Once through the double doors, it truly was a Dr. Strangelove world. A vast projection screen filled the opposite wall. It was dark, but he could easily imagine a global map display, arrows crisscrossing back and forth showing the trajectory of incoming missiles. Several dozen desks were arrayed in three tiers facing the darkened screen.
They were standard military issue of a generation or more ago. Most had old standard rotary phones on them as well, a few early model desktop computers, all of it having the feel of a time capsule. There were glassed-in rooms in a semicircle set around the main room, half a dozen feet higher than the main floor. John could see one was lit up with fluorescent lights; Bob Scales and half a dozen of his troops were in that room. As he approached, Bob looked down and waved for John to come up.
There was an unpleasant scent in the air, and as he drew closer, there was yet another body, not covered, shot in the head. He had seen so many dead like this one, but in this surreal room, the corpse seemed so out of place. John hesitated for a moment, looking down at it and then up at the lone guard stationed at the door telling John that the general was waiting for him, and he went into the room.
Far-more-up-to-date computers and communication gear lined two walls of the room, some of it lit up. The far wall was covered by a dark blue curtain, in front of it a desk, flanking the desk to either side American flags. Parked at an angle were a couple of television cameras that looked to be twenty or more years old, and glassed in to one side a small control booth, apparently to operate the cameras and sound equipment.
Besides Bob and his security detail, there were several civilians in the room as well. One of them Pelligrino, ashen faced but still alive. Standing nervously behind him were two men and a lone woman.
“John, are you all right?” Bob asked.
“Sir?”
“There’s blood all over your jacket.”
John looked down and for the first time realized that he was indeed caked in blood. “It was Grace. The girl with my unit,” John said softly.
“She going to make it?” Bob asked.
John could only shake his head.
Bob looked back at Pelligrino. “Another death I am holding you responsible for.”
It looked like Pelligrino was beyond rattled and just sat in dejected, terrified silence, eyes darting back and forth like those of a hunted rabbit.
“What’s going on here, sir?” John asked.
“Get these four things out of this room and have them wait in the hall,” Bob snapped, and the guards with him shoved the civilians out without any display of civility, leaving Bob and John alone.
Bob leaned back in the old chair, put his feet up on the table, and sighed. “You want the ‘sit-rep’?” Bob asked, motioning for John to pull up a chair.
John sighed and nodded, fishing into his pocket for the pack of cigarettes he had taken and pulling one out.
“I thought you quit,” Bob said, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
John did not reply as he tossed the pack on the table. Bob reached over, pulled out one as well, and motioned for the lighter.
“Didn’t know you smoked.”
“I didn’t other than the occasional cigar.”
The two sat in silence for a moment, Bob coughing as he exhaled but then nodding. “I can see how you can get hooked on these damn things.
“We’re in the shitter,” Bob finally said. “For that matter, the whole damn world is in the shitter.”
John knew that he was serving as a sounding board and the best thing to do now was to just listen.
“I came in here with eighty people. We’ve taken about twenty casualties.” He paused, looking at John. “I’m sorry about Grace and Lee.”
John could not bring himself to reply.
“All I could worm out of that administrator Pelligrino is that we are in a world of hurt. There are a couple of hundred civilians at the back end of this facility in a highly secured area who are family members of high-value types. ‘Movers behind the movers,’ they call them. Anyhow, the security we faced at first, standard garrison types, you could see that. But there are some definite A-team types holed up in that highly secured area, and if they try to retake us, it could go badly. I was on the phone to someone up there. She wouldn’t identify herself, but I told her she keeps her people in place and there’s no threat. But if they move, all bets are off, and this place turns into a free-fire zone.”
“Do they know how many we really have with us?” John asked.
“I don’t know. If they have access to outside cameras, they could see how many came in with us and do the math. For now, I think I’ve got them convinced I’ve got a full battalion in reserve coming in and if they start a fight, we can hold until that battalion arrives and all hell will come down on them. They’re not pushing, at least for the moment, and if they don’t, we don’t shove.”
John nodded.
“They’ll buy it for a while,” he finally said while Bob took another drag and coughed again but did not toss the cigarette down.
“What else?” John asked, for obviously there was more.
“I had that piece of crap Pelligrino out there get on the phone with Bluemont.”
That momentarily caught John by surprise, but then again, the moment they started to hit this place the alert would have gone to Bluemont, which by land was less than sixty miles away and by helicopter a quick twenty-minute flight.
“And?”
“I’m ordered to surrender my entire command. They’re sending up a battalion by land even as we speak.”
“Air?”
“Assume so.”
“Our choppers?”
