“Shit, man, there’s a McDonald’s if you think that would be easy enough.” The Sailor said. Daniel followed the blue uniformed man up several decks to the darkened room that was the Winston S. Churchill’s Combat Information Center. Cmdr. Ogden was standing at a relaxed ease position, her arms comfortably behind her back.
Though not in uniform, Daniel snapped to attention and reported. “PFC Sawyer, reporting as ordered, Ma’am.”
Captain Ogden let slip what might have been a slight smile. “At ease. I believe there is someone here, well, on the videofeed, who would like to speak with you.”
Daniel’s heart raced. For whatever reason his hope beyond hope was it was somehow, miraculously, his father. He was equally happy, yet secretly disappointed, to see his mother on the other end of what sufficed for the government-issue Skype. She saw him, and despite being in uniform broke down crying. It took a moment for her to recompose herself, but when she did she had the broadest smile Daniel had ever seen his mother wear.
“You’re alive! You’re alive oh my God you’re alive…” Annette Brown, as she had remarried after Daniel’s father left, leaned in closer to the screen. Her eyes weren’t focused on the camera, which made it weird to speak to her. Some people hadn’t grasped how to speak on a videophone. “What happened to your face?”
Daniel smiled. “Jose and I were playing hot potato with a grenade. So, you know, same ol’ same ol’. I guess you know I’m in Gitmo now?”
“Yes. Yes I do.” Annette dried her eyes. “There’s an outbound flight heading for Cheyenne in the morning. I expect you to be on it.”
“Are there extra seats?”
“For who?”
“Jose, remember him? You met him when we graduated AIT?” That was a stupid question. Annette had been so embarrassed her son joined the Army and not the Air Force it had literally been a fight between her and her new husband Gabe about even going. Of course she didn’t remember Jose or anyone else who might have been there. The woman had showed up wearing civilian clothes with absurd looking sunglasses and a blue Carmine San Diego hat.
“Yes, yes of course. Are you bringing him with you?” She lied. This was his chance to use his mother’s need to save face to get what he wanted.
“And one other.”
“I’ll arrange it. Daniel, I love you. Get on that plane, Captain Ogden has promised me you’ll be on it whether you want to be or not…”
“I did indeed.” Ogden said from behind Daniel.
“I can’t wait to see you.” She was about to hang up, but could at least read the most pertinent question on her son’s mind. “Before I go, and I’m sorry to take more of your time, Captain, but no, I haven’t heard from your father. Not since he texted that you’d-” She trailed off. She hated Clyde, she loved Clyde, she certainly didn’t want him dead though. “You’ll be able to tell me all about you experience when you get here. I love you, Daniel.”
“Love you too, Mom.” He said, fighting back tears. The screen went blank and he turned to Captain Ogden. “By your leave, Ma’am.”
“You are scheduled on Flight 18 bound for Cheyenne, Wyoming tonight at 2355 hours. Report to the flightline one hour before then.” She put the notebook she was reading the information off of down on a control panel. “I don’t have extra personnel to detach to babysit you, Mr. Sawyer. Can I trust that you and your friends will be on that flightline?”
“Yes, Ma’am. We wouldn’t miss it for love nor money.” He didn’t know why his response was so casual, he didn’t intend it to be, but he was genuinely adamant that he wouldn’t fail to be on that plane. Daniel wanted to go home, he wanted to see his mother and live like a human being again. Human. That word had new meaning now, one that would require more introspection on his part. Maybe when he was finally home.
Once safely off the confusing maze of corridors that was an R. Leigh Burke class destroyer, Daniel found Jose and Camilla waiting for him at one of a dozen rickety looking tiki bars that lined the beaches. Because they were in the Tropics a rain spurt caught him on the way to the bar and lifted just as he got there. Being the only one now soaking wet, the bar tender had sympathy for Daniel and poured him a draft on the house. Daniel was only twenty, but then who the hell was enforcing that now?
“So what did the captain want?” Camilla asked, working on a whiskey sour.
