And she felt she wasn’t there for him, when he needed her the most.
Hannah had no way of knowing that Frank was safe and relatively warm, four hundred miles away. He’d been wounded, yes. But he was in the care of a very capable and caring paramedic.
She had no idea he was in a massive food storage facility with enough food and water to sustain him for many years.
Most people, when a loved one goes missing, think the absolute worst.
Hannah was no different.
In her mind Frank was lying in a ditch somewhere, severely injured in some manner.
Perhaps he’d been shot by marauders intent on stealing his Hummer.
Perhaps he’d slid off the road and was thrown from the vehicle.
Perhaps he’d suffered broken bones or gunshot wounds.
Perhaps he was slowly freezing to death, or dying of thirst.
While waiting on and depending upon his best friend Hannah to coordinate his rescue.
Those were the only possibilities Hannah would even consider.
Well, those plus the chance he could be dead.
Her friends implored her to consider other possibilities, including that he was alive and well somewhere but had no way to contact her.
“No,” she said adamantly. “Frank would find a way.”
Frank didn’t know any of this was going on. If he had, he’d have moved heaven and earth to gain access to a ham radio so he could let Hannah and the others know he was okay.
But he hadn’t a clue she was so distressed.
So as the people in Junction finally gave him up for lost and began to mourn him, Frank focused on getting better.
Before Crazy Eddie did his damage, Frank was within a day of attempting an escape.
Now he was afraid his window had closed.
Josie walked into her tent that morning and said they’d cracked open one of the back doors of the facility to see what the weather was like.
“It kind of sucks that we have no windows to look out and see what’s going on in the world occasionally,” she said.
“You mean there aren’t any windows in the whole place?”
“Not in the part we occupy. There are in the office and administrative areas, but we can’t get to them without an awful lot of work.”
“Why not?”
“When my brothers and their friends stormed the place and kicked everybody out they barricaded all the doors.
“They knew the windows would be a vulnerable spot for anyone trying to take the place away from them. They worried mostly about the cops initially, but also knew the marauders would try the windows before they tried the doors.
“Their solution was to fill the offices with wooden pallets, floor to ceiling.
“The pallets are bigger than the windows, so the marauders can’t just break the windows and drag the pallets out of their way. If they shoot into the offices hoping to kill any of us, the pallets will absorb the bullets. They’ll just be wasting their time and ammo.”
“I’d say that was a pretty good idea.”
“Yeah. Except that now to get a breath of fresh air or to see what the weather is like we have to go to the back of the building and crack a door open.”
“So, don’t leave me in suspense. What’s the weather like?”
“Oh, it’s beautiful. You’re a stodgy old man, so you’d say it just looked cold.
“But I’m a silly girl at heart and a bit of a romantic. I miss being able to walk and play in the snow.”
“So it’s snowing?”
“Oh, yes. And it looks like it’s been snowing hard for a couple of days. The snow pack is quickly returning. Pretty soon we can relax.”
“Relax?”
“Yes. After Saris 7 hit we came under assault several times. Marauders fired through the doors, tried to ram vehicles through them, yelled that if we didn’t come out and surrender they were going to set the place on fire.”
“Well, you obviously didn’t surrender. Did you think they were bluffing?”
“It’s a metal building with a metal roof. And it was twenty degrees outside. How in hell were they going to set it on fire?
“Anyway, different groups tried to force their way in, but we kept firing through the walls and each time they’d go away and another group would come.
“That all ended after about three weeks and we didn’t know why.
“That was the first time we opened a back door to see what was going on, and found out it had been snowing hard. The snow pack made it impossible for anybody to move around out there.
“The marauders all gave up and went to ground to ride out the freeze.
“We figure the same thing will happen this time. That when the snow pack is back we can finally relax again until the thaw.”
“You said the snow pack is back?”
“Pretty much.”
“Just how deep is the snow out there, anyway?”
“About two feet or so. I looked out at the abandoned cars in the parking lot and all I could see were their tops.”
Frank tried hard to hide his disappointment.
His window to escape hadn’t just closed, it had been slammed shut.
Josie had told him he wouldn’t be able to do any physical labor for at least a month.
He’d based his new escape plan on that date, figuring if he could resume his chores by that time he’d be able to put his escape plans back into place.
But two feet of snow on the ground already made driving the Hummer darned near impossible.
How high would it be after another month?
At the height of the first freeze the snow pack was over five feet high. Then the summers started to break freezing on some afternoons and the ice began to melt a little at a time. It refroze into ice each night, but started to compact and shrink in each successive year.
This freeze, according to Hannah, wasn’t expected to last as long. The ice pack wouldn’t get to five feet.
Or then again, it might.
Plainview was in the farming belt. Presumably this part of Texas got more rainfall than the Junction area.
