“That’s okay. You’ve got a good spot here in the rocks. Stay hunkered down and out of sight. There should be enough light for me to see the terrain up there before it gets totally dark. I’ll go figure out the best way back to our friends, then I’ll come down and get you. I promise I’ll try to find a path where you don’t have to do much climbing.” She smiled, almost breaking his heart. The girl had grown on him since the jail cell.
“I’ll rest here.” He sat in a small nook between two of the large boulders.
Tabby listened for a moment, perhaps trying to decide if those sporadic gunshots were moving closer. She set a pistol on the ground by his feet. A gift. Then she waved at him, cinched the rifle on her back, and disappeared in the long shadows.
“I hope you come back,” he whispered.
As nice as she was, he was not talking about the girl.
CHAPTER 15
Wild Horse, CO
The tiny dirt airfield looked even smaller in the daylight of the morning. The town of Wild Horse was one of those typical high plains towns he’d been blowing through for the past several days. A couple of rows of weather-beaten homes. A single storefront for a food store. A one-room post office. Maybe a grain silo. Wild Horse had all of them, minus the silo. Instead, it had the airport, which seemed to be a recent addition.
“What are we going to do with these?” Emily said, stretching and pointing to the three crop-dusting two-seaters on the tarmac.
No one had gotten much sleep the night before. They’d spent a few fitful hours trying to sleep in their vehicles, alternately keeping watch. Staying inside the vehicles seemed safer than trying to find a place to hole up in the town. He was now convinced much of the state was under surveillance of one kind or another. Even turning on a water faucet might be noticed. Part of him also figured they could make a hasty escape on one of the planes, which he’d scouted last night.
“One of them is inoperable. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. The other two are working, full tanks and all.” He pointed to the two he meant.
“But they’re two-seaters. Hardly enough to get all of us in the air. Eight of us would have to stay behind. It wouldn’t exactly make us a killer attack force.” She snickered.
“You’re right. I’ve been thinking about how to optimize our force using one of these planes. The best I could come up with was having you and me fly out together, then head to a larger airport to find a bigger plane. Then we’ll bring it back, load our people, and head south to Lamar.”
“And we just land at their airport like we belong there? You said yourself they’ll be on high alert for imposters after we made them look like fools so many times.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s where my plan always breaks down. We drove right by the place, but I admit I wasn’t trying to memorize it. We saw a Walmart, lots of houses, and the airfield where all those big planes were landing.”
“Hmm, maybe we could crash a plane on their airfield. One of us, hint-hint, could jump out at high altitude and let the attack plane smack into them. Once they’re in chaos and fighting the fire, the other plane full of our people could make an emergency landing there. It would be a one-two punch.”
He was impressed with her three-dimensional thinking. However, the 3D model also went underground. “I don’t think that will be enough. Once the plane crashes, they’re going to lock down the bunker, if it’s not already sealed shut.”
“What do we do if the bunker is sealed? We can’t exactly knock.”
Ted fell into thought. Emily knew to let him do his thing, which he appreciated. He did not like the fact he couldn’t think of any way inside. Still, he tried to put a positive spin on it. “If the bunker is locked, we’ll take out as many of the enemy on the surface as we can. Maybe they’ll have to open up if their support teams can’t maintain their base topside.”
She leaned forward on the seat and whisked dust out of her hair. “Maybe we can kidnap someone to help us open the doors. Enemy soldiers would have to know the way in, right? We could set fire to one of those gigantic autonomous aircraft. Based on how expensive they probably are, they’d kill themselves to prevent it from being destroyed. Once we have the place in chaos, it should be easy to infiltrate.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said distantly. “But, once again, I’m sure they’ll be on high alert for people like us making asses of them, even if there’s a plane on fire.” He looked up, laughing. “So, we’ll have to up our game.”
Emily finished her attempt at primping and flicked her hair back over her head. When she met his eyes, she smiled wryly. “You’ve got something, don’t you?”
“It’s something you said just now. You mentioned those giant black planes. We saw one land in Lamar, and we saw a bunch of them parked at the airport. What if we found one of those out here and used it to sneak our way in?”
Her smiled faded. “Can you even fly one of those things?”
Ted shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not even sure they can be piloted by a person. It’s an autonomous flying platform, which means it doesn’t even have a cockpit. However, it has to be controlled by someone. If we could figure that out, hijack the signal, divert it here, then put our people aboard, we could glide into the airfield right past all their sentries and guards. Once on the inside, and without alarms blaring, we might be able to bluff our way inside the bunker.”
“You said they’ll be on the lookout,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, it’s a big problem. Maybe we need to find a real man and woman on David’s crew so we can steal their ID cards? It would at least get us one additional level of credibility on the ground.”
She slowly shook her head. “I’m not sure. Where do we even start with such a plan?”
He pointed to the minimalist brick building serving as the control facility for the airfield. It had a radio tower as well as some radar equipment attached to the roof. “Right there.”
