“They’ll yell through the door and ask who it is, and I’ll tell them it’s me. Then they’ll let us in.”
“Pardon me for asking a stupid question” John asked his brother. “But you’ve been gone a long time. What if they forgot the code?”
“They can’t. I had the same worry, and I didn’t want to get shot trying to get in. So I wrote the code on the inside of the door.”
Frank was impressed.
It seemed they’d covered all the bases.
But he hoped he was standing nowhere the door when Justin tried to get in.
Just in case.
As it happened, the code worked flawlessly. They parked Frank’s hummer outside dock 44 and walked up the steps to the personnel door adjacent to it.
Justin pounded out his code, and after thirty seconds or so, someone inside shouted out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” he shouted back. “It’s Justin. I’ve got John with me.”
The door slowly opened a few inches. The barrel of an AR-15 rifle came out first, followed by a head.
The head started out with a stern and suspicious look, but that quickly changed to a smile.
“Justin! It is you! It’s about time you came back, boy.”
The face quickly surveyed John, who was recognized and passed muster.
Then the eyes rested very briefly on Frank.
The look of mistrust and suspicion returned immediately.
“Who’s he?”
“He’s cool,” Justin said. “He’s a friend of mine. He drove us up here when our truck broke down.”
The face looked uncertain, perhaps a tiny bit confused. He looked to John for affirmation.
John just shrugged. Perhaps Frank had finally won him over too.
Or perhaps he was just too tired after the long trip to shoot him.
-35-
Brad woke up just after dawn and stretched. He was thankful for getting through the night without dreaming that awful dream again.
And actually, he was in a pretty good mood.
He had a feeling that today was the day his rescuers would finally come. They’d chew him out for being so stupid as to leave his assigned highway without telling anyone.
They’d likely chew him out a second time for driving too fast in bad road conditions on a strange road and having jackknifed and slid off the roadway for his carelessness.
Brad could handle all of that. He deserved it and would take his medicine.
In fact, he’d tolerate anything his friends had to say to him, knowing that when the ass-chewing was done they’d hug him and pat him on the back and congratulate him for surviving.
Then they’d take him home.
Home to Sami and the baby.
He crawled out of the bunk and moved into the driver’s seat, then cranked the engine.
While he waited for the cabin to warm up, he huddled beneath one of the heavy blankets.
He could see his breath. It fogged the inside of the windows.
He wiped off the driver’s window with his sleeve and looked out.
There’d been another snowfall during the night. A couple more inches of the fluffy white stuff covered the footprints he’d made the day before.
That meant the orange triangles would be partially hidden by drifts. He needed to get up to the roadway soon to clean the snow away from them.
In fact, he might as well do it now. He was cold anyway, so he had nothing to lose by going out in the elements.
His watch said 5:55.
Five had always been his lucky number.
He’d take that as a good omen. It probably didn’t mean a damn thing.
But he’d take it anyway.
He crawled back into the sleeper, where he had more room, and put on a new pair of wool socks he’d thrown through the tear in the trailer’s shell and into the snow the day before.
He remembered he’d also thrown a case of ravioli through the same hole.
It was still out there. He’d never brought it in.
After the socks came his boots. By the time he donned his parka and gloves it was right around six a.m.
He cracked open the hatch to the sleeper and backed down onto the snow pack.
The seventeen steps were hard to see. There had been more snowfall than he’d first thought.
And they were slippery too. He almost went down halfway up the hill.
Two of the triangles were toppled over and were lying flat on the pavement. Apparently there was some considerable wind the night before as well.
His greatest fear was that another vehicle had already been by and had failed to see the triangles, since two of them were blown down and the other two were partially covered by snow drifts.
A quick check of the roadway convinced him that wasn’t the case. There were no fresh tracks. The tracks from the Jeep which went through the previous day were no longer discernable.
He breathed a sigh of relief, then stood up his two flattened triangles and cleared the snow from the others.
He needed to empty his bladder and in doing so pledged his love to Sami by writing her name in the fresh snow.
He ended it up with a heart.
He was in a silly mood. For he firmly believed this was the day he’d go home again.
Brad knew the dangers of getting his hopes up. Many times over the years he’d done so and wound up being crushed.
Today he couldn’t help himself.
In fact, as he counted off his one hundred paces in his trek north, he whistled.
We’re in the Money.
Why that particular song, he didn’t have a clue.
It just popped into his head the day before and seemed to want to take up residence there.
After fifteen minutes he stopped dead in his tracks and listened intently.
No vehicle sounds.
He could get discouraged and trudge away as he’d done so many times the day before.
But not today. Today was his day. He just knew it.