“I’ve already ordered them to clear out. They get caught on the ground, we truly are screwed. They’re pulling back to where we landed earlier today. We can stay in touch with the comm team I left up on Little Round Top. That way no transmissions can be locked in on. Our choppers lifted off a few minutes ago. Security teams at the gate are pulling in and securing that huge steel door. Wounded are inside the gate and being tended to.”
John nodded, crushed out his cigarette, and lit another. Bob, coughing, just let his drop and did not bother to try another just yet.
“We caught them by surprise,” John replied. “If they hit back, we’ll be ready and can hold this place against a damn armored brigade. Are there any back doors?”
“I’ve got some of my people talking to the prisoners we took. Hate to say so, but I told my people to be persuasive if need be.”
“What doesn’t happen in front of CNN never happened,” John said softly. It was a bit of advice John remembered being spread among the troops just before going into Iraq. Of course there were rules of engagement with his army. But there was also the fundamental fact that war ultimately was and is the application of brutality, and if it saved the lives of men under one’s command, all bets were off, at least if CNN wasn’t there.
Bob did not reply.
“So what next, sir?” John asked.
Bob pulled another cigarette out of the pack lying on the table and lit it. His feet still up on the table, he exhaled the first puff and watched in silence as the smoke swirled up. “John, at a moment like this, it might seem strange, but I’m going philosophical on you. In fact, you were one of the few I ever served with I could go philosophical with.”
John said nothing, but it was indeed an ultimate compliment.
“Do you remember our oath when we were sworn into the service?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bob continued to stare at the coils of smoke. “‘I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’ there’s a bit more, and then it ends with ‘I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.’”
John remained silent.
“I have just been ordered by the person claiming to be the president of the United States, headquartered in Bluemo
nt, to surrender my command and all those serving with me.” He took another drag on his cigarette, gaze unfocused. “You ever take an order from someone you thought was a total ass and the order was dead wrong?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hope not me.”
John chuckled softly. “Of course not.”
“For enlisted personnel, their oath includes that they are only required to obey orders that are lawful and are held morally and even legally accountable if the order is immoral or violates the military code of justice and/or the Constitution. That became important post-Vietnam, after the Mỹ Lai Massacre.
“That is not specified in the oath for an officer, but it is clearly implied because we have an option enlisted personnel do not have; we can resign our commissions in protest and are expected to do so.” Another puff on the cigarette followed by a moment of silent thought.
“Are you going to resign?” John finally asked.
Bob looked over at him. “Your thoughts, John?”
“Is it about here?” John asked. “The fact that someone—in fact, quite a few—knew on the morning of the Day that we were going to get hit, took care of their own, and said the hell with the rest of us?”
“In part.”
Bob was silent for a moment. He took another drag on his cigarette and sighed.
“So damn much is clear now. We knew a practice drill was going on the day we got hit and most of the personnel that took over after that day by chance had been in Bluemont. At least I and others believed it was by chance. Hell, drills like that are being pulled all the time. We just came to assume that a few more that took over made it to Bluemont in the weeks afterward.”
He stood and looked out the window of the room to the open floor of what had been built in the 1950s to serve as the War Room to keep on fighting from if Washington was destroyed. “This was built to fight a nuclear war from. Once ICBMs with flight times of but minutes came online in the late 1950s and warning time went from hours down to just a few minutes, those of us working in the Pentagon knew we’d all be gone in those first few minutes and this place was all but forgotten. A relic of a different type of war from a different time. And now to find it was activated and running with families stashed here?”
He looked back at John, tears in his eyes. “Six hours’ warning and I could have gotten Linda out of Florida. All of us could have done something. For that matter, we could have scrambled everything we had and perhaps even targeted the container ships in the Gulf of Mexico and off the California coast before they hit us. It’s all too much to absorb, John.”
“I spoke to a woman who said her husband claimed that a select few knew something was coming but assumed it would be just a nuclear strike on D.C., and I would guess maybe New York.” John wearily shook his head. “Just D.C. and New York,” John whispered again. “Just ten to fifteen million dead. My God, what kind of mentality thinks such a loss would be a small number and that would reset the political paradigm in their favor.”
“There’s intelligence chatter all the time.” Bob sighed. “If one believes all of it, every day you go crazy. You know that. Maybe they thought that it was just a mid-level alert. I guess we’ll never know for sure. Bastards who would sit back for that think of themselves first. I doubt if we’ll ever get the truth from them.”
“By the way,” John said, breaking the tension of the moment with a sad smile, “it was her husband sending those love notes, not to his wife but to his mistress stashed away in the highly secured other end of this facility, that gave us the clue about Site R. I told her you have the letters. She is so pissed off I’m certain she’ll sing like a canary for us if we need more info later.”
“Typical,” Bob said softly, wearily shaking his head. “So typical of so many moral scum we all had to salute at one time or another.”
