William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

“Can’t they back out of there?” Susan asked.

Larkin shook his head. “Not with that wheel off the ground. If somebody could get a jack under the front .. . or maybe enough guys lifting…” He looked around, then turned the .45 and extended it butt-first toward his wife. “Here, take this.”

“What?” Susan stared at the gun. “I don’t shoot.”

“The safety’s off. All you have to do is point it and pull the trigger. Hold it with both hands if you have to fire it. It’s got a kick to it. And don’t fire it unless you’re absolutely sure you need to.” “Patrick, what are you going to do?”

He opened the door. “See if I can get the way cleared so we can go on. And I’m counting on you to stand guard while I’m doing it.”

Susan looked like she wanted to argue, but Larkin was already out of the SUV. There was a woman behind the wheel of the car that had gone into the culvert, and she had several children in there with her. Larkin turned to the vehicles in line behind him and waved, then pointed to the stuck car and shouted, “Come on! We’ve got to get it out of there!”

For a couple of seconds, nothing happened. Then a few doors swung open and several men climbed out of their vehicles. “Come on!” Larkin called again, and they trotted forward.

Larkin led half a dozen men to the culvert and pointed to where they needed to stand. As they positioned himself, he gestured to the driver for her to roll down the window. She looked like she didn’t want to because she was so shaken and frightened, but after a moment she complied.

“We’re gonna lift on the front end,” Larkin told her. “Watch me, and when I nod, you put it in reverse and give it some gas. Not too much, though. There’s not a lot of room between you and the car behind you. When you’re out of this hole, you can cut your wheels back to the right and ease around it. Understand?”

“I… I think so,” the woman said. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble—”

“It’s okay. Just keep an eye on me. You’ll get out of here.”

Whether that would be enough to save her life and the lives of the kids in the car with her, Larkin had no idea. Like everybody else out here, all the woman could do was hope.

Larkin took his place among the other men, reaching under the car’s bumper and finding a place to grab hold. “Ready?” he asked, and got nods and grunts of acknowledgment. “Lift!”

More grunting as they put their backs into it. Larkin felt his muscles straining and creaking. But the car’s front end came up, and he could tell that both rear wheels were on the ground again. He nodded to the driver.

She was too nervous to follow his advice about taking it easy. She tromped the gas hard, and the car lurched backward, banging heavily into the sedan behind it. The driver of that car, an older guy who hadn’t gotten out to help, opened his door and leaned out to yell, “Hey!”

One of his headlights was broken, but Larkin didn’t figure that was going to matter. He and the other men let go of the car and Larkin checked to make sure the bumpers hadn’t locked. They hadn’t, so he thumped the top of the car a couple of times and told the woman through the open driver’s window, “You’re good to go, lady. Just be careful.”

“Thank you!” she called. She eased forward, missing the edge of the culvert this time.

“What about the damage to my car?” the older man said.

“If that’s all that happens to it,” Larkin said, “consider yourself one lucky bastard.”

Larkin ignored the glare the man gave him and walked back to the SUV while the other men who had pitched in returned to their vehicles. He brushed more glass off the seat and then got in.

Susan heaved a sigh of relief and said, “I was afraid someone would try to jump you while you were out there, Patrick. I… I don’t know if I could have shot anybody.”

“Not even to protect me?” he asked with a grin.

“Well… even if I tried, I don’t know if I could have hit them. I might have shot you instead.”

“Don’t think I didn’t worry about it,” he said as he took the Colt back from her. His smile took any sting out of the words, but there was some truth to what he said. He really should have insisted that she go to the range with him more often.

The slow procession rolled on.

There was plenty of news on the radio, of course, but at the same time, there was no news. Nobody seemed to know anything about what was going to happen. The South Korean army and air force had tried to strike back against the North, resulting in an all-out war between the two countries, but from what Larkin could gather, the nuclear strike had been such a crippling blow that South Korea wouldn’t be able to muster much of a fight. It was likely the “war” would be over in a day or two.

What worried Larkin was the tone of everything the Russians said. The statements had a threatening stridency to them, as if the U.S. had already declared that it was going to attack North Korea and the Russians were foaming at the mouth to jump in. Washington’s official stance was that the “incident” was “still under investigation.” As with any crisis, the administration wanted to pretend to investigate until the problem went away on its own. With the attitude coming from the Russians, though, Larkin had his doubts about this one going away.

As they started slowly down a hill, Susan pointed and said, “I can see the gate up ahead!”

So could Larkin. The entrance to the Hercules Project was about a quarter of a mile away now, close enough that they could walk the rest of the way if they had to. Part of him wanted to climb out now and start in that direction, figuring they could move faster on foot.

But they had quite a few bags, including the gun bags, and he didn’t want to load Susan down with any more of a burden, for any farther, than necessary. So they stayed where they were for the moment, with the SUV rolling forward a foot or two at a time.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they were just about even with the gate. Larkin could see Graham Moultrie’s Jeep parked on the other side but no sign of Moultrie himself. The man had to be somewhere close by, though. Larkin couldn’t imagine that Moultrie would be anywhere else under these circumstances. The project was the man’s baby. He would want to protect it and see that everything functioned the way it was supposed to.

“Good enough,” Larkin said. He turned the wheel to the left and ran the SUV out onto a grassy, fairly level spot clear of the shoulder so others could get by. “Let’s get the gear.”

He stepped out of the vehicle and holstered the .45 on his right hip where he had clipped its holster earlier. Susan got out of the other side and joined him at the back of the SUV. Larkin opened it and started taking out the bags, slinging the heavier ones on his shoulders and handing the lighter ones to her.

“Are we just going to leave the car here?” she asked.

“It’s no good to us in there,” he said. “If nothing happens, maybe we can retrieve it later. If it’s gone, well, I’ll trade a stolen SUV for the world being safe.”

“You’re right. There are a lot of things it just doesn’t make sense to worry about anymore, aren’t there?”

“Almost everything,” Larkin said.

They were both pretty weighed down when they started across the road toward the gate, stepping between the barely moving cars. Larkin hurried them along as much as he could, wishing there were some way they could do this without drawing attention to the gate that was their destination.

No one tried to stop them. The AR-15 he carried, the. 45 on his hip, and the grim look on his face probably had a lot to do with that. But it was inevitable that someone would notice him and Susan, and sure enough, he heard somebody shout, “Hey! Where are those two going?”