"Okay. We'll keep walking, just slowly for a minute or so." She held her side. We stopped for a second. Then started walking.
"So, any ideas where we are?" I asked her.
"Not really. The air feels like the southeastern United States to me though. It has to be ninety-five degrees and at least eighty percent humidity. It is almost like Titusville. Every now and then I even think that I can smell the ocean." She continued to hold her side.
"Yeah, I thought I could smell salt earlier also. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I have to be, don't I." She made the last statement as more of an order to herself. It was definitely not a question.
"Hey stop!" I yelled. "Don't step any further." Tabitha obeyed but she looked at me very confused.
"What is it?" She took a defensive posture.
"Tabitha, without moving look down about two feet in front of you." She did and if it were possible to sweat more than we already were, she did so.
"Anson, I hate snakes!"
A small colorful snake was sunning itself in the sand on Tabitha's side of the logging road. I slipped way around so as not to startle the snake and found a tree limb that was about four feet long. I broke it off a sapling that was overhanging the road.
"Come here, fella! You're all right, mate!" I did my best Steve Irwin impression. I made a slight disturbance behind the snake with the stick and it turned away from Tabitha. "Okay, Tabitha, slowly back up, then come around to me mate. Whoa, you're okay, mate." The snake struck at the twig a few times.
"Would you quit talking like that!" She did just as I had told her although she was obviously annoyed by my sense of humor.
"Red touching black you can pet him on the back. Red -touching yellow will kill a fellow." I recited the poem that my dad had told me when I was a kid.
"You mean that thing is poisonous, right?" Tabitha held my shoulder, keeping me between her and the snake.
"Well, at least I know where we are now. With this vegetation, the sand, and this little coral snake, which by the way is more poisonous than a rattlesnake—or at least as poisonous. Though it is kind of like comparing apples and oranges since they carry different types of toxins. I digress. Anyway," I continued, "I would guess that we're in south Alabama, Georgia, or northern Florida. I'm not quite sure why we missed our mark so far. Probably a miscalculation of the frame dragging effect or something. Maybe somebody is fiddling with the laws of physics and not telling us." I laughed at the thought of that. Then I remembered that Tabitha's parents lived in Florida and began to wonder just how much damage our return home had caused, would cause. I hoped that the tornadoes had blown themselves out before they reached population centers. I started to bring it up but Tabitha had enough on her mind with the physical pain and all—not to mention the mental pain of losing several of her long time friends in the Shuttle explosion. We didn't dare think about that. Keep moving soldiers; we'll mourn our brothers later.
"We better get back to moving," Tabitha nudged me away from the little snake.
"G'day mate." I said, tossed the stick away, and we began running again.
We ran quietly for the next four or five minutes. I let Tabitha set the pace. She must have been feeling better because we were cranking out probably seven-and-a-half-minute miles. The terrain was rather flat. It was easy running except that we had no shoes and were both wearing Spandex long johns. The sandy roadbed became slightly more compacted and there were fresh tire tracks on it.
"Tire tracks," I said.
"That means people might live close by. Anson we are going to be responsible for killing them." Tabitha seemed to up the pace but maybe it was my imagination.
"I know. Maybe we can get somewhere in time to warn people or to go back and stop the explosion. We still have at least twenty-five minutes, maybe thirty or more."
"Listen!" Tabitha said. "I hear a vehicle! It sounds like it's coming from around the curve ahead."
"You're right! I hear it too!" We pushed a little harder hoping to catch whoever was ahead of us. We turned the curve and three other roads joined into a slightly larger one. The noise was a HUMV about thirty yards ahead of us on the main southbound road. As we approached it became clear that the HUMV was stopped at the gate of a fence. The fence was about eight feet tall with barbed wire at the top. At the edge of the road was a guard shack and a sign that told us that we were at one of the gates to Eglin Airforce Base. We were in Florida.
CHAPTER 12
Anson, let me do the talking," Tabitha warned as we approached the guard shack. I nodded to her.
