Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2 (11 page)

With Henderson already on the way back to resupply them, Eric and Tom got back to work. Eric found the brief respite had recharged his energy and his step seemed lighter and easier as he made his way through the underbrush. The diminishing spool of barbed wire felt lighter in his hands as well. Even the scrapes and scratches across his arms and chest didn't burn as badly as they had before. His newfound zest was short lived, though, and he was soon dripping sweat from the end of his nose again. Still, he ground his teeth and pushed on through the pain. The minutes stretched into hours, and the hours seemed to go on for days as Eric stumbled his way through the underbrush, wrapping the stiff barbed wire around the designated tree trunks. Finally, Eric wrapped his barbed wire around a pine tree roughly the size of his waist, turned, and saw his father walking easily through the woods.

Eric and his father measured off the lengths of wire needed to hook the two strands together, and Joe twisted the final knot into the wire. "Well, that's one down," Joe said as slapped Eric on the shoulder. "Three to go. It's about noon now, so we'll start the second run after lunch."

The woods were thin along the back edge of the garden, and in a few dozen strides the men stepped out into the field itself. The sun stood nearly directly overhead, and it was oppressively hot and humid. As they headed for the far corner of the field and the road up to the farm house, there was the sudden sound of distant gun shots. The men stopped as one and turned toward the direction of the loud pops. There were three close together, then several louder shots, followed by an outburst so rapid that they couldn't keep track of them. The echoes faded into a sudden silence, and then there was a final single loud crack that reverberated through the trees.

Joe looked at Eric who shook his head slightly. "Sounded like it was across the river, maybe back toward the Harringtons' hunting club."

"How far from here?"  Tom asked.

"Three and a quarter miles on the roads," Joe said, "But that's just to the entrance. Their club has about two thousand acres of land and part of it sits just across the river."

After a long stretch of silence, the men started back toward the house, and Chris cleared his throat awkwardly. "Look, we all know that wasn't target practice. Should we be worried?"

Joe barked a short laugh and shrugged. "Yeah, we probably should be. In fact, we definitely should be. But right now, we should go and get some lunch. I'm hungry, and we've got a lot of work to do."  He glanced over his shoulder and back toward the river. "And from the sounds of it, we don't have much time to get it done."

CH.17

Wheels Down

Marcus cracked the security casing and pulled out a small red envelope. Inside was an index card with a mosaic pattern on one face and the reverse was a universal calendar. The calendar was formed by a sort of grid with days of the week lined down one side, while the number of the day in the month spanned the other. Marcus lined up the day of the week with the day of the month, and wrote down the string of characters. He handed the card and the string of coded characters to the pilot afterward.

The pilot looked down at the numbers and clicked on the radio communications. "Henry Mt. tower control, this is Ghostrider in bound. Request confirmation, Whiskey Yankee Charlie one five five nine."

There was a short silence, and the radio operator on the other end of the line answered. "Roger that Ghostrider. Authentication confirmed Hotel Sierra seven seven."

The radio clicked off and the pilot nodded the affirmation toward Marcus. They were home, finally. The chopper began an easy descent over one of the four broad helipads that dotted the low hills around the main complex. All of the helipads were isolated and they were covered from above at three different points. The protocol was to request authentication at least a mile and a half out from the base but never more than five miles, even under extreme duress. Waiting for proper clearance made for a tense few moments on the final approach, but in these cases the security was warranted. Marcus had never been on a flight that failed to follow protocol to the letter, and now, especially, he was rather certain he didn't want to be.

As the helicopter neared the ground, a pair of thick metal blast doors rolled open on the low bunker to the left, and armed men spilled out of the darkness behind it. The men all wore high sierra digitized camo uniforms and carried M-4 rifles and shotguns. This was definitely not a normal landing. Someone had at least considered the possibility of trouble and had taken far more precautions than usual. At the thought of the possible complications with that many armed men facing them, the small hairs on the back of Marcus' neck rose, and he felt his adrenaline level kick up a notch.

