The Final Day Read online

  “Sir, I thought you were…” John was overcome by emotion, and he fell silent.

  “I wish,” Bob began. “I wish I could have seen Jennifer again, just one more time.”

  Those words nearly broke John completely. Bob had stood as godfather for both of his girls. Childless himself, he had formed a special bond, especially with Jennifer, who used to call him “Uncle Bob.” A most memorable moment, at a formal review that was just wrapping up, Jennifer had shaken free of her mother’s hand and raced up to Bob, who was standing in the middle of the platform where he was at rigid attention, reviewing the troops marching by. She threw her arms around his legs and loudly asked what Beanie Baby he had brought for her that day. And in spite of all the formality of the moment, Bob had motioned to the ever-present aide that hovered by a general’s side. The young captain with grave features had reached into Bob’s attaché case to produce a stuffed golden retriever puppy for “my girl.”

  And with that, the memory flooded to completion. The aide that day was Quentin Reynolds.

  There was a squeal of delight as she clutched the latest addition to her collection, Bob picking her up and showing her how to salute the last company of troops marching by as he held her. There was not a soldier in the ranks of that company able to conceal a grin as they marched by. It was the exact kind of gesture that rather than creating smirking laughter later endeared him even more to his troops and their families who had witnessed the moment.

  It defined the man that John was now hugging with open warmth.

  John finally broke the embrace and stepped back, but Bob reached up, for John towered over him by a half foot or more, and put his hands on John’s shoulders.

  “Son, it is so good to know that at least you survived.”

  “And you too, sir.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and the two reverted back a bit to remembrance of command, that at such a moment so many were watching them for the slightest signal or gesture, friendly or hostile.

  John looked back at the chopper. There were at least half dozen heavily armed men in the crew compartment, while Bob’s eyes darted past John to take in the old airport, obviously evaluating.

  “Yes, sir, I’ve got a lot of people concealed around here,” John said softly, “so let’s defuse them. Okay?”

  Bob nodded as John turned away from him for a moment and raised his arms high, waving them over his head to indicate that all was well.

  “We’ve got a woodstove ready to light in the airport clubhouse and packed along some MREs. Let’s get your team in and get mine out of the woods,” John announced. “This damn cold makes me long for the desert again.”

  Bob motioned for his security team to get out, gesturing as well for them to sling their weapons, while John stepped away from the chopper so those in the wood line could clearly see him, waving his arms and shouting for them to stand down.

  The six-man detail in the chopper got out, weapons slung over their shoulders but still obviously wary as they spread out into a loose circle around Bob, watching as Forrest stepped out of the hangar, M4 held casually in his one hand, followed by Maury, Danny, and Lee, who had yet to shoulder their weapons.

  “Your friends?” Bob asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The one-armed character with the eye patch?”

  “Airborne. Sergeant in Afghanistan, Silver Star and obviously a Purple Heart.”

  Even though he was moving slowly, Bob was still in his usual form as he walked up to Forrest and without going through the formality of a salute just extended his hand.

  “Trooper, I’m honored to meet you.”

  The gesture forced Forrest to sling his weapon, catching him off guard, and John breathed a sigh of relief when Forrest actually forced a bit of a smile and extended his hand.

  “First time a damn general ever offered to shake my hand, sir,” Forrest announced. “Maybe you’re okay like John said.”

  “I hope I am. If we get time, I want to hear your view on some things.”

  Bob’s comment had a casual air to it, the type of line many in high command used as a friendly gesture but still a brush-off, but from Bob it was indeed genuine. When in command of John’s battalion, Bob was the type of commander who would swoop in on a unit before dawn, ignore any officers who might be fumbling around, head straight to where breakfast was being dished out, get a cup of coffee, and then start peppering the cooks and dishwashers as to how they saw the unit. Dishing out his own meal, he’d then sit with a table of enlisted men and ask questions.

  At the end of more than one such inspection swoop, an officer might very well be on his way out to reposting in some godforsaken place. Chances were that regardless of their friendship, Forrest might be asked a few pointed questions as to how he felt about John’s leadership.

  It was a technique John had learned as well. If you want the straight dope, go to those at the bottom of the food chain of administrations, not the middle or the top.

  The two old friends turned to look back at each other.

  “Any place where we can sit and talk one-on-one?” Bob asked.

  “It will be crowded in the airport clubhouse. Let our people get out of the cold, grab something to eat, and mingle.”

  John did not add that Forrest, along with Grace and several others, had been thoroughly briefed that if the two sides did get together, they were to break out a jar or two of moonshine and pump for any information they could glean. He realized that chances were at least one of Bob’s security team was his intelligence officer who would be doing the same. Forrest should be able to sniff that out quickly enough.

  “The hangar we were waiting in is out of the wind and catching the morning sun; let’s you and I settle in there,” John offered, pointing the way.

  John fell in by Bob’s side, subtly gesturing for his friends to leave them be and take care of their guests. He looked back to the chopper; the rotors were slowly turning over in idle.

  “Your crew can shut down if they want; there’s no threat here, Bob.”

  Bob just smiled but did not reply to the offer, and John did not press him.