Pike National Forest, CO
The quarter-mile hike up the side of the hill was a snap for Tabby, and she was glad to give Dwight the opportunity to rest. He was obviously devastated at the loss of his bird, and in such a horrible fashion. Once close to the top, she caught sight of the familiar shape of Pike’s Peak and figured Cheyenne Mountain was somewhere close by. She noted the direction and headed back down.
She immediately got lost. As dusk turned to a cloudy night, the darkness was crushing. Despite her best efforts to find Dwight’s hiding spot, she eventually was forced to take cover in the low branches of a cedar tree. However, when morning came, she still had trouble finding her friend in the rocky terrain below the hills.
“Dwight,” she called out in a low voice. If the bad guys were looking for her, she didn’t want to make it easy on them, but she could also walk all day and not see her partner. Tabby desperately wanted to get back to Peter and Audrey. They might have already left her…
“Dwight!” she cried out a tiny bit louder.
A flash of recognition caught her eye in how the rock field was laid out, and it helped guide her to what she thought was the big rock where he’d taken shelter. When she arrived, it didn’t quite look the same as the night before, but a black object caught her attention.
“Dude,” she breathed out. Dwight wasn’t there, but he’d left the pistol on the ground. She sat next to the gun. “Now what?”
Did the strange man get bored and wander off? She wouldn’t put it past him, given his erratic behavior all the time. Did he get captured? But if he was nabbed, why would they have missed the gun on the ground? Maybe he went back to the campground to find his dead bird. She wouldn’t put that past him, either. Or did he assume she’d gotten lost on her mission and heroically sprang into action to find her?
She hopped up and stepped away from the rocks, attempting to survey the hillside above, but there were too many trees to see much of anything. The more she thought it through, the less likely she considered the hero option. His actions were always those of a man who was a little
off in the head.
“A lot off,” she said under her breath, futilely laughing at the situation he’d placed her in.
After waiting a few minutes to see if he miraculously showed up, she picked up the pistol and stuffed it into the waistband of her jeans. The day was overcast, with little breeze, which made the sky above the pines a uniform gray. After all her searching and moving around, she realized she had no idea which way to go. She was almost certain the enemy campground was beyond the brushy terrain by the creek, and she was mildly confident she needed to go in the opposite direction to go toward Pike’s Peak. Yet, nothing felt certain.
“Dang it.”
She walked around the rocky base of the hill, heading in the direction she thought was correct. If Dwight and his bird showed up during her hike, she would happily let them follow, but she was done trying to keep tabs on him. If she would have let him go with the ATV guys, she’d probably be with Peter and Audrey and the rest of the group. She’d still be wondering where the guy had disappeared to, but at least she’d be with her friends.
Her hike took her through the endless national forest, and there were no roads to be found in most of the valleys. A few times she imagined hearing the mechanical clacking sounds of one of those horse robots she’d faced back at the TV station, but they faded as fast as they arrived. The thought of facing one of those things kept her walking fast…
However, despite her vigilance, she accidentally stumbled onto a gravel road before she knew what it was. As soon as she whipped her head both ways, deer-in-headlights style, she ran to the far side to cross it. Once there, she realized she was near the destruction caused by the drained lake.
“This figures,” she exhaled, knowing she’d walked sideways, rather than directly to her destination. Pike’s Peak was out there, beyond the missing lake, the same distance away as when she was at the boulders. Most of the muddy terrain ahead of her had dried, leaving the carnage of twisted trees and scoured rocks her main obstacles, though the small stream also looked like a challenge.
She chose to walk a short way next to the shoulder of the road until she arrived at the broken dam. Keeping to the road would eventually get her where she needed to go, but there would be a mile or two where she would be stuck next to the open field of the lake bottom. If the guards showed up, they would see her for miles. She needed to get across the field and back into the woods.
Of all the places to cross, the nearby dam seemed the easiest. When the structure collapsed, the chunks of concrete had piled at the base and created a hopping path across the constricted waterway passing through. Staying dry appealed to her.
“I swear, if I end up in pipes or ducts down there, I’m going to be pissed.” She laughed it off but was sincere about how much she wanted to avoid more of it. As she hopped down the incline toward the middle, she stayed vigilant for holes or tubes.
When she neared the bottom and was about to jump on one of the giant chunks of concrete resting in the stream, she caught sight of movement. Something small had shifted position near the remaining piece of dam still standing on the left bank.
She prayed it wasn’t a man from the campground. Since she was already out in the open, and already a hop away from crossing, she jumped into action. Tabby sprang from one foothold to the next, easily moving over the rocks. Her shoes gripped the dry cement, and her adrenaline carried her jumps over the water. When she finally reached the more solid bank of debris on the far side, she chanced a look back.
“Dwight?”
The man in the baggy suit stood like a zombie next to the fifty-foot-tall structure. She wasn’t even sure he’d seen or heard her running and hopping so close to him. He stood there looking at the wall as if he had no clue how to go around it.
“Dwight!” she yelled louder, confident the burbling water would mask her voice from far away.
He finally turned. “Oh, it’s you again. Poppy told me to come down here…but that’s impossible. Poppy was shot, I’m sure of it.”
