She got the joke. And it told her the jovial cop in the big cowboy hat was just what he claimed to be: a good officer who saw what he thought might be a motorist in trouble and who stopped to render assistance.
“Oh, Johnny, stop. He is not. He just wanted to see if we needed help.”
“No, baby, he’s onto us.”
Every time Johnny panicked the paranoia came out, and it always made things exponentially worse.
He went on, “Did you see the way he looked at me? Like he knew something we didn’t. Like he knew he was gonna arrest us and went up there to get Frank as backup. In fact, I’ll bet we were set up from the beginning. I’ll bet Frank is an undercover cop and got in front of us with his damn snow plow just so he could block us in and arrest us.”
“Johnny, you’re talking nonsense. What are you gonna do, shoot the cop now too?”
“I don’t have any choice. Can’t you see that?”
Instead of answering, Tina reached over to the AR-15 rifle between them and ejected the magazine. She dropped the magazine well out of Johnny’s reach, between her seat and the passenger side door.
“Well,” she said, “If you’re gonna do something incredibly stupid, you’d better be a good shot. You have one bullet in the chamber. And you’re gonna have to take out all four of them with one shot, or they’ll blow your dumb ass away.”
She looked up and saw Deputy Sonmore headed back in their direction.
She continued, “And if you’re gonna do it, you better do it now, ‘cause he’s coming back this way.”
Johnny looked up in a panic and swallowed hard.
He froze to the point that she had to remind him to lower his window again to talk to the deputy.
Deputy Sonmore was the same jovial soul he was the first time they spoke.
“Well, I guess I can’t get around y’all. I’d get stuck in the snow if I tried. I guess I’ll just have to join the convoy and follow you all the way. How far did you say you were going?”
It took all the strength a terrified Johnny could muster to squeak out, “Big Spring.”
“Well, I’m going a little farther than that. San Angelo. Seems half their department is sick with the flu, and the sheriff sent me down there to help out. Interagency support and all that.”
He reached out his hand to Johnny and said, “My name’s Daniel, by the way. Daniel Sonmore.
Johnny looked horrified, as though the man had whipped out a pistol or something.
Tina reached out and took the deputy’s hand herself.
“I’m Tina and this is Johnny. Don’t mind him, he’s a dumbass with a deathly fear of getting another speeding ticket.”
Sonmore chuckled, “Well, at six miles an hour I don’t think he’s got anything to worry about.”
He noticed the Humvee was pulling away and said, “Well, I guess we’re on the move again. Y’all drive safe now.”
He tipped his cowboy hat to Tina, as all good Texas men do, and walked back to his SUV.
The blue lights went off and Johnny pulled forward, Sonmore close behind him.
It was several minutes later when Tina noticed a vague smell wafting through the cab of the truck.
“Johnny, did you wet your pants?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, maybe.”
“What am I gonna do with you?”
He felt like a little boy being chastised by his mother.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either.”
So we’ve already established this was Johnny’s lucky day. But he wasn’t alone.
Had Deputy Sonmore not driven up precisely when he did, Frank Woodard would have been shot in the back. Johnny would have rushed forward to shoot Josie and Eddie before they could produce guns of their own, and had a very good chance of succeeding.
He’d have dragged all three bodies off the roadway and into the deep snow, where they wouldn’t be discovered for a very long time.
Deputy Sonmore showing up when he did marked a lucky day for Frank Woodard as well. And for Josie and Eddie.
All of them were blissfully unaware of how close they came to dying.
And since they didn’t know, it didn’t bother them.
As they tooled down the highway at the lightning speed of six miles an hour, Josie was reading questions from a deck of Trivial Pursuit cards they’d brought along for entertainment.
Frank, because he was older than dirt and a little smarter than a coconut, got nearly all the history questions right.
Eddie was playing too, and got one right every once in a while as well.
Not really, but Josie pretended he did.
-17-
Outside the main gate at Joint Base Lackland, Mike Suarez stood with several of his fellow activists and scratched his head.
Literally, for he’d forgotten to wear a hat, and the cold air was making his head itch.
Just as the base commander gathered his own people earlier and tried to brainstorm a solution to a dilemma, Mike Suarez was doing the same thing.
Turns out it was exactly the same dilemma. They were just seeing it through two different lenses.
For all practical purposes the base commander’s goal was achieved. The gate was unblocked, the base was once again open for business, and base personnel could come and go once again.
As for Suarez, the enormity of the mess he and his friends had created was just now sinking in.
They declared victory, for Colonel Morris Medley was now a free man and all charges against him were dropped. After a thirty day period of nonchargeable leave he would be reinstated as commanding officer of the Wilford Hall Regional Medical Center.
Truth was their blockade of the base had little affect on General Lester Mannix’s decision to drop the charges. He just finally decided to be reasonable.
