by EE Isherwood
“You didn’t…” It seemed incredible someone would leave a major hole in their security, but then again no one in North Dakota seemed overly concerned with security. The base had been wide open until they’d arrived, and the server room wasn’t even guarded. If someone on their side wanted to check an auction on Ebay while they took over the world, who was she to point out their error?
Ten minutes later, she found what she was looking for. It was—
“Kyla, we’re leaving in five. You okay in there? You weren’t lying about your wound, were you?”
“Yeah, Unk, I’m fine,” she replied in a hurry. “Just doing, uh, girl stuff.” She cringed, hating to have to use such a lame excuse, but it would serve its purpose. Mom had used similar outs a lot of times over the years to get guys off her back, though for reasons she never really thought about until that moment.
“Sounds good,” he said, clearly flustered. “We’ll leave when you’re ready.”
“Thanks!” she replied, getting right back to the computer operation in front of her. She soon found her way to the homepage for Rammstein Air Base in Germany. If there was time to poke around, she might have tried to track down someone on their end who was online and talk back and forth. There wasn’t time, however. Uncle Ted might further question her about what was taking so long. If she tried to use the girl-stuff excuse again, she was positive he’d enlist Meechum or Emily to come in and confirm. The shortcut was in front of her…
She clicked the ‘Contact Us’ tab and followed it to a form to fill out. When prompted, she selected the option to send a note to the public affairs group, assuming more than one person would check their email, thus increasing her chances of finding someone who would help her.
My name is Kyla Justice. My uncle is Major Ted MacInnis, USAF. I am on mainland USA, currently on the run from enemy forces. I cannot say where, as they could track me down using said information. I have learned the enemy headquarters is in NORAD mountain.
Something about that wasn’t right. Kyla couldn’t remember the exact place where the headquarters was located, and she couldn’t go ask her uncle or the others. Uncle Ted had said the name last night, but it wasn’t on the tip of her mind. NORAD was definitely at a mountain, though.
If you get this message, send a satellite over it or whatever you need to do. I was already able to take the nuclear briefcase offline, to protect this country, but they still have control over the arsenal from NORAD. You MUST destroy their headquarters as soon as possible. If you don’t, I’ll have to go there and do it myself.
Kyla remembered about OPSEC, operational security, as her uncle once taught her. In situations like this, where everything was on the line, she had to reveal places and names to establish she wasn’t some crackpot from crack town, but she didn’t want to give away her exact location, any routes they planned to take, the alive-or-dead status of her uncle or Ms. Williams, and so forth.
After a simple closing, Cordially, Kyla Justice, she hit send.
She ripped out the battery a second later, content there was no way anyone could have tracked her intrusion. Kyla packed both components into her ill-fitting black jumpsuit, patted her pistol to be certain it was with her, then unlocked the door.
All she had to do now was be patient. With a little luck, the US Air Force would get the message and blow NORAD sky high before they ever got close to danger.
Westby, MT
Ted wasn’t going to wait around for Kyla. He’d learned the hard way over the years you couldn’t flush out a woman from behind a closed door. Since they weren’t in an urgent rush, he gave her the space she needed to prep for the day. However, he went out into the front yard, craning his neck to see both ends of the short street of the tiny town.
Emily had followed him. “What are you looking for? Can I help?”
“Don’t hate me, but I’m going to stereotype residents of this town. If I find the right vehicle, I think maybe I’ll also find some more firepower.” He looked over his shoulder back toward the house. “Don’t let Kyla hear me say this, but I miss my rifles. They were built exactly the way I wanted them. Now some jerk from the other side is going to find them back at that grocery store.”
“You need a moment? I think there’s some tissues inside.” Her eyes sparkled with the mirth in her voice. She was right of course. It wasn’t worth worrying about personal items. He’d lost his Jeep, too, and he didn’t complain about it. They could always find new ones.
The best he could do was flash her a bah-humbug wave.