In any event, he had to accept the fact he was here for the long haul.
And he had no way of contacting the people at the mine to let them know where he was, or whether he was even still alive.
-38-
Colonel Tim Wilcox sat on the bunk of a stark cell, his head in his hands, wondering how everything went so wrong.
It had seemed so simple. That elite members of the United States government had gone to great lengths to build a super-bunker right under their noses. The only thing that made sense was they were watching out for their own, to the detriment of everyone else.
That they were hoarding resources which couldn’t be used by others, who deserved at least an even chance to survive.
Had there really been another possibility all along? That the men in the bunker weren’t just trying to save themselves, they were trying to save the United States of America?
Or, at least, the government experts who’d be able to get the country moving again?
He didn’t want to be base commander. He’d only stepped up because he outranked Colonel Leatherwood by a month.
And because when Brigadier General Swain disappeared without a trace, someone had to step up to take the reins.
A single damned month.
He began to question his own motives.
Had he gone off half-cocked based on what Hannah and Mark Snyder has told him? That Colonel Montgomery, who Wilcox knew and despised, had procured half of the Snyders’ stock and seed stores by false pretenses?
Montgomery had told them he needed their stock and seeds to feed the survivors of San Antonio and Bexar County after the thaw came.
They later found out that wasn’t the case. That all the meat from the livestock, all the produce from the seeds, was instead going into a secret bunker.
A bunker they only found out about by accident, when Hannah was given a rid
e in Montgomery’s helicopter and happened to see a large construction site in the distance.
She saw a huge hole being dug into the earth and asked Montgomery about it.
He quickly explained the earth movers were digging deep for mineral-rich soil to use in his green house operations.
Hannah and Mark accepted his explanation at face value. After all, they considered him an honorable man, and as a high ranking military officer he should be trustworthy.
But she’d seen something else that day as well.
Something which gnawed at her.
She’d seen a long line of cement mixers, at the ready, awaiting their turns to pour a massive amount of concrete into… something.
Eventually she put two and two together and went to Mark with her concerns.
The two of them, in turn, went to Colonels Wilcox and Medley.
Wilcox stood and paced back and forth across the cell. He looked in the piece of shined stainless steel which passed for a mirror and gazed at his own reflection.
Was that it?
Was he so quick to accept Mark and Hannah’s claim that Colonel Montgomery was up to no good simply because he didn’t like the man?
Was he derelict in his duties because he didn’t consider other options? Didn’t even entertain the thought that there might be other reasons for Montgomery to behave in such a manner?
Full bird colonels are supposed to trust one another, even when they’re from different branches of the military.
They’re supposed to be able to rely on one another’s judgment. To believe they not only know what they’re doing, but are working to fulfill their lawful missions, regardless of what those missions might be.
They’re not supposed to let their own petty differences and prejudices cloud their judgment.
He sat upon his bunk again and felt nauseous.
And even though he was the only one in the cell, he spoke aloud.
He said to himself, “Tim, you really stepped in it this time.”
-39-
Two cells over, Colonel Morris Medley was having his own thoughts.
He was a good man. A Christian man. The kind of man who was more comfortable playing chess or reading a good book than playing war games or sports. Who’d never fired a weapon in his life, yet his chosen profession was as a military officer.
He’d gone to medical school to save lives, not take them. So many didn’t understand where he wound up.
“Seriously,” they sometimes told him. “You should have stayed out of the military and gone to work at some big trauma center. There are plenty of lives to be saved there.”
He’d had to explain the situation time and time again.
That he’d run out of money halfway through medical school. He could have applied for student loans, as most of his fellow students had.
But he’d heard horror stories about the student loan program. About how the federal government would hound him forever to pay and the longer it took him the more they’d dog him.
“If there’s any way to avoid it, don’t get help from the government,” his best friend had told him. “They’ll demand your first born son and will eat him in front of your eyes. Then they’ll really get ugly.”
Another of his friends had opted out of the whole student loan thing and had joined the United States Army Medical Corps instead.
Medley thought that was a good idea, but not if he had to join the Army.
He had nothing against the Army, actually. But both his parents were career Air Force. That’s where they’d met. And for an Air Force family member to join the Army instead was something akin to blasphemy.
The Air Force Medical Corps offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. They paid for his last four years of medical school. He did his internship at an Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany.
The price wasn’t too steep. Two years in the Air Force for every year they paid his way. That was eight years, versus the lifetime he’d have been under the government’s thumb had he gone the student loan route.
For those years he’d be paid fairly well, be able to travel around the world at government expense, and have a chance to hone his skills.
At the end of the eight years he could resign his commission and transition into the civilian world.
There was a problem, though.
Morris Medley was a pacifist.
