Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Peter wrapped his arm around Deogee. “You’ll be our guard dog, won’t you?” The wolfhound licked his face, making him fall over on his side giggling uproariously. Again, she thought of how easily the teens were able to blot out the loss of their friend.

  Deogee soon left Peter, sniffed all over Audrey for a few moments, then she came and threw herself at Tabby. For a few minutes, she rolled and played with the dog too, trying to forget all the problems swirling around outside their patch of cornfield. She didn’t make a big deal out of it when another car passed by on the road, but it reinforced the idea she was doing the right thing.

  Driving straight home was the smart play.

  CHAPTER 16

  Over Wisconsin

  While Emily and Uncle Ted sat up front, Kyla had eight comfortable seats in the back to share with Meechum. The plane was barely big enough for one small restroom, which was a godsend on the long flight, but it had no door between the seats and the cockpit. She chose to sit near the back, if only to give the pair privacy in the cockpit. She had her suspicions about what they were talking about; she’d seen the way her uncle was gaga over Emily’s dress.

  “Do you think they like each other?” she asked Meechum under her breath. Kyla wasn’t a gossip at heart, but this was a special case. She thought back to all those fake boys she mentioned to her partner Ben back on the job. She’d exaggerated and made stuff up to avoid telling him she wasn’t dating anyone. It was all fake, but it passed the time. However, there, on the plane, she was convinced real things were happening.

  She shifted positions to better see Meechum.

  The short-haired woman sat across the aisle from her. She had her rifle in pieces for the umpteenth time since they’d taken off. She’d seen her do it before, which led to her thinking the woman was super thorough about cleanliness and preparation, but Kyla now believed it was a trained habit designed to keep her endlessly occupied, possibly because she’d said flying wasn’t her thing. The Marine didn’t even glance over. “It wouldn’t be proper for me to get into it. She’s my commander-in-chief.”

  “Oh, come on. You mean you never speculated about who Tanager would end up with?” President Kirby Tanager was famous for entering office as a bachelor, but that didn’t last long. He married one of his spokeswomen who was as loud and obnoxious as he was. For the brief time before he settled down with her, the tabloids were on fire with speculation about who would make the perfect first lady.

  Meechum stared at her. “Do I look like the type of woman who cares who other women are doing? I have enough trouble finding a man, and I work at a company with nothing but men.” When she’d made her point, she resumed working on her rifle.

  “I bet you scare the hell out of those guys.”

  “Marines aren’t afraid of anything,” she deadpanned. “I just don’t go for the big, stupid types. I also don’t go for men in my unit. Do you know how much trouble it would cause? Those dumbasses would lay down their lives one after the other to protect me when the bullets came our way.”

  Kyla detected an undercurrent in her words. “But there is someone, isn’t there?” she taunted in a friendly manner.

  Meechum’s lip almost formed a smile, until she caught herself and turned the tables. “What about you? Did you date that fellow you were with when we found you?”

  She recoiled at the thought. “Eww. Hell no. Ben was married with kids, plus he was old enough to be my father. Oh yeah, and this is a disqualifier of epic proportions in my book, he was working for the bad guys.” Meechum knew the story of how she’d shot Ben as he tried to get off the boat, so her reason for bringing it up was to deflect from her original question. However, rather than press her on who liked whom, she tried to move the conversation away from the subject.

  “How much damage do you think Van Nuys did before you killed him?”

  Meechum paused her task and looked up. “If we would have had the authority to detain him at the outset, we would have kept him in that hold at the bottom of the ship. His story was fishy from the start.”

  “But you couldn’t?” Kyla asked.

  “No. And with no other crew around, we needed him to get the ship out of port. He did us a favor by doing that much, but his plans were probably threatened when the Marines on the Iwo showed up. At that point, it might have been possible for the captain of the Iwo to take command of the carrier, but we didn’t have any evidence backing up our hunch.”