Daniel took his over shirt off and wrung it out. He’d been issued blue scrubs with a card from the ship’s quartermaster that he should be issued new clothing when they arrived at Gitmo. From what the corpsmen aboard ship told him they’d had to cut all of his clothing off to make sure he hadn’t been bitten. Either way he was starting to get cold as the wind from a nearby storm picked up. It could have been a hurricane and they’d still be on that plane.
“She made contact with my mother.” He smiled, feeling a twinge of survivor’s guilt.
“Really?” Camilla was confused. That seemed like a waste of resources to just find his family, she didn’t know Daniel that well after all.
“His mom’s in the Air Force. Pretty high up there too. What did she say?” Jose pressed. He was well on his way to being drunk.
“Tonight at 2300 we need to be at the flightline. I’m taking you both home with me.”
“Is it safe there?”
Jose and Daniel both gave Camilla the are you serious look. “Nowhere is safe now, but if there’s anywhere on Earth that resembles safe, it’s the Cheyenne Mountain complex. Trust me, I used to live right next door to it… Figuratively, it was a few miles away.”
“Why would that place be safer?” Camilla was not well versed in how the United States planned to protect itself. She likely only knew as much about the military as Jose had told her, and it was doubtful she was the type to pay attention to technical details in a disaster movie. What a wonderful, blissful world it must be to never question the logic of what you see in Hollywood’s disconnected representation of any and all things.
“It’s a hardened nuclear missile command center. It could survive a direct strike from an ICBM. The entire government has probably fallen back there. And, call me crazy, but if they can still control a navy and an air force with units all over the world, I think they can secure one Green Zone on our own turf.” That was awfully optimistic of him, and probably giving the government more credit than it was due.
Camilla nodded, absorbing it all. “What’s an ICBM?”
There was a FEMA dining hall near a major refugee center at Gitmo, so naturally they avoided the place and found a Navy chow hall instead. The food wasn’t likely to be any better, but the people there were not the poorly behaved, teeming mass of terrified homeless. It would simply make for a quieter, safer meal. Daniel and Jose both missed out on being deployed during the War of Terror, so neither had ever seen what it was like in a dining facility in a combat zone. Everyone had to carry a gun, if they had one of course, and Daniel no longer did. A special section with an armed guard protected the military-in-transition who might not have a weapon. It was scary to think about, being eaten while eating, but the military never did anything they weren’t prompted to do, including posting guards.
Nobody in Crystal River had really wanted for food, there was so much left behind and so many fish the only way you’d have starved was if you tried, but that doesn’t mean there were any buffets just left out for everyone to take what they wanted from. The chow line was a special place now and Jose gorged himself, showing Camilla all the different things he knew how to make out of everyday foods. She watched, pretending to pay attention as Daniel did while Jose yammered on, but he could sense how lost and scared she felt in a world she’d never seen before. This was all very new and huge in scale compared to anything she’d been through until now, making the crowded lunch room of a city high school look like a microcosm of chaos. At least she had someone like Jose to keep her head above water.
Daniel stuffed himself with wholesome food, not just crackers or MREs, but left just a little bit of room for a tr
eat he’d not had since England. Ice cream. Vanilla, chocolate, stawberry, he didn’t care. It was free and wasn’t going to run out. Daniel got brain freeze twice and felt like he’d throw up if he ate more, and then he did eat more. When the three of them were finally forced to leave so the staff could clean, the walk to the flightline looked like three extremely pregnant women waddling about in a penguin parade.
Jose had snagged a half pint of gin from the tiki bar on the beach and while they waited he passed the bottle around. With growing anticipation they watched the running lights of the C-17, then the spotlights on her landing gear and shouted cheers when the tires squawked on the tarmac. The alcohol put Camilla to sleep while they were still taxying on the runway, which was good because she missed the dog sized rat that ran between their seats. Even the vermin knew he was heading toward the promise land. One of the C-17’s crewmembers came by and kicked the rat with some force before Daniel or Jose had time to do anything about it. The squealing creature fell behind some other junk and flopped back to the metal deck, its hind legs still twitching.
The crewman reached down and took a nip off the bottle. “Fat little bastards. You see another one just do what I did.” He said before walking off to continue his duties.
