“Well, it was kind of a secret that wasn’t a secret. Impossible to hide something like that, not like some of the sites out west. It’s just we never talked about it, even with officers getting trained up at Carlisle just thirty miles from here.
“Anyhow, work crews that had been drilling all the tunnels for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, coal miners from the fields north of here, a couple of thousand of them were brought in and hollowed out an entire mountain. I’ve been in it. You go down half a mile deep, a regular three-lane highway, and come out into subterranean caverns that just seem to go on forever. They put up hundreds of recycled World War II barracks, officers’ quarters, rather nice private trailers for high-rank civilians, mess halls, a giant cistern fed by artesian wells, storage areas, years’ worth of survival food, and a meeting room that looks like it came straight out of that movie Dr. Strangelove. It’s something like a time capsule down there actually. I was part of an emergency evacuation drill back when the Cold War was still on but winding down. Of course we all thought it absurd. It wouldn’t be bombers hitting us anymore. It would be sub-launched ballistic missiles from off the coast, launch to impact on D.C., little more than five minutes.”
He laughed sadly, shaking his head.
“During that surprise drill, just herding us onto the buses took an hour before we were even out of the parking lot. Your typical snafu. Kind of sad and creepy actually how we laughed about it on the drive up here. At least it was an overnight away from the Pentagon.”
“When was it still operational?” Maury asked.
“I think that exercise we were in proved how futile it all was. If the shit hit the fan without warning, we were all toast, so why sweat it? Got mothballed back when everyone was told the Cold War was over. Rumor is it was reactivated and the vice president was parked in there for a while immediately after 9/11. But since then?”
He sighed and shrugged. “I know this. On the Day, there was no mention of it whatsoever to anyone in my wing of the Pentagon.”
He turned to look back to the west and walked over to where the two soldiers who had been lugging heavy backpacks had already shucked off their loads and were pulling them open.
“But in a few minutes, we’ll find out the real truth of it all.”
Bob leaned over, pointed to the west, both of the men nodding, and as John watched, they began to unfold and open up a couple of portable dishes and several other antennas. They then pulled out of their packs a couple of high-grade military laptops and turned them on while the other trooper, squatting down, secured the dishes, aimed them west, and began to slowly adjust them while listening to directions from his companion with the computers hooked into the antenna arrays. Bob walked away and came back to the rest of the group.
“I thought about Site R off and on after the Day, even asked about it. All I ever got back from the government in Bluemont was blank stares and what I sensed were bullshit answers. The so-called reconstituted government at Bluemont was hunkered down in the FEMA fallback position and was told that was it. I just let it go since it was obviously a ‘don’t ask and we won’t tell’ type of issue. But there were whispered rumors. And then yesterday, your friend Linda Franklin handed me some data.” He looked off to the west. “And if confirmed, my friends, the shit is about to hit the fan big-time.”
He walked over to where his eavesdropping team members were still at work. One of them looked up at the general.
“A few more minutes, sir.”
Bob, obviously agitated, turned back to John and his friends. “Bluemont was a more recently constructed site, actually the headquarters not for the military in the event of a catastrophic attack but for a civilian agency, FEMA. Not as big a facility by a long shot—could house four or five hundred at most—but a lot more up to date. Half the distance as well to D.C. for evacuation. Rumor was it was the parking place for whenever there was a ceremonial gathering in D.C.; a member of the cabinet, a representative from each House, and some administrators were sent there just in case something really bad happened. So Bluemont seemed the logical place for those that were able to be extracted out after the attack to set up the government and start over.
“Also”—he paused for a moment and then shrugged as if the topic were no longer a secret—“there were rumors that some personnel were already up in Bluemont on the day we were attacked, taking part in some sort of drill. Those allegedly lucky ones thus became the core of the reconstituted government. At least that is how I saw it all until Linda tossed those papers in my lap last night with e-mails leaking back and forth between Bluemont and Site R.”
His features reddened slightly. “Some juicy tidbits, for this old guy, if not for how deadly it all is, I could almost laugh with how pathetic that guy in Bluemont sounded—what did they call it?—sexting or something like that to a woman in Site R?”
He shook his head. “So now we are here,” Bob said, looking back to the west. “The snow’s clearing for a moment. Go ahead and take a look. It’s just to the left of that ski slope. That’s Site R, just over there; you can see the antenna array atop the mountain.”
John squinted and looked to where Bob was pointing, and sure enough, he could see the antennas jutting up from atop a ridgeline as a snow squall drifted clear for a moment.
“Wouldn’t those antennas have fried off on the Day?” Maury asked.
“Yes, but for a place like that, they have backups and more backups stored inside. Remember it was built to come through a nuclear war. If that place is somehow operational, they got the replacements up. So that is why I decided we should park here—eavesdrop in the best way possible, with our gear literally aimed straight at them from only six miles away. I knew this to be as good a spot as any to do so and figured we’d soak up a little history as well while my tech boys listen in. Feel free to wander around, but don’t go out into the open. I doubt anyone picked us up flying in twenty feet off the road for the last fifty miles, but one can never be positive, especially when coming up on a place like this. So now we sit back, wait for my team to get up and running, and see if this is a wild-goose chase or not.”
