by Bobby Akart
At the top of the stairs, a little girl, maybe three or four years old, stood alone, watching her father run back and forth through the foyer in a frenzy. Mac had no idea how long the child had been standing there, or where her mother was, but she recognized the look of depression and stress on her face.
Mac ascended the wide stairwell and approached the child slowly before sitting on the floor next to her. The girl looked at Mac for a moment and then turned her attention back to the activity below.
“Would you like to sit down with me? It might be more fun to watch that way,” started Mac.
The smallish child gave Mac a puzzled look. She looked back downstairs and then shrugged, collapsing onto her butt with her legs crossed in front of her.
“My daddy’s busy,” she managed to speak a few words.
“He sure is because he is a very important man. My name is Mac. I’m a doctor.”
The little girl was interested in this topic. “What kind of doctor? People or dog doctor?”
“Before I answer, will you tell me your name? We can’t be friends unless you tell me your name.”
“I’m Melissa. My daddy is a soldier.”
“Yes, I know. My mother is a soldier too.”
The girl giggled. “Mommys can’t be soldiers.”
“Oh, yes, they can. She used to be a general, but now she’s retired.”
The girl simply nodded her head. Mac wanted the little girl to feel safe but her biggest concern at the moment was why she wasn’t being watched by her mother.
“Melissa, where is your mommy?”
“She went to bed. She said she just wanted to sleep.”
“Melissa, don’t move. I’ll be right back. Promise?”
“Okay.”
Mac jumped off the floor and ran toward the end of the hall, where a set of double doors led into the master bedroom. She didn’t bother to knock and flung the doors open.
“Mrs. Hoover!” she exclaimed as the doors opened wide. Captain Hoover’s wife was sitting on the floor with her back against the bed, holding her baby. An opened prescription bottle lay on the bed and a dozen bright red capsules were scattered about.
Mac ran into the room and grabbed the bottle. “Did you take any of these?”
The woman kept sobbing. Mac fell to the floor onto her knees directly in front of the crying woman.
“Mrs. Hoover!” she shouted. Mac grabbed her face with her left hand and shoved the bottle at her. “Look at me! Did you take any of these?”
The woman shook her head and whispered, “No.”
“What about the baby? Did you give them to the baby? Answer me!”
Mac was incredulous, but she had to snap this woman out of it before she said anything else. She immediately recognized the red capsules as Seconal. Secobarbital was a powerful narcotic used to help insomniacs, which Captain Hoover apparently was experiencing. Its street names were reds or red devils.
“No. No. I couldn’t, um, I would never do that.” The woman began to wail.
Mac looked around where the three of them sat on the floor to make sure there weren’t any pills around her. She got up and began to scoop all the drugs up into her palm. She glanced to make sure little Melissa was still sitting where she’d left her a moment ago. Then Mac rushed into the bathroom and attempted to flush the pills down the toilet, but it wouldn’t flush.
She rattled the handle repeatedly and then realized the water wasn’t working. The family had several one-gallon jugs of water sitting in the bathtub. Mac quickly poured two gallons into the toilet bowl, causing the weight of the water to activate the flushing mechanism. The toilet flushed on its own and took the red devils away.
Mac had to decide what to do next. Obviously, this woman was so distraught that she was contemplating suicide and leaving these two beautiful children behind. Her husband, who seemed on the brink of losing it himself, had told Mac he couldn’t sleep because of the terrors he’d witnessed in Denver. The sleeping pills were probably used by him to escape the horrific memories of what he’d witnessed.
She wasn’t sure what was going on and why the soldiers were scrambling, but the last thing Captain Hoover needed right now was his wife attempting suicide. Mac decided to bring Melissa back into the bedroom and calm the situation down.
“Hey, Melissa, your mommy decided not to take a nap after all. Come in here for a moment because I have a fun idea.”
