Grady laid back on the bed and allowed the girls to handcuff his arms wide to the length of chain that he’d run underneath the bed to connect the two sides. “Okay,” he said when they were done. Now leave me alone for a few hours.”
Mandy stood beside him, pushing her hip out. “You sure? You got this look in your eye that men get when they’re about to go crazy. We can help with a little release, big guy.” Her hand drifted onto his stomach, finger tracing one of the scars there.
“I’m good. Just…” A new sensation hit him. He became hyper-aware of her hand on his body. Was that it? Did the craziness stem from needing a release? Was his body reacting so dangerously because he hadn’t done anything? He squirmed away from Mandy’s fingers, trying to remember the last time he’d had sex or even masturbated. He couldn’t recall when that was. It had been… Hell, he didn’t even know.
One thing was certain, though. He wasn’t going to take advantage of these girls. They’d been through too much already.
“No. Please, Mandy. I’m good to go. I just need this right now.”
“Alright The offer still stands. You’re a sexy old guy. You can split the uprights on any given Sunday.”
Grady winced at her poor football analogy as the girls left the room, closing the door softly behind them. For the briefest of moments, he’s allowed himself to feel. The loss of sensation where Mandy lifted her hand away opened a well of emotions within him, emotions he didn’t remember that he possessed.
He allowed the pain of his loss to be free. Lucy, little Lucy Lou, his daughter was dead. He was sure of it. Her mother was an idiot, there was no way they made it to the safe zone at Fort Bliss. That little girl didn’t even get a shot at living.
Tears flowed down his cheeks. He’d been a shitty father, always gone, never there for her, watching her life through videos and photographs. He should have been there to protect her. But he wasn’t. He’d failed his daughter completely, both in life and in death. The Iranians and North Koreans had stolen everything from him. Everything.
The rage took him once more, replacing sorrow with anger. He didn’t resist. Grady let it flow, screaming his hatred of the people who’d done this to his world. He thrashed against the restraints, the chain banging loudly underneath the bed as he pulled to free himself.
He wanted to kill something. He needed to feel the empowerment of destroying other lives as his had been destroyed. He—
Suddenly, Grady understood. That was what they’d done to him. Aside from the experiments and whatever else they’d done to him physically, it was the mental anguish that they’d preyed upon. His mind had been torn apart and patched back together in a misshapen approximation of reality. That was why he had no memories of events and a certain smell or a visual would bring them flooding back to him. They’d experimented on his mind, turning off the pain receptors and altering his memories.
He relaxed, laying calmly on the bed once more. With the knowledge that they’d messed with the chemicals in his brain, Grady knew he could beat this. He would beat this. He wasn’t a serial killer. He wasn’t a madman. And he sure as hell wasn’t one of those wretched infected creatures. He would beat this.
The adrenaline subsided and his heartbeat slowed over time. Grady allowed himself to feel the pain of Lucy’s loss once more. This time, the feelings were cathartic instead of detrimental. He would be the man his daughter thought he was. For her.
31
* * *
FORT BLISS MAIN CANTONMENT AREA, EL PASO, TEXAS
MARCH 11TH
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Neel said into the Tandberg’s camera. It had been weeks since he’d talked to the man running what was left of the country.
“Morning, General Bhagat. How’re things?”
The general looked past the small personal video teleconferencing device resting on his desk to the men and women seated at his conference table. Lately, he’d taken to inviting them all in to hear the president’s orders directly, even if they were off camera. The mandate to reduce the refugee population had come directly from the president, but it had been Neel Bhagat who’d taken the heat for the tragic events that led to the deaths of more than two hundred thousand Americans. Not this time. He didn’t think he’d survive another event like that. One of his officers would shoot him in the back.
“They’re better, sir. The long winter helped to further reduce the infected population in the area and we’ve been able to steadily increase our food supply by sending troops to the FEMA camps for the stockpiles there. We’ve had a decrease in malnutrition-related illnesses and—”
“Good, good. We need to preserve our population now, more than ever.”
Neel gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Listen, Neel. I don’t have a lot of time to discuss what’s happening here at Cheyenne, so I’m just gonna tell you flat out that we’ve been targeted multiple times by enemy forces. The Mountain’s security force has been able to repel them so far, but we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to hold out.”
“Enemy forces, sir?”
“It’s those goddamned Iranians. They were granted a position on the UN Security Council because they were one of the only nations that seemed to be unaffected by the disease and had the troops to help out. Now we know that it was all an elaborate plot to destroy the world while they remained safely behind their borders. That information your team discovered down in Brazil was the final bit of evidence that we needed to convict both Iran and North Korea on the international stage.”
“Good, I’m glad we were able to help out, sir.”
There was a loud rumble over the Tandberg’s speakers and the picture went fuzzy for a moment before clearing up.
“Damn bastards stopped trying to breach the blast doors when they realized they were designed to withstand a nuclear blast. Now they’re tunneling directly through the side of the mountain.”
“What do you need us to do, sir?”
