DAY 743
This is BBC News. It is 3:00 a.m., Greenwich War Time.
In a surprise move that is triggering comment around the world, the United States administration in Bluemont, Virginia, just announced less than an hour ago that it will release an undisclosed number of tactical nuclear weapons, commonly known as neutron bombs, for use against, and I quote, “indigenous groups in rebellion against the authority of the federal government within the continental United States.” The government official went on to explain that such weapons are in no way intended as a threat or, and I again quote, “a counterforce threat against other nations currently engaged in aiding our civilian population or occupying territory within the United States,” end quote. The announcement stated that if used, such weapons will only be employed east of the Continental Divide and north of the Red River, thereby sending a clear signal to the governments of China and Mexico that such weapons are not intended as a threat against their forces on American soil.
It was also reported today by Radio Free Canada that the American federal forces known as the ANR were dealt a serious setback in Chicago with the reported annihilation of a full battalion of troops, with several hundred taken prisoner by one of the groups in rebellion in that city occupying the downtown area. There is no word yet as to their fate.
Later in this program, we’ll have a panel of experts joining us to discuss the nature of these weapons and the political ramifications of this announcement. Colonel Peter Ramsey, professor of strategic warfare studies at Sandhurst, was reached by this reporter for clarification as to the nature and use of so-called neutron bombs. He explained that they are low-yield nuclear weapons developed during the 1970s for tactical battlefield use and are by no means to be confused with the type of weapons used two years ago to trigger electromagnetic pulses. A neutron bomb is designed, at the instant of detonation, to release a highly lethal dose of radiation out to a very limited distance but with a very low blast area, damaging buildings only within several hundred yards of the point of detonation. The high radiation yield, however, can kill out to a mile or more, often within minutes. It is a weapon designed to kill but not physically destroy urban areas, and the federal government is threatening to use them in light of its frustration in suppressing rebellions in nearly every major city.
This now for our friends in Budapest and Prague: “The languid sobs of the violin wound my heart deeply.” I repeat, “The languid sobs of the violin wound my heart deeply.”
* * *
As John parked in front of the town hall, he dwelled on the fact that he had an appointment to see Doc Weiderman and finally get the tooth out—that and the word phoned in by Ernie Franklin, who claimed to have heard a BBC report regarding something about the feds announcing they were going to release tactical nukes for use inside the continental United States. There had been plenty of rumors over the last two years about further use of nukes, and indeed, in the days after the attack, North Korea and Iran had been blanketed in retaliation, while India and Pakistan finally escalated over the edge, and most of their major cities were gone, as well. But here, against ourselves? Insanity. It had to be a rumor.
Before he even managed to get out of his car, Ed was out of the office, running to meet him. “John, we’ve been trying to find you for the last twenty minutes. Where the hell have you been?”
“Do I have to report in every time I stop to go to the bathroom and walk around for a few minutes before coming in?” He didn’t add that he had stalled for a few minutes just inside the Montreat gate, nerving himself for the dental visit.
“Don’t you hear it?” Ed shouted.
“Hear what?”
“That!” Ed pointed up toward the Mount Mitchell range.
Damn it, not another raid. John cocked his head but heard nothing. “Perhaps I’m not over the concussion yet, but I don’t hear a damn thing.”
Ed stood silent, turning to face the mountain, and John saw a crowd gathered where street traders had set up their booths down on State Street for the twice-weekly market, looking up toward their beloved peak, several pointing excitedly.
“There it is again!” Ed cried, but John heard nothing. “An Apache—and it’s shooting the crap out of something!”
“What?”
“Started about a half hour ago. I think they’re hitting the reivers up along Craggy Pass.”
John gazed at the mountain for a moment and finally caught a glimpse of a helicopter soaring up sharply over the pass and then turning to dive back down the far slope, disappearing from sight.
“Call Billy Tyndall now,” John snapped. “I want the plane ready to go immediately.”
“John?”
“Ed, just please do it; I’ll explain later. And once that’s done, I want you to go down to the big flagpole at the car dealership. Find three American flags and run them up the pole, one above the other.”
“What?”
He repeated the order, falling back into the older routine of making decisions quickly, passing the order, and expecting it to be done without debate.
“Ed, just please do it.”
He drove the half mile down to the hangar, which was open, fortunately with Billy already running through a preflight check.
John jumped out of his car. “Can you take me up now? I mean right now?”