Down the steps he went, careful not to fall and injure himself. He couldn’t hug Sami, couldn’t make love to her if he had a sore back.
She’d been bugging him lately, telling him that pregnant women could too have sex, as long as they didn’t get too crazy.
He’d adamantly resisted her advances, saying “There’s plenty of time for that later. I don’t want to take any chances. What if I make a dent in the top of the baby’s head?”
“First of all,” she said, “don’t flatter yourself. Second, we can still make love as long as we’re careful.”
The night before, as he tossed and turned on the trucker’s bunk trying to fall asleep, he’d decided to give in to her. To let her have his way with him.
He was looking forward to it.
But he’d still be super careful.
He retrieved the case of Ravioli from the snow bank where it had landed the previous day and hauled it into the tractor with him.
The tractor was warm now, bordering on tropical.
It wouldn’t take long to thaw him.
The ravioli? A little longer. He took two cans of the stuff, frozen solid, and placed one can in front of each of the floor vents.
Even with direct heat from the heater it would likely take several hours to thaw them.
Chances were he’d be rescued long before he could pop one open and eat it.
Chances were he was wasting his time, and the cans would be abandoned there just like everything else in the rig.
But he went through the motions anyway.
-36-
Being a colonel in a top-notch military organization definitely had its perks.
Colonels got comfortable and spacious housing. Some would call it luxurious compared to enlisted housing.
They got choice assignments too. Their own reserved parking spaces. And they got to wine and dine and schmooze with local politicians and big wigs from Washington on occasion.
Enlisted personnel constantly reminded them how imp
ortant they were by saluting them fifty times a day.
Of course like most things, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. They were still responsible for maintaining the grounds at those spacious houses. Lawnmowers weren’t just for enlisted folks. And colonels, because they had bigger yards, typically spent twice as much of their weekends doing yard work than the sergeant down the block in a bungalow.
They got the choice assignments, sure. But those assignments typically carried more responsibility. Seldom a week went by when a bird colonel in the United States Air Force wasn’t awakened at night to get involved in one crisis or another.
Even the salutes were a drag. At Officer Training School, cadets looked forward to the day when they’d graduate and they’d be saluted. It would give them affirmation that although they weren’t necessarily better than the enlisted ranks, they were worthy and deserving of more respect.
And, to be honest, more than a fair number did deem themselves better than the enlisted ranks.
But every salute had to be returned, and not sloppily so. They had to be returned in a sharp military manner.
The first salute a lieutenant received on a typical duty day might give him a heady feeling. A feeling of accomplishment, of self importance.
But by the time he returned the fiftieth salute of that day, the luster of the salute had worn off. It was now just another chore which had to be done whether one wanted to or not.
Few of those lieutenants would ever become colonels. But those who did would have to return hundreds of thousands of such salutes over the course of their careers.
At some point they stopped being fun.
The lines between the officer and enlisted ranks have blurred in recent decades.
At one time the two were kept completely segregated to reinforce the thinking the officers were a different class, a more refined breed.
A better breed.
At one time the primary difference was that officers had college degrees, where few enlisted personnel did. Many enlisteds didn’t even finish high school.
In the modern military, most non-commissioned officers have degrees. Some have several. Many are more highly educated than the officers they serve.
The strict fraternization prohibitions which once kept officers from mingling socially with enlisted personnel have faded. The two groups now socialize to a limited degree, both on and off duty, on and off base.
There are many who say the distinction between officers and enlisted has worn out its worth. They say there’s no longer an education divide between the two groups. That most enlisted personnel are quite capable of managing men and operations as most officers.
And that a mere commission does not make a good military officer.
For there are some absolutely worthless officers out there.
Some say the emphasis should be on teamwork and mission accomplishment. Not who went to which college and got what degree.
That day may come, at some point.
But not quite yet.
One other thing colonels have to do that they don’t necessarily like?
Giving bad news.
They’re human, after all. They don’t like bringing heartache or disappointment or disgust to others.
But by virtue of their rank, it’s their responsibility.
It’s the price they pay for all those perks they get.
The crowd was restless, but had done what he asked. They put aside their weapons or holstered them, seemingly content to let justice play out without their help.
But that was when they expected the tear gas to chase the rats out of the bunker at any minute.
Now the situation had changed.
Colonel Wilcox conferred at length with MSgt Selleck and several other engineers about their best course of action.
Then the good colonel went back to address the crowd once again.
And he fully expected trouble.
He went to the same squad car he used before to address the spectators.
This time he was flanked by several security forces personnel, their M-16s charged and at the ready.
To a man, each was willing to use their weapons if they had to.
And to a man, each prayed they wouldn’t, for the people facing them on the other side of the police cars were their friends, neighbors and co-workers.