“Keep up the good fight down there and keep our people safe. Thankfully our enemies haven’t targeted you yet, and that’s due to the brilliant work of your soldiers as they’ve shown the world what they can do over the past year. Our intelligence estimate puts the number of foreign troops on US soil at somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred thousand, but that’s based almost exclusively on satellite imagery, so there’s a plus or minus of up to twenty-three percent they say.”
“That’s certainly more than we’d expected, sir.”
“You ain’t gotta worry about them for right now. Just keep on defending your location. The infected are still very much a threat and it only takes one of those bastards to start a whole new infection cycle.”
“Understood, sir,” Neel replied, beginning to wonder what the point to this call was.
“So, I’m gonna get down to brass tacks with you, Neel. We’re on the ropes here. Even with all of our small little enclaves of troops stationed strategically across the nation, we’re outnumbered over three-to-one. We have to level the playing field, really find a way to force them into disarray and make them leave.”
“That seems like—”
“Let me finish, goddammit.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President.” This was probably the most irritable that he’d seen the man. He must be under incredible stress— Aren’t we all? Neel thought.
“I’ve discussed it with the British Prime Minister. At 7 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time today, we are launching a joint attack on the Iranian and North Korean nations. They’ve attacked us and we’re going to hit them back, hard.”
Bhagat looked away from his Tandberg and raised his eyebrows. Somebody on his staff needed to tell him what that time translated to for the Mountain Time Zone. He refocused his attention on the president.
“…they’ll be forced to withdraw and return to their nations to provide aid.”
Dammit, Neel chastised himself. He’d missed what the president had said. It was a two- or three-second distraction and he
’d missed the most important part.
“Excuse me, sir. Can you repeat that?”
The man in his monitor looked perturbed that he needed to repeat himself, but Neel didn’t care. This was an important moment and he had to know what the US was planning.
“I said we’re going to nuke the bastards. We’ll launch several at North Korea and Iran, England will launch at Iran. We’ll inform the UN Security Council after the missiles are in the air.”
“You can’t do that,” Neel protested. “Sir, think of the massive civilian casualties. The loss of life will be staggering—”
“I CAN do that. One of the main burdens of this office is being given the direct control of our nation’s nuclear arsenal. It is a terrible, but necessary power that I wield.” He paused for a beat before continuing. “You’re not going soft on me are you? Our nation is on the brink of complete annihilation because of what those people have done. If you’ve lost your spine, I’ll replace you and put someone in who can stomach the dirty work that comes with the job.”
There was another explosion at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
“I have not lost my will, sir. You know that I’ve always followed your orders explicitly. I’m prepared—”
“Good,” the president cut him off. “I’m not sure how much longer this place is going to last. I want to thank you for all that you and your team have done for our great nation. We gave you a shit sandwich and told you to eat it. Our scientists think we’ve turned a corner on this thing since the infected are dying off, starving, but we need you to keep it together there. We need you to keep our population alive long enough for the sickness to die out.”
“Of course, sir. I can send a strike force to your location within the hour.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve got a bunch of bombers inbound from Alaska. They’re gonna clear away these fuckers like ants.”
An alarm sounded from the Tandberg’s speakers. Men rushed in from behind the president and Neel could hear shouting. The camera jostled for a moment, then he was staring at a wall on the device’s screen. After a respectful thirty or forty seconds, the general asked, “Mr. President? Are you still there?”
There was no answer, but the alarms continued to wail in the background. Neel picked up the VTC device’s remote and ended the call. He carefully set it down in the cradle at the base of the monitor and took a deep, steadying breath before looking up to his staff sitting around the conference table.
“Okay,” he said, drawing out the word. “Thoughts?”
“It’s about damn time,” Dave Tovey replied. “We’ve known who the enemy was for months now.”
“We’ve known that they were our current enemy,” Dave Morales, the division headquarters chief of staff corrected. “But we didn’t have evidence that they were behind the cause of the infected until we went down to Brazil. I believe the president showed incredible restraint in choosing not to use our nuclear arsenal while we fought a conventional war with the Iranians.”
“And now that we have proof that they started this whole mess, we’re gonna turn their desert into glass. Good riddance,” the division operations officer huffed, leaning back in his chair and placing his hands on his stomach.
“Major Calamante,” Neel said to get the communications officer’s attention. “I need you to get Colonel McTaggert from Holloman on the horn. They have radar and access to satellite that we don’t have. We need to see what’s happening at Cheyenne Mountain.”
“Yes, sir.”
The signal officer stood and went into the adjoining room to make a few calls. “Okay, while he’s getting that set up, did somebody do the math? If the president and the Brits are launching at 7 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, what time does that make it here?”
“We’re GMT minus seven, sir,” Major Blackledge, 1AD’s intelligence officer stated. “That means noon our time.”
Neel’s eyes drifted to the clock on the wall. It was 11:54.
“If Cheyenne Mountain got breached, would he authorize an early launch, sir?”