  Getting out of the snow, they stomped into the hangar. Its long-gone owner had turned it into an aviator’s man cave, posters of World War I and II aircraft papering the walls, along with a couple of classic pinups of nose art from that era. There were a couple of overstuffed lounge chairs next to a long-cold space heater, the chairs smelling unpleasantly of mouse or some other rodent. John dragged the two chairs into the morning sunlight while Bob examined the posters and, brushing the dust off the windshield, looked into the cockpit of a long-grounded Aeronca Champ, its tires cracked and deflated after years of sitting idle.

  “I actually learned to fly in one of these.” Bob sighed. “Sweet plane, postwar version of that L-3 I heard you have up and running.”

  John looked over at his friend. Of course he would know what John had.

  There were so many questions, but Bob opened first. “John, what happened to Jennifer?”

  The question took John aback, and with it returned all the pain of those tragic days. He looked away from Bob, gaze unfocused. “She died, Bob. The way so many died. In her case, diabetes.” He fell silent, not wanting to say more; it was not the conversation he wanted for now.

  Bob reached over and in a fatherly gesture patted John on the knee. “Sorry I brought it up. Last time we talked, it was her birthday. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember.” John could not keep the bitter edge out of his voice. “Her last birthday thanks to whoever, whatever triggered all this madness.”

  He looked back at his friend. It was, of course, not Bob’s fault.

  “And you, Bob? How is Linda?”

  “I’ll never know.” Bob sighed. “She was visiting friends in Florida when it hit.” A pause. “You most likely know what Florida turned into. I somehow knew she was dead within a few weeks. You know how that is with someone you love. You just wake up in the middl
e of the night, you know they are there in the room with you … and they are dead and have come to say good-bye. I just pray it was gentle and swift.”

  “Jennifer’s wasn’t,” John said, and he instantly regretted it, seeing the hurt in Bob’s eyes. “I’m sorry I said that, Bob.”

  Bob did not reply, the two old friends sitting in silence for a moment until John stirred from his seat. Remembering the thermos of coffee left by Forrest, he picked it up from the floor and motioned to it. Bob nodding agreement as John poured out the hot brew into two battered cups, handing one to his friend.

  “The real stuff?” Bob asked.

  John nodded and could see the look of surprise.

  Bob reached into his parka jacket, produced a flask, motioned to John’s cup. John could pick up the welcome scent of scotch and looked quizzically at Bob, who just smiled while he poured several ounces into his own cup before raising it in a toast.

  “I thank God you are still alive, John. Here’s to those we lost.”

  “To those that we lost,” John whispered.

  The two sipped their drinks, and it helped to relax the tension.

  “Bob, a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How the hell did you survive? You were in the Pentagon the day it happened. What happened up there?”

  Bob looked down at his drink before taking a long gulp. “Some of us got lucky. Most tried for their homes to get their families out. Washington went into total chaos within hours. Those that had set out to try to reach their families, some with forty miles or more of a hike ahead of them? Never heard from again. Me? Linda was in Florida—no reason to try for home. Some of us struck out for Fort Meade and hunkered down there until we tried for Fort Belvoir, the rumor being that local assets were trying to regroup there. From there, well, for a while, I was out on a carrier. The navy with assets overseas fared better than the army on that count.”

  “What really happened, Bob?”

  “We got hit, and we lost.”

  “That simple? ‘We got hit, and we lost’?” There was a sharp edge to John’s response.

  “About all I can say.”

  “All you can say, or all that you know?”

  Again a moment of silence.

  “John, you were on the phone with me when it hit. You know I and all those around me were as off guard as you and a minute later literally in the dark, same as you and the rest of the country. Pearl Harbor in spades.”

  “And if I remember my history, a couple of lectures from long ago at the War College, the warning signs for Pearl were clear enough to read.”

  “After the fact,” Bob interjected. “After the fact, the patterns fell into place. But before?”

  “Some read it correctly.”

  “Don’t tell me you are buying into some conspiracy shit?” Bob snapped. “You’ve too sharp an intellect for that.”

  “With everything we had? Surely…”

  Bob did not reply.

  John fell silent and looked at his friend closely. Bob had answered a little too sharply and quickly. Was there something he was holding back? Even before the Day, Bob held many a secret that generals held while those under him were kept in the dark and knew better than to try to ask. He filed the suspicion away. Bob would only share what he felt he could share at this moment and nothing more.

  Bob had aged ten, fifteen years since he had last seen him little more than three years ago. Though there was still something of his once sharp, penetrating gaze of confidence, there also seemed to be an infinite weariness behind the eyes.

  His shoulders were rounded over slightly as if carrying some unspeakable burden. Gone was the ramrod-straight posture, that certain look and feel of command. There was a slight tremor to his hands as he held the warm mug. Was it just exhaustion of the moment or something far deeper?

  “And out there?” John finally asked, shifting the topic away from the personal for the moment.

  “Where?”

  “The world. Everything, anything. We no longer trust Voice of America out of Bluemont. We try to glean what we can from the BBC, even China and their News to America program. What’s the straight dope?”