He had had that kind of feeling before when he stumbled on a family of black bears while hiking one day. He remembered the mother turning full toward him and chomping her jaws in a fierce clapping sound. Marcus had frozen and then slowly backed away as the cubs moved on down the path away from him. That instant jolt of fear had come with the realization that if the mother bear had decided to charge him, he'd have been completely at her mercy. The only other time he'd ever felt fear that immediate and that pure was when Captain Tillman had put his hand on his gun. In that instant he knew that even though both he and the pilot were armed, if Captain Tillman had decided they were a threat, he would have had no trouble taking both of them down.

Marcus looked at the pilot, his questions and his concerns obvious, but the pilot just shrugged. "We got no choice. Nowhere else close enough to refuel before we go down a lot harder than this."

Marcus drew a deep breath, pulled his Beretta 9mm, and checked the slide to make sure it was chambered. He clicked the safety off and holstered it without the holster strap snapped shut. If he needed to pull the weapon, he didn't want any hindrance at all. By the time the helicopter set down in a thick cloud of dust, nearly two dozen men had arrayed themselves in two ranks, ready to defend the door. The pilot throttled back the engines and began shutting the helicopter down. The rotors continued spinning for a little bit as the brakes slowed them. The dust began to settle and the air cleared.

Marcus took another deep breath and opened his door, but the pilot didn't even unlatch his safety harness. "If they want to shoot me and steal our ride," he said in response to Marcus' quizzical look, "then they're going to have to mess up their pretty, new helicopter to do it." 

Marcus chuckled at the sentiment, but he didn't think that was likely. If the control tower had really wanted them dead, it would have been much easier to let them inside and simply kill them once their guard was down. He was truly confused by the deployment of armed security forces at all, though, as he'd never seen anything like that in the four years he'd been at the facility, even in breach drills. Marcus stepped out onto the hot tarmac and waited. Whatever was about to happen, he wasn't going to be the one to initiate it; that much was clear.

None of the men facing him had raised their weapons, but they all held them with an air of calm expectation. Marcus had seen that kind of training before in the security personnel, though oddly none of the regular uniformed security officers were present. The hairs along the back of his neck were still standing on end, and Marcus felt an almost painful twisting in his gut. For the first time he wondered if coming back to the facility had been a wise decision.

The sound of footsteps from inside the bunker gave a brief warning that someone was approaching, and then Mr. Price came striding out of the darkness, four armed men boxing him in. At first, Marcus thought that his boss was under arrest, but Price’s guards were facing out, their eyes looking for threats that could possibly come from the hills around them. For his part, Price was dressed in his own khaki service dress uniform; a broad panel of ribbons spreading across the left side of his chest. He wore a Commander's silver maple leaves, just like Marcus' father had worn years before. Even three years into his retirement, Commander Price exuded faultless military bearing.

The two men in front of Mr. Price nodded to Marcus as they passed and took station on the far side of the helicopter. The remaining two stopped fifty feet from Marcus, and Mr. Price continued alone. He had a broad smile on his face, though his eyes looked tired and his face was pale in the heat. "I'm so glad you're back safe, Mr. Attledge," Price said as he shook Marcus' hand firmly. "You've been missed. Tell me, how did your mission go?"

Marcus looked at the men around him, but Mr. Price waived his hand dismissively. "They won't speak about it, but say only as much as you feel you can until we can talk in private."

Marcus nodded and began sketching in the rough details of his mission. "Well, we made it there. I introduced myself, thought I was going to get shot, and then handed over the package."

Marcus paused and Mr. Price arched an eyebrow. "And?"

Marcus took a deep breath and let it out very slowly before answering. "Mr. Price, what did you send me out there to do? Apparently there's some history there that you failed to mention, and for all I can gather, I just flew well over halfway across the country and back just to hand someone a .....
package
......turn around and come back. I could have been killed; I almost
was
killed, more than once, and I don't even know what I really did and why I did it."

