The Final Day Read online

  “Anyone fighting back?”

  “Yeah, Texas, of course. Voice of America isn’t reporting it, but some group in Texas declares they’re the new government, cite what they claim was the original treaty of annexation from the 1840s, and they are justified in withdrawing from the Union. They got representatives with them from half a dozen other states saying the same. It is ripe for a blowup. Logical, therefore, that our regular military pull out completely to avoid the prospect of this going really bad and what is left of our country getting sucked into the conflict.”

  “Meaning nuke?”

  “The Chinese are just as afraid of that as we are. They know if we popped three or four EMPs over their mainland, they would be in the same boat we are. But if we do that, they blanket what’s left of our country with ground bursts. We do the same back. Who wins other than death?”

  “Thus we concede west of the Mississippi, and Bluemont focuses on bringing everything east back under their control. Are those the orders you’re following, sir?”

  Again, Bob did not directly reply. “Full-scale war with China now?” he finally said. “Then who gets to grab what’s left of the radioactive pie? Mongolia?”

  John actually chuckled and shook his head.

  “Some years back, I was over there for a conference,” Bob continued. “Great people, beautiful country. Remember camping with the head of their military up in a northern province for a weekend of fishing.” He smiled wistfully and took another sip of coffee. “Anyhow, we were finally talking shop. That guy said they assumed someday it was all going to hit the fan. Russia against us, China against Russia, or just the whole world goes crazy. He then said, and I swear the guy was serious, that when the dust settled and radioactivity cooled off, they would mount up and ride again. Maybe that’s who wins if this unravels any further. John, we are balanced on a razor’s edge. A couple of third-rate powers triggered all of this; I swear that pudgy nutcase in North Korea did it just to see if they could do it. Iran joins in on the plot for whatever it was they used to believe about their hidden imam returning. We allowed them to get their nukes and missiles to hand off to terrorists like ISIS. Damn all who allowed that to happen. Any idiot could see eventually they’d go for us.

  “Anyhow,” he said, sighing wearily and staring into his coffee cup, “I saw the report that where the well is that their imam was supposed to come out of is now a crater a thousand feet deep. Same is true for the cities controlled by the terrorists and all of North Korea. Some vengeance.

  “That’s all moot now as far as you and I are concerned. It happened, and we lost. The job now is to pick up the pieces of what is left and try to reassemble some sort of united front. A United States out of what is left and project outwardly that, though our backs are to the wall, we’re standing again as a united country. If not, we completely cease to exist.”

  There was a long moment of silence, the two friends sipping their scotch-laced coffee, a cold breeze sweeping into the open hangar so that they zipped their parkas back up, while outside the helicopter turbines continued to turn over with a low steady hum.

  John wished he had not accepted the scotch. Never have a drink, even with a once trusted friend, until whatever issue was between them was settled.

  “You’re here to either pull me in or take us out, is that it, Bob?”

  His friend looked over at him and slowly nodded.

  “What exactly is your job now?”

  “Military governor of this entire region. Everything east of the Appalachians from Charlottesville down to the wreckage of what was once Florida. Navy is working the coast; I’m to deal with everything inland.”

  “I assume you know what happened between us and that idiot Fredericks that was sent down here back in the spring.”

  “Yeah. Don’t look at me, John; I had nothing to do with that screwup and the idiotic idea of the Army of National Recovery. Those of us left from the regular military were appalled with that idea. You can’t pull a bunch of kids out of surviving communities where they are needed most right now, throw a weapon in their hands, given them twelve weeks of basic, and send them into hellholes like Chicago, Pittsburgh, or what had once been D.C. or New York City. It was the same kind of stupid thinking about how to fight Vietnam, and remember, I’m old enough to have been in on the tail end of that one. Draftees who barely knew how to wipe their own butts out in the jungle without getting jungle rot or snake bit didn’t stand a chance. Same with the ANR. After that battalion got taken prisoner in Chicago and every last one tortured to death by the gangs running that place, the whole concept was quietly dropped.

  “That’s why what is left of our regular military was pulled back from the face-off with the Chinese and Mexico out west and redeployed here. We got to get things back into a single, unified whole—at least east of the Mississippi. That’s my job now.”

  “Did you send a courier to me by the name of Quentin Reynolds?” John asked.

  “He was a good man.” Bob sighed. “Said he grew up in the area, knew his way around. After we took Roanoke, I wanted to get word to you outside regular channels.” He paused, obviously carefully choosing his words. “Let’s just say that Major Quentin took it upon himself to try to reach you with that and some other things.”

  “What other things, sir?” John asked.

  “Let’s stick to Quentin for now. He left with several others in a Humvee. Did he get through?”

  “He’s dead, Bob. Don’t know about those who came with him. Some of my people found him along Interstate 26, on foot, badly beaten. It is still no-man’s-land up in parts of these mountains, and he met the wrong folks. Only thing one of my men got out of him before he died was that you sent him and wanted to talk.”

  Bob sighed and then stared straight at him. “Obviously, he had some contact to you; otherwise, you wouldn’t have tried to reach me. What exactly did he say?”

