The Final Day

by William R. Forstchen

  “Or what, sir?”

  “This morning, my ass is on the line as well. I’ll explain it later, but things with Bluemont have never been a love match from the start, of late have gone very sour, and you, Colonel Matherson, you and your friends have finally pushed me over the edge.”

  “Which means?”

  “Your call, John. If you don’t trust me with this, and suspect I am playing some game to deliver not just you but six of your friends to Bluemont as icing on the cake, then get the hell out of here now. If you trust me I want six of your best with me within two hours. I want them as additional witnesses as to what is going to happen next. When all is said and done this day, many might not believe me, but they just might believe you and your friends.”

  John again looked at the map. He was not sure exactly what it was that Bob was plotting, but it was not what he expected just twelve hours ago when arrested.

  “Okay, sir,” was all he could say in reply. Across a lifetime he had learned that far too often when someone said “just trust me,” it was a prequel to getting a knife in the back. Bob was asking him now to not just put his own life on the line, but those of some of his closest friends and comrades as well.

  But there was a cold logic to it all at this moment. If they were about to be betrayed, Bob’s prediction that Bluemont would take his community off the map with an air attack was undoubtedly true and his friends would die anyhow.

  He again looked at the lines Bob had drawn on the map, what it implied, and he finally made the decision. If Bob’s intent was to betray them, they were all dead anyhow. If not, he would have to trust his old commander’s offer.

  “Okay, sir, I’ll give them a call, but chances are they’ll refuse.”

  “I won’t blame them if they do, but I sure would appreciate their presence this day. I can have a Bradley up there in an hour to pick them up and bring them back. I hope they sign on.”

  John looked at the map one more time, still not sure where this was all leading. Some pieces were beginning to fall into place, memories surfacing from his time at the War College and a stint in the Pentagon.

  “I’ll make the call.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  John climbed into the troop compartment of the Black Hawk and looked across to the opposite row of benches. Maury, Grace, Forrest Burnett, Reverend Black, and Kevin Malady seemed relatively at ease, but Lee was already cursing under his breath while Maury helped him to adjust his safety straps. They had all been rousted out by his call to the town office. By chance, Forrest had come in from over the mountain when hearing that John had been arrested, demanding to lead a rescue operation before he was hauled away. The fact that all of them had actually trusted his voice, over a phone, to board a Bradley sent up from the airport and that it was not a trap to round up those who had served with him spoke volumes.

  The door was about to be slid shut when, to John’s surprise, Bob Scales climbed in, followed by Sergeant Major Bentley and a young staff sergeant toting several different radios. Behind them, extra boxes of small-caliber ammunition were loaded in, finally followed by a medic dragging aboard a couple of boxes of medical supplies.

  The pilot looked back over his shoulder. “Sir, we are overweight!” he shouted.

  “Just get us the hell up, burn off some gas, and we’ll be fine!” Bob shouted back. “I’ve seen worse!”

  “Your orders, sir,” the pilot snapped back.

  Bob looked around at John’s friends and smiled. “So I suppose you’re all wondering why I asked for this meeting at eight in the morning with the snow coming down.”

  “You’re damn straight,” Forrest muttered, and he finally added on, “sir.”

  “Time later—now just enjoy the ride, I always get a kick out of liftoff.”

  The eight Black Hawks and six Apaches started to taxi out from the parking area in front of the National Guard hangar, ground crews watching them, bundled up against the blasts of the rotors and the moderate snow coming in from the west.

  Rather than do a straight vertical takeoff, they actually taxied down to the end of the runway, the lead Apache turning to face the wind and with wheels still on the ground built up forward speed before finally nosing up. John looked forward through the windshield of the Black Hawk to watch the show.

  Forrest was leaning up out of his seat to watch as well and started to chuckle. “Remember that damn movie, the one with the bugler blowing charge? We actually used to do that in the ’Stan if a bunch of us were lifting off and going in harm’s way. Got your blood up.”

  “Shut the hell up,” Lee muttered, already clutching his vomit bag. “If I’d known this involved another flight, John, I’d have told you to screw off.”

  Three Apaches lifted off first and then circled high to protect the rest of the formation. The Black Hawks were next. John’s pilot shouted a warning to hang on. He rolled forward at full throttle, shifted the collective, and nosed up high, Lee moaning as they lifted into the swirling snow. Gaining just a few hundred feet, they leveled off and turned to a nearly due north heading.

  “It’s going to be nap of the earth most of the way!” Scales shouted. “Might get bumpy at times with this weather. We’re going to follow Interstate 26 over the mountains, angle east once through the pass until we pick up Interstate 81, and then straight on from there. Low and fast. Should take about two and a half hours. We’ve got a hot thermos of coffee for those who want it; otherwise, just settle back, try to get some sleep, and enjoy the ride.”

  His words were met by a heavy retching from Lee, and there were a few gags from the others until the slipstream shrieking past the helicopter whipped the stench away.

  There had been a barrage of questions from John’s friends as they wearily alighted from the Bradley at eight in the morning and were handed Kevlar vests, helmets, M4s, and combat packs. The situation was not helped when Lee saw that they were being shepherded to a Black Hawk, its engines already running.

