Standing at the Edge

by William Alan Webb

  #

  SECTION SEVEN

  In the Back

  Chapter 53

  You’ll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.

  Julia Child

  Operation Overtime, General Angriff’s Quarters

  1903 hours, April 19

  Dessert consisted of apple pie MREs, warmed, with fresh ice cream sweetened with honey melting on top. Angriff had called in a special favor from Sharon Goldsmith to get it. As a rule he avoided using rank to get things others couldn’t, but when it came to his wife and daughters, that went out the window.

  He was halfway through the concoction when someone knocked at the door. Morgan sat closest, so she jumped up and answered it before he could move. “Dad,” she said, coming back to the table, “it’s Colonel Kordibowski.”

  “Thank you, sweetie.” He kissed his wife on the top of her head as he passed her. “Nobody finishes my dessert. I’m coming back.”

  In the hallway, Kordibowski apologized.

  “It’s fine, Rip, that’s your job. What’s up?”

  “This.”

  Angriff read the message. “Analysis?”

  “We think it refers to the Sierra Army Depot.”

  Angriff looked at the floor as the import of those words sank in. “Were all those AFVs still up there when you went cold?”

  “As far as I know they were, but I’ve never been there personally.”

  “Damn… Get me everything you’ve got on Sierra and meet me in my office in fifteen minutes.”

  He went back into his quarters and finished dessert. With a big smile he wiped his mouth, pointed at his son, and said, “Time for us to go to work.”

  #

  Operation Overtime

  1914 hours, April 19

  Colonel Schiller looked up when his orderly knocked on his office door. “What is it, Corporal?”

  “Colonel, Lieutenant Khoury was taking the physical ammunition inventory as you ordered, and found something unusual.” The corporal extended a yellowed slip of paper.

  Schiller recognized it as a manifest for a case of FIM-92A Stinger missiles, quantity eight. It was unusual because that model had been replaced decades before, but otherwise he scanned it and was about to ask so? when his eyes found the name of the addressee. He had no idea who Don Charro was, but he understood the implications of a place named Masjid of the New Prophet in Humble, Texas.

  “Did he find any more labels like this?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Thank you, Corporal. Get me an appointment with General Angriff. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  #

  Sitting behind his desk, Angriff decided not to light a cigar yet.

  Sergeant Schiller stood in the doorway and his expression showed his concern. “Something wrong, General?”

  Angriff started typing on his keyboard, looking for images of the Sierra Army Depot. “What tipped you off?”

  “Tonight was supposed to be family night, but here you are back again.”

  “You know me too well, J.C. Colonel Kordibowski will be here shortly and we’re going to need coffee.”

  “Trouble?”

  “What else is new? And J.C.? Tell Colonel Walling I need him back here pronto.”

  “Your wish, General.”

  When Kordibowski came in five minutes later, Angriff knew a lot more about the Sierra Army Depot than he had before. Green Ghost had arrived, too, and sat on the couch. Kordibowski took a chair.

  Angriff scrolled back up then turned from the monitor. “The last report we have from Sierra is dated five months after the initial earthquake, or about six weeks before Overtime was sealed up. We know things were falling apart then, so I’m quite surprised the report was not only written but loaded into the databases.”

  “Is there an inventory?”

  “No, just a report. I’ve sent you a copy, but it looks like most of the garrison pulled out on orders to head for Chicago. The report says they took most of the energy-generating hardware and operable vehicles with them, leaving only a skeleton staff with limited supplies to man the base. It mentions the engineers all left, as well.”

  “Damn. So all that hardware is probably sitting there waiting for the Chinese to take it…”

  “Maybe not,” Green Ghost interjected. They both turned to him. “Consider this. First, we have to assume the message is real. Otherwise, why send it?”

  “The Chinese could be luring us into a trap,” Kordibowski said.

  “That’s a long way for a trap. Getting there is the problem.”

  “Seven hundred fifty miles,” Angriff said, staring again at his computer monitor. “I’ve already looked it up. But I think you’re right. If they wanted to lure us into an ambush, they wouldn’t do it so far away. They’re after the weapons. Go on.”

  Green Ghost continued. “Second, if the message is real, then somebody must still be up there. Otherwise, who sent the message? Somebody had to radio Australia to let their buddy know to contact us. And third, the message says the Chinese are attacking. If there was nobody there, they’d just roll right in. They wouldn’t have to attack.”

  “The base has a defense force,” Kordibowski said.

  Angriff glanced from Green Ghost to Kordibowski and back again. “There are Americans up there fighting to hold back the Chinese.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Saint. They could be other enemies, or even rogue Chinese who already seized the place.”

  “No. Using your own logic against you, why would they radio Australia to contact us? They’re Americans, all right, and we’ve got to help them.”

  Kordibowski rose and paced a few times between his chair and the edge of the glass office wall. “If we assume there’s somebody resisting a Chinese advance…”

  “Yes?”

  He held up his hand in a gesture that meant wait. “I’m thinking it through as I go… Somebody’s fighting back, but… if they’re U.S. military, then why call Australia for help? If they have a long-range radio, then why not make a blanket call for help within the U.S. first? And if they’d done that, we would have picked it up, wouldn’t we?”

