(Wrath-06)-Smoke & Dust (2012) Read online

  “So, sir, what do you say?” Bono pressed. “Please, it would only take a few minutes to fly us to one of the Air Force bases around Washington, D.C. It would take us a week, maybe longer, to walk, the way things are right now. It’s turning crazy quickly, you surely know that, and this may be our only chance. We’ve been gone an awfully long time, sir.”

  The colonel walked to the window and looked out on the flight line as he thought. “Do you have any idea how dear these helicopters are right now? They are literally the only transportation left inside the District. I’ve got my pilots flying twenty hours a day and we’re not even close to keeping up. Now you want me to what, gin up a sortie so a couple Special Forces soldiers can go home and see their families?”

  Bono shook his head at Sam and raised an eyebrow. It doesn’t look good, his frown said.

  The colonel stood in silence. Sam fidgeted nervously. Bono watched the colonel’s back.

  “I’ve been flying some critically important missions,” the colonel continued. He thought another moment and then added, “But some of it is bogus. Yesterday I had to fly some congressional staff out to one of the bunkers in West Virginia. Bunch of snot-nosed college kids. They couldn’t have explained the difference between national security and a security blanket, but they are so critical to the survival of our nation that we had to get them out there. I’ve got senators’ wives demanding to be taken home to mama, some pukes down at the DNC—the Democratic National Committee, for pity’s sake—demanding we get them out of town.”

  Bono cracked a smile.

  “And you want me to take a couple grunt lieutenants down to Langley just so they can try to hitch a ride. A couple guys whose only excuse is that they’ve been living in the desert for the past twenty-four months, eating snakes and burying themselves in the sand to get away from the heat. Senators’ wives or you two pukes? Now, who do you think I should put as my priority?” The colonel turned around.

  Bono looked him in the eye. “Us, sir?” he said.

  “Dang straight there, lieutenant. It’d be an honor to help.”

  Bono grinned. “Really sir?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” the colonel answered indignantly. “After what you guys have been through, it’s the least I can do. Believe me, guys, I would rather fly this mission than almost anything else I’ve done in the past week.”

  “Thank you sir,” Sam said.

  The colonel turned toward them. “You do realize, I hope, that it’s extremely unlikely it’s going to do you any good anyway. No flights are going in or out of Andrews; the radiation levels are still too high. Now, we can get you down to Langley, but what are the chances the Air Force is going to be able to help you? It’s not like they’re scheduling regular service down to Memphis.” He turned to Sam. “And you don’t even know where you want to go.”

  Neither of the younger officers said anything.

  “I could make a pretty strong argument that the best thing you could do is stay here. We can take care of you. You could help us,” the colonel said.

  The soldiers immediately shook their heads. “No sir,” Bono said. “Thanks for the offer, and it might turn out that you’re right, but we’ve got just two weeks, and this might be our only opportunity. Who knows how long it will be until our unit cuts us loose again? Months? More likely years. We’ve got to try to get there while we have the chance.”

  The colonel nodded. “Oh, to be so young,” he muttered wistfully.

  Sam cocked his head toward Bono. “If you saw his wife, sir,” he said with a sly grin, “believe me, you’d understand.”

  “Got it,” the colonel laughed.

  “No, sir, you really have to see her. Go on, Bono, show him some of your pictures.” He smiled teasingly at the colonel. “I’m telling you, sir, he’s got the cutest little kid in the world. Go on and show ’im, Bono.”

  “I’m not going to show him—”

  “Come on, don’t be humble.”

  “There’s no reason,” the colonel broke in. “You don’t have to convince me, OK.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bono said, shooting a deadly look toward Sam. Sam smiled again and shrugged.

  The colonel walked back to his desk, calling to his aide. “Specialist Anderson, get in here.”

  The office door pulled back.

  “What’s the schedule on our Hueys?” the colonel asked.