  The way Bob spoke the last few words, John could sense his friend was tense. “I never spoke to him directly, sir. He reached an outlying community run by my friend Forrest, the one-armed Afghan vet. They fetched me back to meet him, but Quentin died before I could talk to him.”

  Again silence from Bob.

  “Why him?” John asked. “A trek from Roanoke to here by land, that is damn near suicide, especially at this time of year. Why not just send a message in the clear? You got the air assets.”

  John nodded out to the Black Hawk that, in a profligate display, was still burning precious Jet A fuel.

  “I couldn’t, John.”

  “Why?”

  Bob stood up, downing the last of his coffee and setting the cup on a cluttered workbench next to the dust-covered Aeronca Champ.

  “Because I have orders to kill you. Kill you and either rein this so-called State of Carolina into line or wipe it out.”

  Bob turned his back on John as he spoke, and John wondered if his old friend and mentor did so because he could not look him in the eye as he spoke.

  “John, I would like you to come back to Roanoke with me to talk this thing out further. I promise you no harm will come to you or your community while you are away. I’m asking you to trust me on this.”

  “Is that an order, sir, or a request from a friend?”

  “I’d prefer the latter.” He paused for a moment. “John, I’m doing this as a dark op. No one further up the line knows I’m here talking to you privately. I’m doing this as a favor to a trusted friend. Please come back with me for your own good and that of your community.”

  “And if I say no?”

  Bob sighed and turned back to face John.

  John shifted his focus to the pilots in the chopper. One appeared to be talking, attention focused toward Bob. Had there been some sort of signal? Was something being called in if he refused Bob’s “request”?

  “John, I hate to say it, but I think you can assume I can bring hell down on this place in less than five minutes. I assume that the men who were with you when I landed are some of you
r closest friends and advisors.”

  “They are.”

  “If this goes bad, they will be caught up in it as well.”

  “I know that.”

  “Therefore?”

  John looked into his eyes and could still see his old friend, a commander he respected and would have given his life to protect. Was he really capable of doing this?

  “Why, Bob?”

  “Orders.”

  That left him stunned, and he lowered his head. “I recall an ethics class you personally taught at the War College,” John said softly, voice tinged with sadness. “A code that stated that an officer must refuse an immoral order, even if it meant his career or even his life. Bob, I know you too well to accept that you are—and God forgive me for saying it—only following orders.”

  Bob bristled at the reply and did not speak.

  “I sense this order is one that you yourself have inner questions about, sir.”

  “What the hell do you think?” Bob replied sharply. “An order to either arrest or kill a man I saw as a son, his children substitutes for grandchildren I would never have? Just what the hell do you think?”

  “You know I won’t go with you.”

  “I kind of assumed that.”

  “So I guess this is at an end,” John said, coming to his feet. “It’s your call, Bob, and I’m leaving it to you. You asked me what Quentin had said. And as I just told you, by the time I reached his side, he was dead. But he did spill something beyond the fact that you were alive.” John paused. “At least what he rambled about to my friend Forrest and the nurse trying to save him. Like I said, the poor man was damn near dead when he was found and out of his head.”

  “And he said what?”

  “Something about another EMP.”

  Bob stiffened and broke eye contact.

  “Bob?”

  “John, I’ll ask you one more time. Come back with me to Roanoke. We can talk further then. Bluemont wants you dead. If I’ve got you stashed away in a safe place, believe me, it’s for your own good.”

  “Sir, I’m not going back with you, and if all was reversed, you’d say the same.”

  “Yeah, I assumed it would be thus.”

  “So, what’s next?” John asked. “You’re free to go. I won’t stop you, and you knew that before you even stepped foot off that chopper. You get your people back in, lift off, I tell my people to scatter, and in five minutes, you and I are personally at war. Is that it?”

  Bob did not reply.

  “Kind of like what we read happened at West Point a long time ago, when the superintendent was ordered to hold on charges of treason any cadet or faculty that would not renew the oath of allegiance to the Union. Instead, he told the secretary of war to go to hell and let his old friends and students—now enemies preparing to serve the Confederacy—leave without a fight. Is that it?”

  Bob nodded. “I’ve served my country over forty-five years. If not for this current mess, I was about to retire out, settle down with Linda; she was already picking out a place down on Marco Island, and you know how it is. Old soldier writes a book or two, kills the boredom by fishing, and quietly grumbles how the country continues to go to hell but there is nothing he can do about it. And now, instead, I’m here, freezing my ass off.”

  “Then why did you really come, Bob? Really? Your comment a few minutes back tells me that if I don’t go, you are most likely expected to lift off, and five minutes later, this place is toast. Is that what Bluemont expects?”

  Bob did not reply.

  “So why not do it?”

  “In reply, John, I assume there are at least a few heavy weapons stashed in this hangar and you got extra personnel in a hangar next door to this one. You could hold me hostage and back out. Chances are if I’m taken prisoner, in spite of my orders to hit you even if I am being held, my people would hold back on a strike, allowing you to escape.”

