One Year After: A Novel

by William R. Forstchen

  This now for our friends in Budapest and Prague: “The languid sobs of the violin wound my heart deeply.” I repeat, “The languid sobs of the violin wound my heart deeply.”

  * * *

  As John parked in front of the town hall, he dwelled on the fact that he had an appointment to see Doc Weiderman and finally get the tooth out—that and the word phoned in by Ernie Franklin, who claimed to have heard a BBC report regarding something about the feds announcing they were going to release tactical nukes for use inside the continental United States. There had been plenty of rumors over the last two years about further use of nukes, and indeed, in the days after the attack, North Korea and Iran had been blanketed in retaliation, while India and Pakistan finally escalated over the edge, and most of their major cities were gone, as well. But here, against ourselves? Insanity. It had to be a rumor.

  Before he even managed to get out of his car, Ed was out of the office, running to meet him. “John, we’ve been trying to find you for the last twenty minutes. Where the hell have you been?”

  “Do I have to report in every time I stop to go to the bathroom and walk around for a few minutes before coming in?” He didn’t add that he had stalled for a few minutes just inside the Montreat gate, nerving himself for the dental visit.

  “Don’t you hear it?” Ed shouted.

  “Hear what?”

  “That!” Ed pointed up toward the Mount Mitchell range.

  Damn it, not another raid. John cocked his head but heard nothing. “Perhaps I’m not over the concussion yet, but I don’t hear a damn thing.”

  Ed stood silent, turning to face the mountain, and John saw a crowd gathered where street traders had set up their booths down on State Street for the twice-weekly market, looking up toward their beloved peak, several pointing excitedly.

  “There it is again!” Ed cried, but John heard nothing. “An Apache—and it’s shooting the crap out of something!”

  “What?”

  “Started about a half hour ago. I think they’re hitting the reivers up along Craggy Pass.”

  John gazed at the mountain for a moment and finally caught a glimpse of a helicopter soaring up sharply over the pass and then turning to dive back down the far slope, disappearing from sight.

  “Call Billy Tyndall now,” John snapped. “I want the plane ready to go immediately.”

  “John?”

  “Ed, just please do it; I’ll explain later. And once that’s done, I want you to go down to the big flagpole at the car dealership. Find three American flags and run them up the pole, one above the other.”

  “What?”

  He repeated the order, falling back into the older routine of making decisions quickly, passing the order, and expecting it to be done without debate.

  “Ed, just please do it.”

  He drove the half mile down to the hangar, which was open, fortunately with Billy already running through a preflight check.

  John jumped out of his car. “Can you take me up now? I mean right now?”

  “Sure, John, but what’s the rush?”

  “Get me up over Mount Mitchell. I want to see what the hell is going on over there.”

  Billy looked out the hangar door, his eyes going a bit wide. “It’s a bit gusty out there. Turbulence over the mountain can get wicked for a small plane like this.”

  “You telling me it’s unsafe?”

  Billy hesitated. “How serious is this, John?”

  “Could be damn serious.”

  “Okay, we’ll go, but grab a barf bag out of the back well before we go up, because you’re going to need it.”

  Billy called for Danny to help throw the prop as the two climbed in. Billy ran down the short checklist, shouting for Danny that mags were hot and to clear prop, and seconds later, they were taxiing across the Ingrams’ parking lot, down a short stretch of Main Street, which was kept well clear for passage of the plane, and then up the exit ramp. Billy stopped for moment to check mags again and to be sure that John was strapped in with seat belt tight, and then he throttled up. John could hear him muttering curses over the headset as they rolled far past where he had lifted off on their first test flight.

  “How much do you weigh, John?” Billy shouted. “I should’ve asked that before we took off.”

  “One eighty-five.”

  “Ah shit. Okay, just hang on.”

  They rolled another five hundred feet before the ground started to drop away, climbing slowly, and once above the trees flanking the interstate, Billy gently banked the plane to almost due north.

  “You’re my first passenger in this plane, John. I’d prefer somebody lighter for that.”

  “You want to back out of this?”

  He knew it was the wrong way to ask the question; it came out as a challenge to play chicken rather than an offer to follow Billy’s best judgment. Dumb thing for a commander to do at such a moment, John thought, but as he looked over Billy’s shoulder, he caught another glimpse of a helicopter, this one a Black Hawk sweeping low above the old Blue Ridge Parkway, flaring and settling to land.

  The plane bounced as they passed Allen Mountain to their right, the turbulence catching John by surprise. As an officer in the army, he had spent hundreds of hours in choppers, but this was actually his first flight in a small aircraft like this since childhood, and he was beginning to regret his rash decision to take a personal look. But he was committed now.

  “Look, Billy, if you think the turbulence is outside what this old bird can handle, turn back at your discretion.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was a bit of a chuckle. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. We’ll have to circle a few times; with you in the backseat, climb rate is only several hundred feet a minute, and it’s nearly five thousand feet straight up.”

