“In a minute.”
Forrest reached over to the carton of cigarettes. There were still several packs inside. He opened one, lit it with his battered 101st Airborne Zippo, and looked over at John, offering him a puff, which John gladly took.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Having been escorted through the vast cavern labyrinth by the runner sent back by General Scales, John passed row after row of old-style barracks and Quonset huts. Most of them were empty, windows dust covered with no sign of habitation.
There was a grim triage logic to it. Designed back in the 1950s to house twenty-five thousand for how long? A month, six months, maybe a year? Two thousand could stay down here for years, a decade if need be. Also, moving twenty-five thousand in? Surely it would have drawn notice. Bob had been in the Pentagon on that day of days and was clueless as to what was going on at the moment everything hit. The number who were in the know and slipped away earlier that day or even before that? A hundred or two at most? Their families added in?
It was the sick mathematics of living versus dying. Who is the inner elite who cared no more for their duty and moral responsibility and thought only of themselves? Triage at its most sickeningly self-centered. It was time to confront it.
As they hiked to wherever Bob had gone, John could see scores of civilians lingering, watching. Some were even tanned. My God, did they even have tanning beds down here to get a dose of vitamin D and look good in the process?
He looked at his friends Forrest, Reverend Black, and Kevin, so clearly showing the ravages of two and a half years of survival, and he knew how he must look to them. Kevin was struggling to keep it together, an affirmation of what John suspected: that he and Grace had become close. Reverend Black was whispering to him, a supportive arm around his shoulders. He was barely keeping to his task, and John was tempted to relieve him and send him back to Grace’s body and see that it was tended to with loving respect, but at this moment, he needed him far more than sentiment could allow.
After nearly a half mile of walking, John could see, of all things, a Cyclone fence that went from floor to ceiling, warning signs to either side of the entryway that they were about to enter a secured area. That almost made him laugh if it hadn’t been so ironic. The gate was wide open, two of Bob’s troopers posted to either side. A dead body covered with a poncho lay to one side, a massive pool of congealing blood having leaked out from underneath the poncho. He paused and made eye contact with the troopers.
“One of theirs,” a trooper announced, her voice clipped, grim. A field bandage was wrapped around her upper left arm.
“You all right?” he asked her.
“Yes, sir. But that son of a bitch isn’t.” She nodded to the body. “He nearly shot the general.”
There was a gaze of intense hatred in her eyes, and it was obvious she had killed him and now showed no remorse. How could he blame her? How could he blame any of them? After all they had been through, after all they thought they had been fighting for, and now to see this?
“The general is in that bunker complex over there, sir,” she announced, nodding back beyond the fence, wincing as she did so from the wound to her arm.
He looked over at the other guard, a sergeant. “Can’t we get her over to a hospital?” John asked.
The sergeant nodded back down the street that John had just traversed.
“Sir, we’ve got less than fifty in here,” the sergeant whispered. “No telling how many we’ve yet to secure who will fight back once they get organized for a rush on us. The general said everyone who can hold a gun stays on station until we get things straightened out.”
The sergeant turned his attention away from John, shouldered his weapon, and aimed past him. “You there! Halt and keep back, or I will shoot!” the sergeant snapped.
John looked over his shoulder. A group of milling civilians was getting closer and at the sergeant’s command sullenly started to draw back.
“If they were all armed, we’d be in the shit,” the sergeant said softly. “Word is that there are some additional personnel in a highly secured area.” He paused. “You know anything about that, sir?”
“I do,” was all that John felt comfortable with saying. “Just be ready; there could be some well-trained personnel in there.” He looked just beyond the gate; there was a Humvee parked inside. “See if you can get that thing to start. If not, drop it into neutral and roll it to block this gate. Stay behind it as cover just in case.”
He looked over at Forrest, who was nodding in agreement. “Mind staying here?” John asked him. “Kevin, Reverend Black, maybe you two as well?”
“Okay.” Forrest smiled. “Sir.”
The two guards were obviously grateful for the reinforcements, and leaving them behind, John started for the bunker complex. As he approached, he eyed the building. Unlike the living quarters, it was made of poured concrete. A lone guard from Scales’s unit guarded the door, offering a salute as John approached and opening the door for him.
As he went through the door, it felt as if his ears were about to pop. The room was overpressured, the air pressure higher within to keep any ambient dust or anything else, such as chemical or biological agents, from filtering in. He could see wire meshing in the heavy glass of the door. It wasn’t armor against bullets; it was faraday caging of the entire building, proofing it against an EMP. Of course it was known about back in the 1960s, and he could recall some of the secured briefing rooms down in the basement of the Pentagon having the same kind of protections.
Once through the double doors, it truly was a Dr. Strangelove world. A vast projection screen filled the opposite wall. It was dark, but he could easily imagine a global map display, arrows crisscrossing back and forth showing the trajectory of incoming missiles. Several dozen desks were arrayed in three tiers facing the darkened screen.
They were standard military issue of a generation or more ago. Most had old standard rotary phones on them as well, a few early model desktop computers, all of it having the feel of a time capsule. There were glassed-in rooms in a semicircle set around the main room, half a dozen feet higher than the main floor. John could see one was lit up with fluorescent lights; Bob Scales and half a dozen of his troops were in that room. As he approached, Bob looked down and waved for John to come up.