One Year After: A Novel (35 page)

John strode up to the shooter, whom Kevin had personally disarmed. John slapped the young man hard across the face. “What in the hell are you doing?”

“He’s the pilot of one of those damn Apaches. They killed my wife, and damn him to hell, he is going to pay now!”

“I was following orders!” the prisoner gasped, curled up in a ball, his scorched face contorted in agony. “I was following orders.”

John looked down at him with contempt, half tempted to kick him, as well, so sudden was the rage he felt at what this man had done and the words he chose to defend his actions.

John turned away before he lost control.

“All prisoners to be checked for weapons, hands secured behind their backs.” He paused for a brief instant as if to indicate that he was debating a decision, knowing that cruelty should be beyond him. “My people will escort you down the road to the pickup point for transport back to safety. As long as you cooperate, no one will be harmed. Do all of you hear that?”

There were cries of relief, several actually going down on their knees, sobbing with relief, so intense had been their terror. As he gazed at them, he could sense that these troops were barely above the rank of amateurs.

“Are you ANR?” he asked, focusing on a girl who looked to be in her midtwenties with bright twin bars on her shoulders. He motioned for her to come over and pointed at her shoulder bars. “Incredibly stupid to be wearing something like that, especially at night.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I’m not talking to the lamppost behind you.”

“Yes, sir, Army of National Recovery.”

“How long have you been in?”

“Six months.”

“Merciful God,” John whispered, turning his back on her for a moment. Her words had at least deflated a bit of the battle rage with his troops of a few minutes earlier.

He turned to look back at her. The young woman’s dark features were drenched with sweat, and she was actually trembling with fear, almond-colored eyes wide, gazing at him with obvious fear. He stepped forward and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and could feel her shaking. “The fighting is over, Captain. No one is going to hurt you. Are you hearing me clearly?”

She stifled a sob and nodded.

“I want you to help me with your people to make sure there are no mistakes now. Will you work with me on that?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, her voice trembling.

“Where are you from?”

“Plainsboro, New Jersey,” she replied, her Jersey accent obvious.

“I grew up near there,” he replied as an offer of reassurance. “Now tell me why are you here?”

“I was drafted, along with most of the others here. I got to be captain because I had a college degree.”

“In what?”

“Business leadership.”

“Oh, just great.” John sighed. “All right, Captain, what’s your name?”

“Deirdre Johnson.”

“Listen to me, Deirdre Johnson. We don’t abuse or execute prisoners here, and I want you to work with me to keep your people in check as we get them the hell out of here. Can you do that?”

She took his words in wide eyed, and her shoulders began to shake again.

“Why are you crying?”

“We were told that you rednecks—” She paused. “Sorry, sir. We were told you people execute prisoners.” She paused. “That African Americans would be lynched and women raped, so I’m down on two counts.”

He stepped closer, shaking his head. “How they turn us against each other,” he said sadly. “Look at me. Do I look like a racist and rapist to you? How many women do you see in my ranks? How many of African descent? Tell me!” His voice rose in anger so that she recoiled and then lowered her head.

“You really promise none of us will be hurt or killed?”

“I was a colonel in the United States Army, and on my word of honor, I promise you that as long as you listen to my people and do not try to escape, you will be taken back to Black Mountain and there held until I figure out what to do with you—most likely paroled after this is over.” He looked past her to the others. “Did you all hear me clearly?”

There were nods of thanks and several replies of “Yes, sir,” more than a few openly crying.

“Are you the superior officer here?”

She looked around at the group and then shook her head and nodded to the pilot still writhing on the ground. “Major Cullman there. He was in overall command here for the airbase. The helicopters crews and maintenance teams were National Guard units, the rest of us ANR.”

John stepped away from her and knelt down by Cullman’s side, roughly grabbed him by the hair, and pulled his head up. The man’s face was scorched, the scent of burned hair and flesh wafting around him.

“You hear me, Major?”

There was a barely audible reply.

“Are you army? I sure as hell can’t see you flying the way you did with six months’ training.”

