Standing the Final Watch Page 8

  “Steeple said there’s a site out west in Arizona, but there was no way for two such senior Army officers to pay a visit there. Too many eyes in the sky. He’s right. Satellite facial recognition has gotten too sensitive, and too many people know his whereabouts. He can disappear for short periods, but no more than ten or twelve hours.”

  “You’re putting an awful lot of faith in a man you once despised for betraying his country.”

  “I don’t think so. The op is real enough. I saw the frozen bodies, lots of them. I saw the equipment storage, the security protocols, everything. None of that was faked for my benefit, if that’s what you’re getting at. And I read the classified reports on what the computers think will take us down and when. It’s not a pretty picture. We’re already seeing escalation in the terrorist war, all the attacks in France, Orlando, California, Tahoe… and the American people are no closer to being motivated to win this war than they were ten years ago.”

  “So you’re really going through with this?” Fleming said.

  “I am. There’s nothing left for me here, Norm. I hope you can understand that. Everything just seems so… temporary, so transient. Except for you, everything and everybody I’ve ever cared about is gone. Nothing I do here seems to matter any more, but maybe I can make a difference in the future. Maybe there will be a time when we can start over again.”

  “There’re plenty of fights left in the here and now. And I can’t believe you’re letting those snipers get away with taking shots at you.”

  “That’s a neo-Stalinist group Steeple knew about, said they’ve targeted me for a while, but none of them have combat experience.” Angriff shook his head. “That’s why it was such a botch. They needed a high-profile action but couldn’t pull it off. As for the rest of it, those fights are for other people now. There’s too much sadness for me here, too much anger. I’d spend the rest of my life killing scumbags during the day and drinking myself to sleep at night. I’d be fighting for a country that has lost the will to win.”

  Fleming drained the bottle and wished he’d brought a third. He couldn’t argue with his friend’s last point. “So why tell me? You were already dead as far as I knew. Why fly me all this way just to explain yourself? Hell, from my standpoint, the other way was cleaner. I was already into stage four.”

  “Eh?”

  “Bargaining. I promised God all kinds of stuff if they could find you alive somehow.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d go to church more and drag you with me, try to get you to quit cussing so much… hell, I don’t know.”

  “Sounds like you owe him a few promises.”

  But Fleming had known Angriff too long. After two beers in the warmth of the waning day, with water lapping at the shore a few feet away, he had almost forgotten his friend’s modus operandi.

  Almost.

  “You haven’t answered my question yet.”

  “Which one? You ask a lot of questions, Norm. It’s what you do best.”

  “Why tell me about this? Why not just let me keep thinking you’re dead?”

  “Yeah, about that. I am the sum total of my friends and family. Without them in my life I’m nothing. So it’s pretty simple. I have no more family, and you’re my closest friend. I want you to come with me.”

  Section 2

  Chapter 8

  I walked the road of glory

  And I strode that road alone,

  None will know my story,

  And the sun will bleach my bones.

  Found carved into a stone in the Superstition Mountains

  June 17th, 59 years later, 1311 hours

  The broken ground of the Sonoran desert soaked up the heat of the midday sun. As the desert floor warmed it began to heat the air close to the surface, which then caused that air to expand and grow lighter. The lighter air rose in bubbles of warmth called atmospheric convection, better known as thermals, rising higher until the temperatures of the air surrounding the bubbles became cooler, causing them to sink again and create updrafts. On that blazing hot day the cooling effect did not occur until the warm air had risen high into the atmosphere.

  Wheeling high on those thermals, a prairie falcon sensed the subtle changes in air temperatures and stayed in the updrafts, using the energy of the warm air to provide the lift under its great wings and keeping it where it could see for miles in every direction. After a fruitless search it banked off south in search of better hunting.