If he’d been around when the country was drafting young men into military service he likely would have registered as a conscientious objector. He had no desire to shoot anyone, or even to carry a gun.
But those days were over.
He was still a pacifist. He still didn’t want to shoot anybody.
He wanted to save lives, not take them.
But in the medical corps nobody ever asked him about his beliefs to that regard.
He still had to wear a sidearm when he was stationed in Afghanistan at a field hospital outside Bagram Air Base.
It was a requirement since he was in a war zone.
Only he knew, though, that the magazine in his duty weapon was empty, the bullets in the bottom of the footlocker back in his tent.
The gun was worthless as a weapon unless he chose to throw it at someone.
Despite his beliefs which might have placed him at odds with the Air Force, Medley turned out to be an outstanding doctor and a far better than average trauma surgeon.
He completed his lifelong calling. He did indeed save plenty of lives.
And by the time his eight years were up he’d decided he loved the Air Force too much to leave it.
He decided to retain his status as a commissioned officer and was sent to the Wilford Hall Regional Medical Center in San Antonio.
He worked side-by-side with Dr. Wilcox from the day he arrived.
They clicked. He liked Tim Wilcox. And while many considered them a rather odd couple, they became fast friends.
Wilcox was not a touchy-feely kind of guy. He was obstinate, moody and irritable.
And those were some of his better qualities.
Medley was gentle, kind and respectful.
They offset each other.
Something else Morris Medley was: a follower. And despite his irritability, no one could dispute that Tim Wilcox was a great leader.
As they became closer and closer friends, Morris became more and more a follower to Tim’s suggestions. When Tim told him only sissies didn’t know how to fire a gun he let Tim goad him into going with him to the gun range.
When Tim insisted that every man should know how to provide for himself if the world ever went to hell, he was able to talk Morris into going hunting.
When Morris Medley shot his first deer he felt sick for a week.
Wilcox butchered and packaged the meat because Morris didn’t have the stomach for it.
Wilcox brought most of the venison to Morris’ house, only keeping a couple of flank steaks for himself.
Medley graciously took the meat from his friend, not wanting to admit the thought of eating it sickened him.
The following day he carted it all off to a homeless kitchen and never went hunting again.
The sad fact of the matter was Morris Medley was too sensitive to keep up with the activities which interested his friend.
That didn’t make him a bad guy.
It just made him a different breed.
As he sat alone on his lonely bunk he wondered if it was time to stop following Tim Wilcox.
-40-
Captain Edwards and Colonel Leatherwood stood outside the bunker’s huge swinging door as a bitter wind chafed their faces and made them shiver.
Behind them, Lt Col Dave Smith was a bit better off. He was the only one of the three who’d thought to wear a heavy jacket.
“What’s he like?” Leatherwood had asked on the way over, referring to General Mannix.
“He seemed amiable enough,” Edwards replied. “But at the same time, I got the distinct impression he’s not a man you’d want to cross.”
> “Yes, I suspected as much. You don’t get four stars on your shoulders and become Air Force Chief of Staff by being a pushover.”
Edwards switched to channel five on his radio and called in.
“Um… this is Captain Edwards to see General Mannix.”
It was an awkward transmission. Normally he’d have hailed a unit’s control center or entry control desk.
But he wasn’t sure whether the people in the bunker had set up either.
It didn’t matter. His transmission had the desired effect.
General Mannix himself came over the radio a few seconds later.
“Captain Edwards, welcome back.
“If I were to give you the number twenty seven, what would your response be?”
“My response would be two, sir.”
“Very good. Stand by, I’ll have my people let you in.”
The wind seemed to pick up as they waited, making an already uncomfortable situation almost unbearable.
The door suddenly swung open and the three faced two men in black flight suits, M-16s at the ready. They appeared to be military in every way. In reality they were secret service agents who’d gone through SEAL training to hone their combat skills.
Between the two was a rather diminutive man in khakis and a red polo shirt.
“Are any of you armed?”
Leatherwood and Edwards shook their heads. Lt. Colonel Smith snapped to attention and replied, “No sir.”
It was a rather odd gesture.
Although surely the little man had some kind of position of authority, he likely wasn’t military and certainly wasn’t in uniform.
A simple “no” would have sufficed.
But Smith was a timid man who was afraid of his own shadow. Men with authority intimidated him, no matter how small they were.
He nearly passed out when the little man in front of him seemed to express a particular interest in him over the other two visitors.
He walked directly to Smith and demanded, “Unzip your coat, please.”
“Y… yes sir.”
He couldn’t comply fast enough.
The small man wrapped his hands around Smith’s waistband, just to make sure he didn’t have a weapon hidden beneath the jacket.
Final Dawn: Book 12: Where Could He Be? Page 13