“Sure, John, but what’s the rush?”
“Get me up over Mount Mitchell. I want to see what the hell is going on over there.”
Billy looked out the hangar door, his eyes going a bit wide. “It’s a bit gusty out there. Turbulence over the mountain can get wicked for a small plane like this.”
“You telling me it’s unsafe?”
Billy hesitated. “How serious is this, John?”
“Could be damn serious.”
“Okay, we’ll go, but grab a barf bag out of the back well before we go up, because you’re going to need it.”
Billy called for Danny to help throw the prop as the two climbed in. Billy ran down the short checklist, shouting for Danny that mags were hot and to clear prop, and seconds later, they were taxiing across the Ingrams’ parking lot, down a short stretch of Main Street, which was kept well clear for passage of the plane, and then up the exit ramp. Billy stopped for moment to check mags again and to be sure that John was strapped in with seat belt tight, and then he throttled up. John could hear him muttering curses over the headset as they rolled far past where he had lifted off on their first test flight.
“How much do you weigh, John?” Billy shouted. “I should’ve asked that before we took off.”
“One eighty-five.”
“Ah shit. Okay, just hang on.”
They rolled another five hundred feet before the ground started to drop away, climbing slowly, and once above the trees flanking the interstate, Billy gently banked the plane to almost due north.
“You’re my first passenger in this plane, John. I’d prefer somebody lighter for that.”
“You want to back out of this?”
He knew it was the wrong way to ask the question; it came out as a challenge to play chicken rather than an offer to follow Billy’s best judgment. Dumb thing for a commander to do at such a moment, John thought, but as he looked over Billy’s shoulder, he caught another glimpse of a helicopter, this one a Black Hawk sweeping low above the old Blue Ridge Parkway, flaring and settling to land.
The plane bounced as they passed Allen Mountain to their right, the turbulence catching John by surprise. As an officer in the army, he had spent hundreds of hours in choppers, but this was actually his first flight in a small aircraft like this since childhood, and he was beginning to regret his rash decision to take a personal look. But he was committed now.
“Look, Billy, if you think the turbulence is outside what this old bird can handle, turn back at your discretion.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a bit of a chuckle. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. We’ll have to circle a few times; with you in the backseat, climb rate is only several hundred feet a minute, and it’s nearly five thousand feet straight up.”
Fifteen minutes later, by the time Billy had completed the second full turn, circling over the North Fork Reservoir, John was firmly clutching the barf bag and wiping the sweat from his brow. He knew he was about to let go, but at least the air at six thousand feet was actually chilly this morning, which helped a bit. Coming out of the long, sweeping turn, Billy announced they were just above the level of Craggy Gap but that he’d like to get another five hundred feet altitude before venturing closer. The turbulence was indeed bad, and John could sense Billy tensing up with each sideways, up-and-down jolt from unseen winds that rattled the plane, at one point lifting John out of his seat and then slamming him back down a second later.
“Well, we’re certainly shaking out the G stress-load testing for real,” Billy gasped after one hammer-like shock. “Just did it with sandbags piled up on the wings when on the ground before. Guess we’ll find out for real if that replacement wing will fold up.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” John gasped, as he sealed up the barf bag he had just used.
They were running a mile or so south of the gap, and John could clearly see black-clad troops on the ground along the parkway, the helicopter that had carried them lifting off and heading back toward Asheville.
There were people on the ground other than the ones in black uniforms, half a dozen at least, and as they flew closer, John could see they were down, not moving, and then the realization hit. They were dead.
“Damn it,” John whispered.
“What? Reivers? So what?” Billy responded in the casual tone of someone who had seen bodies and fighting before. For that matter, all of them down to four years old had seen bodies lying prone and motionless like that, twisted up into impossible contortions with blood pooling out beneath them. The troops on the ground, a team of eight from the looks of it, gazed up at them, one of them raising a weapon to his shoulder and pointing it in their direction.
“Don’t shoot, damn you,” Billy said, and a second later, he nearly stood the plane on its starboard wing, in an evasive turn, zigzagging back and forth.
Someone was by the side of the man who had raised the gun, motioning at the plane. The weapon was half lowered but still poised toward them.
“Go over the gap, down there!” John shouted, pointing to the north-side slope of Mount Mitchell where, half a dozen miles away, the two Apache helicopters were circling in a long oval pattern, lifting up at one end in a near-vertical turn, coming about, and then sweeping back down.