"You got it, Colonel!"
The guard looked to be between twenty and twenty and a half somewhere. That is, if he was a day over eighteen. Tabitha postured herself with her best voice of command that she had learned in officer's school. Looking back on the scene, I realize that we must have been quite a sight to see. Both of us were sweaty, wet, muddy, and in our white Spandex long johns—but none of that fazed Tabitha a bit.
"Airman! I am Colonel Tabitha Ames and this is Dr. Anson Clemons." Tabitha showed off our astronaut wings and her dog tags. "We are survivors of a Shuttle crash and it is important that we see your commanding officer immediately."
The airman must have recognized her. He snapped to and saluted her. Tabitha returned the salute. "It is an honor to meet you, Colonel ma'am. I've been a long-time fan of yours. I always wanted to be an astronaut. That is why I am in the Air Force so I can pay my way through school and—"
"That's great soldier and I would love to hear it some other time, but we're in an extreme hurry. Where is your C.O.?"
"Well Colonel, other than that truck that just came through I've been the only person on this side of the base all day. We'll have to use the radio. Follow me." He led us to the small truck parked behind the guard shack. He made a call to his superiors and handed Tabitha the radio.
"Who am I speaking with?" Tabitha asked.
"This is Sergeant James of base military police—who is this?"
"Sergeant, my name is Colonel Tabitha Ames. It is very important that you listen to me carefully. I and one other occupant of the Space Shuttle are the only survivors of a crash that took place about three miles from this gate. There are security-sensitive elements in the crash site. More importantly, one of the classified components at the crash site has gone critical. That device will, I repeat, will explode in about twenty minutes or so unless we return and stop it. The explosion will have a total destruct radius larger than the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. Do you understand?"
There was a pause on the other end of the radio for a moment. The airman looked at me as though what Tabitha had just said scared him out of his mind. It well should have. I was scared shitless!
"Uh, ma'am is this for real? Jason is this some sort of gag?"
"Sergeant, I assure you that this is no gag. If we don't take action right now, there will be serious consequences!" She pretty much screamed that last bit at the microphone.
The airman took the microphone from Tabitha.
"Excuse me, Colonel," he said. "Sergeant, this is Airman Jason. This is real, Sarge! It really is Colonel Ames—I recognize her from television. Her and this other fellow just walked up out of the woods still in their astronaut gear. They both look like they've had a really bad day."
"All right, Jason. Put the colonel back on." Airman Jason handed Tabitha the mic.
"What do you need, Colonel?"
"First you need to start a civil defense evacuation of the area. A ten-mile radius from here at least. Do that now. Second, get us a helicopter or something that can land in a tight spot here five seconds ago. Also, hold a second . . ." She turned to me. "What do we need Anson?"
"Uh, a set of jumper cables and about five car batteries. How about some clothes and shoes. I wear a size ten and a half. Oh, and some duct tape. You can never have too much duct tape."
"Good idea. I wear a women's nine. Did you copy that -Sergeant?"
"Copy that, Colonel. It will be the
re in five minutes or less."
I had expected him to ask about the car batteries and stuff but he didn't. He just followed orders and didn't waste time. Good soldier.
"Colonel, you guys look thirsty. I have some sodas in a cooler in the shack there if you want them and there's a water cooler back there, too." Airman Jason said. I could tell Airman Jason wasn't from the South. The thing about there being "sodas" instead of "cocolas" in the cooler was a dead giveaway.
"Airman, I want you to get in your truck and drive south at least ten miles before you stop," Tabitha ordered him.
"Sorry, ma'am. From the sound of it you two will need some help carrying all those car batteries. I'm going with you. Besides, my Aunt Rosie lives about five miles from where you are talking about. If I can help, I plan to. "
"Airman!—" Tabitha started in on him. I interrupted her.
"Tabitha, he's right. We need the help. I don't want anybody else involved either, but he signed on to help protect the country. This is his job."
