“Who is this?” a woman’s voice answered on the other side.
Bob looked over his shoulder at Pelligrino. “I said I want this on speaker.”
Pelligrino looked to Phyllis, who switched on a speaker mounted above the desk.
“This is General Robert Scales here.”
There was a pause.
“We demand that you put Mr. Pelligrino on the phone now,” the woman replied.
“It’s the other way around,” Bob replied. “Whoever calls themselves president where you are, you put that person on the phone.”
“Just who do you think you are?” came the sharp reply. “General, you have been stripped of rank effective immediately. You are to turn yourself over to Mr. Pelligrino and the head of security where you are. Any who continue to obey your orders will face the severest consequences. You will be escorted to a secured area where you wait until our forces arrive.”
Bob actually smiled at that. “Go to hell.”
“What?” Her voice was almost a shriek, and as it rose in volume, John found himself looking at the loudspeaker with surprise. He recognized who she was.
“Madam. You are to recall your forces now. Immediately.”
“Mr. Scales, it’s the other way around.”
“I hold the trump card; you do not.”
“You’re an egotistical fool. You have fewer than eighty with you. We realize that now. You’ve undoubtedly learned by now there are additional security forces within the site. Whatever chance you had is finished. If you surrender yourself, I promise leniency for all those deluded into following you, and that is our only offer.”
Bob cupped his hand over the receiver and looked at John and the two guards.
“Tell her to kiss our asses,” one of the troopers replied. “Every man and woman under your command is with you, sir.”
Bob nodded his thanks and then looked at Phyllis. “I want you to turn those cameras on and set up an uplink.”
“To what?” she asked nervously.
“BBC, for starters. China, the whole damn world.”
“I will not.”
“I can have one of my tech people in here in less than five minutes and do your job for you,” Bob replied coolly.
She did not move.
“Get someone. Sergeant McCloskey can handle it,” Bob snapped to the two guards in the room, and one set off at a run, but the other guard came up close to John.
“McCloskey’s dead,” the guard whispered to John.
He could see Bob hesitating, such a rare sight, but all of it had become all so overwhelming. Every second that passed raised the chance that a counterstrike could hit them, and as if in answer, he could hear what sounded like gunfire from outside the command bunker. Chances were they were about to be overrun.
What had to be done, he knew Bob most likely was contemplating, but the moment dragged out, gunfire growing louder, and for John, it came down to Lee, Grace, Jennifer, all those who died. All those who would continue to die.
“Sir,” John snapped, and he extended his hand out, indicating he wanted the phone.
Bob looked at him in surprise but then handed the phone up.
“This is John Matherson. You might not know who I am, but I know who you are.”
There was a pause from the other end. “The terrorist from Carolina?” It was more a question than a reply.
“A citizen from Carolina who knows that you plan to take down the entire southeast region of the United States with another EMP burst within the next few days.”
“What difference does it make that I’m talking to you instead of a general now formally stripped of command?” she snapped.
“I’ll tell you the difference, ma’am.”
There was no reply, but over the loudspeaker, John could hear whispering from those who were most likely in the same room with the woman on the phone.
“I want all of you to listen closely. General Scales might not be comfortable with ordering this, but I no longer have a problem after everything you bastards have done to us, to our country.”
“How dare you!”
“I dare because I can destroy this place in a matter of minutes.”
Another pause, whispered voices, and finally a reply, as if she were trying to laugh his words off as an idle threat. “It was built to withstand a direct hit on the surface from a nuclear weapon. Unless you have one with you, John Matherson, your words are just that—words.”
“But we are inside. This place has a central ventilation system. I have enough of my people here that we will blow that, for starters. There is fuel storage, gasoline and diesel; we will dump it and light it off. The barracks are made of wood; after sixty-plus years down here, they’ll burn like torches. Your food supply is centrally stored; we already know where that is. A hundred gallons of gasoline tossed in there and lit and the life of luxury in here turns into the way people like my family have been living for over two years while your families are fat, warm, well-fed, and safe.
“Your water cisterns. I’ll blow them, and while everything burns at this level, we’ll flood out any lower levels beneath this one as well. We will blow this place, and in one hour, every single person in here will be standing out in the freezing cold. And let me guess—do you have grandchildren in here?”
“How dare you threaten them, you son of a bitch!” she shrieked.
“So you do have them here. So let’s make this clear. I bet there are a couple of dozen in that room with you, and all of you have families here. And by the way, if your so-called secretary of state is there, tell him his wife knows about Alicia and is waiting to discuss his mistress. I offered to loan her my gun, and I think she’s eager to use it.”
He could hear loud cursing and then the voice of someone being muffled.
“Don’t you dare try to play a blame game with me. We are not terrorists who will kill children. But you most certainly are a terrorist. My daughter died because of people like you. So the choice is yours: call your attack dogs off both inside here and any coming from the outside, and we continue to talk. Otherwise, I’m handing the phone back to General Scales, we start smashing this damn hiding hole, and you figure out what to do with everyone in here when they’re standing outside tonight in two feet of snow and another storm is rolling in.