  “We’ve got two birds flying medical and rescue teams back and forth to the mobile hospitals. Four birds have been requested to ferry some surviving congressional staff out to Mount Weather. Our last scheduled sortie before nightfall is a bird heading up to CIA headquarters. Scheduled takeoff is 2000 hours.”

  “OK. Tell the pilots I want them to take off early and run these guys down to Langley before they head up to the CIA.”

  The army specialist hesitated. “Langley, sir? As in Langley Air Force Base, not CIA headquarters, Langley?”

  “Yes, that is right.”

  “Sir, that’s a forty-minute flight.”

  “I know that, Specialist Anderson.”

  “With all the birds we already have committed, not to mention our fuel situation, sir, do you really think that’s wise?”

  “I don’t know, Specialist Anderson, I’m not that wise. But wise or not, I think you ought to leave command decisions up to the boss.”

  The specialist nodded and left the room. The two young soldiers stood up and thanked the colonel with a shake of their hands.

  “Bono?” the colonel questioned as he and Sam moved toward the door. “Like what, the Korean running shoes?”

  Bono stopped and turned around. “That’s it, sir. Twenty bucks. They’ll last forever.”

  “Sure, sure, I had a pair myself. Picked ’em up at Osan. Not much of a nickname, though. Like being called Nike or Reebok or white-tennis-shoe guy or something.”

  “I’ve heard many worse,” Sam broke in.

  “How’s that?” the colonel asked.

  “Well, sir, for example, roughly translated the Persian word parvân means pretty butterfly. As a call sign, I think that would be a whole lot worse than Bono.”

  Colonel Parvan snorted, then laughed, walking them to the door. “Good luck, guys,” he said.

  The soldiers walked down the hall.

  The colonel watched them and then added quietly, “Get on home and see your families. It might be the last time that you see them in a very long time.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Sam and Bono found themselves tucked inside the back of an old Huey UH-1 helicopter. The noise and vibration made it impossible to talk as the helicopter lifted off from Davidson Army Airfield and headed south. Behind them, through the sunset haze and smoke, Sam could see a huge, irregular circle that changed in hue from brown to gray to black as it got closer to the center of the nuclear blast. A mile square, the scene went from broken buildings to torn-up buildings to steel frameworks jutting out of the ground to nothing but a blackened circle of dust and ash. He turned away and closed his eyes, knowing he was looking at his father’s grave.

  Forty minutes later, the helicopter set up for its final approach into Langley. As they descended from 500 feet, Bono pushed the cabin doors back.

  Langley Air Force Base, Headquarters, Air Combat Command, was situated on a jut of land that extended into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The enormous runway ran east and west, with most of the aircraft parking on the south. Two taxiways led north, one to the alert fighter facilities, one extending farther through the trees toward a NASA test facility. Trees, bushes, and several small rivers and inlets from the Chesapeake Bay surrounded the base. As the helicopter slowed, Sam noticed that the main road had been blocked with portable cement barricades. Humvees and guard posts lined both sides of the access road. It looked more like Iraq than America, and he found it hard to draw his eyes away from the soldiers manning the gates, knowing that foreign fighters weren’t the primary security concern anymore. He thought of the scene in Washington, D.C., the cha
os they’d experienced back on I-495, then turned in his seat to look down at the center of the base. The aircraft parking ramp was crammed with dozens and dozens of aircraft: air refueling tankers, C-130 tactical freighters, C-141, C-5, and C-17 airlifts, F-15 fighters, contract airline carriers, and white C-21 VIP transports.

  Sam nodded toward the crowded parking ramp. “You ever seen so many aircraft?” he shouted above the noise.

  Bono shook his head. “Looks like half of our air force.”

  “No. Not even close. But that is a bunch of aircraft, lots more than I’ve ever seen here before.”