“They’re shooting the crap out of something down there,” Billy announced and pointed, but John did not need to be told. He could see the trail of gun smoke streaming aft of the helicopter. He had seen it often in their mad rush into Iraq during Desert Storm, driving past the twisted, torn wreckage of a convoy of Iraqi vehicles, bodies within cut to shreds by the deadly twenty-millimeter rounds of the chin turret and side-mounted miniguns.
Down at the base of the slope of Mount Mitchell, there was a secondary explosion, a vehicle igniting, an old RV that appeared to lift off the ground, a fireball erupting, most likely its propane tank blowing.
They were still several miles out, and John now guessed that this was in fact the same encampment site he had been dragged into as a prisoner. So contrary to what Burnett had said, they had not pulled up stakes. Moving a camp like that would drink up a lot of gas, and Burnett had rightly guessed that John had dampened down the calls for a vengeance raid.
“If only we had those Apaches when facing the Posse, it wouldn’t even have been a fight!” Billy exclaimed. “Seems like a waste of good ammo on a bunch of junk vehicles.”
A couple dozen fires were burning in the clearing below. The second helicopter began its strafing run, no longer aiming at the vehicles but instead at a stretch of woods several hundred yards east of the clearing, and a few seconds later, John could see a couple dozen people sprinting out of the woods, breaking cover, running across a road.
“Jesus Christ, those are kids!” Billy cried. “Look at them.”
The attacking helicopter yawed slightly, its rounds stitching the road, bodies tumbling, bursting, going down into twisted heaps.
“John, what in God’s name are they doing?”
“Killing people,” John said coldly.
Its run completed, the helicopter banked up and away to the north.
“Ah shit, we got company!” Billy cried.
John turned to look straight ahead and barely had time to cry out as the first helicopter, which they had lost track of while watching the attack, was now coming straight at them, at eye level. There was that frightful split second, which John had faced several times before in his life, when he figured that all was finished and he was about to die.
Billy slammed the L-3 hard to starboard, and the helicopter shot past them.
“That son of a bitch was playing chicken, and I blinked, damn it!”
“Here comes the other one!” John shouted. And indeed, the second one was closing in, gun turret swiveled toward them. A quick burst of tracers shot across in front of them fifty yards ahead.
“Damn him!”
“He’s warning us off, otherwise we’d be dead now!” John shouted.
“Hell with this. I’m turning back. First time I ever get shot at in the air, and it’s by my own side, damn it!”
“Billy, you got one of those signal-to-ground streamers in the back well?”
“Yeah. Why?”
John turned, having to unbuckle his seat belt in order to lean into the storage well, and he pulled out a six-foot-long, bright-orange streamer, tearing off the rubber band so that it would unravel. He fumbled in his pocket. Damn it, no pen! “You got a marker pen back here?”
“In the side pocket well, with the maps. A grease pen.”
“Fine. Now I want you to turn about and fly straight over where those vehicles are burning; edge it in alongside the woods. It’ll be tight from the way that smoke is blowing. I don’t want this going into the woods or the fires.”
“What in the hell are you doing, John? That son of a bitch just fired at us.”
“He knows who we are. He was trying to warn us off. He won’t shoot us down.”
And as if in answer, there was a popping sound, the aft overhead plastic window behind John cracking with a neat bullet hole through it.
“What the hell?” Billy cried.
“Ground fire, that’s all. Just keep weaving!”
“Oh shit, great!”
The first helicopter was back, slowing as it came up along their portside wing. John could clearly see the gunner looking at him, turret swiveling to point straight at them.
John held his hand up and actually waved. The gunner just gazed at him, looked forward, another warning burst in front of them. John grabbed the head of the streamer, braced it on his knee, and quickly jotted a note on the streamer. Forrest, it wasn’t us. John M.
It had struck him that the survivors below, who had without doubt been watching every move of his community for months from atop Craggy Gap, had most likely seen the first flight of the L-3. There was a chance the reivers might link his town’s ability to fly with this attack. If he had stayed well clear of it all just now, chances were their rage would be focused on Asheville. But flying over like this, he had to make it clear that though the town’s plane had been seen in the middle of this attack, they had nothing to do with it. Otherwise, they might catch the blame for it with a murderous vendetta rather than just a food-gathering raid—that is, if any down below had survived this onslaught.