“So what are you looking for, exactly?” she continued, more seriously.
“We’re in Montana. Your parents live here.” He didn’t say lived, though that was more accurate. “Do they own rifles or some sort of guns?”
“My dad had a collection. I can’t tell you what they were, or what they were used for, but he was proud of it. He kept a big safe full of them.”
It warmed his heart to hear such good news. People in the state would have given David and his band of merry assholes a helluva fight if it had been a fair war. Still, the people were gone, but not the guns. “It’s not necessary to know all that. What matters is I bet every other house on this street has guns inside. We only have to find the one with the most.” He stressed the word most.
“Which one will have the most?” She scanned the street, though he hadn’t told her how to identify a potential target.
Several houses had pickups and four-wheel-drive SUVs parked in front, but he looked for a certain one. A few houses down, across the street, a bright red Ford pickup called out to him. It was lifted, with tires bigger than the ones he had on his Jeep Wrangler. The back window was littered with American flag stickers, an Iraqi campaign service ribbon, and an oversized Gadsden flag with its angry don’t-tread-on-me snake. The truck was parked on the man’s lawn, he was sure it was a guy, and not on his driveway.
“That’s the one.” He glanced over to her, held out his hand, then asked, “You want to go for a walk?”
She held out her hand in return. “Lovely morning for it.”
As soon as they touched the pavement and were out of earshot from the house, Emily casually switched gears in the substance of their conversation. “So, you haven’t said much since last night.”
“What do you mean? I’ve talked you all to death.” It was true. He tried to include the three women in as many decisions as he could. They were all able-bodied ladies, with good heads on their shoulders. He’d wanted their input on almost all the critical choices he’d made during the escape from Minot.
“I think you know what I mean.” She squeezed his hand, confirming what she meant had nothing to do with the others. Emily went on before he needed to answer. “You clammed up after Kyla caught us kissing like a couple of seventh graders. Are you embarrassed by me?” She chuckled in her typical way, but he interpreted the subtext as her being a little hurt.
“You may have just said the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. What man would be embarrassed to have the eye of the first female president of the US of freaking A?”
“Then what’s the deal? I know you feel the same way I do. I could tell by the way you kissed me.” She leaned against his arm and bumped his hip. It was charming coming from an attractive woman like her, but it also cut to the bone of what had him bothered. He could have pushed on and pretended like it was no big deal, but he also wanted to work through it.
“Step into my office,” he said quietly as they strode by the big red truck and to the side entrance of the prospective house. The door was unlocked, so he went inside, Emily trailing. “Honey, I’m home!”
No one answered.
He went into the living room and had a good look at the bedrooms and kitchen from where he was, but he stopped and faced Emily as she joined him. “I’m having a hard time processing you being my boss—the boss of the whole nation. I wouldn’t date a female superior in the Air Force for the same reason it feels wrong to show feelings toward you.”
/> She stepped closer. “You’re saying it’s you, not me.”
He was taken aback. “Yeah, I guess.”
“But if you were interested in me, would you let me step closer, like this?” She closed the distance to within inches and looked into his eyes. She was a bit shorter, so she had to look up.
“Yeah, this is fine.”
“And if you were interested in me, despite being your boss, would you want me to do something like this?” She leaned in to kiss him, and he willingly went to meet her, but before their lips touched, Emily halted.
“You were right! Look at that!” She pointed into an adjacent room.
He was disappointed to miss the kiss, but she’d found the jackpot. A black gun safe hung wide open. The large number of rifles inside seemed to beckon him like a cornucopia of goodies at Thanksgiving. The owner of the giant truck had proved him right.
“Thank you, Montana,” he said dryly. Ted moved to go look at the treasure, but Emily caught his arm.
“This is to be continued. I’m going to seriously think about firing you from the Air Force to get you out of my chain of command, you hear me? Anything to get you to stop thinking this is weird between us.”
