Ted was impressed at the dexterity of the overweight general.
He was less impressed with the dead animal on the floor.
There was going to come a time when that could be someone’s meal.
Ted excused himself, having clarity about the need for escape.
Cheyenne Mountain, CO
While the guy named Ted went to the front of the bunker, Tabby took some time to search other rooms in the office building. Audrey and Peter went with her, and she thought the guy with the bird was lurking around, too.
The first thing of note she turned up was a small candy bar. “Hey, Audrey, how are you feeling? You know, since you’re diabetic and all?”
The girl emphatically shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never felt better. Hungry, yeah, so I’d love that chocolate bar, but that’s about it. I think they fixed me when I was put in the white light the last time.”
Tabby didn’t trust such sketchy science. “Well, watch yourself. Tell me if you get light-headed or need to rest.” She tossed the bar to her young friend.
“I will,” the girl said as if becoming non-diabetic was ho-hum.
“I will, too,” Peter added, before walking into another room.
She followed, not sure how to take their indifference. Health concerns perhaps didn’t rank well after being shot across the state in a futuristic piece of technology.
“Hey, these are pretty cool.” Peter pointed to a large wooden display case hanging on the wall of an office. There were six rows of large coins displayed inside, each more colorful than the one next to it. “They have the name of military bases on them. I see the Pentagon. An aircraft carrier. Mount Weather. All kinds of stuff!”
Tabby wasn’t interested in coins, but she knew what they were. “They’re challenge coins, like the one that man, Ted, showed us.”
“You think anyone would care if I took one?” Peter asked. “There’s one here for NORAD. I might start collecting these for places I’ve been. You think they have one for the other base we were taken to?”
Tabby cracked up, glad to have the goofy boy back in her life. “No, they won’t have a coin for a secret bunker. You were in the Sears Tower, though. Look for it in the set.”
She knew they wouldn’t have it, but it gave her time to search a small cabinet in the back of the room. Once open, she knew she was onto something. “Jackpot! New clothes!”
The office might have belonged to a well-traveled military person, but she was also a woman. The civilian jeans and long-sleeved black shirt were perfect for someone who was going to spend time in the cool interior of the bunker.
“Do they fit?” Audrey asked with half-interest. “Are there enough for both of us? I’m not thrilled with my ensemble. It isn’t very flattering.” Like Peter, Audrey was studying the coins, though based on her roving hands, she seemed mostly interested in the boy. She’d also half-unzipped the front of her uniform shirt, revealing more of her chest than Tabby would have ever dared. Probably to impress said boy. It was quite the turnaround from when Tabby had first met them.
“I only see one pair,” she replied. Tabby tried them on, not caring if Peter or Audrey were in the room. Once she confirmed they would fit, she pulled the jeans over her blue tights. She did the same for the long-sleeved shirt. She really wanted to ditch the blue, but the truth was she had nothing on under them, and she wasn’t as bold as Audrey, so she didn’t want to be exposed.
Feeling better than she had in a week, Tabby made for the door. “I’m not waiting around for something to happen. Will you guys go with me deeper into the bunker? I want to see what’s behind this building. Maybe we can find blueprints or whatever, showing another way out.”
“Another adventure?” Peter said with immediate interest.
Audrey stood behind him, but now had both hands wrapped under his armpits so it appeared as if he had four arms. Tabby was unable to see her face, but the girl said she’d go anywhere but back to David’s prison.
“Well…” She pointed them out the door.
The group used a set of stairs in the rear half of the building. This allowed them to go around the other prisoners and avoid being seen. They stepped outside the back door, which was still inside the bunker, so it was a weird feeling.
“Shouldn’t we tell someone?” Peter asked, as if he’d forgotten an important rule.
Audrey grabbed his hand, pulling him forward. “Where the heck are they going to go? We’re all trapped in this place. We can’t go far.”
Tabby was inclined to go back and tell someone they were heading off to poke around, but Audrey was right. There was nowhere they could go to escape. If, by some miracle, they found one, she and her friends would look like the veteran travelers they were. It would obviously impress the hell out of the first woman president. It was a feeling she found appealing. “Screw it. We’ll go look around and then come right back. No need to worry anyone.”
It wouldn’t fly with her father back in the mines of Bonne Terre, but she thought it was the right call for their situation.
It turned out there were several office buildings lined up one behind the other. Any of them might have an office or department with schematics of the military base, but the red lights going off into the distance behind the last building immediately caught her eye.
“Think that goes somewhere?” she asked with an appraising tone.
“At least it has lights,” Peter said, now dragging Audrey by the hand. “I’d rather be outside than go snooping in another one of these cramped buildings.”
Audrey let herself be pulled. Laughing, she added, “You know we’re not outside, right? Those buildings are not outside, either. Everything is inside in this place.”
Tabby experienced a momentary pang of longing for Victor. It would be nice to have someone to hold hands with down the dark tunnel, even if he wasn’t the best person in the world.
“Hold up, guys, we’ve got to stick together.”
CHAPTER 4
Hoover Dam, NV
“Meechum!” Kyla blurted the instant she saw her friend.
