The Plan

by Shawn Chesser

  “And New York,” Steve-O added.

  Tara said, “Which means we need to get as far away from here as possible.”

  Noting the range indicated on the trip computer, Riker ran a quick calculation in his head. “With the tank full and extra fuel in the cans in back, we should be well into Georgia before we need to think about stopping again to top off.”

  Tapping on the SYNC display, Tara pulled up the navigation screen. “I don’t think we should wait until we’re running on reserves. Fill up when we can seems like the best strategy.”

  “War game it,” Riker said. “Find all the stations from here to Tampa and flag the ones that look the most promising. Preferably mom and pop outfits first. Then single out the ones that are set farthest back from the interstate.”

  As Tara went to work on the touchscreen, zooming and scrolling and changing the views between Road and Aerial, fat drops of rain smacked the hood and windshield and roof.

  Riker shot a sour look at the darkening sky. Flicking on the wipers, he said, “And now Mother Nature is entering the fray.”

  Chapter 21

  Raven Rock Mountain Complex

  Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania

  President Tillman sat in a forward-facing seat in the MV-22 Osprey designated Marine One. During the twenty-minute flight from the White House, the Marine aviator flew the big twin engine tilt rotor like he had stolen it. Flying nap of the earth and so low that Tillman could see license plates on vehicles transiting the Pennsylvania backroads, the constant adjustments in altitude had the President’s safety harness working overtime.

  After thundering over a white farmhouse complete with the requisite red barn and grain silo, the pilot dipped into one last narrow valley prior to final approach to Site R—the United States’ “underground Pentagon” and vital component of the three-piece puzzle designed to ensure continuity of government in the event of a national emergency.

  Looking a little green around the gills, President Tillman regarded his Secretary of Defense.

  “Almost there,” Marigold said. “One final pop up and a smooth transition to horizontal flight.”

  Tillman grimaced. He knew “smooth” wasn’t an appropriate adjective to use when describing anything this behemoth did while airborne. In fact, a spin on the Hulk rollercoaster at Universal Studios was like riding in a Bentley compared to the Osprey’s flight characteristics.

  The “smooth transition” had Tillman’s stomach crowding his tonsils when the twin-engine nacelles began their steady pivot to vertical. There was a groan and a shudder raced through the airframe as forward speed bled and the massive rotors took big bites of air to keep the ship aloft. Save for the takeoff from the White House’s South Lawn, the descent and landing at Raven Rock was about the smoothest part of the journey.

  On approach, Tillman had looked out his window and surveyed the facility.

  The entrances and support buildings serving the deep underground communications facility sat perched on a crescent-shaped tract of cleared land running along a fifteen-hundred-foot-high, mile-long hill located near the Mason-Dixon line.

  The installation’s two-lane service road ran between two pair of buttressed tunnel entrances fitted with enormous thirty-ton blast doors. Set back from the road were a number of buildings: a firehouse, a remote receiving building, guard houses, and assorted structures arranged around the entry portals feeding to the underground tunnels.

  The entire site was ringed by redundant twelve-foot-high fences topped with coiled concertina. The gates at the east and south ends of the road were manned with armed personnel.

  Save for the buttressed entrances below, and array of dishes, antennas, and other communication gear bristling from the peak, Site R looked as if it could be owned and maintained by any number of mundane governmental agencies. However, the small convoy of military vehicles entering the east tunnel quickly dispelled that illusion.

  Marine One jounced once as it landed on the alternate helipad deep in the woods and concealed from prying eyes by mature trees. The rear ramp was already open, and the President’s three-man Secret Service detail were hustling Wolverine toward the rectangle of light even before Marine One’s wheels had ceased all forward movement.

  On the way out of the Osprey, Tillman dipped his hips and cast a weary glance at the hurricane fencing paralleled by a dense thicket of trees.

  Seeing his protectee duck and scan the woods, Special Agent Dan Kite said, “There are no infected in the woods, sir. Site R is sterile. Entrance is this way.”