  Fifteen minutes later, by the time Billy had completed the second full turn, circling over the North Fork Reservoir, John was firmly clutching the barf bag and wiping the sweat from his brow. He knew he was about to let go, but at least the air at six thousand feet was actually chilly this morning, which helped a bit. Coming out of the long, sweeping turn, Billy announced they were just above the level of Craggy Gap but that he’d like to get another five hundred feet altitude before venturing closer. The turbulence was indeed bad, and John could sense Billy tensing up with each sideways, up-and-down jolt from unseen winds that rattled the plane, at one point lifting John out of his seat and then slamming him back down a second later.

  “Well, we’re certainly shaking out the G stress-load testing for real,” Billy gasped after one hammer-like shock. “Just did it with sandbags piled up on the wings when on the ground before. Guess we’ll find out for real if that replacement wing will fold up.”

  “Thanks for sharing that,” John gasped, as he sealed up the barf bag he had just used.

  They were running a mile or so south of the gap, and John could clearly see black-clad troops on the ground along the parkway, the helicopter that had carried them lifting off and heading back toward Asheville.

  There were people on the ground other than the ones in black uniforms, half a dozen at least, and as they flew closer, John could see they were down, not moving, and then the realization hit. They were dead.

  “Damn it,” John whispered.

  “What? Reivers? So what?” Billy responded in the casual tone of someone who had seen bodies and fighting before. For that matter, all of them down to four years old had seen bodies lying prone and motionless like that, twisted up into impossible contortions with blood pooling out beneath them. The troops on the ground, a team of eight from the looks of it, gazed up at them, one of them raising a weapon to his shoulder and pointing it in their direction.

  “Don’t shoot, damn you,” Billy said, and a second later, he nearly stood the plane on its starboard wing, in an evasive turn, zigzagging back and forth.

  Someone was by the side of the man who had raised the gun, motioning at the plane. The weapon was half lowered but still poised toward them.
>
  “Go over the gap, down there!” John shouted, pointing to the north-side slope of Mount Mitchell where, half a dozen miles away, the two Apache helicopters were circling in a long oval pattern, lifting up at one end in a near-vertical turn, coming about, and then sweeping back down.

  “They’re shooting the crap out of something down there,” Billy announced and pointed, but John did not need to be told. He could see the trail of gun smoke streaming aft of the helicopter. He had seen it often in their mad rush into Iraq during Desert Storm, driving past the twisted, torn wreckage of a convoy of Iraqi vehicles, bodies within cut to shreds by the deadly twenty-millimeter rounds of the chin turret and side-mounted miniguns.

  Down at the base of the slope of Mount Mitchell, there was a secondary explosion, a vehicle igniting, an old RV that appeared to lift off the ground, a fireball erupting, most likely its propane tank blowing.

  They were still several miles out, and John now guessed that this was in fact the same encampment site he had been dragged into as a prisoner. So contrary to what Burnett had said, they had not pulled up stakes. Moving a camp like that would drink up a lot of gas, and Burnett had rightly guessed that John had dampened down the calls for a vengeance raid.

  “If only we had those Apaches when facing the Posse, it wouldn’t even have been a fight!” Billy exclaimed. “Seems like a waste of good ammo on a bunch of junk vehicles.”

  A couple dozen fires were burning in the clearing below. The second helicopter began its strafing run, no longer aiming at the vehicles but instead at a stretch of woods several hundred yards east of the clearing, and a few seconds later, John could see a couple dozen people sprinting out of the woods, breaking cover, running across a road.

  “Jesus Christ, those are kids!” Billy cried. “Look at them.”

  The attacking helicopter yawed slightly, its rounds stitching the road, bodies tumbling, bursting, going down into twisted heaps.

  “John, what in God’s name are they doing?”

  “Killing people,” John said coldly.

  Its run completed, the helicopter banked up and away to the north.

  “Ah shit, we got company!” Billy cried.

  John turned to look straight ahead and barely had time to cry out as the first helicopter, which they had lost track of while watching the attack, was now coming straight at them, at eye level. There was that frightful split second, which John had faced several times before in his life, when he figured that all was finished and he was about to die.

  Billy slammed the L-3 hard to starboard, and the helicopter shot past them.

  “That son of a bitch was playing chicken, and I blinked, damn it!”

  “Here comes the other one!” John shouted. And indeed, the second one was closing in, gun turret swiveled toward them. A quick burst of tracers shot across in front of them fifty yards ahead.

  “Damn him!”

  “He’s warning us off, otherwise we’d be dead now!” John shouted.

  “Hell with this. I’m turning back. First time I ever get shot at in the air, and it’s by my own side, damn it!”

  “Billy, you got one of those signal-to-ground streamers in the back well?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  John turned, having to unbuckle his seat belt in order to lean into the storage well, and he pulled out a six-foot-long, bright-orange streamer, tearing off the rubber band so that it would unravel. He fumbled in his pocket. Damn it, no pen! “You got a marker pen back here?”

  “In the side pocket well, with the maps. A grease pen.”

  “Fine. Now I want you to turn about and fly straight over where those vehicles are burning; edge it in alongside the woods. It’ll be tight from the way that smoke is blowing. I don’t want this going into the woods or the fires.”