  “I’d have to ask Santorio to be sure, but I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.”

  “So am I. Which either means they called Australia first, or they have no radio and somebody else called Australia.”

  “Somebody else?”

  “Think about it, sir. If whoever is fighting the Chinese doesn’t have a radio, somebody else would have to. What if it’s a ham radio setup that still works? I know very little about amateur radio, but don’t they have the range to reach Australia?”

  “I don’t know.” Angriff was about to key the intercom when Schiller appeared in the doorway with a pot of coffee and three mugs. “Perfect timing, J.C. Get Colonel Santorio up here, please. Tell her to come as she is.”

  After putting the pot and mugs down on the small table he’d put there just for this purpose, Schiller nodded. “Will do, General, but Colonel Schiller is here to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

  “Oh, damn, what now?”

  “Want me to tell him you’re busy?”

  “No, send him in. Rip, Nick, stay here. We’ll resume when Santorio gets here.”

  Angriff didn’t see Kordibowski squint when he said Nick, but Green Ghost did.

  Colonel Schiller entered in the same formal manner he always had, erect and correct. After a sharp salute, Angriff invited him to take the other chair beside Kordibowski. The office was getting full.

  “General, while taking a physical inventory of munitions, my staff discovered something disturbing.” He handed over a printed spreadsheet. Paper was a finite resource and Angriff had issued strict regulations on its use, so if Schiller had used four precious sheets, this had to be important.

  Next the colonel laid a shipping manifest beside the spreadsheet. “You need to look at entry FIM-92A.”

  Angriff picked up the manifest first, scanned it, and t
hen inspected the spreadsheet, looking for the entry FIM-92A. He found it on page three, ran his finger across the page until he found the quantity received and the date. Beside that was the column for quantity shipped. Every other item on the sheet had a zero there, except that one. That one had a four.

  Angriff laid the manifest on his desk, trying to rationalize what it said into something other than open treason. He hated Steeple, yes, but a traitor? He was vicious and amoral, without a doubt, and absolutely a megalomaniac. But stretching that to include treason seemed too far. He had never gotten that sense of the man. “You didn’t find any more like this?

  “No, General, but after the first one, we did find three more places where a square the exact size of the crate on that manifest kept the wood from aging as quickly as the rest of the box. That verified the number.”

  “So they were shipping our enemies a lot of weapons?”

  “I would say that’s correct, sir. Four cases of FIM-92As.”

  “Stingers.”

  Schiller nodded. “Basic models, but yes, Stingers.”

  “How many come in a case?”

  “Eight.”

  “Those bastards… those damned bastards. Our own government supplied the Sevens weapons before The Collapse, and they have used those same weapons against my command, and will likely do so again.”

  “I can’t respond to that, sir. It’s outside my knowledge.”

  “Thank you, Colonel Schiller. Tell your people this is fine work.”

  #

  Schiller got up to leave, but Angriff waved him back down.

  “Bill, I’ve got an important assignment for you. I need you to relieve General Fleming over at Comeback. If I give you command of the base, can you run it?”

  Schiller’s face flushed, pink color running past his close-shorn hair into his scalp. “I’m honored, sir, but am I the best man for the job?”

  “You are. I need a complete inventory of everything, where it is, its state of readiness, anything it needs to be made operational… and that includes personnel. We have to integrate Comeback in the fastest, most efficient manner possible. I can’t think of anyone more qualified for the job than you. Do whatever you have to do here to coordinate your efforts at Comeback with your responsibilities as S-4, but I want you to relieve General Fleming no later than thirty-six hours from now. Any questions?”

  “Not offhand, sir.”

  “You can call me anytime, for anything. I have full confidence in you.” He looked up. J.C.stood in the doorway, indicating Santorio had arrived. “Now, get to it.”

  Schiller stood even more ramrod straight than he had before, saluted, and left.

  #

  Santorio had never been summoned to the Crystal Palace before. She’d been there on the platform when Nick the A had chewed them all out for not noticing the stars on General Tompkins’ collar, but never in the office itself. Now her hands shook and she couldn’t make them stop. What had she done wrong?

  Angriff stood when Sergeant Schiller ushered her in. She saluted him and he returned it, then he invited her to sit. She nodded at Green Ghost and Kordibowski.

  “Thank you for coming, Colonel. We need to know something about this message you passed on to Colonel Kordibowski earlier tonight. What type of equipment would be necessary for a radio signal to reach Australia?”

  “Assuming you’re talking about not using satellites, it wouldn’t take anything special, sir. A radio and the right antenna is all you need. The atmospherics are where you’d run into a problem. Daytime, nighttime, sunspots, fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field, they all play a bigger part in transmitting over long distances than the equipment does.”

  “So it’s at least theoretically possible that somebody near Lake Tahoe could contact somebody in Australia?”

  “Absolutely, sir. Conditions would have to be right, but it’s definitely possible.”

  #

  Chapter 54

  We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters.