Onboard there were maybe a hundred civilians and another two hundred servicemen wearing every uniform in the US arsenal, plus another group under guard near the front section. These POWs wore either bright orange jump suits, or the stripped down uniforms they were captured in. Daniel recognized the flat green uniforms of the Cubans who’d attacked them in Florida, plus one very shaggy looking face he thought he’d never see again. Chief Anton Kuzma of the Russian Federation Navy.
The guards watched Daniel with mild disinterest, but didn’t seem to be under orders to keep them from talking to the prisoners. “Hey, Chief.” Daniel said.
Kuzma looked up, surprised anyone would still call him that. “Mr. Sawyer. You make it, I’m glad to see that.”
“Why did they arrest you?” Daniel got to the point.
With a broken smile, Kuzma dodged the question. “Who else makes it, did you see?”
“You didn’t answer me.”
Kuzma sighed. “I am sorry, Daniel Sawyer. I lied to you and everyone in Crystal River. I am not Chief Anton Kuzma. He was just a man onboard Sonya when shit hits the fan. You may as well know, I am Rear Admiral of Russian Navy Yuri Petrov, 4th Fleet. I was supposed to keep Cuba in Russia’s hands. I failed, my comrades and I tried to flee, then I end up with you.”
“Jesus.” Daniel looked at the guards, who shrugged and didn’t deny who he was. “Why did you lie to us?”
Petrov laughed this time. “If you were American officers in enemy lands, and you had chance to hide and escape, would you not take it?”
“It is the duty of every American serviceman to attempt escape if possible… But that’s only if we’re captured. We didn’t capture you, we rescued you.” Daniel was admittedly unhappy about the revelation of Kuzma’s true identity.
“It is as your cartoon character Archer say, ‘little column A, little column B.’” Petrov tried humor. It didn’t work. “If I tell you I am high ranking officer in Russian Navy, would you let me back on Sonya? And be honest, Private Sawyer. Be better than me on that at least.”
“No. We’d have never let you near that ship again.”
Petrov nodded. “That was only lie, though. I had to protect the boat, try to escape. It was my duty.”
“Would you have killed us after we helped you get the ship out of King’s Bay?”
“Nyet. No.” Petrov was adamant. “If we found Russian fleet I would demand you be sent home. We’re not enemies, not in this fight. But I cannot say if a superior officer would have allowed it.”
Daniel had heard enough. “I hope you’re not lying to me now, whatever your name is. But maybe one day they’ll send you home too.” Before Daniel walked away he had one more question to ask. “Did you know the Cubans were going to invade? Do you know what they were looking for?”
“Did they ask you to ask me this?”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Then no. When I leave I thought Cuba would be wiped out. Havannah was gone, burning, the last helicopter out was already over the sea. I hid aboard Sonya and left those bastards to die. I swear this, Mr. Sawyer.” Petrov nodded to one of the guards. “I have to piss. Cup your hands.”
“Fuck you, Ivan.” The MP said, tossing him a piss bottle.
“I am handcuffed, ass-clown.” Petrov said, repeating a word he had picked up from Daniel cursing at other people. “I piss in your mouth you don’t let me up!” Daniel didn’t get to see how his Russian comrade accomplished the task of urinating, he went to the onboard head and back to his seat to catch some sleep without giving the Russian too much more thought. Jose was already out cold, his head laid precariously on Camilla’s shoulder and threatened to roll into her cleavage at the slightest turbulence.
Closing his eyes Daniel tried to imagine he was somewhere else, aboard a civilian airliner heading home from England and none of the last six months had ever happened. For a minute it seemed he did drift off, he could smell the freshly cleaned interior of the airliner instead of the motor oil and Simple Green that stained almost all military equipment. The stewardesses were pushing the cart for refreshments and moist towels, the roiling steam from the bowl catching his eyes, and then there she was. Lea for the first time, again.
Daniel blinked when the C-17 hit a pocket of hot air, rattling everything. Lea was sitting in the vacant seat across the aisle from him, her legs crossed and holding the same small travel bag she’d carried around with her when they’d first met. She smiled at him, not saying anything, he blinked again and she was gone. The same crewman who’d sipped the gin with them walked by and saw Daniel’s face was a white as a ghost.
