Phoenix Rising pr-1

by William W. Johnstone

  “Jake, stop.” Karin said. “I have to check on them.”

  Jake stopped and Karin, getting out of the car, hurried over to the couple. She squatted down and felt for a pulse in each of them. “The woman is dead, but the man is alive,” she said.

  Both the man and the woman had been shot.

  “Sir, what happened?” Jake asked.

  “The sons of bitches took my truck,” the old man said, straining to talk. “They took my truck and trailer. Had all our belongin’s on it.”

  Jake looked at Karin and she shook her head, to tell him that the man didn’t have long left.

  “They shot Suzie,” the man said. “Then they shot me. Dressed like pirates they were, all in black. The sons of bitches.” He coughed a couple of times, then took one last rattling breath.

  Karin tried his pulse again.

  “He’s dead,” she said.

  “Those murdering bastards,” Jake said. “If I was feeling any twinge of regret before, I don’t now.”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Karin asked. “We can’t just leave them here like we did the other two. After what the other two did, they can lie out on the road until the buzzards pick them clean as far as I’m concerned. But these folks are innocent. They didn’t do anything to bring this on.”

  “I’ve got an entrenching tool in the car,” Jake said. “We sure can’t give them anything like a proper burial, but you’re right. We don’t need to leave them out here, exposed to the elements.”

  Forty-five minutes later Jake and Karin stood over a fresh mound. Jake buried them both in the same grave. It kept him from having to dig two graves, but he was fairly certain they would have wanted to be buried together anyway. Before he buried them, he took the old man’s billfold. It had pictures, a driver’s license, but no money. But it didn’t matter that there was no money, since money was worthless anyway. And at least now, he knew who they were.

  “Mr. Theodore Fuller, Mrs. Suzie Fuller, I don’t think I’ll be able to find any of your next of kin to let them know what happened to you, but I hope there is some comfort that you didn’t leave this world without someone knowing your names,” Jake said. “I’m sorry your lives ended up like this. On the other hand, you did go out together, and you’ll be together for all eternity now. And truth to tell, with what the rest of us are facing, you may well be the lucky ones.”

  Karin reached over and squeezed Jake’s hand.

  “You might be right,” she said. “They might be the lucky ones.”

  “Come on, the others will be worrying about us. Let’s go see if John and Marcus have found a helicopter we can put back together.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Ozark gate at Fort Rucker was unmanned, but it had been unmanned for several days now. There was, however, still a sign attached to the MP shack that read VISITORS MUST OBTAIN PASS.

  After going through the gate they passed several abandoned vehicles, and as they moved farther onto the base, Jake was surprised to see that many of the base housing units were still occupied. But then, as he thought more about it, it wasn’t surprising at all. These houses were home to the married soldiers. Like the houses in Ozark, Enterprise, and Dothan, these houses had no electricity or water, but they did provide shelter. Where else would they go?

  One man walking alongside the road saw the blue post sticker on Jake’s windshield indicating that he was an officer and automatically saluted. Just as automatically, Jake returned the man’s salute; then, as he passed, he looked in the mirror as the man continued his long, lonely walk.

  “Oh,” Karin said quietly, and glancing toward her, Jake saw a tear sliding down her face. “Where will he go? What will he eat? We are trained to look out for our troops but—oh, Jake, I feel so helpless.”

  Jake squeezed her hand again. “We are looking out for six of them,” he said. “That’s a start.”

  “They are looking out for us, just as much,” Karin replied.

  “That’s true.”

  When he turned off Hatch Road onto Hanchey Field Road, Jake felt a sudden twinge of melancholy. So many times over the years of his multiple assignments to “Mother Rucker,” he had made this same turn on the way to log flight time. At first glance Hanchey Field didn’t look too much different from how it always did. More than one hundred helicopters were parked at the huge heliport. However, a closer examination of the helicopters showed that nearly all had been stripped of anything of value. Many were missing rotor blades—others had been stripped clean of sheet metal so that nothing but the skeletal frame remained.