  Bob sighed, set his coffee mug down, unscrewed the cap to the flask of scotch, and offered it to John, who took another ounce while Bob emptied the rest back into his cup.

  It surprised him. Bob always had a taste for good twelve- and fifteen-year-old scotch, but only after hours and off duty.

  “John, the world has gone three-quarters of the way to hell and is tottering on the edge of the final abyss.”

  John sipped his coffee and waited.

  “From the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Oil is no longer the export. Maybe when things finally cool down enough, they can sell glass where once had been a score of cities.”

  “Who?”

  “Israel against the rest. Their ballistic missile shield held protecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but the rest. Their government is now underground in bunkers somewhere out in the Negev desert. It was a full exchange. Then Indian and Pakistan cut loose on each other. Not much left on either side.”

  “Russia, China, Europe?” John asked.

  “Holding off. Mutually assured destruction at play there. Russia was brushed by the EMP hit that went off course. Saint Petersburg abandoned. Moscow, word is some semblance of order there, the government holed up somewhere out in Siberia with their fingers on the trigger. John, the moment America was taken out of the paradigm of the balance of power, a vacuum was created. While survivors here were trying to just find the next meal, the rest of the world tottered to the edge and at least for the moment have held back from the final descent into the apocalypse.”

  “It was the apocalypse here.” John reached over to the thermos to pour out some more coffee for the two of them.

  The sun was climbing, radiating at least some warmth into the hangar, the icicles hanging along the eaves dripping puddles of water near their feet.

  “John, we hang by the slenderest of threads. We still have a lot of nukes; the navy’s boomers are still out there, each one packing a couple of hundred warheads. The surviving carriers and their escorts pack more.”

  “Surviving?”

  “Guess we wouldn’t admit it. When all hell broke loose in the Persian Gulf the week after the EMP strike and we launched on Iran in retaliation, they took out two of our carriers with nearly all hands. In the wake of that, with the emergency back home, the assets we had over there, we pulled out.”

  He nodded to the Black Hawk fifty yards away, rotors stilled but turbines still humming if things here went sour and Bob decided to pull out quick.

  “John, most of what we have here now in the States we pulled out from the Middle East and Europe. After North Korea was taken off the map, equipment from the Pacific was pulled back stateside as well. We try to keep China in check by letting them know if they try anything with nukes, a boomer parked out in the Pacific will hit them with over two hundred nukes—starting with an EMP, of course. Sword of Damocles over their heads if they push us too hard.”

  “But Bluemont is ceding half our country to them, Bob. I don’t get it.”

  “Let’s just focus on the here and now,” Bob replied, obviously diverting the direction the conversation was taking.

  That triggered another suspicion for John, but he knew better than to press the issue—and besides, Bob was right. It was the here and now that he had to focus on.

  “Blunt question, Bob, for the ‘here and now.’”

  “Go for it.”

  “You got other assets nearby just in case this meeting went bad?”

  Bob nodded. “Couple of Apaches and an extraction team set down on the far side of Linville Gorge. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Hell of a position for two old friends, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “To talk as we are right now.”

 
; “Why?”

  “John, you most likely know the political and military situation for our country. BBC has been rather close to the mark, and I assume you’ve been monitoring that.”

  “We have.”

  “I eventually was assigned out west, commander center in Cheyenne Mountain for a stint. We all knew it was a no-win with China. Sure, humanitarian aid was the guise; they wanted it to look like another Marshall Plan, with ‘hearts and minds’ thrown in. Can’t blame the folks out in California and on the rest of the West Coast. Infrastructure down, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, even Vancouver turning into snake pits of chaos. Someone trying to keep their family alive, feel that our government has utterly failed to protect, and container ships flying red flags start coming in. Rations, water purification plants, medical supplies.”

  He paused. “Things like insulin, John. What would you have done?”

  That barb, if it was intended as such, stung deeply, and he did not reply.

  “Their first troops even wore UN-blue helmets. Three-quarters of the population out there already dead? People forget LA was built on what was near desert. Without the Colorado River being pumped in from hundreds of miles away, along with a dozen other reservoirs off-line, people were killing each other for a lousy bottle of water after just three to four days. Someone hands your kids water and a meal—”

  “So they are there to stay, is that it?”

  “Unless we want to go to nuclear war, yes.”

  “These reports that we are abandoning the line along the Continental Divide, military assets pulled back to east of the Mississippi?”

  “It’s being defined as neutral air space to defuse any chance of a confrontation. That and Mexico, with backing from half a dozen Central American countries pressing up over the Rio Grande. What do we do?”

  “It was once our country, Bob.”

  “Argue that with Mexico, who now claims we ripped them off in a long-ago and forgotten war.”

  “And they ripped it off from those who were there before them.”

  “History, John. It has always been thus. Take the veneer of civilization off, a major power receives a visceral blow and totters. Nature abhors a vacuum. Amazing—the years of political correctness pumped out in our colleges became an education of national guilt. Some out there along the West Coast actually say we deserved what we got for our past sins and welcomed a chance to try out socialism. Just feed us, and we’ll get along with whoever is in charge.”