  Robert E. Lee

  Operation Overtime

  2139 hours, April 19

  “All right, boys, it looks like this is real,” Angriff said. “If the Chinese get their hands on those tanks, it wipes out the losses we inflicted last year and then some. We’ve got one armored battalion, and they’d have an armored army. What can we do about it?”

  Green Ghost spoke first. “The first thing is to find out if the Chinese have already taken the base.”

  “And how do we do that?” Angriff said.

  “How far did you say it was, General?”

  “Seven hundred fifty miles. Even if we averaged forty miles an hour, it would take most of a day to drive it.”

  “With the state of the roads, you wouldn’t come close to averaging that,” Green Ghost said. “And I wouldn’t trust the bridges unless I had to. Then there’s the issue of fuel. You’d have to send tankers, because none of the available vehicles have that kind of range, but then you’d have to escort them with APCs or even AFVs, which would use even more fuel. Not to mention wear and tear on the heavy stuff.”

  “So ground is out, at least in the short term,” Angriff said. “That only leaves air.”

  “Seven hundred fifty miles is beyond the range of any of our birds,” Kordibowski said.

  “We’ve still got Steeple’s Blackhawk.”

  “They don’t have near the range,” Green Ghost said, “unless they’re equipped with extra tanks. We used them on an op once, a thousand-mile round trip. I was the only passenger. They squeezed in these specially designed fuel tanks for the mission. Are there any of those at Comeback?”

  “I don’t know,” Angriff answered. “Let’s find out.”

  #

  Operation Comeback

  2149 hours, April 19

  Norm Fleming’s nostrils flared as he sat behind the commander’s desk. By and large he didn’t show much emotion, but at that moment he wanted to yell at somebody. When the light on his headset came on, he slipped it over his ears and pushed the on button on his desk.

  “What is it?” he snapped.

  “Had a bad day?”

  “Nick! Yeah, you might say that. Amunet’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Gone. No longer here. Vanished. Nobody knows where.”

  “Great.” He heard Angriff sigh on the other end. “More rabbit holes.”

  “I heard somebody tried to kill you.”

  “Oh, hell, I’d already forgotten about that. It seems SOP at this point. Yeah, another true believer in whatever they believe in. But forget the assassins. I need you here.”

  “More problems?”

  “Nothing I want to talk about over the radio. I’m relieving you there, Norm, because I need you here. Colonel Schiller will take over command of Comeback.”

  Fleming closed his eyes and smiled, but tried to keep his voice neutral. “If you need me there, that’s all that matters. I’ll be back first thing in the morning. I’m bringing Alexis back with me.”

  “No, don’t come back just yet. You don’t have another Blackhawk there, do you?”

  “No. There’re a few other general purpose birds, but Steeple took the only Blackhawk. Why?”

  “I need you to check and see if Comeback has the special long-range fuel tanks that fit inside the Blackhawk, and I need it done now. If you have them, I’m sending the bird back your way to have them installed. This is priority one, Norm.”

  “Are we under attack?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You’ve got it. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

  “Norm? Make it sooner, will you?”

  #

  “Can you think of anything else we should be doing right this minute?”

  “If we can’t rig the Blackhawk, then I don’t know what we can do besides get some sleep,” Green Ghost sai
d. “But I think our top priority is information. Even if we can use the Blackhawk, it can’t haul more than one or two people with all that extra weight on board. So I say we send one person to gather information and then use the bird’s radio to give a detailed sitrep.”

  “That’s the plan, then. I just wish we knew who sent that signal.”

  “Have you asked General Tompkins?” Kordibowski said.

  #

  “I’m honored you thought of me, Nick.” Tompkins had gained a few pounds since the previous year, but it looked good on him, Angriff thought.

  “Knock off the humble stuff, Dennis. You’ve more than earned your right to be sitting here. It’s my fault for not thinking of you sooner.”

  “Did I run across anybody with an amateur radio?” Tompkins scratched behind his ear as he thought about it. “No, but it seems to me I did run up on somebody who said they knew such a man. It wasn’t that long ago, either. Somewhere up in Nevada, I think, maybe a few years back.”

  “Nevada? Up around Lake Tahoe, or north of there?”

  “No, further south. O’course, my memory ain’t the greatest any more, but I’d say south of Carson City.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, then,” Angriff said.

  “Maybe it does,” replied Green Ghost. “What if they sent out somebody looking for help? And that somebody found the amateur radio? Remember the last two words? Tell Americans.”

  “Y’know, you might be onto something. They might have intended that message for the Seventh Cav.”

  Kordibowski held up his hands in a whoa gesture. “Not so fast, General. Remember the message was sent to Patton?”

  “Good point. Nevertheless, they reached out to Americans for help, and it’s Americans who are going to answer the call.”

  #

  Chapter 55

  Perception is a tool that is pointed at both ends.

  Hannibal Barca

  Operation Overtime

  0003 hours, April 20

  Angriff leaned back in his chair and stretched his neck muscles. Green Ghost had slipped off to the hangar deck to see if anybody had thoughts on what to do if the extra tanks for the Blackhawk didn’t exist. He’d sent Kordibowski and Tompkins to try to get some sleep. There seemed nothing more he could do that night and was about to get up when the intercom buzzed.