“And if it is a wild-goose chase?” Kevin Malady asked, looking over at Bob suspiciously.
Bob sighed. “Let’s just hope this is the final straw,” he said coldly, his tension obvious to all.
“Let’s take a look around,” John announced, working to ease that tension down.
If this was indeed a wild-goose chase, what would his friend do next? For that matter, John now wondered, what would he do with whatever it was he was about to find?
John felt it best to step back for a few minutes. He motioned for his friends to follow and set off along the crest of the hill. He cautioned all to remain inside the wood line, while pointing out the statue of General Gouverneur Warren, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg, his bronze figure forever gazing toward where the Confederate attack had come in.
Near Warren’s iconic statue, the gaudy and imposing two-story-high mini-castle dedicated as a monument to a New York regiment towered above them, which John suggested they not climb up. He noticed that Bob was following along.
Bob’s features were drawn, pale in spite of the icy blasts of wind whipping about the hilltop. What is he contemplating next? John wondered.
“Wish we had time to really visit this place,” Bob said. “Maybe when better times come again, we will do so.”
In the silence of a winter morning, the landscape clad in snow, visibility at times dropping as another squall came in like powder smoke obscuring this field of action, John felt a strong profound connection with this land and its history. With all that had happened, would history eventually forget this place, its location returning to primordial forest such as what greeted the first settlers a hundred years before the battle? It was a sobering thought that a day might come when their descendants a score, maybe even a hundred generations hence might walk this ground, look at the broken fragments of long-gone monuments, and ask, “What happened her
e?”
Already, the first signs of neglect were showing. The once heavily trodden pathways were beginning to be reclaimed by the forest. Looters and vandals had already defaced many of the monuments, stealing the bronze plaques emblazoned with the names of the gallant for their metal. Even a couple of the artillery barrels had been stolen from their cast-iron gun carriages.
The path led down the slope to a simple granite monument tucked into the southwest slope of the hill. John, with his friend Bob by his side, approached it reverently. It was the monument for the Twentieth Maine, which had held the extreme left flank of the Union army on that grim, terrible day against odds as high as six to one. Even Lee Robinson, whose ancestors had assaulted this hill, stood in reverent silence as John spoke a few words about what this place meant to him, how the commander of that regiment, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, when returning years later to this now-quiet glen declared that where great deeds are accomplished, greatness lingers and that this was indeed the vision place of souls.
All stood silent, Bob then offering that they pray together for the repose of the souls of all who fell here, both North and South, which they did, Lee openly in tears.
As the group turned to start back up the slope, General Scales interrupted their departure.
“It might be legend, it might be true,” he began, struggling to keep control over his voice. “Some claim that when the few hundred men of Maine who were sent to hold this position started to dig in, piling up rocks to form a low wall to huddle against and hearing a tidal wave of thousands screaming the rebel yell heading their way, Colonel Chamberlain stepped forward to address his men. Back then, officers actually did that kind of thing.
“Legend is that he cried out, ‘Men of Maine,’ and then went on to proclaim that perhaps only once in a century were so few men gifted to hold such responsibility, that whether their Republic lived or died now rested in their hands and their hands alone and let each man embrace that duty, if need be with his life.
“Maybe that is us this day,” Bob said. “The Republic might rest in our hands before this day is out.”
With that, he turned and started back up to the crest, shoulders braced back, walking with a purposeful stride. John followed in his wake, sensing that his friend had reached a profound decision.
As they reached the crest of the hill, Sergeant Major Bentley, who had stayed behind, came racing down to meet the group.
“My God, General, you got to see this!”
Bob moved ahead swiftly, and this time Bentley did not hesitate to put his arm around his respected commander and help him up the slope.
John fell in behind them as they reached the crest. The two snipers were hunkered down behind the boulders, and the antenna arrays had been covered with gauzy white camouflage netting, one of the snipers forcefully suggesting that the rest of the group stay low.
“We monitored a Black Hawk taking off from there not ten minutes ago,” Bentley announced. “It was a tense moment, feared it might be coming over this way to check us out. But it turned southeast, and from the chatter we picked up, it was bound for Bluemont.”
“Okay, and…?” Bob asked.
“My God, sir, that place is bursting with chatter, uplinking to a sat, take a look!”
Bob went over to where his two surveillance people were hunched over their laptops, capturing data. One of the surveillance team looked up at Bob, but he wasn’t grinning, and there was a chilling, icy look of rage in his eyes and clarity in his tone of voice.
“Sir, those bastards—” He paused for a moment. “Those people over there, the flow is near constant. The stuff going up, not much and highly encrypted, but we can break some of it down. It is the other traffic, though. Personal notes to people back at Bluemont. Personal! One of them complaining that they’re sick of the frigging rations!”
The young man looked down at the ground and slammed his fist next to the laptop he was monitoring. “They’re complaining about the food they’re stuffing themselves with while I found out my father was killed trying to protect our family dog from being taken for food, and my mother was…” His voice trailed off into tears of rage.