“I am a man of faith, and I swear to you before God I will not harm a single innocent person in this place. But I also swear to you that unless you back off now, every person in this place will be living like the rest of America in another hour. At least I’ll give your people time to get into warm clothes if they have any and one pouch of an MRE each, but that is it. And that is a damn sight more than you and yours ever gave to the rest of this country two and a half years ago. I’ve said my piece. It is now you who have one minute to decide.”
John tossed the phone down on the desk and looked over at Pelligrino. “Get on there and tell her I’m not bluffing!” John shouted.
Bob sat in perfect silence, looking up at John in surprise.
John drew out his Glock and pointed it at Pelligrino. “Tell her I’m not bluffing!” John shouted.
“John?” It was Bob speaking, but John did not look at him.
“Tell her.”
Hands shaking, Pelligrino needed both to pick the phone up. “He has a gun to my head. He’s just crazy enough to do it.”
“One minute for the shooting in here to stop and for you to halt whoever is preparing to hit us, or this place starts coming down!” John shouted.
“He means it!” Pelligrino cried.
A pause, more arguing from the other end, and someone sobbing their kids were in the middle of it and to back down.
“Thirty seconds!” John shouted.
“All right! All right!” she cried.
It sounded like she was muffling the mouthpiece of the phone, but all could hear her shouting to get on a comm link to the security team in Sector Alpha and order them to cease fire and withdraw.
“Tell her she
just bought herself a few more minutes,” John said, looking at Pelligrino, who nodded and gasped out the message.
John stepped to the door into the room, telling the one remaining member of their team standing watch to go out to the gate and report back whether all was secure.
The distant sound of gunfire finally ceased. Two minutes turned to three and then four.
The guard, breathless, ran back into the cavernous main hall and then up to the communications center. “Whoever they are, they’ve apparently pulled back, sir.”
John nodded and lowered his weapon away from Pelligrino, and the man visibly shuddered and sighed with relief.
“How bad was it?” Bob asked.
“Two of our people at the gate are down. I think one is dead.”
John wanted to ask if his own friends were safe but knew he could not do so now.
Bob nodded and took the phone from Pelligrino. “Every death now is on your head,” he said. “I’ll call you back in five minutes. But if any moves are made, if anyone tries to approach from outside, what Matherson said will come to pass.”
He hung up without waiting for her reply and looked back at Phyllis, who, though obviously frightened, was displaying more nerve than Pelligrino.
“You and I need to talk, and I promise you, either way you answer, no harm will come to you. You have my word of honor on that.”
She nodded but did not reply.
Bob spared a sharp glance toward Pelligrino and motioned to the door, and the breathless trooper hustled him out of the room, closing the door.
“Sit down, Phyllis.” Bob offered her a chair.
She did as requested, and Bob motioned toward the pack of cigarettes. She shook her head, but he drew one out for himself, as did John.
“Phyllis, how long have you been here?”
“Since the morning of the day the war started.”
“Why you? Are you a family member of someone in Bluemont?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why?”
“I’d rather not say.”
That could mean a lot, but John sensed what it might be and did not press the question.
“And you being in here in this room when I came in?” Bob continued.
“I was assigned to work communications here. I used to be a producer and sometimes anchored for a television station in D.C.”
For John, that seemed to fall a bit into place. She was tall, highly attractive, the type that would be pushed in front of a camera to interview some government official. It was easy enough to see that had developed out and why she was alive here rather than long ago dead back in Washington.
“I think you know that outside of here, Bluemont, and I can only assume now a few other places, our country has gone to hell.”
She just nodded, head lowered.
“It could have been you out there, Phyllis.”
“My parents, a sister”—she paused—“a guy who was once my boyfriend.”
“Phyllis, do you know that Bluemont is preparing to launch an EMP strike against our own country?”
She hesitated. “There have been rumors,” she whispered.
“And your thoughts on that?”
She did not reply.
John could see what Bob was trying to do and gently moved in on the conversation. “Phyllis, there are hundreds of communities like mine that just barely managed to survive. Barely. We’re starting to crawl out of the dust, basic things, get at least a trickle of electricity up and running. From that, the chemistry lab in the college where I teach is again making anesthesia and antibiotics, things we once took for granted. Phyllis, have you ever witnessed an amputation with the victim wide awake, no pain pills afterward, no way to stop infection once it set in?”
She stared at him wide-eyed and then lowered her gaze and shook her head.
“How about watching a diabetic child die because her frantic parent could not find a single vial of insulin?”
Another shake of her head, but her glance turned back up to him.
