Standing at the Edge

by William Alan Webb

  The tiniest details always caught his attention. Sometimes during his career, it had gotten him commended, sometimes reprimanded, but he couldn’t help himself; he was naturally gifted with an ability to find anomalies in spreadsheets and bills of lading. And so it was again.

  Among the thousands of parts inventoried in the Comeback base, one innocuous computer chip stood out. The chip itself had no suspicion attached, nor had it been trans-shipped somewhere nefarious, as had happened with the Stinger missiles at Overtime. What caught his eye was the supplier of the part, Rosos Manufacturing. Everyone knew Rosos had been a leftist totalitarian hedge-fund manager, but Schiller wondered if it could possibly be the same Rosos. To his knowledge, the man never made anything in his life besides money.

  Only one person was capable of deciphering the riddle. Schiller buzzed his administrative assistant and told her to get him Overtime on the phone, Colonel Wallings office. He needed to speak with Corporal Dupree.

  #

  Operation Overtime

  1238 hours, April 21

  Sergeant Schiller knocked at Angriff’s office door. “General, it’s Corporal Dupree. He’d like a moment.”

  Angriff leaned back and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Dupree… this can’t be good. He’s like the Angel of Death, a herald of bad news. All right, bring him in. And get me more coffee. Please.”

  Dupree stood at attention, trembling as usual, and held his salute.

  “At ease, Dupree. Don’t be so nervous, son. We won a battle today. I’m not going to yell at you.”

  “I— I know I always bring you bad news, General, and that makes me nervous.”

  “So you heard my remark? Never mind, I’m sorry I said that, Dupree. You do one helluva job and have saved our collective ass more than once. So what’ve you got for me this time?”

  “I’m not sure what it means, General, but Colonel Schiller sent me something from Operation Comeback that he wanted my opinion on. An invoice for a computer part that came from a company named Rosos Manufacturing.”

  “A computer… part?”

  “Yes, sir, some sort of board or chip.”

  “And is this the Rosos, as in that Hungarian anti-capitalist guy, the one who financed all those riots around the world?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never heard of him or this company. What I told Colonel Schiller is that it’s not a computer company I’d ever heard of.”

  “So this isn’t some known entity?”

  “It’s hard to tell. There were lots of dinky specialist manufacturers, so I checked all our databases and came up empty. But that’s not definitive. It could’ve been one guy named Rosos working in his mom’s basement.”

  “Rosos…” Angriff rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Any idea what it means?”

  “None, sir. But like I told Colonel Schiller, it’s very weird. I mean, even if it’s legit, since when does the army buy hardware from some company so small it’s not even in the database?”

  “Thanks, Dupree, you may go.”

  #

  Operation Overtime

  1255 hours, April 21

  Angriff stared at the desert from his favorite corner in his office. When the intercom buzzed, he whirled and pushed the answer button within two seconds.

  “Colonel Santorio on line one, General.”

  “What have you got, Desiree?”

  “General, we’ve got General Fleming on the radio. It’s a weak signal and he can’t talk long.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I didn’t waste time asking him, sir.”

  “Right, good call. Put him through.” At first all he heard was static. “Norm, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you, Nick, but it’s faint. Listen, I don’t have much time. I’m in the Blackhawk at ten thousand feet and we’re low on fuel. We held the base against a strong Chinese attack, but casualties were very heavy. We need reinforcements, fuel, and most of all medical teams and supplies. We need a lot of blood and we need it now, along with surgeons and anything else you can spare.”

  “I’ll have a relief convoy on the road first thing tomorrow! Are you expecting further attacks?”

  “Not in the near future, but after they regroup, who knows?”

  “How are you?”

  “Right as rain. No damage.”

  “I can tell you’re lying; you sound out of breath. So you’d better stay alive until I can court-martial you for disobeying orders.”

  Angriff heard a slight chuckle. “I’ll use the Angriff defense at my trial.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “Direct orders from superior officers not to personally engage in combat operations shall be taken as suggestions, not binding orders.”

  #

  Sierra Army Depot, Herlong, CA

  1743 hours, April 21

  Despite their exhaustion, the bodies of the dead could not be left out in the open overnight. Aside from the clouds of flies already swarming over them, they were attracting insect scavengers too, such as scorpions and fire ants. But dragging more than three hundred bodies, scattered over such a huge area, to a central location, without vehicles, was beyond the men’s remaining physical strength.

  In the end, all they could do was drag the bodies to the nearest pit, trench, or depression, and cover them with stones and boulders. Nobody found Prophet James and his followers; they were too far west. When patrols stumbled across them the next day, there wasn’t much left. The American dead within the base itself Fleming ordered taken to an undamaged warehouse for burial the next day.

  With the sun low over the western mountains, Fleming paused beside the deep trench where Aretha Lamar lay with her teenage girls. The savagery of the fighting showed in the craters, blood, scorch marks, and shell casings. Lamar herself was already nearly buried, as were the girls. The only words he knew to speak were the same ones he’d been using all afternoon.

  “You have given the ultimate sacrifice in defense of freedom. If you can hear us now, please accept the thanks of a grateful nation.”