But there was no sense telling that to Mike Suarez and his group of happy activists. It would have served no real purpose. And they certainly meant well.
Colonel Medley, in his first trip off the base since his release, made a point to go by the Guerra Public Library to personally thank them.
He didn’t tell them either, but was flattered that so many people he didn’t know or barely knew would go to bat for him the way they did.
Mike Suarez set him straight. He said, “We didn’t do it just for you, Colonel. We did it in the name of justice. None of us wanted to live in a country where good men could be railroaded and executed just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In any event, the colonel learned he had many more friends in the San Antonio community than he thought he had.
He resolved to show his appreciation, since the AETC commander gave him thirty days off. He didn’t know beans about moving over six hundred automobiles with no batteries in them.
But he was willing to help anyway, so there he was in blue jeans and winter coat to help pull his share.
“Any ideas on how to do this, colonel?” Suarez asked.
“Please. Colonel is my first name when I wear my blue uniform. When I wear jeans I’m just Morris.
“And I’m afraid I have no ideas at all. I didn’t see how you got them all here. My cell at the brig didn’t have a window. But I suspect the best option would be to do it the same way you got them here, only in reverse.”
“Makes sense to me, Just Morris,” Mike said with a smile.
As though he’d been standing by waiting for a cue, one of Suarez’ activists pulled up in a pickup truck.
His name was Stuart, and in the back of his truck were ten car batteries of various sizes.
“Where do you want these, Mike?”
“Just park there, Stuart, and we’ll start installing them in the first few cars.”
He turned and took a headcount.
There were exactly ten men present, including himself and Colonel Medley.
“Pick a car, gentlemen. We’ll put a battery in it and send you on your way. Ther
e’s an H.E.B. Supermarket on Military Drive, just inside Loop 410. We have permission from the manager to line up a hundred cars there. After that we’ll put two hundred more at the Walmart just north of there.”
Someone asked what to expect after they parked their car at the supermarket.
“Stuart will meet you there with his pickup. He’ll help you take the battery out of your car and bring it back to install in another one. We’re all volunteers here, and we don’t want to overwork anybody, so work as long as you want. When you’re ready to call it a day, just drop out of the rotation.
“I hope you’ll all feel like coming back tomorrow to help out again. If not, I certainly understand.”
Medley asked him how long it would take to get the cars moved out.
“I don’t know, Morris. I guess it depends on how many volunteers show up and how many hours they work every day. If we get ten per day I expect maybe a week or so. If they start dropping out a little longer.
“And by the way, I really appreciate you being here, but I meant what I said to the other guys. You’ve been through a hell of a lot more than we have. Any time you feel the need to drop out, go for it. We all know that you’ve been through the wringer and we’ll all understand.”
“Nonsense. I have thirty days to get over that ordeal. And I’m old enough and wise enough to know the best way to do that is to find something to keep me busy. At the end of this it may just be you and me. But I can assure you I’ll be the last volunteer to drop out.”
As it was, only thirty cars got moved that first day. Since most cars hadn’t been driven since the first freeze began ten years before, their batteries were shot.
Ten dry cell batteries were located on the shelf at an agricultural supply store. Since they were dry and had never before been activated, a bit of acid made them fresh and like new.
But that wasn’t their only problem.
All the cars were gathered up from area parking lots and considered abandoned. Since the activists weren’t the legal owners and didn’t have keys for any of them, they each had to be hotwired.
It took a considerable amount of time to install batteries, hotwire the cars, then to drive them a couple of miles to their new parking spots.
Add to that the occasional flat tire or car which stubbornly just refused to start.
The project was off to a dismal beginning.
Then Morris Medley, “Just Morris,” had a better idea.
-18-
One doesn’t make it to the rank of full colonel in the United States Air Force by being a slacker.
Or a dummy, either.
A bird colonel is just one rank… one pay grade… below the single star of a brigadier general. The majority of colonels never pin on the general’s star, but that’s okay. Many of them don’t really want to.
To be a general is to be as much a politician as a military officer. To be a general one has to schmooze the elites of society.
When one puts aside his silver eagle and replaces it with the single silver star of a brigadier general, he is expected to mingle with mayors and senators and local celebrities.
Even if he doesn’t like them or considers such mingling a waste of his valuable time.
A general’s world is a world of cocktail parties and elementary school grand openings. Throwing out the first pitch at AAA baseball games and dedicating new wings at hospitals.
He goes to award ceremonies and grand balls and is the keynote speaker at graduations.
Sometimes, when he’s able to squeeze in a little bit of time, he does his Air Force job as well.
But every general ever made has bemoaned all the little things which tug at his time and pull him away from what he considers his “real job.”
Colonels see that coming, and many don’t want it.