John held on to the end of the streamer and tossed the weighted head out the side window. Another shot fired from below hit the wing just a few feet from his face. He let the end of the now extended message streamer go and saw it flutter down to land by the edge of the woods.
“Okay, Billy, get us the hell out of here!”
John suppressed a yelp of fear as Billy stood the plane on its starboard wing and pivoted sharply, dropping the nose and then leveling out and skimming low over the trees, turning back toward Craggy Gap. One of the helicopters was again beside them, the pilot looking toward them, pointing at them, then to the southwest, back toward Asheville.
John shook his head in reply, pointing due south. There was a tense moment, the gunner looking at them again, chin turret swiveled. John kept pointing south. The helicopter sped up a bit and then swung in front of them, Billy cursing loudly, swerving to the west as they were hit by the turbulence it kicked up. For several minutes, it was a game of cat and mouse, the helicopter repeatedly trying to force them to follow its lead.
“Okay, Billy, act like we’re going along!” John shouted. “We’re too low yet to climb over the mountain anyhow.”
“Thank God you finally got some sense, John,” Billy replied as he turned on a heading toward Asheville, pointing straight ahead to the watching gunner, who nodded a reply and repeated the gesture that they were to follow him back. The two helicopters backed off slightly to a hundred yards out, the three aircraft beginning to climb to clear Bull Gap, which was half the altitude of Mount Mitchell and an easy enough ascent for the L-3. The turbulence picked up severely as they cleared over the south side of the mountain and began to descend into the Swannanoa Valley. John could see home eight miles or so to the east, Asheville looming up straight ahead.
As they reached the eastern end of town, one of the choppers edged back alongside the L-3, the pilot pointing toward the parking lot of the long-abandoned and burned-out mall. Their operational base was apparently set up there; both of the Black Hawks were on the ground there. Parked nearby were half a dozen trucks and an equal number of Humvees. A couple of military fuel bladders, each capable of holding a thousand gallons, were deployed out, the Black Hawks apparently being loaded up again.
One of the helicopters edged in closer, the pilot motioning down to the parking lot. Billy vehemently shook his head. “That guy’s an idiot if he thinks I’ll put this girl in there. I might be able to land, but there’s not enough room to take off again.”
Billy pointed to I-240, motioning again and again, circling the road at five hundred feet until the helicopter pilot finally relented and nodded in agreement.
“Billy, you know what to do. If we land there, this plane, all your hard work, belongs to them forever after. Act like you’re setting up to land. How good are you at tree hopping?”
“Used to love it, but then again, no one was shooting at me for real.”
“Your call. You’re the pilot in command.”
“Well, damn glad you finally realize that, John. Make sure you’re buckled in tight and hang on. You still feel like puking?”
John chuckled. “Been there, done that. Then I was so terrified back there I forgot about puking again.”
“Just don’t mess the plane up now.”
Billy turned the plane where Interstate 40 merged with 240 and started to drop as if setting up to land. Just as he passed the abandoned Walmart to his right, he shouted for John to hang on. He slammed up to full throttle, pushed the nose forward, and dived, skimming over the store’s parking lot and going under a power line, a move that left John speechless.
“Always wanted to do that—no FAA now to take away my license!” Billy laughed.
It was eight air miles back to Black Mountain, but it turned into nearly fifteen as they played cat and mouse with one of the Apaches that took off in pursuit after them. The helicopter was just as maneuverable as they were with the added advantage that it could come to a complete stop and hover if necessary. It was up to Billy to outnerve that Apache’s pilot, and John wondered if the pilot of the helicopter pursuing them was just being an annoying bastard or if maybe he was actually having a bit of fun with this game of who could outfly whom.
By the time they reached Swannanoa proper, John knew that it was turning into something more than just a game. The Apache pilot was getting increasingly aggressive, with Billy pushing the edge of sane piloting in response. He started to line up to go underneath a highway overpass, John finally asserting himself and shouting for Billy to break it off.
Skimming only half a dozen feet above Interstate 40 for the last few miles, the helicopter circled wide and came across their front, the pilot half saluting them, but Billy returned the gesture with finger extended as he instantly pulled full back on the joystick and clawed for altitude, the plane shaking violently from the rotor downwash that would have slammed them into the pavement if he had not reacted.