Melissa shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Once she was inside the bedroom, Mac closed the door behind her. She took the baby out of Mrs. Hoover’s arms and helped the new mother off the floor. She’d recovered her composure but was still crying.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said through her sniffles. “Kevin told me what happened and it was, like, the last straw. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“What’s your baby’s name?”
“Amy.”
“Melissa, would you like to help your mommy for a minute?”
“Okay.”
Mac looked around the room and there was no crib or place to put the baby. There was a car seat lying on the floor in the corner of the room. Mac took the baby and strapped her in so she couldn’t get into anything.
“Here we go, Amy,” said Mac as she gently put the infant in the car seat. “Melissa, you guys pretend you’re going on a ride to the zoo, okay. I’m gonna talk to your mommy because I have an idea.”
“Sure. Come on, Amy. Let’s go see the monkeys first.”
Bad choice, Mac thought to herself.
She quickly checked under the bed to make sure none of the pills were on the floor within the children’s grasp. Then, Mac rose up out of her crouch and turned to Captain Hoover’s wife.
“Come with me,” Mac said brusquely as she led the woman into the bathroom and closed the door behind them.
“I wouldn’t have gone through with it. It’s just that—”
“Now you listen to me,” started Mac. “People are dying gruesome deaths out there. You don’t have the right to quit. Do you hear me? I almost lost my father the other day. I cried and cried at the thought of life without him. Is that what you want for your babies? How selfish are you?”
Perhaps Mac had been a little rough because the woman broke down in tears again. “No. I love my girls.”
“Enough to leave them behind?” Mac asked as she kept her face directly in front of the distraught mother.
“No, I’m sorry. I was just so upset.”
Mac decided to soften her approach. She didn’t want to drive the woman into looking for more pills. “I get it. It sucks right now. But look at me,” said Mac as she forced the woman to look into her eyes. Mac tried to read her to see if this was a onetime lapse in moral judgment. “Do you love your husband?”
“Yes, of course. I love Kevin more than anything.”
“Then focus on what you have with him and not what’s out of your control. You, your husband, and those two precious little girls are your universe. Forget the rest.”
She stopped crying and reached for a towel on the vanity. “I’m so weak.”
Again, Mac gave her a pep talk. “No, you’re not. You wanna know why?” Mac, who was at least six inches taller than the mom, bent down to look into her eyes.
“Why?”
“Because you couldn’t go through with it. If you were weak, you’d be dead. Instead, you chose the lives of your husband and children instead.”
Mrs. Hoover nodded her head and gave Mac an unanticipated hug. The two women held each other until the new mother whispered, “Thank you.”
“Are you okay now? I’ve got to go downstairs for a minute, but I’ll be back, okay?”
She nodded and then got a fearful look on her face. “Are you gonna tell Kev? He has so much pressure on him.”
“No, I’m not. That’s up to you. When the time’s right, you’ll find the strength and you’ll deal with it together. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Go play with you
r children. Hold them close. I’m gonna talk to the guys for a minute and then we’re gonna go to the house we slept in last night and have a tea party for Melissa. She needs to get away from this. All of this. It’s too much for a little girl. It’s too much for a new mom also.”
Chapter 33
Day Eighty-Seven
Star Ranch
Colorado Springs
Hunter had just emerged from the living room, where he and Captain Hoover provided final instructions to the National Guard contingent, when Mac came bounding down the stairs to greet him. She had a frazzled look on her face.
“Is everything okay up there?” he asked.
She leaned in to his ear and whispered, “No, not even close. Hoover’s wife was on the verge of suicide. She’d closed herself up in the master bedroom with her baby and a bottle of Seconal—sleeping pills.”
Hunter calmly said, “Did she take them?”
“No, I think she was going to and couldn’t go through with it. Hunter, I’ve got this under control for now, but she’s pretty unstable still. I don’t think we should tell her husband. It should be up to them to work it out.”
“I agree. The man’s under an inordinate amount of stress. Mac, I’ve seen PTSD in various stages. Cappy’s on the edge of losing it. I’m not kidding.”