  Stubby HK MP7 aimed at the ground, Kite hustled Wolverine through the open gate, nodding at the similarly armed agent manning it.

  At his back, Tillman heard the turbine whine rise exponentially. The sound was reassuring. It meant the bird was heading to Virginia to collect his family from the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center. Clamping a hand down on his ball cap, he threaded through the gate and followed the lead agent through a sort of tunnel carved from dense foliage surrounding the landing pad.

  After a dozen yards or so they passed over a gravel road awash in sun. Squinting against the harsh light, Tillman drew a deep breath of fresh air and followed Agent Kite into a poured-cement tunnel large enough to admit a bull elephant. At the end of the tunnel, maybe fifty feet from the entrance, was a miniature version of the site’s main blast doors. Thick with several inches of hardened steel and skinned with titanium, it stood open and was flanked by a pair of Marines in MultiCam camos and brandishing some kind of exotic weaponry.

  The President of the United States was led to an elevator door. As he stood there running the events of the last week through his head, the door to outside was dogged down, and he finally exhaled the breath trapped in his lungs.

  Lake City, Florida

  With Riker driving the Shelby at speeds well over the posted limits, they quickly outpaced the first effects of the outer bands of Hurricane Owen. Save for a brief pit stop at a rest area thirty miles north of Sergeant Wilcox’s checkpoint, during which Riker swapped his Tommy Bahama shirt and shorts for a plain gray tee shirt and khaki 5.11 Tactical pants, he had been driving nonstop for nearly five hours.

  Having come to the conclusion during her brother’s pee break that charting a course close to the shore on the gulf side would likely double their travel time, Tara convinced him they should stick to I-75 until its merger with I-10—roughly three hundred miles to the north.

  For most of the trip north, traffic moving with them had been sparse. Most was civilian in nature, the majority of the vehicles loaded down with camping gear, generators, and various supplies. Now and again they would come upon and overtake small military convoys consisting mostly of multi-wheeled troop carriers and Humvee ambulances.

  Riker chalked up the dearth of civilian vehicles fleeing north to the fact that the early reporting on Owen had it making landfall near the Carolinas as a medium-strength hurricane registering a 2 or 3 on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

  Hot on the heels of Nicole comes another tropical storm seemingly cut from the same cloth. And so far, it would seem, Floridians are content with staying put and guarding their castles, was what Riker remembered the reporter on the television in the RaceTrac as saying. Which would explain the abundance of flatbed trucks heading south with full loads of sheet plywood. People staying to ride out a hurricane needed supplies to fortify their “castles.” And if Riker hadn’t seen evidence of Romero pop up in Miami with his own eyes, he would be prone to believe the southbound National Guard convoys consisting of troop carriers, MRAPs, and Humvees bristling with gun turrets were merely the leading element of a proactive response to the fifteenth-named hurricane of the season.

  Coming up fast on Lake City, also known as “The Gateway to Florida” due to its close proximity to the intersection of Interstate 75 and Interstate 10, Riker felt his eyelids growing heavy.

  The sky had been blue for most of their trip; however, over the last hour, as dusk drew near, the sky to the west seem
ed to catch fire.

  Backlit by a burnt-orange sky dominated by the rapidly setting sun, roadside palms and their swaying fronds added a hypnotic effect that had Riker wishing for coffee, or, better yet, one of those five-hour energy drinks.

  Suddenly an alarm chimed as the driver’s side tires crossed over the fog line and rode over the grooved rumble strips for a couple of hundred feet. As Riker was shocked alert, he played it off, making a minute course correction to get the Shelby back to tracking straight in the fast lane.

  Going rigid in her seat, Tara asked, “You want me to drive?”

  “I’m fine,” replied Riker, watching a Prius a lane over speed up. He checked his surroundings in the mirrors. Saw the station wagon that had been pacing him fall back a couple of car lengths.

  From the backseat came a long, drawn-out fart.

  Holding her nose, Tara said, “If that doesn’t wake you up, nothing will.” She chuckled, the noise coming out of her mouth funny-sounding in her own ears.