“I think that bastard was trying to crash us at the end!” Billy shouted.
John did not reply. With the tension of the last hour at an end, he finally relaxed enough to reopen the barf bag and let go for a second time. There was a crosswind as they came in to touch down, Billy tensing up as much as when dodging the helicopters, landing with portside wing down low and rudder in the opposite direction, the plane coming down a bit hard and then rolling out. A couple of cars were parked on the westbound side of the highway, one of them Ed’s much-battered patrol car, the other Maury’s Jeep.
They rolled to a stop while still on the highway, Billy popping the door, staggering out, and walking around the plane to look at the bullet hole in the wing and the one through the cab farther aft, which had shattered the overhead window. Then, like John, he just leaned over and vomited. “Damned if I ever fly you again, John,” he gasped.
Leaping the highway crash barriers, Ed, Danny, and Maury approached the two, all three shouting questions as Ed grabbed hold of John, who was definitely shaking from the experience. He well understood now a conversation shared long ago with a general who had been a veteran, first wave in on Omaha Beach, and from there led his battalion all the way to the Elbe in 1945. He had once asked his elderly friend what was the most frightening moment of the war, and the general laughed, saying he was trained for Omaha and too busy on the beach that day trying to bring order out of chaos to be scared, but the time he had gone up with his recon pilot, the experience had scared him half to death. Though frightened by the game of chicken with the helicopter pilots, John was now furious, as well.
Ed was still holding him by the arm. After all the noise, shouting, and confusion, it was hard to sort out what the police chief was saying, and then he caught it. “Fredericks wants to see you now, John.”
John nodded. “You’re damn straight he does, and I want to see him now!”
Twenty minutes later, they pulled into the parking area in front of the courthouse, John having quickly briefed Ed on what he had seen and what happened afterward.
They got out of the car and headed for the courthouse entrance. The same sergeant who had hassled John on an earlier visit was out front and came toward him as if waiting to strike. John slowed and glared at him coldly. “Son, either you get the hell out of my way or you’re going to quickly find out if that gun of yours is for show or not.”
The guard hesitated, and John stepped around him.
“Bullshit trooper,” John snapped as they continued on. “No guts when facing someone really pissed off.”
“Keep it calm, John,” Ed whispered.
“Not after what I just saw,” John snapped.
They stepped into the cool darkness of the courthouse. The fluorescent lights were off this morning. Another security guard blocked their way as they came into the foyer.
“Your weapons,” he snapped as a preemptive order.
“Yeah, right,” John growled, reaching into his pocket, pulling out a pocket Ruger semiautomatic, and slapping it on to the table. “Careful, son. It’s actually loaded.”
The guard glared at him but said nothing then turned to Ed.
“Like hell,” Ed announced loudly, his voice echoing in the foyer. “I am chief of police of my town, and for fifteen years, I’ve walked in and out of here and never surrendered a weapon unless going into a courtroom. So like hell, son.”
He started to step around the table, and the guard stepped back, unclipping the safety strap of his holster.
“Listen, boy, you are an amateur,” Ed snarled. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be before the devil or Saint Peter. So just leave your gun in that holster.”
“Sir, step back three feet, turn around, and keep your hands over your head.”
“Go ahead and try it.” Ed was actually grinning. “I was sick of your type before the war, and I’m doubly sick of you now.”
“Sir, I will shoot to disable you.”
“Oh, really? Go ahead, damn you!”
John began to step between the two.
“Charlie, back off.” It was Dale, storming out of his office with two security guards in tow.
The guard looked away from Ed, and John’s friend laughed. “You village idiot. Wrong move, Charlie. Bang-bang, you’re dead.” Ed was holding up his empty hand, forefinger pointed at the guard, thumb moving like a gun hammer.
One of Dale’s guards did have his gun out and drawn in reaction to Ed’s gesture, and for a frightful instant, John thought Ed was a dead man.
Dale actually came to a stop, letting the guards move in front of him.
“Everybody just freeze!” John shouted, and his command voice was firmly in place, echoing in the cavernous foyer.
All looked to John, except Ed, whose hand was not on his holster but only inches away with the safety strap unbuttoned.
“Now everyone work with me, and let’s calm down. Mr. Fredericks, please ask your personnel to relax. Ed, can I have your permission to remove your weapon myself and put it on the table?”
“Go to hell, John.”