  “But now you do,” she reasoned.

  “Yep. That’s why I radioed a message back to my team. They’ll work with the other captain and hopefully gain control of the JFK. I only wish I was there to bang some heads with the rest of the boys.”

  Kyla didn’t have to ask if it was because she loved a good fight, or if there was someone she wanted to see again. She began to understand the dynamics of the other woman and came to a new respect for her sense of duty for going with them out west. She was about to ask if she had a sense of the odds of their journey, but the plane lurched and bounced violently before she could speak.

  Uncle Ted called over the intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve crossed most of Wisconsin. Next up, Minnesota.”

  Over Wisconsin/Minnesota

  “Airspeed: four hundred miles-per-hour. Altitude: ten thousand feet. All instruments look solid.” Emily pointed to the radar screen; it still had the contact at the extreme edge of their TCAS screen. “Except for this guy, we’ve made great time.”

  “Whoever they are, they must know the Avanti’s capabilities, including what distance they needed to maintain position off, or at the edge of, our avoidance system.”

  Emily sighed. “We saw them the whole time. I guess they messed up.”

  Like he’d done with the Cessna 172, he’d turned off the transponder before they took off, so they couldn’t be tracked as easily. It meant they wouldn’t show up on the enemy’s TCAS system, since it collected data from nearby transponders. However, if they weren’t tracking by TCAS, it meant they probably had active radar on board. It suggested a military aircraft. “Whatever, or whomever, they are, we aren’t going to lose them in flight. I’m afraid if they stay with us until Minot, they may figure out what we’re doing.”

  She chuckled. “Taking the vice president to a nuclear missile base to enter a code in a computer, so real Americans maintain control of the United States ballistic missile arsenal. You really believe it’s the first thing they’ll think of?”

  He stretched his legs and leaned her way. The pilots’ chairs were comfortable, but they’d been in the air for almost three hours. The lower half of his body was crying out to shift positions. “When you put it like that, lady, I don’t believe they’ll come up with it at all. However, the fact remains: they’re watching where we go.”

  “Then we have to go somewhere that throws them off the scent,” she said dryly.

  Ted had been thinking the same thing, but he’d kept it to himself for as long as he dared. It was too easy to sit in the plane and cross the endless miles of land below, but the cold truth was they were literally on someone’s radar at that moment. They had to ditch them before they could make their move toward North Dakota.

  “I don’t want to turn around. That would make it obvious we didn’t have a real destination. From where we are, we could go to Duluth, Rochester, or Minneapolis. All are about the same distance from us.”

  “Where do you want to go?” she asked.

  “Well, considering the size of our strike force, I think it would be easy to get lost in any one of those cities, but if the aircraft behind us is also carrying military personnel from the enemy forces, I think I’d rather be in a large city. It will give us more places to hide.”

  She huffed. “Why does it sound like we’re in for some trouble? Everywhere I fly with you, more trouble!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, really meaning it.

  She grabbed his arm. “I’m kidding, of course. You know I trust you. This sounds like a really good plan. We’ll swo
op down, jump out, and make a run for the city.”

  He reflexively put his hand on hers, but he pulled it off a second later, fearing he’d make things uncomfortable. She held her hand where it was for a few seconds, smiled with a hard-to-read expression behind her eyes, then pulled back. He thought about telling her how nice she looked, or how her hair was attractive in the summer-themed scrunchy, but nothing sounded professional in his head. Failing that, he picked up the intercom microphone and went with what he knew. He pushed the yoke forward to dip the plane toward Minneapolis.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your seat backs and tray tables in the upright position. We’re about to descend into the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. Oh, and if you have running shoes available, please have those ready. We’ll be doing some light jogging. Thanks for flying with MacInnis Air.”