The radio was already switched over to its public address system.
Wilcox started out, “There seems to have been a delay.”
An audible groan swept through the crowd. There were a few grumbles. One man in the back yelled, “Bullshit!”
Another demanded, “What are you trying to pull?”
Wilcox ignored them and continued.
“They apparently have an air filtering system. The tear gas should have made them evacuate the bunker by now, but it seems to have no affect on them.
“It was a plan that seemed to have merit. We tried it because it seemed to be a good way to get them out without going in and subjecting our men to gunfire.
“Now that this plan has failed, we’ll go on to another one.”
The crowd by now was completely silent. He had their undivided attention.
-37-
“I have consulted at length with our engineers. They are the experts in this operation. I’m a doctor by trade. I have zero experience in storming bunkers or forcing people to surrender.
“In this case I am relying on our engineers to come up with a new plan.
“They, in turn, are relying on their collective experience. Collectively Master Sergeant Wayne Selleck and his men have almost a hundred years in dealing with buildings and bunkers and what systems they use to keep them alive.
“They possess the corporate knowledge to know a building’s strengths, as well as its weaknesses.
“They tell me that modern nuclear submarines have systems which allow them to recycle their air, so they can stay underwater for weeks at a time. They tell me that some modern bunkers have similar systems.
“However, this bunker is not so equipped.
“I asked how they knew that.
“Their answer was simple and made good sense. If they had such a system there would be no need for the ventilation intakes.
“Bearing that in mind, they’ve recommended a new course of action. It might take awhile. And some of you might not like it. But I agree with Sergeant Selleck that this represents the least chance of innocent people on either side to get injured or killed.”
“They aren’t innocent,” a woman in the crowd yelled. “They are self-serving cowards!”
“Not true at all,” Wilcox countered. “The men who are in there are indeed cowards. But they took their children in with them. And their wives. Their family members should not be punished for their fathers’ and husbands’ sins.
“Those are the people I am determined to protect. Them… and you. Because remember that bullets fly in both directions.
“You have survived a lot already. We, as a group, have lost far too many people already. I’ll not lose any more today.”
“So what are you going to do, colonel? We’re not gonna wait forever!”
“No one is asking you to, sir. I assure you, I want those people out of the bunker as much as any of you. But we’re going to do this safely.
“Even as we speak, our engineers are sealing all the ventilation pipes. The intakes as well as the outtakes.
“Their air supply will start to thicken. The exhaust from their generators will start to build in the bunker.
“At some point they’ll be faced with having to make a terrible decision.
“They’ll either surrender and come out peacefully…
“Or they’ll stand their ground and suffocate.”
The same man who asked what Wilcox was up to a few minutes before asked a reasonable question.
“How long will it take?”
Wilcox had no good answer. He asked Selleck to take the microphone.
Only Selleck had no good answer
either.
“The short answer,” he began, “is that we really don’t know. To figure that out we’d have to have a lot of data we just don’t have.
“For example, we don’t know how many people are inside breathing up their oxygen.
“We also have no idea how many cubic yards of air they have in there. We have the dimensions of the bunker, but don’t know how many levels it has.
“Obviously, if there are two or three levels, they have a lot more oxygen than if they only have one level.
“There’s also a high probability they’ll turn off their generators when they’ve figured out we’ve turned off their air supply. If they do that, they’ll obviously have more air to breathe. However, once their battery storage is used they’ll be in the dark. That’ll have a severe impact on their morale and might encourage them to give up sooner.”
Wilcox whispered to him, “That’s your short answer? Good thing they didn’t ask you for the long one.”
Selleck smiled.
He asked the crowd, “Any other questions of me? Anything technical in nature?”
There were none. He handed the microphone back to the colonel.
“So here’s the deal,” Wilcox continued. “We are not trying to hide anything we do. We want everything to be open and transparent. I encourage you to stay here if you want to.
“But bear in mind this is a process that could take several days to play out, depending on the factors Sergeant Selleck explained.
“We’re in it for the long haul. You might wish to talk to your buddies and see if they want to break into shifts, so some of you can go home and get some rest. If you’d rather stay here for the duration, I strongly suggest you go home and get some blankets and winter sleeping bags.
“Sergeant Selleck has already sent people to bring back several burn barrels and firewood to help keep everyone warm.
“The only thing I ask of you in return is to remember you are members of the United States Air Force. We are not a vigilante mob. We will not take vengeance on these people when they come out.
“If any of you have that in mind, I suggest you leave now. If you don’t, I believe there is a very good chance you’ll leave either in handcuffs or in a body bag.
One of Our Own: Final Dawn: Book 11 Page 12