Bob squatted down by his side, rubbing the back of the young man’s neck, but as he did so he looked at the data scrolling down on the screen, eavesdropping on transmissions from Site R but six miles away. He remained thus for long minutes, at one point picking up the laptop and asking the other technician how to freeze the screen so he could reread something. As he did, his features reddened, and he put the laptop down and stood up.
“Okay, we’ve got enough here,” he snapped sharply. “I want you two to stay here and keep monitoring. Capture everything you can.”
He then looked back at the two who were the security detail and ordered them to stay as well, along with one to follow him back to the choppers and pull out some survival gear and rations and then come back.
He now looked at John and the others. “Let’s go,” he snarled.
“To where?”
Bob pointed across the fields of Gettysburg to the ridgeline beyond. “We’re going to take that damn hill.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A thunder echoed in the valley behind Little Round Top as the five Apaches and eight Black Hawks started to rev up. General Scales had gathered his men around once back down from the hilltop and briefed all on what was to be done. Standing with his friends, it struck John just how concisely the man had thought out a tactical plan within a matter of minutes. He outlined the reasons for his decision first and offered that if any did not want to participate, they were free to stay behind. Upon hearing what the general had to say, every man and woman volunteered, all filled with a deep anger. Next he laid out the tactical plan for the assault to the pilots and troops and, having caught his breath after the grueling hike in the snow, did so with a calm radiance and voice of authority.
As he broke word to his command of exactly what they were facing and that they were going straight in, John could see the entire demeanor of the eighty troops, the pilots, and copilots shift within seconds to determination and bitter rage. Many of them cursed foully as they gathered round their choppers and geared up for a flight into what might turn into a hot zone, zipping up Kevlar jackets and loading up with extra ammunition from the boxes hauled in on the helicopter John had ridden in. The medics were tearing open the box of supplies carried on John’s chopper, each of them shouldering several fully loaded emergency bags, checking to make sure they had medic armbands on both arms. Forrest quietly whispered to John that in Afghanistan the medics took those off since the bastards they were fighting would single out medics for special treatment.
Once loaded up, Bob circled to each team, bowed his head, and led them in a short prayer before helping them to load in. Bob chose to go in with the lead copter, telling the pilot for the one John was on to hang back and be the last one to come in once the LZ was cleared.
“This is why I wanted you and your friends with us!” Bob shouted. “If we find what I suspect is over there, I want civilian witnesses. You might not know it, John, but your reputation extends beyond just Black Mountain, Montreat, and Asheville. So if things get hot, you are to stay back and stay alive. You got that?”
Bob led this last group in a short prayer with heads bowed, and he shook hands. He told Forrest and Malady—who was a marine vet—to make sure everyone’s gear was squared away and then stomped off to the lead chopper.
“Let’s double-check each other’s equipment and get ready for some shit!” Forrest shouted enthusiastically, and John could see that in a perverse way, PTSD was forgotten for the moment; he was back in his old element and enjoying it.
As each climbed into the chopper, Forrest and Malady checked their Kevlar jackets and helmet straps, Forrest giving John an admonishing look as he zipped up John’s jacket and then helped him up while Kevin double-checked that each was properly strapped into their safety harness.
“It could be hot; we might get hit. If we
do and have to ditch in, follow what I do!” Kevin shouted.
Their pilot looked back over his shoulder, holding up one hand in a thumbs-up gesture, which all returned.
“Bugler, sound charge!” Forrest shouted as they lifted off, this time rising nearly vertically, the Black Hawks spacing out into line astern with Bob in the lead Black Hawk, while two Apaches fanned out on to either flank, the other three moving ahead of the column.
John looked over at Lee, who was sitting next to him, his gaze fixed forward, and for once he did not look nauseous.
They swung a bit to the north, following the Wheatfield Road rather than cresting up over Little Round Top. Lee, wide-eyed, rattled over the place-names—Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, Trostle Farm—his voice filled with emotion. John recalled years ago at the town’s Civil War roundtable meeting when Lee had nervously presented a talk on his family’s role in the war, how two of his ancestors fought in this battle, one losing an arm. There were tears in his eyes as he leaned up to take in the view.
“If only we had half a dozen of these at that battle, good God, how it would have changed things.”
“Suppose we had them instead,” John quipped back with a smile.
The choppers swept low over the snow-covered battlefield, hugging the earth, climbing up the gentle slope of Seminary Ridge, pitching up slightly to just barely clear the trees. Ahead, Sachs Covered Bridge could be seen, beyond that the open fields of the Eisenhower Farm, and then directly ahead … Site R, the ridgetop bristling with antennas.
Lee took a deep breath and looked across at Forrest, who was sitting silently, eyes half-closed.
“How bad is it going to be?” Lee shouted.
“Don’t know. Maybe just some garrison types who will pee themselves and run as we come in. Or special-ops types with orders to shoot to kill anyone who comes close and tear us apart as we come in. You’ll know in about three minutes.”
“Now I know how my granddaddies felt.” Lee sighed, his features set and grim. He started to whisper, and John caught bits of the Ninety-First Psalm, what many called the soldier’s psalm, “Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night; nor the arrow that flieth by day. Nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the destruction that wasteth by noonday…”
The Final Day Page 29