“Yes. Six years.”

John leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper. “Personally, I would like to shoot you myself for what you did to us and the reivers. You broke the code, Major, and I detest you for it. But I won’t shoot you, nor will you face trial, because—let me guess—you were only following orders.”

Cullman gazed up at him, eyes wide with terror, unable to reply.

John looked over at Grace. “Make this bastard walk, no matter how badly he hurts. Lock him up in some basement along with his gunner and the other pilots and ground crews if you can find them still alive. Regular army we hold for negotiated exchange after all this is over. Now get him out of here before I change my mind.”

The sad procession started to shuffle toward the gate that the truck had burst open, while out in the street, the first of the pickups converted into ambulances had pulled up to haul away the wounded.

Maury came up to his side, grinning. “The first Black Hawk is badly shot up, looks like the engine is fried, but the other one is checking out okay, no leaks sprung. I’m going to make a go of it.”

John smiled and nodded. “Let’s see if you can remember anything.” He followed Maury over to the Black Hawk, which several members of his team were guarding. The first of the reserve attack wave was across Tunnel Road and fanning out, scrambling over the supply trucks that apparently had come up from the Asheville airport just after dark.

Another of his strike groups should have been hitting the airport ten miles to the south at this same moment. If the transport plane was still there, it was to be captured or burned. All supplies found were to be taken, and then, in a most crucial move, work crews were to tear up the runway and taxiway at five-hundred-foot intervals, marking both ends with broad
X
s, the international sign that a runway was shut down. There would be no more transports from Bluemont, Charleston, or anywhere else until this issue was clearly resolved.

Maury, favoring his wounded arm, climbed awkwardly into the pilot’s seat of the Black Hawk and strapped himself in.

Billy Tyndall, who had never even had five minutes in a chopper, took the copilot’s seat, looking over at Maury wide eyed as he flicked on a flashlight, pulled out the preflight checklist, and scanned it. He then looked back at John. “Like I told you, John, it’s been more than twenty years since I flew one of these, and that was in an old Huey with the National Guard.”

“I heard it’s like riding a bicycle,” John offered, trying to sound humorous, but given the moment, his comment fell flat.

Maury shook his head and looked over at Billy. “Do you have any idea where the starter button is?”

If not for the seriousness of the situation, John would have started to laugh, but all were interrupted by a shout from out in the compound.

“Incoming!”

A couple of seconds later, a shell impacted a couple of hundred yards to the south.

“Mortar!” a cry went up.

“Maury, stop screwing around! Find the damn starter, rev her up, and get the hell out of here!”

Maury fumbled with various switches, cursing under his breath, and then he finally found his goal, the rotor overhead beginning to turn slowly, turbine engine whining to life. It sounded rough, rumbling, Maury working what he thought was the primer, adjusting the fuel mixture, grasping a lever, the pitch of the rotors changing, cutting deeper, louder.

“I’m not sure if I got it yet!” Maury cried. “Get the hell off, John, unless you want a quick ride to Black Mountain or one helluva crash!”

John stepped back out of the chopper, ducking low and looking to the side of the road where medics were working on the wounded.

“Worse cases that won’t make it back to the hospital, load them up!” John shouted.

Six of the wounded, two of them their foes, were carried over. One of the wounded was the old marine, a close friend of Forrest’s who had nailed the Apache with the RPG. He was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds across his stomach. John doubted he had more than a few minutes left, but those carrying him did so with tenderness and respect.

John grasped his hand and squeezed it. “You won this one for us, gunny, knocking out that Apache,” John said, voice even, the man’s eyes drifting out of focus. “Semper fi.”

“Didn’t get time to fire the second one. Did it get away?”

John held his hand tightly. “You got both with that one shot, Sergeant.”

“Incoming!”

John crouched down, the gunny’s stretcher-bearers dropping him down and covering him with their own bodies.

The shell detonated fifty yards to the north. They were definitely bracketed, most likely a firing position staring down their throats atop Beaucatcher Mountain.