  Amarillo, TX

  Brent issued his orders and sent his band of merry men out into the greater Amarillo area to retrieve the necessary supplies. They avoided the airport, since that seemed to be the hub of enemy activity, but the rest of the giant city was ripe for the plucking. They’d found throwaway cars and split up; a move he hoped wouldn’t come back and bite him in the ass. There wasn’t enough time to play it overly safe.

  They all rendezvoused on a residential street deep inside miles of suburban housing. He was pleased to see everyone had come back from their first mission with the right vehicles. Nine or ten big trucks were already there.

  Kevin, a small black man with the deepest voice Brent had ever heard, knew a guy who managed a car repair shop. He owned a giant wrecker, which was now parked on the street. Carter, the alleged pyro who may or may not have burned down his family’s failing pool supply store, said he knew of a trucking company they’d done business with inside the city. A tractor-trailer with that company’s name sat behind the wrecker. Brent didn’t let Trish go off alone, so they’d gone together and brought back two tankers from a truck stop.

  As he climbed out of his rig, he noticed a line of trash trucks down the street. “Who brought those?”

  Andre raised his hand. “It must have been trash day in this part of the city when they attacked us. Me and Ross brought in six of them, and we didn’t have to look that hard.”

  Brent rubbed his hands together. “Good job, men. Let’s make one more trip to the truck stop I just came from. You aren’t going to believe how many of these shiny tankers are there.”

  “Are they full?” asked Kevin.

  “I think so,” he replied. He wasn’t a trucking expert, but the engine strained to pull the one he’d taken. It had to be close to full, and the numerous hazard signs convinced him it was carrying gasoline.

  The rest of the daylight hours went by as Brent and his men improved their collection time. They figured out it was best to pair up—one man would start a civilian car found in the subdivision, then they’d go to the truck stop. They’d leave the little car there, then bring back two trucks. When Brent arrived in another tanker, the whole street looked like an oil refinery.

  “This should do it, guys.” He was proud of what he’d been able to accomplish in a short time, but the real heavy lifting would begin once it got dark. He looked over the nearest truck, and his guys gathered around.

  In the evening, a flatbed truck rolled up the street and parked next to Brent. It was a rental from a Home Depot store, painted in the distinctive orange color of the home improvement chain. Its arrival meant the completion of another of the missions he’d created for his men.

  “What did you bring us?” Brent asked the driver.

  Cliff waved at him. “Check it out.” He pointed to the flatbed.

  Brent moved around to get a look at his cargo. The familiar orange buckets were filled to the tops with metal objects, making it look like he’d brought back a king’s treasure that was spilling over into the truck’s bed. Instead of gold, however, they were large bolts and strips of rebar. There were also twenty or thirty cinderblocks stacked inside.

  The driver came around behind Brent. “I filled up the buckets like you said. It was easy to do when there was no one inside to stop me. I just dumped out the boxes of bolts. I, uh, might have driven my truck right in through the front doors to make it easier.”

  “Smart thinking,” Brent replied.

  The man went on, “I also got all the emergency roadside kits I could find, as well as two dozen ten-foot lengths of copper wire, though I have no idea what it’s all for.”

  Brent couldn’t wait for the sun to go down. He’d had nothing but time over the past few hours to imagine how they were going to assemble all that they’d brought together into a weapon designed for war. It wasn’t Vietnam, and those weren’t regular soldiers at the airfield, but he was about to teach all of them, friend and foe alike, what it meant to be a pissed-off American warrior.

  “I know exactly what it’s all for,” he said dryly.

  CHAPTER 17

  Minneapolis, MN

  As soon as Ted touched down at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport, the plane behind them disappeared from their system. He had no illusions of losing the enemy craft; the only question was whether the opposing force had radioed to ground units already in Minnesota or not.

  They ran through the darkened airport terminals, careful as always to avoid the piles of clothing. There were long lines of passengers at several of the gates, as well as lots of traffic inside the food court. All four had the same idea when they ran by a food kiosk; he grabbed a couple energy drinks and several bags of chips. The others pulled off their favorite junk foods as they ran for the pilot’s lounge.

