William Forstchen - The Final Day

Bluemont was far behind them now, and Gettysburg sixty miles farther on—as Bob adroitly put it, a few days’ march away for Robert E. Lee. Site R was not much more than six miles away from where they now stood and clearly visible from Gettysburg’s Little Round Top.

“Site R was built back in the early 1950s,” Bob began, and John smiled. It was almost like the start of one of his lectures delivered at the War College.

“It was built as the fallback position for the Pentagon and civilian government in case of nuclear war. At the time it was built, the thinking was that the commies”—he paused with an ironic smile—“excuse me, I mean our good friends the Russians, if they launched an attack, it would come in with bombers, and we’d have six to eight hours’ advance warning. So the military decided they needed a bunker, a damn big bunker to house upward of twenty-five thousand personnel. It had to be far enough away from D.C. not to be caught in the blast radius of a twenty-megaton warhead and the resulting fallout, but close enough that it could be reached by ground within two hours, by air within twenty minutes.

“Thus Site R. That’s why a modern four-lane highway was built from D.C. to Frederick, Maryland, back in the 1950s. Convenient as well that, with Eisenhower as president, it was damn near in his backyard with his farm just down there on the other side of Seminary Ridge. Whenever things were looking hairy, Ike could always just go to his farm for a while without triggering a panic and be just a few minutes away from the biggest shelter in the country. Same with Camp David less than five minutes’ air time away from here.”

As he spoke, almost like a tour guide, he pointed to the west, but for the moment the snow squalls obscured the view.

“All the times I was visiting here, I never knew about it,” Lee offered.

“Well, it was kind of a secret that wasn’t a secret. Impossible to hide something like that, not like some of the sites out west. It’s just we never talked about it, even with officers getting trained up at Carlisle just thirty miles from here.

“Anyhow, work crews that had been drilling all the tunnels for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, coal miners from the fields north of here, a couple of thousand of them were brought in and hollowed out an entire mountain. I’ve been in it. You go down half a mile deep, a regular three-lane highway, and come out into subterranean caverns that just seem to go on forever. They put up hundreds of recycled World War II barracks, officers’ quarters, rather nice private trailers for high-rank civilians, mess halls, a giant cistern fed by artesian wells, storage areas, years’ worth of survival food, and a meeting room that looks like it came straight out of that movie Dr. Strangelove . It’s something like a time capsule down there actually. I was part of an emergency evacuation drill back when the Cold War was still on but winding down. Of course we all thought it absurd. It wouldn’t be bombers hitting us anymore. It would be sub-launched ballistic missiles from off the coast, launch to impact on D.C., little more than five minutes.”

He laughed sadly, shaking his head.

“During that surprise drill, just herding us onto the buses took an hour before we were even out of the parking lot. Your typical snafu. Kind of sad and creepy actually how we laughed about it on the drive up here. At least it was an overnight away from the Pentagon.”

“When was it still operational?” Maury asked.

“I think that exercise we were in proved how futile it all was. If the shit hit the fan without warning, we were all toast, so why sweat it? Got mothballed back when everyone was told the Cold War was over. Rumor is it was reactivated and the vice president was parked in there for a while immediately after 9/11. But since then?”

He sighed and shrugged. “I know this. On the Day, there was no mention of it whatsoever to anyone in my wing of the Pentagon.”

He turned to look back to the west and walked over to where the two soldiers who had been lugging heavy backpacks had already shucked off their loads and were pulling them open.

“But in a few minutes, we’ll find out the real truth of it all.”

Bob leaned over, pointed to the west, both of the men nodding, and as John watched, they began to unfold and open up a couple of portable dishes and several other antennas. They then pulled out of their packs a couple of high-grade military laptops and turned them on while the other trooper, squatting down, secured the dishes, aimed them west, and began to slowly adjust them while listening to directions from his companion with the computers hooked into the antenna arrays. Bob walked away and came back to the rest of the group.

“I thought about Site R off and on after the Day, even asked about it. All I ever got back from the government in Bluemont was blank stares and what I sensed were bullshit answers. The so-called reconstituted government at Bluemont was hunkered down in the FEMA fallback position and was told that was it. I just let it go since it was obviously a ‘don’t ask and we won’t tell’ type of issue. But there were whispered rumors. And then yesterday, your friend Linda Franklin handed me some data.” He looked off to the west. “And if confirmed, my friends, the shit is about to hit the fan big-time.”

He walked over to where his eavesdropping team members were still at work. One of them looked up at the general.

“A few more minutes, sir.”

Bob, obviously agitated, turned back to John and his friends. “Bluemont was a more recently constructed site, actually the headquarters not for the military in the event of a catastrophic attack but for a civilian agency, FEMA. Not as big a facility by a long shot—could house four or five hundred at most—but a lot more up to date. Half the distance as well to D.C. for evacuation. Rumor was it was the parking place for whenever there was a ceremonial gathering in D.C.; a member of the cabinet, a representative from each House, and some administrators were sent there just in case something really bad happened. So Bluemont seemed the logical place for those that were able to be extracted out after the attack to set up the government and start over.

“Also”—he paused for a moment and then shrugged as if the topic were no longer a secret—“there were rumors that some personnel were already up in Bluemont on the day we were attacked, taking part in some sort of drill. Those allegedly lucky ones thus became the core of the reconstituted government. At least that is how I saw it all until Linda tossed those papers in my lap last night with e-mails leaking back and forth between Bluemont and Site R.”

His features reddened slightly. “Some juicy tidbits, for this old guy, if not for how deadly it all is, I could almost laugh with how pathetic that guy in Bluemont sounded—what did they call it?— sexting or something like that to a woman in Site R?”

He shook his head. “So now we are here,” Bob said, looking back to the west. “The snow’s clearing for a moment. Go ahead and take a look. It’s just to the left of that ski slope. That’s Site R, just over there; you can see the antenna array atop the mountain.”

John squinted and looked to where Bob was pointing, and sure enough, he could see the antennas jutting up from atop a ridgeline as a snow squall drifted clear for a moment.

“Wouldn’t those antennas have fried off on the Day?” Maury asked.

“Yes, but for a place like that, they have backups and more backups stored inside. Remember it was built to come through a nuclear war. If that place is somehow operational, they got the replacements up. So that is why I decided we should park here—eavesdrop in the best way possible, with our gear literally aimed straight at them from only six miles away. I knew this to be as good a spot as any to do so and figured we’d soak up a little history as well while my tech boys listen in. Feel free to wander around, but don’t go out into the open. I doubt anyone picked us up flying in twenty feet off the road for the last fifty miles, but one can never be positive, especially when coming up on a place like this. So now we sit back, wait for my team to get up and running, and see if this is a wild-goose chase or not.”