“Get it up, Maury! Get it up!” John shouted.

The speed of the rotors picked up, Maury working the collective to get the feel of it, sound changing to the distinctive helicopter
thwump, thwump, thwump.
For a brief instant, it flashed John back to Desert Storm, the fleet of helicopters passing overhead in the opening moments of the attack into Iraq.

John ducked back down, and the next mortar round blew just twenty yards away, over near where the wounded were waiting to be loaded onto trucks. More screams echoed even above the roar of the Black Hawk as it lifted half a dozen feet, dropped back down, and began to lift yet again. Then its tail swung violently, nearly crashing into John so that he dived for the pavement. As the chopper swung back the other way and started rising straight up, another mortar round exploding in the wreckage of the burning Apache.

“Come on! Get out! Get out!” John cried, and he could see that most of his personnel were ignoring the incoming, looking up at the captured Black Hawk as if willing it to get up and away. It banked slightly, nearly drifting into the roof of the mall, rotating drunkenly, nose edging over, and then it just sped off into the darkness toward Black Mountain, disappearing into the night.

Another mortar round clipped the procession of prisoners, dropping several along with one of his guards. Grace shouted for them to run down the street to where the flatbed truck waited, John crying for the ambulances to back up, as well.

A thought seized him, and he shouted for one of his troops standing nearby to run down to the prisoners and bring back their captain, and then he ordered everyone to take cover inside the mall.

There was no need for urging. John shoved Kevin Malady through a shattered doorway, his ham radio operator behind him. Lee Robinson brought up the rear, cursing out John for being in the middle of it all.

Within was a dark and haunting sight. He remembered the weekly trip here with Elizabeth and Jennifer years earlier and the ritual of having to drag Jennifer past where the Disney Store had been, negotiating with her as to whether she wanted a Beanie Baby that week or one of the Disney stuffed animals—they cost more and were equal to two Beanies—Economics 101 for a four-year-old. Though painful in a way to recall, he did smile for an instant as he gazed down the darkened corridor, as if half expecting to see his little girl alive again.

Beside her would be Elizabeth, reaching the age where she would slow at the sight of the gaudy jewelry offered at a corridor kiosk, and then they would head to the food court for a snack before going across the street for a movie, where minutes earlier he had ducked low along the roadside to avoid getting shot.

All of it was abandoned ruins, completely looted out in the first week after the Day, though there was hardly a store in the vast complex that contained a single item necessary for survival. Much of it had then been burned by looters gone wild and left to sink into moldy ruin. Once one of the iconic images of affluent American society, a shopping mall, it was now a ghost building filled with ghost memories. He turned away from the memories to examine the building they were in.

The huge Sears building had been turned into a barrack and storage area for the chopper crews and their security team. There was even an electrical generator still running, some fluorescent lights casting an eerie glow on the ruins of fire-gutted wreckage—shattered display cases, a mannequin with a broken face sporting what would have been the summer fashion of two years earlier, debris of a squatter’s camp, most likely driven out by the arrival of Fredericks’s troops. A disquieting stench of moldy, decaying clothing and waste hung over it all. The wreckage had been pushed back to make way for nearly a hundred bunks, a chow line, and storage area in what had once been the first-floor section devoted to tools and automotive supplies, which of course had been one of the first areas looted.

Several mortar shells crumped onto the ceiling high overhead, but nothing collapsed down from the upper floor.

“Malady, post security. Once the annoyance stops outside, get people into their supply trucks and move them into hiding; get others to check out what we have here.”

John took a moment to get on the radio and announce in the clear. “We have one chopper—a Black Hawk—coming back. It is definitely ours.”

If Fredericks was monitoring that, it would certainly set him off, and he could imagine the cheers erupting back in Black Mountain.

“Prepare the hospital for at least fifty more wounded coming in.”

He clicked off and looked around as his troops, many armed with flashlights, began to search about, and as they rifled the personnel bunkers, there were cries of excitement as MREs, snacks, comfortable sleeping bags, and personal items were snatched up.