In the moment, that sparkle in her eyes was meant for him alone. It was infectious and irresistible. Despite his misgivings, he knew the weirdness was already melting away. It was always nice to be wanted.
At the same time, they had work to do.
“To be continued,” he agreed.
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
Dwight had spent a considerable portion of his later years with bruises and cuts all over his body. Life on the streets was brutal and a relentless struggle. Other homeless folk pushed and shoved when the demons in their head told them to. Drug addicts would come down an alley kicking and screaming looking for their next score. Police would sweep through every so often, oddly enough also kicking and screaming. All of them eventually inflicted some degree of pain.
However, nothing compared to the beating he vaguely remembered getting the night before. He did recall the fire; it had been branded into his eyes. Bernard had gone up in flames, along with the rest of his fire team in the city of Folsom. His memory got fuzzy after that…
There was the escape.
A liquor store.
Lots of drinking.
A bunch of Bernards appeared and beat him until both his feet were in the grave. They could have put the rest of him in the ditch, but he blacked out. It was caused by all the pain, but he’d also put away something close to his bodyweight in alcohol.
When he woke up, he was in an office prison. The door to the outside was lined with bars. A pretty young girl stood across the hall, wearing a blue costume of some sort. It was hard to see since one of his eyes was swollen shut.
“Poppy? Where did we end up?”
The bird was silent.
He tried to scoot off the cot, but the droopy thing wrapped around him like a taco shell. Or, more likely, he simply lacked the strength to free himself.
“Poppy, I need help,” he slurred.
Perhaps minutes or an hour later, he woke up on the gray industrial carpeting of the floor. From there, it was a lot easier to get to his feet, though he used the metal bars to steady himself as he searched for his friend.
“Poppy, where did they take you? Come back! I’m sorry!” Whenever she disappeared, it was usually because he’d done wrong.
The pretty girl was back at her door. “Excuse me, mister, are you all right?”
His green-and-red bird wasn’t on her shoulder, which was a good sign. If Poppy had abandoned him for some stranger, he was going to be boiling mad. Yet, his bird friend wasn’t up or down the hallway either.
“Sir?” the girl pressed. “Who did you lose? Maybe I can help you find him.”
“Well, duh!” he barked, pissed she would imply he’d lost anyone but also wrecked to learn she didn’t even know the sex of his bird. “You couldn’t help me find him. My bird is a her, you stupid normal. Not that you would know the difference if you saw her. No one ever sees her.” He remembered that much. Anyone he asked about seeing his bird always gave him the same look. Often, they ran the other way.
“Oh,” the girl replied unhappily.
He dared not let go of the bars or he’d fall to the ground. For the first time, he noticed the ugly white-and-orange outfit he wore. He held on even tighter. “Poppy! I need you to come back! Get me out of here! Don’t let this bitchy woman hurt you.”
“Hey, watch what you say to me. My name isn’t bitchy woman. It’s Tabitha.”
Tabitha? What kind of name is that, he wondered. If he found Poppy, he intended to ask her if it was even a legit name. “I’m Dwight. If you’re the one who hurt Poppy, I’m coming through both these cell doors and I’m going to burn you where you stand. I did it to Bernard and the other Bernards. I can do it to you, too.”
The girl scoffed at him, then pulled a food tray into her room, out of his sight. Her disappearance suited him fine, as it gave him time to study every possible hiding spot where Poppy might have gone. He yelled for her. He paced, hoping she would appear. He closed his eyes, wishing her to reveal herself.
Eventually, he opened his eyes and saw the girl in blue, along with a golden man with white hair. They stood in the hallway, outside his door. “You two! Have you seen Poppy?”
The white-haired man tisk-tisked and glanced over to the woman. “It looks like your neighbor is going through alcohol withdrawal. Such a nasty thing.”