Tabitha scowled at me and stormed over to the truck. She didn't say a word. She rummaged through the cooler for a soft drink. I followed her.
"What?" I asked her. I did something wrong. I could tell.
"Anson, I love you, but never, and I mean never, contradict me when I'm giving orders to subordinate soldiers."
"Tabitha I love you too—more than anything in the world. But, I'm not a soldier and I don't have to follow orders here. We aren't on the Shuttle anymore. And although I will admit that you are better suited to be in charge here, if you do something wrong or if I disagree with you I should be able to tell you. Shouldn't I?"
"Next time do it in private!"
"Yes ma'am, Colonel."
"Don't Colonel me, civilian," she tossed right back at me. She was still obviously sore at me, but not as much. After all, I had invented the warp drive.
"Listen," I began. "You're right and I'm right. I don't want to involve anyone else either. Hell, if there was a way that I could do this myself and put you in that truck with Airman Jason I would do it." Tabitha halted me there.
"The hell you would!"
"Well, I'd try. Maybe between Airman Jason and me we could hogtie you and throw you in the back of that truck."
"There would be a helluva fight," she said. Then she smiled. That was good. I didn't want Tabitha mad at me. We had enough on our minds.
We grabbed a Coke each and started drinking them. I managed to get out of Airman Jason that he was from Ohio somewhere and his Aunt Rosie was retired and living here in Florida.
Tabitha and I both needed the caffeine and sugar rush. Of course, neither of us needed to be dehydrated and that is just what the caffeine will do to you. We chased the Cokes by filling the bottles with water from the water cooler in the guard shack.
About three minutes had passed since the radio conversation. I looked at my watch. There were only about seventeen minutes left. Whoever was coming had better hurry.
"If they don't show within ten minutes, all three of us are getting in that truck and heading south," I told Tabitha and Jason.
Then a jet silently passed into view from behind a small hill. A few seconds later we could hear it. It came straight for the clearing at the guard shack.
"That's a Harrier Jump Jet," Tabitha exclaimed.
"Doesn't look like any helicopter I have ever seen," I replied.
"Yeah, I like Harriers. The VTOL capability makes them very useful like a helicopter, but still as effective as a fighter jet. Just check out how it lands in as small a space as a chopper can." Tabitha watched in approval of the pilot's skill.
The jet landed in a small clearing and two men crawled down from it. One of them was carrying a small duffle bag. The pilot confronted Tabitha.
"You Colonel Ames?"
"That's right, Captain. I thought I asked for a helicopter."
"Sorry ma'am. All the helicopters were ordered out when the tornadoes came through. There are none within twenty minutes of here. This Jump Jet came in just after the storms. We were fortunate to get it. It is a real mess out there." He pointed to the southeast.
The other man handed me a flight suit, a pair of socks, and a pair of combat boots. Then he handed the duffle bag to Tabitha, after he saluted her of course. Tabitha looked around and then stepped behind the truck.
"Gentlemen, please look the other way. Anson, get dressed quick."
I was still trying to tie my boots when Tabitha stepped out from behind the truck.
"Captain, I'll take your gear. Dr. Clemons will take the lieutenant's. Move it!" The two of them moved it.
"Sorry, Airman. I guess you won't get to go with us after all." I shook his hand.
"Good luck sir and ma'am," he said.
"You three men get in that truck and drive south. That is an order! Where are the batteries?" Tabitha asked.
"Sorry, ma'am. No time to find them. But, we did get a small generator fully fueled and the jumper cables. They are in the back seat," the lieutenant said.
"Anson, will that work?"
"Yeah, it should. We will probably have to reset the circuit breaker on it every time we fry a board though. Hope we have enough time." At least I thought it should work. There were no physical reasons why it shouldn't.
Tabitha saluted the three men and we were off. I climbed into the backseat and Tabitha climbed into the pilot's seat. She cycled the canopy as she brought the engines on line.
"Have you ever flown one of these things before?" I prayed that the answer was yes.