  The humans below knew nothing of convection, except for the heat they felt rising from the dry soil, like standing over an open fire. Twenty-three people worked the rows where tiny green shoots pushed into daylight, eight women riding herd on fifteen children. For them, life began and ended in patches of hard-scrabble dirt never meant to sustain crops. Escape existed in dreams, not real life. They lived daily with no shade, no rest, and very little food. Crops had first priority for water, guards came second, and slaves tilling the soil were allowed just enough to keep them working during the day’s two breaks. And for one of the women, not even then; most of her water she gave to her children, keeping a bare minimum for herself.

  Her dark skin had burned darker than the soil she scraped with a hoe, and the summer sun burnt through more layers of skin, almost roasting her alive, but if her masters did not care, neither did she. Her personal condition had no relevance. No matter how much she bled from cuts and cracked skin, no matter if her vision blurred from too much heat and too little water, her thoughts never left her children working the soil beside her. She had to protect them any way she could, and that meant staying on her feet no matter what happened. If she fainted or collapsed she risked being declared unfit to work, and those unfit to work were dead weight on the Caliphate. Precious resources would not be spent on unproductive infidels, and so she kept working when others would have dropped.

  “Mama, I’m thirsty,” said Elena, her eight year old.

  “I know, sweetie,” she said, trying to moisten her lips without success. “But you’ve got to be a big girl and keep working. They will give us water soon.”

  “How long?”

  “Soon.”

  Her eldest daughters, twins with fair skin burned red, had grown old enough to understand the situation. They kept working and said nothing, but sometimes glanced at the guards who watched them as they bent over to work. The older they grew, the nearer they came to being snatched like their older sister had been one morning, and taken to the city, where female infidels served the Caliphate as slaves to satisfy the urges of the faithful. She would never know what become of her daughter.The girl’s name had been Mary, a name the Sevens hated, and she had just turned thirteen when they took her.

  The twins would be twelve on their next birthday.

  She spent most of each day silently praying to God to save her family, pleading with Him to at least let her know why He had abandoned them. So far she had resisted all pressures and remained true to the religion of her birth, yet her loyalty had brought only more pain and misery. Then, realizing she questioned the will of God, she would spend more time apologizing for doubting His wisdom. God’s kingdom existed elsewhere, not in this world, so if she and her daughters needed to suffer on Earth to achieve salvation, then so be it.

  The sun climbed high and at length the slaves got a rest. They gulped their meager water ration and then curled up in balls to hide from the omnipresent sun. The mother huddled her three girls beside her and attempted to shield them from the sun with her wilted body, giving them blessed relief, even if only for a moment. The guards watched every move, making jokes when someone stumbled, or leering at a torn blouse. They could not touch the children, but nobody cared what they did with the older women, as long as they kept working.

  The balls of hot air floating skyward distorted vision and gave the desert floor a shimmering effect. High overhead, a falcon glided in slow figure eights, making its way west. Adjusting his binoculars, Major Dennis Tompkins watched the four guards kick at the women and ch
ildren crumpled in the dust, as they had done the previous five days. Break time was over. He watched, grinding his teeth, as one of the guards hauled a woman to her feet and stuck his hand down her skirt.

  Tompkins knew the scenario. He and his men lay behind a low ridge five hundred yards from the corn fields. A narrow road skirted the ridge on his right and ran past the field and into the distance, its surface pitted and holed but still navigable. They had one working truck and he knew they could never fit twenty-odd women and girls, plus him and his men, into that one truck.

  But the guards had two trucks parked under the lee of the ridgeline on the other side of the valley, and if he and his men could seize those that would change everything.

  The women had once been part of a larger settlement a hundred miles to the north, a place dubbed Roundup by its inhabitants. Over the years Tompkins and his men had often stopped there for news. It provided a safe haven for free men and their families, survivors of the old United States who still flew a ragged American flag over their compound. They kept alive the dream of a nation where liberty allowed them to say what they felt and worship as they pleased.