Tabby didn’t know what to say. Indulge the guy’s fantasies or tell him to suck it up and get moving? What would a proper tour guide do?
She centered her breathing. They were hidden among the rocks and warped dam wreckage, but if someone came by on the road and happened to look in their direction, they’d be spotted. She needed the fastest method of convincing him to come.
“Hey, mister. I think I saw your bird over this way…” She pointed in the direction she was going, hoping it wouldn’t lead him to ask how she could possibly see it in a place she’d hadn’t yet gone.
“Really?” he said with excitement. “I knew it!”
She cringed, wondering what she’d tell him when he made it across the stream.
CHAPTER 16
Hoover Dam, NV
Kyla spent the night somewhere with steep rock walls all around them, after being picked up by Avery’s helicopter. He and his men had rescued her from the shoreline after swimming and then running from the collapsed dam. An hour of flight passed before they’d landed in a place of refuge.
She’d gotten off the chopper, glad to be alive, but Meechum passed out as soon as they’d been assigned a place to rest. Kyla was beat to hell and fell asleep soon after her friend. However, all she dreamed about was the harrowing escape from the dam. It was always the same…
“Thanks,” Meechum gurgled as she spit out water.
In her dream, they’d barely made it out of the lake.
“No…problem,” Kyla replied from hands and knees, engrossed by the spectacle of the broken dam. She’d gotten her friend onto dry land and made sure she was alive, but then she had to see the once-in-a-lifetime sight.
The rush of water chipped away at both sides of what was left of the curved structure. The surface of the lake was now tilted at an unnatural angle as more and more liquid was sucked into the breach. The speed of the current must have been incredible as it tugged at the four intake towers, already toppling one of those closest to them.
“God, I feel like dog shit,” Meechum said, complaining for the first time Kyla could remember. That, at least, got her to turn and check on her friend.
“Are you all right?”
The soaked woman looked up at her. “We have to move out. Get away from the dam. We have to do it while those shooters are distracted by the same thing you are.” She pointed to the rush of water pouring out of the lake. The roar of the splashing water grew in intensity, striking at whatever was on the far side of the dam.
The reminder of the larger battle made her look across what was left of their defensive position. The tear had reached almost to the far shore, as if the entire dam was in danger of being scrubbed off the walls of the canyon. However, tiny figures ran up the rocks over there. Avery’s men, a few of them at least, were still alive.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she replied after a little thought. “We’ve got to run.”
“Stay alive,” Meechum said with slurred speech.
“Come on,” she replied, ignoring the pain on the unbreakable woman’s face. Kyla helped her friend to her feet, noting she actually allowed someone to help her. That didn’t bode well.
They jogged along the shore away from the dam, though she turned back as frequently as possible to watch the action. In a few minutes, most of the dam was gone, and three of the four towers had collapsed and been swept away. A smothering mist choked the downriver side of the break point, making it impossible to see the bridge crossing the river to the south.
“You did good,” Meechum said, finally walking on her own.
She smiled to herself. “I didn’t think I could make that jump. I almost didn’t, actually. But, looking at what’s left, we couldn’t have waited another second before going over the side. We would have been swept over the dam, no doubt.”
“You’re stronger than you know. Never forget it.”
Kyla was disturbed to hear Meechum speak as if she was dying.
“Are you really okay?” she prodded. “You aren
’t sounding like yourself.”
Meechum glanced over. Her face was bloody from where her stitches had opened a little. She was obviously holding one of her arms to keep it from swinging. And her face was still pale. The woman had somehow stayed upright the day before, until she’d passed out immediately prior to reaching the safety of the creek. The high-dive into the lake had been next-level, and Meechum was still holding it together, though Kyla was on the lookout for her friend to shut off again.
“I think I knocked the wind out of my lungs. I need some time to catch my breath, but I’ll be fine.”
Kyla put her hand to her own neck, happy the small wound hadn’t opened. Somehow, she’d come out of their shared journeys in much better shape than the Marine. It was tempting to think it made her something special, but she knew it was all dumb luck. If anything, Meechum made sure all the pain came her way, rather than Kyla’s. She couldn’t let that go unnoticed. When they made it out of the war, she was going to make sure everyone knew.
“We have a little farther to go, then we’ll be around the corner from the dam. I think we can take a breather. From there, who knows. Maybe we can walk all the way around the lake?” She had no idea how long it would take to walk around Lake Mead, but there was no way she’d touch the water. The huge lake was all heading for the exit now, and anyone who was caught by the current would be helpless as it drew them over the new waterfall at the Hoover Dam.
“We’ll try the radio when we’re safe,” Meechum added.
“When we’re safe,” she echoed sarcastically.
“I know, right?” her friend chuckled.
In her dream, she continued to run the shoreline for hours, always looking over her shoulder for the pursuing soldiers dressed in black. Her fears made her slip and fall on the rocky shore, always threatening to pull her into the dangerous waters. At some point, the dream would take her back to the dam, watching the bomb drop from the sky.
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 102