Many see the rank of colonel as the shining end of a stellar career and are satisfied with it.
And make no mistake about it, being a colonel is a pretty sweet gig.
And everybody in the United States Air Force, from the slick-sleeved airman basic to the chief of staff, knows the hard work and sacrifices a colonel makes to be a colonel.
And as we said, colonels don’t get where they are because they’re slackers or followers.
No, they get that hard-earned bird because they’re leaders and doers.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, then, when Morris Medley said at the end of that first day, “Mike, I think I have a better way.”
Now, by that time Mike Suarez was frustrated beyond belief.
Several weeks before, when they’d decided to implement the blockade in support of the colonel, he had three times as many volunteers.
He actually had to turn some away. Some were getting underfoot.
Now it was all he could do to get ten drivers. And several had already informed him they wouldn’t be able to come back the following day.
Oh, they made good excuses.
One said he had a sick wife at home and couldn’t stay away too long.
Another said it was his turn to perform neighborhood watch.
A third said he was almost out of firewood and had to make a trek to a forest and chop trees the next couple of days.
The excuses might well have been valid, but Mike could see on their faces that they weren’t as dedicated to the task of retrieving the cars as they had been in putting them out to begin with.
It was like husbands at Thanksgiving dinner.
Everybody loves the meal, but nobody wants to clean up the mess. Especially when there’s a ball game on.
Mike was beginning to wonder whether the whole blockade thing was a good idea, and whether it really would be himself and “Just Morris” who moved the last of the cars.
So when he heard from the colonel there might be a better way he was more than willing to listen.
“I have a friend who might be able to help us out,” Medley told him.
That was it.
No further explanation.
Mike would have liked to have more details, but Just Morris wasn’t forthcoming.
It wasn’t that he wanted to be secretive.
It was just that he didn’t know if his idea was doable, and he didn’t want Mike to get his hopes up.
“Let me get back to my office and make a phone call, and I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
“Sounds good, Morris. Same time, same place?”
“Yes, sir. See you here tomorrow.”
Medley went from the main gate to Wilford Hall Medical Center and went straight to the hospital commander’s office.
His office.
The lights were out and it was frigid.
He believed in conserving electricity as much as the next man. But when he could see his breath it was too darned cold.
He turned on the thermostat.
The heater came on and began to warm his frozen bones as he looked through the rolodex for a particular phone number.
Most people were out of contact in the frozen new world. Cell towers fell into disrepair during the first freeze because they all became covered with ice. Not only did the ice do its damage, but the towers were too dangerous for maintenance men to climb.
At the end of the freeze most of the carriers had to hire new maintainers, because most of the old ones were dead or scattered to the wind.
Training took time, and just when the carriers were getting some of the towers fixed the world froze again.
As a result, most people still had cell phones, but precious few of them worked.
Even before Saris 7 stuck ten years before, most people no longer had land lines. They were simply viewed as obsolete. Why have a land line when your cell phone went wherever you went?
You know who still had land lines, though?
Businesses.
Even after all the chaos of two meteorites and the freezes they brought with them, businesses still had land lines.
And surprisingly, most of them still worked.
-19-
They have many friends.
And many contacts too.
Part of that is because everybody wants to be their friend, because colonels have a lot of power and can get things done.
And let’s face it. When you’re in a bind and need someone to help you, you wouldn’t go to the guy on the street corner holding a sign and begging for change for a bottle of wine.
You’d go to the colonel, because the colonel knows how to get things done. And if he can’t fix what’s broken himself, he certainly knows who can.
“Ah, there it is,” he said to himself as he pulled a card from the rolodex.
He placed the card on his desk and picked up his phone.
He dialed the number.
A man on the other end picked it up on the third ring.
“Wheel Call Wrecker, this is Tommy.”
“Hey, Tommy. Morris Medley here. How have you been?”
“Well, I’ll be darned. This is a voice I never thought I’d hear again. I was worried they were going to put you in front of a firing squad and shoot you.”
“Believe me, friend, I was worried about that too.”
“I’ll bet you were. Congratulations on beating the rap. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Anything short of my firstborn child.”
“Are you sure? It’s a big one.”
Tommy laughed.
“Okay, okay. You can have my first born. I don’t like him very much anyway.”
“Do you still have wreckers with those things on the back? The ones where you can pick up a car without getting out of the truck?”
Tommy laughed again.
“Is that a technical term, colonel? The thing on the back contraption?”
“You know what I mean, smart aleck.”
“Yes, sir. I do know what you mean. It’s a hydraulic self-loader attachment. And yes, I have four of them. I haven’t been using them much because there aren’t many people out and about to get stuck, and the repo game is on ice right now.
“Did you see what I did there? I said, ‘the repo game is on ice.’ Get it?”
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