  “Through there. Hurry!” he yelled. Ted had been to the airport in the past, but he’d never spent much time there. Most airports had a restricted area where pilots and flight crews were able to relax. Often, airport administration and operations were nearby. “Yes, that’s it.” He pointed to an exit.

  The door was closed, and it had a security panel that required a keycard to operate. He didn’t have the required card, but several of the airport employees nearby had what he needed. Ted respectfully pulled the card off one of the maintenance uniforms and got them through.

  They went up several flights of stairs before entering the square room with huge wraparound windows displaying the airport and the nighttime skies above the dark city of Minneapolis. Dozens of workstations had chairs with civilian clothes piled on them, each placed in front of radar, weather, and communications terminals.

  “It’s still working,” he said breathlessly. Most of the airport had gone dark with the loss of power, but everything in the air traffic control tower was lit up. He figured generators would have kicked on the second main power went out, but since he didn’t know when the switchover happened, he worried everything was going to shut down as he watched. “We have to hurry.”

  “What are we looking for?” Kyla asked.

  Meechum ran to the nearest working terminal. “We want to see if we’re being chased, right?”

  Ted nodded at her. “Yes, exactly. I wanted to get up here before that other plane had a chance to clear out or land.” He jumped in front of one terminal, then slid two or three down the line until he found the one he wanted. “Got ya!”

  The others gathered around. He touched a bunch of numbers on the screen. “Uh oh. We weren’t being followed by just one plane. Look at them all.” He pointed to a half-dozen aircraft coming in from the south, in addition to one that was a lot closer. “They’re running with transponders on, so they can ID each other. We had our transponder off, to stay hidden, but they must have caught us on radar along the way.”

  “Should we have kept it on?” Kyla said reflectively.

  “No, we were unauthorized, either way,” Emily said.

  “So, what does this mean for us?” Kyla pressed.

  They all bunched up at the workstation as Ted explained. “This is the one that was following us. You can see how it’s the only aircraft close to the airport. It’s a…” H
is voice trailed off.

  “What?” Kyla asked, crowding in on his left.

  “It’s a civilian craft. I was sure it was military based on how it kept pace with us. It’s a Bombardier 850. Basically, a big executive aircraft.” He had no illusions about the intent of the pursuit. Maybe they couldn’t spare a military plane to investigate a little puddle-jumper flying across the Great Lakes. The pilot only needed to stay close. But it was the other aircraft which bothered him, since they were moving a lot faster. “These are military.” He pointed to the six dots at the lower part of the screen.

  The group watched the moving dots for half a minute before he realized they were mesmerized by the active radar’s sweeping motion.

  “It looks like they’re coming for us,” Ted said in a steady tone. “We better get moving.” He leaned away, hoping the others would follow. When he looked to the next computer screen, he noticed it was a TV station that had been shot to pieces. His attention was drawn to the scene.

  The big number 5 behind the anchor desk had distinct holes in it, as did the wall next to it. The lights were funny, like a few had been turned off, or the station was running on low power. A small counter ran at the bottom, suggesting the shot was live.

  “Hey, guys, check this out.” Despite the impending threat, they had time before any aircraft got to the ground. He risked a look at the computer system. It was designed to record live television, like a Tivo. He figured the video monitor was useful for air traffic personnel during emergencies.

  Maybe I can see the instant of the attack.

  He paused the live shot, then reversed it. It went by slowly until he hit the button again. The reverse speed increased until it was going by hours at a time. The studio remained the same as he watched, but suddenly, the number 5 fixed itself in an instant. The rewind went on until two people appeared at the desk.

  “Stop!” Meechum ordered.

  He cued the tape back and forth until he found the precise moment he wanted. As one, they held their breath until the moment they all knew was coming. The well-dressed man and woman at the news desk spoke about breaking news happening on the West Coast, then they disappeared from existence.