  Maury started to shout questions at John about what was going on and where they were headed as the chopper leveled off. John pleaded real ignorance as to what was transpiring, and all looked to Bob, who remained mum. The group settled into sullen silence as they raced north, interrupted only by Lee’s pathetic heaves. The medic finally plastered an antinausea patch behind his ear and give him a couple of pills to swallow, and just as they were clearing the top of the I-26 pass at the Tennessee border, Lee finally settled down thanks to the medication and drifted off to sleep.

  John sat lost in silent contemplation. He was putting one hell of a lot of trust in Bob at this moment, trusting not just for himself but for the lives of his closest friends on the line as well. The penciled lines on the map, whatever they meant, could have been just an elaborate ruse to lull him into belief and ultimately to lure in his best combat leaders and closest friends, one of them the only man in their whole community who could, in a clumsy way, actually fly a Black Hawk. For Bob to personally deliver them to his leaders in Bluemont, the murderers of their precious Fredericks, would be quite the coup.

  He looked over at Bob, who, like any old hand with likely thousands of hours in Black Hawks, had settled into his bucket seat, stretched out his feet, lowered his head, and simply dozed off. There was precious little to see out of the frost- and snow-covered side windows. Up front, the view was just a blur of snow and glimpses of a deadly still interstate highway as the chopper banked to a northeasterly heading with Interstate 81 on their left. John caught a glimpse of what looked like an abandoned airport, its snow-covered runway running parallel to the interstate. John had a flash of memory; it might have been Mountain Empire Airport. He recalled it as a friendly place when several years back he was up with a friend in an Ercoupe, and they landed to get gas and some Coke and crackers. One of the mechanics noted that a cowling flap had cracked loose on the antique plane. It looked to John that the bent-back metal from the cowling would mean they would be stuck for hours. The mechanic simply bolted it back in place and
literally charged them just a dollar and a half for the bolt.

  He hoped that whoever had helped them had survived and that he was perhaps peering out with envy at the eight Black Hawks and six Apaches racing by, just barely above the pavement.

  Time stretched out, John nodding off as well after the tension of the last few days. As he was stirring awake, he saw Grace and Kevin sharing a joke and laughing, leaning in close against each other. The way they looked at each other, he wondered if something was developing between the two. If so, good; they’d make a fine match.

  John dozed off again, to be awakened by Bob talking to the pilot and then looking back to John.

  “We just lost one of our Apaches. Turbine overheating. They’re landing on the highway, see if they figure it out, but we’re pushing on.”

  “Where are we?” John asked.

  “Near Winchester, Virginia. It really is nap of the earth now, so you’d all better hang on for this last part.”

  Winchester?

  If so, John knew that Bluemont was just fifteen or so miles to the east, dug into the slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which too many mistakenly called the Shenandoahs. If they continued on the current heading, it really did mean Bob was not heading there after all.

  “How far to wherever it is we are going?” John asked.

  “Fifteen minutes by air at most, but if Robert E. Lee was leading us as infantry,” he said, smiling, “it’d be about two days’ forced march.”

  It took a minute to decipher that, and John smiled. His last remaining doubts had just been set aside.

  The helicopter flared fifteen minutes later as Bob predicted, nose high, coming in to land, snow swirling up around it, nearly blinding the view. John looked out eagerly. He recognized the terrain as if it were darn near his own hometown. The chopper, nose into the wind, thumped down a bit hard, bounced, and then finally settled. Bob, unstrapped from his safety harness, was already up. He hunched over, went to the side door, slid it open, and then leaped out. Typical Bob, John thought. First one in with boots on the ground. John eagerly followed him. Bob shaded his eyes against the rotor blasts as one helicopter after another settled down along the road, doors sliding open, troops leaping out with weapons raised.

  John looked over at Bob. “Why land here?” he shouted.

  Bob grinned at him. “Because I miss the place.”

  John could only shake his head in wonder.

  Bob called over one of his captains and shouted some orders. The captain nodded and turned to issue a command, and nearly all the troops dismounted, spreading out to form a defensive perimeter—except for one squad, two of the men toting sniper rifles, another what looked to be a ground-to-air missile, and two others backpacking heavy loads that John could not identify.

  “Care to come along?” Bob shouted to John.

  “You’re damn straight I’m coming along. Mind if my friends join in?”

  Bob looked back at the Black Hawk they had been on, John’s people tentatively climbing out, all of them with looks of confusion, Lee obviously unhappy until he looked around, eyes going wide before he ran a dozen yards forward to look up at a road sign.

  “My God!” Lee cried. “Taneytown Road and Wheatfield Road! You have got to be kidding me!”

  “No joke,” Bob replied. “Care to follow me?”

  “You’re damn straight, sir!” Lee shouted, and it was he who eagerly broke the trail with his towering bulk, heading up the Wheatfield Road, plowing through the snow, which at places was drifted nearly two feet deep, clearing the way. Behind him, the two snipers—both men nearly as big as Lee—followed, kicking snow aside, obviously laboring to clear a path for General Scales, who, though obviously enthusiastic and eager to go, nevertheless was a man well into his sixties, and after five minutes of uphill ascent, it was apparent the hike was beginning to take its toll.