“His family is too,” said Mac as she looked past Hunter’s shoulder. “Here comes Hoover.”
“Good morning,” he said, addressing Mac. “Hunter, I think we’re ready.”
Hunter nodded and looked to Mac.
Mac said, “Cappy, listen. I was just upstairs, talking with your wife and Melissa. You know, this is kinda busy and disruptive for your girls. Would you mind if I invite them over to the house you provided us? There are two girls’ bedrooms there with toys and dresses. Us girls could get away for a day. Whadya think?”
Captain Hoover thought for a moment. “I think they’ll be safer here with the guards posted downstairs.”
“Cappy,” started Mac as she moved closer to establish physical contact. She lowered her voice, forcing him to focus on what she was saying. “The girls are scared. Look around you. They know something is wrong and they’re frightened. Trust me. I’ll take good care of them.”
Captain Hoover looked upstairs to the empty hallway and back to Mac. “Okay, I trust you. Let me get your weapons. But I wanna send one guard for my peace of mind.”
“I can’t argue with that,” said Mac. She kissed Hunter on the cheek and touched his face. “See ya later.”
Hunter followed Captain Hoover into the dining room, where his aides were seated, making notes. Hunter chuckled at the fact the government’s penchant for filling out forms and keeping inventory hadn’t gone away even during the apocalypse.
Something had been troubling him throughout their preparations that morning. He’d always had a knack for putting himself in the mind of a terrorist. That’d kept him alive through the years as he participated in a variety of missions.
ISIS always sought out targets that provided maximum media exposure. The media firestorm created by a truck plowing into pedestrians or a suicide bomber in an open-air market was an effective way to get the message to the malcontents of society looking to join a group driven by hate.
The attack on Fort Drum the night before was warlike, not propaganda driven. It had all the markings of an insurgency operation where a smaller force, David, takes on the mighty United States military, its Goliath.
ISIS was conducting classic guerilla warfare using ideological soldiers who conducted hit-and-run campaigns aimed at tearing down America’s confidence. Like 9/11, what was happening now was years in the making.
He thought about Mac’s lecture to him yesterday about patience. The sleeper cells had been waiting for the appropriate trigger event to attack America. The plague gave them an ideal scenario. Out of fear of dying, they huddled together for protection.
Give us your huddled masses.
This provided the terrorists easy targets to inflict maximum psychological damage. To defeat an insurgency, conventional military tactics like search and destroy had to be abandoned. A clear and hold approach made the most sense and Captain Hoover was successful in doing so.
Or was he?
Hunter abruptly turned and went inside to locate Captain Hoover. Mac was escorting the girls down the stairs with her sidearm firmly attached to her belt and her AR-15 slung over her shoulder. Hunter gave her another kiss and patted young Melissa on the head with a smile.
Captain Hoover kissed his wife before Hunter quickly pulled him aside. “Show me the map of your perimeter.”
They went into the dining room and moved the aides out of the way. Captain Hoover unfurled a large taped-together map of Star Ranch and the surrounding neighborhoods. There was a dotted line made with a permanent marker that ran haphazardly around the neighborhoods.
“Cappy, within this perimeter, are there any other civilians besides those in the tents out front?”
“Sadly, no,” he replied. “Initially, my orders were to secure Star Ranch. Later, I was told to displace all civilians within the dashed line. Once in a while, our patrols observe someone moving about and we send out a couple of Humvees to run them off.”
“Like yesterday,” Hunter interjected.
“Yes, on the north side we had reports of a large group of teens breaking into homes. Our units were dispatched and we ran them off. They reported you waving in the road as they went by.”
“What about vehicles? I wasn’t able to find a way through your makeshift barricades, which was why we were walking.”
Captain Hoover rose up from being hunched over the map. “I inspected them myself. It would take a tow truck to make a path. Other than that, we disabled every vehicle in the surrounding neighborhood so they couldn’t be used to breach our inner fencing around Star Ranch. Why?”