  “I don’t know,” Jake said as they drove toward the hangars. “From the looks of things, I’m not sure we can find enough to assemble even one flyable helicopter. Give them a call. We ought to be in range.”

  Karin keyed the two-way radio. “Phoenix Base, this is Phoenix One, over.”

  There was a moment’s delay; then they heard, “Phoenix One, this is Phoenix Base. Where are you?”

  “We’re on the field.”

  “Phoenix One, do you remember Dewey Alain and the foam generator?”

  Jake smiled, then nodded. “Tell him yes.”

  “I remember,” Karin said.

  “That’s where we are. Call when you approach. I’ll open the doors and let you in.”

  “Phoenix One, out,” Karin said. She looked over at Jake, who was still chuckling. “What is this about the foam generator?”

  “We had a hangar fire drill once,” Jake said. “Sergeant Alain was supposed to simulate hitting the big red button that would activate the foam generator and flood the hangar. But he didn’t simulate, he actually did it, and the hangar was filled waist high with foam. It took two days to clean it all up.”

  Karin laughed.

  “Wait, that’s not the half of it,” he said. “Two weeks later, there was a report of survey done for the damage, and the inspection team wanted to know what happened. Sergeant Alain explained about the fire drill, told them his job was to simulate hitting the foam button. ‘But I didn’t simulate it,’ he said. ‘I actually hit it. ’” Jake laughed. “Then he . . .”

  “Don’t tell me, he hit it again?” Karin asked, laughing.

  Now Jake was laughing so hard that tears came to his eyes. “If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’,” he said. “He hit it again.”

  Jake started toward the hangar. “That’s the one,” he said.

  “Phoenix Base, hit the foam generator.”

  “Ha, he told you,” John replied. The hangar door started up, and as they came closer, they saw Marcus pulling the chain to raise the door. As soon as they were inside, the door went back down.

  Jake parked his dark gray Volvo next to Clay’s red Liberty. As he exited the car he looked at the Blackhawk helicopter they had selected. At first glance it looked as if he could climb in, light the engine, and pull pitch, but he knew that looks were deceiving. “It looks good,” he said. “What does the logbook say about it?”

  John shook his head. “We have no idea. The logbooks are all stored on the mainframe server and with the server down, we have no way of accessing the records.”

  “There is something to be said for hard-copy logbooks,” Jake said.

  “You got that right. But we are doing a very thorough periodic inspection, so we are finding and correcting all the faults.”

  “Do we have any idea as to the total hours?”

  “Onboard system says twenty-seven hundred and fifteen hours, but of course, that’s just the airframe. We have no idea of the total hours on the engine, engine components, transmission, or rotor system.”

  “There has been a lot of cannibalization on this aircraft,” Marcus added. “Neither engine has a fuel control. Igniters are missing on engine number two. No filters anywhere, engine or transmission. We’re missing a pitch change link on the main rotor.”

  “Why would anyone take a pitch change link?” Jake asked. “What on earth would they use it for?”

  “Beats me. But we’ve go
t almost a hundred helicopters to draw from, I’m pretty sure we’ll find one we can use.

  “Have any trouble coming in?” Clay asked.

  Jake and Karin exchanged looks.

  “You did, didn’t you?” Clay said. “What happened ?”

  Jake told about their encounter on the road with the two young men who had stopped them.

  “There’s going to be a lot more of that,” Clay said. “Especially if anyone finds out how much fuel we have.”

  “But we have jet fuel, don’t we? What good would that do in a car?” Karin asked.

  “A gasoline engine will not run on jet fuel, but a diesel engine will,” Jake explained.

  Clay pointed to his Jeep Liberty. “That will not only run on jet fuel, it is running on jet fuel.”

