April (79 page)

They bounced along, the sun shining through the trees, in a high contrast dappled pattern, that camouflaged the details of the two rut track at their speed. An occasional bump or dip, was only visible in time to brace themselves, or would jar them with no warning at all. The fuel cell power meant they were fairly quiet and had no thermal signature to speak of. The only sound louder than the low hum of the electric motors, was the faint snapping of twigs as they brushed through the narrow path and the occasional rattle of dry gravel, as they crossed bare stretches.

All this was muted by the sealed cab and no bird's call or outside smell, penetrated the filters of the environmental system. They passed an occasional small farm clearing, with broken down fences and abandoned houses or barns. Some of them still had a rusting ground car or two, sitting flush to the ground, tires long rotted away. One house even had an upholstered couch, disintegrating under a sagging porch roof. After a long climb and a couple short dips into shallow hollows, they started on a long downhill grade. The track ended at a heavy wire fence, well hidden in a gulch.

A gate was already unlocked and two men were standing beside it had assault rifles, with grenade launchers slung under the barrels. They both wore disposable paper breathing masks. The guards pushed the gate open wide, as soon as they came into sight. They rolled right through and up a short grade into a large well maintained orchard. The trees were mostly bare of fruit, but rotting windfall apples littered the ground under them. On the other end of the orchard there was a commercial campground, for recreational vehicles and motor homes. Parked a bit away from the other camp sites, to the rear was a large blue motor home, with white vinyl tape graphics swirled down the sides. It had civilian West Virginia plates and travel stickers on the rear window. They pulled up to it and a man with a Captain's insignias came running out and pulled their door open.

"Mr. President, please come inside quickly. We're getting a little fallout from our troubles out west here today and we want you in the filtered air as soon as possible." Hadley looked a bit alarmed at the warning and hustled across to the door and up the three noisy metal steps hanging from the vehicle.

The Captain made a sweeping gesture with his index finger to the other truck, to pull around to the far side of the motor home and it took off around the front of the big RV to position itself between the motor home and the rest of the campground. It was obviously a real working campground, not just a cover.

There were people visible walking in the distance, who did not seem concerned or aware of any fallout and the low sound of music and childish laughter and other activity was faintly heard. There was the smell of smoke in the air and a sharp smell of fermenting apples from the orchard. The two Lieutenants followed the President and the Captain up the stairs into the motor home.

"Mr. President we'll be driving into Charleston and you can decide if you want to stay there overnight, or we have air transport and more security at Yeager field, which can take you wherever you decide to go." The motor home started up. It appeared to have some sort of internal combustion engine, they could feel rumbling through the vehicle although it was very quiet.

"Don't move yet Captain." The President ordered. He looked pretty rough even after Friedman's cleanup efforts and dropped himself hard into one of the big sofas on each side of the motor coach's comfortable main lounge. His shirt was still bloody and his tie gone.

"Sir, we have a certain doctrine to follow, which has been planned out carefully," he protested, but he spoke into a lapel mic and the told the driver to hold a moment. The three of them were still standing in a semi circle before the seated President. Brockman looked at the man that had jumped in the truck with him.

It was the first time he had looked at the man's name tag, over his pocket. It said Friedman. He'd heard him on the radios before. There was another armed officer standing, looking back at them up front by the driver, who was seated with his back to them at the wheel. A flapped holster hung out past the seat edge, by his right leg.

"You'll do what I say, by God, or you'll be in trouble like these two. This man," he said pointing at Brockman, "dragged me out of my office against my will and the other assaulted me too, all the while I was ordering him to desist, as we came here. I have no idea if there are any of my associates alive back there, we could have assisted escape, or if we left documents exposed to capture. I want these traitors shot there," he pointed out the window, "where I can see it happen, before we move anywhere."

"They may have orders, but once I say different, as Commander in Chief I expect to be obeyed when we are under attack. I've sent three Generals off to prison in the last few weeks and I'll be damned if I'm going to put up with a couple snotty Lieutenants disobeying my orders."

Brockman watched the decision play across the Captains face and knew with a chill certainty, what it was before he spoke.

"Lieutenant give me your side arm." He was extending his hand to accept it as he said it. The officer up front was listening to the Captain and starting to walk back to them. He dropped his hand to his holster strap.

Lt. Brockman was fully convinced, he was a dead man if he handed his pistol over. He would be summarily executed outside the window, where the President had pointed out he desired to see it done.

Despite his deep loyalty to his country, he would not submit to being slaughtered over a foolish old man's temper. Despite all the assurances in his training, he knew the Captain had decided to sacrifice them to illegal orders, rather than stand up to a President who was acting like a peevish child. He realized with a sickening feeling the system of law he was sworn to protect had failed, when one old man's word could thrust it all aside.

 None of them had ever seen him run a range course, shooting combat pistol competitively. If the Captain had, he would have never made such a transparent request. The difference in his skill level was not a small incremental advantage. He shot at a level which seemed inhuman to a first time observer. His reflexes were so fast, that on occasion he had been photographed holding the gun on target with the trigger depressed, waiting for the gun to finish cycling, to close the action and fire again.

Once he decided to act there was no doubt of the outcome. He moved without hesitation, drawing his pistol like he would have on cut-out targets at a competition. The training took over completely, blocking conscious thought and the man walking to them from the front, had three holes spaced in the middle of his chest, before the first ejected brass made it to the floor.

The seated driver had a hole through the back of his seat and another just over the seat edge, through his spine high on the shoulders, before the first man had even started to fall visibly. Both died in less than a second.

He shifted his aim and at the same time pulled the extended pistol back closer to him, as the Captain was so close he might reach out and grab the gun, or deflect it. He needn't have worried. The Captain was so startled, he was still in the act of yanking his partly extended hand back, when there was another explosion to Brockman's left and the Captain suddenly acquired a small hole in his forehead, head snapping back.