“We saw a white panel van, the old style, parked at the high school,” replied Hunter. “We’d just walked past it when it pulled out of the parking space and headed toward the back of the school in a hurry. Could your men have missed it?”
Captain Hoover turned his attention back to the map. He pointed to Cheyenne Mountain High School. “Are you talking about here?”
“Yes, and then they took off toward the west behind the school. Where do these roads lead?” Hunter traced his fingers along a twisted, winding road that headed due west into the mountains and then reversed itself toward Star Ranch again.
“Those are old mountain roads that aren’t used except by hikers who like to take photographs from Seven Falls Inspiration Point.”
“Do you have a topo map?” asked Hunter.
Captain Hoover was growing impatient. “No, but I can approximate elevations if that’s what you wanna know. Hunter, what are you drivin’ at?”
“The van we saw yesterday breached your perimeter somehow. It’s big enough to carry weaponry and ISIS operatives. Let me say one more thing. When Mac and I walked past it, we were below grade and probably out of their field of vision. They took off in a hurry, not because we’d just walked by. It was because they knew you were coming.”
“How so?” asked Captain Hoover.
“Lookouts,” replied Hunter, who began to wander through the dining room toward the foyer. “You said your Humvee patrols ran off the teens?”
“Well, actually, they were gone when we got there. They vandalized a couple of homes and must’ve heard us coming.”
Hunter grimaced. “Or they were warned as part of an orchestrated test of your defenses. They have eyes outside your fence but also within your perimeter, Cappy. Yesterday was a dry run to gauge your response time. Mark my words, today there will be another diversion, or two, at the outside perimeter. Ignore them. The real attack will come closer to home.”
Chapter 34
Day Eighty-Seven
Star Ranch
Colorado Springs
“Here’s what I suggest we do,” started Hunter as he spoke to Captain Hoover a
nd his top officers. “They’ll raise a big ruckus at the outer perimeter with the intentions of drawing you away from the fences surrounding Star Ranch. We’re gonna pretend to take the bait with two decoy vehicles. We need offensive capability outside the fence anyway.”
Hunter walked along the wall of maps in the living room. The aerial photographs of the surrounding neighborhoods provided to the Guard by the local property assessor were invaluable. He reached for a yellow Post-it notepad and started tearing them off. He covered some of the houses nearest the entrances to Star Ranch in yellow and then he picked up a pink pad off Captain Hoover’s desk and covered other homes that were farther away.
Hunter continued. “I would be willing to bet the houses I’ve identified in yellow are already occupied by jihadists with rifles and maybe even RPGs. If they had access to rocket-propelled grenades at Fort Drum, I’d assume they have them deployed elsewhere.
“There are half a dozen houses at the north gate that are possibilities. We’ll send out three Humvees with four troops in each. Break them up into teams of two and assign a house. When the diversion begins, have the Humvees charge out of here but immediately circle back and clear these locations.”
Hunter turned to Captain Hoover. “Do you have anyone proficient in long-range shooting, even sniping?”
The sergeant who had brought Hunter in answered. “Four or five. They’re not military issue, but we confiscated a variety of hunting rifles, including a couple of Remington 700s, from the residents in Star Ranch.”
“You disarmed them?” asked Hunter.
“Yes,” replied Captain Hoover. “The situation was too volatile. I personally dealt with a man who was prepared to shoot anything that moved to keep from being dislodged from his home.”
“Doesn’t matter,” grumbled Hunter. “You need to send your best shooters to the upper levels of these homes on the northern perimeter of the neighborhood. Quietly and systematically move all the residents out of these homes along the outskirts into other, more secure houses. Have your shooters focus on these houses marked in pink. Watch for open windows, movement behind curtains, or a rifle barrel sneaking a peak. Sergeant, they must not hesitate. Once the battle begins, light ’em up!”