William Johnstone - Phoenix Rising

“Ready? Fire!”

The sound of the first volley echoed back from the buildings adjacent to the parade ground.

“Ready? Fire!”

Rifle fire, which, during his life, the general had heard in anger, now sounded in his honor.

“Ready? Fire!”

The last volley was fired, and those who were rendering hand salutes brought them down sharply.

The bandsman, a bespectacled specialist, raised a trumpet to his lips and with the first and third valves depressed, played taps.

Jake thought of the many times he had heard this haunting bugle call, at night in the barracks while in basic training, and in OCS. He had also heard it played for too many of his friends, killed in combat or in aircraft accidents.

The young soldier played the call slowly and stately, holding the higher notes, gradually getting louder, then slowing the tempo as he reached the end, and holding the final, middle C longer than any other note before, he allowed it simply and sadly to . . . fade away.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Dunes, Fort Morgan—Friday, July 27

Many of the houses at The Dunes had their own generators as a result of the long power outages following hurricanes. The problem was that at full usage the propane tanks could last for no more than a week. By rationing the usage, Bob was able to get ten days of service; then he, James, and Jerry began taking propane tanks from the unoccupied houses and using them for their own needs.

In addition to taking the propane tanks, they also took the food that many of the houses had in their freezer and pantries They ate the frozen food first so they would not have to keep it cold for too long—and at the beginning of their ordeal, they ate very well: steaks, roasts, lobster, shrimp, and fish.

For better utilization of the food the three families decided to take all their meals together.

“What is this? Leg of lamb?” Jerry asked as he cut into the meat.

“Yes. It came from Dr. Kelly’s freezer,” James said.

“You can say what you want about Dr. Kelly, the man does have good taste,” Bob said. “That’s also where we got the prime rib, isn’t it?”

“And the lobster,” James added.

James Laney did not have a college education, but he had worked himself up from general handyman to plant manager of the Cobb County Electric Cooperative in Georgia. He accomplished this by mastering every job in the plant and even though he was now retired, he kept himself busy by taking care of the houses of the absentee owners: doing electrical repair, plumbing, carpentry, and painting. Bob and Jerry had “elected” him mayor of The Dunes. The election was only partially in jest; James knew all the absentee owners, and had a key to every house.

James had married his wife Cille when he was seventeen and she was fifteen, and though everything seemed stacked against their marriage succeeding, they had celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary earlier this year.

Jerry Cornett was a retired salesman and now the consummate outdoorsman who had fished and hunted around the world. He did his hunting with bows that he made himself, and was a champion bowman, having won so many bow shooting contests that the magazine Bowhunt America pronounced him “America’s Senior Champion Archer.” Jerry’s wife, Gaye, was a retired hairstylist.

Until the collapse of the economy, Bob Varney had been a successful novelist. Success had come late for him—he had written over three hundred books, but most were ghostwriting projects for others. And while his ghostwriting paid well, it left him with a sense of frustration. He saw many of the books he had authored become bestsellers, but he was unable to take advantage of them. Then, two years ago he convinced his editor to let him write his own books. Those books had done very well and at long last, let him build his own career.

Ironically, the career that had taken him so long to build was now nonexistent due to the collapse of the U.S. economy.

Bob was also a retired Army officer who had done three tours in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot. It had been forty years since he last flew, and he often watched, with a bit of nostalgia, the service helicopters pass over his house as they flew out to the offshore gas rigs.

Because of his writing and research, he was practically a walking encyclopedia, fascinated by trivia, and he knew diverse facts ranging from the number of words in the King James Version of the Bible—181,253—to the temperature of the sun at its core—twenty-seven million degrees. And he was a Custer expert who could name every officer who made that last scout with Custer, including those who were with Reno and Benteen, and tell what eventually happened to them.

Bob’s only other talent was in cooking, but he excelled in that, his specialty being coming up with very satisfying meals by utilizing what was available. Bob’s wife, Ellen, was a retired schoolteacher, who, in her youth, had taught in Point Hope, Alaska. That remote experience was coming in handy now that the small Fort Morgan Dunes group was isolated from the rest of the world.

Hampton Roads, Virginia—Saturday, July 28

The United States had a long record of helping other countries in time of need—from the earthquakes in Haiti to the Indonesian tsunami, going all the way back to the Marshall Plan that helped Europe recover from World War Two. Because of that, countries around the world, many of whom had been helped by the U.S. at one time or another now rose to the occasion offering aid to the stricken nation that had fallen from such great heights.

Three cargo ships, the Abdul , the Kishwan , and the Sahil, their containers filled with food and goods, left Yazikistan bound for the United States. All three were flying proud banners proclaiming:

Friendship from the Islamic Republic of Yazikistan

After crossing the ocean together, the three ships parted company off the coast of the U.S., then sailed on for three separate destinations: Boston, New York, and Hampton Roads.

As the three ships separated, Ariz Khabir Jawwad, who was on the Kishwan bound for Hampton Roads, went to the container that was labeled RICE.

Buried in the rice inside this container was a Russian SS-25 nuclear warhead, with an effective charge of one hundred kilotons, which was eight times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. There was also a similar nuclear warhead on each of the other two relief ships.

Jawwad recalled the briefing he and the other two martyrs for Allah had received, prior to being dispatched on their mission.

“We expect the initial casualties from the three bombs to exceed one million in number. That figure does not include those deaths that will come indirectly from disease or other longer-term fatalities. The overall effect of an attack on this scale is particularly numbing. Anyone trying to flee will find themselves travelling through contaminated areas. The pollution of water supplies, destruction of homes, and general devastation will result in secondary problems with disease. Radiation reduces the body’s ability to fight off illness. The final number of deaths from the martyrdom would then be much higher.”

Jawwad thought of the others on board this ship, and the two other ships. They were completely unaware that one of the cargo containers held a nuclear bomb. When Jawwad detonated the bomb it would not only kill the American infidels, it would also kill everyone on board this ship and most of them were, like Jawwad, Muslims, true members of the faith. In addition, as Jawwad had been a crew member of the Kishwan for the last three years, he had made many close friends among the other crew members on board. When he had mentioned to his trainers that innocent Muslims would die, he was told that he would be doing them all a favor.