  The helicopter turned east and set down on the VIP helicopter pad outside of Base Operations. A red sidewalk had been painted on the tarmac from the center of the helipad to the front door of Base Ops. The two soldiers stepped out of the old helicopter, grabbed their gear, and walked quickly, heads lowered, toward the building where a large sign was positioned over the door:

  “Welcome to Langley Air Force Base Home of the 1st Fighter Wing”

  They walked in, dropped their gear against the wall, and looked around. Offices left and right. A flight planning room down the hall, which would contain all the charts, maps, regulations, notices to airmen, and other pilot information required to plan a local or international flight. The weather shop was around the corner; off to the right, farther on, were a crew lounge and small cafeteria. The building was packed. Twenty or thirty pilots moved here and there, intent on their work. Sam noticed the different unit patches on their shoulders: C-141 crews from Washington and Germany; C-17 crews from South Carolina; tanker crews from Oklahoma, Japan, and Maine; aircraft and aircrews from all around the world. The place smelled like sweat and Chinese food, and had a certain sense of urgency that came only with war. The two army soldiers moved toward the crew lounge and stopped.

  “OK,” Sam said, “what now?”

  “I don’t know,” Bono answered. “Haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “My plan is a good one. And it’s really all we have.”

  Bono hesitated. He was clearly not convinced.

  “What else you going to do?” Sam pressed. “None of these aircrews or airplanes are going to take you down to Memphis. There’s not even an Air Force base down there. And remember, with my plan, we don’t have to ask them to land anywhere—which ain’t going to happen, friend. But get them to divert a little, you know, just turn a couple degrees and fly for thirty minutes, that’s a doable thing. Get us close, just fly over, and we can take it from there.”

  Bono turned to him, frustrated. “You don’t even know where you’re going. Your family couldn’t have made it to Salt Lake before the EMP went off. You’ve got the entire country lying there before you. How you going to find them? What is your plan?”

  Sam shook his head. He didn’t know. Bono watched him, then turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but it’s a real problem, Sam.”

  “I know that.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to—”

  “Look, Bono, I don’t know, OK? I mean, everything has happened pretty quickly. It’s only been a day.”

  Bono sucked his teeth, then turned away. “I’m going to talk to the guys at the Operations Center and see what sorties they’ve got heading southwest.” He turned and walked toward the center of the building where an elevated platform had been built.

  Sam waited, then went into the mission planning room with its lines of charts and maps, bulletins posted on the walls, notices of airport and airspace closures from all around the world, and a bunch of other things he didn’t understand. He paid it all no attention as he walked to the back of the room where a huge map of the United States had been mounted on the wall. He studied it. Langley Air Force Base was on the tip of Virginia—hard to go farther east without getting wet. The entire nation lay to the west, thousands and thousands of miles. Eight states between Salt Lake City and Langley. A dozen major cities. A thousand smaller towns. Two mountain ranges. The great, barren plains. Half a dozen major rivers.

  How would he ever find them? How could he possibly know where they were!

  He located I-70, the main highway heading west from Washington, D.C., and traced it with his finger, following its course through Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana—still only a fourth of the way to Utah. Such a long, long way to go.

  And just two weeks to find them.

  He shivered.

  Who was he kidding? His family could be anywhere along a highway that extended for more than two thousand miles. They could have taken I-80 farther north or any one of a dozen highways to the south.

  He took a breath and sighed, his shoulders slumping as he thought. Bono was right. He wouldn’t find them. There wasn’t any hope.

  * * *

  The man entered the room quietly. Sam didn’t notice him until he was standing at his side; then Sam turned, looking at the man’s profile as the stranger also considered the large map on the wall. Sam wanted to turn away but couldn’t, for there was something about the stranger that seemed out of place. For one thing, he wasn’t wearing a uniform, just a white shirt and tan slacks, making him one of the very few civilians in the building. His blond hair was cut short and he was tall and thick-chested. Some kind of security badge hung around his neck and Sam glanced toward it, trying to figure out who he was.