“Ed, please, let’s defuse this calmly. Okay, my friend?”
Ed continued to stare intently at the guard who had drawn a weapon but finally nodded in agreement. John stepped up to his friend, deliberately letting the jumpy guard at the front desk and the ones now blocking off Dale from harm see him draw Ed’s weapon out with thumb and forefinger and place it on the table next to his Ruger.
There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief, and Dale stepped around his two guards. “John, can I see you in my office?”
John and Ed fell in behind Dale, Ed looking back over his shoulder menacingly at the two security guards who followed them all the way into Dale’s office. The guards stood unmoving until Dale finally gave a nod of dismissal.
“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out,” Ed quipped as the two exited.
“Damn it,” Dale snapped as soon as the door was closed. “I got enough trouble around here today without you two pulling that scene out there.”
“Us pulling it?” Ed replied hotly. “I’ve been chief of police for fifteen years. Rules were I kept my sidearm in the building. Hell, there was even an incident in here some years back where folks were damn glad I was armed. Only time I was to disarm was when I went into a courtroom to testify. I’ll be damned if some black-uniformed rent-a-cop orders me to disarm and is so damn stupid I could have blown his ass away in response.”
“And you two would have been dead,” Dale retorted icily. “Those two you just insulted are trained security specialists, and they know their business.”
“Your personal bodyguards, Mr. Fredericks?” Ed cried.
Dale was silent.
“Well, if they’re so damn professionally trained, they forgot something.” Ed reached down and lifted up his right pant leg to reveal a Ruger like the one John had strapped to his ankle. “Some frigging security, Dale.”
Dale gazed at him coldly.
“So do I keep it, or do you call your goons?”
“I suggest you leave this meeting now,” Dale replied, and there was a flicker of a smile, but John could see the coldness behind the mask.
“And if I say no?”
“I’ll have you escorted out. The rules here are now firm. No firearms carried into this building.”
“Then call your goons, and let’s see what happens.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ed,” John interjected. “Let’s all cool it down here. We didn’t come here to argue about the policy of carrying in this building. Ed, there are bigger fish to fry at the moment.”
“You telling me to leave, John? Is that an order? Because I’ll be damned if I part with my ankle shooter now.”
John put a reassuring hand on the shoulder of this man who had stood by his side through two long, terrible years. “Ed, for the sake of the moment, as a favor, please go along with it.”
“That was our problem before the Day. Just go along with it. It was always ‘just go along with things’ as we kept stepping backwards, and look where it landed us.” As he spoke, his gaze was fixed firmly on Dale.
Dale did not move, but John could see his eyes going wide, features paling. “I will call my security team in ten seconds,” Dale replied.
“Oh, now the threat to bring in the gestapo.”
“The what? How dare you!”
“Ed, please cool off,” John whispered, trying to sound reassuring. “Please help me with this.”
There was eye contact, and Ed finally nodded and without a word turned and walked out of the office, slamming the door hard.
“He’s a hothead, John.”
“He’s saved my life more than once. He helped keep our town together, and frankly, he had every right to be pissed off just now.”
Dale opened the cabinet and motioned to the bottle of scotch. “I think we could both use a drink after this.”
John shook his head in refusal.
“John, this country is still at war, and some rules have to change. For the security of this building, no weapons except by designated personnel is now firmly one of them.”
“Rules changed. Like killing innocent civilians?”
“Sit down, John. You’ve had a hard day.”
“You’re damn straight it’s been a hard day after what I saw a few hours ago and what your hotshot pilots pulled on me after that.”
“I heard you were up in that plane. Why in God’s name did you go up and stick yourself into the middle of that fight?”
“Because it bordered territory I feel responsible for. That’s why.”
“A bit of advice. There are times when a man in our position has to learn to delegate. And second, as a military man, you should have immediately grasped it was a military operation under way, and to go sticking yourself smack in the middle of it was foolhardy, and you know it.”
“A military operation authorized by you?” John asked coldly.
“John, regarding you. Thank God my pilots are well trained. One of them radioed in about your plane, and I ordered him to hold his fire. Otherwise, they were about to dump you out of the sky, thinking you were one of the gangs we were taking care of today.”
“Gangs?” John exhaled noisily. “Have you debriefed your pilots yet? Have you looked at the gun camera footage?”