  The men assembled to fill in the trench nodded. A few crossed themselves.

  Then a voice spoke from behind them. “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, here we fought and here we died, our honor undefiled.”

  Fleming turned. Green Ghost led two stretcher bearers carrying a man wrapped in heavy, bloody bandages.

  “I like the changes to the epigram,” Fleming said.

  “Thanks. This is Private Marcus Lamar. That’s his grandmother down there. She was the C.O. of this place. Marcus fought his gun to the last and wanted to be here to say goodbye, but he passed out on the way over.”

  “Should you be moving him?”

  Green Ghost shrugged. “When a brave man makes a request like that, I figure what the hell.”

  “Yeah.”

  #

  Chapter 86

  Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

  From a tombstone in Ireland

  Somewhere over South Central Nevada

  1145 hours, April 21

  “I told you dodging that goo would screw up my navigating, and it did. We’re at least ten degrees off course.”

  “Stop bitching. I wasn’t flying through it, not in this crate.” Bunny Carlos never took his eyes off the sky ahead. “I’m not sending this bird back to the taxpayers.”

  “Just don’t yell at me because we’re lost.”

  “Don’t tell me that, Joe! I’m smiling at our fuel gauge but it’s not smiling back. We need to find a runway.”

  “Don’t get beaded up. I’ll find us one. But I know we’re headed too far east.”

  “This would have been a lot easier with satellites, ground control radar, and ATCs.”

  The low whine of the huge aircraft’s jet engines had become comforting. Joe had an old map of Nevada that somebody had left in the plane, with the location of several brothels outside Las Vegas scrawl
ed in blue ink, but no charts, GPS, or modern navigational aids to help him. As he angled the map into the sunlight streaking through his window, Jingle Bob slid into the cabin. He and Carlos had forgotten the scraper was on the plane.

  “How’s it looking?” Bob asked, loud enough to be heard over the engines. Randall took off one headphone and Bob repeated the question. The shriek of the jets blocked the trembling fear in Bob’s voice.

  “We’re lost in the bubble.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “That’s because it’s not. We went around a big thunderstorm, but now we’re— hold on a minute.” He tapped Carlos on the shoulder and pointed to one o’clock. Slipping his earphone back on, he said, “That looks like a runway. See the big whitish area? Look just beyond that.”

  “It’s hard to tell,” Carlos answered.

  “I’m telling you that’s a runway, Bunny.”

  “Okay, I see it now, but how do we know that’s Creech? Try the radio again.”

  Randall tried calling, but still got no response. “This thing’s dead. I say we touch down and see what’s what. Our fuel is low but we’re not out; we’ll still have enough for another short jump if we need to.”

  “For all we know, that runway’s full of potholes.”

  Before they could argue further, Bob started shaking Randall’s shoulder.

  “Hey, man, take it easy!”

  But Bob was pointing straight ahead. “I ain’t never seen it from an eagle’s eye, but that looks like Groom Lake. That’s what that big white place is called. We need to shit fire get out of here.”

  “Groom Lake?”

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  Randall didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at a new red light flashing high on the instrument panel. He didn’t know what it meant, but red lights on panels are never good, and when they start blinking without warning, that usually means something has gone very wrong. Pulse throbbing at his throat, he leafed through the dog-eared handbook and stabbed a page with his finger. “Oh, fuck, Bunny! We’re being painted!”

  For the first time in hours, Carlos turned away from the route ahead. “Painted as in radar painted? They’ve got a working radar? What if they’ve got SAMs, too? Does this tub have defenses?”

  Randall pointed to ten o’clock low, where two small aircraft rose together from the runway. They were silver-gray in color, with swept wings, one engine on each side of the fuselage, and dual vertical stabilizers canted at a sharp angle. One peeled off, passing them on the right, and Randall spotted a darker gray circle on the left wing, with a pale five-pointed star inside, the markings of the United States Air Force. Within seconds, he identified the airplane he’d seen a thousand times, the F-22 Raptor.

  It only took the nimble fighters twenty seconds to flank the huge transport, and they maintained station thirty feet off its wingtips. The pilots pointed down with their index fingers, in the universal symbol for land immediately or we’ll blow you out of the sky.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Bob’s face looked bluish-white in the half-light behind the pilots’ seats. “Are they gonna kill us?”

  “Shut up and sit down!” Randall said. “If we don’t land, they’ll shoot us down.”

  Bob covered his face with his hands and then spread them out to his ears. Fear twisted his features, but he said nothing more.

  Randall ignored him. “You can do this, Bunny. I know you can. You shot landings in one of these before, right?”

  “Yeah, a few times, but that was a lifetime ago and I had a qualified captain in the left seat in case I fucked it up.”

  “But you’ve done it, and you can do it again. Calm down and concentrate. You’ll be fine.”

  Randall gave a thumbs-up to the visored head in the F-22 off the right wing. Carlos held the huge machine steady as they went through the landing checklist. The engine’s roar alternately deepened or increased in pitch as he adjusted air speed. Randall put the landing gear down to let the fighters know they were serious about landing. No use giving those potentially trigger-happy pilots a reason to put a missile up their ass. Tense seconds followed as the mechanical whirr of the gear being deployed overrode the engine noise. Randall hated the feeling of not being in control and tapped his foot as they waited for the loud chink to indicate they’d locked in place.