“I’m not sure what he’ll do, Todd,” Neel replied to the intelligence officer. “That’s why I want Colonel McTaggert on the line.”
The general looked back at the clock. It was still 11:54. No time had passed. He simply couldn’t believe that they were going to launch nukes. Memories of his childhood flashed through his mind as his school went through the ridiculous nuclear detonation drills—duck and cover, don’t look at the light! The weekly nuclear detonation drills were almost always interspersed with monthly lessons on nuclear fallout and what that could possibly mean for long-term survival. All that had stopped once the Berlin Wall came down, but what a crock of shit to feed a bunch of kids. Lay down flat with your head toward the blast, don’t look at the light, falling ash can kill you slowly over time… Why would they have subjected kids to that?
Because some self-important asshole is always holding the launch keys, Neel mused.
“Okay, sir,” Major Calamante said from the doorway. “I’ve got Colonel McTaggert’s people connecting him now. I’ll, uhh, bring it up on the big screen.”
“Good. Thank you, Juan.”
11:55.
The screen powered on, and Dan McTaggert’s face slowly brightened into view. “Good morning, sir. I guess it’s still morning, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Neel’s eyes went to the clock again. “Good morning, Dan. I’m calling you because I have a short notice request for you.”
“Sure thing, sir. What is it?”
“There’s no easy way to put this, so I’m just gonna tell you.” He paused and looked at the signal officer. “We’re secure, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Dan. The president is launching nukes at Iran in a few minutes. I—”
“Good Lord.”
“I know. He took the evidence that we provided after the mission to Brazil as a justification to wipe them off the face of the earth. He’s convinced the Brits to attack them as well, I guess it’s in one final show of solidarity for our shared past.”
“Sir, give me a moment. I’ve going to get my ops to track this.”
“Of course,” Neel replied, but the colonel was already off camera, directing his personnel to action.
11:56.
The colonel reappeared shortly. “I’m sorry, sir. We’re bringing up satellite imagery to see what we can see.”
“Any way you can share your feed with us? The president said they were launching at noon.”
“Umm…” The colonel looked off screen and asked someone to change the view. A colorful map of radar-produced clouds covered the screen with an outline of the United States in the background. “There you go, sir. We’re going to zoom in… Yeah. There are hot spots blooming in the Dakotas and Wyoming.”
“Hot spots? What’s that mean?”
11:58. Neel blinked. He’d lost an entire minute.
“I’m not a nuclear officer, sir. I’m a pilot. But I imagine those are the rocket motors on our ICBMs warming up for launch.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” the general replied. “There’s another aspect to this. As we were talking, the president told me that the Iranians had discovered the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and were attempting to breach it.”
“Good luck,” McTaggert scoffed. “Those blast doors are designed to take a near-direct hit from a nuclear bomb. They aren’t getting through them.”
“They figured that out too, so they’re tunneling directly through the mountainside. We could hear explosions over the speakers, then the alarms started going off and the Secret Service grabbed him. I think they breached the facility.”
11:59.
“Hey, sir. Are you seeing this? The heat blooms have become legitimate heat signatures with— My ops just confirmed launch. We have just launched missiles, sir.”
The digital clock on the wall ticked over to 12:00.
“Did we just start World War III?” Major Blackledge mumbled, staring at the screen on
the wall.
“God, I hope not,” somebody replied.
“Are the Russians or Chinese responding?” Neel asked.
“We’re trying to determine that now, sir. My OPSO says that the missiles from the Dakotas are headed generally toward Iran, but the ones from Wyoming are headed over the Pacific.”
“We’re hitting North Korea as well,” the general replied much more casually than he actually felt. “How long until the missiles hit Iran?”
“Um… Fifteen, twenty minutes? None of us here at Holloman are Nukes, sir, so that’s just a guess on our part.”
“Understood, Dan. You guys are doing a great job. Thank you. Do you think we can see what’s happening at Cheyenne Mountain while we wait?”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have access to any of the satellites tasked to cover that area.”
Neel nodded silently. The NSC would want sole control of that type of satellite, of course. “Is there any response from the Chinese or the Russians?”
“We’re not seeing anything from them. We know they weren’t wiped out, but as far as we can tell, they’re in about as much of a degraded state as we’re in.”
“Degraded state?” Neel chuckled aloud. “Dan, if you call what we’re going through here in the US a ‘degraded state’ then I’d hate to see what you call a disaster. Best estimates is that we have five or six million people left alive out of a nation of three hundred and thirty million. We’re pretty damn degraded.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s alright. I was just… You know what? Never mind, Dan. You and your people are doing a fantastic job and we appreciate your help. Can you switch over to the Middle Eastern view, please?”
The colonel replied, but Neel stopped listening. Instead, he was focused on the little blinking dots traveling at what he imagined was supersonic speed. His old infantryman’s mind couldn’t fathom the speed that the missiles were traveling, but it was a whole lot faster than anything that he’d ever seen before.
Five Roads To Texas | Book 11 | Reciprocity [Sidney's Way 3] Page 21