“But to the core question, sir?” John asked. “Is it about what they did to us all or what they are going to do to us next?”
“Go on.”
“I see one side of the dilemma that you are dwelling on being what happened. But, sir, the more pressing issue is what they’re going to do next and how you will reply.”
“Keep talking.” Now Bob lit his third cigarette.
“All of this started to unravel when you received orders—when was it, not much more than a day ago?—to pull your entire command back to Roanoke. It meant that Bluemont was preparing to pop an EMP to destabilize Atlanta, take out communities like mine that are resisting them, and I guess send a message to China as well not to push beyond the Mississippi. It comes down to the fact that they are willing to hold and execute power whatever the cost. I just heard someone quote Milton: ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ They scrambled to protect themselves when all hell cut loose and then seized the reins of power afterward. Whether that was their plot beforehand or not we most likely will never know. But since the Day? What they’ve done, what they are planning to do next? That, sir, is the issue of the moment to focus upon.”
Bob closed his eyes. “‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion … If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning … If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth…’”
He looked over at John. “The 137th Psalm,” he whispered. “I dwell on it often when I think of all that has happened.”
“And you are saying we cannot let our tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth or our right hand forget its strength.”
Bob made no gesture of reply.
“Enemies, foreign and domestic—it all turns on that, sir. Not just what they did but what they are about to do to hold on to their power. To protect the Constitution, it is therefore right for you to act.”
His gaze was no longer fixed on John, as if he was staring off to some distant place
“And to not forget the Jerusalem that they allowed to be destroyed,” John interjected, “Whether they thought it would be—forgive me for even saying it—just a strike on Washington and New York that would reset the political paradigm and power structure or some suspected it would be a full-scale EMP strike, it happened. Now they’re ready to do it themselves against the southern United States. Why?”
“A message to the Chinese, for one,” Bob said softly. “If we’re now willing to do such against our own territory still in rebellion against them as they see it, the message would be clear. They’re so desperate that they will order the same against everyone else in this world if they think they’re about to go under. Second, it was to knock out people like you who were beginning to rise back up and put things together and who at some point would look at Bluemont and start asking questions.”
“Therefore?” John asked.
“We have to hold to our oaths to protect the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic,” Bob replied, strength returning to his voice. “Yes, I took over what they called Eastern Command. I actually believed restoring order using our traditional military had to be done, but the ones I was first fighting against were barbarians like that Posse you wiped out. But then you were in front of me, John. That is when the inner questions started for me. I was ordered to bring you in. I tried to reason back that you had been provoked into that fight with Fredericks because you had no alternative but to fight.
“It didn’t fly. I thought I could work my way around it, get you to cooperate peacefully, which you did order, and then they tried to kill you anyhow. That assassination attempt was of course to kill you and your family as vengeance for your defiance, but it was a message to me as well that I was being watched and to toe the line. And thus the questions began to hit at last on my part in all of this.” He looked over at John. “Forgive me for not protecting you better.”
“Nothing to forgive now, sir,” John replied, but in his heart he knew if Makala had been killed that would have taken him beyond any forgiveness.
“When they ordered me to pull back to Roanoke, I knew I had to act, but h
ow? Then your friend Linda handed me the deepest paradox of all. Did at least some of them know what was about to happen before the Day, protected themselves and their own, and left the rest of our country wide open for what then followed? That finally tipped it. That is why I had to come here and settle for myself what had to be done.” He forced a weary smile. “What I have to do now.”
Bob turned away from John and lowered his head. John knew what he was doing; he had seen it just days before in the chapel at Montreat. He remained thus for several minutes.
John heard him whisper, “Thy will be done.” Bob made the sign of the cross and then leaned back in his chair and looked over at John.
“Get that administrator or whatever he is back in here,” Bob said, and his voice was firm.
John opened the door, pointed at Pelligrino, and nodded to the guards, who shoved the trembling man back into the room.
“Again, I must protest this kind of treatment,” Pelligrino started, but an icy glance from Bob silenced him.
Bob pointed to the control booth in the far corner of the room. “Do you know how to operate the equipment in there?” Bob asked.
Pelligrino shook his head.
“Find someone who can do so now.”
Pelligrino hesitated.
“Now!”
“Phyllis is our communications person,” Pelligrino blurted out.
“Get her in here,” Bob snapped.
John opened the door, pointed at Phyllis, and beckoned for her to enter, which she did reluctantly.
“First of all, get me on the phone with Bluemont again, and put it on speaker. I want you and Colonel Matherson to hear it.”
Pelligrino did as ordered, pulling over the red phone on the desk Bob was sitting at and pushing a single button that lit up on the face of the phone. Bob picked up the receiver.
The Final Day Page 35