William Forstchen - The Final Day

“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 country 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.