  “I was going to suggest that,” Jake said. “I am just about out of gasoline, so any running around we have to do in the next few days is going to have to be in your vehicle.”

  “We could go out to TAC-X,” Clay suggested.

  “No, not yet,” Jake said. “We’ll keep that as an emergency supply. There may come a time when we will be in desperate need of it.”

  “You’re probably right,” Clay replied.

  The others expressed some curiosity in what Jake and Clay were talking about, but none of them asked any questions, and neither Jake nor Clay made any attempt to satisfy their curiosity.

  Saturday, August 4

  “I need some Kleenex,” John said. “At least six boxes.”

  “Six boxes? Wow, you must have some runny nose,” Deon said.

  “Not for my nose. We aren’t going to be able to find any new filters, so I’m going to have to make some. Kleenex tissues will work.”

  “Alright,” Clay said. “I’ll check the commissary and the PX. If I can’t find any there I’ll run in to town.”

  “Better try Enterprise or Dothan. I know there aren’t any in Ozark,” John said. “We looked yesterday.”

  Clay started toward his Jeep SUV.

  “Deon, go with him,” Jake said. “After what Karin and I ran into on the way out here today, there’s no telling who or what might be waiting for you.”

  “All right,” Deon said. He walked over to the wall where their weapons were, picked up two M-16s, then put them both back down. Instead, he picked up an M-240, a machine gun.

  “You plan on starting a war?” Julie asked.

  “No,” Deon said. “I don’t plan to start one, but if I happen to get into one, I damn sure plan on winning it.”

  “I like the way that man thinks,” Clay said.

  Although they passed several abandoned vehicles on the way in to Dothan, and even more once they reached the city, they did not run into any trouble. Seeing a Winn-Dixie on Westgate Parkway, Clay pulled into the parking lot, weaving around abandoned cars and trucks. He pulled all the way up onto the wide sidewalk in front of the store.

  “Let’s see what we can find in here,” Clay suggested.

  The inside of the store was a jumbled mess—overturned shelves and counters, broken glass, empty boxes, shredded paper, and signs that mocked with their cheery false promises.

  Winn Dixie Brings You the Freshest Produce!

  “We aren’t goin’ to find anything in here,” Deon said.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Clay admitted. “But we may as well give it a try. If there is anything, it will more than likely be over here,” he said, pointing toward a sign that said PAPER PRODUCTS.

  The two men looked through the residue under the sign. Suddenly Deon raised up and pointed. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  Clay looked in the direction Deon was pointing. There, on the floor, was a huge pile of currency in denominations from ones to one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “How much do you think is there?” Deon asked.

  “I don’t know. A couple hundred thousand dollars, probably.”

  “It’s just lying here. You know there’ve been hundreds of people that have picked through this store since everything collapsed, but nobody took any of the money.”

  “You want to take some of it?” Clay asked.

  “No. What good is it?”

  “There you go, that’s why nobody has taken any of it,” Clay said. “We better try someplace else. We aren’t going to find anything here.”

  The next place they stopped was a Bruno’s store, and there they found several boxes of a house-brand tissue that were water damaged.

  “What do you think?” Deon asked.

  “I think this will have to do.”

  John had only asked for six boxes, but they found ten boxes that looked to be in pretty good shape, figuring that the extra boxes might make up for any that were too damaged to be of use.

  On the way back to Fort Rucker, they saw a pickup truck parked across the road in a blocking position. There were four armed men, and three of them were pointing their weapons at them, while the fourth held up his hand in a signal for them to stop.

  “Uh-oh,” Clay said.

  “Stop here,” Deon said.

  “What for? We’re goin’ to have to face them so we may as well see what they want.”

  “You know damn well what they want,” Deon said. “They either want this vehicle or the fuel. Stop here; let me get up on top.”

  Deon reached in the back and picked up the machine gun; then he got out of the jeep and climbed up on top. He loaded the weapon, chambered a round, lay down on top of the car facing forward, braced his feet on the top railing, then hit his hand on the roof.