  The man turned toward him and smiled so warmly that Sam couldn’t help but smile back. “How you doing?” the stranger asked.

  “Pretty good,” Sam replied.

  The man nodded, then leaned against a large table in the middle of the room.

  Sam watched him a moment before turning back to the wall. They stood in silence as Sam studied the map.

  “Are you the fellow who’s looking for his family?” the stranger asked.

  Sam looked around, then nodded. “You must have talked to Bono?”

  “Bono? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Lieutenant Calton. The other army officer I came in with.”

  The man didn’t answer.

  Sam shrugged, his eyebrows furrowing. The stranger looked at him and smiled again. Dark eyes, determined, almost piercing, gracious and comfortable. Sam felt an instant affection, almost a drawing to the stranger. “Sir, how did you know about my family?” he asked respectfully. Something about the stranger seemed to demand his deference.

  The man thrust his hands into his pockets. “Go to Chicago, Sam.” He stepped forward and pointed with his finger, tapping the map. “Stay on the south side of the city. You will know what to do.”

  Sam’s eyes were drawn to the map. “Sir, what are you talking about?”

  “Listen to me, Samuel Brighton.”

  Sam hesitated, almost afraid to answer. “Chicago? Why Chicago? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Trust me, Sam. Chicago. They will be waiting. You have to save their lives.”

  “I can’t go to Chicago. I have to find my family. I don’t even know what you’re talking—”

  He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Bono burst into the room, running toward him. “Come on,” he almost shouted. “I got us a ride!”

  The stranger looked at Sam intently, reached out and patted him on the shoulder, then turned and walked out of the room. Bono paid the man no attention as he ran toward his friend. “Come on, man, we don’t have much time.” He was flushed and excited, his backpack already on his back.

  “What is it? What you got?”

  “There’s a C-141 heading down to Little Rock. They don’t have much room, but I talked to the loadmaster and he’ll get us on—”

  “Little Rock, are you kidding? Man, that’s perfect! You’d only be, what, I don’t know, but not too far from Memphis!”

  “Yeah, but it’s leaving right now. I mean right now! The aircraft is out on the ramp, the engines running. They’ve got a hard takeoff time and they can’t let it slip or t
hey’ll be here for six hours waiting for another slot. We’ve got to go. I’ve got to go! I’ve got to take this, Sam!”

  Sam hesitated, shooting another glance toward the map. “I understand. This is great. Go on! Go and get it.”

  Bono didn’t move. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam stepped aside, looking toward the doorway, but the stranger was gone.

  “Come with me, Sam. Come with me now. Come down, spend some time with my family. My wife would love to have you. And I could use your help.”

  Sam slowly shook his head. “I can’t do that, Bono. Dude, I’ve got my own family, my mom and my two brothers.”

  “Stick with me, Sam. You’re never going to find them. Not like this! Not the way things are right now. Luke and Ammon, they’re no dummies. They’ll take care of your mom.”

  Sam thought, then turned away. He paced, his lips tight with worry, the words echoing in his head. “Go to Chicago. They will be waiting for you. You have to save their lives.”

  Bono watched him, confused, then spread his arms toward the map. “Look, Sam, I understand what you’re thinking, but you’ve got to be realistic, OK? You’ve got to consider the very real possibility that you might not be able to find your family right now. I don’t need to remind you what is happening out there. I don’t need to tell you just how difficult, no, Sam, how impossible this is going to be. You can’t travel. You’ve got no transportation. You don’t even know where you’re going!” Bono was almost shouting now, his voice rising with frustration. “Come with me. Come to Memphis. This might be our only chance.”

  Sam took a step toward him. “I just can’t do that, Bono.”

  Bono took a breath and held it, then slowly let it out. “All right, then.” He glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got to go, Sam. He gave me five minutes, not a second more.”

  Sam paced again and then stopped, his face scrunched tight.

  “What’s your plan, Sam? I need to know.”