  Roundup had kept a wary eye on the growing threat to the south, the Caliphate of the Seven Prayers of the New Prophet, and through them Tompkins had also been aware, but he could do little to stop the caliphate’s spread. At its most numerous, Tompkins’ command had numbered just over one hundred men, remnants of this or that American military unit covering all five branches of the armed forces, including one from the Coast Guard. Most had had no training as combat infantry and learned from brutal experience

  Now, his surviving command consisted of himself and five others, four of whom had been with him since The Collapse. Six old men, they’d sought out Roundup because they had grown too old to wander the western United States looking for any more survivors. But they found only the devastation left behind by the dreaded Sevens, the Caliphate’s raiders. Not one building had been left intact and anything worth looting had been taken. The tattered American flag they found in the mud.

  The noonday sun scorched the desert. Tompkins waved for his company sergeant, John Thibodeaux. The small Cajun scrambled up the ridge, minimizing loose gravel and dirt in his wake. With caution tempered by long years of hiding from enemies, he took the binoculars from Tompkins and eased his head until he could see over the crest of the hill.

  “Tell me what you see,” Tompkins said.

  Thibodeaux inspected the tableau spread before him. Minutes dragged by and Thibodeaux wiped sweat from his eyes several times before he lowered his head and slid down a few feet from the crest.

  “It ain’t good, Skip. If we’s goin’ in, we’d best be doin’ it.”

  Tompkins grimaced. They were old men now, all of them, old and slow. Their truck had even more years on its chassis than any of them did. Almost five hundred yards separated them from the women, and if the guards suspected a rescue they would start shooting, and that would be that.

  Tompkins put his hand on Thibodeaux’s shoulder. “Tell the boys to pack up and get ready.”

  “We goin’ need them trucks.” Thibodeaux indicated the vehicles parked so the guards could sit in their shadows. “Cain’t get ever’body in this one ole truck.”

  “I know.”

  The six men moved in silence, their movements precise and efficient. Everything had a place: the tents, cooking gear, and other necessities had their own nooks in, under, and on top of their World War Two era truck. They checked their weapons and took their battle stations on board, with Tompkins in the cab and Thibodeaux driving. Wilson, Zuckerman, Hausser, and Tandy sat in the back, ready to jump out and start firing.

  Clumps of weeds grew through long cracks in the road’s pavement, and the old M35 deuce and a half truck bounced and slid as Thibodeaux avoided pot holes. His grip on the wheel tightened. Sweat rolled into Tompkins’ eyes. The salt burned and he used a dirty rag to wipe his and Thibodeaux’s foreheads. Hopefully the guards would think them friends returning from a mission, but the slow pace gave the guards a lot of time to examine them. If they opened fire before Tompkins’ men could deploy, none of them would survive.

  “Speed it up,” Tompkins said.

  “I don’t know, Skip,” Thibodeaux said. “We hit a big ole hole and we might break an axle.”

  “We’ve gotta take that chance.” Tompkins shifted the M16 in his lap.

  Less than two hundred yards separated them before the one of the guards looked their way. Thibodeaux stuck his left hand out the driver’s window. The guard waved back. The other three did not react, as if the heat had sucked the life out of them.

  Thibodeaux stopped between the guard on duty and the three guards lounging in the trucks’ shade. The one on duty slung his rifle and walked into the dust cloud around the cab. When he stopped beside the truck, Thibodeaux put the barrel of his .45 between the man’s eyes and pulled the trigger. The back of his head exploded, spattering blood and brains on the ground.

  Tompkins shot another guard. His men jumped from the back and finished off the other two. None made it to his feet.

  The girls and women began to scream and ran, scattering.

  “No!” yelled Thibodeaux, stepping down and waving his arms. “We’re friends! Friends!”

  “Monty, you and Sig collect anything of value, especially guns and ammo,” Tompkins said, rifling the pockets of the man he’d killed. Finding a small bag of corn biscuits, he stuffed them in his pants pocket. “Paul, Derek, you guys help John get those girls in the trucks. I’m going to see if I can get them started.” With the caliphate’s poor maintenance, it wasn’t a given.