He almost simultaneously put a single round through the already dead Captain's breastbone, before the mess from the head shot had finished splashing off the wall behind. Turning his head left to look, Lt. Friedman's arm was extended toward the Captain, pistol pointed up in a small incline from the recoil. He stayed frozen in that position while the Captain fell back against the wall behind him and slid down into a sitting position. Brockman did not immediately understand why he froze like that. Then he realized the look of terror on the man's face was directed at him.

"Please don't kill me." Friedman begged. "They were going to execute me too. I've never seen anyone move as fast as you. You tapped out six shots before I could do one. I could never move fast enough to shoot you." The stink of gunpowder and blood was heavy.

Hadley who stayed frozen in his seat for the scant three seconds the shootings took and the twelve long seconds Friedman needed to present his plea to Brockman, made a surprisingly swift dash for the back of the vehicle. He had a big enough adrenaline surge, that even at his age he managed three steps, before a shot from each of the Lieutenants sounded almost as one, catching him between the shoulder blades and throwing him forward on his face.

Friedman looked at that, shaking his head no and slowly put his pistol with the hammer still back up to his temple for a third shot, with a terrible lost look on his face. Brockman cracked him across the wrist with the bottom of his pistol frame and sent his gun clattering to the floor. Surprisingly it didn't go off. Friedman looked at him, clutching his wrist like he couldn't understand why he had been stopped.

"Don't be a fool." He snarled at him. "You didn't save yourself to turn around and die so easily. If we can stay loose for a few weeks or a month, they'll end up giving you a damn medal for this. Everything is falling apart anyway. Have the two in the other truck noticed anything yet?" he asked, peering hard over Friedman's shoulder.

Friedman looked out the deeply tinted window at the other truck, which had escorted them out. It was about fifty meters away and both the occupants were sitting back to them, looking away for danger. The truck was all sealed up with the ventilation going, but the motor home still must be insulated really well for them not to hear the shots. They didn't know the men also had music playing against regulations. He shook his head no.

"This motor home is meant to not look military. So I can't imagine if we just pull away, that they would have been tasked by the Captain to follow in a big camo truck. I don't think he ever had time to give them orders anyway. Can you drive this thing or do you want me to?"

"Damn, you're a cool one." he marveled. "I think you may have busted my wrist, so you drive and I'll dig and see what they have heavier than a couple pistols in the back."

"OK. Do you have any place safe you want to go? I'm from clear out in Montana. There's back country I know out there, but it's really too far."

"Yeah, I have a family friend. He has a hunting cabin up in Maine, near Jackman. He's been too old to use it for a couple years, but he still hangs on to it. I always had it offered as a retreat, if things ever came apart. Well, I guess they have pretty much. I not only know where the key is and his cache buried out back in the hillside, but if we need to we can go into Quebec, with snow shoes or cross country skis later. Plenty of folks would help us up there."

 Brockman pulled the slumped driver out of the seat and decided he didn't have time to clean up the bloody cushions, forcing himself to sit on it with a grimace of distaste. As he pulled away, the radio came on and the two in the parked truck called.

"Sir, if you are through with us, may we proceed back inside the perimeter?"

Brockman stuck his finger deep in the side of his mouth to distort his voice and jammed the mic right against his mouth to answer. "Roger that," was all he said, to give as little a sample of his voice as possible for them to think about. He was sure the deliberate distortion would cover his voice and the standard usage and brevity gave away no hint of regional speech. Besides, he had told them what they wanted to hear.

As he pulled out past the check in and general store for the RV camp, onto the two lane black asphalt, nobody seemed to be concerned with them or following. He called a map up on the dash and started considering how many minutes they had, before the silence from the motor home would start to make someone worry. The bombardment had destroyed so many of the assets charged with tracking and assisting their protection detail, they might be in disarray anyway.

Friedman came up the aisle, looking a little happier than he looked a few minutes ago and carrying two short gray submachine guns, with suppressors and cloth shoulder bags full of ammunition. They had laser sights and folding stocks. He laid them on the carpet between the big luxurious buckets seats.

"There's enough stuff back there to start our own respectable little war," he explained. "We should try to loot some of it, to take to my friend's cabin. There's all sorts of stuff to set up a sensor perimeter, with active defenses besides weapons and explosives. If we can hide or destroy the stuff we don't take, they'll have no idea how we're equipped. I was thinking; when we do dump this, we should get two vehicles and drive separated a bit. They will be looking for two men together and we can take more of the equipment back there, if we have two vehicles."

"That makes sense to me, maybe something like an old pickup, with a load of small trees from a nursery in the bed, hiding the stuff. With everything that's back there, how about some food?" Brockman inquired, not looking away from the narrow road as he drove the huge vehicle. "What do they have back there to eat?"

"I'll go look, but I can't imagine they have enough for weeks or months. My buddy has a cache buried with staples and canned goods behind his cabin and we can hunt to stretch it, until we have to risk buying something in town."

"Fine, but what I mean is right now. I'm a couple hours past lunch and my stomach is growling. Can you see if there are sandwich makings, or whatever back there?"

Friedman looked at the bloody corpse of the driver, dragged back down the aisle and moved his estimate of Brockman's hardness up a couple pegs. He swallowed the sour taste that rose in his throat at the thought of food and decided not to give Brockman any doubts about his own value, as a survival partner.

"Sure. I'll see what I can get us. Be right back."

* * *

Local control at Home, got a call which surprised them. A beautiful, lilting and feminine voice said. "This is His Majesty's Armed Merchant, Mother's Pride, lifting out of Tonga, Kaihau Laulu Master, on approach for Home, requesting clearance to automated dockage for freight transfers and passenger pick-up."