  “More likely it’ll knock me out cold.” He made a show of swerving within his lane. Just a subtle left to right to left to right jiggle of the wheel that had the Shelby carving long graceful arcs, each spanning several hundred feet of blacktop.

  “Stop swerving,” ordered Tara. “Last thing we need is to be pulled over because you’re goofing around.” She rummaged in her bag and came up with a tall aluminum can. Squiggly neon-green letters on a black background spelled out Monster.

  Riker said, “I wasn’t goofing around. I was trying to rouse our friend back there. He farts a lot less when he’s awake.”

  Tara popped the top on the energy drink. “Not cool,” she said, handing it to Riker.

  Taking the can in hand, Riker said, “It’s warm. I can’t even stomach one of these if it’s ice cold.”

  “Just do it, you big baby. You want to risk the alternative? Run us off the road into a palm tree?”

  Far off in the distance, brake lights flared red.

  Holding the steering wheel steady, Riker tipped the can and took a couple of long pulls of the tepid, semi-sweet, lemon-lime-flavored pick-me-up. Face screwed up in disgust, he belched loudly and went to stuff the empty can into his door’s side pocket.

  “It’ll kick in,” she promised. “Soon your hair will be on fire and everything that moves will be a squirrel to you.”

  “Very funny,” said Riker. He was having trouble getting the can to seat in the map pocket, so he resorted to using brute force.

  There were a couple of metallic pops as the aluminum was reshaped.

  When Riker returned his attention to the road, he saw that vehicles ahead in the right two lanes were stopping. The Prius had pulled over to the passing lane and wasn’t slowing down.

  With maybe a half-mile to make up his mind, Riker said, “What do you think, Sis? We coming up on another checkpoint?”

  “Looks like a couple of big rigs stopped for something. Better slow down, Ricky Bobby.”

  Tara’s Talladega Nights reference was lost on Riker. He wasn’t into Nascar, let alone movies with motorsports a central theme.

  With less than a quarter-mile to go to the tail end of the backup, Riker steered the Shelby to the left lane, bled speed to put several car lengths between him and the Prius, and then regarded Tara. “You put the Sig away, didn’t you?”

  “I did. But not under your seat. I put it back in the console where I got it.”

  Spotted only by Tara, a person standing on the grassy median activated a road flare and tossed it to the ground in the break-down lane.

  Still regarding his sister, Riker said, “Great. That means it’s sitting on the paperwork from the dealership I’ll need to dig out to prove this truck is mine and not stolen.”

  Instinctively planting both feet on the floor and reaching for the grab bar above her right ear, Tara pointed over the dash and shouted, “Look out, Lee!”

  As Riker swung his gaze forward, he saw that his following distance had gone from six truck lengths to two, and the Prius in his lane, its trio of brake lights blazing solid red, was fishtailing like mad.

  Long dormant training kicked in. Riker braked hard and jinked the wheel left. The risky maneuver sent the wheels on his side into the grassy median, and the ones on Tara’s tracking down the center of the breakdown lane.

  From the new vantage, Riker saw the jam—both figuratively and literally—that his brief lapse of situational awareness had gotten them into.

  A pair of eighteen-wheelers had stopped in the right lanes. In the middle distance, maybe two hundred feet beyond the pair of big rigs, a third semi hitched to a tandem was jackknifed and blocking the entire interstate. Having come to rest at a right angle to the first of its two linked trailers, the multi-wheeled Freightliner tractor, all by itself, took up two-thirds of the left breakdown lane.

  As blue-gray smoke from the Prius’ tires poured from the tiny hybrid car’s wheel wells, Riker drifted Dolly all the way onto the median and felt through his boot sole the antilock braking system kick on. Brake calipers grabbed massive discs, causing the Shelby’s nose to dip. As Riker fought to control the slewing rig, twin rooster-tails of dirt and grass erupted from her back tires, and he saw that things weren’t going to end well for the Prius driver.