“No to the first question, other than a brief radio report, and as for the second, we don’t have gun camera footage anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because the equipment doesn’t exist. We’re cobbling aircraft back together once they are shipped back here to the States, and as quickly as we get them flying, they’re dispatched out. Gun cameras are just about the last damn thing we worry about as long as the machine flies.”
“Well, I wish to God you rethought that one.”
“Why?”
“Because when I wandered on to the scene, it wasn’t that those hotshots were tearing up some vehicles belonging to gangs and murderous thugs—they were strafing the woods where noncombatants, women, children, and old people were hiding.” He paused, forcing himself to calm down, to shift out of an emotional response, to fall back on to the long years of training to be dispassionate, in control of himself. He took a deep breath. “I witnessed the last firing run. The pilot lit up a stretch of woods, and a couple dozen people, many of them obviously women and children, broke cover in panic. They were gunned down without mercy.”
“How many?”
“A couple dozen, at least. Nearly all were hit.”
Dale took that in, again putting fingertips together in the shape of an inverted V, chin resting on the tips, looking pensive. “Hmm. They didn’t report that.”
“What were their mission orders? But before that, why the attack in the first place?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“A supply convoy running from here up to Johnson City was hit just north of Mars Hill. Two of my people dead, half a dozen wounded, one vehicle destroyed. That was yesterday afternoon.”
“Mars Hill—that’s in Madison County. Word is that the border reivers up there are an entirely different group.”
“How do you know that?”
At that moment, he felt it best not to elaborate too much. “Dale, I’ve been dealing with these issues for two years. You’ve been here how long? A month?”
Dale did not reply.
“May I suggest you get a better feel for who is what before you start sending out strike missions. There’s a nut job over in Madison and down into Haywood County who claims he talks directly to God and gets his marching orders from him, and that includes killing. They were the ones who most likely hit your convoy. Even with that in mind, is an attack on your convoy justification for slaughtering dozens of civilians in reply? How can you be sure you even were hitting the group that attacked your people on the highway?”
“Damn sure.” Dale’s tone was getting sharp, disturbed that his judgment had been challenged. “I had a drone up to check it out before we went in.”
“You’ve got drones?”
“Of course we do. Did a survey several hours after the attack on the highway—spotted a couple of vehicles heading from the direction of Mars Hill straight back to the encampment I ordered to be attacked today. It was and is intended to be a message to all in the region that, henceforth, official federal operations and convoys are not to be harassed. It is a necessary message to everyone if we are to restore order in my district.”
“But no confirmed identification that it was definitely them?”
“John, are you trying to defend these people?”
“No, Dale,” he replied quietly, making direct eye contact. “But what I can confirm is that I saw your people gun down innocent civilians.”
“If they are running with the reivers, they are not innocent civilians. If innocent, they’d have come out of the backcountry long ago, registered for rations, lived in safe areas as designated by the government. The army unit that was here before me put out that appeal, and I’ve done the same thing. Therefore, after they hit my convoy, I saw that as justified reason to send the strongest possible message that things have changed around here.”
“Dale, your people were shooting up civilians. They are people who were living up there before the war, and those that are left see it as their land still. And the fact that this drone of yours—which apparently has video equipment while your helicopters do not—spots two vehicles is slim evidence to me. These people are far too savvy to pull a hit on a convoy and then be spotted two hours later.”
“I made the decision and stand by it.” He paused. “Though I should have given you a call to get your view since you seem to know these reivers a lot better than you let on.”
“You implying something?”
“Well, it is curious that you get taken prisoner by them, and four days later, you come walking out of the woods as if nothing had happened.”
“What are you implying, Dale?” John repeated, this time more forcefully.
“Just that it was strange. You should have filed a report with me about what happened while you were their prisoner. It seems a lot more transpired than you let on in our last conversation. Otherwise, you would not be defending them now.” He paused. “Did you strike any deals with them?”
“I didn’t receive any memo from you that henceforth I was to report all activities to you.”
“I am the representative of the government here. If you had been more forthright with me, maybe what happened today could have been avoided.”
John glared at him without responding to this classic maneuver to transfer responsibility and guilt if something went sour.
“Yeah, the reivers over the mountain from me are a tough bunch, but they’re mostly into raiding for food, gas, and whatever they think they need. Yes, they’ve killed, and we’ve killed some of them, but outright murdering for a pig, a bushel of wheat, a few gallons of gas … that’s not their style or mine. Taking on an armed convoy sounds more like the reivers farther west following one of those nut jobs than the ones north of me who I have found are mostly folks just trying to survive, the same as you and me.” He paused for a moment. “In spite of our differences, I still see them as Americans.”