  They reached the intersection with Sykes Avenue, where Lee had paused, looking back almost like an eager child ready to push on whether the adults were following or not. Bob nodded and pointed south, a steep ascent even on days when the road and hiking path beside it were cleared of snow. John paused at the intersection, waiting for General Scales to come up, the man bending double for a moment to catch his breath. While waiting for him to continue, John took in the view, limited for a moment as a snow squall swirled around them and then opening back up again. It truly did take his breath away, and he felt a surge of emotion.

  “Let’s go,” Bob announced between hard gasps for air.

  “Maybe wait a few minutes, sir, catch your breath,” John offered.

  “Go to hell, Matherson. I can still hack it,” the general replied. “General Warren and a lot of others did it on the run with full gear. Then there was that artillery battery manhandling their guns up this slope as well.”

  “And they were in their teens and twenties,” John replied cautiously.

  Bob smiled at him and then without another word pushed forward. John noticed that the two snipers had held back a bit and were obviously working hard to tramp down the snow to form a path, as was Sergeant Major Bentley, who came along, invited or not—he had to be by his general’s side. None spoke to the general or dared to offer a hand, but it was obvious they were keeping a sharp eye on him as they climbed the last few hundred yards up the steep slope.

  John, walking by his side, found even he was breathing hard, a memory flooding back of when he was a boy and had actually run up this hill in his eagerness to reach the crest.

  And indeed there was the crest just ahead, crowned by an iconic statue.

  Bob was breathing so hard it started to worry John as they came nearly to the crest and turned off on to a walking path that wove its way through the heavy boulders.

  Lee was already up atop one of the boulders, shading his eyes against the wind, looking west. “Down there, straight down there, one of my great-great-grandfathers came in with Hood’s division.” Then he swung his arm to the northwest. “Another one of my great-great-granddads was in the thick of it up there by the Seminary on the first day.”

  Lee’s voice thickened. “My God, on the third day, he went in with Pettigrew and lost his arm. Oh my God.” He turned away and tears flowed. “Why did you bring us here?” Lee asked of Bob, who smiled.

  John was brimming with the same question, having recognized where they were within seconds of touching down. They had landed behind Little Round Top on the battlefield of Gettysburg.

  Bob motioned for all to gather round, unable to speak for a moment, still breathing hard, coughing and spitting. “It sucks to get old, gentlemen. My first time here, I was twelve and ran my parents into the ground.”

  John was smiling and nodding as his mentor spoke.

  “Colonel Matherson and I must have hiked—or should I admit driven it—a dozen or more times together for staff rides while we were at the War College up in Carlisle, which is only thirty or so miles off that way.” He pointed to the north.

  “I’m not getting it, sir,” Kevin Malady said. “I’ve always wanted to visit this place, but why now?”

  Bob turned and pointed out toward the west. “Site R is over there,” he announced. “That is why we are here, gentlemen.”

  “Site R?” Lee asked, but it all came to John in a stunning rush of realization.

  When Linda had first mentioned it, that they were monitoring some personal traffic back and forth from a Site R, it had not registered with John since he had assumed it was some government site out west. It wasn’t until he saw the lines drawn on Bob’s map that it finally had clicked. It explained why Bob had put a full clampdown on everyone in his command as to their destination and why he had made some obvious choices to leave certain personnel behind, while letting it appear he was personally delivering John to Bluemont and asking some of John’s team to come along as well. To throw off anyone within his own command who might squeal to Bluemont after he lifted off, the game of luring in some of John’s top people to be handed over as well hopefully
worked.

  Bluemont was far behind them now, and Gettysburg sixty miles farther on—as Bob adroitly put it, a few days’ march away for Robert E. Lee. Site R was not much more than six miles away from where they now stood and clearly visible from Gettysburg’s Little Round Top.

  “Site R was built back in the early 1950s,” Bob began, and John smiled. It was almost like the start of one of his lectures delivered at the War College.

  “It was built as the fallback position for the Pentagon and civilian government in case of nuclear war. At the time it was built, the thinking was that the commies”—he paused with an ironic smile—“excuse me, I mean our good friends the Russians, if they launched an attack, it would come in with bombers, and we’d have six to eight hours’ advance warning. So the military decided they needed a bunker, a damn big bunker to house upward of twenty-five thousand personnel. It had to be far enough away from D.C. not to be caught in the blast radius of a twenty-megaton warhead and the resulting fallout, but close enough that it could be reached by ground within two hours, by air within twenty minutes.

  “Thus Site R. That’s why a modern four-lane highway was built from D.C. to Frederick, Maryland, back in the 1950s. Convenient as well that, with Eisenhower as president, it was damn near in his backyard with his farm just down there on the other side of Seminary Ridge. Whenever things were looking hairy, Ike could always just go to his farm for a while without triggering a panic and be just a few minutes away from the biggest shelter in the country. Same with Camp David less than five minutes’ air time away from here.”

  As he spoke, almost like a tour guide, he pointed to the west, but for the moment the snow squalls obscured the view.

  “All the times I was visiting here, I never knew about it,” Lee offered.