  “Let’s go!” he called.

  Seeing that the Jeep wasn’t going to stop, the three men with weapons—two rifles and a pistol—began firing.

  Deon opened fire with the machine gun and the two men with rifles went down. The one with the pistol threw his weapon on the ground and put his hands up.

  “Drive on through!” Deon called down to Clay.

  Clay accelerated, then left the road to go around the block when he got there.

  “You boys have a nice day now, you hear?” Deon shouted as they drove by.

  The two who were still on their feet glared back, but said nothing.

  “Oh, yeah, this will work just fine,” John said when he saw the tissues they had brought back. “I’ll have these filters better than new. Marcus, how are you coming on the hydro mechanical unit?”

  “I’ve about got the HMU up and running. I’ve got the variable geometry actuator, the compressor inlet sensor, and the high-pressure fuel pump installed,” he said.

  “Good, good, we’re cookin’ with gas now.”

  “Cooking with gas? I thought this helicopter used jet fuel,” Julie said.

  “It does. When we say cooking with gas we mean . . .”

  Julie started laughing.

  “I think Julie is pulling a couple of legs,” Karin said.

  For the next several minutes John and Marcus worked on the helicopter engine while the others watched and handed them tools when asked. Deon took a pair of binoculars and an M-16 with him, then went up into the tower where he would have a panoramic view of the entire airfield.

  “Phoenix,” he called down a few moments after he left. “There are some people over in the far northeast corner of the field.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Looks like they are trying to find a helicopter that still has some fuel.”

  “Keep an eye on them, but don’t do anything unless they start something.”

  “Roger.”

  That night they scheduled a guard detail. John was first on, and he went up into the tower to keep watch while the others spread out their sleeping bags. Willie cranked up one of the radios and after some searching, found a broadcast. The voice they heard was that of Ohmshidi.

  “Damn, you mean that son of a bitch is still around?” Clay asked.

  To my fellow citizens of the great commonwealth of the New World Collective, I send my greetings, and my assurances that I am well, and I am working
very hard to restore order and hasten the recovery.

  As I am sure all within the sound of this broadcast know, there were three nuclear detonations upon our soil. While I believe my peace overtures to the Islamic nations were bearing fruit, I neglected the danger from within. It is my sincere belief that the bombs were detonated not by foreign enemies but by domestic terrorists incited to do so by the seditious broadcasts of George Gregoire. I have declared Gregoire to be an enemy of the state, and hereby grant to any citizen who comes in contact with Gregoire the authority to shoot him on sight.

  This may seem like a drastic measure, but under our current situation, drastic measures are allowed—indeed, even required.

  Since the nuclear attack against us, I have, under the authority granted me by the Enabling Act, taken additional action to insure our security. So that there may be efficiency of operation, I have dissolved the government. Congress, as you once knew it, no longer exists, nor does the Supreme Court. Under the aegis of the Enabling Act I have taken on the total responsibility of the government. I assure you this is only a temporary condition and as soon as order is restored and I am assured that recovery is well underway, I will authorize new elections to replace the Congress. I will then, on a gradual basis, return some of the authority I have assumed to the newly elected body, which shall be known as the People’s Collective. I have also dissolved the entire military, from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, down to the lowest-ranking private. If you are in the military, and you hear this broadcast, you may take this as your authority to leave the post, base, or ship to which you are assigned. You are free to go home, or to anyplace you wish. I thank you for your service. All police and military authority now rests with me, and me alone, to be carried out by the SPS units, which I will be expanding.

  Because of the unrest that is rampant throughout the country, and as a matter of personal security, I will tell you that I am no longer in New World City, the place once known as Washington, D. C., but have established the capital in a location that, for now, I shall not disclose. But, as you can tell by this broadcast, the government, through me, is still functioning, and that means that the NWC is still a member nation in the world of nations.