  John sighed, shook his head, and gestured for the general to sit back down by his side. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you, and unless this damn war has twisted you inside out, I know you won’t order a strike on me, at least not like this.”

  “Oh, damn all this shit to hell,” Bob whispered, and with a weary groan, he returned to sit at John’s side. “It’s cold out here, so damn cold.”

  “Yeah, I know.” John emptied the last of the thermos, most into Bob’s cup, the last few drops into his.

  “What did they used to call it? A Mexican standoff or something like that, though I guess that became politically incorrect to say years ago.”

  “Something like that. ‘Mutually assured destruction’ kind of fits better at the moment. Both of us die or both of us walk away.”

  “Stupid, all of it.”

  “You need not tell me, sir. So who ordered me dead?”

  “Bluemont.”

  “Again Bluemont. Can you give me a straight answer?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Just who the hell are they? They claim to be the legitimate government of the United States. Claim line of succession as defined in the Constitution. But who are they really?”

  “They are the government, John. At least that’s something.”

  “How did they survive?”

  “By coincidence, on the day things went down, there was a simulation attack training exercise, with some people evacuated up to the FEMA fallback position, which was the Bluemont facility. You know the president went down while aboard Air Force One. Damn fools in charge had never hardened it to the current level of a high-yield EMP. Congress wasn’t in session, so nearly all those people were scattered around the country. Therefore, the survivors lucky enough to be at Bluemont were it.”

  “You ever meet them or been there?”

  Bob looked down at his coffee, swirling it around in his cup before drinking down the now-tepid brew. “No. I was bounced around after the Day, out west, briefly in Cheyenne Mountain—like I said, out on one of our surviving carriers that for a while served as a joint command center. Then took over assets coming back from the Middle East and the Far East that began to deploy out of what was left of Norfolk with orders cut several months ago to, as I already told you, reestablish control in the southeast. No, I’ve never been there. At least on the inside.”

  “Mind if I ask a few questions, sir?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why keep meeting me a secret? Do your friends in Bluemont know you did this?”

  “Did what?”

  “Came down here like this, based on a somewhat cryptic transmission back and forth? Why didn’t you tell them?”

  “John, to be honest, at the moment, I’m really not sure.”

  “Come on, sir,” John replied sharply. “Do you trust Bluemont?”

  “What?”

  “Just that. You claim you have never met anyone up there face-to-face. Do you trust them?”

  “I trust the Constitution of the United States, which I am sworn to uphold. We have to have something to hang on to. There’s nothing else out there now, John. Bluemont is at least something.”

  “I took the same oath, sir, to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He emphasized the last word, domestic.

  Bob stared at him and finally nodded. “I’m not in the loop on a lot of what is going on. Just rumors—you know how it is—and my focus is the mission to bring this entire region back under control. Your community, what you folks are calling the State of Carolina, is part of that mission.”

  “But you’ve been hearing rumors.”

  Bob nodded in reply.

  “Quentin rambling about an EMP—is that a rumor or fact, and from whom?”

  “John, my entire life I’ve served. I served under some brilliant men in the White House, and yes, some that I thought at best were naïve when it came to the harsh realities of the world and what warfare truly is. And yeah, I served under more than a few I thought were an outright danger to the survival of my country, at least my countr
y as I saw it. But always, in the end, I saluted.

  “I recall Lincoln once declaring that across four years, no president could do ultimate fatal harm to the Republic, and at the end of those four years, the people could vote him out and replace him with someone they thought more capable. Even when I passionately disagreed with a president, I took solace in that and forced myself to salute even when I felt the person I was saluting was unworthy of that. At such moments, I saluted the office and not the person.”

  “EMP, General Scales,” John pressed in, unable to contain the question any further. “Fact or rumor? If fact, by whom and when?”

  “I can’t give you a straight answer.”

  “Because you aren’t sure yourself, or if you are sure, you can’t say?”

  “Damn it, John, don’t press me on this!” Bob shouted back, an action so rare in the past when they served together that it startled John.

  He stared straight into his old commander’s eyes. “I believe you at least suspect something is up. That perhaps I’m even tied into it, directly or indirectly.”

  Bob returned his gaze without blinking.

  “I suspect you are disobeying them right now,” John whispered as if someone might overhear their conversation. “You said you had orders to detain or kill me. But here you are when it would have been just as easy to lure me into this meeting, confirm I was here, and then take this whole place out.”

  Bob stood back up. “I’m freezing. Let’s at least go outside and stamp around a little bit and stretch.”

  John followed him out of the hangar. The glare reflecting off the snow was so intense that John wanted to put on his old scratched sunglasses but decided against it. Sunglasses were often the cheap trick of concealing a man’s eyes—or worse, the way some cops used to wear them to intimidate.

  The air was sharp, crisp puffs of wind kicking up crystals of snow that glimmered and danced in the morning sunlight. If not for the presence of the Black Hawk, the landscape would have been one of peace. It was an unnatural sound now after more than two years of near-total silence with the death of nearly all man-made machines. There were times he missed those sounds, the hum of traffic on the interstate, the near-constant whispering of jets passing high overhead, all the multitude of sounds of an advanced technological world.