  Chapter 22

  A tick after the Shelby’s right-side tires rolled back onto the asphalt shoulder, the Prius driver’s fate was sealed. Instead of countering the slide by steering left to the median, he or she must have panicked, because the brake lights went dark and the slow clockwise spin accelerated dramatically.

  With maybe thirty feet to go before the person who’d dropped the first flare became a permanent fixture on Dolly’s grille, Riker muscled the steering wheel straight and put his trust in the ABS system.

  In the process of igniting a second flare, the woman, who looked to be in her mid-thirties, looked up and saw the two vehicles converging on her.

  Though the Prius driver never recovered from the slide, somehow the car missed the woman entirely.

  Maybe the person at the wheel decided to sacrifice their life for the woman’s, thought Riker. He would never know, because half a beat later the Prius slammed into the Freightliner still travelling at what looked to be about forty miles per hour.

  Instantaneously kinetic energy was absorbed and there was a tremendous bang and explosion of glass as the hybrid seemed to fold in on itself.

  Still holding the grab bar, Tara saw the woman go wide-eyed and bring her arms up to her face. In the next beat, likely still processing the near miss, the woman dropped her arms to her sides and unleashed a primal scream.

  Still moving north of thirty miles per hour, the Shelby passed by the woman on her right side. And though she was spared from becoming a permanent fixture on Dolly’s grille, Tara’s wing mirror clipped her head, silencing the scream and sending her crashing vertically to the ground as if a trapdoor had opened beneath her.

  Having slept through the jackhammer-like pounding of the ABS rapidly slowing the Shelby from seventy to thirty, Steve-O was spilled off the rear seat when, near instantaneously, all forward momentum went from thirty to zero.

  The Shelby ended up stopped on the shoulder with just a few feet separating Tara’s door and the tractor’s grille guard. So close that Riker saw what looked to him like blood and human detritus clinging to the wrist-thick bars.

  Jerked out of a deep sleep, Steve-O rose from the floor and poked his head between the front seats. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed in a sleepy voice.

  “Well I’ll be,” Tara said. “I’m reinstating the swear cup. Pay up.”

  “No time for jokes, Sis.” Riker had already decided the Prius driver was dead and was reversing the Shelby to get a better look at the stretch of I-75 sandwiched between the jackknifed tandem and pair of static eighteen-wheelers.

  The scene was utter carnage. Apparently, the tandem had run over two, maybe three people prior to sideswiping a minivan, which looked as if it had gone airborne and rolled
a couple of times before coming to rest thirty feet past the tandem and on the other side of the far guardrail.

  On the shoulder this side of the guardrail, nearly equidistant to the three semis boxing in the large debris-strewn swathe of interstate, stood a man and a woman. Both wore trucker’s hats, blue jeans, and boots. And both were fussing with cell phones as they paced separate courses along the breakdown lane.

  Closer in, body parts lay scattered over three lanes. Scraps of flesh, clumped hair, a glistening pool of blood, articles of tattered clothing, a mismatched pair of shoes, and one mangled leg all marked what appeared to be the initial point of impact. Multiple blood trails paralleled a hundred or so feet of intertwined skid marks put down on the blacktop by the tandem as it jackknifed.

  A dozen feet behind the second of the tandem’s two trailers, near where the skid marks and one of the blood trails came to an abrupt end, was all that was left of a rather portly man. It amounted to basically a shirtless torso sprouting one pulverized arm and a badly misshapen head.

  What should have been a cooling corpse was twitching and bucking in a sad attempt to get itself rolled over.

  Riker had missed all of this as he fought to avoid two separate collisions.

  Because Tara had been focused solely on the woman she feared was about to lose her life, she, too, had been spared seeing all the gory details now on full display a few yards off her right shoulder.

  Tara regarded the dark black skid marks left by the Shelby on I-75. Then she walked her gaze to the median, where its big off-road tires had carved twin snaking furrows deep into the mud, then gaped at the single twenty-foot-long streak of still-smoking tire rubber. Finally, fixing her brother with a look of incredulity, she said, “That was so effin close on so many levels. I am sooo grateful I gave you my last Monster.”