  They scrambled through the dust clouds. Voices, wheedling, angry, placating, drifted to him, drowned by the cough of the first truck starting up. Tompkins left it idling and climbed into the second one; it started, too, thankfully. When he climbed down, the women and girls were half loaded. A lean, haggard woman, her arms sheltering a pair of adolescent twins and a younger girl, stared at him from beside the first truck’s rear bumper.

  “Skip!” Thibodeaux yelled, cupping his hands to be heard over the rough engines. “We got company!”

  Tompkins turned and Thibodeaux pointed down the road. Perhaps a mile away a dust cloud boiled along the ridge. “Damn,” he said. “Ma’am, I need you to get these children into the truck and do it now. Please.”

  She nodded. “You were sent by God,” she said. Her tone was not questioning; it was a definitive statement. “I asked Him to save my girls and he sent you.” Then she turned and lifted the younger child into the back.

  Two vehicles approached, not one, and it took time to turn the three trucks around. Before they got on the road that led to the highway, the newcomers came in rifle range. Tompkins waited for them to open fire, or pursue, but instead they pulled over to check on the guards.

  It gave them a chance. The Sevens feared darkness as if the demons of Hell lurked in the shadows, waiting to drag them to Satan’s court. If they could elude pursuit until sunset, they had a good chance of getting away altogether. And even in darkness they could drive on.

  “All right,” he said to Thibodeaux. “We caught a break. Now get us the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 9

  The sky above me sparkled red as I sped down a broken road,

  The sky behind me faded to black as I hauled my precious load;

  In the fading light and dust of my wake, came men who wanted me dead.

  But I let them see they don’t scare me, and they will die instead.

  “The Ballad of the Last Six Men,” Anonymous

  two hours later

  The walkie talkie crackled to life. By that alone Tompkins knew it wasn’t good news; batteries could not be replaced, and even rechargeable ones could only be used so many times. Only emergencies justified draining them by using the walkie-talkies.

  “Bad news, Skip,” Hausser said from the rearmost truck. “We’ve got company, maybe two miles back. A lot of company. It lo
oks like a dust storm back there.”

  “Thanks, Paul. Out.”

  He and Thibodeaux exchanged glances.

  “We can outruns them til it gets dark.”

  “If they catch us on this road, we’re dead.” Tompkins rubbed his face, remembering. “But maybe…”

  “Gots to decide soon, Skip. The road of life is paved with flat squirrels.”

  “Keep us ahead while I think.”

  Less than an hour later, when a rocket exploded one hundred yards to their right, Tompkins knew they had run out of time. The truck slammed into a pothole and veered left, toward an arroyo, before Thibodeaux jerked it back onto the highway. Sweat rolled down his face and dripped from the white stubble on his chin. Screams came from the back, where the women and children had nothing to hold onto except each other. In the passenger seat Tompkins tried to blink away the shimmer in his vision caused when his head struck the dash.

  Ahead, the broken road stretched due west into the setting sun. Behind, dozens of vehicles closed in on them, each filled with angry men who wanted to kill them. To either side, empty desert between distant ridges. A prairie falcon flapped out of the path of the speeding truck, abandoning a wounded rabbit on the pavement.

  Hot air poured into the cabin from the searing heat outside. Tompkins leaned out the passenger’s window, peering around, and banged his head on the window frame when they hit another hole. Somewhere out there he remembered an old Army training ground that might be defensible, a place where they might at least make a stand, but the swirling dust made it impossible to see.

  Craning his neck back out the window while shielding his eyes with his left hand, he sought the landmarks to indicate they were close, blinking against the dust and dirt whipping into his eyes. Before The Collapse, Tompkins had been executive officer of a rifle company that participated in war games in that part of Arizona. Somewhere in the area, the Army had flattened a small plateau to act as a combined observation point, brigade headquarters, and field hospital. It was several hundred feet above the desert floor, where flies, mosquitoes, dust, and other pests could be better controlled. A dirt ramp had been constructed leading up to the plateau, wide enough and strong enough to handle large military vehicles. He remembered because he drove the CO’s Humvee up that ramp with an injured man in the back. He recalled the plateau walls being jagged and vertical.