Mr. Price rubbed his chin thoughtfully, a light frown creasing his forehead and mused softly, mostly to himself, "So he kept it then? That's good. That's what I was hoping."  He blinked a few times, and his eyes focused again on Marcus. "Mr. Attledge, you planted a seed of thought and consideration. That's what you did. As to why you did it, well that will have to wait until we get inside. As you can see, some things have changed around here in the short time you've been gone."

Mr. Price turned to lead the way back into the bunker, and as he passed one of his four guards, he leaned close and whispered something to him. The man wore a camo baseball cap that matched his fatigues and dark sunglasses, and white stubble covered most of his cheeks and chin. Still, he bore full combat gear without any noticeable difficulty. When Mr. Price straightened, the man nodded and gave a loud whistle and a few short hand signals. The four-man security team moved in closer to the chopper and began talking to the pilot while the other men formed up into a column and entered the bunker.

"The security detail's going to help the pilot prep the helicopter to be lowered into the hanger bay," Mr. Price said. "That will give us the time and privacy we need to speak freely. You accomplished exactly what I wanted you to, I can tell you that. The whole point of your flight was the ring that Commander Tillman kept with him. On the one hand, it's a clear sign that he's willing to see me. If anything, he's as much as daring me to come out there and get my own ring back. There are other reasons, but I can't tell you those. Not yet. It's not a trust issue, I assure you. Frankly, I'm trying to keep you from becoming a target for them."

"Them?"  Marcus asked.

Mr. Price snorted a chuckle. "That's one I wish I could answer, but I just don't know who ‘they’ are yet. The ghost of a theory is all I can claim and even that is pretty shaky. I'm hoping you'll be able to help me fill in some of the information gaps with your fresh perspective."

"And the guards, the uniforms?" Marcus asked as he indicated Mr. Price's ribbons. "Did the dress code change while I was gone?"

"You could say that," Mr. Price answered with a faint smile. "Funny thing about retiring from the service, Mr. Attledge. You're never really as far from it as you think. A condition of my maintaining my post here at this facility as a civilian contractor was that I remained subject to the upper command of the DoD as my direct superiors and that I was subject to involuntary recall to active duty status should the need arise. All of the former service members at this facility were subject to the same requirement, and that's the majority of the staff. I purposefully gave weight to hiring civilian contractors who possessed specific skill sets that resulted from their military career paths."

"So you've had contact with someone?" Mr. Attledge asked, suddenly excited at the prospect of confirmation that they weren't, in fact, alone in their struggle. "Was it the President or one of the Generals?" 

Mr. Price shook his head slowly. "No. No one other than the FEMA chief so far. I felt the circumstances warranted issuing a general recall. The nation is under attack, and we all took an oath. Including the civilian contractors."

Marcus stopped dead in his tracks. "Wait a minute, what are you talking about? I'm not retired military. I never served. My father did, but I didn't."

Mr. Price nodded. "I know that. I'm the one who hired you, after all. But as part of that hiring process, you signed a condition of employment contract that dictated, if the need should arise for the selective service process to be implemented, all of the civilian contractors at this facility would be immediately deemed vital and essential to the defense of the nation and would be immediately selected for service in the branch of the current commanding officer on site and with a rank commiserate with their duties and responsibilities. In other words, you've been drafted and placed under my command as a reactivated officer of the Navy."

Suddenly, Marcus felt the dimly lit hallway spinning around him. He blinked at the walls to find a solid focal point and took several deep breaths to steady himself. "What if I don't want to be in the Navy, Mr. Price?"  he asked.

"It's Commander Price now," the Commander said as he put his arm around Marcus' shoulder, "and unfortunately for you, Lieutenant Commander Attledge, you have no choice."

CH.18

Downstream

The water was deeper than Alyssa had expected, and she immediately sank to her neck. The buoyancy of the life jacket caught her, though, and she bobbed up and down in the water for a moment like the cork on the line from a fishing pole. She was surprised by how warm the lake was, at least near the surface. Her toes were cool, but that was all. She remembered at the last moment what Mike had said about holding the pack so the that the top didn't dip below the surface of the water.