“You gonna be airsick?” He handed Daniel a bag. “We’re landing in an hour. Can you hold it till then? I’m tired of cleaning shit, piss and blood off my deck. You missed it though, the MP’s had to put that Ruskie in a full body restraint while you were napping. Seems he pissed on one of ‘em.” The guy chuckled, patting Daniel on the shoulder and walking off to attend his in-flight duties again.
A smirk crossed Daniel’s face as he looked over at Jose and Camilla, who were both still passed out cold. The change in air pressure as they landed would wake them, no need to bother them now. The white lighting in the cabin suddenly blinked to red and the plane pitched violently to the left, throwing the airsick bag Daniel might now need far off to the right of him. Anything that was loose was now airborne, flying about the cabin like an unguided missile. Jose hadn’t been buckled in and Daniel reached up to catch him just in the nick of time, pulling his panicked friend back down to safety. People started screaming as the plane lost altitude faster than they could pop their ears, the pain becoming more disorienting than anything. A hard roll to starboard and a maneuver that pasted them all to their seats and the massive cargo plane leveled out, the roar of the engines dying down to a methodical hum.
A voice came over a loudspeaker in the aircraft, “This is Major Holmes, please remain seated and buckled in. We have detected active radar from an unknown source in the area, fighters and AWACs are already tracking and we should be out of harm’s way in a few minutes.”
It wasn’t true. Whoever was tracking the massive, slow moving cargo plane was still there, a new active radar lock sounded in the cockpit before the pilots could turn the intercom off and panic spread throughout the cabin again, this time because they could all hear the pilot’s avoiding incoming fire. They banked sharply, the entire ride felt like a blind nosedive over a roller coaster in a storm and threw everyone’s heads from one side to the other so violently nobody could have looked around. The plane screamed toward the earth, pulled up again and then dove one more time, everything and everyone aboard completely weightless when the explosion occurred. Daniel didn’t see which side they were hit on, or even any fire, just bodie
s being sucked out a massive void that had once been the hull of the aircraft. He could see the ground, trees and buildings flying by like a scale model landscape. This was worse than the DC landing by magnitudes, only there was no false hope the ambulance would meet them at the scene of the crash this time. They were just going to go down, and for a brief moment Daniel felt himself skip the many stages of death and fall straight into acceptance. Had he more time, he may have decided to enjoy his last roller coaster ride before the end, but this was only the hundredth time he’d faced impending doom this year. There’s only so many times you can scream Oh no! before you just start abbreviating it all as Fuck it.
The noise was so cacophonous he didn’t hear the screaming of the others, nor the engines struggle to keep the wounded bird in the air. He did, however, hear the bone shattering boom that was the plane striking ground. Then came a grinding that must have been the last thing a lot of airmen over the decades had heard. The plane bounced off of something incredibly solid, Daniel hit his head and-
black.
Chapter 10
“…and crown thy good with brotherhood…”
Daniel had the eerie impression he was dead, the silence so piercing his ears rang. He opened his eyes, unsure how to perceive the stillness until the first drop of rain fell between them. There probably wasn’t rain in Hell, which was what made Daniel curious enough to look around. First he looked over to Daniel and Camilla and their seats weren’t even there anymore. Of the entire row of twenty or so people he’d been seated in, nobody to his right was still there. The two uniformed Sailors who’d been riding to his left were also dead, one’s neck was snapped and the other was sporting a piece of metal through his chest like a Ridley Scott movie prop. Anywhere rain couldn’t reach seemed to be repainted in blood.
Daniel puked, it stank of liquor and cheese snacks and he knew now for sure he wasn’t dead. Neither Heaven nor Hell was traditionally thought to have tequila flavored vomit as part of their lore. Daring to look down, Daniel realized he was covered in more blood, his tan uniform now a soggy maroon and gathering flies. Taking a deep breath he felt himself for wounds he might be in too much shock to know about outright. When he’d fingered himself long enough, he looked up and lost his meal again. He’d found Jose and Camilla and most everyone who’d been seated to the right of him.
World of Ashes II Page 18