“And I see them as what you locals here call reivers. They got a hundred different names for them around the country, but they all come down to the same type, and one of my jobs is to either bring them back under legal control and compliance with the law or else.”
“Or else what, Dale? And while we’re on that, what is this rumor about the release of neutron bombs for use within the continental United States?”
“The situation in some urban areas is beyond retrieval. But come on—to actually use them? We both know the game of threat, and that’s all I can tell you.” Dale sighed and extended his hands in a gesture of frustration. “But back to here and now. I’d rather try persuasion than what I had to do this morning.”
“Twenty-millimeter miniguns are a rather permanent and uncompromising way of persuasion.”
“Damn it, John.” Now his voice was cold. “Have you been anywhere outside of your small town since the Day?”
John gazed at Dale, a bit startled after all their previous conversations—which, though grating at times, reminded him of a typical smiling midlevel bureaucrat in the prewar world. “Go on.”
“I sure as hell have—or at least seen reports you never laid eyes on. Every major city in America is down, most of them abandoned wastelands, those left controlled by ruthless mobs like those you call reivers. More than fifty thousand of them control Chicago and have declared a dictatorship under some whack job who calls himself ‘the Great.’ The prisoners he takes? The lucky ones get thrown off the top of the old Sears Tower. The rest he crucifies along the shores of Lake Michigan. If those at Bluemont do decide to pop a neutron bomb, I hope he’s the first to get it. Reports of human sacrifices with some cult running Saint Louis—another good candidate for a nuke. You want to see the reports, John, of what’s left of our country?”
John shook his head sadly. “No, I was ‘just here,’ as you put it. But it was my town that stopped the Posse, and I saw more than enough of the depravity of men when turned desperate.”
“That is what I am fighting to prevent here,” Dale replied sharply.
“So perhaps using nukes in the cities and machine-gunning kids and women here is part of the reconstruction program now?”
“John, it was a combat situation, and you, veteran of Iraq, should understand that. They reported taking heavy ground fire and had only seconds to react. Air to ground, mistakes happen, including fratricide at times. You know that.”
“Train your people better,” John finally said coldly. “I could see they were kids, women, old folks—so could your pilots.”
“Precisely why we need people like you, John, to see to things like that.”
“And because you wanted to talk with me, you ordered your pilots to harass the crap out of my pilot and damn near kill us when we finally tried to land.”
“John, I felt it essential to talk to you at once regarding the whole affair. My pilot got a little carried away, that’s all.”
“And once we landed in Asheville, you’d confiscate our plane?”
“Of course not,” Dale replied smoothly as he reached back behind his desk for the bottle of scotch and offered John a drink.
“I’ll pass for now. My stomach is still a bit queasy from that ride.”
Dale poured himself another shot and put the bottle back into the cabinet. “I’ll look into it and get back to you. These kids that fly can get wired up, and we both know that. Most likely, he figured your man could handle that final pass after the chase he had been led on, nothing more.”
“Tell him to stand well clear next time.”
“Or what will you do?”
“It’s already been a long day, Dale. I didn’t expect the ride I went on this morning. I think it’s time I went home.”
“Sure, John.” Dale extended his hand. “No hard feelings.”
“For what happened to me, no. But what happened to those civilians, yes—damn hard feelings. I’d like it thoroughly investigated. And believe me, Dale, this is from long experience here. Whether they did raid that convoy or not is no longer the issue. They will seek payback, and you just triggered a war along your northern border.”
“Well, if they come at you, call me at once.”
John just nodded.
“And, General, when can I announce your acceptance of a commission and get plans rolling for you to head up to Bluemont?” He asked the question as if the conversation of the previous twenty minutes had never taken place. “Arranging a transport flight just doesn’t happen overnight.”
“Let’s talk about that some other time,” John replied.
“Why not now?”
He fixed Dale with a hard stare. “Because frankly, I just don’t feel like discussing it at the moment after what I saw this morning.”
Without waiting for a reply, John headed out the door, stopped at the desk to pick up his Ruger, and found Ed sitting in his patrol car, still fuming mad.
“Ed, I don’t want to hear a word, not a word for right now. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”