"Never. How hard can it be?" She laughed. "Relax, I have over a thousand hours in these things," she informed me as we lifted vertically and then started horizontally. "Oh and hold on," she said as we cleared the treetops and then she slammed me back into my seat with maximum forward thrust. Then we were on our way back to the crash site or should I say ground zero. Tabitha flew due east until she hit the tornado's track. Then she banked and followed the track north until it turned ninety degrees back west.
"The crash was right at the bend in the track," I told her over the headsets.
"I know." She brought the plane in facing west up the track and descended.
I saw something flicker in my peripheral vision. To the north, just beyond the creek there was something shiny. It looked like a small clearing. Maybe there was a house with a tin roof there. It could have been a fire watchtower. Once we were below the treeline I could no longer see it.
Tabitha brought us down quickly with a bit of a thump!
"Come on, we have about thirteen minutes," she announced. The canopy cycled up. Tabitha was on the ground looking back up at me. I worked the small generator out from between my legs and handed it over to her. I grabbed the cables and jumped to the ground. It was a longer drop than I had expected. I nearly did a faceplant in the sand. I caught myself and rolled. I stood up brushing myself off. Tabitha just giggled a little but said nothing.
We both threw our gear down by the plane and each took a side of the generator. Tabitha set a fast pace up the slight hill to the edge of the clearing where the probe was. I could hear no humming or buzzing. That worried me. The calculations we did for the DARPA program showed that the dumbbells go critical just as the frequency or the sound shifts too high for human ears to detect.
We popped into the clearing and there were already four men hard at work dismantling the probe. All of them wearing military gear and clothing and were armed to the gills. The ECC had stopped buzzing because there were large Van der Graaf generators sitting all around it. They were plugged into a battery supply. The strong static electric field must have frozen the Clemons Dumbbells motion keeping them from going further critical. They still weren't drained or destroyed I assumed. Tabitha and I assumed that help had arrived that we were unaware of. We stepped closer to the probe and the leader of the four men turned toward us with his pistol in his hand.
Johnny Cache (my handyman and secretary not the singer) was there by the probe pointing a handgun at Tab
itha and me. I looked at Tabitha. She looked back at me with the same confused look.
"Hello, Dr. Clemons," he said. "I didn't expect that you would come back. You have bigger balls than I thought." Two of the men finished disconnecting the warp field coil housing and lifted the subsection of the cylinder. They rolled it over a network of cabling and cargo straps that they had laid out on the ground. The shiny object I had seen in the clearing just north of the creek must have been a helicopter because it was now hovering over us. A set of cables lowered and the three men other than Johnny Cache connected it to the lowering cables. Johnny talked into his left wrist telling the helicopter to take it up.
"Johnny, what the hell are you doing here?" I asked him.
"I'm earning a living. I wish you hadn't come back, because I kind of like you. But now you will have to die here." He seemed sincerely apologetic.
"What are you doing with the probe components?" asked Tabitha.
"Well, Colonel, I'm selling them to the Chinese. They were going to pick up the whole thing in orbit once the Shuttle was destroyed, but somehow you two managed to bring it back to Earth. Now I'll have to figure out a way to deliver it to them. Of course, it will cost them more. The talk of a meteor crashing in Florida—buzzing all over the news—gave me the idea that this could be the probe. My hunch paid off. Fortunately, I was only an hour or so away by fast helicopter."
"Hunh?" I shook my head. "I don't get it." I also wondered where the good guys were. If Johnny could figure it out, why didn't Space Command?
"He blew up the shuttle." Tabitha pointed at Johnny.
"How could he have done that?" I asked nobody in particular. I was trying to decide how I was going to get that gun away from him. Keep him talking, I thought. Somewhere in the conversation, we could find a distraction. Bob had never taught me how to dodge bullets. I always hoped he would someday. I guess I would just have to wing it, if I got the chance.
Johnny's buddies, employees, or whatever the other three guys were didn't seem to be paying us any attention. They had moved on to removing parts of ECC number two.
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