“Yes, that was me. My daughter was twelve, and I held her as she died. Even with just a few extra hours’ warning, so much could have been different. Phyllis, those of us left are trying to crawl out of the hellhole of what happened, and those people in Bluemont are about to hit us, to push us back down into that hole. Bluemont is going to smash all that within the next two to three days because it doesn’t fit what they see as their plan.
“Look at me, please,” John said, and she raised her head.
“How old was your sister?”
“Fourteen.”
“My daughter was twelve when she died for want of a vial of insulin.”
He held the eye contact, and this time she did not break away.
“What do you want me to do?” she finally whispered.
* * *
John stood just behind Phyllis, who was at the control board. It was lit up. She had indicated to him and Bob that the uplink was hot and also being fed to Bluemont as well.
If she was bluffing, she was being damned good at it, and he could only hope for the best and that she had made a moral choice—or, as Bob had interjected, a penance—and it was time for her to set her own moral choices straight.
Bob was sitting behind the desk at the far end of the room.
Phyllis looked over at John. “He’s on,” she announced, and she turned her attention back to the display board.
John wasn’t quite sure what to do other than just hold his hand up and wave.
Bob nodded and looked at the camera, and John could see the image on a small screen in the control room. Certainly not the professional quality the world had once grown all so used to, but it would have to do.
There was no makeup, no smile, just a firm determined look.
“My name is Robert Scales. Until an hour ago, I was a serving major general in the United States Army and in command of all army operations in what was defined as the Eastern Mid-Atlantic Command Zone.
“My task, as assigned to me by an entity located in Bluemont, Virginia, claiming that it was the reconstituted government of the United States of America, was, and I quote from the orders I was operating under, ‘to return to federal control all territory from Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia, to the north, the Appalachian Mountains to the west, and the border with Florida to the south.’
“Until two days ago, I diligently followed those orders, believing that the entity located in Bluemont that claimed it was the government of the United States was a legitimate government. I no longer believe so, and that is why I am making this broadcast now.
“Several days ago, I was made aware of two actions by those who claim to be the government—one a crime of unsurpassed magnitude on what so many of us now call ‘the Day,’ the other a crime of nearly equal magnitude that same government was planning to commit within the next forty-eight hours.
“I shall review those crimes shortly. But before doing so, I am making the following statement and then demand. An hour ago, I wrote out my letter of resignation as a serving officer in the United States Army so that it can never be stated that one following a tradition going back to General Washington and those who served with him rebelled against his government. I therefore resigned and now have the freedom to act as a private citizen. Bear that in mind as I now make this demand. I demand that the criminal entity that claims to be the federal government based in Bluemont resign from office. That applies to the so-called president and every other official there.
“All of you who resign will stand trial by a duly created civilian court, for your crimes are of such magnitude you must face juries of your peers. Do not resign and you shall be construed as in rebellion against those who defend the Constitution of the United States and dealt with accordingly.”
He paused and looked over at John for a few seconds, who had been carefully watching Phyllis’s actions. Nothing seemed amiss. She had claimed to be linking the signal not just to Bluemont but also to several frequenci
es commonly monitored by ham operators, the frequency of America’s Voice of Victory, as it was now called, and, even more important, the BBC. Her hands were shaking, and he looked over at her.
She was in tears but then whispered. “I’m with you on this now.”
John gave a reassuring look back to Bob.
“I shall now review in detail my charges against those in Bluemont, an explanation of where I am now, and all that this place called Site R, from where I am broadcasting, symbolizes.”
He spoke for nearly a half hour, amazing John with his ability to have thus organized his thoughts, laying it all out clearly with no teleprompter, relying on nothing more than a few sheets of paper with notes scribbled on them with a Sharpie.
John continued to watch Phyllis’s actions. She stuck to her post, not making any attempts to shut things down. Bob had run down the list of events going all the way back to the Day and how it was now clearly evident that a very select few in the government, and beyond them political leaders and high-level economic leaders not directly in government, had word of the impending attack; conspired to conceal it while ensuring the safety of themselves, their families, friends, and allies; and ensured as well their seizing dictatorial power afterward. This cabal, as he called it, had ceded more than half of what had been America to other nations in order to ensure their continued hold on power and finally had plotted an EMP strike as a means of suppressing those attempting to rebuild and as a dangerous political ploy against the rest of the world.
“Why did they sink to this lowest of moral crimes?” Bob finally asked. “I don’t know for certain. The warning about the threat of an EMP attack has been out there for years, decades, and yet no one acted on it. Was it ignorance or was it simple dumb disbelief? Perhaps for many, yes. But I recall all too well an interview with someone who was fully aware of the threat long before it hit. When he was asked why there was no action to prepare, his reply was, ‘Don’t we, the ordinary citizens of our country who are aware of the threat, realize the elites will take care of their own no matter what happens?’
“This day I have found that those who claim to be our government based in Bluemont did take care of their own while the rest of us faced the Day without warning, and hundreds of millions died. Every one of their deaths rests on those who knew and said nothing while looking out for themselves.
The Final Day Page 36