  Because of its enormous size, the C-5 had a complicated landing gear system. First, four sets of doors opened like the bomb bay doors of a B-17. Then four struts descended, each supporting two axles. The rear axle had two tires on either side, while the front axle had one tire on each end, six in total. During their descent, the tires faced to either side, not front and back. The struts had to rotate ninety degrees before they locked in place and were ready for touchdown. From opening the doors to the landing-gear-ready light turning green, the whole process took twenty seconds.

  Randall thought it seemed more like twenty minutes. “Landing gear down and locked.”

  Final approach was straightforward enough, although convection from the day’s rising heat bumped the plane around. Carlos blinked at sweat, refusing to release the controls to wipe it away. He fought the aircraft rather than flew it, but minutes later they all exhaled as tires screeched on contact with the runway. There was a second’s gasp as they bounced twice, but then the monstrous aircraft settled into a long, slowing roll.

  Only then did they notice a line of buildings off on the left, and the truck heading out to meet them.

  Carlos taxied off the main runway onto a concrete pad, two hundred yards from a multi-story building with unbroken glass windows. The truck stopped near the aircraft’s nose and men piled out, cradling rifles.

  “Are they gonna shoot us?” Bob asked as Randall and Carlos unbuckled and rose from their seats. “We shouldn’t have come here.”

  Randall arched backwards, stretching his sore muscles. “If they do, I hope they do it first thing and get it over with.”

  Carlos knew he was joking.

  Bob didn’t. “No, don’t say that!”

  Something banged on the fuselage. Muffled voices shouted for them to open up.

  “This should be fun.” Randall smiled at Bob to reassure him.

  On the left side of the aircraft, behind the cockpit area, a hydraulic door folded down, with a stair extending to the ground once the door had locked in place. Randall went down the steps first, stopping long enough to grin and show empty hands. Bob came next and Carlos last. Randall was close enough to the ground to feel heat rising from the concrete when he noticed the faces of the men holding rifles; they all looked like Dennis Tompkins, lean, gray, and weathered. None of them looked under seventy.

  A short man with little hair and one drooping eyelid stepped forward. Judging by the way the men with rifles stiffened, this was obviously their C.O. He wore no insignia, however, just oversized green pants with a matching shirt and baseball cap. “You’re young,” he said, more to himself than to them. “How is that possible?”

  With the Galaxy back on land, Randall naturally reassumed his role as spokesman. “It’s kind of a long story and we’re pretty tired right now. Anybody got some water?”

  “Shut up, you!” said a bent sergeant in a faded Air Force uniform. He poked at Randall with an M-4.

  “Who are you people?” demanded the man in charge.

  “I’m easy to identify.” Randall’s face turned serious. “I’m wearing the flight suit of a captain in the United States Army. My name’s Randall, just like it says here.” He ran his fingertip over the name on his right breast. “The lieutenant is my co-pilot. His name is Carlos. This man is Jingle Bob; he’s a scraper. There, now you know all about us, so it’s your turn. Who the hell are you people?”

  The first F-22 touched down behind them and taxied their way. The second fighter landed seconds later.

  “The United States Army hasn’t existed for fifty years.” The C.O. raised his voice over the rising whine of the approaching F-22. “Unless you count that rabble over in
Arizona. Where did you get an airworthy C-5? And why are you all so young? None of this makes any damned sense, so you’d better start talking and make it fast.”

  Randall put fists on his hips and glared back at the man. Usually he talked himself out of confrontations, but something about this old man grated on his nerves. Fifty feet away, the Raptor braked to a stop and cut its engine. Two ground crewmen pushed a platform ladder to its side. The ladder had once been painted a bright blue, but only flakes were left.

  The C.O. relented. “I’m Major Jonathan Cole. This is Detachment Three, Air Force Flight Test Center.”

  “Thanks, Major. You don’t have a working radio, do you?”

  “Doesn’t matter if we do,” Cole said. “No outgoing messages.”

  “What?” Carlos yelled. “What do you mean, we can’t call out? How are we getting out of here again, flying out?”

  Cole pulled up short and turned around. “That C-5’s not going anywhere and neither are you. You’re members of my command now.”

  “Like hell!” Randall and Carlos said in unison. Carlos wasn’t finished. “I’ve got a baby on the way!”

  “I’m going to say this once, and you’d better understand it. This base is secret. It’s the repository for the last and most advanced research of the United States and, as such, it’s my responsibility to keep it safe until such time as superior military authorities return to take over from me. Those are the last orders I received and I mean to carry them out.”

  “Like you said, the USA’s been gone for fifty years, dammit!”

  “Yeah? Well, I just received those orders three weeks ago.”

  #

  Operation Overtime

  1808 hours

  Angriff rose from his desk chair slow enough to hear his joints pop. He was tired. Being in combat energized him, but he found it intolerable to sit by and listen to events he couldn’t influence. The irony didn’t escape him that he and Norm Fleming had reversed roles.