She seemed disgusted and sympathetic at the same time. He vaguely recalled the same queasy glances from tourists back in San Francisco. Sometimes, rarely, he found genuine concern in the eyes of those people. That was when he knew he was going to get a large payday from them.
“Mister, all I want is my Poppy.”
The man came to his cell door, unafraid of Dwight. He spoke with a haughty better-than-you tone he also recognized from high-brow tourists. “My name is David. You should know, all I want is the six men you killed. You have committed the ultimate crime against the Legion, and you will suffer greatly for it. The sentencing is in a few hours…”
Mentally, he prepared a list of cuss words he was going to wield against the blurry man standing outside his door. After impressing and shocking him with his command of English language cursing, he’d stick his tongue out and blow spit at the guy. It would be glorious…
But the golden moment passed in a heartbeat. His stomach didn’t want to play nice, and it wouldn’t give him more than a few seconds to prepare for what was heading his way. Dwight did what came naturally to someone suffering withdrawals so soon after consuming too much liquor.
He puked.
CHAPTER 3
Westby, MT
It took ten minutes for Ted and Emily to clean out Mr. Patriot’s gun safe. As he suspected, the person who lived in the house took great pride in two things: his truck, which was a pristine late 80s lifted Ford 150, and his guns, which were a mix of well-treated rifles, automatic shotguns, and factory-fresh Beretta handguns. He also had a drawer full of knives.
“I told you this house would have what we needed,” he bragged, though Emily had already stated multiple times how impressed she was with his selection. By the time they stood there loading the guns into the back of the silver SUV, she feigned being tired of his playful crowing.
“You found something?” Meechum said as she walked up with Kyla, apparently ready to move out.
“He found the jackpot,” Emily said sarcastically. “Though he’s kind of shy about explaining how.”
The Marine’s eyes lit up. “These M9s are like the ones we use in the Corps. I trained Kyla on these…”
Ted cracked up, happy to let his guard down for five minutes and have some fun. More importantly, the discovery had done a little to soothe his pain at losing his own firearms. “I think this guy owned a gun store. These are expensive.” He picked up one of the ARs, which was somewhat similar to the Bu
shmasters he’d built, though they were of much higher quality. “This one is a Bravo Company with a Steiner Optics long-range scope. This glass might cost as much as the rifle!”
“Do we have ammo?” Meechum asked, always practical, liberating a couple of knives.
“Yeah, I was going back to grab it.”
It took all of them to collect the heavy boxes of ammunition. Each shipping carton said there were five hundred rounds inside, and though each box was only about the size of a toaster, they weighed twenty pounds, making them unwieldy to carry more than a couple. Meech grabbed two under her good arm, so he was compelled to match her. Emily and Kyla each took one.
“Do we need more than this?” Kyla asked when they had the first load in the truck.
“You can never have too much ammo,” Meechum replied, already headed back inside.
He shrugged and followed her. “We have the room in the back of the truck. We might as well take it all.” While he was inside, he snagged the man’s cleaning supplies, a couple of large rifle cases, earplugs and safety glasses, as well as a box filled with leather and nylon pistol holsters. The man truly had it all.
“Now we’ve got everything,” he said in a satisfied voice, closing the rear door of the truck. “Let’s get out of here.”
The four of them piled into the stolen SUV. He started it up, scanning his instruments. A GPS had been mounted on the dashboard, but it flashed an error code about no signal. His intention was to spend the day navigating old school. The sun would be their guide.
A buzzing sound came in on the wind, catching the attention of all three of them.
“Is that—” Emily began, holding her breath.
“A drone,” Kyla said with disappointment.
“We’re going west,” he exclaimed, hitting the accelerator. “I’m sure the drone is coming from Minot. They must be widening their search.” He could barely contain his anxiety at being spotted.
The women looked to the sky as if expecting a missile to come down on them, but he kept his eyes forward. Their only chance to avoid detection was to get out of the machine’s field of view before it could acquire them. He didn’t go easy on the gas pedal.