“Hey. Glad to see you’re okay.”
“You should have got me up with you,” she chided gently.
The Marine laughed a little. “I was afraid you’d try to keep me in my bed. I needed to get up and move around.”
“So you picked up a rifle?” Kyla motioned to the weapon on the woman’s back.
Meechum shrugged. “It was either this or read technical books about how to run this dam. You know Marines can’t read.”
Kyla hesitated, waiting for the punchline. When it didn’t arrive, she assumed Meechum was being silly. “Well, can you direct me to someone with a radio? I want to try to contact Uncle Ted. I have to know if he made it inside NORAD in time.”
The other woman pointed down the hallway, toward a control room, but grabbed Kyla’s arm before letting her walk away. “Don’t freak out, but we’re about five hundred miles from your uncle. We’re in Nevada. Hoover Dam.”
Her lungs deflated. “Are you sure?”
“Yep. You’ll see the turbines when you go in there.” She pointed again to the control room down the marble-like hallway.
“Okay, thanks,” she said sadly, leaving her friend to guard her post.
When she arrived, it was more impressive than she expected. The control room itself was basically a bunch of dials and knobs on some computers. However, the back wall was clear glass, giving her a view of the real show.
“Damn!” she gushed. “That’s a monster dam!”
The chamber could have been a mile long. It was hollowed out of concrete and seemed to be two hundred feet tall from floor to ceiling. There were eight turbines, each as big as a two-story house. They were round and tall with an amber light on top. They were also arranged in a neat row, looking like eight birthday cakes awaiting their owners to blow out the candles.
“Yeah, she’s a beaut,” Colonel Avery said without looking back at her. He sat at a laptop computer, doin
g whatever military men did inside dams.
“Hi. Um, Lance Corporal Meechum said you had a radio in here. I’d like to try to communicate with my uncle.” She hesitated a few seconds, wondering for the first time what Meechum’s first name was, before adding, “Oh, and thank you for rescuing us.”
Avery spun on a swivel chair. “You’re welcome. We were going to leave you after you sped off in that van, but you did clue us into the incident at NORAD, and we were able to get a drone down there and shut the door, thus, hopefully, preserving the facility.”
“And saving my uncle, too,” she prodded.
“Of course. I didn’t mean to discount it. It’s just I don’t want to get your hopes up. The missiles weren’t high-yield, but they were designed as penetrators. Stuff we might have once used on underground bunkers in Middle-Eastern countries who weren’t supposed to have such places.” He touched his nose.
“I’m not sure what all that means. Why didn’t you wake us up and let me call for my uncle while we were still close to him? He’s the co-pilot for Air Force Two. He’s with the new President of the United States. They’re important! How far are we, by the way?”
“From NORAD?” he said immediately. “Five hundred and seventy-five miles.”
“Five hundred and seventy-five miles,” she said, distraught. Meechum had been right.
“I have no problem with you trying our radio, miss. You’ve earned it. And, seriously, I hope your uncle answers. However, I assure you we did try to contact him while we were still near Pike’s Peak and during most of our flight out of the state. I wanted to have some good news for you when you woke up.”
She didn’t know what to say.
Avery continued. “But I have to be honest with you: it wasn’t my first choice to bring you along with us to this location. After the nuclear impact, we were forced to break our radio silence. We spoke with Eielson Air Force Base, back in Alaska. They ordered us here, to lay in wait for a Blackout strike force on their way to destroy the crown jewel of American hydroelectricity generation.”
Kyla had zero interest in listening to him talk about protecting stuff from David’s people. She only wanted to know about Uncle Ted. She pointed to the radio sitting on a nearby table. “Can I use it?”
He waved her over. “It’s already set to the proper frequency. If your uncle is now inside the base, he should be able to hear you.”
She sat down, suddenly tired. For ten minutes, she called out for Major Ted MacInnis, sure she wasn’t breaking OPSEC anymore by mentioning his rank. If he was dead, she wanted the enemy to know it. She was going to make sure they paid a price. Somehow. Someday. She would get even. However, if he was alive, she felt it was worth reminding those bastards they were failing at their game. People like her uncle were going to make sure they weren’t in America for good.
After giving it a good effort, she had to temporarily give up. The silence was painful to the ear.
“I’d like to speak with your supervisor,” she said, sounding like a troubled customer asking to see a manager.
“Excuse me?” Avery replied, once again pulled from his duties with the laptop.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so snippy. If I can’t get my uncle on this thing, I’d like to go back. Maybe if we’re closer, he’ll hear us.”
Avery seemed sympathetic. He leaned back from the keyboard. “That’s not how these radios work. If NORAD is broadcasting, the whole world would hear it. Besides, you’ve only been at it for a few minutes. Why don’t you take a break and—”
“That’s not it,” she pushed on. “I want to talk to someone about changing your orders. We don’t need to be defending some relic of a bygone era. We have to attack the people who…” She could barely say it. “…killed my uncle and killed my mother. Killed everyone…”
“The nukes did the job. They took out the enemy leadership inside NORAD. That was the intel we had. Your uncle, no matter what happened to him, was part of that attack.” Avery whispered, “He did good.”
