of town.
Comstock was working again. Not only on the prison but on several new housing developments financed by cheap federal loans.
The trouble was there was so much building going on at the same time, there was a shortage of qualified labor.
Oh, there were plenty of men looking for work. It was the “qualified” part that was lacking.
Construction firms were hiring plumbing and electrical apprentices who’d watch and learn the basics, then be tasked to work a new house on their own.
The results weren’t good. Virtually every house in Comstock built in the post-war years was plagued with problems. Their foundations cracked and sank, the pipes leaked, their sewers backed up and their lights sometimes stopped working.
Houses back then didn’t have breaker boxes. They had fuse boxes.
In Brad’s house the fuse box was located in the kitchen on the wall behind the refrigerator.
Occasionally the lights would go out because one of the fuses blew.
Brad loved helping his father because… well, that’s what boys used to do before they invented video games and smart phones.
Brad particularly loved replacing the fuses for his dad.
The old glass fuses screwed into a socket and were easy to change out. And Brad enjoyed playing the role of family hero when he made the lights come back on.
Once, when Brad was about eleven, a passing thunderstorm sent an electric surge through the power lines and into his house, and the main fuse blew.
Brad’s father looked around and then cursed.
He had no spare fuse.
“Not to worry, Brad. I’ll show you a trick.”
From his pocket Brad’s dad produced an old wheat stalk penny.
A 1958.
Of all the things Brad remembered about that night, the date of that penny stuck in his mind the most. That was because this dad announced, “1958. That was a very good year.”
It was the year both his mother and father were born.
“Watch and learn, Brad. I’ll show you a trick.”
Brad’s father took the copper penny and placed it into the socket, then screwed the old fuse back in.
The lights miraculously came back on.
“Now, this is just a temporary fix,” his father cautioned him. “I’ll go to the hardware store tomorrow and get a replacement fuse, and we’ll fix it properly.”
The next day Brad was walking home from school with his buddies when a fire truck passed them by.
They ran to keep up with the truck because that’s what boys did back then.
Brad was horrified when the truck turned down his street.
Even more so to find his mother and sister standing in the middle of his front yard.
The house was fully engulfed. A total loss.
Brad did indeed, as his father instructed, watch and learn something from the experience.
They’d lost all their possessions, as well as a family cat named Snowball.
But for the rest of his life Brad knew never to place a penny behind a burned out fuse.
However, maybe a radio was another story.
-23-
As Brad saw it, the radio didn’t work because the battery wasn’t quite making electrical contact with the radio.
It was darn close. Less that the breadth of a human hair.
But the contacts weren’t quite touching, no matter how much he tried to force the pieces together.
If his dad could use a penny to complete an electrical connection, why couldn’t Brad do the same with a piece of foil?
Well, for one, it didn’t exactly work out very well for his dad when the house burned down.
But then again, if the radio were to catch fire, all Brad had to do was open the truck’s door and toss it into the snow.
And if he lost the radio, so what? It wasn’t like it was doing him much good anyway.
The other problem, as he saw it, was that the thin foil was coated with paper on one side.
He was fairly certain the paper wouldn’t conduct electricity.
He took his pocket knife and tried to scrape the paper off. But it was much too thin, and it tore the foil.
“Damn it!”
Next, he pulled out his cigarette lighter to see if he could burn the paper off.
No good. The foil burned at the same time.
That made no sense to him.
Aluminum didn’t burn without extra oxygen to boost the flame’s temperature, did it?
Maybe it wasn’t really aluminum foil. Maybe it was just shiny silver paper.
Or maybe he should have paid closer attention in science class instead of watching Ali Swenson’s boobs from across the room.
He tried folding what was left of the tiny paper, silver side out, and stuffing it into the battery compartment.
Nothing.
“Damn it!”
He was getting pretty proficient at damning things.
He checked the time. His break was over. Time to go out into the big chill once again.
Time to climb those seventeen steps up to the roadway.
Time to pace back and forth.
Time to hope that against all odds someone… anyone, would happen by and pick his sorry butt up and take him back to Sami.
It wasn’t until he’d paced one hundred steps to the north and was heading back again he realized what an idiot he was.
Directly behind his big Kenworth tractor was a trailer containing fifty three feet of cargo once destined for a Walmart store.
Surely there was at least one roll of Reynold’s Wrap in all that stuff.
“Damn it!”
Only this time he wasn’t cursing either his gum wrapper or his luck.
This time he was cursing his own stupidity.
He saw the need to modify his schedule just a bit.
He still wanted to spend half his time on the highway.
This was a seldom-traveled road.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever see anyone driving on it, even if he waited for a thousand years.
But he was the king of bad luck. Everybody said so.
And it would be just his luck for one single vehicle to come cruising down the road.
It was also Brad’s luck that the driver of said vehicle would be adjusting his radio, or turning up his heater, or scratching his butt as he drove by.
And would never even look out to see the orange triangles he�
�d left on the roadway as a signal.
No, Brad couldn’t spend all his time on the highway.
It was just too darned cold.
But he’d spend as much time as possible there. For if there was one solitary vehicle which happened along with a very inattentive driver, he wanted to be there to flag the guy down.
By yelling and waving his arms and jumping in front of him if he had to.
Actually, he wouldn’t have jumped in front of him.
But he’d do everything he could short of that.
Okay, so he’d still spend every other fifteen minutes on the highway. He’d have to make some additional time another way.
Then it dawned on him that it never took fifteen minutes to thaw him out.
The truck had an excellent heater. It warmed up his cab in no time at all. By the time each of his breaks in the truck were up, he was no longer shivering.
He was on the verge of sweating.
He checked the time again.
His time on the highway was up. He looked each way one last time.
Cocked an ear to the sky to see if he could hear the roar of an oncoming engine.
Then walked down those seventeen steps back to the Kenworth.
He cranked up the tractor and backed out of it, careful not to lock the door on his way out.
He couldn’t enter the trailer from the end. It was backed up against a huge tree.
But that was okay. Just after the crash he’d used a hatchet from his gear box to cut an access hole through the sheet metal side.
Squeezing through it was tight with his heavy coat.
But he was starting to feel something not unlike desperation.
He was in within seconds, crawling over a low pallet to gain access to the center aisle.
Actually it wasn’t an aisle, but rather the narrow space between the two rows of pallets.
It was tight for sure, and even with a powerful working flashlight it wouldn’t be easy to find aluminum foil, much less to dig it out, in such a confined space.
He’d do this methodically, starting with one of the two pallets at the very front of the trailer. It was a mixed pallet, with a bit of everything on it.
One of Our Own: Final Dawn: Book 11 Page 8