  “What in the hell are you doing, John? That son of a bitch just fired at us.”

  “He knows who we are. He was trying to warn us off. He won’t shoot us down.”

  And as if in answer, there was a popping sound, the aft overhead plastic window behind John cracking with a neat bullet hole through it.

  “What the hell?” Billy cried.

  “Ground fire, that’s all. Just keep weaving!”

  “Oh shit, great!”

  The first helicopter was back, slowing as it came up along their portside wing. John could clearly see the gunner looking at him, turret swiveling to point straight at them.

  John held his hand up and actually waved. The gunner just gazed at him, looked forward, another warning burst in front of them. John grabbed the head of the streamer, braced it on his knee, and quickly jotted a note on the streamer. Forrest, it wasn’t us. John M.

  It had struck him that the survivors below, who had without doubt been watching every move of his community for months from atop Craggy Gap, had most likely seen the first flight of the L-3. There was a chance the reivers might link his town’s ability to fly with this attack. If he had stayed well clear of it all just now, chances were their rage would be focused on Asheville. But flying over like this, he had to make it clear that though the town’s plane had been seen in the middle of this attack, they had nothing to do with it. Otherwise, they might catch the blame for it with a murderous vendetta rather than just a food-gathering raid—that is, if any down below had survived this onslaught.

  John held on to the end of the streamer and tossed the weighted head out the side window. Another shot fired from below hit the wing just a few feet from his face. He let the end of the now extended message streamer go and saw it flutter down to land by the edge of the woods.

  “Okay, Billy, get us the hell out of here!”

  John suppressed a yelp of fear as Billy stood the plane on its starboard wing and pivoted sharply, dropping the nose and then leveling out and skimming low over the trees, turning back toward Craggy Gap. One of the helicopters was again beside them, the pilot looking toward them, pointing at them, then to the southwest, back toward Asheville.

  John shook his head in reply, pointing due south. There was a tense moment, the gunner looking at them again, chin turret swiveled. John kept pointing south. The helicopter sped up a bit and then swung in front of them, Billy cursing loudly, swerving to the west as they were hit by the turbulence it kicked up. For several minutes, it was a game of cat and mouse, the helicopter repeatedly trying to force them to follow its lead.

  “Okay, Billy, act like we’re going along!” John shouted. “We’re too low yet to climb over the mountain anyhow.”

  “Thank God you finally got some sense, John,” Billy replied as he turned on a heading toward Asheville, pointing straight ahead to the watching gunner, who nodded a reply and repeated the gesture that they were to follow him back. The two helicopters backed off slightly to a hundred yards out, the three aircraft beginning to climb to clear Bull Gap, which was half the altitude of Mount Mitchell and an easy enough ascent for the L-3. The turbulence picked up severely as they cleared over the south side of the mountain and began to descend into the Swannanoa Valley. John could see home eight miles or so to the east, Asheville looming up straight ahead.

  As they reached the eastern end of town, one of the choppers edged back alongside the L-3, the pilot pointing toward the parking lot of the long-abandoned and burned-out mall. Their operational base was apparently set up there; both of the Black Hawks were on the ground there. Parked nearby were half a dozen trucks and an equal number of Humvees. A couple of military fuel bladders, each capable of holding a thousand gallons, were deployed out, the Black Hawks apparently being loaded up again.

  One of the helicopters edged in closer, the pilot motioning down to the parking lot. Billy vehemently shook his head. “That guy’s an idiot if he thinks I’ll put this girl in there. I might be able to land, but there’s not enough room to take off again.”

  Billy pointed to I-240, motioning again and again, circling the road at five hundred feet until the helicopter pilot finally relented and nodded in agreement.

  “Billy, you know w
hat to do. If we land there, this plane, all your hard work, belongs to them forever after. Act like you’re setting up to land. How good are you at tree hopping?”

  “Used to love it, but then again, no one was shooting at me for real.”

  “Your call. You’re the pilot in command.”

  “Well, damn glad you finally realize that, John. Make sure you’re buckled in tight and hang on. You still feel like puking?”

  John chuckled. “Been there, done that. Then I was so terrified back there I forgot about puking again.”

  “Just don’t mess the plane up now.”

  Billy turned the plane where Interstate 40 merged with 240 and started to drop as if setting up to land. Just as he passed the abandoned Walmart to his right, he shouted for John to hang on. He slammed up to full throttle, pushed the nose forward, and dived, skimming over the store’s parking lot and going under a power line, a move that left John speechless.

  “Always wanted to do that—no FAA now to take away my license!” Billy laughed.

  It was eight air miles back to Black Mountain, but it turned into nearly fifteen as they played cat and mouse with one of the Apaches that took off in pursuit after them. The helicopter was just as maneuverable as they were with the added advantage that it could come to a complete stop and hover if necessary. It was up to Billy to outnerve that Apache’s pilot, and John wondered if the pilot of the helicopter pursuing them was just being an annoying bastard or if maybe he was actually having a bit of fun with this game of who could outfly whom.