She withered under the knowledge. It didn’t make it any easier to know he was a hero. If he was really gone, it only made him one thing.
Dead.
Cheyenne Mountain, CO
Ted was listening for footsteps as he walked away from Mendoza. He half-expected some of the foreigners to jump him, knowing what kind of people they were. What type of catastrophically poor leadership they served under. He wasn’t happy to know they were bringing that same failed government to his homeland. However, he had to remind himself he was dressed as a bad guy. He was one of them.
Someone did follow him.
“Hello, sir,” the voice called out.
Ted stopped and waited for the man to catch up. To his relief, it was the silent listener who’d been behind the large general. Maybe he would be more reasonable.
The newcomer spoke quietly. “You should off that idiot and make an example for the others.”
Nope, not more reasonable.
Still, he had to interact with him. “What good would that do? The general laid it out. None of you seemed to disagree with him. He wants me to fix him dinner.”
The young man was dressed in tight black pants and a silky white shirt. His teeth were perfect, his mustache was well-trimmed, and for some crazy reason, he still wore his pair of aviator sunglasses. Given the man’s Hispanic accent, he immediately thought of the guy as a drug lord. “Oh, there was disagreement. We can feed ourselves. He wants to be served, like he was back home. Many of us only want to find a way out of this mess and return to our countries. Whatever wonderland David said he was creating here, it clearly isn’t safe for us.”
Ted shifted his weight from one foot to the other, absorbing what had been said. “You’d kill one of your own?” He tried to think like a security person in David’s army. “I don’t think the chief would be cool with that.”
The guy shrugged. “But would you be cool with it?”
Ted understood why the guy had put on glasses. It was a test. If he said the wrong thing, it would be him playing the part of the rat being shot to death.
He tried to keep his voice light. “I don’t care what you guys do with your own people. My job is to take care of the survivors, including my own civilians, and, if we’re super lucky, find a way to escape this place.” He figured it would help his chances if he tossed out some desirable goal.
The oily man studied him from behind the shades.
Ted tried again. “Of course, if it would smooth things over, I could go back to the others and recommend General Mendoza shove a front stack up his tail pipe.” He smiled, as if the saying was very common.
“It would be great,” the man replied, waving him back toward the general. “Get their attention and give him a slice of your mind, as you say. I’m not serious about hurting the man. I only want to make sure things don’t get out of control, you know?”
For a second, Ted considered making a run for the office building down the hallway. Emily and the others were waiting for him, armed. But they were too far away. He was on his own.
“Sure thing,” he added, not sure at all.
He walked in the direction indicated, but wished he’d brought a pistol with him. He had no idea what decision the guy had made about him. That was why he tossed in the option to really piss off the general. He hoped it put him squarely in the correct camp, though he had no way to know.
Each step toward the general felt like his last.
Fairford, England
Priscilla Clairmont stared at the message typed out on her phone. It was destined for her ex-husband, Ted MacInnis. His name sat at the top of her phone while she thought about hitting send. She’d been perfectly happy to not communicate with him over the past five years, but the terror attack had changed something inside her. That was why she’d tried to communicate with him on day one. Now, seven days later, she still hadn’t heard from him. No matter their past, she had to believe he’d at least let her know he was still alive. Hell, he’d pr
obably want to rub it in.
“Attention, all Americans left in England, Wales, and Scotland must depart in the next eighteen hours. This is your hourly courtesy warning…”
The computerized voice rang out on the television screen as part of the British government’s efforts to chase out every American on their soil, to comply with David’s demands. If they didn’t leave, the Brits would suffer the same fate. They would be erased. With all the people still left in-country, she would be shocked if they could beat the deadline.
“Weak,” she replied to the screen. It was fitting the Brits used a computer to do their dirty work. It was well-known the British people did not want to chase their American allies onto boats and planes to kick them out, but no one had a better idea. The computer voice at least saved one real Brit from having to be the voice of the betrayal.
After looking at her message to Ted, she shifted screens to the one for her new husband, Kinkaid. After it rang a few times, his voice greeted her cheerfully. “Please tell me you’re on the flight out?”
Her chest was tight with the pressure of the evacuation, but she tried to sound as cheerful as Kinkaid. “I’m walking out the door of our apartment right now.”
The one nice thing about being kicked out of the country on short notice was she didn’t have to worry about her things. Command said she would be reimbursed for the crap she left in her apartment, but that was a lie everyone accepted to keep the evac moving along. Money was no longer even a thing. The US dollar hadn’t only collapsed; it had disappeared. Her bank account back in the States was worthless.
“Good,” Kinkaid replied, sounding relieved. “We’re saddling up here in Germany, too. Only ones left are pilots, it seems. I love you. Got to go!”
“I love you more,” she droned, hanging up the phone.
Aviation was her job, too. She was about to hop the last bus to the US airbase and get flown to France. From there, she’d catch a boat to a fleet of American warships and cruise liners floating in the Bay of Biscay. That was where tens of thousands of her fellow citizens would be waiting for her. It was where Europe was sending Americans to get them off their soil.
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 94